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here. You will furnish us with their addresses.”
    “Addresses, ladyship?”
    “Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?”
    “Ah,” said the chamberlain, miserably.
    The duke leaned forward on his throne.
    “I trust,” he said, “that they do pay taxes?”
    “Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,” said the chamberlain.
    There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, “Go on, man.”
    “Well, it’s more that they don’t pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn’t think…Well, they just don’t.”
    The duke laid a hand on his wife’s arm.
    “I see,” he said coldly. “Very well. You may go.”
    The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.
    “Well!” said the duchess.
    “Indeed.”
    “That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,” said the duchess. “The weak don’t deserve to survive.”
    The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. Hedidn’t, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or—he recalled—the liver.
    “Quite so,” he managed. “Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “Of course not.”
    “Put matters in hand.”
    “Yes, my love.”
    Matters in hand. He’d put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He’d been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He’d tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn’t have happened. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed still he screamed.
     
    Granny wasn’t at home in public houses. She sat stiffly to attention behind her port-and-lemon, as if it were a shield against the lures of the world.
    Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing “The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All.”
    The table was covered with copper coins. Vitoller and his wife sat at either end, counting. It was something of a race.
    Granny considered Mrs. Vitoller as she snatched farthings from under her husband’s fingers. She was an intelligent-looking woman, who appeared to treat her husband much as a sheepdog treats a favorite lamb. The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomlessreserves of patience and organizational ability and nimble fingers.
    “Mrs. Vitoller,” she said eventually, “may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?”
    The couple looked blank.
    “She means—” Nanny Ogg began.
    “No, I see,” said Mrs. Vitoller, quietly. “No. We had a little girl once.”
    A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him.
    “Only, you see, there is this child,” said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg’s arms. “And he needs a home.”
    The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed.
    “It is no life for a child,” he said. “Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that’s very important these days.” But his eyes didn’t look away.
    Mrs. Vitoller said, “Why does he need a home?”
    “He hasn’t got one,” said Granny. “At least, not one where he would be