(Return to) The Discworld Tarot
The Minor Arcana
Gods know what I'm taking on here as there are fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana, the familiar sequence of Ace-to-Ten, then Princess (Page or Jack) Prince (Knight), Queen and King. The parents of the familiar deck of playing cards, each family of court cards is slimmed down to King, Queen and Jack, and the only survivor of the Major Arcana is the Fool, who lives on as the Jester/Joker.
In no particular order, I shall tackle them as the Muse takes me – I can always re-order them afterwards - and I know it's going to be a long slog!
The Two of Swords:
The Twos are all about polarities, dualities and expressly partnerships or interactions between two people.
The Two of Swords concerns discussions, chats, understandings, between two people, who may or may not be lovers. It could be two old friends meeting to gossip and chat about nothing in particular; a career discussion between an employee and their boss; a couple who are friends, or professional peers, or an older couple in an established relationship who are perfectly comfortable in each other's company and who are glad of a few minutes' or a few hours of quiet unhurried conversation. As said elsewhere, the odd-numbered Swords are pretty horrible, but the even numbers tend to be happier and more positive. They can still represent challenges and obstacles to be overcome, or at least talked out, though.
We begin by reprising a tense situation at the end of my novella The Graduation Class, in which an old Assassin is contemplating retirement, as the profession has moved on beyond the point at which he feels comfortable.
Downey agreed, albeit reluctantly. Joan smiled, having got what she'd come to argue for. Only Mericet remained in fighting mode.
"Sir, I must protest! In all my more than forty years with the Guild I can safely tell you I have never seen such a degree of feather-bedding and mollycoddling of student Assassins! How will they learn if they are not continually followed by the fear of death?"
"More happily and less fearfully, I expect." Vetinari said. He left the desk and held the door open.
"Mr Mericet, if today's Guild is not to your liking any more, there is always honourable retirement."
"I may well take it" Mericet hissed. "Female Assassins. Safe exams. An end to the misericordia. This isn't my Guild any more!"
"Many old men say that after nearly half a century's loyal service. Things change. Goodbye, Mr Mericet."
Mericet's had his chips, then, thought Vimes.
Vetinari paused and added "No great rush."
I wanted to keep Mericet on at the Guild and see his opinions change and shift. His particular skills made him the natural old hand younger Assassins have turned to for help and guidance at several points. Besides, giving the dry, dour and forbidding Poisons master a sort of late-flowering romance was comedy gold. But if I'd effectively retired him at the end of TGC, with a "Goodbye, Mr Chips" sort of ambience, and Vetinari himself approving of this, how to bring him back?
Here it is.
Lord Downey sat back and sighed. He loathed moments like this. The man sitting opposite in the Master's office sat expressionlessly, his decision seemingly having been made. He looked completely at peace with himself.
Downey put down the resignation letter, which was short and to the point, loaded with the accepted phrases such as with the greatest regret... and this having been forced on me... and with the Guild having changed direction and emphasis in such a way that my sense of professional integrity has been fatally compromised... He looked up and contemplated Mr Mericet's impassive face.
"This is all very regrettable." he said at length. "Very regrettable indeed. And I would be sorrier than I could possibly say if you were to leave us now. Is there no way I can convince you to retract this letter and for you to stay with us until a more formal retirement age? After all, Mr Mericet, you are only..." Downey did a mental calculation and reminded himself the man sitting opposite was younger than he looked. Maybe working with lethal poisons for so long had just made him seem older. "...fifty-eight years old. Teachers at this Guild have forged successful careers into their late sixties, maybe even into their seventies. It is not unknown."
Downey crossed his fingers, trying not to remember members of the teaching faculty who had lingered on for perhaps too long, such as Mr Lamister, or The Extremely Reverend Dr A-Pox-Upon-Their-Houses Jenkins, the former Chaplain.
Jenkins had been a morass of bad habits, misogyny, and misanthropy marinaded in alcohol, and had he ever had any of the milk of human kindness in him, it had seriously curdled. Replacing him as Chaplain had been imperative before the first girls arrived at the school. He hadn't wanted to go – in his own unique way he had been looking forward to the arrival of girls and women teachers – and Downey had shuddered at the implications of this. (1) But the Omnian Church had also seen a need for him to retire, and the local church heirarchy had colluded in removing him to a maximum-security priests' retirement home in the Shires. And Mr Lamister had been retired out of kindness and prudence, before this wholly ineffectual teacher fell victim to a pupils' prank that might have had fatal results. It wouldn't have looked good.
"My mind is made up, Master." Mericet said, with grave finality. "After due consideration, I have decided this is no longer my world, and I should stand aside to let younger and more suitable people steer the School in its new incarnation."
Downey steepled his fingers, an affection he had picked up from Havelock Vetinari.
"Mr Mericet... Humphrey... I beg you to reconsider." he said. "If nothing else, you have been resident here at the Guild for over thirty years. In which time you have given absolutely sterling service as a Housemaster and principal tutor in your speciality. But do you have anywhere to go when you leave? Any family? Friends? I know there are procedures whereby long-standing servants of the Guild can be provided with grace-and-favour accommodation in retirement..."
Mericet frowned.
"I have savings, Master. I live frugally and I have banked much of my wages, plus several contract fees for successful inhumations. I will be instructing a property agent to look for suitable premises for me."
"But what will you do?" Downey asked. It was common knowledge that Mericet had no friends and only very distant family. He was unmarried. The Guild and teaching had been all his life.
"I am unsure. Perhaps set up as an apothecary. I have the training and experience, after all."
"Hmm." Downey said. He wondered how long a business like "H. Mericet – Family Apothecary" would stay solvent for. Mericet's concept of a headache remedy or treatment for a stomach upset was quite radical, after all. And Downey himself was getting no younger. Even though there was an evens chance he might die in office – he was Chief Assassin, after all, and his predecessor had gone interestingly insane(2) - Downey feared a cold and lonely and friendless old age in retirement. He did not want to preside over an old colleague's descent into this particular abyss, a slow and lingering inhumation in life.
He gave up.
"If this is your decision, Mr Mericet. We will of course honour it and ensure you receive a suitable retirement package. But I beg you to do nothing precipitate. Please at least hang on, until we can secure the services of a suitable replacement for you."
"Perhaps one of the new lady assassins might be suitable, Master." Mericet suggested, with a hint of his legendary dark sarcasm. "If that is all, thank you for your time. I will go and see my affairs are in order."
Mericet left the office. Downey sighed. A little later, the Guild Bursar, Mr Wimvoe, knocked and entered.
"I take it the interview with Mr Mericet didn't go well?" he asked, collecting several communications and invoices that required his attention.
Downey sighed. Winvoe looked down at the resignation letter and raised a questioning eyebrow. Normally he dealt with the financial implications of staff leaving the teaching profession, and tied up those necessary loose ends.
"Not just yet, Mr Winvoe". Downey said, shaking his head. "I propose to sit on this matter for a while, and make regretful remarks about how difficult it is to recruit a new member of staff with both the aptitude to teach, and an extensive knowledge of poisoning techniques and inimical alchemy."
"There is one, Master." Winvoe reminded him. "In the new intake of mature Assassins."
"Oh, yes." Downey said, with new gloom. "But I had other plans for this person. Ah well..."
"Now see here, Humphrey!"
The voice thundered across the restaurant. Mr Mericet winced and looked round to see if anyone had reacted. He'd been careful to conceal his first name from generations of pupils at the Guild school. It would not have looked good for the image of the dry, dour, terrifyingly sarcastic Poisons master, had they discovered he had a very human first name. It never occurred to most students, who saw him as a quietly disapproving and not-quite-human Presence radiating a field of deadly mordant sarcasm, that he even had a first name like most normal fully human people. Most pupils who got as far as "Mr H. Mericet" briefly speculated that he might be a Havelock. Or possibly a Heinrich. If it got out that he was a Humphrey then life would get difficult. Even colleagues in the staffroom called him Mr Mericet. He did not welcome familiarity. But that had been until...
He was relieved that at this time in the evening the chosen restaurant was only sparsely occupied and there were no other Assassins in there, nor anyone he knew. But everyone else had jumped at the voice, including, unfortunately, the waitress with the tray of glasses. It was that sort of voice. It commanded attention. It had not been a shouted voice. But the owner of the voice knew how to project and they used it like a weapon, in full knowledge of its effects on the listener.
If possession of a dangerous voice were to have been a criminal offence, the Watch would have happily charged Joan Sanderson-Reeves with multiple offences. At present she was leaning forward on her side of the table, her lean bony face set in a scowl and her eyes radiating serious disapproval. This made Mr Mericet's eyes water slightly. Feeling slightly intimidated was a new experience for him. He was aware he was out of his comfort zone in several rather large ways. He was in his late fifties. He was uncomfortably aware that since the age of eleven, he'd been living as a lifelong confirmed bachelor. Since his days at the Guild School he'd been living in an exclusively masculine world. Oh, some aspects of it had chafed. He had despised the bluff, hearty, sporty types who had little patience for scholarly, quiet, and weedier boys, seeing them as fair game for inflicted indignities. But after a while, they'd stopped bullying him. (3) Quiet, weedy, boys who are good with poisons tend to get respect. And speaking of respect...
"Now listen to me, Humphrey." Joan said, firmly, in a lower voice that was still audible over the sounds of broken glass being swept up.
"What's all this ludicrous story about your retiring? I've never heard a sillier notion in my life!"
Mr Mericet suddenly realised he had nowhere to retreat to, no exit strategy against things going horribly wrong. This too was new and uncomfortable for him. He ran a finger around the inside of his collar, which was suddenly getting too hot and sticky for him. He tried to look levelly at Joan, and for the first time he could remember, had to break away first.
This woman is remorseless, he thought. She is ruthless. A born Assassin.
Forty-eight years old, Joan had won her own reputation mainly by being the oldest person ever to pass the Final Run and to have earned Full Black as an Assassin. Prior to that she had been a freelance contract killer, an unlicenced Assassin who had despatched a variable number of men to the sort of near-Death experience, the sort from which nobody ever returns to speak of bright lights, tunnels and deceased relatives beckoning them on. (4)
In appearance, Joan Sanderson-Reeves was slender, bony even, with the sort of purposeful graceful motion that speaks volumes for thirty years as a deportment teacher. She also taught elocution, etiquette and the social graces; and in later life had run a very successful cookery school in the city. A born teacher, her experience had begun as Governess to various socially elite families, followed by upscale Finishing Schools in the Überwald mountains, then after the sad death of her fiancée, a return to the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies, this time as a teacher. Girls the Disc over had learnt to treat her with fear and respect. Returning to Ankh-Morpork and setting up an Academy of her own, the Assassins' Guild had sub-contracted her to take on difficult cases who needed shock treatment in the social skills, let us say boys with harsh, graceless, lower-class accents who needed special tuition. Working with Assassins had given her some creative ideas and she had learnt much, in return, from her boys. Which had led her to arrest, detention, and the offer to legitimise her standing by becoming a late-entrant Full Assassin.
Joan had sighed, accepted, knuckled down to the intensive training, and against all exceptions had qualified. She had endured the more physical aspects of the training, with generous help from the three other women on the course. (5) Emmanuelle Lapoignard les Deux-Epées had coached her to a passing grade in Swords; Alice Band had accepted she was at a disadvantage in Edificeering, but had ensured she did not fall off things too drastically; Johanna Smith-Rhodes had nursed and sometimes bullied her through Fieldcraft and Wilderness Survival training. In return, she had helped the other three through the more cerebral courses, such as Poisoning and Inimical Alchemy.
Which had led her to...
Humphrey Mericet had attempted to be professional and impartial in his classes, treating his first four official female students(6) with an equal-opportunities degree of sarcasm and mordant comment. His conviction that women were not cut out to be Assassins was reinforced the evening when Miss Alice Band, tired after a long day of physical training, had inadvertently dosed herself with a rather large amount of ergot-derived hallucinogen. (7)
He had noted, though, the skill and resource with which Joan Sanderson-Reeves had nursed Alice out of the trip and provided the appropriate counter-intoxicant. This was the first time Joan had stood out as the star of the Mature Students' Class.
And over the fifteen months of the Mature Students' Class, Joan had stood out in a way even Mericet could not ignore, earning almost a full 100% mark in his classes. This had led him to, very diffidently and very respectfully, ask if she would consent to dinner with him at some point convenient to herself. Joan, flattered by the attention, had agreed. But right now, he was hideously aware of a need to placate and mollify. He was also vulnerably aware that he was totally unfamiliar ground, the part of the map marked "Here Be Dragonnes" in large threatening lessons. There was one in front of him right now.
"Humphrey," she said, in a softer voice, "You're an intelligent man. I would go so far as to say you are a very clever man. You have been trained to observe. You've known Lady T'Malia for a long time. You've been in or around this school since you were eleven, give or take a year or two. The occasional girl has got past you and gone the distance and graduated. Good heavens, you taught Alice, Johanna, Emmanuelle and myself. You taught Emmanuelle twice, as I recall, the first time when she was posing as a boy and she even fooled you!"
"Well, she was thirteen then." Mericet almost mumbled. "I would very much doubt Madame Deux-Epées could carry off the deception now."
"But the point is, she fooled you." Joan said, remorselessly. "Be honest, Humphrey. You would have given a starred pass mark to the boy she was posing as. You would have backed him to sail through the Final Run and graduate. It was only damned bad luck that prevented her from graduating then. Does the fact he was really a girl make any difference? Any difference at all?"
Here be terrible dragonnes, Mericet thought. Had he manifested late-onset over-confidence, that fateful night when he'd asked her out to dinner? Women had not just been a closed book to Humphrey Mericet. The entire library had been closed and barred to him and the road leading to it had been closed, with a great big "Road Up!" sign erected to prevent access. Oh, he'd had the traditional visit to the Seamstresses' Guild that had been a mandatory and much-anticipated part of training. But that had been a long time ago. Mericet had accepted the experience was passingly pleasant, but had felt no great desire to revisit it. He'd lost a virginity he had no real need for and which was irrelevant to him either way.(9)
Every so often he wondered if life might be different were there to have been a Mrs Mericet. But life at the Guild was good and the women it employed provided all that a man could ever ask for or need. There were women who cleaned his rooms. Who made his bed and changed the linen. Who could tailor, launder, and repair his clothing. Prepared such food as the abstemious Humphrey Mericet required. All the services of a wife and none of the drawbacks. And so the years passed and Humphrey Mericet had grown older at the Guild, accepting an occassional discreet contract so as to keep abreast of emerging trends in the profession.
And then one day Joan had come along, as part of a wholly novel and unwelcome idea to formally extend Guild teaching to females. And Mericet's tidy, organised, institutional, life had suddenly been turned inside out. He had met a poisoner whose ability was every bit as good as his own. Her other essential Assassin skills had been honed by intensive guild training. And what was more, she was refined, cultured, and she could cook.
Humphrey Mericet was in love. It was a whole new world for him. Finally, a Mrs Mericet had come along. Or at least, a very good candidate.
Fully aware she had got his entire attention, Joan's voice grew kinder.
"I admire you, Humphrey." she said, letting a little of her own feelings slip. she felt oddly drawn to this man, despite his nearly sixty years of bachelor quirks. And neither of them was getting any younger. "I consider you are a man who is worth getting to know better, now we are no longer teacher and student. You probably only believe women are not fit to be Assassins because you've never before seen what women can do." she said. "The idea has never been tested before. So all I'm asking you, Humphrey, is that you set this silly prejudice aside and stay on at the School. Delay this silly idea you have about retiring. Give it a year. Watch, look at, the intake of girls you will be helping to teach. Heavens above, Humphrey, we're not trolls or gnolls or some other sort of non-human species! I grant you, young gels can be silly and they can be sloppy and they can be maddening – I have taught them for long enough to know that – but they are no different from young boys in that. Besides."
Joan took a long sip on her drink.
"Besides. Look at what young gels grow up into. You taught Emmanuelle when she was thirteen and posing as a boy. And this last year you've seen the adult version. They're not thirteen and silly forever. They grow up into people like Alice Band. And would anyone in their right mind pick a fight with Alice?"
Mericet nodded assent.
"Or indeed, you. But I can't picture you aged thirteen."
She laughed.
"Nor can I, it was so long ago! But, Humphrey, the Guild is your life. You would be quite bored and miserable if you were to retire now!"
Humphrey Mericet breathed a deep resigned sigh.
"I concede you may be right on female pupils and Lady Assassins." he admitted. "I work alongside my Lady T'Malia, after all, and I am aware of her unique ability. I informally know of several women who performed the essential deception so well as to graduate. My personal inclinations and prejudice are perhaps blinding me and preventing me from realising what should have been obvious."
He looked speculatively at Joan.
"Eighteen clients, I believe? And most of them poisoned?" he asked.
"Well, the first one, I clubbed to death. But on that day I was utterly enraged. And most people credit me with twenty-four. Gods know where that figure came from, as I only ever counted eighteen!"
"Maybe the time is right to widen our approach and our selection criteria and tap the latent talent of an overlooked section of society." Mericet admitted.
"The other half of society, Humphrey!" Joan corrected him. "Women. We account for half the human race, after all!"
"Good-oh!" Joan said, satisfied. "And this other thing, Humphrey. Does the Guild really need to test pupils to death? I agree the Final Examination should have an element of risk about it. It's dangerous. There has to be a risk of death. that concentrates the mind wonderfully. But we're their teachers, Humphrey. We have a duty of care to our pupils! I will happily shout at, speak very sternly to, even bully and beast, a student who is shirking and being idle or wilfully ignorant. That is what we are there for. But seeing all that teaching wasted and ending up in a dratted coffin at the end of seven years. Waste of my time. Waste of yours. Just a waste all round, Humphrey. I will teach at this school and do it gladly, but I will NOT be a party to un-necessary death! Even if the pupil is a waste of good oxygen and hard to love."
There was an uneasy silence. Mericet felt something was expected of him.
"If I hear you correctly." he said, slowly, as if turning over a novel idea and examining its merits was a difficult thing for him, "what you are advocating is that if a pupil is corrected by a near-miss or a fright, he - or she - will live on to learn from that and avoid making the same error again."
"Damn right, Humphrey! It's hard for a corpse to learn by its mistakes!" she said, thumping the table.
He took a deep breath.
"It would be the case that you are right." he admitted. "I feel I owe it to you – and to the Guild – to at least delay my retirement. To at least give the new regime a try."
Mericet did not add that his infatuation with Joan was the other reason for his withdrawing his resignation. But she smiled anyway.
"Jolly good, Humphrey! Can I take it that you have seen sense? Good-oh. Look, if it's unfamiliarity with young gels, ask me for advice, will you? And don't be tempted to go easy on 'em if they can't take it and start blubbering. In my experience, all male teachers fall for that one. Then they take advantage. Then they all blubber. You have to be hard on 'em. It's the only way. Now let's see the dessert menu, shall we?"
They paid enough of a tip on the way out to cover the cost of a tray of broken glasses. It was only right. Noblesse Oblige dictated.
"And besides," Joan said, reflectivey, as they walked arm-in-arm down Pelicool Steps, past the pet shop and the florists' next door, "Exactly how long do you think a chemists' shop called Mericet's would survive for? You'd be as bored as anything. Commerce is not you, Humphrey!"
A day or two later, Mr Mericet asked for an interview with Lord Downey. He walked diffidently into the Master's office.
"May I have a word, my Lord?" he asked.
"What can I do for you, old chap?" Downey asked, radiating benevolence.
"Well... I was wondering if it was too late to retract my resignation, Master. I have been persuaded that there may be advantages to remaining and spending my declining years helping to establish the new system. That there is merit and worth and a renewed sense of challenge in the new approach."
Downey was considerate enough not to ask exactly who had persuaded Mericet. Solid staffroom rumour had given him a shrewd inkling(10), and he kept a diplomatically straight face. He reached into his in-tray and retrieved Mericet's letter.
"Of course, old chap. I haven't actioned it yet, in any case. Shall we rip it up, and have a sherry to celebrate?"
"That would be a very good idea, Master. I thank you!"
(1) Yes, I do have Father Jack Hackett from "Father Ted" in mind here. Imagine Father Jack being let loose on girl pupils, or his having a run-in with, say. Miss Alice Band... yes, exactly. The outgoing Chaplain and Mr Lamister, a haplessly neurovore teacher of the old school with much in common with the named Teachers' Guild leader Master Greetling, are named and described in The Assassins' Guild Yearbook. (I have recently had access to a copy and read it for the first time. While relieved that I was pretty much on the money about Madame Duex-Epées and that there are teasing hints that I got it broadly right about Miss Smith-Rhodes, there's a lot of canonical stuff I will need to write in here and there...). Mr Lamister may have retrained as a priest, by the way. The Compleat Ankh-Morpork names a Reverend N. Lamister who is every bit as hapless a priest as he was a teacher. And the butt of sadistic pranks by choirboys and altar servants.
(2) See Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett.
(3) This had subtly changed one day when, unaccountably and no doubt due to a bad batch of citrus fruit, the half-time oranges had provoked a serious and inexplicable attack of vomiting and purging. It had been noted that young Mericet had been seen loitering near the dressing rooms. But the then Guild Master had noted that, if the hearty sporting types were wise, they should reflect that slight, weedy, unsporting boys with starred A-grades in poisons and potions should be treated with a certain respect. Mericet had received a sherry and successfully avoided the almond slice, although he had suggested how the almond slice might be made more interestingly.
(4) Although her clients did indeed get to draw very near to Death for as long as it took to conclude the formalities.
(5) Although she had somehow aced the Emergency Drop in a manner she was grateful for, but blowed if she ever was going to confess to anyone. This tale may yet be told.
(6) Girls had got through the Assassins' Guild training course before, by expedients such as a rolled up pair of socks down the britches and a lot of bluff and imposture. Guild protocol in those cases was to accept that if a girl managed to keep up the deception so well for up to seven years, she was a bloody good Assassin and should be allowed to graduate (provided, of course, she kept discreetly quiet about it). Mericet had once taught a pupil called Emanuel-Martin de Jeannedarc. He recognised "him" straight away when some years later he returned to the School, having narrowly failed to graduate first time around.
(7) See my short White Rabbit , in which Alice falls down a rabbit-hole and ends up in Wonderland. Soundtrack by Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane.
(8) See footnote (6) above. Also read The Graduation Class for a lot of the backstory. This can be viewed as another sequel to it, this one following the Mericet-Joan shipping storyline.
(9) In fact, he'd spent most of the night enthusing about various poisons and poisoning techniques to the Seamstress who'd drawn him. Maybe it rubbed off: thirty years later, she became an Agony aunt, one of the Guild's hereditary enforcers.
(10) The suppressed giggles and forced poker expressions on the faces of the three other female staff members were clue enough. Johanna and Alice thought it was really sweet, and Emmanuelle considered it to be a huge joke.