Chapter 4: Fresh air
Every twenty minutes or so, Sir Havelock Vetinari moved off the dance floor and partook of an increasingly delightful drink Alexandra called a Scumble Colada – a shot of scumble mixed with ice cold water, a bit of brown sugar and a coconut slice.* He'd lost count of how many he'd consumed but then, he'd also lost count of how many fingers he had on his hands.
He'd observed one round of the Roll-in-the-Hay, and then entered the dance himself, executing the steps so efficiently and precisely that other dancers stood aside to watch him. He really hit his stride with the Happy-Cow, which among other things involved stooping and making downward jerking motions with the hands. By the fourth dance and his third Scumble Colada, Vetinari knew the steps to the dances before the caller announced them.
The uneasiness he'd felt before his first drink had evaporated. His head still ached a bit but his memory seemed to be in perfect working order; the Leap-Frog-Jig came after the Pitchfork-Reel. It always had. After awhile, Alexandra had a hard time keeping up with him.
"Tired already?" he asked as she breathlessly stepped off the dance floor.
"I'm dying of thirst. I have to sit one out, sir."
"Don't call me sir," Vetinari said as he handed her a cup of water from the buffet. "We've shared at least six dances and…" he thought a moment, "…some scumble. You may now call me Havelock."
Alexandra smiled and Vetinari saw her face glow with a scumble-soaked radiance. He was sure she hadn't been particularly beautiful when he first saw her. Pretty, perhaps. If she was laughing and one discounted the freckles.
But now, with her hair damp, her face moist, her eyes bright, she was… exquisite. Of course, Vetinari had consumed his share of alcohol in his life as a knight and knew its filter effects. It was a bit like magic. The plain made beautiful with the wave of a hand, as long as that hand held a tall cup of scumble.
He tried to recall that inventive man who he vaguely remembered was locked up in some part of a palace somewhere. If the man existed – and wasn't some figment of Vetinari's scumbled up imagination -- he'd do a painting of her. Yes. And Vetinari would certainly hang it up in… that place where he always worked. An office. Had a shape that wasn't square.
These thoughts wavered and disappeared. Remembering didn't matter. He was here. There were people and music and Scumble Coladas and Alexandra and he hadn't had this much fun since… well, he couldn't remember that either.
He remembered other things. He knew all of the dances, and he knew that he had presided over country lotteries before in barns and barley fields across the kingdom. His black horse was called Snowy, revealing just what kind of a sense of humour knights tended to have. He had three castles on the south western edge of the kingdom, and had ridden 100 miles from Tallstone, the capitol. He had the reputation of being a loyal vassal and an able administrator. He was a widower without children. It occurred to him that some of these facts didn't quite fit. He was normally something else too, something important...
But right now he was just Havelock on a Scumble Colada high with a woman on his arm and if he was not mistaken, there was certainly a hayloft on the far end of the barn. This held possibilities.
"When does the lottery begin, Alexandra?" he asked.
"We usually do the draw at daybreak," she said. "We have a couple of hours."
Vetinari looked down at her and smiled. His smiles had normally involved the turning up of the corners of his mouth and, if something was especially hilarious, the showing of his top teeth. The rest of his face was not involved. Now the smile was relaxed and reached all the way to his eyes. It was rather pleasant and not at all threatening.
He turned his eyes back to the far end of the barn. The hayloft was quite high up. The indoor ladder to it had been removed but there appeared to be a way in from outside. There were many bales of hay arranged in such a way that surely privacy would not be a problem.
Alexandra followed Vetinari's gaze. "You aren't…but surely… There are hundreds of people here! You couldn't be thinking--"
"To be honest, I'm not thinking much at all," Vetinari said with some satisfaction. "It's an amazing fact that most people live their lives without stringing together more than a half dozen significant thoughts. Maybe not even that many. I, on the other hand, always think. I didn't consider it a flaw in my character until now."
Alexandra made a show of choking on a pretzel she'd been eating. "You? Admit a flaw?" She shook her head. "I don't believe it. Your arrogance tonight was so impressive up till now. Don't spoil it by becoming humble; Noblemen do it so badly."
"Your self confidence is also noteworthy, Alexandra," Vetinari said. He snatched the remaining pretzel from her hand and popped it in his mouth. "How do they get the salt to stay on?" he asked as he chewed thoughtfully.
"Probably a trade secret," said Alexandra. "And don't think I didn't notice how you changed the subject so fast. I'm not talking about pretzels. I mean the hayloft. And just so you know, I will not be going up there with you in front of the most important people in the valley."
"I wouldn't dream of asking you to," Vetinari said. He brushed a few pretzel crumbs from his beard. "Tell me, do you practice a profession of some kind?"
"Oh, I do a bit of this, a bit of that," Alexandra said evasively.
"Mhm. A bit of this, a bit of that. Well paid work, is it?"
"I used to be something of a scribe," she said. "Most people here can't read or write so if there was something to write I wrote it and if there was something to read I read it. I charged two eggs to write a one-page letter and a string of sausages to read from the municipal ledger."
"Fair prices, surely," said Vetinari. "And how did you acquire an education beyond that of the typical rural maid?"
"That was my father. He thought girls were useless burdens on the family. So he sent me to Stind, to a girls school." Alexandra made a face as if she'd just eaten something terrible. "I didn't like it there at all. Snobs to the last of them."
"Ah. And so we discover the origin of your opinions on nobility," Vetinari said. "I'm quite surprised you spoke to me at all tonight."
"You looked so helpless trying to wriggle out of your armour. Reminded me of a salmon in a net." Alexandra pulled Vetinari's arm so that he'd stoop to allow her to speak in his ear. "I do love salmon, you know," she whispered. Her smile could have melted a tea kettle.
This would be just about the time when, if this dimension was in the realm of animation, some kind of steam would rise up from Vetinari's collar. But since this was the real world, or at least, a real world, Vetinari merely turned away from Alexandra in order to drink down a very long, very cold cup of water. It didn't really help.
He switched to a Scumble Colada. They shared it as they watched the festival, the dancers who were just beginning the Barefoot-Monkey-on-a-Frozen-Ground, the cliques of people talking or playing Kat, a card game with a mathematical complexity not normally needed in rural life. A brawl broke out over a miscalculation of points.
The barn stank of manure and tobacco and scumble and sweat.
"Would you like to step out for a bit of fresh air?" Vetinari asked.
Alexandra nodded gratefully, and they made their way out into the cold. As they strolled around the barn, their damp clothes stiffened in the wind. A few other couples were also out, huddled together for warmth.
They stopped before a long ladder that leaned against the far side of the barn wall. In the moonlight they could just make out bits of hay jutting out of the opening near the roof. Alexandra folded her arms tightly across her chest and shivered.
"I hope you're not too cold," Vetinari said.
Alexandra looked at him with the same amused little smile that she had when she had first seen him.
"You're not fooling anyone, you know," she said.
"No?"
"No. We come out here and I don't even have a coat and you bring me to the ladder that goes to the hayloft and make a comment about me being cold. I'm supposed to say yes, I'm freezing, and you, being oh so suave, say well, look at that, what a coincidence, the hayloft is right here and I'm sure it's warm up there. And I say hoo-ee, boil my britches, I reckon it would be warm. And I'm just supposed to climb right up and…"
He kissed her.
A minute later and without a word of protest, Alexandra climbed the ladder.
* Coconuts were not plentiful in that land of icy winters. Bootleggers had attempted to cultivate the common coconut palm, but to no avail. Fortunately, Mrs. Perspicacity Rottweiler's popular Clodhopper's Almanac predicted a twice yearly Rain of Coconuts -- and it happened. Mrs. Rottweiler had keen judgement when it came to weather. And drinks. The recipe for Scumble Colada can be found in Clodhopper's volume XIX, p. 123.