It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king's own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.
The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.
He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn't much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.
If only they could find it.
Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn't got the budget. He'd done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn't wash away in a light shower.
The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.
Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.
The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.
It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle's Fool in the warmth of the kitchen.
He growled and stood up. 'There is a knocking without,' he said.
'Without what?' said the Fool.
'Without the door, idiot.'
The Fool gave him a worried look. 'A knocking without a door?' he said suspiciously. 'This isn't some kind of Zen, is it?'
When the porter had grumbled off in the direction of the gatehouse the cook pushed another farthing into the kitty and looked sharply over his cards at the Fool.
'What's a Zen?' he said.
The Fool's bells tinkled as he sorted through his cards. Without thinking, he said: 'Oh, a sub-sect of the Turnwise Klatch philosophical system of Sumtin, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception.'
'How's that again?' said the cook suspiciously. He was on edge. When he'd taken the breakfast up to the Great Hall he'd kept getting the feeling that something was trying to take the tray out of his hands. And as if that wasn't bad enough, this new duke had sent him back for . . . He shuddered. Oatmeal! And a runny boiled egg! The cook was too old for this sort of thing. He was set in his ways. He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn't have an apple in its mouth and you couldn't roast it, he didn't want to serve it.
the badge of King Verence,' said Magrat.
'Who's he?' said Granny Weatherwax.
'He rules this country,' said Magrat.
'Oh. That king,' said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting.
'Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn't make sense,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Magrat, you have a look in the coach.'
The youngest witch poked around inside the bodywork and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded on to the turf.
The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown.
'It's a crown,' said Magrat. 'It's got all spiky bits on it.'
'Oh, dear,' said Granny.
The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her.
She didn't like its expression at all.
King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view.