Equal Rites

Granny bowed, giving the girl a chance to take in the pointy black hat with the batwing hatpins. It had an impressive effect: she blushed and, peering out into the quiet alley-way, hurriedly motioned Granny inside. There was a big mossy courtyard on the other side of the wall, crisscrossed with washing lines. Granny had the chance to become one of the very few women to learn what it really is that wizards wear under their robes, but modestly averted her eyes and followed the girl across the flagstones and down a wide flight of steps.

They led into a long, high tunnel lined with archways and, currently, full of steam. Granny caught sight of long lines of washtubs in the big rooms off to the sides; the air had the warm fat smell of ironing. A gaggle of girls carrying washbaskets pushed past her and hurried up the steps—then stopped, halfway up, and turned slowly to look at her.

Granny set her shoulders back and tried to look as mysterious as possible.

Her guide, who still hadn’t got rid of her clothes-pegs, led her down a side-passage into a room that was a maze of shelves piled with laundry. In the very centre of the maze, sitting at a table, was a very fat woman with a ginger wig. She had been writing in a very large laundry book-it was still open in front of her-but was currently inspecting a large stained vest.

“Have you tried bleaching?” she asked.

“Yes, m’m,” said the maid beside her.

“What about tincture of myrryt?”

“Yes, m’m. It just turned it blue, m’m.”

“Well, it’s a new one on me,” said the laundry woman. “And Ay’ve seen brimstone and soot and dragon blood and demon blood and Aye don’t know what else.” She turned the vest over and read the nametape carefully sewn inside. “Hmm. Granpone the White. He’s going to be Granpone the Grey if he doesn’t take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is just a black magician with a good housekeeper. Take it—”

She caught sight of Granny, and stopped.

“Ee ocked hat hee oor,” said Granny’s guide, dropping a hurried curtsey. “Oo ed hat—”

“Yes, yes, thank you, Ksandra, you may go,” said the fat woman. She stood up and beamed at Granny, and with an almost perceptible click wound her voice up several social classes.

“Pray hexcuse us,” she said. “You find us hall at sixes and sevens, it being washing day and heverything. His this a courtesy call or may I make so bold as to ask—”she lowered her voice—” his there a message from the Hother Sade?”

Granny looked blank, but only a fraction of a second. The witchmarks on the doorpost had said that the housekeeper welcomed witches and was particularly anxious for news of her four husbands; she was also in random pursuit of a fifth, hence the ginger wig and, if Granny’s ears weren’t deceiving her, the creak of enough whalebone to infuriate an entire ecology movement. Gullible and foolish, the signs had said. Granny withheld judgment, because city witches didn’t seem that bright themselves.

The housekeeper must have mistaken her expression.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “May staff have distinct instructions to welcome witches, although of course they upstairs don’t approve. No doubt you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?”

Granny bowed solemnly.

“And Aye will see if we can’t find a nice bundle of old clothes for you, too,” the housekeeper beamed.

“Old clothes? Oh. Yes. Thank you, m’m.”

The housekeeper swept forward with a sound like an elderly tea clipper in a gale, and beckoned Granny to follow her.

“Aye’ll have the tea brought to my flat. Tea with a lot of tealeaves.”

Granny stumped along after her. Old clothes? Did this fat woman really mean it? The nerve! Of course, if they were good quality ….

There seemed to be a whole world under the University. It was a maze of cellars, coldrooms, stillrooms, kitchens and sculleries, and every inhabitant was either carrying something, pumping something, pushing something or just standing around and shouting. Granny caught glimpses of rooms full of ice, and others glowing with the heat from red-hot cooking stoves, wall-sized. Bakeries smelled of new bread and taprooms smelled of old beer. Everything smelled of sweat and woodsmoke:

The housekeeper led her up an old spiral staircase and unlocked the door with one of the large number of keys that hung from her belt.

The room inside was pink and frilly. There were frills on things that no one in their right mind would frill. It was like being inside candyfloss.

“Very nice,” said Granny. And, because she felt it was expected of her, “Tasteful.” She looked around for something unfrilly to sit on, and gave up.

“Whatever am Aye thinking of?” the housekeeper trilled. “Aye’m Mrs Whitlow but I expect you know, of course. And Aye have the honour to be addressing—?”

“Eh? Oh, Granny Weatherwax,” said Granny. The frills were getting to her. They gave pink a bad name.

“Ay’m psychic myself, of course,” said Mrs Whitlow.