“There's some gentry we don't want to see here,” said Granny. “I won't be happy until all this is over.”
Nanny Ogg craned to try and see over the head of a small emperor.
“Can't see Magrat around,” she said. “There's Verence talking to some other kings, but can't see our Magrat at all. Our Shawn said Millie Chillum said she was just a bag of nerves this morning.”
“All these high-born folks,” said Granny, looking around at the crowned heads. “I feel like a fish out of water.”
“Well, the way I see it, it's up to you to make your own water,” said Nanny, picking up a cold roast chicken leg from the buffet and stuffing it up a sleeve.
“Don't drink too much. We've got to keep alert, Gytha. Remember what I said. Don't let yourself get distracted-”
“That's never the delectable Mrs. Ogg, is it?”
Nanny turned.
There was no one behind her.
“Down here,” said the voice.
She looked down, into a wide grin.
“Oh, blast,” she said.
“It's me, Casanunda,” said Casanunda, who was dwarfed still further by an enormous[30] powdered wig. “You remember? We danced the night away in Genua?”
“No we didn't.”
“Well, we could have done.”
“Fancy you turning up here,” said Nanny, weakly. The thing about Casanunda, she recalled, was that the harder you slapped him down the faster he bounced back, often in an unexpected direction.
“Our stars are entwined,” said Casanunda. “We're fated for one another. I wants your body, Mrs. Ogg.”
“I'm still using it.”
And while she suspected, quite accurately, that this was an approach the world's second greatest lover used on anything that appeared to be even vaguely female, Nanny Ogg had to admit that she was flattered. She'd had many admirers in her younger days, but time had left her with a body that could only be called comfortable and a face like Mr. Grape the Happy Raisin. Long-banked fires gave off a little smoke.
Besides, she'd rather liked Casanunda. Most men were oblique in their approach, whereas his direct attack was refreshing.
“It'd never work,” she said. “We're basically incompatible. When I'm 5' 4” you'll still only be 3' 9“. Anyway, I'm old enough to be your mother.”
“You can't be. My mother's nearly 300, and she's got a better beard than you.”
And of course that was another point. By dwarf standards, Nanny Ogg was hardly more than a teenager.
“La, sir,” she said, giving him a playful tap that made his ears ring, “you do know how to turn a simple country girl's head and no mistake!”
Casanunda picked himself up and adjusted his wig happily
“I like a girl with spirit,” he said. “How about you and me having a little tete-a-tete when this is over?”
Nanny Ogg's face went blank. Her cosmopolitan grip of language had momentarily let her down.
“Excuse me a minute,” she said. She put her drink down on his head and pushed through the crowd until she found a likely looking duchess, and prodded her in the bustle regions.
“Hey, your grace, what's a tater tate?”
“I beg your pardon?”