Monstrous Regiment

Wazzer tried to concentrate. “No, they’re not real. They’re like… echoes. Dead voices in an ancient cave, bouncing back and forth, the words changing, making nonsense… like flags that were used for signals but now just flap in the wind…” Wazzer’s eyes went unfocused and her voice altered, became more adult, more certain “…and they come from no god. There is no god here now.”

“So where do they come from?”

“From your fear… They come from the part that hates the Other, that will not change. They come from the sum of all your pettiness and stupidity and dullness. You fear tomorrow, and you’ve made your fear your god. The Duchess knows this.”

The water-mangle creaked onwards. Around Polly the boilers hissed, water gushed in the ru

“I don’t believe in the Duchess, either,” said Polly. “That was just trickery in the woods. Anyone’d look round. It doesn’t mean I believe in her.”

“That doesn’t matter, Polly. She believes in you.”

“Really?” Polly glanced around the steaming, dripping cave. “Is she here, then? Has she graced us with her presence?”

Wazzer had no concept of sarcasm. She nodded. “Yes.”

Yes.

Polly looked behind her.

“Did you just say yes?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Wazzer.

Yes.

Polly relaxed. “Oh, it’s an echo. This is a cave, after all. Uh…”

…which doesn’t explain why my voice doesn’t come bouncing back…

“Wazz… I mean, Alice?” she said thoughtfully.

“Yes, Polly?” said Wazzer.

“I think it would be a really good idea if you don’t talk too much about this to the others,” she said. “People don’t mind believing in, you know, gods and so on, but they get very nervous if you tell them they’re showing up. Er… she’s not going to show up, is she?”

“The person you don’t believe in?” said Wazzer, showing a flash of spirit.

“I’m… not saying she doesn’t exist,” said Polly weakly. “I just don’t believe in her, that’s all.”

“She’s very weak,” said Wazzer. “I hear her crying in the night.”

Polly sought for further information in the pinched-up face, hoping that in some way Wazzer was making fun of her. But nothing but puzzled i

“Why does she cry?” she said.

“The prayers. They hurt her.”

Polly spun round when something touched her shoulder. It was Tonker.

“Mrs Enid says we’re to get to work,” she said. “She says the guards come round and check…”

It was women’s work, and therefore monotonous, backbreaking and social. It had been a long time since Polly had got her hands in a washtub, and the ones here were long wooden troughs, where twenty women could work at once. Arms on either side of her squeezed and pummelled, wrung out garments and slapped them into the rinsing trough behind them. Polly joined in, and listened to the buzz of conversation around her.

It was gossip, but bits of information floated in it like bubbles in the washtub. A couple of guards had “taken liberties”—that is, more than had already been taken—and had apparently been flogged for it. This caused much comment along the tub. Apparently some big milord from Ankh-Morpork was in charge of things and had ordered it. He was some kind of wizard, said the woman opposite. They said he could see things happening everywhere, and lived on raw meat. They said he had secret eyes. Of course, everyone knew that that city was the home of Abominations. Polly, industriously rubbing a shirt on a washboard, thought about this. And thought about a lowland buzzard in this upland country, and some creature so fast and stealthy that it was only a suggestion of shadow…

She took a spell on the copper boilers, ramming the stewing garments under the bubbling surface, and noted that in this place without weapons of any sort she was using a heavy stick about three feet long.

She enjoyed the work, in a dumb kind of way. Her muscles did all the necessary thinking, leaving her brain free. No one knew for sure that the Duchess was dead. It more or less didn’t matter. But Polly was sure of one thing. The Duchess had been a woman. Just a woman, not a goddess. Oh, people prayed to her in the hope that their pleas would be gift-wrapped and sent on to Nuggan, but that gave her no right to mess with the heads of people like Wazzer, who had enough trouble as it was. Gods could do miracles; duchesses posed for pictures.

Out of the corner of her eye, Polly saw a line of women taking large baskets from a platform at the end of the room and stepping out through another doorway. She dragged Igorina away from the wash trough and told her to join them. “And notice everything!” she added.

“Yes, corp,” said Igorina.

“Because I know one thing,” said Polly, waving at the piles of damp linen, “and it’s that this lot will need the breeze…”

She went back to work, occasionally joining in the chatter for the look of the thing. It wasn’t hard. The washerwomen kept away from some subjects, particularly ones like “husbands” and “sons”. But Polly picked up clues here and there. Some were in the Keep. Some were probably dead. Some were out there, somewhere.

Some of the older women wore the Motherhood Medal, awarded to women whose sons had died for Borogravia. The bastard metal was corroding in the damp atmosphere, and Polly wondered if the medals had arrived in a letter from the Duchess, with her signature printed on the bottom and the son’s name squeezed up tight to fit the space.

We honour and congratulate you, Mrs L. Lapchic of Well Lane, Munz, on the death of your son Otto PiotrHanLapchic on June 25 at ■■

The place was always censored in case it brought aid and comfort to the enemy. It astonished Polly to find that the cheap medals and thoughtless words did, in a way, bring aid and comfort to the mothers. Those in Munz who had received them wore them with a sort of fierce, indignant pride.

She wasn’t sure she trusted Mrs Enid very much. She had a son and a husband up in the cells, and she’d had a chance to weigh up Blouse. She’d be asking herself: what’s more likely, that he gets them all out and keeps them safe, or that there’s going to be an almighty mess which might well harm us all? And Polly couldn’t blame her if she went with the evidence…

She was aware of someone talking to her. “Hmm?” she said.

“Look at this, will you?” said Shufti, waving a sodden pair of men’s long pants at her. “They keep putting the colours in with the whites!”

“Well? So what? These are enemy longjohns,” said Polly.

“Yes, but there’s such a thing as doing it properly! Look, they put in this red pair and all the others are going pink!”

“And? I used to love pink when I was about seven.”9

“But pale pink? On a man?”

Polly looked at the next tub for a moment, and patted Shufti on the shoulder. “Yes. It is very pale, isn’t it? You’d better find a couple more red items,” she said.

“But that’d make it even worse—” Shufti began.

“That was an order, soldier,” Polly whispered in her ear. “And add some starch.”

“How much?”

“All you can find.”

Igorina returned. Igorina had good eyes. Polly wondered if they’d ever belonged to someone else. She gave Polly a wink and held up a thumb. It was, to Polly’s relief, one of her own.

In the huge ironing room, only one person was working at the long boards when Polly, taking advantage of the temporary absence of Mrs Enid, hurried in. It was “Daphne”. All the rest of the women were gathered round, as if they were watching a demonstration. And they were.

“—the collar, d’you see,” said Lieutenant Blouse, flourishing the big, steaming, charcoal-filled iron. “Then the sleeve cuffs and finally the sleeves. Do one front half at a time. You should hang them immediately but, and here’s a useful tip, don’t iron them completely dry. It’s really a matter of practice, but—”

9. It is an established fact that, despite everything society can do, girls of seven are magnetically attracted to the colour pink.