Carpe Jugulum (Discworld 23)

As Agnes turned round again she saw the three magpies. They were perched on a branch over the road.

"Three for a funeral-"' she began.

A stone whirred up. There was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers.

'Two for mirth,' said Nanny, in a self-satisfied voice.

'Nanny, that was cheating.'

'Witches always cheat,' said Nanny Ogg. She glanced back at the sleeping figure behind them. 'Everyone knows that  -  who knows anything about witches.'

They went home to Lancre.

It had been raining again. Water had seeped into Oats's tent and also into the harmonium, which now emitted an occasional squashed-frog burp when it was played. The songbooks also smelled rather distressingly of cat.

He gave up on them and turned to the task of disassembling his camp bed, which had skinned two knuckles and crushed one finger when he put it up and still looked as though it was designed for a man shaped like a banana.

Oats was aware that he was trying to avoid thinking. On the whole, he was happy with this. There was something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks, and listening to his own breath. Perhaps there was a way...

From outside there was the faint sound of something wooden hitting something hollow and whispering on the evening air.

He peered through the tent flap.

People were filing stealthily into the field. The first few were carrying planks. Several were pushing barrels. He stood with his mouth open as the very rough benches were constructed and began to fill up.

A number of the men had bandages across their noses, he noticed.

Then he heard the rattle of wheels and saw the royal coach lurch through the gateway. This woke him up and he scurried back into the tent, pulling damp clothes out of his bag in a frantic search for a clean shirt. His hat had never been found and his coat was caked with mud, the leather of his shoes was cracked and the buckles had instantly tarnished in the acid marshes, but surely a clean shirt-

Someone tried to knock on the damp canvas and then, after an interval of half a second, stepped into the tent.

'Are you decent?' said Nanny Ogg, looking him up and down. 'We're all out here waitin', you know. Lost sheep waitin' to be shorn, you might say,' she added, her manner suggesting very clearly that she was doing something that she personally disapproved of, but doing it just the same.

Oats turned around.

'Mrs Ogg, I know you don't like me very much-'

'Don't see why I should like you at all,' said Nanny. 'What with you tagging after Esme and her havin' to help you all that way across the mountains like that.'

The response was screaming up Oats's throat before he noticed the faint knowing look in Nanny's eyes, and he managed to turn it into a cough.

'Er... yes,' he said. 'Yes. Silly of me, wasn't it? Er... how many are out there, Mrs Ogg?'

'Oh, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.'

Levers, thought Oats, and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny's parlour. She controls the levers of lots of people. But someone pulled her lever first, I'll bet.

'And what do they expect of me?'

'Says Evensong on the poster,' said Nanny simply. 'Even beer would be better.'

So he went out and saw the watching faces of a large part of Lancre's population lined up in the late-afternoon light. The King and Queen were in the front row. Verence nodded regally at oats to signal that whatever it was that he intended ought to start around now.

It was clear from the body language of Nanny Ogg that any specifically Omnian prayers would not be tolerated, and Oats made do with a generic prayer of thanks to any god that might be listening and even to the ones that weren't.

Then he pulled out the stricken harmonium and tried a few chords until Nanny elbowed him aside, rolled up her sleeves and coaxed notes out of the damp bellows that oats never even knew were in there.

The singing wasn't very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like 'Om Shall Trample The Ungodly' and 'Lift Me To The Skies' and 'Light The Good Light'. They went down well. Lancre people weren't too concerned about religion, but they knew what it ought to sound like.