4. Usque ad mortem
All of the Patrician's days were eventful, if an avalanche of reports, memos, appointments and meetings constituted events. It was an administrative busyness, a sit-behind-a-desk kind that suited the Patrician's nature. He liked work that could be ordered in a nice series of notations on his daily planner, which he normally kept not on paper, but in his mind.
Ankh-Morpork was an eventful city, but it was not chaotic. The Patrician had seen to that. The city might bob and sway as if it threatened to tilt over the edge of a cliff but the Patrician was the little jagged outcrop of stone inserted in just the right place to keep the city from falling into the abyss.
Order and balance and precision were beautiful things.
And so, when Commander Vimes showed him what Isabella had drawn the night before, the Patrician looked on something beautiful. It was not a piece of art in the normal sense, though Lord Vetinari would not have hesitated to frame it and give it a place of honour on a wall if it wouldn't have been at the same time an incredibly foolish thing to do. Like advertising the key to a code.
He brushed the surface of the paper lightly with his fingers.
"How closely did you look at this, Sir Samuel?"
"Close enough to see that she knows this Palace like the back of her hand, sir," said Vimes. "I'd never seen a floor plan of it before."
"Until now, none existed."
The Patrician was not being entirely honest about that. One floor plan of the ancient, rambling Winter Palace of Ankh-Morpork did exist but he kept it in his private library. It was six hundred years old, a scroll that would have long crumbled to dust if some one in previous generations hadn't treated the paper with a resin-like substance that acted as a preservative. The Palace had been altered many times since then, but the drawing under the Patrician's hands obviously incorporated elements of the old scroll with Palace architecture at its current standing. This was no small task, since the Palace was a nest of rooms and hallways and secret passages so complex that few individuals had a grasp of the building as a whole.
"How long did it take her to do this?" asked the Patrician.
"About an hour."
"She consulted no books? No other…schematics or drawings?"
Vimes shook his head. "Looked like she was taking dictation, sir. She didn't even need to erase anything as she went along."
"Remarkable."
Vimes had spent the last half hour explaining the rest of the discoveries he'd made, what Angua had told him and what Isabella herself had said. He couldn't remember the exact wording of the verses she recited, but when he mentioned "let us make fire" the Patrician looked startled for a moment.
He studied the floor plan again. "Perhaps it's time I ask the lady to oblige me with a visit," he said without looking up. "Will you arrange it, commander? I have a full schedule today so let us say…nine o'clock."
"Would you like me to be there too, sir?"
"Perhaps the lady will be more forthcoming if we are alone. I assure you, Sir Samuel, I shall give you a full report afterward."
As Vimes left the Oblong Office, he seriously doubted that. If he was going to get any answers on this case, he had to look for them himself, that was clear. He thought back fifteen years, which meant jumping over a hazy period dominated by a pesky whiskey problem, and tried to remember anything he could about Vetinari before he became Patrician. There was nothing much. It was hard to think that Vetinari had ever been a civilian.
Outside the Palace, Vimes started the stroll back to Pseudopolis Yard in a thoughtful mood. He wondered if there were any old Vetinari servants about. Any who would talk quietly. First rule of police work: If you need information, go to the servants. He lit up a cigar and let his feet swing into the easy-going policeman's gait. Nobby and Fred were at the accident scene with him all those years ago, weren't they? Maybe they remembered something…
**
After dark, Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sergeant Fred Colon were enjoying the warm summer night by tramping around on patrol. It was just like the old days when the Watch's responsibility was to ring the bell and declare all's well -- contrary to all evidence.
They saw no need to endanger themselves by going into the Shades so they stuck to friendlier areas where here and there a street lantern was still lit. Only reluctantly did they approach a crowd of people milling around outside of a worn wooden house on Cable Street.
"The Watch!" someone cried, stating the obvious since Nobby and Fred were wearing armour and helmets. They looked a bit embarrassed by the accusation nevertheless.
"What's going on?" said Fred.
"Dead body!" said a bystander.
"Murder!"
Fred Colon had spent most of his life in the Watch and wasn't about to get upset about a cry like that. Morporkians had a habit of exaggeration.
"Somebody nipped a bit too much of the…" He made the drinky-drinky gesture with his hand.
"It was a vampire!" hissed someone else in the crowd.
Nobby and Colon looked at each other. Nobby waved to the doorway of the house. "After you, sarge."
The ground floor was a shop, a potter's workshop, to be exact. The front was full of glazed and unfinished white ceramic pots and plates and tiles on shelves and tables. Through a corridor, a pottery wheel could be seen. Nobby and Colon had to push their way through the crowd of people standing around quietly in the workshop, and this put them on edge more than anything else. Morporkians got quiet only in certain situations, most of them ones to worry about. The people looked stricken, shocked.
Colon led the way up a wooden stairwell and followed the sound of someone weeping to a small room he could barely squeeze into even if there hadn't been people crowding the narrow doorway. Once he got through, he wished he could get out again.
"Gods," he said. He turned away and said it again just as Nobby got a look, his splotchy face paling.
The weeping came from a woman. She knelt on the floor of the room, her hands helpless at her side. Two silent, round-eyed children knelt beside her. There was one bed in the room and it contained a naked man. He was collapsed, pale, withered. Empty. Someone had been brave enough to close his eyes.
"Vampires!" the woman cried out suddenly.
The children started screaming.
It seemed to break the spell. The room emptied rapidly, people carrying Nobby with them and down the stairs and back out into the street.
They were chanting it now – Vampires! Vampires! -- and the look of shock melted off the faces and was replaced by hard determination. Knives flashed as they were drawn from boots and sleeves. Nobby looked around helplessly as the people scattered, taking the chant into the streets. Then he ran for the nearest watchhouse.
From her perch in the shadows of the eaves of the house opposite, Klieg brushed her dark hair off her shoulder and turned a page of the "Vampire's Guide to Ankh-Morpork." She flattened the book on her knee and undid the folds. It was a fold-out map of the city. Very convenient. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted to pop into Unseen University next or go check out the Slaughterhouse District. So much to see. So much to do. She turned to the book's index and looked up "S."
Below her, the little people took her warning to the city.
**
Isabella wore her hair in a single, long black braid, thick as a rope, and her dress was the colour of rust. From his desk, Lord Vetinari watched her closely, examining her profile when she turned to thank Vimes for escorting her to the Oblong Office. He observed her face as she stared around the room, at the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. She hugged herself a little. Cold, perhaps. Or frightened. The first was unlikely considering the late summer warmth.
Without a word, he approached her quickly and grasped her hand. Cold after all. The nails were clean and short, like she had more important things to do than cultivate the luxurious finger nails many ladies had. There was a simple gold band on her fourth finger. So close he caught the faint scent of soap on her, plain and refreshing, and he saw the fine lines around her eyes and the darkness of the iris and he felt in his hand her fingers warming, as they should.
Surely, she wasn't undead.
But it was her.
He released her and waved at a chair at the conference table.
She sat and looked at him with a patient expression on her face. Lord Vetinari propped his elbows on the table, pressed his hands together and gazed at her over his fingertips.
Five minutes passed in silence.
Then he leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
No significant event happened in Ankh-Morpork without it causing trouble for him eventually. It was a basic world view that usually served him well. If something happened and it turned out to be benign, he could be happy that say, a seemingly innocent invention to automatically shine shoes didn't create the right environment for creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions to start stalking the streets and eating people. Just like anybody else, Lord Vetinari liked to be happy. The less trouble in the city, the happier he was.
Unfortunately there was always trouble somewhere. Happiness for him was usually only found in the few minutes between waking up in the morning and reading the first dispatch over coffee about something terrible happening somewhere that he'd have to fix.
Even those few moments of ignorant bliss had been denied him since seeing Isabella at the Ramkin-Vimes House. There were certain parts of his life that he assumed would one day bite him in the figurative back side. It was all right. He expected it.
But not this.
Explanations for what had happened to bring things to this point collated themselves in his mind. He chose one.
"It wasn't Pseudopolis," he said. "Neither my agents nor the Watch can find anything there about you. There is nothing in Quirm. Nothing in the other plains and coastal cities. You can save me the necessity of searching in a wider radius if you simply tell me where on the Disc you've been."
"You recognize me after all."
He nodded.
"Why wouldn't you speak to me at Sybil's?"
"That was sadly necessary. Commander Vimes can get such ideas in his head. If he took my fingerprints himself he would still accuse me of giving him the wrong impression." He smiled briefly and brushed the topic aside with a wave of the hand. "Genua, perhaps. You went back to your family there?"
"No, Havelock."
"Ephebie."
"No."
"Uberwald."
"Why do you think I went anywhere?"
"You were a clever girl but not quite up to the task of hiding from me in my own city for fifteen years."
"Apparently I'm dead."
"In that case you are extremely well preserved."
A smell of rotting potato peels drifted up from the floor at the foot of Isabella's chair.
"Wuffles!" she cried, holding a hand out to him. "You recognize me, don't you?"
The Patrician's elderly white Morporkian terrier was known more for his unpleasant odour than his sociability. He peered up at Isabella through crusty eyes, slowly touched his nose to the palm of her hand and then…
He wagged his tail. It was no ordinary wag. The entire back half of his body bent back and forth in such a way that if he wagged any harder he'd spin himself in a circle. He let out a yipe, licked Isabella's hand quickly, and backed away from her a little, his rear dragging across the carpet, his tail still flapping excitedly like a flag on a windy day.
Laughing, Isabella dropped onto her knees and scooped him up and kissed him on the face. He let out another yipe accompanied by a cloud of doggy breath.
It seemed to the Patrician that he was watching a reunion. As far as he knew, dogs never forgot a scent. Whatever Sergeant Angua and the dragon Bagglesworth had detected in Isabella obviously didn't matter at all to Wuffles. Lord Vetinari had a good idea why.
"Wuffles!" he commanded.
Reluctantly, the dog wriggled out of Isabella's arms and did the rear-end drag across the carpet to his master.
"Sit," said the Patrician.
Wuffles stopped wriggling at the foot of his chair.
"Stay."
The dog whined a little. Isabella brushed white fur off her dress and went back to her seat.
Lord Vetinari gazed at her thoughtfully, shuffling explanations for her presence in his mind. He chose another.
"How did you come to find yourself in Lady Sybil's garden?"
"I fainted apparently."
"That doesn't answer the question."
"Sybil had put on a ball as a big fundraiser for the Sanctuary. The air in the ballroom was getting too stuffy so I took a walk."
"Was your husband there?"
Isabella leaned forward. "If we aren't married, why do you recognize me? You knew me before this carriage accident, didn't you?"
The Patrician ignored her question. "Was the weather out of the ordinary that night? Lightning, thunder, strange-coloured storms?"
"How did we meet?"
"Were there any wizards at the ball?"
"Did we meet at the Merchants Guild reception or somewhere else?"
"Witches, perhaps? Or a sourcerer?"
"Why didn't you want Vimes to know you knew me?"
Wuffles whined. The Patrician paused, shuffled the explanations in his head, then shifted gears again.
"How old is the iconograph?"
Isabella took it out of her pocket and slapped it on the table in front of him. "How old do you think it is?"
Still whining, Wuffles eased his way back to his bed. He watched them from the shelter of the Patrician's desk. Lord Vetinari waited patiently for Isabella to answer.
"It's six months old," she said finally. "It was supposed to be a family sitting but one-fifth of the family was too busy to attend."
The Patrician opened the frame and looked at the iconograph again.
"The twins are--"
"Different from Octavia, I know. They take after me completely but they're still yours. This isn't the moment for that old joke."
Humour was not on the Patrician's mind either. He pushed the iconograph back at Isabella and locked her in one of his blue steel gazes. He pressed on with another explanation.
"Did you know the men who took you away from the scene of the accident?"
"I don't remember any accident. It seems the type of thing I'd remember if it happened to me."
"A gap in the memory is possible."
"I have no memory gaps."
He shuffled the explanations and shot down another path.
"Are you here of your own accord or were you sent?"
Isabella left her chair. She waved at one of the walls of the office.
"How do I know about the secret passages?"
"Miss Capelli, I would be grateful if--"
"What about your desk?"
"I suggest that you--"
"Bottom left drawer, locked, booby-trapped, various currencies, in-sewer-ants papers and a few of Leonard of Quirm's more alarming drawings in a metal box. Middle left drawer, locked, classified files, top left drawer, unlocked, unclassified files, secret drawer above top left, booby-trapped, classified letters…"
The threat-laced intensity of the Patrician's stare faded.
"…bottom right drawer, locked, treats and toys for Wuffles, middle right drawer, unlocked, blank writing paper, top right drawer, unlocked, unclassified letters and files, secret drawer above top right, bobby-trapped, knives and --"
He swept up to her and grasped both her hands.
"Please calm yourself. We shan't get anywhere if we begin this like a wrestling match."
He held up a handkerchief. Isabella snatched it away and dabbed it angrily at her eyes.
"I believe you are thinking of a verse," said the Patrician.
She glanced up at him, the handkerchief crushed in her fist. "If you're not my husband, how do you know me?"
He held up a finger.
"The verse. Say it."
She shook her head.
"Please. I would like to hear it."
"Tell me what's happened, Havelock."
"Say it. Please."
She paced to the center of the office and spoke to the carpet.
"I want to measure how much I do not know / and this is how I arrive / casually, I knock, they open, I enter and see / yesterday's portraits on the walls / the dining-room of the woman and the man / the chairs, the beds, the salt-cellars / only then do I understand / that there they do not know me."
The Patrician stroked his beard as he listened, a faint smile on his face. Sections of his compartmentalized mind left locked and dark over the years stirred like hibernating animals awakening again. Remembering despite the erasure he'd made. It obviously hadn't stuck. He wasn't surprised.
"I trust you feel better now," he said.
Isabella dropped the handkerchief onto the conference table. She was suddenly so tired she thought she'd collapse in the Oblong Office. A warm bed, hot tea, sleep. If only she could sleep…
"Could we try this again tomorrow?" she asked.
Lord Vetinari escorted her out of the Palace. After watching the carriage rumble off, he quietly ordered a clerk to arrange round-the-clock surveillance. If Isabella Capelli was going to bring him trouble – and he had no doubt she would – at least he might see it coming.
As he walked slowly back to his office, he remembered...
…an oiled brown satchel over her shoulder, the flap lifted, a small tuft of white fur peeking out, followed by two wide, bright little eyes and a small black nose.
"I don't understand why someone would pitch a pure bred Morporkian terrier into the canal," she said. "The little thing was practically smothered."
She lifted him with one hand out of the satchel.
"Say hello to Lord Vetinari. Hm? Not talkative anymore? He wouldn't shut up in the carriage. Wuff, wuff, wuff all the way here."
"He smells like a privy rug, Miss Capelli. Does he have a name?"
"I'm afraid to do it since I can't keep him. My mother hates strays. Could I leave him with one of your servants until I find a home for him?"
The memory dissolved.
In his pocket he fingered Isabella's gold wedding band. It was a cheap trick, the little slide of hand he'd done; he was surprised she hadn't noticed. The ease with which the ring had come off her finger interested him. It could mean…various things. He paused at a wall candle and held the ring up to the light. Gold alloy a half inch wide, random scratches on the surface. The inscription on the inside was in a tiny, extremely fine cursive script.
Havelock – Isabella – Usque ad mortem*
* One of the Patrician's favorite phrases in more general circumstances. It means: Until death. It doesn't mention whose.
