“I know what I can call you, mister…”
Vimes felt the smooth brass of the surrogate knuckles, polished as they had been by years of abrasion from his pants and, needless to say, the occasional chin. As he dug down, they almost leapt to his grasp.
“Sorry about this, your grace,” said Jiminy as he pushed him gently out of the way and said to the smith. “Well now, Jethro, what’s this all about, then?”
“Your grace?” sneered Jethro. “I ain’t going to call you that! I ain’t going to lick your boots like all the others do! Coming back here, lording it over us, ordering us about as if you owned the place! And that’s it, isn’t it? You do own the place! One man with all this country! That’s not right! You tell me, how did that happen? Go on, you tell me!”
Vimes shrugged. “Well, I’m not an expert, but as I understand it my wife’s ancestors fought somebody for it.”
The blacksmith’s face bloomed with an evil pleasure as he threw off his leather apron. “Well, okay. No problem. That’s how it’s done, is it? Fair enough. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you for it, here and now, and, tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you with one hand strapped behind my back, on account of you being a bit shorter than me.”
Vimes heard a slight wooden sound behind him: it was the sound of a barman stealthily pulling a two-foot-long rosewood truncheon from its accustomed place under the bar.
Jethro must have heard it too, because he called out, “And don’t you try anything with that, Jim. You know I’ll have it out of your hands before you know what’s happening, and this time I’ll shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Vimes took a look at the rest of the clientele, who were doing remarkable impersonations of stone statues. “Look,” he said, “you really don’t want to fight me.”
“I do, indeed I do! You said it yourself. Some ancestor got all of this by fighting for it, yeah? Who said it’s the time to stop fighting?”
“Burleigh and Stronginthearm, sir,” said a polite yet chilly voice behind the big man. To Vimes’s shock it was Willikins. “I’m not cruel, sir, I won’t shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted. No, please do not make any sudden movements. Burleigh and Stronginthearm crossbows have notoriously responsive triggers.”
Vimes resumed breathing again when Jethro raised his hands. Somewhere in all that rage there must have been a halfpennyworth of self-preservation. Nevertheless the blacksmith glared at him and said, “You need to be protected by a hired killer, do you?”
“In point of fact, sir,” said Willikins smoothly, “I am employed by Commander Vimes as a gentleman’s gentleman, and I require this crossbow because sometimes his socks fight back.” He looked at Vimes. “Do you have any instructions, commander? and then he shouted, “Don’t move, mister, because as far as I know a blacksmith needs two hands to work with.” He turned back to Vimes. “Do excuse that interjection, commander, but I know his sort.”
“Willikins, I rather think you are his sort.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.”
“Now, I want you to put that bloody thing down, Willikins. People could get hurt!” Vimes said in his formal voice.
“Yes, sir, that would have been my intention. I could not face her ladyship if anything had happened to you.”
Vimes looked from Willikins to Jethro. Here was a boil that needed lancing. But you couldn’t blame the lad. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought the same way himself, many times. “Willikins,” he said, “please put that wretched thing down carefully and get out your notebook. Thank you. Now please write down as follows: “I, Samuel Vimes, somewhat reluctantly the Duke of Ankh, do intend to Duke it out, haha, with my friend Jethro…What’s your full name again, Jethro?”
“Now look here, mister, I didn’t—”
“I asked you your damn name, mister! Jiminy, what’s his surname?”
“Jefferson,” said the landlord, holding his truncheon like a security blanket. “But look, your grace, you don’t want to go…”
Vimes ignored him and went on, “Now where was I? Oh, yes: ‘my friend Jethro Jefferson, in a friendly fight for the ownership of the Manor and environs, whatever the hell they are, which will go to the which of us that does not first cry “uncle,” and should it be myself that utters the same, there will be no repercussions of any sort upon my friend Jethro, or on my man Willikins, who pleaded with me not to engage in this friendly bout of fisticuffs.’ Got that, Willikins? I’ll even give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to show to her ladyship if I get bruised. Now give it to me to sign.”
Willikins handed over the notebook with reluctance. “I don’t think it’ll work on her ladyship, sir. Look, dukes aren’t expected to go around—” His voice faltered in the face of Vimes’s smile.
“You were going to say that dukes shouldn’t fight, weren’t you, Willikins? And if you had, I would have said that the word ‘duke’ absolutely means that you do fight.”
“Oh, very well, sir,” said Willikins, “but perhaps you ought to warn him…?”
Willikins was interrupted by the pub’s customers pushing their way out at speed and running through the village, leaving Jethro standing alone and bewildered. Halfway toward the man, Vimes turned to look back at Willikins and said, “You may think you see me lighting a cigar, Willikins, but on this occasion, I think, your eyes may turn out to be at fault, do you understand?”
“Yes, and in fact I am deaf as well, commander.”
“Good lad. Now let’s get outside where there’s less glass and a better view.”
Jethro looked like a man who had had the ground cut from under his feet but didn’t know how to fall down.
Vimes lit his cigar and savored, just for a moment, the forbidden fruit. Then he offered the packet to the blacksmith, who waved it away without a word.
“Very sensible,” said Vimes. “Now then, I’d better tell you that at least once a week, even these days, I have to fight people who’re trying to kill me with everything from swords to chairs and in one case a very large salmon. They probably don’t actually want to kill me, but they’ll try to stop me arresting them. Look,” he waved a hand at the landscape in general, “all this…stuff, just happened, whether I wanted it to or not. By trade I’m just a copper.”
“Yeah,” said Jethro, glaring at him. “Stamping on the faces of the struggling masses!”
Vimes was used to this sort of thing, and put it mildly. “Can’t tread on their faces these days, my grinder gets in the way. All right, not very funny, I admit.” Vimes was aware that people were coming back down the lane. They included women and children. It looked as though the pub’s clientele had roused the neighborhood. He turned to Jethro. “Are we going to do this by the Marquis of Fantailer’s Rules?”
“What are they?” said the blacksmith, waving at the oncoming horde.
“Rules of sparring by the Marquis of Fantailer,” said Vimes.
“If they was written by a marquis I don’t want no truck with them!”
Vimes nodded. “Willikins?”
“I heard that, commander, and have recorded it in my notebook: ‘refused Fantailer.’ ”
“Well then, Mr. Jefferson,” said Vimes. “I suggest we ask Mr. Jiminy to start the proceedings?”
“I want your lackey to write down in that book of his that my mum won’t get put out of her cottage, whatever happens, right?”
“It’s a deal,” said Vimes. “Willikins, please make a memorandum that Mr. Jefferson’s old mum should not be thrown out of her cottage, hit with sticks, put in the stocks, or otherwise manhandled in any way, understand?”
Willikins, trying ineffectually to hide a smile, licked his pencil and wrote industriously. Vimes, less noisily, made a mental note and the note said: “The ferocity is draining out of this lad. He is wondering if he actually might get killed. I haven’t thrown a punch, not one l
ittle punch, and he is already preparing for the worst. Of course, the right way about it is to prepare for the best.”
The crowd was growing by the second. Even as Vimes looked on, people came down the lane carrying a very old man on a mattress, their progress accelerated by his delight in hitting them on the back of the legs with his walking stick. Mothers toward the back of the crowd were holding up their children for a better look and, all unknown, every man had a weapon. It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant. Men touched their forelocks when Vimes looked in their direction, women curtsied, or at least bobbed up and down a bit, disturbingly out of sequence, like organ pedals trembling.
Jiminy approached Vimes and the blacksmith cautiously and, to judge by the glistening of his face, very apprehensively. “Now then, gents, I’m choosing to consider this a little demonstration of fisticuffs, a jolly trial of strength and prowess such as may be found on any summer evening, all friends under the skin, okay?” There was a pleading look in his eyes as he went on. “And when you’ve got it out of your systems there’ll be a pint waiting for each of you on the bar. Please don’t break anything.” He produced an overused handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket and held it in the air. “When this touches the ground, gentlemen…” he said, backing away very quickly.
The slip of linen seemed to defy gravity for a while, but the moment it touched the ground Vimes caught the blacksmith’s boot in both hands as it swung toward him and said very quietly to the struggling man, “A bit previous, weren’t you? And what good has it done you? Hear them all sniggering? I’ll let you off, this time.”
Vimes gave a push as he loosened his grip on the foot, causing Jethro to stagger backward. Vimes felt a certain pleasure in seeing the man losing it this early, but the blacksmith pulled himself together and rushed at him, and paused, possibly because Vimes was grinning.
“That’s the ticket, my lad,” said Vimes, “you just saved yourself a dreadful pain in the unmentionables.” He made fists and beckoned suggestively to his bewildered adversary over the top of his left fist. The man came swinging and got a kick on the kneecap, which floored him, and he was picked up by Vimes, which metaphorically floored him again.
“Whyever did you think I was going to box? That’s what we professionals call misdirection. You want to go for the hug? I would if I were a big bloke like you, but you ain’t going to get the chance.” Vimes shook his head sorrowfully. “Should have gone for the Marquis of Fantailer. I believe that has been carved on many a gravestone.” He took a generous pull of his cigar; the ash had yet to be disturbed.
Enraged beyond belief, Jethro threw himself at Vimes and caught a glancing blow to his head, receiving at almost the same time a knee in the stomach which knocked all the breath out of him. They went down together with Vimes as the conductor of this orchestra. He made certain he ended on top, where he leaned down and hissed into Jethro’s ear, “Let’s see how smart you are, shall we? Are you a man who can control his temper? ’Cos if you aren’t, then I’ll give you a nose so wide that you’ll have to hold your handkerchief on the end of a stick. Don’t you, for one moment, think I’m not capable of it. But I reckon a blacksmith knows when to cool the metal, and I’m giving you a chance to say that at least you got the duke on the floor in front of all your friends, and we’ll stand up and shake hands like the gentlemen neither of us is, and the crowd will cheer and go into the pub to get happily ratted on the beer that I shall pay for. Are we men of one accord?”
There was a muffled “Yes,” and Vimes stood up, took the blacksmith’s hand in his hand and raised it up high, which caused some slight puzzlement, but when he then said, “Sam Vimes invites you all to take a drink with him in Mr. Jiminy’s establishment!” everybody shrugged bewilderment aside to make room for the beer. The crowd surged into the pub, leaving the blacksmith and Vimes on their own—plus Willikins, who could be remarkably self-effacing when he wanted.
“Blacksmiths should know about temper, too,” said Vimes, as the crowd dispersed pubward. “Sometimes cool is better than hot. I don’t know anything much about you, Mr. Jefferson, but the City Watch needs people who learn fast and I reckon you would soon make it to sergeant. We could use you as a smith, too. It’s amazing how dented the old armor can get when you’re standing on the faces of the poor.”
Jethro stared down at his boots. “All right, you can beat me in a fight, but that doesn’t mean it’s right, all right? You don’t know the half of it!”
There were sounds of merriment coming from the pub. Vimes wondered how embroidered that little scuffle would turn out to be. He turned back to the smith, who hadn’t moved. “Listen to me, you stupid young fool, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth! When I was a kid the only spoons I ever saw were made of wood and you were lucky if there was some edible food on the end of them. I was a street kid, understand? If I had been dumped out here I would have thought it was paradise, what with food jumping out on you from every hedge. But I became a copper because they paid you and I was taught how to be a copper by decent coppers, because believe me, mister, I wake every night knowing that I could have been something else. Then I found a good lady and if I were you, kid, I’d hope that I’d find one of them, too. So I smartened myself up and then one day Lord Vetinari—you have heard of him, haven’t you, kid? Well, he needed a man to get things done, and the title opens doors so that I don’t actually have to kick them open myself, and do you know what? I reckon my boots have seen so much crime down the years that they walk me toward it of their own accord, and I know there’s something that needs kicking. So do you, I can smell it on you. Tell me what it is.”
Jethro still stared at his own boots and said nothing.
Willikins cleared his throat. “I wonder, commander, if it might help if I had a little talk with the young man, from what you might call a less elevated position? Why don’t you take a look at the beauties of the local countryside?”
Vimes nodded. “By all means, if you think it’ll do some good.” And he went away and examined a honeysuckle hedge with considerable interest, while Willikins, with his shiny gentleman’s gentleman shoes and his immaculate jacket, strolled over to Jethro, put an arm around him and said, “This is a stiletto I’m holding to your throat and it ain’t no ladies’ shoe, this is the real thing, the cutting edge, as it were. You are a little twit, and I ain’t the commander and I will slice you to the bone if you make a move. Got that? Now don’t nod your head! Good, we are learning, aren’t we? Now, my lad, the commander here is trusted by the Diamond King of Trolls and the Low King of the Dwarfs, who would only have to utter a word for your measly carcass to come under the caress of a large number of versatile axes, and by Lady Margolotta of Uberwald, who trusts very few people, and by Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork, who doesn’t trust anybody at all. Got that? Don’t nod! And you, my little man, have the damn nerve to doubt his word. I’m an easygoing sort of fellow, but that sort of thing leaves me right out of sorts, I don’t mind telling you. You understand? I said, do you understand? Oh, all right, you can nod now. Incidentally, young man, be careful who you call a lackey, all right? Some people might take violent exception to that sort of thing. A word to the wise, lad: I know the commander, and you thought about your old mum and what might happen to her and I reckon that is why I won’t be seeing you in lavender, because he is a sensitive soul at heart.”
Willikins’ knife disappeared as quickly as it had come, and with the other hand the gentleman’s gentleman produced a small brush and tidied the blacksmith’s collar.
“Willikins,” said Vimes from the distance. “Will you go for a little walk now, please?”
When his manservant was loitering under a tree a little way further up the lane, Vimes said, “Sorry about that, but every man has his pride. I bear that in mind. So should you. I’m a copper, a policeman, and something here is calling to me. It seems to me that you have something you’d like me to know and it’s not just about who sits
in the high castle, am I right? Something bad has happened, you are practically sweating it. Well?”
Jethro leaned toward him and said, “Dead Man’s Copse on the hill. Midnight. I won’t wait.”
The blacksmith then turned round and walked away without a glance behind.
Vimes lit a fresh cigar and strolled toward the tree where Willikins was appearing to enjoy the landscape. He straightened up when he saw Vimes. “We’d better get a move on, sir. Dinner is at eight o’clock and her ladyship would like you to be smart. She sets a lot of store by your being smartly turned out, sir.”
Vimes groaned. “Not the official tights?”
“Happily not, sir, not in the country, but her ladyship was very specific about my bringing the plum-colored evening dress, sir.”
“She says it makes me look dashing,” said Vimes morosely. “Do you think it makes me look dashing? Am I a dashing kind of person, would you say?” The birds started singing from a low branch of the tree.
“I’d put you down as more the sprinting sort, sir,” said Willikins.
They set off home, in silence for a while, which is to say that neither man spoke while wildlife sang, buzzed and screeched, eventually causing Vimes to say, “I wish I knew what the hell all those things are.”
Willikins put his head on one side for a moment, then said, “Parkinson’s warbler, the deep-throated frog-eater and the common creed-waggler, sir.”
“You know?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I frequent the music halls, sir, and there’s always a bird or animal impersonator on the bill. It tends to stick. I also know seventy-three farmyard noises, my favorite of which is the sound of a farmer who has had one boot sucked from his foot by the muck he’s trying to avoid and has nowhere else to put his stockinged foot but in the said muck. Hugely amusing, sir.”
They had reached the long drive to the Hall now, and gravel crunched beneath their boots. Under his breath, Vimes said, “I’ve arranged to meet young Mr. Jefferson at midnight in the copse on Hangman’s Hill. He wishes to tell me something important. Remind me, Willikins, what is a copse, exactly?”