Snuff (Discworld 39)

“Thank you,” said Vimes, to the invisible informant. “You’ve been very helpful.”

He walked thoughtfully back upstairs, through an avenue of turned backs, and was thankful to encounter Willikins in the laundry on the way. The batman did not turn his back on Vimes, which was a relief.*

He was folding shirts with the care and attention he might otherwise have marshaled for the neat cutting off of a defeated opponent’s ear. When the cuffs of his own spotlessly clean jacket slid up a little you could just see part of the tattoos on his arm but not, fortunately, spell out anything they said. Vimes said, “Willikins, what are the whirling housemaids all about?”

Willikins smiled. “Old custom, sir. A reason to it, of course—there often is if it sounds bloody stupid. No offense, commander, but knowing you I’d suggest that you let twirling housemaids spin until you have got the lie of the land, as it were. Besides, her ladyship and Young Sam are in the nursery.”

A few minutes later Vimes, after a certain amount of trial and error, walked into what was, in a musty kind of way, a paradise.

Vimes had never had much in the way of relatives. Not many people are anxious to let it be known that their distant ancestor was a regicide. All that, of course, was history and it amazed the new Duke of Ankh that the history books now lauded the memory of Old Stoneface, the watchman who executed the evil bastard on the throne and had suddenly struck a blow for freedom and law. History is what you make it, he had learned, and Lord Vetinari was a man with the access to and the keys of a whole range of persuasive mechanisms left over, as luck would have it, from the regicide days and currently still well oiled in the cellar. History is, indeed, what you make it and Lord Vetinari could make it…anything he wanted. And thus the dreadful killer of kings was miraculously gone—never been there, you must be mistaken, never heard of him, no such person—and replaced with the heroic, if tragically misunderstood, Slayer of Tyrants Stoneface Vimes, the famous ancestor of the highly respected His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. History was a wonderful thing, it moved like the sea and Vimes was taken at the flood.

Vimes’s family had lived a generation at a time. There had never been heirlooms, family jewels, embroidered samplers stitched by a long-dead aunt, no interesting old urns found in granny’s attic which you hoped that the bright young man who knew all about antiques would tell you was worth a thousand dollars so that you could burst with smugness. And there was absolutely no money, only a certain amount of unpaid debt. But here in the playroom, neatly stacked, were generations of toys and games, some of them a little worn from long usage, particularly the rocking horse, which was practically life-size and had a real leather saddle with trappings made from (Vimes discovered to his incredulity by rubbing them with a finger) genuine silver. There was also a fort, big enough for a kid to stand in and defend, and a variety of child-sized siege weapons to assault it, possibly with the help of boxes and boxes of lead soldiers, all painted in the correct regimental colors and in fine detail. For two pins Vimes would have got down on hands and knees and played with them there and then. There were model yachts, and a teddy bear so big that for one horrible moment Vimes wondered whether it was a real one, stuffed; there were catapults and boomerangs and gliders…and in the middle of all this, Young Sam stood paralysed, almost in tears with the knowledge that no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t play with everything all at once. It was a far cry from the Vimes childhood, and playing poo sticks with real poo.

While the apple of their eyes tentatively straddled the rocking horse, which had frighteningly big teet

h, Vimes told his wife about the objectionable spinning housemaids. She simply shrugged, and said, “It’s what they do, dear. It’s what they’re used to.”

“How can you say that? It’s so demeaning!”

Lady Sybil had developed a totally calm and understanding tone of voice when dealing with her husband. “That’s because, technically speaking, they are demeaned. They spend a lot of time serving people who are a lot more important than they are. And you are right at the top of the list, dear.”

“But I don’t think I’m more important than them!” Vimes snapped.

“I think I know what you’re saying, and it does you credit, it really does,” said Sybil, “but what you actually said was nonsense. You are a Duke, a Commander of the City Watch and,” she paused.

“A Blackboard Monitor,” said Vimes automatically.

“Yes, Sam, the highest honor that the King of the Dwarfs can bestow.” Sybil’s eyes glittered. “Blackboard Monitor Vimes; one who can erase the writings, somebody who can rub out what is there. That’s you, Sam and if you were killed the chanceries of the world would be in uproar and, Sam, regrettably they would not be perturbed at the death of a housemaid. She held up a hand because he’d opened his mouth and added, “I know you would be, Sam, but wonderful girls though I’m sure they are, I fear that if they were to die a family and, perhaps, a young man would be inconsolable, and the rest of the world would never know. And you, Sam, know that this is true. However, if you were ever murdered, dread the thought and indeed I do every time you go out on duty, not only Ankh-Morpork but the world would hear about it instantly. Wars might start and I suspect that Vetinari’s position might become a little dangerous. You are more important than girls in service. You are more important than anybody else in the Watch. You are mistaking value for worth, I think.” She gave his worried face a brief kiss. “Whatever you think you once were, Sam Vimes, you’ve risen, and you deserved to rise. You know the cream rises to the top!”

“So does the scum,” said Vimes automatically, although he immediately regretted it.

“How dare you say that, Sam Vimes! You may have been a diamond in the rough, but you’ve polished yourself up! And however you cut it, husband of mine, although you are no longer a man of the people, it certainly seems to me that you are a man for the people, and I think the people are far better off for that, d’you hear?”

Young Sam looked up adoringly at his father, while the rocking horse rocked into a gallop. Between son and spouse, Vimes never had a chance. He looked so crestfallen that Lady Sybil, as wives do, tried a little consolation.

“After all, Sam, you expect your men to get on with their duties, don’t you? Likewise the housekeeper expects the girls to get on with theirs.”

“That’s quite different, really it is. Coppers watch people, and I’ve never told them that they can’t pass the time of day with somebody. After all, that somebody might provide useful information.” Vimes knew that this was technically true, but anybody who was seen giving anything more useful than the time of day to a policeman in most streets of the city would soon find a straw would be necessary to help him eat his meals. But the analogy was right, anyway, he thought, or would have thought, had he been a man to whom the word analogy came easily. Just because you were a member of somebody’s staff didn’t mean you had to act like some kind of clockwork toy…

“Shall I tell you the reason for the spinning housemaids, Sam?” said Sybil, as Young Sam cuddled the huge teddy bear, who frightened him by growling. “It was instituted in my grandfather’s time at the behest of my grandmother. In those days we entertained all the time with scores of guests on some weekends. Of course, a number of these guests would be young men from very good families in the city, quite well educated and full of, shall I say, vim and vigor.”

Sybil glanced down at Young Sam and was relieved to see he was now lining up some small soldiers. “The maids, on the other hand, in the very nature of things are not well educated and I’m ashamed to say might have been slightly too compliant in the face of people whom they had come to think of as their betters.” She was starting to blush, and she pointed down at Young Sam, who she was glad to see was still paying no attention. “I’m sure you get the picture, Sam? Absolutely sure, and my grandmother, whom you would almost certainly have hated, had decent instincts, and therefore decreed that all the housemaids should not only refrain from talking to the male guests, but should not make eye contact with them either, on pain of dismissal. You might say she was being cruel to be kind, but not all that cruel, come to think of it. In the fullness of time, the housemaids would leave the Hall with good references and not be embarrassed about wearing a white dress on their wedding day.”

“But I’m happily married,” Vimes protested. “And I can’t imagine Willikins risking the wrath of Purity, either.”

“Yes, dear, and I’ll have a word with Mrs. Silver. But this is the country, Sam. We do things a little more slowly here. Now, why don’t you take Young Sam out to see the river? Take Willikins with you—he knows his way around.”

Young Sam did not need very much in the way of entertainment. In fact he made his own entertainment, manufacturing it in large quantities out of observations of the landscape, the stories that had lulled him to sleep at bedtime last night, some butterfly thought that had just sped across his mind and, increasingly, he’d talk about Mr. Whistle, who lived in a house in a tree but was sometimes a dragon. He also had a big boot and didn’t like Wednesdays because they smell funny and he had a rainbrella.

Young Sam was thus totally unfazed by the countryside, and ran ahead of Vimes and Willikins, pointing out trees, sheep, flowers, birds, dragonflies, funny-shaped clouds and a human skull. He seemed quite impressed by the find and rushed to show it to his daddy, who stared at it as if he had seen, well, a human skull. It had clearly been a human skull for quite a long time, however, and appeared to have been looked after, to the point of being polished.

As Vimes turned it over in his hands, searching forensically for any sign of foul play, there was a flip-flop sound approaching through the shrubbery, accompanied by a vocal number on the subject of what a person unknown would do to people who stole skulls off him. When the bushes parted said person unknown turned out to be a man of uncertain age and teeth, a grubby brown robe and a beard longer than any Vimes had seen before, and Vimes was a man who had often been inside Unseen University, where wizards considered that wisdom was embodied in the growing of a beard that would keep the knees warm. This one tailed cometlike behind its owner. It caught up with him when his hugely sandaled feet slithered to a stop, but its momentum meant that it began to pile up on his head. Possibly it carried wisdom with it, because its owner was bright enough to stop dead when he saw the look in Vimes’s eye. There was silence, apart from the chuckling of Young Sam as the endless beard, with a life of its own, settled on the man like the snows of winter.

Willikins cleared his throat, and said, “I think this is the hermit, commander.”

“What’s a hermit doing here? I thought they lived up poles in deserts!” Vimes glared at the raggedy man, who clearly felt that an explanation was called for and was going to deliver it whether it was called for or not.

“Yes, sir, I know, sir, that is a popular delusion, and personally I’ve never given it much credence, on account of the difficulty of dealing with what I might call the bathroom necessities and similar. I mean, that sort of thing might be all right in foreign parts, where there’s sunshine and lots of sand, but it wouldn’t do for me, sir, no indeed.”