Equal Rites Part 18

Which is why most ordinary visitors to the University use the back door, which is made of perfectly normal wood and doesn't go around terrorizing people, or even stand still terrorizing people. It had a proper knocker and everything.

Granny examined the doorposts carefully and gave a grunt of satisfaction when she spotted what she was looking for. She hadn't doubted that it would would be there, cunningly concealed by the natural grain of the wood. be there, cunningly concealed by the natural grain of the wood.

She grasped the knocker, which was shaped like a dragon's head, and rapped smartly, three times. After a while the door was opened by a young woman with her mouth full of clothes-pegs.

"Ot oo oo ont?" she inquired.

Granny bowed, giving the girl a chance to take in the pointy black hat with the batwing hatpins. It had an impressive effect: she blushed and, peering out into the quiet alleyway, hurriedly motioned Granny inside.

There was a big mossy courtyard on the other side of the wall, crisscrossed with washing lines. Granny had the chance to become one of the very few women to learn what it really is that wizards wear under their robes, but modestly averted her eyes and followed the girl across the flagstones and down a wide flight of steps.

They led into a long, high tunnel lined with archways and, currently, full of steam. Granny caught sight of long lines of washtubs in the big rooms off to the sides; the air had the warm fat smell of ironing. A gaggle of girls carrying wash-baskets pushed past her and hurried up the steps-then stopped, halfway up, and turned slowly to look at her.

Granny set her shoulders back and tried to look as mysterious as possible.

Her guide, who still hadn't got rid of her clothes-pegs, led her down a side-pa.s.sage into a room that was a maze of shelves piled with laundry. In the very center of the maze, sitting at a table, was a very fat woman with a ginger wig. She had been writing in a very large laundry book-it was still open in front of her-but was currently inspecting a large stained vest.

"Have you tried bleaching?" she asked.

"Yes, m'm," said the maid beside her.

"What about tincture of myrryt?"

"Yes, m'm. It just turned it blue, m'm."

"Well, it's a new one on me," said the laundry woman. "And Ay've seen brimstone and soot and dragon blood and demon blood and Aye don't know what else." She turned the vest over and read the nametape carefully sewn inside. "Hmm. Granpone the White. He's going to be Granpone the Gray if he doesn't take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is just a black magician with a good housekeeper. Take it-"

She caught sight of Granny, and stopped.

"Ee ocked hat hee oor," said Granny's guide, dropping a hurried curtsy. "Oo ed hat-"

"Yes, yes, thank you, Ksandra, you may go," said the fat woman. She stood up and beamed at Granny, and with an almost perceptible click wound her voice up several social cla.s.ses.

"Pray hexcuse us," she said. "You find us hall at sixes and sevens, it being washing day and heverything. His this a courtesy call or may I make so bold as to ask-" she lowered her voice-"his there a message from the Hother Sade?"

Granny looked blank, but only a fraction of a second. The witchmarks on the doorpost had said that the housekeeper welcomed witches and was particularly anxious for news of her four husbands; she was also in random pursuit of a fifth, hence the ginger wig and, if Granny's ears weren't deceiving her, the creak of enough whalebone to infuriate an entire ecology movement. Gullible and foolish, the signs had said. Granny withheld judgment, because city witches didn't seem that bright themselves.

The housekeeper must have mistaken her expression.

"Don't be afraid," she said. "May staff have distinct instructions to welcome witches, although of course they upstairs they upstairs don't approve. No doubt you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?" don't approve. No doubt you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?"

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 s.p.a.ce 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 t.u.r.ds from a llama.s.sary or some dried llama t.u.r.ds 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 common to me. No offense meant." 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 pa.s.ses over it and mumbled a charm (which she normally used to cure mast.i.tis 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 at the bottom of the cup and let her mind wander. What she really needed now was a handy rat or even a c.o.c.kroach that happened to be somewhere near Esk, so that she could Borrow its mind.

What Granny actually found was that the University had a mind of its own.

It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they've got the time-span all wrong. From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well.

The rocks from which Unseen University was built, however, have been absorbing magic for several thousand years and all that random power has had to go somewhere.

The University has, in fact, developed a personality.

Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.

Granny found the child by following the threads of the University's attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall...

"-in there?"

The voice came from a long way away.

"Mmph?"

"Aye said, what do you see in there?" repeated Mrs. Whitlow.

"Eh?"

"Aye said said, what do-"

"Oh." Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of pa.s.sages. another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of pa.s.sages.

"Are you all right?"

Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.

Fortunately Mrs. Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.

In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs. Whitlow's ample favors. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.

"There is another thing," she added.

"Yes? Yes?"

"I see you hiring a new servant-you do hire the servants here, don't you? Right-and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything."

"What about her, then?" said Mrs. Whitlow, already savoring Granny's surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.

"The spirits are a little unclear on this point," said Granny, "But it is very important that you hire her."

"No problem there," said Mrs. Whitlow, "can't keep servants here, you know, not for long. It's all the magic. It leaks leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it's not the same." down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it's not the same."

"Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won't be any trouble as far as that is concerned," said Granny grimly.

"If she can sweep and scrub she's welcome, Aye'm sure," said Mrs. Whitlow, looking puzzled.

"She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is."

"How very helpful. When is this young lady going to arrive?"

"Oh, soon, soon-that's what the spirits say."

A faint suspicion clouded the housekeeper's face. "This isn't the sort of thing spirits normally say. Where do they say that, exactly?"

"Here," said Granny. "Look, the little cl.u.s.ter of tea-leaves between the sugar and this crack here. Am I right?"

Their eyes met. Mrs. Whitlow might have had her weakness but she was quite tough enough to rule the below-stairs world of the University. However, Granny could outstare a snake; after a few seconds the housekeeper's eyes began to water.

"Yes, Aye expect you are," she said meekly, and fished a handkerchief from the recesses of her bosom.

"Well then," said Granny, sitting back and replacing the teacup in its saucer.

"There are plenty of opportunities here for a young woman willing to work hard," said Mrs. Whitlow. "Aye myself started as a maid, you know."

"We all do," said Granny vaguely. "And now I must be going." She stood up and reached for her hat.

"But-"

"Must hurry. Urgent appointment," said Granny over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps.

"There's a bundle of old clothes-"

Granny paused, her instincts battling for mastery.

"Any black velvet?"

"Yes, and some silk."

Granny wasn't sure she approved of silk, she'd heard it came out of a caterpillar's bottom, but black velvet had a powerful attraction. Loyalty won.

"Put it on one side, I may call again," she shouted, and ran down the corridor.

Cooks and scullery maids darted for cover as the old woman pounded along the slippery flagstones, leapt up the stairs to the courtyard and skidded out into the lane, her shawl flying out behind her and her boots striking sparks from the cobbles. Once out into the open she hitched up her skirts and broke into a full gallop, turning the corner into the main square in a screeching two-boot drift that left a long white scratch across the stones.

She was just in time to see Esk come running through the gates, in tears.

"The magic just wouldn't work! I could feel it there but it just wouldn't come out!"

"Perhaps you were trying too hard," said Granny. "Magic's like fishing. Jumping around and splashing never caught any fish, you have to bide quiet and let it happen natural."

"And then everyone laughed at me! Someone even gave me a sweet!"

"You got some profit out of the day, then," said Granny.

"Granny!" said Esk accusingly.

"Well, what did you expect?" she asked. "At least they only laughed at you. Laughter don't hurt. You walked up to chief wizard and showed off in front of everyone and only got laughed at? You're doing well, you are. Have you eaten the sweet?"

Esk scowled. "Yes."

"What kind was it?"