Making Money - Terry Pratchett [47]
And it had all begun with a lie. Why had Cosmo believed him? Because he was mad, but regrettably not all the time; he was a sort of hobby madman. He had this…thing about Lord Vetinari.
Heretofore didn’t spot that at first, he just wondered why Cosmo had fussed about his height at the job interview. And when Heretofore had told him he’d worked at the palace, he was hired on the spot.
And that was the lie, right there, although Heretofore preferred to think of it as an unfortunate conjunction of two truths.
Heretofore had indeed been employed for a while at the palace, and thus far Cosmo had not found out that this was as a gardener. He had been a minor secretary at the Armorers’ Guild before that, which was why he’d felt confident in saying “I was a minor secretary and I was employed at the palace,” a phrase that he felt Lord Vetinari would have examined with more care than the delighted Cosmo had done. And now here he was, advising a very important and clever man on the basis of as much rumor as he could remember or, in desperation, make up. And he was getting away with it. In his everyday business dealings, Cosmo was cunning, ruthless, and sharp as a tack, but when it came to anything to do with Vetinari, he was as credulous as a child.
Heretofore noticed that his boss occasionally called him by the name of the Patrician’s secretary, but he was being paid fifty dollars a month, food and his own bed thrown in, and for that kind of money he’d answer to “Daisy.” Well, perhaps not Daisy, but certainly Clive.
And then the nightmare had begun, and in the way of nightmares, everyday objects took on a sinister importance.
Cosmo had asked for an old pair of Vetinari’s boots.
That had been a poser. Heretofore had never been inside the actual palace, but he’d got into the grounds that night by scaling the fence next to the old green garden gate, met one of his old mates, who had to stay up all night to keep the hothouse boilers going, had a little chat, and the following night returned for a pair of old but serviceable black boots, size eight, and information from the boot boy that his lordship wore down the left heel slightly more than the right.
Heretofore couldn’t see any difference in the boots presented, and no one was actually claiming as a fact that these were the fabled Boots Of Vetinari, but well-worn but still-useful boots floated down from the upper floors to the servants’ quarters on a tide of noblesse oblige, and if these weren’t the boots of the man himself then they had almost certainly, at the very least, sometimes been in the same room as his feet.
Heretofore handed over ten dollars for them and spent an evening wearing down the left heel enough to be noticeable. Cosmo paid him fifty dollars without flinching, although he did wince when he tried them on.
“If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes,” he’d said, hobbling the length of his office. What insight he’d glean if they were the man’s under-butler’s shoes, Heretofore couldn’t guess at, but after half an hour, Cosmo rang for a basin of cold water and some soothing herbs and the shoes had not made an appearance since.
And then there had been the black skullcap. That one had been the one stroke of luck in this whole business. It was even genuine. It was a safe bet that Vetinari bought them from Bolters in the Maul, and Heretofore had cased the place, entered when the senior partners were at lunch, spoke to the impecunious youth who worked the steamy cleaning and stretching machines in the back room—and found that one had been sent in for cleaning. Heretofore walked out with it, uncleaned, leaving the young man extremely pecunious and with instructions to wash a new cap for return to the palace.
Cosmo was beside himself, and wanted to know all the details.
Next evening, it turned out that the pecunious