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Chapter VII
Gods know why, but for some reason Patrick felt duty bound to accompany Smite to a Thursday service at the Queer Street Church of the Great Om (Reformed). He thought it was only fair. If Smite was prepared to try to understand his ways, against all advice to the contrary, then the least he could do was reciprocate. That he also hoped Bliss might be there was entirely co-incidental. Oh, come on, he couldn't fantasise about someone called Blister.
Indeed there she was on the other side of the aisle, in her pretty white-cotton dress and see-through veil. Now there were some mad religions on the Disc –well, madd-er at least- and Patrick thought that up on Dunmanifestin they laughed at people for their sport. It was as though there was a competition to see who could come up with the daftest idea that people would still be prepared to follow. Mass-Lamb the Contradictory decreed that all women should be swathed entirely in black at all times so that they could hardly see, and barely walk –it was called veiling. Otherwise, apparently, Mass-Lamite men would be compelled to rape them. He also taught that all sex was sinful, consequently Slammers were rapidly dying out. At the other end of the scale were the followers of Mayzohn, the god of small businessmen. Mayzohnites were compelled to wear little aprons and only one sock, which wasn't too much of an imposition, except on every other Tuesday, when they also had to walk around blindfold too.
By even these standards Om was almost off the scale. For centuries had Omnians been smiting unbelievers with a vim and vigour that other gods could only envy. And by gods could they smite. Burnings, beheadings, flayings… they would smite anyone with anything; including the jawbone of an ass, or the thighbone of a bullock, if nothing else was available. And that was just in their own back knacker's yard. Anyone who so much as misinterpreted or even missed out a word in reciting the Verses of the Prophet Eleidedh, would be smote, or boiled in oil, or nailed to a tree… Eventually it became clear, even to the Omnians, that they were starting to run out of Omnians to smite. So they had built a huge and terrifyingly disciplined army, and taken smiting on tour.
But all that was before the Reformation of Brutha, when all was changed, changed utterly. Now all that Omnians –or at least most of them- ever visited upon anyone was compassion, generosity and remarkably advanced medical knowledge. Oh, and sometimes some improving, enlightening and politely-worded pamphlets. And this bloody veil.
Patrick just didn't get it. He didn't get the Mass-Lambites either but at least he could see what they were trying to do. A woman swathed in so much black cloth that it was impossible to work out her shape –or even if there's anyone in there at all- is not going to be attractive to anyone, which might account for why Mass-Lambism was in such sharp decline. But this veil didn't make even that kind of sense. It was worn only by unmarried women and was intended to indicate both their modesty and their chastity. But a little piece of gauze worn across the bridge of the nose hides nothing and only draws attention to your eyes, and Omnians had beautiful eyes. It didn't make them look modest nor chaste either, though it did make them look incredibly sexy.
He was fairly sure that in church one was supposed to be concentrating on The Great Om and the words of the preacher, not thinking of the beautiful young women opposite; at least not in the way he was. And then there was the preacher himself. He'd never before been harangued with quite such vehemence to go forth and be charitable and kind. When he had to address those who hurt them, or who slighted Om his eyes bulged and his face turned purple.
"You must FORGIVE the TRANSGRESSORS!" he yelled.
Even with all of his assassin's training Patrick felt his own face beginning to purple as he fought back the laughter. Beside him the gentleman nodded, while across the hall the ladies clapped politely in their white-lace gloves. And then there was the singing.
He'd never heard anything quite like it. The whole congregation, from the youngest to the oldest, seemed to have beautiful voices and be able to sing in perfect harmony. When the preacher had asked at one point for volunteers for the choir he'd assumed he was joking; until he'd listened to the choir. They were as close to divine as anything he had ever heard, or could imagine hearing. He would happily have gone there every single day just to listen to it. If only it hadn't been for the words.
The problem with Omnian hymns, at least the ones everyone knew, was that most of them had been written before The Reformation of Brutha. This meant they were mostly about boiling people alive, hacking off their limbs or chucking them on fires. Rather than, following the new fashion: giving them your help, your love and indeed everything you owned. He'd tried it a couple of times, but beautiful people singing beautifully about mass-slaughter was more than his discordance muscle could lift. Still, that was as nothing compared to his first date with Blister.
He'd thought that a double-date, with Smite and Shame at the most expensive, Genuan restaurant in the city –La Petite Folie- would have been suitably low-key, but that had been Richard thinking, and times had changed. On the other hand, he'd thought, it would have been a good test.
The first thing he'd done once he'd escaped was to get his face done, well, the second, obviously. The first thing he'd done was make sure he was still rich. There were many things that he'd been reluctant to take from his father: beatings, advice, a name… but money had never been one of them. Of course he'd been far too clever to leave any of the money - that was supposedly his- in a bank where someone else could, for whatever reason, block his access to it. No, he'd slowly and surely removed it from all his accounts and put it in a big box in a big hole in the ground. It was all back in banks now, of course, but not under any name that could ever be traced back to him. Whoever he was.
The next problem that he'd encountered with his face was the obvious one: what did he want to look like? For the right price a good Igor could make you look like anyone you wanted, but it was best to have some idea going in. However, Patrick had been in an understandable hurry and just said something like "averagely handsome" before going under the knife. It might have been an idea for him to have looked at the pictures on the wall of Igor's satisfied customers. When the bandages had come off and all the bruising had finally faded he looked like a matinee-star in one of those moving pictures that people still seemed to want to watch for some reason. On the other hand, there were a couple of advantages: no one could mistake him for Richard Ravenswood any longer; and now even Bliss might not think she was out of his league. But that was another thing; Bliss didn't even seem to realise she was beautiful. Of course if you're born in Omnia then you grow up surrounded by beautiful people, and when everyone is beautiful then beauty loses all meaning. But Bliss had been born in Ankh-Morpork, as had Smite and Shame, yet none of them seemed to notice that they were now also surrounded by ugly people, like Gorgon the Greaser –who made the best fish and chips in the city- and Nobby Nobbs and, well, Patrick himself, a bit, before his transformation.
Then there had been the problem of trying to explain the concepts of: date, dinner-date, double-date and that he was paying for the whole thing. It had taken so long that he'd been tempted to give up on the whole idea. But Blister had indeed seared her image onto his retina, and Omnians never gave-in to temptation, so why should he?
Smite had had to ask him what they should all wear to a fancy restaurant. He'd told him they should wear their Thursday clothes, but without the veils. That had been tough, but he doubted he could cope with watching Bliss eat food under her gauze.
Of course no one would be able to recognise him now, he was sure, but he was still slightly nervous and thought the best additional disguise would be to have three other people with him who were even more attractive than he was.
At first he'd considered doing the whole carriage thing, but ended up just meeting Smite at the YMOA and then picking up the girls at the Nurses' Home. Also, his first thought of going up-market with The Splurge had been scaled back, then further scaled back and then scaled back again. Even so, his companions thought it luxurious and everyone else in Le Marché appeared to think the four of them had wandered in by mistake.
In that way that he was coming to find increasingly unsurprising, these three people, who were normally almost exclusively vegetarian, had taken to seafood soup, with all the creatures still identifiable in it, and raw beef with an egg cracked over it, as though it was just something you had to get on with. That they had then found these things utterly delicious seemed to astound them.
He'd never met people like them. They weren't like children. Sure, they all seemed to have a child's sense of wonder at each new experience. But there was none of the fussiness or fear, or petulance, or attention-seeking… There was just, genuinely, something deeply wrong with them.
The conversation had been one of the most interesting he'd had in his life. It began with the wine. It became clear early-on that Smite's reaction to his first mouthful of wine had indeed just been the tipping-point. Now, without the run-up of nineteen pints of ale and several large measures of assorted strong spirits, he loved the stuff, and really appreciated it too, and liked to talk about it in the most flowery language.
However, he and Smite were essentially having a conversation with each other while the girls would barely look up. Patrick was sitting beside Bliss and opposite Shame as this was, apparently, the Omnian way.
"Would you like some wine?" he asked her.
"No thank you, sir," she said, without looking up.
"It's not forbidden, you know?" he offered, helpfully.
"I know, sir," she replied and favoured him with a flash of huge, beautiful, brown eyes.
"Did not Brutha himself drink of wine?" asked Smite.
"Actually, no, he didn't," said Shame, matter-of-factly.
"But he could have if he had wanted to," said Blister, "so I shall."
Patrick poured her a large glass. From his limited study of Omnian drinking habits, he doubted that a small one would suffice. She took a deep breath and then, as they all watched, had a mouthful.
"Oh!" she said.
There was a moment's silence while they waited for further information, then Blister took another, larger drink.
"Ooooh!" she exclaimed, "Shame, you really must try this."
"Ok," said Shame.
Patrick simultaneously slapped his forehead and gestured to the sommelier with his other hand while Smite poured her a glass. She took to it like a honey-badger to fighting.
There is nothing like good food and wine to loosen tongues and enliven evenings. Soon Bliss was sitting across from Patrick and Shame across from Smite, and the girls were now prepared to actually look them in the eye. And gods, what eyes! They were enormous, of course. Bliss's eyes were particularly enormous, but Shame's eyes were enormous too, and even Smite's were pretty big, and very brown. Well he supposed that Bliss's were technically hazel; and he wondered if he might not be becoming obsessed.
Of course there had been the, almost inevitable theological discussion about the pros and cons of alcoholic drinks; then suddenly they'd started talking about sex. And in more explicit terms than Patrick had ever heard any women do before, though he'd been about a bit.1
"Shhhh!" he demanded.
"Why?" asked Shame, a picture of innocence.
"Because other people can hear," he hissed.
"Why would they be interested?" asked Blister. Were they, conceivably, really that innocent? Patrick wondered.
"In Genua it is considered impolite to speak of sexual matters in public."
Both girls looked absolutely stricken that they might have committed a faux pas. For his part, Patrick didn't really want to discourage them.
"It's alright, no one has noticed. Just do it quietly."
They both nodded and, in lowered voices, continued:
"Did not the prophet Ebidiah say: It is sinful for woman to be wonton?" whispered shame.
"No," said Blister, "he said: It is sinful for a woman to be left wanting."
"Oh," said Shame as if this was news to her, "so a woman must be satisfied, according to the prophet."
"Of course," Bliss affirmed, "as must men. All things must be equal under Om. As Brutha explained…"
Patrick was completely fascinated; Smite looked as though he'd been petrified. Who'd have thought that theology could be quite so enthralling?
"In that case," suggested Shame, "would it not be sensible for a woman to test relations with more than one man before making a final decision?"
Patrick felt his eyes grow wider, as his eyebrows crept farther up his forehead.
"Or experiment with another woman," Blister suggested.
His eyebrows shot up into his hairline, tipped over his chair and landed him on his back. Where he'd called for the bill, while swatting a fly. There seemed to be an awful lot of them these days.
They'd walked the girls back to the Nurses' Home, where they both thanked Patrick for a wonderful evening, and he had asked with all his oily, Assassin's faux-gallantry, if he might kiss their hands. They each removed one lacy glove and blushed when his lips brushed their bare skin. Confusing observation number…oh, he'd lost count hours ago. Then he dropped a still-dazed Smite back at the YMOA, before heading back to The Duck.
The pub was closed but Kate was still up and he decided to join her for a nightcap. As he sat down at the bar she handed him a cognac.
"I'd have settled for a brandy," he said.
"I'm being Genuan," she replied.
"Was that a clever play on words?"
"Of course it was. So, how was your evening?"
"Kate, if I told you. You wouldn't believe me."
"The fact that you can say that with a straight face means you don't know me very well."
"Ok, I'm in love."
"I don't believe you."
"With a beautiful Omnian girl…"
"I don't believe in Om."
"…who thinks she should experiment with several men before she marries, or possibly a woman."
"I don't believe in her."
"You know, Kate, I'm not sure I do either."
Patrick had no idea of how old Kate was, and wasn't even prepared to guess. She wasn't old, as any unruly customer who had recently felt her right-hook would attest, but she was no longer in her first bloom. She'd told him once that she had in her youth been a noted singer and dancer, and had done the latter while not wearing very much.
"Were you wearing less at the end of the song than at the beginning?"
"Of course, I know how to sell a performance."
He'd seen her beat men twice her size in arm-wrestling contests, and up to three men at once in bare-fist fights. Apparently she'd also been in the army and worked down the docks –though as a docker rather than a seamstress. However, she made it very clear that she had nothing against being a seamstress as it was "a tough job in a hard world".
Of course there was a difference between a courtesan trained at the Guild of Seamstresses and a poor wretch selling herself down the docks. Materially it was the difference between a duke and a destitute drunk. Morally, as a certain Sir Samuel Vimes would confirm, it was no difference at all. And if there was a difference it wasn't in the way you might think.
"You know," said Kate, "I once rescued a child from a burning building all on my own. But I slash on neck, and what name do I get?"
If Kate didn't believe something, Patrick concluded, it was literally unbelievable, and therefore not real. He went to sleep that night safe in the knowledge that Bliss had been simply a dream.
1 Women often "talked dirty", but generally only to other women.