Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett [87]
“Some people don’t know a joke when they hear it,” said Granny.
As the band launched into another number Nanny Ogg fumbled 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 around, 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 honor 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 onto 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 eye-patch 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 toward Nanny Ogg, who had already cleared