9. See the Stars
"Hanna!"
Madam seemed to forget her pain and threw her arms around Hanna as soon as she stepped into the Awfully Orange Drawing Room.
"I was about to clacks Havelock that I'd lost you! Where have you been? You look terrible. My gods, it must have been awful. Cecil! Champagne!"
Hanna wove together a tale of half-truths because she was talking to Vetinari's aunt, and she assumed it was just as hard to lie openly to her as it was to the Patrician. There was something about an innocent tour of the Temple of Finna, being mistaken for someone else by a sect of cookie-eating brothers, hauled to the Holy Hill where a battle between faiths was fought, while she escaped in a tunnel that led to the cellar of a band of dwarf thieves who fed her spaghetti.
She didn't mention Maltesi or the treasure.
"That's about all of it," said Hanna. "I'm dying to sit back in the tub with a good book."
"Well." Madam let out a long sigh of relief. "At least you're back. I don't know what I would have written to my nephew. How does one start that kind of note? My dear nephew, I have unsettling news. Your lamb is missing and I have no idea how to find her. That wouldn't do at all, would it?"
"He knows I'd turn up."
"I'm sure. You know one another so well."
Hanna snorted into her pink kitten mug. She doubted anyone knew Vetinari well. She imagined him like those nested dolls. When one was opened, there was always another closed one inside, all the way to the tiny, little core that couldn't be opened.
There were more straightforward men in the world. Maltesi, for instance. With his temper tantrums and resentment and bravery and...Well, he seemed to be a man a girl could rely on when the chips were down. A man of action. She remembered the look on his face when Mac Dibble told him to strip outside the sauna, and started giggling. She stopped when she noticed Madam staring at her.
"You have a certain smile, my dear."
"It's just a smile."
"No, a very particular one." A frown passed over Madam's face, but she softened it. "I'm so relieved you're back. Havelock would have been frantic about finding you."
"He doesn't get frantic about anything."
"He wouldn't run around shouting and waving his arms but he would turn over every stone in Pseudopolis looking for you. Don't you know that?"
Hanna shrugged.
"Well, why don't you go have your bath. Cecil will draw it for you. All the good books in the house are in my study. Take anything you want."
While Cecil got the bath water heated, Hanna dragged herself up to Madam's study. Book cases lined one wall, and the books themselves were organized alphabetically. There were book marks and scraps of paper and folded notes sticking out of almost all of them. It was obviously a working library where the owner didn't have the books there just for show. She didn't know what she felt like reading. History maybe.
She ran her finger along the spines until she touched a book that didn't look quite like the others. No book marks. There wasn't anything on the spine, which wasn't unusual for the older books, so she pulled it out and opened it.
A history of Uberwald. Hanna's ancestors came from there, so the book was a good possibility. She started browsing through it until she came to a dead end.
After page 100, a kind of compartment had been cut out of the rest of the book. The remaining pages framed a space big enough to hold letter-sized papers.
She set the book on Madam's desk and unfolded the top letter. There was no seal and nothing else to show it had ever been sent. At the top was a date. A month ago. And it began:
My dear Margolotta...
Hanna read it through. By the end, she was having trouble breathing. She set the letter aside and took the second one out of the book. Dated a couple weeks earlier than the first.
My dear Margolotta...
She looked at the third and fourth, and tore through to the bottom of the false book, a dozen letters. They weren't in the Patrician's handwriting, though the signature at the bottom was very close. The syntax and word choice were Vetinari's without a doubt. It looked like someone had rapidly copied the original letters verbatim.
She went back to the beginning and read them, most recent to the oldest, which was dated ten months before. Phrases caught her, parts of sentences that contained her name, or the word seamstress.
...a rather foolish girl, far too young, and it shows in her immaturity and her recklessness. I have tried to temper this but she will not be taught...
...valued as a seamstress, of course, but her usefulness in important matters is severely hindered by her mediocre judgment and intellectual inadequacies...
...so that I have been forced to regard her as something of a social project. It is the old question of nature and nurture. Can a woman with her numerous failings, whether from birth, ability or circumstance, be improved by my example? I confess that the experiment so far has had only limited success...
Hanna replaced the letters and put the book back where she'd got it and wandered into the bath room. The tub stood ready, filled and steaming hot. She undressed without thinking and climbed in without testing the water.
She thought of Madam. It was obvious she had spies on the Palace staff, people to rifle the wastebaskets or save anything he wanted burned in the grate or copy his private mail before it was sent. Spies on her own nephew. And how nice of her to place copies of letters like that in a book Hanna was likely to look in. They weren't forgeries. There was no attempt to imitate Vetinari's handwriting. They were copies, Hanna was sure of it.
She pressed her toes against the edge of the bath tub and tried to breath through the heat and steam and the feeling she was going to faint from lack of air. She knew she wasn't brilliant, she wasn't an evil genius or a cunning plotter. She was sometimes foolish and childish and reckless, she was sometimes dim. She was just a person.
Maltesi was surprised when she showed up at his office that evening. There was something about the look on her face that made him set aside his work and against his better judgment take her to his favorite bar. It was a large, smoky cellar filled with muttering, inebriated patrons and muted torch light, where a quartet made up of bass, guitar, drums and flute returned from its break accompanied by a man who had the blues written all over him. The cellar was called the Clinical Diagnosis, or just the Clinic for short. Small drinks in clear glasses were served, and that was a tip as to the concentration of alcohol they contained. When asked by spouses or friends where they were going, regular visitors to the cellar thought it looked good to say, "I'm goin' to the Clinic." It sounded important. It sounded like doctors and rules of hygiene rather than alcohol was involved. Considering that most medicines on the Discworld were at least 40 proof, naming a pub after a medical establishment wasn't that far from the truth.
The blues man was named Theodor Richelieu La Grange. These days he went by the name Swamp Man Ted. He was over sixty and was wearing a suit a size too big for him and a slouch hat. He had a harmonica in his hand and had the patient look of a grizzly bear fresh out of hibernation. The lines in his face could tell stories involving galley slaves and privateering on the open seas and wrestling crocs that had stolen his last andouille in his home town of Genua.
"He was one of your father's crew?" whispered Hanna.
"The captain sailed for 40 years," said Maltesi. "Everybody was on his crew."
It was interesting to Hanna that he referred to his own father as "the captain." She took another drink of rum and listened.
"Only one kind o' man can sing the blues," said Swamp Man Ted, his Genuese accent exaggerated for theatrical purposes. "And that's a man who's loved a woman."
A few people in the audience muttered.
"Loved her to the depth o' his soul."
There was a repetition of the word soul around the club.
"Loved her with his mind and heart mo' than he loved hisself."
Yeah! answered a few people.
"Loved her in the mornin'..."
Yeah!
"Loved her in the deep, deep night..."
Yeah!
"Loved her on a Tuesday..."
Yeah!
"Loved her on a Sunday till the sweet, sweet gods was jealous."
Yeah!
Swamp Man Ted nodded sagely, his black gaze roving over the faces in the audience like a preacher taking in the enthusiasm of the congregation. He stopped at Maltesi and Hanna. He winked, then gave the low ceiling a messianic stare.
"When a man's loved a woman like that, that don't make him a blues man."
No, it don't! someone said.
"No, laws, it don't." Swamp Man Ted's voice dropped. "That man who's loved from the tip o' his head to the nails on his toes can't be a blues man till somethin' happens."
What?
"You know what happens?" he prompted.
What?
"I say, you know what happens?"
What?!
"That man come home after a hard day workin' his fingers to the bone."
Yes, laws!
"And he sit at his table and the woman he loves from the depth o' his soul set a plate o' sweet potato pie in front of him."
Yes, she does!
"And that man, he dig in, he lift that fork."
Yeah!
"And he bite down."
Yes, he does!
"And that man who loves that woman from the depth o' his soul, he learn at last..."
What's he learn?
"I say, that man who loves a woman, he learn at last!"
What's he learn? shouted the audience.
Swamp Man Ted readied his harmonica.
"He learn at last that she cook like shit."
Laughter erupted in the Clinic.
"Only then is that man a blues man," said Swamp Man Ted. "And fo' that man, I wrote this song."
He nodded at the quartet, which started up a lumbering beat, and he sang in a voice pitched to blues perfection by years of cigarette and whiskey abuse:
My sweet wo-man She cook like shitSwamp Man Ted played a short harmonica riff.
My sweet wo-man
She cook like shit
Harmonica again.
How do I tell my wo-man
I cain't handle it.
Hanna was gasping for air and wiping a handkerchief across her eyes and trying to stop laughing but the power and majesty of Swamp Man Ted's "My Woman Cook Like Shit" (part of his "Genua Blues Revival," performance dates to be announced) was too much for her after two vodkas and most of a rum drink she'd yet to clearly identify.
And as long as the tears were there she eventually stopped laughing but the tears continued. It took a minute for Maltesi to notice the change. He dragged his chair next to hers and tried to angle his body so other people couldn't see she was crying.
She said a lot of tearful, incoherent things that he couldn't understand, except for the occasional "Vetinari" and "bastard" and something that sounded like "eyebrows."
Swamp Man Ted shot into an extended harmonica solo that got the audience clapping the beat he stomped with his foot.
"He wrote letters!" Hanna sobbed. "He wrote mean, horrible, hateful letters!"
Maltesi didn't know what to say to that because he didn't know what she was talking about. He knew Vetinari was a bastard; everybody knew that, but his knowledge of the situation stopped there.
"Come on, stop crying," he said. "It can't be that bad." He'd found that kind of thing was generally helpful in all situations.
"What does he want from me?" cried Hanna.
"You are a seamstress, aren't you?"
To Maltesi, this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Why Hanna broke out into fresh sobs was a mystery to him.
He ventured to put a hand on her shoulder.
"He doesn't hit you, does he?"
She sniffled and shook her head.
"Does he forget to pay you?"
"No."
"Does he lock you up in the dungeon or starve you?"
"No!"
"Well, I don't see where the problem is."
She glared at him.
"I never know what he's thinking. I never know what's going on. He can't just sit down and talk to me, he can't string together two honest sentences. If I ask him something he just gives me one of his stupid little smiles and says 'Use your powers of deduction, Hanna' or 'We'll discuss it another time, my lamb,' and then we never do! And I hate it when he calls me that. I really hate it, but he won't stop!"
She blew her nose loudly.
"He always has to be so damn clever. He doesn't do anything for fun or because it's nice or...whatever, there has to be fifty motives all twisted together and I'm always just...guessing all the time. If he buys me something I'm thinking, why did he do that?"
She pointed at her wrist. A gold and diamond bracelet was there.
"He bought me this for my birthday. It probably has some secret compartment in it somewhere for little tiny iconographs or it's poisoned or...something because it can't just be a bracelet. With him, nothing is ever what it is. It's all just smoke. And another thing. He's always so calm, it drives me insane that he never gets upset about anything. Doesn't he care about anything enough to have a good shout about it? He got overthrown and sent into exile and he still never raised his voice about it. It's not natural! And he's always sneaking up on me like some kind of ghost, and he never just cracks up laughing and, and he always has to be right, he's never wrong, and he's a real snoop, he has to know everything about everyone..."
Twenty minutes went by.
"...and he never wears anything but those stupid black robes and stupid beanie caps and I don't like the kind of soap he uses and if he gets something out of the wardrobe he never closes the door after him and he never rinses the bowl after he shaves. Oh, and his fingernails are too long."
Hanna wiped her cheeks on her sleeve. "I guess that's everything."
Swamp Man Ted's harmonica wheezed its last note. The quartet shut down. Maltesi and Hanna clapped with everyone else. They'd missed out on clapping the last three songs. Hanna was too busy complaining and Maltesi trying to keep his confusion masked behind a supportive look on his face.
Afterward, they went to the little back room where the band was packing up. Swamp Man Ted scooped Maltesi up into a bear hug.
"Anthony, my boy! How's it hangin'? What's the buzz?"
They chatted for a few minutes. Hanna hung back in the corner, so embarrassed that she feared she was blushing. She never cried. Never. Certainly not in public. And not in front of a man. Like soldiers and boxers, seamstresses couldn't show weakness.
She didn't realize they were talking about her until Swamp Man Ted patted her arm.
"Men," he said, rolling his eyes. "We drink, we burp, we fart. What good are we? I tell ye, ain't nough good men left in the world fo' me to count on one hand. Anthony, here, he's one." He slapped Maltesi on the shoulder.
"All right, Ted..."
"Tha's a good man, there. Foul mouth, no manners, but a good man. You listens to Swamp Man Ted, little lady. I knows what I's talkin' about."
She smiled. Ted had the sort of kindly, grizzled look that reminded her of her grandfather, Opa Stein. He was also a good man, though all he did before he died was drink, burp and fart from his chair in a corner of the family brewery.
She and Maltesi took a cab back to Madam's, but not all the way. Hanna called for the driver to stop up the road.
"Sorry I was such a mess back there," she said.
Maltesi started fiddling with his glasses. "It looks like you could use a good time. Why don't you stop by the party tomorrow? Syd'll be there."
Hanna smiled and allowed her anger and hurt and the hard liquor in her bloodstream to overrule her good judgment. The kiss came backed with hesitation, and was followed by a pause to see if the sky would fall down, courtesy of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. They waited, listening for any tell tale signs of Vetinari-induced trouble. The horse stamped a hoof and the driver on top of the cab spat in the road. That was it.
"You'd better get going," said Maltesi.
"Why?"
"Because you're drunk."
"No, I'm not."
"You should get going anyway."
"Are you scared of him?"
"Hell yes. I'm not stupid." Maltesi paused. "If it's any consolation, I also can't stand him. I've never met the man but I can't stand him."
"Me either," Hanna said wearily. She stumbled out of the carriage and looked up at the stars. Apparently, the Prancing Hippo was entering the sign of the Cricket, which probably meant somebody somewhere was getting a horoscope that said, "You will find a new love."
She wondered if she should start believing in horoscopes.
oOo
Lord Vetinari read the clacks as soon as Drumknott brought it in.
My dear nephew,
I was quite puzzled by the tone of your clacks. Perhaps I was reading between the lines inaccurately, but your inquiry about Hanna and Mr. Maltesi sounded inordinately urgent. I assume the rumor you mentioned is exaggerated. Hanna has shown herself to be a delightful, helpful and entertaining young lady, even if now and then she seems a touch unhappy. It is only the strain of recent months, I'm sure. Regardless, your auntie will look into the matter. I have every confidence that there is an innocent explanation, and that I will soon be able to put your mind at rest.
Your affectionate aunt
The Patrician carried the note to the grate and searched around for a lit coal.
His mind did not need to be put at rest. It was at rest already. That was its permanent state.
He was as certain as she was that there was nothing serious to worry about with Hanna. It was only the leverage Polk was attempting to use that was the issue. They'd had one additional meeting, but the matter was not yet resolved to the Patrician's satisfaction. It wasn't going to be as easy as offering door number one or door number two.
He got the note to start burning, then went back to his desk. Soon, his contemplation of a municipal tax issue was interrupted by a thought that pierced through his restful mind for one brief second:
A touch unhappy.
He brushed it off and went back to work. He worked straight through until midnight, when eye strain didn't let him work any more. He took up a candle and opened a secret panel in the office wall.
Leonard of Quirm's attic was dark except for a few candles burning here and there. Leonard sat with a stick of charcoal in his hand, sketching in the moonlight.
"Good evening, Leonard," said the Patrician.
"What a surprise, my lord. I was just thinking you might be interested in my newest studies of shadow."
He turned the paper around so the Patrician could look. There was little actual form to the drawings, if they could be called drawings at all. Leonard had somehow succeeded in sketching a part of his workshop solely by reproducing the various light and deep shadows individual objects cast on one another. It was an eerie, dreamlike picture. The Patrician set it aside. Leonard lit a few more candles.
"How long have you been here at the Palace, Leonard?"
"I'm not sure, my lord. Tea?"
"No, thank you. I believe it's been six years. Six and a half." The Patrician stared around at the workshop. "You haven't minded that I don't visit very often, have you?"
"My lord?" Leonard wiped the charcoal off of his fingers with a paint encrusted rag.
"You have no complaints about your treatment here, do you?"
"None at all."
"I haven't been in any way..." The Patrician groped for vocabulary he didn't normally use, "...insensitive to your needs, have I?"
"Not that I've noticed."
Leonard was not very observant in conversations but even he could sense that something was not quite right about the Patrician. He started rummaging in a box at the foot of his drafting table.
"Are you running a fever, my lord? I've been experimenting with the properties of quicksilver and have made a small thermometer that can be comfortably inserted in the--"
"No, no. I'm fine."
Leonard looked disappointed. He laid his thermometer on the table. To the Patrician, it still looked too big to be inserted anywhere comfortably.
"On the whole, your stay at the Palace has been a pleasant one, hasn't it?" he asked.
"Oh yes, my lord. I have everything here I could want." Leonard waved at the skylight. "Windows, from which I can observe the flight of birds, candles to observe the shadows, paper and pencils and paints and bits of wood and..."
"Hmm," said the Patrician. He slumped in his chair.
In an unusual stroke of interpersonal insight, Leonard said, "Trouble with your young lady, my lord?"
The Patrician straightened as if he was embarrassed to be found slacking.
"Not at all. She is on holiday. A much-deserved rest. I'm delighted that she is enjoying herself so much."
"That's good, my lord." Leonard's grasp of irony was weak at the moment.
The Patrician's gaze settled on a looming metal contraption in the corner. "What is that?"
Leonard jumped out of his chair and fussed with a series of levers that protruded from the side of the machine. The whole thing looked like an iron turtle upright against the wall.
"I've been doing some astrological observations again with the help of those new star maps you got me, my lord." Leonard cleared a space on the floor of the workshop and dragged the iron turtle to the center. "It's a See-the-Stars-Inside-a-Room machine," he said proudly. "With these levers, the iron shell spins here and the little dots shift and project light onto the ceiling in the shape of a constellation."
"Remarkable." The Patrician stooped in front of the machine. "How many constellations is it capable of showing?"
"I believe I'm at 133, my lord. Just this morning I finished the Prancing Hippo."
"I would be interested in seeing each and every one of them."
Leonard looked happily stunned. "Are you sure you have time for that, my lord? It's rather late. I imagine most people are sleeping"
"I would also like you to explain in detail how everything works." Lord Vetinari pointed to a lever. "What does that do?"
Leonard launched into a complicated explanation, which was just what the Patrician needed. It's not like he had anything else he wanted to think about.