'But I never walked like that! Why's he got a hump on his back? What's happened to his leg?' He listened some more, and added, in horrified tones, 'And I certainly never did that! Or that. Why is he saying I did that?'
The look he gave Nanny was full of pleading. She shrugged.
The king reached up, lifted off his spectral crown, and examined it.
'And it's my crown he's wearing! Look, this is it! And he's saying I did all those—' He paused for a minute, to listen to the latest couplet, and added, 'All right. Maybe I did that. So I set fire to a few cottages. But everyone does that. It's good for the building industry, anyway.'
He put the ghostly crown back on his head.
'Why's he saying all this about me?' he pleaded.
'It's art,' said Nanny. 'It wossname, holds a mirror up to life.'
Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.
Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.
That's us down there, she thought. Everyone knows who we really are, but the things down there are what they'll remember – three gibbering old baggages in pointy hats. All we've ever done, all we've ever been, won't exist any more.
She looked at the ghost of the king. Well, he'd been no worse than any other king. Oh, he might burn down the odd cottage every now and again, in a sort of absent-minded way, but only when he was really angry about something, and he could give it up any time he liked. Where he wounded the world, he left the kind of wounds that healed.
Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what's happening, and I know there's no truth in it.
This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.
We've lost. There is nothing we can do against this without becoming exactly what we aren't.
Nanny Ogg gave her a violent nudge in the ribs.
'Did you hear that?' she said. 'One of 'em said we put babbies in the cauldron! They've done a slander on me! I'm not sitting here and have 'em say we put babbies in a cauldron!'
Granny grabbed her shawl as she tried to stand up.
'Don't do anything!' she hissed. 'It'll make things worse.'
' “Ditch-delivered by adrabe”, they said. That'll be young Millie Hipwood, who didn't dare tell her mum and then went out gathering firewood. I was up all night with that one,' Nanny muttered. 'Fine girl she produced. It's a slander! What's a drabe?' she added.
'Words,' said Granny, half to herself. 'That's all that's left. Words.'
'And now there's a man with a trumpet come on. What's he going to do? Oh. End of Act One,' said Nanny.
The words won't be forgotten, thought Granny. They've got a power to them. They're damn good words, as words go.
There was yet another rattle of thunder, which ended with the kind of crash made, for example, by a sheet of tin escaping from someone's hands and hitting the wall.
In the world outside the stage the heat pressed down like a pillow, squeezing the very life out of the air. Granny saw a footman bend down to the duke's ear. No, he won't stop the play. Of course he won't. He wants it to run its course.
The duke must have felt the heat of her gaze on the back of his neck. He turned, focused on her, and gave her a strange little smile. Then he nudged his wife. They both laughed.
Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
She felt the land below her, even through several feet of foundations, flagstones, one thickness of leather and two thicknesses of sock. She felt it waiting.
She heard the king say, 'My own flesh and blood? Why has he done this to me? I'm going to confront him!'
She gently took Nanny Ogg's hand.
'Come, Gytha,' she said.