Strandpiel Book Two
Chapter Eleven
Thirteen
As always, this is V0.03. Revisions: locating and slaying the typos and tweaking slightly.
Bitterfontein, the Turnwise Caarp, Rimwards Howondaland.
Bekki had readjusted quickly to her civilian, non-Watch, life. Her uniform had been sent for cleaning, and then for hanging up for when she would need it again in about a week's time. She had gratefully resumed civilian clothing, and felt glad to get back to establishing her Steading.
She'd also been soaked to the skin when she'd landed, with the imperative to get Boetjie under cover, groomed and settled, and also to take off the Watch armour she was wearing. Some of that lightning in the distance had been frightening; tropical storms did not mess around, and several hundred feet above the ground, she had felt uncomfortably exposed.
Bekki had heard about an Air Watch officer who had been killed by a lightning strike. And that she hadn't even been in the air at the time. (1) From a thousand feet up with a big storm getting nearer, this did not feel terrifically comforting. She dispensed with the usual leisurely spiralling circles, the safe way of losing height on a Pegasus, and angled Boetjie down at the sharpest angle consistent with safety, trying to estimate things so that she didn't wildly overshoot the Lensen plaas.
She sighed. Going out she'd arrived in a fierce howling white-out blizzard. Coming back, she was drenched to the skin, deafened by thunder, and watching jagged, actinic, horizon- filling, earth-stabbing, bursts of lightning.
Just my luck…
Boetjie, at least, seemed to instinctively know the safest place was on the ground, and was taking the quickest way there. That was reassuring.
Things had also become very dark, very quickly. Shadows on the ground, when they weren't leaping and changing with the lightning, were getting darker, deeper. The sky was talking on a dark slate-blue-green colour. It was positively unhealthy. Bekki remembered Grandmother Joan had once shown her a jar of very emphatically sealed prussic acid, so she knew to recognise and avoid it. Cyanide had the same deep blue-green hue to it. (2)
And every time lightning struck on the horizon, it was like a very big explosion of white light at ground level, erupting upwards into the cyanide sky, lighting the rainclouds in a deep purply-red colour, like blood from a vein against clouds suddenly the clinical linen-white of bandages. The quicksilver leaping of a lightning bolt in the middle of all this, which somehow seemed to start from the ground and go upwards against all previously held logical truth, was a courtesy detail.
Counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, Bekki made the sort of crossed-fingers-and-hope-this-is-right calculation that suggested the storm was at present discharging to the Turnwise possibly fifteen miles away… she frowned, and tried to remember the larger local map. Hartenbeeste and Uniondale, smaller towns and settlements, were over in that direction. They'd be getting it worse.
Somewhere in her head, specialised receptor cells noted that there was octarine in that lightning. It suggested natural magic was discharging somewhere. Bekki wondered, in a quiet corner of her mind, if this happened in all lightning storms or if it was just some. Dad had said something once…
Boetjie, a Pegasus who had a great deal of practical horsy intelligence, came to earth a few yards away from the stables he associated with food, shelter and grooming. Bekki appreciated this.
She quickly stripped off the Watch breast-and-backplates and her sword belt, thought for a second, and dropped them outside the door of the stables where they'd get wet – no help for that – but at least if they were a lightning risk, there was no risk of attracting a bolt that might also set fire to a wooden structure. And most crucially, if it did, she wasn't wearing them at the time.
Soaked to the skin and trying to stop her teeth chattering, she set about the most important thing, tending to Boetjie. She was carefully stripping off his tack, preparatory to necessary grooming, when rustling in the hay told her she wasn't alone. She relaxed as two clearly scared plaas employees, the black grooms, appeared.
Reasoning they'd been sheltering in the dry away from the storm, she said hello, and asked if they could provide water, sponges, and the necessary grooming kit. The stable was clean and well-tended and the other plaas workhorses looked groomed and acceptable; it wasn't a case of their skiving off the job, and she very carefully did not raise that they'd been caught not actively working by one of the white baases. This was Rimwards Howondaland, after all, where everybody knew the blecks were feckless, idle and lazy, unless supervised by white people.
The two grooms grinned with relief. Miss Rebecka, the new baas, wasn't going to get angry with them. She even said "please" and "thank you." Miss Rebecka was alright.
She talked to them as they worked, sponging, drying, combing, and providing horse-blankets.
"You left your armour and your weapons just outside, Miss Rebecka?" Tobias asked, diffidently.
"Lightning risk." Bekki said. "Made of metal. I'll have to pick them up and chance it when I run for the huis, when we're done here."
Tobias, the older of the grooms, a man with black hair going to white, coughed and shuffled.
"Err. The little people. The green one and the blue one. They've picked up your things, and are running to the big huis with them."
Bekki sighed. Wee Archie and Grindguts. She wondered why they hadn't come into the stable with her. They'd taken the risk of picking up her metal kit for her, in a lightning storm, so she wouldn't have to. She sighed. She felt warmed they'd do this for her, but even so…
"I'll thank them later." she said. "They'll probably tell Mevrou Hendricka and Aunt Mariella and Uncle Horst that I'm back."
"Miss Rebecka, Minheer Horst and Mev'Mariella are at friends this evening, over in the Hartebeeste country."
"In this? I hope they're in a warm dry place."
Bekki gathered that if the storm persisted, as it probably would, her aunt and uncle wouldn't chance the ride back and would stay over, returning the next morning. It was accepted. Besides, Uncle Horst was with a fellow ex-soldier and a member of the same fifteen-a-side squad. Bekki sensed what that was likely to mean. And that Aunt Mariella would definitely know what that implied.
"Well. Uncle Horst is going to have a beer head in the morning, then. He'll be babelaas."
The two black grooms grinned. She pretended they hadn't, and they discussed the practicalities of getting a throw over the back of a horse that had wings. The standard sized one wouldn't do. Too small. Bekki said the wings folding back over the body usually provide enough warmth and insulation, but after recent experience in Ankh-Morpork, her boss there, Captain Olga, was considering commissioning really big tailor-made horse blankets for use in extreme cold. When the Air Watch got them, she'd ask if she could bring one here with her. There was another Pegasus pilot who spent most of her week, with her Pegasus, in a country that could get very cold in winter. She thought Vasilisa should get one too.
"Lady Olga visits here. Friend of Mev'Mariella. She's good woman. Good baas."
"Yes." Bekki said. "She is."
Bekki tapped her top pocket, wondering if communicators could get water-damaged. Dad had said they'd taken this into account and were building in waterproofing. She hoped so. Then she reflected the casing was metal, it was right over her heart, and a tropical storm was going on. She sighed. It was always the little details.
Then she shivered again.
"Everything is done here, Miss Rebecka." Tobias said. "You are wet through. You should go to get warm."
She agreed, and collected the rear pannier that had the necessary things in it. The others could safely wait here, hanging over the side of the stall and the tack-nails. On the dash to the huis, random thoughts about the last two days in the snow and ice of Ankh-Morpork surfaced.
Commander Vimes had been relieved to see her safe after being lost for three hours. She'd felt that in him.
What he'd actually said, when she'd had the obligatory handshake and a "well done", had been "I'm pretty relieved to see you back. I was afraid I'd have to shell out twenty-six dollars plus a call-out fee over you."
He hadn't elaborated.
Godsmother Irena had said "A dollar a letter, devyuschka. Plus a mason's call out charge."
She must have looked puzzled.
"Rebecka Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons. Twenty-six letters." Irena had clarified. "Also, Mr Vimes, two hyphens. Therefore, twenty-eight dollars".
"Oh. The Watch pays for the inscription on a tombstone." Bekki had said, almost realising. "That Air Watch black humour again."
"Almost right, devyuschka." Irena had replied, mysteriously.
"The other one would have cost a lot more, if she hadn't shown up. Eighty-odd dollars." Mr Vimes had added. Irena did not elaborate.
With no Pegasus flying, she had spent her time on the ground, alternating spur-of-the-moment training sessions with going out on street patrols. On a conventionally mounted patrol, she had remembered the general order from Commander Vimes which had been to fly the flag, let people know the Watch is out there, and be generally useful. Riding past the Pairs factory on Sticky Widow Street, Bekki had ridden into the soapworks and personal grooming products factory, enjoying the wonderful warm rising aromas of perfumes and scents, where the manager had really been pleased to see the Watch. He'd been afraid an uncontrollable mob was going to burst in, take advantage of the City Watch being confined to the Yard, and loot the place.
Her patrol partner, Officer Dunnibar, had been sceptical. "What, Ankh-Morpork people? Looting a soap factory, and nicking everything?" he had exclaimed. "I can certainly see you're worried, sir."
Bekki had explained her aunt, who lived abroad, had asked her to get a few things, and, "Well, as I'm here, sir. I've got the list, and cash to pay for it…"
She had left with all her saddlebags plus equipment pouches laden with freebies. The manager hadn't dreamt of taking payment. Bekki had tried not to take advantage.
"Am I meant to declare all this when I get back to the Yard?" Bekki had asked Dunnibar, a seasoned Mounted Watch officer.
He had considered, then grinned.
"It's a perk, miss." he had reassured her. "If I were you I'd leave some of that in the female officers' locker room and shower room. Then it's understood. Captain Angua likes the naturally scented Pair's shampoo, by the way. Or so I'm told."
He added, speculatively, "You'll know best what Captain Olga prefers."
The rest of the largesse, along with Uncle Horst's new fifteen-a-side boots, had flown back with her. She had mentioned Uncle Horst had turned out for the Ankh-Morpork Springboeks a couple of times, alongside her also-Uncle Danie Smith-Rhodes.
The sporting boot factory owner had looked at her with interest.
"Your uncle is Danie Smith-Rhodes? Of the Springboeks?"
"Yes, and Uncle Horst, at home, turns out for the local side in Bitterfontein. He's represented the provincial side, the Kavaliers, as full-back…" (3)
Bekki was slightly irked that the man wasn't listening. She'd had to work hard to memorise information that wasn't really of much interest to her, concerning her Uncle Horst and fifteen-a-side…
The manager came back with a set of fifteen-a-side boots, neatly boxed, in size ten. As he was dealing with a relative of the great player Danie Smith-Rhodes, he waved away Bekki's offer of payment. Apparently there was a sponsorship agreement. It meant big-name players got kit for free if they publicised where they got it from and said in public that they'd never dream of wearing anything else. And the export market to Rimwards Howondaland was potentially lucrative…
Bekki got it. Any relative of Danie Smith-Rhodes who was a big enough name to be notable, a rising star, would be of interest to them.
Uncle Horst, consider yourself Sponsored….
She lugged the overly heavy and bulky pannier into the huis with some relief. She reflected she'd even got Mevrou Hendricka's preferred chocolates, although she'd had to pay for those. No Watch discount at Weinrich and Boettcher's.
Mevrou Hendricka had been pleased to see her back.
"Get yourself to your room, meisie." she had said. "Dry off. Clean clothes. Then when you come down, there will be tea. We can talk. I'd like that."
Bekki discovered her armour and sword were in her room. There was no sign of Grindguts or Wee Archie. After drying and changing into civilian clothes, and thanking an attendant housemaid who was waiting to pick up her laundry, she returned to the main room, following familiar voices.
Mevrou Hendricka was listening to Wee Archie, who was telling her a highly embellished tale of their flight to Ankh-Morpork. She was listening intently, as Grindguts the Destroying Demon helpfully added little extra details of his own. Both were holding appropriately-sized containers of something which smelt, even from some yards away, like klipdrift. Hendricka herself was enjoying her end-of-the-day glass of the family product.
("Quality control." she had said. "Although not to the same extent as my late husband, Gods rest his soul.") (4)
"Aye, mistress." Wee Archie was saying. He was perched on the arm of a chair in what he fondly believed to be a dramatic pose, supporting his words with hand and arm gestures. "'Twas a blizzard, the likes of which a man hasnae seen. You couldnae see the fingers in front of y'face for snow. 'Twas white in all directions and the wind, it wuz howlin', howlin wi' all the dee-mented voices of the tormented souls in the coldest of Hells, but yon Boetjie is one brave and gallant steed. He wisnae daunted, and he wisnae gauin tae let down Miss Rebecka in her time of great need. Stern of eye and resolute o' mane, the great-hearted steed galloped in the air, an'…"
"Bloody nearly crashed us all into the Tump Tower because of a cloth-brained Navigator, pardon my Klatchian." Grindguts added.
Wee Archie glared back, advised Grindguts to hold his wheesht, and explained that of all the tall towers of Hell, they had indeed narrowly evaded hitting this one…
"Only two towers that big in Ankh-Morpork, big city, lots of empty air, and you nearly smack all of us into one of 'em. Splat time." Grindguts said.
"But he didn't." Bekki said, coming in. "In fact, he got us all out of there in time."
Hendricka smiled.
"The little fellow tells a thrilling tale, you have to admit." she said. She beckoned a maid over. Bekki noted the maid had seemed just as enthralled as the mistress. And she was looking at Bekki with wide-eyed awe.
"Get Miss Rebecka a drink, Klara." Hendricka said. "Something warming. She got soaked returning here."
She nodded to Wee Archie.
"You know, I saw snow, once." she said, and for a moment she was a long way away and possibly a few decades ago.
"We were staying in Underberg, near the mountain pass at Boesmansnek. I'd been before, but this time it was changed. I remember asking. The peaks of the mountains had changed their colour to white and the white stretched quite a way down. I asked the manager at the hostel what it was. He told me."
Bekki received what, for politeness, had to have some alcohol in it. Klara the maid had mixed a glass of the Lensens' best red wine, with some added spices for warmth and grape juice to dilute the alcohol. The memory of the pepper vodka from a day or two before was still there. She still thought it wasn't a taste she could get used to at any time soon.
"That is the only time you have seen snow, Mevrou Hendricka?" Bekki asked. She was privately surprised it snowed at all in Howondaland, but the Drakensbergs were high mountains(5), rising to nearly thirteen thousand feet. Of course they'd get snow. Obvious. Her family were from the lowland veldt. Snow never fell there.
"We returned several times. Holidays and family. On one occasion in a colder winter, there was a light dusting on the ground where we were staying on the lower slopes. Enough to turn the earth white." Hendricka reminisced. "I remember I caught a flurry in my hand and tasted it. It was cold and tasted vaguely of metal. It was a strange experience."
Bekki thought.
"Excuse me a little." she said, and went to get her pannier. She hoped it was waterproof enough to withstand a Howondalandian rainstorm, and reflected that they were designed for flight in all weathers. She opened, rummaged, and retrieved.
"These are the Ankh-Morpork papers for the last few days." she said. "They report on the snowstorms, and they printed lots of pictures. Aunt Mariella asked me to bring them back, along with illustrated magazines she likes."
Hendricka excused herself, and studied the newspapers. She whistled through her teeth and looked at Bekki. Then studied the photographs in amazement.
"It gets so bad?" she said, in genuine surprise. "You know, I never really thought of it falling heavily. I remember on that one occasion in the Drakensbergs, seeing the white flakes drifting down, maybe dancing a little in the air. It seemed so pretty. I thought all snow fell that way, and it was hard to picture what the little fellow was telling me so earnestly. I suspected he was elaborating a little, as his people do."
"Nay, mistress. Nae word of a lie. You are seeing it as we did, in the ico-no-graph-ie pictures." Wee Archie assured her, gravely. "The bluidsucker who takes those picturs is a bit tappit, you follow, he was oot in that a' the lang day taking they shots, heedless of the cold an' the howlin' wind."
"Said it reminded him of home in Überwald, daft bug… bloke." Grindguts added.
"It says here that Captain Olga Romanoff of the Air Watch was quite concerned one of her incoming Pegasus pilots went missing and was lost in the blizzard." Hendricka remarked. "The pilot, believed to be Officer Rebecka Smith-Rhodes, in brackets it gives your age as seventeen, was overdue and unaccounted for, for nearly three hours, and a search mission had to be sent out."
"That was me." Bekki admitted. "I don't know if Wee Archie got that far in the story, but I had to make an emergency landing, and get everybody under cover."
"Aye, mistress. The brave Miss Rebecka made a plan, so she did, an' she braved the storm, and never have I seen a Pegasus so well piloted an' by such a guid pilot, an' the wings of the valiant Boetjie swept the snow aside as if it wisnae there, 'an she unerringly got us tae a stables, where she had friends who took us in…"
"You've only ever seen Bekki fly." Grindguts said. "Not sayin' she isn't good, but there's Captain Olga, and Red Star Irena, and Miss Nottie, she's okay, and Sergeant Hanna the Human Golem, now she scares the fairy gold out of me…"
"Aye, and Sergeant Na-zed-ka, the broody oul' mother hen..."
"Archie…" Bekki said warningly.
"Aye weel. You're one of her chicks. She come out and found you. Miss Irena, too."
"I get it. there are pilots who've been doing it for a lot longer than me. They're better than me. Of course they are. They've got the experience." Bekki said, trying not to sound cross. "And for goodness' sake, don't call Sergeant Popova "Nasedka." I found out what it can mean, and I'm guessing that's her husband's privilege."
"I should perhaps ask Olga?" Hendricka said, with amusement.
"It means something like broeis, or humeurige." Bekki said. " 'N ou humeurige hen bo-op die eiers gesit."
"And she is your sergeant." Hendricka said. She smiled. "Better not call her anything but "sergeant"."
She resumed studying the pictures in the newspapers. Both the Times and the Inquirer had gone to town on photography of Ankh-Morpork in the snowstorm. Weather, after all, was big news.
"It doesn't just sit flat on the ground." she said, wonderingly. "It forms big heaps. Up to six feet deep in places? Jislaaik!"
"The wind blows it about, ma'am. when it's all loose." Grindguts said, helpfully.
"How do you little fellows get about in this?"
"The lads at the Air Station wiz cuttin' tunnels, Mistress." Wee Archie said. "For getting around, ye ken. We know to do that in the snow. Keeps the wind aff."
"Yeah, but the Golem put up this dirty great spell." Grindguts said. "Blasted the whole lot away to get the deck clear for landings. The lads had to run like bug… run really fast… to get out of her road."
Hendricka laughed. Then she turned to Bekki and said, in Vondalaans, "It's nice of him to correct himself. But do you think I should tell him I grew up on a farm, and I'm used to hearing swear words?"
"He's behaving himself. I'd be relieved." Bekki replied.
Outside, the thunder and lightning grew in intensity. It was going to be a long night.
"If the weather permits, tomorrow I will show you the surgery and treatment room." Hendricka said. "I have had some men working in there while you have been away. They have made progress."
The Assassins' Guild School, Filigree Street.
Matron Igorina was primarily employed as a combination of School Nurse, School Doctor and Medical Emergency specialist, She had replaced the old and ineffectual School Doctor quite a few years before, on the grounds that this School could be a hazardous place, people got injured in the course of Education, and the best possible medical care should be at hand(6) to patch up injured students and return them to their classes with a minimum of delay.
She wore the purple teaching sash to denote she was Staff, but in practice only actually taught two specialised courses. Personal and Social Development(7) happened in the autumn term and involved a lecture presentation, lasting approximately an hour and a half each time, one version tailored to boys of thirteen, and one directed to girls of the same age. Boys tended to come out looking subdued and thoughtful, girls came out shuddering and vowing themselves to chastity. The lectures were detailed, graphic, and involved lots of medical descriptions(8) and iconographic slides. (9) PSD did not occupy a great deal of her time and was usually ticked off as complete within the first couple of weeks of the autumn term.
This afternoon, Matron Igorina was leading one of her classes in her other teaching speciality. This took longer. However, it was a class she enjoyed teaching.
Her students had gathered, after lunch, in the demonstration room in one of the sub-cellars several levels beneath the surface Guild. A fan hummed, continually refreshing the air. This sort of Dwarfish technomancy was indispensable in the sub-cellars and more than usually needed in this one, which had a cocktail of residual smells, formaldehyde being most dominant. Otherwise, this room was sparse, white-painted and clinical.(10) Not usually a place you'd expect to find any sort of Igoring.
Except, one of her class reflected, this room had Matron Igorina in it. He gathered she had progressive ideas about Igoring. She didn't lisp, for one thing. She also believed there were genuinely useful things that Igors could teach to what they called mehums. Mere humans. Old-time Igors considered there was an essential mystery to Igoring that was kept in the Clan and not told to outsiders. Then again, old-time Igors looked unfavourably on Igorinas.
He looked at the shrouded something on the slab, having a pretty good idea as to what it was, and then at Matron Igorina again. In appearance, she was a strikingly attractive woman of about thirty who carried herself well and neither slouched nor limped. She had, according to well-founded rumour, been a strikingly attractive thirty-year old woman for quite a few decades. He wondered how old most Igors were, and speculated whether, in some significant respects, they were immortal. Body parts failed and needed to be replaced, but the Igor remained. Did Igors die? They must do, he thought. New Igors were born, periodically. He'd heard Igorina get philosophical and argue that the human womb could build a new human being in a little less than nine months. At one level, all human women are Igorinas. So why consider it remarkable if some of us grow up to deal with how the human body can be reshaped and customised after birth?
He wondered if the coming-of-age, rite-of-passage thing for an adolescent Igor, or Igorina, was when they did their first auto-Igoring on themselves. He looked over to the trolley next to the slab that had gleaming surgical instruments on it. He also reflected that this was happening first thing after lunch…
"Good afternoon!" Igorina said, cheerfully. "I hope you all had a good lunch."
Her eyes flickered over to where a line of buckets was, discreetly, just within staggering distance.
"For the next few hours, we will be building on the classroom and lab sessions of the last four months. You have been taught basic anatomy. You have been taught about articulation of muscles and ligaments. You know about the major bodily systems, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and so forth. You have had a basic grounding in what can go wrong, and what to do about it."
She nodded to the slab again.
"Underneath the shroud is a new member of our class. His name is Mr Osmund Perfunctory, and in life he was an unlicenced Thief who stepped over at least two lines when he committed a murder. Before he was hanged yesterday, he expressed contrition and bequeathed his body to medical science and research."
Igorina smiled, benevolently.
"When you were accepted on my training course, you were told that in time we would participate, as a class, in a full autopsy and dissection of two human bodies, one male, one female. This is where it begins. Mr Perfunctory is to be our friend in these matters, and may I make it clear that his remains are to be treated with respect? There is to be no "my name in lights", no unauthorised removal of internal organs or bodily parts for use in practical jokes – and believe me, I have seen them all. When he is not participating in our class, Mr Perfunctory will go back on ice in the Guild mortuary and his remains will eventually be repackaged and returned to his family for burial, for which the Guild is paying. Therefore. Respect."
She nodded to the class. The next fifteen minutes were spent in familiarising the class with the working tools. Heavy duty scalpels, bonesaws, skin-scissors, forceps, toothed forceps, clamps, skull-keys, eye-spoons. Then there were arterial and jugular tubes, Devices to enhance the neat draining of bodily fluids into clinical storage containers, and other tools of the trade.
She smiled again, benevolently.
"Who wants to start and make the first cut? Mr duPris? Good man, step forward."
She smiled again and added "Lekker."
Andrijs "Ampie" duPris reflected that it was just typical of the Guild School to schedule a lesson like this for just after lunch. Given that everyone was currently snowed in and it was bloody cold out there, they'd broken with the regular menu and served a lot of hot, warming, meat and veg stew with crusty fresh bread. Easy for a reduced kitchen staff to make in bulk, and genuinely good for you on a sub-zero cold day.
Ampie stepped forward, reckoning that if he needed to, the buckets provided were about fifteen steps to his left… he reminded himself that these lessons in Igoring For Mehums were vital, if he wanted a quiet time in the Army when he was called up later in the year. Demonstrating he had all the skills to become a bandsman/medical orderly, and therefore to sit out two years of conscription in a quiet comfortable barracks somewhere. (11)
He wondered about Rebecka. If she came back to Ankh-Morpork on her Watch days, she'd be snowbound too, and they were likely to miss each other. He sighed. There'd be other weeks.
Igorina passed him the big scalpel.
"Initial Y-shaped incision." she reminded him. "I'll correct you, if you go wrong."
Bitterfontein, the Turnwise Caarp, Rimwards Howondaland.
Bekki had finally gone to bed, gratefully and warmed by spiced sweet wine. The backdrop to eventual sleep had been the heavy percussive pounding of tropical rain on the roof above her.
I'm sure somebody here must know about tiling a roof, she thought. Or thatching it. The natives manage that. Material to do thatching is abundant. There are barns and animal byres that are thatched. So why do my people persist in believing a roof for a house with people in it should be made out of corrugated metal? Or large flat cement or concrete tiles? (12)
She tried writing a letter to Ampie, just to pass an hour or so. She was uncertain how to actually get it delivered so that it arrived before she returned for her next working days. But it was something to do. She apologised for having been in the same city and not having got to see him. It didn't mean she loved- she paused and amended this to "liked" – him any less. The weather had been so bad she hadn't even got to see her own mother, who'd been in a different part of the City. It had just been Dad and Ruth and the servants at home. Captain Olga wants me to do something else next Thursday, I think it involves seeing off an old Witch who is Leaving – but I'm sure we can do something on Wednesday night.
The rain still hammered on the roof. Occasional lightning flared and caused the inside of her room to dance and leap in new patterns of light and shadow.
She put down pen and writing pad, and tried to read. Mevrou Hendricka had said something about assigning her Thirteen as a sort of servant and orderly. Bekki wondered about this. There were some white employers who didn't bother with learning the names of their blacks and just assigned them numbers. But Mevrou Hendricka wasn't one of them. So… Dertien. Thirteen. Why a number, not a name?
The storm receded and she passed into sleep.
Bekki awoke with the daylight the next day. She had a vague memory of a dream where she'd spoken to her Great-Aunt Johanna Francesca. All she could remember of the conversation was her deceased great-aunt saying "Listen to Mariella Elisabet."
Bekki frowned and spoke into the air, asking if any of her spirit guides were nearby. Nothing happened. She expected that; people had Afterlives to lead, after all, and couldn't be with you all the time. She reckoned they'd show up if there was a worry or a concern, and shrugged. Let's see what the day holds.
At least it wasn't raining any more. This was heartening. She accepted a mug of tea from an attentive housemaid, and wondered if they'd had somebody on alert to be ready when Miss Rebecka awoke. Maybe Mevrou Hendricka left instructions?
She got ready for the day, and tried to remember where they'd agreed to put the treatment room and surgery. She recalled there was a lean-to building erected against a back wall of one of the main buildings that was about right for the purpose. It even had windows in it. But the problem was, until she got properly familiarised with the plaas, everything looked pretty much the same justnow. There were barns, as you'd expect on any working farm. Stables for the horses and paddocks to exercise them safely. A byre for the small sub-herd of cows. These were milked daily for the household and the kitchen staff used the milk. There were chickens, for eggs and meat. Bekki found them amusing, and thought the clutches of chicks that periodically emerged wherever you got chickens were cute and enchanting. The plaas had several hives of bees. And she had discovered another innovation on the part of Aunt Mariella, following her nose to the smell and her ears to the grunt. A sty, with a field for foraging in, and a small colony of pigs. These were tended by the inevitable black labourers. The sound and the smell kindled a memory, of Lancre and the exiled Zulu family who were working for Petulia Gristle. She wondered how they were getting on; after an initial misunderstanding they'd turned out to be perfectly normal decent people.
These were the sideshows, small-scale animal management for the immediate benefit of the wider Lensen family, with maybe some things left over to sell or trade. Her grandfather out on the border was mainly a cattle rancher: but he did a little of everything else too. The more self-sufficient a Boer farmer was, the better. Bekki wondered if developing this side of the enterprise, the smallholding side of things, was Aunt Mariella's way of making it feel like more the home she'd grown up in. She reflected if her aunt wanted a little thinking time, she might pick up a basket of feed and tend to the chickens, picking up only those eggs that a hen was not sitting, instinctively telling the difference between eggs for eating and eggs that would become new chickens. (13)
According to Uncle Horst, Aunt Mariella could be quietly passionate about her chickens. The Lensen family chicken run was very securely fenced, the wire-mesh fence and its posts rooted in a deep trench that had been back-filled so that anything trying to dig underneath would find the wire barrier extended a long way down. In a country where there were birds of prey, the wire netting was overhead as well. Guard dogs ran outside at night. Anything trying to get to the chickens would have a fight on its hands.
"Problem is, everything eats chickens." Uncle Horst said, laconically. "Then again, most of the everything that eats chickens thinks twice about it when they see the dogs."
Bekki had also discovered the other reason why the plaas kept donkeys. Donkeys were like a nocturnal alarm system. If anything out of the ordinary happened, they brayed. Guard-donkeys. And this was a country where a working farm like this might well attract veldt foxes, honey-badgers, maybe even baboons or hyenas. These were known in the bush , and sometimes ventured this far into settled areas. There was still a lot more unfarmed land than there were farms. And a donkey seeing a honey-badger or a baboon or a hyena would bray. Uncle Horst said it was unmistakeable. Half anger, half fear.
"It has been known to get noisy at nights." her uncle had said. "Keep a crossbow where you can reach it at night."
Bekki had wondered if there were other things a Witch could do here, as opposed to just shooting things, and turned a few interesting thoughts over in her mind. You know, for consideration later.
Dressed and booted, Bekki went out into the post-storm morning. She splashed through puddles and squelched through mud which was only just beginning to dry back in the growing morning sunlight. Despite the mingled smells of Farm and Distillery, the air she breathed had the fresh just-after-a-storm feel to it. Smelling Pig on the breeze, for a moment she felt nostalgic for Lancre, for Highmost Pigmanhey where she'd learnt about porcine management.
Two large dogs woofed their happiness at seeing her, and splashed into step beside her. Bekki welcomed the Ridgebacks, Etzebeth and Willems, and allowed them to walk alongside her. Then she looked down, disapproving.
"Wee Archie…" she said. Her Feegle, perched on the back of Willems and holding onto his collar, grinned back up.
"Aye. Weel. I came tae an arrangement wi' Fido here." he said. "He disnae mind a passenger. When ah wants him tae gae left, ah pulls the left ear a wee bit, like…"
Bekki sighed. She reflected some of the mud down there was waist-deep for a Feegle.
"Just don't hurt him." she said. "And I hope you can explain this to Aunt Mariella. They're her dogs."
She was just about to ask "Where's Grindguts?", but spotted the moving blur of green pixels. It occurred to her that Grindguts would not be inconvenienced by deep mud, either. When he repixillated into Demon form, it wouldn't even stick. And once he knew his way around a place, he had the option of travelling by pixel. A Demon bred, or perhaps constructed, by the University, different physical laws applied.
The pixels coalesced on top of a fence-post.
"Morning, Bekki, love." Grindguts said, amiably.
"I need to go to the workroom I've been allocated." she said. "Coming? It's round the back of one of the big factory buildings, but I can't remember which one."
"I can see the difficulty." Grindguts said, thoughtfully. "They all look the bloody same to me."
"Och, weel." Wee Archie said. "They dinnae smell the same. It's doon here. Behind the wine-pressing rooms. Nae bother. Follow your nose!"
Bekki grinned. On this at least, Wee Archie's sense of navigation would be one hundred percent spot on.
They left the farm buildings behind them and walked on, onto a harder-paved service road. Here, as the terraced slopes of the Sandrift Hills loomed up in the distance, was the Lensen family's core business. Several more modern buildings loomed up large and grey, all built to the same uniform pattern. An unpracticed eye would not tell them apart. Bekki had only been here for just over a week, and two of those days had been spent, memorably, back in Ankh-Morpork. She was still learning her way around the wider plaas and discovering how it all fitted together. Over there was the garage for carts, the resident smith's forge, the wheelwright's premises, the place for all the wheeled vehicles an enterprise like this needed. Just behind, she could see the large hothouses and glasshouses used for secure cultivation of new vines from seed.
Over here, the tithe-barn where the harvested grapes went, temporarily, for sorting and preparation before going into the pressing-shed next door. With no harvest due for a few months, this area was currently empty. Next to that, the kegging and bottling plant. Somewhere behind, she knew, would be the vaults and cellars dug into the hillside, where wines in barrels and bottles matured at a constant cool temperature. There was a constant back-and-forth between the maturation vaults and the bottling plant. From near to she could hear the clinking of glass bottles, perhaps the thumping of the press that made the labels.
Next to it, the secure and well-guarded warehouse that stored the finished products prior to shipping out. She knew Aunt Mariella kept a very tight guard here. Bekki wondered for a moment what might happen to any Thieves who dared to raid a distillery and vinery managed by two Assassins. She decided not to push this line of thought. Uncle Horst was generally good-natured, friendly and easy-going. But try to rob his business…
And last of all, the place that really made Wee Archie quiver with excitement, the distillery. Even this early in the morning, mingled smells were rising. Peat smoke? Something warm and organic, that might have once had grapes in its ancestry.
Lensen's was a big business. The terraces of the Sandrift were a monoculture devoted to grapes. The harvest became plain fruit juices. Bekki loved those. Some grapes were sold as harvested to local greengrocers, for eating. Everything else became wine, at least to begin with. Different sorts of grapes became different sorts of wines.
And a lot of that wine went to the distillery. After necessary refinement, it became klipdrift. Brandy.
"Wee Archie?" she prompted him.
The Feegle shook himself awake. He had been in a private world of his own, in this wonderful place.
"Oh, aye, Mistress. We go this way." he said.
Not many people were about outside the buildings. Bekki suspected the morning shifts of labourers were all inside, going about their duties. The working teams on the land would have been carted out into the terraces to do what was needful there among the vines. Out here, it was as if they were the only people moving, although distant low murmurs of conversation were audible above the noises of industry.
They moved down the wide gap between two of the long, low factory buildings. Bekki was surprised as to how long the buildings were. Then she remembered. At one end of one building, there was a newer structure which had evidently been built on as a lean-to. It was well built, with wooden walls rising from stone foundations, and appeared to have originally been planned as some sort of office extension. The space was well lit with lots of windows and a skylight, and there was a surprising amount of space inside. Bekki remembered she'd been shown this the previous week and asked if it would serve as an all-purpose sickroom, treatment room, and dispensary. Taken aback with the size, and the generosity shown her, she had said, in an astonished voice, "yes…"
Then, it had been empty. But people had been busy in here. There had been shelves put up along one wall, exactly where she thought they'd be needed. Bekki had asked Aunt Mariella for at least one lockable cabinet. She'd explained why. Aunt Mariella had agreed this was a very good idea and that she'd make arrangements. Indeed, a glass-fronted cabinet was resting against one wall, ready to be put up. A bunch of keys hung from the lock. It looked like something no longer needed in the house, repurposed domestic furniture.
She frowned. An area towards the rear of the large room was now in the process of being partitioned off. Bekki had asked for separate cubicles, to allow for private examination and treatment of male and female patients. Mevrou Hendricka had said this was a good thing and that she would instruct the labourers. But Bekki had only asked for two partitioned cubicles. There appeared to be four being built in, two opposite two, with a sort of corridor in between.
"But I only asked for two…" she said, puzzled. "One for a man, one for a woman."
She looked into one. People had indeed been busy. There was a cot-bed in there, with a small table. Bedlinen was stacked neatly on the tabletop. The partitioning walls between the cubicles did not go as high as the ceiling, but they were tall enough, made neatly of thin plywood over a wooden frame. Not all the partition screening had been painted white, but an attempt had at least begun; she could smell fresh paint, and looking into the cubicles at the other side, she saw beds had yet to be brought in, but paint-pots and brushes were stacked in there, awaiting the painter to come in and begin the necessary work.
"Well, Bekki, love." Grindguts said, thoughtfully. "You can write to Mrs Ogg now, to say you got your Steading. Got to be a big moment for a Witch, innit?"
"And to Godsmother Irena." she said, feeling weak. Her steading. Her independent practice. The nearest Witch, in the sense of somebody trained in Lancre, quite a few thousand miles away. Irena Politek, her sponsoring Witch, was a long way away in Ankh-Morpork. Bekki had her Steading. And at that moment it felt like the furthest and loneliest outpost of Discworld Witchcraft.
She wondered for an instant if she was up to it.
"Ye are a Hag, Mistress." Wee Archie said, encouragingly. "An' this is the place where the world will come tae ye. Because ye are their Hag."
She smiled and felt confidence. Wee Archie wasn't the world's best navigator. But he was infectiously optimistic and cheerful. Right now, she wouldn't have swapped him for anybody.
"Yes." she said. "I am a Witch. This is my place."
There should have been something, some little sign, the cosmic version of a fanfare or a drum-roll. Bekki had just acknowledged the reality, that she was now a witch in her Steading. A rite of passage thing. The local Witch. There should have been a sign in the sky or something, a symbolic bird passing her visual field.
Nothing happened, and the world carried on as normal. Just birdsong, the as-yet-unfamiliar sort she could not put shapes or names to, a reminder she was in an unfamiliar part of a familiar country. Depressingly, one bird-calls sounded almost derisive, mocking. Bekki went to the desk that had appeared in her steading and acknowledged that this was a nice thought. After all, she'd still need a worktop and somewhere to do any necessary writing. There were even two chairs. She sat in one and tried the desk draws. She felt another little surge of affection for Aunt Mariella. Writing paper, pens and ink were there. There was even a large sturdy ledger and a desk diary. Things to organise her working life with.
She studied the large open space in front of her, thoughtfully. The two dogs flowed to rest either side of her, and went into canine ease. She absently reached down and petted Etzebeth, who panted happily.
I can do any private or intimate consultations in the cubicles. But minor injuries, scrapes, scratches and cuts. Out here? I may need a treatment table for this. Also a sink, a place to wash my hands, to clean and ideally sterilise instruments. Therefore some means of heating water. Clean water to dilute preparations, potions and medicines. How busy could it get? Where might people wait while I deal with a patient? Is it fair to have them wait outside? I was reminded last night how the weather can get. So many questions….
These were things she could work out as she went along. It didn't all have to leap into place, fully-formed, from Day One, after all.
After a while, looking round what was to be her workplace, a little memory emerged and a prompt spoke to her, in her mother's voice.
It doesn't matter how good the builders are, Mum had said, looking at the music studio that had emerged from what had once been a mews garage. They always leave a mess behind them. And it needs to be cleared up.
Ruth had understood. After a while, so had Famke. Without being asked, they had found dustpans and brooms and had begun clearing up after the builders. The servants could have done this. But the music studio was going to be Ruth's space, and Famke's when she was home from school. Some things are understood when you take possession.
Bekki stood up. She'd seen a broom in the almost-finished treatment cubicle that was being used to store paints and tools. And there were a lot of wood shavings and sawdust on the floor still. My place. My Steading. I'm responsible.
A short time later, new arrivals saw a Healthcare Practitioner who was performing one of the most fundamental manoeuvres a Witch can do with a broom.
"Mr van Linden." Bekki said, greeting him.
The labour manager returned her greeting affably, and grinned. Without breaking step, and steering a growing pile of sawdust and woodchip towards the door, Bekki thanked him for the work that had been put in here and that there'd been an amazing amount done in the past two days.
Van Linden, a thickset man in his fifties, not especially tall, with close-cropped blonde hair going to grey, grinned back.
"Mevrou Hendricka's instructions, Miss Rebecka." he said. "And Mev'Mariella. They want you up and running as soon as."
He paused.
"Now-now, not justnow, Mev'Mariella said."
Bekki understood. Time in Rimwards Howondaland was relative. Justnow meant a job could be completed maybe within the next hour, or possibly next week, next month, or next year, if there wasn't too much of an urgent rush about it. Now-now added more of a sense of urgency.
"Called by to ask what else you think should be done." van Linden went on. "To make a plan with you. If you want it and I can get it installed for you, just name it."
He nodded to the black man who was hovering diffidently in the doorway. He radiated the usual resigned submission, but also had an oddly familiar eager-to-please look about him.
"Dertien! Get in here, boy, everyone's going to think you're slapgat jukka. Don't want to prove them right, do we?"
"No, baas." he replied, submissively.
Bekki restrained a sigh and remembered this was Rimwards Howondaland, where any black skinned male was a boy, regardless of age. She suspected there could be affection in there, perhaps sometimes even respect, but the greater motivation did appear to be reminding the blecks who the baases were. And by the look of Dertien, the last time he could have been called a boy in the accepted, non-Rimwards Howondalandian, meaning of the word, might have been about fifteen years ago. It was genuinely hard to tell with black people – Bekki restrained an inward shudder at how bad that sounded, but it was truth – but Dertien could have been any age between twenty-five and thirty-five.
"You shouldn't be doing that, Miss Rebecka." van Linden said, nodding to the broom in her hands. "This is what the blecks are for."
Go with it, Aunt Mariella had said. Accept things as they are and learn how things are done here in this great country of ours. Don't make waves until you are sure you can surf.
"Of course." Bekki said. "Pleased to meet you, Dertien. Could you carry on tidying and sweeping up while I talk to Mr van Linden? Dankie."
She handed the black man her broom and noted the momentary wince in van Linden's eyes. She'd accepted that black people did the menial work here. After all, she'd been brought up in Ankh-Morpork, and in van Linden's eyes, didn't quite know the local rules yet. Van Linden was prudently and kindly educating her in how to deal with the blecks. He'd have to accept that she said things to black people like "please" and "thank you". Those were her rules for dealing with people. Of whatever skin colour.
While Dertien swept and cleaned – and why is he called "Thirteen"? - she talked to Mr van Linden and raised the issues of reliable clean water, and some sort of stove, for heat when it was needed, and to be able to heat things that needed heating. She also said, as an unmistakable lower-stomach sensation was reminding her she'd drunk half a pint of redbush tea a couple of hours earlier, that she could see situations where an immobile patient might need access to a bedpan. Where were the nearest privvies to here?
"Ag." he said, as if it had just occurred to him. "Good point, miss. Listen, Mevrou Hendricka says you can have Dertien as a general help, a boy to do routine work for you." He considered. "Just out the back here, where the bush starts. It isn't near any water table, and it should be okay to do it. I'll get him to dig you a ka… a poefdoef. Assign a carpenter to help with building the skyrocket over it."
Bekki grinned.
"Make it a langdrop poefdoef, Mr van Linden? Dankie."
She wondered if she should mention that Uncle Danie had once used the word kakhuis, when she'd been about six. Auntie Heidi hadn't been pleased. (14) words had been spoken.
More black workers arrived with a cart, and unloaded the beds and tables to go into the other two cubicles. Bekki watched, carefully, the way van Linden interacted with them, and noted the genial and affable way he had with them. She recognised the same sort of general, non-specific, casual racism that she'd seen in people like Fred Colon, and also noted the overseer did not wear a whip or any weapons. That was a point in his favour. His attitude was a relaxed good-natured booming bonhomie that she'd seen a lot in the bros Uncle Danie mixed with in the fifteen-a-side team. It only went so far, naturally: this was the baas, the labour manager, the man with the power to hire and fire and impose disciplinary sanctions. The man on top in the apartheid system.
He also knew the black workers by name, something Bekki chalked up as a tick. She'd got it that many white employers didn't bother. His attitude, as he cracked jokes with the workers, seemed to be "So long as you know I'm baas and you do the work, there's no need to be heavy and everything's kiff."
"Anyway, Miss Rebecka, you get Dertien. Pleasant fellow, can be a steady worker, but every so often he gets a bit milly, a bit jas."
Bekki must have looked puzzled. She was speaking Vondalaans with van Linden, but there were some words she wasn't getting. It was an unfamiliar experience. (15) She guessed these were local words for… she made a guess. Inattentive? Unreliable? His attention wanders?
Van linden frowned. "Mr Graham summed it up, miss. He used a Porkkie phrase to describe Dertien, when Mr Horst tried him out in the distillery and the bottling plant."
He shook his head.
"Bad move. Away with the fairies, George Graham said."
Bekki looked at Dertien, then smiled.
"Ah. So that's "milly" and "jas"." she remarked.
"You've got it." van Linden confirmed. "And he's the sort of fellow it's hard to dislike. Mev'Mariella said to try everything, and see if we can find him something he can settle to. She likes him too. And when his head's on the same planet as everybody else, he isn't a bad worker. He just has little moments. Sometimes, big moments."
Bekki sighed. Dertien reminded her of Wee Archie Aff the Midden. A human-sized version. Still, it was good to be warned.
"I'll keep him busy, mr van Linden. And I'll look after him if he needs it."
"I reckon you will, miss."
He hesitated.
"You know the saying ʼn Man van twaalf ambagte en dertien ongelukke?"
A man of twelve skills and thirteen accidents. Bekki nodded.
"Well. Mev Mariella agrees it's not a good idea to have him working with glass in the bottling plant when his attention wanders." he said. "At least all those bottles were empty. No actual product lost."
"Anyone get hurt?" Bekki asked. (16)
"A few cuts. That's when the idea happened, about having a nurse on site."
Bekki heard that her new assistant had fallen off ladders, fallen out of trees, fallen through a roof, been kicked by one of the guard-donkeys, whacked his own thumb with a hammer, and sundry other minor disasters. He had a habit of working perfectly well for a few weeks or even a few months, and even showed promise and skill at things like carpentry, and then something would happen.
"Dertien ongelukke." Bekki said.
"You got it, miss. The Mevrou said if he works for you, then at least the next time he crocks himself up, the right person's close to. And she also thinks you can get some useful work out of him, in between accidents."
He straightened up.
"I'll get onto the heating and the water for you." he said, indicating he needed to be moving on. "There's a skyrocket at the other end of the plaas we can have moved over here. Needs a few new planks, but I reckon it can go over a good deep hole. When Dertien's done here, we can get him digging a hole for it to go over."
Bekki remembered she'd brought a couple of cases of working supplies and equipment over with her and they were up at the huis in her room. Would it be possible to have them brought over? Bandages, lotions, preparations, surgical equipment, the usual.
He said he'd send somebody over. And… nearly forgot. He handed over a set of pre-printed cards, mass-produced general stationery of the sort you could buy anywhere. Bekki read them, and frowned.
"For your treatment rooms, miss." he said. "Legal requirement."
Two cards said Slegs vir swart mense. The other two said Streng slegs vir die gebruik van wit mense. All had, in smaller print underneath, In opdrag van die rasse-skeidingswette!
"Blacks on one side, white people on the other, miss." he said. "Got to segregate."
At least it explained why she'd got twice the number of treatment cubicles she'd asked for.
When van Linden had gone, she looked at the hateful cards again. Black people only. Strictly for the use of white people only. The "By order according to the Racial Separation Acts" was a discourtesy detail. She sighed. She could put them up later.
After she'd found a privy at the back of the bottling plant – more than one, but it had to be one with "Whites Only" on the door – she returned to the surgery and waited for her gear to be brought over from the huis.
It arrived with Aunt Mariella, who looked tired and thoughtful. She had returned from Hartebeeste, and she had a story to tell.
Closing here – this chapter took a lot of time. I knew what I wanted to say but I had to slog to say it. The conversation between Mariella and Bekki concerning events at Hartebeeste will be next chapter, as will the revisiting of the first chapter of The Price of Flight from Rebecka's viewpoint.
(1) Go to The Price of Flight. Tatiana Grigorenko was an Air Watch legend, sometimes even for accurately remembered reasons.
(2) "Common poisons, m'dear. I expect you'll see a few of these in your Witching, so I'll just run down the more common ones, that ordinary people outside the Guild have access to, so you know what they look like, how they work, and where they have one, what the antidote is. Practically every one also has a legitimate use and some of 'em, in very small doses, can even be beneficial. I'm thinking you'll use some of them, perfectly legitimately and of course for the best of reasons, as a Witch. And you won't need me to tell you that some people are tempted to use them for the wrong reasons, people being people. So your mother's asked me to have this little session with you, for a couple of hours…" Getting The Talk, or a variation on the theme, from an adopted grandmother who taught a specialised version of Poison Strategy at the Assassins' Guild School, had been very enlightening. Grandmother Joan had also generously said that if Bekki ever needed anything and could demonstrate a legitimate reason for needing it, she had only to ask and she, Dame Joan Sanderson-Reeves, would be happy to provide.
(3) I think that's right. In our world, the Western Cape in South Africa has a provincial side called the Boland Cavaliers, die Kavaliers, who pay at the Boland Stadium and draw players from local sides in the Winelands. They play in grey and black hoops, apparently.
(4) See Gap Year Adventures. Bekki understood there were occupational hazards in running vineries and distilleries. Aunt Mariella had advised her that Uncle Horst's father had died of one of them, despite Igor intervention to save his liver and kidneys after decades of abuse. "The stuff is easily available here and when a man gets to love strong drink too much, the illness is in his head, and there's not much Igors can do about that."
(5) OK. Only 11500 feet (3800m) in our South Africa. Apparently enough to support a winter sports industry. You live and learn. (The research I do for these tales!)
(6) Or somebody else's hand. Or leg. Or liver.
(7) Sex Education
(8) boys' lecture: This slide illustrates a common ailment caused by frequent masturbation combined with inadequate personal hygiene. Balanitis, gentlemen. Girls' lecture: This is thrush. A very common cause of thrush in women is, obviously, men. I will now explain why…
(9) Despite being co-educational, the Guild School had a zero incidence of teenage pregnancy. Matron Igorina had been congratulated for bringing this about.
(10) As a nod to traditional Igoring, a colony of spiders had been allowed to establish themselves in just one corner of the ceiling.
(11) Ampie is a musician of well above-average competence. Miiltary bands value capable players of horns and brass instruments. It was just that military bandsmen are also expected to be medical orderlies. This course in the last year of his Assassin training was therefore a no-brainer. Learning from Igorina all the forms of violent injury an Assassin could sustain if they got seriously overconfident, and how to manage them. Armies valued this skill too. And Ampie wanted two quiet years in a base depot or a military hospital, away from any uncomfortable active service. He reckoned marching with the regimental band would assure this. Learning medical skills was additional insurance.
(12) I did a google search on South Africa – Roofing Materials. Sure enough, the first ten entries involved… corrugated iron. Or steel. Or zinc. Or large prefabricated sheet concrete/cement tiling slabs.
(13) I thought this was some sort of arcane semi-mystical skill known only to farmers, an Egg-Farmer's Word. The truth is… if you have a rooster, or roosters, in your flock, they're ''all'' going to be fertile. Mariella is in all probability keeping careful notes of which hens are which, noting the ones who are reluctant to leave their nests for longer than they have to, and leaving those clutches alone so they get to be the next generation of chickens. Selecting the biggest healthiest birds and allowing them to become mothers of the next generation, and considering everybody else's eggs are fair game for collection. And it took some digging to find this out… I'm assuming in a small operation like this there are no artificial incubators. With a lot of new chicks coming along, Mariella will of course have to make capons occasionally. But this is a different story.
(14) Australians call it a dunny. Looking up South African words for "outdoor toilet" and discovering the corresponding word appears to be poefdoef, with kakhuis (shithouse) given as a more demotic word, "langdrop" meaning exactly what it sounds like in English and "sky rocket" being a more recent SA-English word for the structure around it… well, some bits of the necessary research are sheer job satisfaction.
(15) Hopefully I'm getting this right. Bekki's Vondalaans (Afrikaans) comes necessarily from what used to be called the Transvaal but which in our world is now Gauteng. She's moved to the opposite side of the continent to what on our world would be the Cape. I'm getting that van Linden would use local Cape Town/Cape region slang, which somebody from Gauteng might need to come up to speed on.
(16) She was also calculating how much surgical catgut she had for stitching, reflecting on the potential hazards of a bottling plant if things went wrong. She thought on and added more needles to the shopping list.
The Notes Dump:-
The Laager, where odd ideas, insights, Showing My Workings, and other miscellaneous bits that take my fancy, are all penned, before such ideas as make it continue their Trek into a main story somewhere. Insights into the way my mind works that would gladden a psychiatrist.
Listening to a radio interview where Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe is explaining how he had to get to grips with the most difficult accent he's ever had to master… South African. The film is called "Escape from Pretoria".
Howzzit? Euthymol toothpaste? "Lekker!"
menyere
feh' heh – fair hair, blonde. Difference between the Saffa accent of English-speakers – less pronounced than that of Afrikaans speakers in English, but you'd expect that. I've heard it. Julian Smith-Rhodes' manner of speech, compared to the "harsher" tones of his more rural cousins.
Totally unrelated note: the Russian dancers/actresses appearing with Otava Yo in the video for "Cossack's Lezginka" are called Maria Popova & Tatiana Barkova. Just dropping it here, 98% unrelated to anything Discworld but you forget these things otherwise. I know the six core members of Russian folk-rock ensemble Otava Yo by name, face and personas; but at least a dozen more friends of the band drop in and out of performance and videos and they aren't always namechecked. OY are getting to be a "thing" right now; they're a necessary antidote to the other Russian music that adds to the background soundtrack of my stories. A lot of the anthems that go with videos on YouTube are stirring, heartfelt, and go with amazing swordplay, Cossack riding and weapons skills: but these feed into an undercurrent of authoritarian, right-wing Russian nationalism and militarism. The mirror-image of "Make America Great Again", and you can get uneasy about this after a while.
Watching Russian soldiers perform the full goose-step is also a WTF moment – a marching style indelibly associated with Nazi stormtroopers making themselves very unpopular around Europe and especially across a devasted Russia. You want to ask – do you not see anything just a tiny bit incongruous or out of place about this, your own army emulating the people who set out to devastate your country, caused a ruinous four-year war for national survival, and who very nearly succeeded?
Anyway: Otava Yo are a Russian music thing who expressly do not do the miltaristic and the martial. It's happy, joyous, infectious, the other side of Russia. There's a theme, "oysa ti oyisa", which I've repeatedly seen as backdrop to Cossack sword-fighting : OY's variant takes the swords out and, I'm reliably told, changes the words.
OY also has Yulia Usova and Lina Kolesnik to play violins, which is also a consideration.
Also, watched a fascinating BBC documentary in which British-Asian comedian Romesh Ranganathan gets to explore Zimbabwe and meet people – it's a surprisingly lovely country. He meets old-time Rhodesian whites and a lively argument ensues between his black Zimbabwean guide and the old-time White Rhodesian. Really useful background detail for developing "Smith-Rhodesia" further!
From a Facebook discussion on the Largest Patchwork Quilt in the world, made in Finland and when displayed covering a goodly area of the square outside Helsinki Cathedral.
I wrote:
From what I've read about Finnish and Sami witchcraft and mysticism, local Witches do not mess around. Mrs Earwig (Rouva Ryömi- hyönteinen?) would not last five minutes out there. Old Woman Louhi is a potent uber-Witch with Dark Goddess-like qualities, and the Daughters of Louhi are all potent Witches of various degrees of benevolence (or otherwise). The mother of the hero Lemminkäinen, a witch herself, has to do some back-room Igoring to restore his body after it gets ripped to pieces - she manages it with intercession from the Bees - and I'm just betting any quilting they do will have interesting properties.
EDIT - any Finnish used here is either from general reading or using Google Translate to give a Blind Idiot Translation of "Mrs Earwig" - outside ubiquitous words like "perkele!" I am not claiming even marginal fluency
Reader Lotta Raatikainen replied:
Earwig is pihtihäntäinen (literally "plier tailed") in Finnish. Lemminkäinen's mother raked his body parts from the river of Tuonela (the land of the dead), attached them to each other with the help from supernatural beings like Suonetar (literally "veiness") and then sent a single bee to fly over the moon and the sun to the ninth heaven to get powerful ointment with which she brought her son back to life.
I don't remember Kalevala mentioning more than one daughter of Louhi, and she had a nasty end after bullying Kullervo who was her husband's slave at the time. Kullervo had magic powers, so he drove her cattle to a swamp to drown, then gathered wolves and bears, made them look like cows by magic and drove them home. When Louhi's daughter went to milk them they ripped her apart.
Quilting was not a thing in iron age Finland, but many women were extremely skilled weavers back then.
So where did I get that Old Woman Louhi had more than one daughter….
Watching a series of YouTube voxpops on "Which country do you hate the most?" - the one from Finland – people randomly voxpopped on the streets of Helsinki – is remarkably free from bile, although some people hesitated for a long time on the question "do you hate Sweden?" before saying "no." And – beautifully – one Finn said "Why talk about hate? I like people of all countries." (long pause) "Even Russia."
The vox-pops from Moscow, on the other hand… Muscovites do not like the bits on the edges that used to be part of the USSR. Especially the Islamic bits.
And in England…. I watched this, bracing myself for xenophobia.. And... the English hate the English. This subtly explains much. Even perhaps the collective shot-themselves-in-the-foot called Brexit. But. Repeat this in an English city chosen at random that isn't London. I'll guarantee you will discover pent-up bile and xenophobia by the gallon.
These vox pops are interesting. And while it's a wholly unscientific random sample of people on the streets of the capital city of each country on one day, they're remarkably free of predictable prejudices. On the basis of general background reading, I'd have expected more than two people on the streets of Bucharest to say "Hungary!" as their example of a country hated in Rumania. Only one Ukrainian in Kiev outright said "Russia!" and that's because he was from the Crimea and feels like a refugee (thrown out for maintaining his nationality is Ukrainian, not Russian, after the invasion/takeover). And only one Pole in Warsaw outright said "I hate Germany". You'd have expected more.
Also… listened to the recorded voice of Joseph Stalin. I don't know what I was expecting… but… Bloody hell... of all the possible associations with the actual speaking voice of Joseph Stalin. I did not expect him to sound like Harold Wilson. (note to people under about fifty who are not British. Harold Wilson is a former Prime Minister from the 60's - 70's. He had exactly the same nasal, slightly reedy, higher-pitched, sort of speaking voice. Comedians and impressionists of the day, like Mike Yarwood, loved it and made it a source of amusement.)