Maskerade - Terry Pratchett [58]
She stepped back, and trod on someone’s foot.
Agnes spun around. “André, there’s no—”
Someone crouched back. “Sorry miss!”
Agnes breathed out. “Walter?”
“Sorry miss!”
“It’s all right! You just startled me.”
“Didn’t see you miss!”
Walter was holding something. To Agnes’s amazement, the darker shape in the darkness was a cat, flopped over Walter’s arms like an old rug and purring happily. It was like seeing someone poking their arm into a mincing machine to find out what was jamming it.
“That’s Greebo, isn’t it?”
“He’s a happy cat! He’s full of milk!”
“Walter, why’re you in the middle of the stage in the dark when everyone’s gone home?”
“What were you doing miss?”
It was the first time she’d heard Walter ask a question. And he’s sort of a janitor, after all, she told herself. He’s allowed to go anywhere.
“I…got lost,” she said, ashamed at the lie. “I…I’ll be going up to my room now. Er. Did you hear someone singing?”
“All the time miss!”
“I meant just now.”
“Just now I’m talking to you miss!”
“Oh…”
“G’night miss!”
She walked through the soft warm gloom to the backstage door, resisting at every step the urge to look round. She collected the kettle and hurried up the stairs.
Behind her, on the stage, Walter carefully lowered Greebo to the floor, took off his beret, and removed something white and papery from inside it.
“What shall we listen to, Mister Cat? I know, we shall listen to the overture to Die Flederleiv by J. Q. Bubbla, cond. Vochua Doinov.”
Greebo gave him the fat-cheeked look of a cat prepared to put up with practically anything for food.
And Walter sat down beside him and listened to the music coming out of the walls.
When Agnes got back to the room Christine was already fast asleep, snoring the snore of those in herbal heaven. The mug lay by the bed.
It wasn’t a bad thing to do, Agnes reassured herself. Christine probably needed a good night’s sleep. It was practically a kindly act.
She turned her attention to the flowers. There were quite a lot of roses and orchids. Most of them had cards attached. Many aristocratic men apparently appreciated good singing or, at least, good singing that appeared to come from a face like Christine’s.
Agnes arranged the flowers Lancre fashion, which was to hold the pot with one hand and the bouquet in the other and forcibly bring the two into conjunction.
The last bunch was the smallest, and wrapped in red paper. There was no card. In fact, there were no flowers.
Someone had merely wrapped up half a dozen blackened and spindly rose stems and then, for some reason, sprayed them with scent. It was musky and rather pleasant, but a bad joke all the same. She threw them in the bin with the rubbish, blew out the candle, and sat down to wait.
She wasn’t certain for whom. Or what.
After a minute or two she was aware that there was a glow coming from the waste bin. It was the barest fluorescence, like a sick glowworm, but it was there.
She crawled across the floor and peered in.
There were rosebuds on the dead sticks, transparent as glass, visible only by the glimmer on the edge of each petal. They flickered like marsh lights.
Agnes lifted them out carefully and fumbled in the darkness for the empty mug. It wasn’t the best of vases, but it would have to do. Then she sat and watched the ghostly flowers until…
…someone coughed. She jerked her head up, aware that she’d fallen asleep.”
“Madam?”
“Sir?!”
The voice was melodious. It suggested that, at any minute, it might break into song.
“Attend. Tomorrow you must sing the part of Laura in Il Truccatore. We have much to do. One night is barely enough. The aria in Act One will occupy much of our time.”
There was a brief passage of violin music.
“Your performance tonight was…good. But there are areas that we must build upon. Attend.”
“Did you send the roses?!”
“You like the roses? They bloom only in darkness.