Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett [58]
Granny bowed solemnly.
“And Aye will see if we can’t find a nice bundle of old clothes for you, too,” the housekeeper beamed.
“Old clothes? Oh. Yes. Thank you, m’m.”
The housekeeper swept forward with a sound like an elderly tea clipper in a gale, and beckoned Granny to follow her.
“Aye’ll have the tea brought to my flat. Tea with a lot of tea-leaves.”
Granny stumped along after her. Old clothes? Did this fat woman really mean it? The nerve! Of course, if they were good quality…
There seemed to be a whole world under the University. It was a maze of cellars, coldrooms, stillrooms, kitchens and sculleries, and every inhabitant was either carrying something, pumping something, pushing something or just standing around and shouting. Granny caught glimpses of rooms full of ice, and others glowing with the heat from red-hot cooking stoves, wall-sized. Bakeries smelled of new bread and taprooms smelled of old beer. Everything smelled of sweat and wood-smoke.
The housekeeper led her up an old spiral staircase and unlocked the door with one of the large number of keys that hung from her belt.
The room inside was pink and frilly. There were frills on things that no one in their right mind would frill. It was like being inside candyfloss.
“Very nice,” said Granny. And, because she felt it was expected of her, “Tasteful.” She looked around for something unfrilly to sit on, and gave up.
“Whatever am Aye thinking of?” the housekeeper trilled. “Aye’m Mrs. Whitlow but I expect you know, of course. And Aye have the honor to be addressing—?”
“Eh? Oh, Granny Weatherwax,” said Granny. The frills were getting to her. They gave pink a bad name.
“Ay’m psychic myself, of course,” said Mrs. Whitlow.
Granny had nothing against fortune-telling provided it was done badly by people with no talent for it. It was a different matter if people who ought to know better did it, though. She considered that the future was a frail enough thing at best, and if people looked at it hard they changed it. Granny had some quite complex theories about space and time and why they shouldn’t be tinkered with, but fortunately good fortune-tellers were rare and anyway people preferred bad fortune-tellers, who could be relied upon for the correct dose of uplift and optimism.
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.
She couldn’t help wondering if Mrs. Whitlow was a born witch who somehow missed her training. She was certainly laying siege to the future. There was a crystal ball under a sort of pink frilly tea cozy, and several sets of divinatory cards, and a pink velvet bag of rune stones, and one of those little tables on wheels that no prudent witch would touch with a ten-foot broomstick, and—Granny wasn’t sure on this point—either some special dried monkey turds from a llamassary or some dried llama turds from a monastery, which apparently could be thrown in such a way as to reveal the sum total of knowledge and wisdom in the universe. It was all rather sad.
“Or there’s the tea-leaves, of course,” said Mrs. Whitlow, indicating the big brown pot on the table between them. “Aye know witches often prefer them, but they always seem so, well, common to me. No offense meant.”
There probably wasn’t any offense meant, at that, thought Granny. Mrs. Whitlow was giving her the sort of look generally used by puppies when they’re not sure what to expect next, and are beginning to worry that it may be the rolled-up newspaper.
She picked up Mrs. Whitlow’s cup and had started to peer into it when she caught the disappointed expression that floated across the housekeeper’s face like a shadow across a snowfield. Then she remembered what she was doing, and turned the cup widdershins three times, made a few vague passes over it and mumbled a charm (which she normally used to cure mastitis in elderly goats, but never mind). This display of obvious magical talent seemed to cheer up Mrs. Whitlow no end.
Granny wasn’t normally very good at tea-leaves, but she squinted at the sugar-encrusted mess