The MGC returns? C16
The Bellamy family sat down to a relaxed evening meal. Cooking and serving dinner was something Davinia did rarely these days – Peter was a good basic cook and happily prepared meals for the family on those days she was working late at the shop. However, she had wanted to make the dinner tonight as a gesture, of love to her family certainly, but one that also felt like a last despairing attempt to grasp whatever shreds of normality lingered on, before the trap clamped shut and the game was up.
She wondered if it would cause problems for Peter if she was remanded to the Tanty. Would he be suspended? Would he be, very pointedly, sent away on compulsory paid leave until the last morning? What sort of awful banter would Mr Trooper come up with on the scaffold? Did that man really stay up late preparing his script? He certainly seemed to make a music hall turn out of an execution. And of course, it could all still go the other way…. She carefully avoided he question of how Peter and the boys were to manage when she was gone.
The Bellamys' guest at table wasn't helping. Oh, she was a pleasant girl, a neighbours' child they'd known since she was a baby. A friend of Simon's and about the same age, Davinia's mother-senses were working to ascertain whether it was still an innocent childhood friendship between two people who'd grown up together in the same street, or whether it was something more. With them both turning thirteen, the possibility was there and she felt she ought to be alert to it.
But Peggy Cregan was a day pupil at the Assassins' Guild School, and she was still in her uniform when she sat down to eat with them, having just got back from the after-school homework prep class for day students.
"It's got to be a strange place to go to school." Peter observed, as she served the rabbit-and-vegetable pie that was to be dinner.
"You must get the usual sorts of lessons – maths, language, literature, history, foreign languages, that all kids get in school. But the things you have to do on top of that…"
"That's about half the timetable." Peggy confirmed. "All the boring stuff anybody at school does anywhere. The teachers who do these subjects don't need to be full Assassins, although most of them seem to be. Mr Mycroft, my Maths teacher, I don't think he's a full Assassin, but you wouldn't want him getting all sarcastic at you. And even he brings being an Assassin into it. He'll set a question, like if three Assassins go out on a contract worth thirty-seven thousand dollars and the Guild takes fifty per cent, and the other three share the balance as a third and two twelfths, how does it all break down in dollars, please show working. And then he'll add questions about completion bonuses and compound interest to make it really difficult."
She shuddered, theatrically.
"But you don't necessarily have to become an Assassin?" Davinia questioned her. "I hear a lot of people just go there for the general education and leave at the end of the fifth year as associate Guild members."
"We don't have to make the choice until the end of fourth year" Peggy said. "By then, all the normal stuff is done with, practically. We take the exams if we want to or if the teachers think we're good enough. You get a chance to take other subjects in Fifth Year if you haven't taken the Black, or to retake exams if you fail or you aren't good enough at the end of Fourth. People who choose Black, though, move onto the Black Syllabus where they're doing nothing but training to be full licenced Assassins. That's three years, through fifth form, lower sixth and upper sixth. You learn all these cool skills and methods , but the downside is that you have to take the Final Exam, there's no going back. I haven't decided yet."
"I shouldn't think you'd have much of a problem." Peter said, respectfully. This was true enough; at the age of ten, Peggy had been the victim of a street attack by one of the more feral inhabitants of the Shades, who had felt the dark urge rising to cross the city to a place where parents felt safe enough to let their kids play out in the street, in order to assault a little girl. The little girl he had picked on had turned into a fighting wildcat, and while she hadn't killed him, she'd inflicted substantial soft-tissue damage, enough to leave her attacker writhing in a world of pain all of his own. Hearing the screams, Peter Bellamy had run out of the house to discover Peggy, in a torn dress that told its own story, hysterically stamping on the man's kneecaps and screaming incoherently.
Later, the Watch identified him as a man wanted for other crimes, and Peter Bellamy had in the fullness of time escorted him to the gallows. A cigar-smoking Commander Vimes had nodded at him from the roadside, one professional to another, as the execution procession left the Tanty. "Just want to make sure he's dead." Vimes had said, affably.
At the trial, Vetinari had noted Peggy's part in bringing the criminal to justice, and had asked her to stay afterwards. In a side-room at the palace, she and her parents had been introduced to Lady T'Malia, who had made a strong case that a young girl with such natural skills should be educated as a scholarship pupil at the Guild school. "She has exceptionally strong natural aggression, Mr Cregan." T'Malia had said. "We are uniquely equipped to train her to use it and control it. Would you feel entirely comfortable for her to return to normal life, knowing she very nearly killed her would-be attacker? Unmanaged, that aggression could explode again at any time."
They're paying the bulk of Peggy's school fees because they identified her as a useful investment, Davinia thought. But however they're doing it, they're doing it well, as she's so well-adjusted and there hasn't been a repetition since.
"Who's your form teacher?" Peter asked, interested.
"Miss Sanderson-Reeves. She's in charge of all day pupils and we register in her classroom every morning."
"I met her not so long ago! She had to visit the Tanty on business." He paused, and added, very carefully, "She would make an outstanding prison officer."
Peggy and the boys laughed. Davinia looked thoughtful.
"Everyone says she's an old witch and they're all a bit frightened of her, but I don't know, really. All I know is, if you do what she says and don't mess her about, she can be fair. Get past the pineapple, and she's alright, really."
"What does she teach?"
"Domestic Science, elocution and deportment. She helps Mr Mericet in the Poisons department, sometimes. The rumour is they're, er…."
"Good for her." said Davinia. "A woman can be errr at any age. You never get too old to be err!"
"Mum!" protested Tim and Martin..
"Whatever men think."
"Apparently" said Peggy, in a lower voice, "she inhumed twenty-four men as a freelance before the Guild recruited her. They say she was the original Marriage Guidance Counsellor!"
"Really?" said Davinia and Peter together, genuinely interested.
(Peter was thinking so that's why we prepared a cell on Death Row but never got a body to occupy it. The rumours were true. She was offered an Angel!
While Davinia was thinking So the Guild do recruit promising adult candidates. But will they make that offer to me as an alternative to…)
"We're all wondering, what with this new serial killer calling herself the Marriage Guidance Counsellor, whether Miss Sanderson-Reeves has gone back to her old life? I mean, we're all warned to beware of inhuming for inhumation's sake. They say it gets to be like one of those funny ess-drugs to trolls, once you start you can never ever stop, and sooner or later you get careless... mrs Bellamy?"
Davinia realised she was giving things away through her face.
"What? Oh, nothing, Peggy, I was just thinking how terrible that must be…"
Peter said, to lighten the atmosphere, "Do you know, she gets respect from Miss Maccalariat? That takes some doing. Your Miss Sanderson-Reeves reminds me of my drill-sergeant in the old days. They have to teach you a lot of difficult skills in a very short time and they have to be very blunt and direct in doing it. And a lot of the things she teaches sound like Army drill, the elocution and the deportment and so forth. They're bodily movements you have to unlearn, and new ones you have to learn, by constant rote repetition and practice until you get it right. It's boring, it's crushing, but it's necessary. And nobody ever loves their drill sergeant. Thirty years later, though, when you're still walking with your head up and your shoulders straight and you find yourself slipping back into the "stand-at-ease" when you're relaxed, you realise what the DS was trying to tell you about good posture and body control, and you'll thank him for it. I'm sure you will, too, with Miss Sanderson-Reeves."
"Oh, deportment." Peggy said. "You'll never guess what she did in deportment class to get us to concentrate. She had a bottle of acid, an actual bottle of acid, and a saucer…."
She explained the saucer of acid demonstration, as successive classes of students had seen it.
Peter exhaled, appreciatively.
"Well, all I can say is that I'm glad Sergeant Protheroe never thought of that" he said. "We'd all be carrying the scars to this day!"
"It takes a woman" Davinia agreed. "Men don't have it in them to be quite that inventively nasty."
"Usually, the men teachers are easier to get on with than the women. That doesn't mean they can't be sarcastic or hard on you sometimes, but they're different. I think a lot of them haven't had much experience of teaching girls before. Mr Bradlofrudd(1)1, the Games master, I think he's so used to classes of boys that he forgot once, he walked into the changing room after Games bellowing at us to get a bloody move on and get dressed. Everything went quiet, you know, pin-drop quiet, then he realised and said "whoops…" and walked out again. We all know he didn't do it deliberately, but we tease him about it! After that, if one of the women teachers is available or even one of the women staff or a prefect, she supervises the changing room for him if he has to take a girls' class."
"Is he an Assassin?" asked Davinia, trying to visualise the contradiction of an Assassin P.E. Master. He'd be a killer, yes, with a club with a nail through it. But aren't Assassins meant to be stylish and intellectually articulate and well-dressed?
"He does wear a black tracksuit, yes. With purple piping, and purple ribbon on his whistle, so we know he's a teacher. Apparently he inhumed the headmaster at his last school after a really bad argument. The Guild snapped him up after that and gave him a second chance."
"What about the other lady teachers?" asked Peter.
"There aren't many yet. Miss Band's OK. She's can be strict, but she knows when to be kinder and less formal. Madame Deux-Épées is really fun. If you get her for swords, she really makes it interesting, although it's hard work. She's a laugh, which doesn't mean you aren't learning anything. Get her in a classroom covering a formal sitting-down lesson and it can go anywhere!"
"Is there a Howondalandian teacher? With very striking red hair?" Davinia forced herself to ask.
"Oh, that will be Miss Smith-Rhodes! She does biology, natural history, zoology, in the classroom. Outside, she does animal management and welfare, and wilderness survival. They say she also teaches things like Use of Exothermic Reagents and unorthodox combat to pupils studying for the Black."
"Exo-what?" asked Tim Bellamy.
"Explosives, dummy. Like fireworks, only less sparkly light and more kaboom. She blows things up!" his brother Simon translated. "Seriously cool!"
"I really like her." Peggy said. "There are a dozen pupils in my year who all got to be Scholarship after….well, after the same kind of thing that happened to me. " She looked troubled and unhappy for a moment. "We all have a group session with Johanna once a week. Did you know she killed a man when she was eleven? She knows what it's like. Any worries or bad memories we can talk to her about. She knows."
"First name terms?" Peter inquired.
"Only behind a closed door in her office. Anywhere else, it's Miss Smith-Rhodes."
"I'm glad the Guild is looking after you so well" Davinia said, pleasantly.
Although inside she was thinking That is a picture of a determined woman. Who while not without decency and honour, has not refrained from killing in the past. And she is coming after me. What do I do?
She forestalled a squabble between two sons by saying "Timothy, Martin, clear the plates up. Now. Thank you." In her best Mother Is Talking voice. In a cheerful voice that she hoped didn't sound brittle or desperate, she asked
"Anyone for dessert?"
1 (1) Another of TP's "placeholder" characters, given a name, the status of teacher at the AG school, form master responsibility over Tree Frog House (day boys), and about whom not much else is known. I've fleshed him out a bit. The full list of A.G. teachers appears in the New Discworld Companion.