Mort - Terry Pratchett [42]
Death gave him another of his supernova winks.
Mort didn’t return it. Instead he turned and plodded towards the door, at a general speed and gait that made Great A’Tuin look like a spring lamb.
He was halfway along the corridor before he heard the soft rush of footsteps behind him and a hand caught his arm.
“Mort?”
He turned and gazed at Ysabell through a fog of depression.
“Why did you let him think it was you in the library?”
“Don’t know.”
“It was…very…kind of you,” she said cautiously.
“Was it? I can’t think what came over me.” He felt in his pocket and produced the handkerchief. “This belongs to you, I think.”
“Thank you.” She blew her nose noisily.
Mort was already well down the corridor, his shoulders hunched like vulture’s wings. She ran after him.
“I say,” she said.
“What?”
“I wanted to say thank you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “It’d just be best if you don’t take books away again. It upsets them, or something.” He gave what he considered to be a mirthless laugh. “Ha!”
“Ha what?”
“Just ha!”
He’d reached the end of the corridor. There was the door into the kitchen, where Albert would be leering knowingly, and Mort decided he couldn’t face that. He stopped.
“But I only took the books for a bit of company,” she said behind him.
He gave in.
“We could have a walk in the garden,” he said in despair, and then managed to harden his heart a little and added, “Without obligation, that is.”
“You mean you’re not going to marry me?” she said. Mort was horrified. “Marry?”
“Isn’t that what father brought you here for?” she said. “He doesn’t need an apprentice, after all.”
“You mean all those nudges and winks and little comments about some day my son all this will be yours?” said Mort. “I tried to ignore them. I don’t want to get married to anyone yet,” he added, suppressing a fleeting mental picture of the princess. “And certainly not to you, no offense meant.”
“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on the Disc,” she said sweetly.
Mort was hurt by this. It was one thing not to want to marry someone, but quite another to be told they didn’t want to marry you.
“At least I don’t look like I’ve been eating doughnuts in a wardrobe for years,” he said, as they stepped out on to Death’s black lawn.
“At least I walk as if my legs only had one knee each,” she said.
“My eyes aren’t two juugly poached eggs.”
Ysabell nodded. “On the other hand, my ears don’t look like something growing on a dead tree. What does juugly mean?”
“You know, eggs like Albert does them.”
“With the white all sticky and runny and full of slimy bits?”
“Yes.”
“A good word,” she conceded thoughtfully. “But my hair, I put it to you, doesn’t look like something you clean a privy with.”
“Certainly, but neither does mine look like a wet hedgehog.”
“Pray note that my chest does not appear to be a toast rack in a wet paper bag.”
Mort glanced sideways at the top of Ysabell’s dress, which contained enough puppy fat for two litters of Rottweilers, and forbore to comment.
“My eyebrows don’t look like a pair of mating caterpillars,” he hazarded.
“True. But my legs, I suggest, could at least stop a pig in a passageway.”
“Sorry—?”
“They’re not bandy,” she explained.
“Ah.”
They strolled through the lily beds, temporarily lost for words. Eventually Ysabell confronted Mort and stuck out her hand. He shook it in thankful silence.
“Enough?” she said.
“Just about.”
“Good. Obviously we shouldn’t get married, if only for the sake of the children.”
Mort nodded.
They sat down on a stone seat between some neatly clipped box hedges. Death had made a pond in this corner of the garden, fed by an icy spring that appeared to be vomited into the pool by a stone lion. Fat white carp lurked in the depths, or nosed on the surface among the velvety black water lilies.
“We should have brought some breadcrumbs,” said Mort gallantly, opting for a totally noncontroversial subject.
“He never comes out here, you know,” said Ysabell, watching the fish. “He made