'Cor, look at us,' she said. 'Them feathers in your hair really look good.'
'I've never been vain,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'You know that, Gytha. No-one could ever call me vain.'
'No, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.
Granny twirled a bit.
'Are you ready then, Dame Ogg?' she said.
'Yes. Let's do it, Lady Weatherwax.'
The dance floor was thronged. Decorations hung from every pillar, but they were black and silver, the colours of the festival of Samedi Nuit Mort. An orchestra was playing on a balcony. Dancers whirled. The din was immense.
A waiter with a tray of drinks suddenly found that he was a waiter without a tray of drinks. He looked around, and then down to a small fox under a huge white wig.
'Bugger off and get us some more,' said Nanny pleasantly. 'Can you see her, your ladyship?'
'There's too many people.'
'Well, can you see the Duc?'
'How do I know? Everyone's got masks on!'
'Hey, is that food over there?'
Many of the less energetic or more hungry of the Genua nobility were clustered around the long buffet. All they were aware of, apart from sharp digs with a pair of industrious elbows, was an amiable monotone at chest height, on the lines of'. . . mind your backs . . . stand aside there . . . comin' through.'
Nanny fought her way to the table and nudged a space for Granny Weatherwax.
'Cor, what a spread, eh?' she said. 'Mind you, they have tiny chickens in these parts.' She grabbed a plate.
"Them's quails.'
'I'll 'ave three. 'Ere, charlie chan!'
A flunkey stared at her.
'Got any pickles?'
'I'm afraid not, ma'am.'
Nanny Ogg looked along a table which included roast swans, a roasted peacock that probably wouldn't have felt any better about it even if it had known that its tail feathers were going to be stuck back in afterwards, and more fruits, boiled lobsters, nuts, cakes, creams and trifles than a hermit's dream.
'Well, got any relish?'
'No, ma'am.'
'Tomato ketchup?'
'No, ma'am.'
'And they call this a gormay paradise,' muttered Nanny, as the band struck up the next dance. She nudged a tall figure helping himself to the lobster. 'Some place, eh?'
VERY NICE.
'Good mask you've got there.'
THANK YOU.
Nanny was spun around by Granny Weatherwax's hand on her shoulder.
'There's Magrat!'
'Where? Where?' said Nanny.
'Over there . . . sitting by the potted plants.'
'Oh, yes. On the chassy longyew,' said Nanny. “That's ”sofa" in foreign, you know,' she added.
'What's she doing?'
'Being attractive to men, I think.'
'What, Magratr
'Yeah. You're really getting good at that hypnotism, ain't you.'
Magrat fluttered her fan and looked up at the Compte de Yoyo.
'La, sir," she said. 'You may get me another plate of lark's eggs, if you really must.'
'Like a shot, dear lady!' The old man bustled off in the direction of the buffet.
Magrat surveyed her empire of admirers, and then extended a languorous hand towards Captain de Vere of the Palace Guard. He stood to attention.
'Dear captain,' she said, 'you may have the pleasure of the next dance.'
'Acting like a hussy,' said Granny disapprovingly.
Nanny gave her an odd look.
'Not really,' she said. 'Anyway, a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm. At least none of those men look like the Duc. 'Ere, what you doing?'
This was to a small bald-headed man who was trying surreptitiously to set up a small easel in front of them.
'Uh ... if you ladies could just hold still for a few minutes,' he said shyly. 'For the woodcut?'
'What woodcut?' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You know,' said the man, opening a small penknife. 'Everyone likes to see their woodcut in the broadsheets after a ball like this? “Lady Thing enjoying a joke with Lord Whatsit”, that sort of thing?'
Granny Weatherwax opened her mouth to reply, but Nanny Ogg laid a gentle hand on her arm. She relaxed a little and sought for something more suitable to say.
'I knows a joke about alligator sandwiches,' she volunteered, and shook Nanny's hand away. “There was a man, and he went into an inn and he said ”Do you sell alligator sandwiches?“ and the other man said ”Yes“ and he said, ”Then give me an alligator sandwich - and don't be a long time about it!'"
She gave him a triumphant look.
'Yes?' said the woodcutter, chipping away quickly, 'And then what happened?'
Nanny Ogg dragged Granny away quickly, searching for a distraction.
'Some people don't know a joke when they hear it,' said Granny.
As the band launched into another number Nanny Ogg rumbled in a pocket and found the dance card that belonged to an owner now slumbering peacefully in a distant room.
"This is,' she turned the card round, her lips moving wonderingly, 'Sir, Roger the Coverley?'
'Ma'am?'
Granny Weatherwax looked around. A plump military man with big whiskers was bowing to her. He looked as though he'd enjoyed quite a few jokes in his time.
'Yes?'
'You promised me the honour of this dance, m'lady?'
'No I didn't.'
The man looked puzzled. 'But I assure you, Lady D'Arrangement . . . your card . . . my name is Colonel Moutarde ..."
Granny gave him a look of deep suspicion, and then read the dance card attached to her fan.
'Oh.'
'Do you know how to dance?' hissed Nanny.
'Of course.'
'Never seen you dance,' said Nanny.
Granny Weatherwax had been on the point of giving the colonel as polite a refusal as she could manage. Now she threw back her shoulders defiantly.
'A witch can do anything she puts her mind to, Gytha Ogg. Come, Mr Colonel.'
Nanny watched as the pair disappeared into the throng.
' 'Allo, foxy lady,' said a voice behind her. She looked around. There was no-one there.
'Down here.'
She looked down.
A very small body wearing the uniform of a captain in the palace guard, a powdered wig and an ingratiating smile beamed up at her.
'My name's Casanunda,' he said. 'I'm reputed to be the world's greatest lover. What do you think?'
Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down.
'You're a dwarf,' she said.
'Size isn't important.'
Nanny Ogg considered her position. One colleague known for her shy and retiring nature was currently acting like that whatshername, the heathen queen who was always playing up to men and bathing in asses' milk and stuff, and the other one was acting very odd and dancing with a man even though she didn't know one foot from the other. Nanny Ogg felt she was at least owed a bit of time in which to be her own woman.
'Can you dance as well?' she said wearily.
'Oh yes. How about a date?'
'How old do you think I am?' said Nanny.
Casanunda considered. 'All right, then. How about a prune?'
Nanny sighed, and reached down for his hand. 'Come on.'
Lady Volentia D'Arrangement staggered limply along a passageway, a forlorn thin shape in complicated corsetry and ankle-length underwear.
She wasn't at all sure what had happened. There had been that frightful woman, and then this feeling of absolute bliss and then . . . she'd been sitting on the carpet with her dress off. Lady Volentia had been to enough balls in her dull life to know that there were occasions when you woke up in strange rooms with your dress off, but that tended to be later in the evening and at least you had some idea of why you were there . . .
She eased her way along, holding on to the wall. Someone was definitely going to get told off about this.
A figure came around a bend in the corridor, idly tossing a turkey leg into the air with one hand and catching it with the other.
'I say,' said Lady Volentia, 'I wonder if you would be so good as to - oh . . .'
She looked up at a leather-clad figure with an eyepatch and a grin like a corsair raider.
'Wroowwwwl!'
'Oh. I say!'
Nothing to this dancing, Granny Weatherwax told herself. It's just moving around to music.
It helped to be able to read her partner's mind. Dancing is instinctive, after you've got past that stage of looking down to see what your feet are doing, and witches are good at reading resonating instincts. There was a slight struggle as the colonel tried to lead, but he soon gave in, partly in the face of Granny Weatherwax's sheer refusal to compromise but mainly because of her boots.
Lady D'Arrangement's shoes hadn't fitted. Besides, Granny was attached to her boots. They had complicated iron fixtures, and toecaps like battering rams. When it came to dancing, Granny's boots went exactly wherever they wanted to go.
She steered her helpless and slightly crippled partner towards Nanny Ogg, who had already cleared quite a space around her. What Granny could achieve with two pounds of hobnailed syncopation Nanny Ogg could achieve merely with her bosom.
It was a large and experienced bosom, and not one that was subject to restraint. As Nanny Ogg bounced down, it went up; when she gyrated right, it hadn't finished twirling left. In addition, Nanny's feet moved in a complicated jig step regardless of the actual tempo, so that while her body actually progressed at the speed of a waltz her feet were doing something a bit nearer to a hornpipe. The total effect obliged her partner to dance several feet away, and many surrounding couples to stop dancing just to watch in fascination, in case the build-up of harmonic vibrations dropped her into the chandeliers.
Granny and her helpless partner whirled past.
'Stop showin' off,' Granny hissed, and disappeared into the throng again.
'Who's your friend?' said Casanunda.
'She's - ' Nanny began.
There was a blast of trumpets.
"That was a bit off the beat,' she said.
'No, that means the Duc is arriving,' said Casanunda.
The band stopped playing. The couples, as one, turned and faced the main staircase.
There were two figures descending in stately fashion.
My word, he's a sleek and handsome devil, Nanny told herself. It just goes to show. Esme's right. You can never tell by lookin'.
And her . . .
. . . that's Lily Weatherwax?
The woman wasn't masked.
Give or take the odd laughter line and wrinkle, it was Granny Weatherwax to the life.
Almost. . .
Nanny found she was turning to find the white eagle head in the crowd. All heads were turned to die staircase, but there was one staring as if her gaze was a steel rod.
Lily Weatherwax wore white. Until that point it had never occurred to Nanny Ogg that there could be different colours of white. Now she knew better. The white of Lily Weatherwax's dress seemed to radiate; if all the lights went out, she felt, Lily's dress would glow. It had style. It gleamed, and had puffed sleeves and was edged with lace.
And Lily Weatherwax looked - Nanny Ogg had to admit it - younger. There was the same bone structure and fine Weatherwax complexion, but it looked . . . less worn.
If that's what bein' bad does to you, Nanny thought, I could of done with some of that years ago. The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.
The eyes were the same, though. Somewhere in the genetics of the Weatherwaxes was a piece of sapphire. Maybe generations of them.
The Duc was unbelievably handsome. But that was understandable. He was wearing black. Even his eyes wore black.
Nanny surfaced, and pushed her way through the throng to Granny Weatherwax.
'Esme?'
She grabbed Granny's arm.
'Esme?'
'Hmm?'
Nanny was aware that the crowd was moving, parting like a sea, between the staircase and the chaise-longue at the far end of the hall.