The Shepherd's Crown (Discworld 41)

Miss Tick smiled again. Why were people so keen to look at a sunrise, a rainbow, a flash of lightning or a dark cloud and feel responsible for it? She knew that if either girl really believed they could control a storm in the skies, they would be running home, screaming in terror – and their mothers would probably have to wash out the girls’ underclothing. Still, a bit of self-belief in a witch was a good start.

‘Miss, miss!’ said Becky and pointed. There was a hairpin now floating in the air alongside her caterpillar.

‘Well done,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Very well done indeed.’

‘Well, what about this, then?’ said Nancy, as her own shamble collapsed and the sheep’s wool floated to the ground, the little caterpillar perched on top like a witch on a broomstick. She raised her finger, and fire appeared to come out of the tip.

‘Excellent,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Both of you have got the hang of it. After that, it’s just a matter of learning, learning every day,’ she said sternly.

But what she thought was, Well, Mistress Tiffany will want to see you two and no mistake.

The music was playing in Fairyland – a harmonious melody, notes spiralling into the empty air, where a lazing elf perched on a slender branch near the top of a blossoming tree allowed himself the pleasure of turning each note into a colour, so that they danced above their heads, delighting the court. It doesn’t take much to delight an elf. Hurting something is usually top of their list, but music comes a close second.

The musician was a human, lured into the woods by the glamour of an elf’s harp, then snatched through to play, play, play for the Lord Peaseblossom. Elves were skilled at keeping their playthings alive, sometimes for weeks, and the man with the flute was a delightful new toy. Peaseblossom wondered idly how long the man would last.

But he was pleased. His warriors were making little sorties into the human world, bringing him back presents such as this. And he knew that with each successful incursion their confidence was growing. Soon they would be ready to make their move . . .

He frowned. He had to speak to Mustardseed. He needed to know that the elf had indeed thrown the wretched remains of the Queen out of Fairyland. He wanted no . . . complications.

Just as he loved to watch wildlife, so Geoffrey observed people. He found them fascinating, and he watched closely all the time, learning more and more from what he saw.

One thing he saw was that the old men seemed somehow in the way in their homes. It was so different from Geoffrey’s own home, where his father had decidedly ruled the roost. Here, where there were women in the old men’s lives, the women held all the power indoors – as they had for the years their men had been out working – and they had no intention of giving any of it away.

This thought was in his mind when he went to tidy up the nostril hairs of Sailor Makepeace, an errand which even Nanny Ogg disliked. Now Mrs Sally Makepeace – too shortsighted to be trusted with a pair of scissors near her husband’s nose, as an earlier attempt had proved – appeared to be a good woman, but Geoffrey had noticed that she treated her husband almost as part of the furniture, and that made Geoffrey sad – sad that a seafaring man who had seen so many interesting things now spent much of his time in the pub because his wife was always washing, cleaning, polishing and, when no alternative was around, dusting. She only just managed to avoid washing, cleaning and dusting her husband if he sat still for long enough.

Gradually it dawned on Geoffrey that the pub was both an entertainment and a refuge for the old boys. He joined them there one day and bought them all a pint, which got their attention. Then he had Mephistopheles do his counting trick. By the second pint the old boys had become quite avuncular and Geoffrey broached a subject which had been on his mind for a few days.

‘So, may I ask what you do, gentlemen?’

As it happened, he got laughter, and Reservoir Slump – a man whose grin, unlike his name, never slipped – said, ‘Bless you, sir, you could call us gentlemen of leisure.’

‘We are as kings,’ said Laughing Boy Sideways.

‘Though without the castles,’ Reservoir Slump added. ‘’Less’n I had one once and lost it somewhere.’

‘And do you like your leisure, gentlemen?’ said Geoffrey.

‘Not really,’ said Smack Tremble. ‘In fact, I hate it. Ever since my Judy died. We never had kids, neither.’ There was a tear in his eye and a break in his voice, which he covered up by taking another swig from his tankard.

‘She had a tortoise though, didn’t she?’ Wrinkled Joe, who had been built to a size big enough to pick up cows, put in.

‘Right enough,’ Smack said. ‘She said she liked it because it walked no faster ’n her. Still got the tortoise, but it ain’t the same. Not much good at conversation. My Judy would rattle on all day about this ’n’ that. The tortoise listens well enou

gh, mind you, which is more’n I could say for Judy sometimes.’ This got a laugh.

‘It’s a petticoat government, when you get old,’ said Stinky Jim Jones.

Geoffrey, now pleased to have got the ball rolling, said, ‘What do you mean by that?’

And then there was a kind of grumble from every man.

‘It’s like this, backhouse boy,’ said Wrinkled Joe. ‘My Betsy tells me what I am to eat and when and where, and if we are together, she fusses around me like an old hen. It’s like being a kid.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Captain Makepeace. ‘My Sally is wonderful and I knows I would be lost without her but, well, put it like this: I was a man once in charge of many other men, and when the weather was fearsomely bad, I would be up there making sure that we didn’t founder because it was my job and I was the captain.’ He looked around, seeing nods from the others, and then said directly to Geoffrey, ‘And best of all, young man, I was a man. And now? My job is to lift my feet while she sweeps around me. It’s our home and I love her, but somehow I’m always in the way.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Stinky Jim. ‘You know me, I’m still a good carpenter, well known in the Guild, but my Milly frets about me handling all the tools and so on; and I tell you, when she’s got her eyes on me, my hands shake.’

‘Would you like them to stop shaking?’ asked Geoffrey, though he had in fact seen Stinky Jim lift a tankard to his lips with a hand as steady as a rock. ‘Because you gentlemen have given me an idea.’ He paused, hoping they would listen. ‘My maternal uncle came from Uberwald and his name was Heimlich Sheddenhausen – he was the first man known to have a “shed”.’