'Oh, Greebo!' said Nanny. 'I was wonderin' where you'd got to...'
'Could you please remove him, Mrs Ogg?' said the King.
Agnes glanced at Magrat. The Queen had half turned away, with her elbow on the arm of the throne and her hand covering her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.
Nanny grabbed her cat off the throne.
'A cat can look at a king,' she said.
'Not with that expression, I believe,' said Verence. He waved graciously at the assembled company, just as the castle's dock began to strike midnight.
'Please begin, Reverend.'
'I, um, did have a small suitable homily on the subject of, um, hope for the-' the Quite Reverend Oats began, but there was a grunt from Nanny and he suddenly seemed to jerk forward slightly. He blinked once or twice and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. 'But alas I fear we have no time,' he concluded quickly.
Magrat leaned over and whispered something in her husband's ear. Agnes heard him say, 'Well, dear, I think we have to, whether she's here or not...'
Shawn scurried up, slightly out of breath and with his wig on sideways. He was carrying a cushion. On the faded velvet was the big iron key of the castle.
Millie Chillum carefully handed the baby to the priest, who held it gingerly.
It seemed to the royal couple that he suddenly started to speak very hesitantly. Behind him, Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred per cent artificial additives. They also had the impression that the poor man was suffering from frequent attacks of cramp.
'-we are gathered here together in the sight of... um... one another...'
'Are you all right, Reverend?' said the King, leaning forward.
'Never better, sir, um, I assure you,' said Oats miserably, '... and I therefore name thee... that is, you.. .'
There was a deep, horrible pause.
Glassy faced, the priest handed the baby to Millie. Then he removed his hat, took a small scrap of paper from the lining, read it, moved his lips a few times as he said the words to himself, and then replaced the hat on his sweating forehead and took the baby again.
'I name you... Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!'
The shocked silence was suddenly filled.
'Note Spelling?' said Magrat and Agnes together.
'Esmerelda?' said Nanny.
The baby opened her eyes.
And the doors swung back.
Choices. It was always choices...
There'd been that man down in Spackle, the one that'd killed those little kids. The people'd sent for her and she'd looked at him and seen the guilt writhing in his head like a red worm, and then she'd taken them to his farm and showed them where to dig, and he'd thrown himself down and asked her for mercy, because he said he'd been drunk and it'd all been done in alcohol.
Her words came back to her. She'd said, in sobriety: end it in hemp.
And they'd dragged him off and hanged him in a hempen rope and she'd gone to watch because she owed him that much, and he'd cursed, which was unfair because hanging is a clean death, or at least cleaner than the one he'd have got if the villagers had dared defy her, and she'd seen the shadow of Death come for him, and then behind Death came the smaller, brighter figures, and then-
In the darkness, the rocking chair creaked as it thundered back and forth.
The villagers had said justice had been done, and she'd lost patience and told them to go home, then, and pray to whatever gods they believed in that it was never done to them. The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.
She shuddered at a memory. Almost as horrible, but not quite.