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The Duke of Ankh was preparing to re-enter Society. Parties, dinners, committees, regattas, fund-raisers, galas, meetings of societies and charities… a list of things he’d frequently (and, on occasion, literally) run a mile to avoid now filled up his diary, carefully maintained by the shell-shocked Willikins, who had spent the last ten years cajoling his employer into shaving once a week.
Well, you couldn’t marry a gel and then sit around, getting in her way, all day, could you? Hard luck for a wife to have to look at her husband’s mug from sun-up to sun-down, especially if the mug in question was Vimes’s.
Thanks Gods, he couldn’t go about raising any regiments because there were, for once, comparatively few wars on the go and even fewer that the Duke of Ankh would be expected to take the slightest interest in. This suited Vimes very much indeed.
So, with the certainty of the man who, if he didn’t Have-It-All, certainly had Most-Of-It, he set about informing a variety of startled organisations that he would be attending their next meeting.
He had asked Sybil if there were any committees or societies or any of that rot she’d be interested in joining. Not that, he’d added quickly, he thought she should, if she weren’t keen. Just that she’d been used to a busy, active sort of job and she might find some of it jolly and she’d certainly knock a bit of good sense into proceedings.
She’d said, quietly, that she thought getting to grips with housekeeping would keep her busy, at first.
Sybil had been unusually quiet, lately. This was still fairly noisy by most people’s standards, he had to admit, but now even her contemplative silences1 felt somehow… flat.
The Duke would have been the first to admit he was not the deepest or quickest thinker on the Disc. His thinking faculties had been obliged to take a gracious second place to his ducking-out-of-the-way-of-projectiles faculties during his long military service.
On the subjects of nobility, gentility, etiquette or breeding, he had nothing to say. It was the way he’d been brought up - it was vulgar for a Vimes to have any opinion on arenas where they were the uncontested champions. However, he had a firm conviction that one ought to behave like a gentleman, doncherknow, and this he endeavoured to do in his own way. It admittedly included quite a lot of glaring, which did tend to solve quite a lot of immediate inconveniences. The niggling feeling at the back of his head couldn’t be glared at, which was thoroughly unsporting on its part.
There was only one person to whom he could ever consider deferring on the subject. The man in question was sharpening a series of carving knives with a relish to which Vimes’ nerves had grown used2.
He usually disagreed with Willikins on the topic of Gentlemanly Behaviour3, which Vimes reckoned the man had got out of a book or off Selachii’s valet. Books were all right, in their place, so long as they had some detailed descriptions of where to put cannons or when to plant cabbage seeds, but he had a bone-deep suspicion of the sort of rotter who would feel the need to write down how to act like a gentleman. Selachii’s valet was probably a good sort but he could hardly pick up an idea of decent conduct from a man who’d spent approximately ten percent of his life recovering from advice dispensed by the Agony Aunts.
Willikins, ever a man to perfect whatever career he found himself executing, had spent most of his years in service chalking up Vimes’s behaviour to Aristocratic Eccentricity, though most Morporkians would have called it Odd Nobbery. Vimes continued to stump about the place, acting like he owned it4 and avoiding formality of all kinds.
So, on hearing Vimes cough his way around the topic of engagement etiquette, Willikins could perhaps be excused for nearly removing his own thumb with the knife he’d sharpened to a sharpness well, well above military standard.
Having managed to stem the flow of blood fairly quickly, he put his mind to the problem the Duke had conjured up and found that, against all odds, it did exist. If he said so himself, Willikins had adapted quite quickly to Vimes the Romantic. It had been surprising at first to see the Duke smile (sometimes as often as twice a week!) and to see him refrain from the other half of the brandy bottle (even after dinner!).
All these shocking displays of sentiment aside, however, and the fact was, the man really should have been getting a move on. It was all very well and good Stoneface having these, almost touching, agonies about Pressing His Advantage, but ultimately he would have to make a sensible decision about the affair.
Vimes felt, and Willikins agreed, that Sam Vimes himself had no particular advantage in terms of his own person. Women, in his experience, did not swoon over heavily-scarred, grumpy, paranoid bastards who spent ten years shut up in crumbling houses5.
Besides, Vimes thought, the Captain was the sort of woman who could look up a dragon’s nostrils and only slightly buckle at the knees. She could hardly be glowered into accepting a proposal, nor was Vimes physically equipped to loom over her, caddishly, in order to force her hand. Not without a box to stand on and some heavy duty armour, at least.
The money, on the other hand. The title, on the other hand. For instance, it was probably not too bad if some old duffer gives you a house he’s not using after a dirty great dragon burns your office down but you might feel differently if he started plighting his troth at you afterwards. What if a woman thought she had to say yes, because he might be the sort of fearful sewer who would take it away otherwise?
It only took a little slight of hand, Willikins would later think with satisfaction, bringing up some servant’s gossip about what Rust the Younger had been up to with that Venturi girl, walking out with her, stringing her along, tears at balls, whispers at parties… Vimes’s face had taken on a look of dull but growing horror. The final shot fired by Willikins was a reference to the unjust damage to Lydia Venturi’s Reputation and it hit its mark with the fatal accuracy for which he had been famed on the battlefield.
So, in the end (comforting himself that he’d given the house in Pseudopolis Yard to the City, really), Vimes resolved to ask the woman nicely and hope for the best - and, somehow, he’d got it.
Which was, of course… well, it was a good beginning, so far as marriages went.
The thing was - it was all right to ask a woman a nice question like, “could you see your way clear to marrying me?” but some long-suppressed instinct was insisting that he had to do his utmost to make sure she had a nice time while married to him. You wouldn’t want a jolly clever woman like that to go round feeling that she couldn’t live up to any of the mouldy things you landed her with, like a bloody great tomb of a house or a big, fat name like, ‘Sybil, Duchess of Ankh’.
And, of course, once she’d said yes - the career problem had taken centre-stage. The Duke was unused to career women, in so far as he was used to women at all, but he knew enough to consider that a woman who regularly and willingly lifts people with knives off other people with knives doesn’t want a man to show up and say, “here I am, darling, your knight in shining armour6."
Vimes, of course, knew of Cockbill Street and he, of course, knew that people there were poor but it meant as much to him as an angler fish knowing a giraffe is tall. To be strictly fair, thought Willikins, there were Emperors who were strapped for cash in comparison to Vimes.
Where Vimes knew of the Shades and Cockbill Street, Willikins knew both places intimately and he knew women and men like Sybil Ramkin, like her mother, like her father, who worked their fingers to the bone, who carefully maintained a cheerfulness which was ground down further and further under the lodeweight of the Disc. They grasped back-breaking work with both hands and a grin and turned away a helping hand as though it were a draught of poison.
Willikins did not voice this opinion directly to the Duke, who looked increasingly stonefaced with worry. The thing was, even Vimes wasn’t so insensitive to reality to not realise the prospect of going from scraping your own living to being showered with the wealth of the Vimeses must at least be galling. It was the sort of thing could make you question, well, whether you should be tramping about at night in shoddy armour, even if it was with a very promising young werewolf who had “so much potential, honestly, Sam, you can’t imagine how useful that nose is."
Not an imaginative man by habit, Vimes could nevertheless clearly see Sybil as the Lady of the House. He could see her as the Duchess of Ankh, Leader of Society. When he thought of these formidable women who Sybil wasn’t yet but was going to be, he thought she looked, well - really rather nice, you know. Jolly smart. Suited her.
She could sort out the House and the Hall and make all that habitable and what’s more make it all bearable with her common-sense and her plain good taste and her ability to find out the best in anything while never ignoring the worst in anything.
It was just that she had been really rather quiet, recently, and it could be nerves, he supposed, about the wedding which seemed to grow like a weed in terms of decisions and demands...
The thing was, she’d seemed happy enough with the idea of being married to him, Sam Vimes, and this in itself seemed a more than minor miracle. The fear was that broaching the subject of being married to the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes would break the spell.
In the end, one day as he screwed his courage to the sticking place7, she’d floored him by volunteering, as they walked up to Pseudopolis Yard, “-so you see, it wasn’t his hand at all, it was his brother’s, but why you’d keep your own hand in the scullery, I don’t know, but it baffled the Corporal on duty so I s’pose it wasn’t a bad misdirection as they go, oh and I’ve given my last day to the Patrician as the 4th, that’s not too close to the wedding, you don’t think? We found a foot but the Gods only know whose it is, it was just sitting in the bath so Angua’s going to, you know, sniff it out, if you get my meaning-“
Well, if she was happy enough to give up being a Captain to be a Duchess, who was Sam Vimes to intervene or question further? At the time, it had seemed a good idea.
An allowance would imply dependence on him, which he couldn’t stand. Access to it all would cause even the most level-headed woman on the Disc to fret, which he also couldn’t stand. So, as Willikins agreed, there was nothing for it but to sit down.
“I would recommend, sir,” he’d added, “that you pick a room with as few Vimeses scowling down at you from the walls as possible.” Vimes had to admit, this was a jolly good thought.
So, one afternoon, he’d poured the tea as Sybil smiled vaguely at him and at the window and carpet and bookshelves, still thinking of the robbery down at the Klatchian takeaway in Dolly Sisters.
(“Now, who,” she’d said, “would want to steal a load of pig’s balls?” and Vimes had remained poker-faced until she’d unblushingly corrected herself, two minutes and three topics later with, “oh, pork balls, I meant.”)
Vimes glanced at the delicate, pale amber tea, the scents of the Aurient rising up prettily from china cups so fine that through them you could read H A Mugg’s Historie of Leaves (Tee), a first edition of which sat on the shelves above.
Without hesitation, he placed seven cubes of sugar and around half a gallon of milk in it before passing it to Sybil, who accepted it graciously while no doubt thinking about the sickly-sweet sludge of tannin that waited for her at the Yard.
He cleared his throat, trying and failing to make the gesture sound proletarian and salt-of-the-earth. He set his jaw.
“Sybil, I need to talk to you about something in some detail, for about two minutes.”
In fact, he spoke for about six minutes and with Sybil’s full and rapt attention. It was rare Sam Vimes had so much to say in one sitting, and with so little profanity.
Things such as, “endow”, “worldly goods”, “Hall”, “Manor” and “holdings in Fourecks, only about 3000 hectares” were the general theme, along with the general sentiment, “you needn’t be bothered with it but there it is, if you want to be bothered with it”.
“So you see, I don’t want you to feel over-awed or anything wretched like that and I certainly-“ and these sorts of conversations were the only time she ever saw him look at her sternly, she would later think, as opposed to his usual friendly glare, “-certainly don’t want you to be grateful. It’s all yours, when you want it, and that’s it.”
Sybil nodded, visibly restraining herself from an impulsive ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ or ‘it’s very kind of you’. Vimes looked at her fondly.
“Rather rum luck for you, I’m afraid, prospect of hitching yourself to all this rubbish. I’m old-fashioned, you see,” he said, more consolingly, “but you know, I don’t intend to go around insisting on things or anything ghastly like that, not a husband’s pla-“
And here he faltered and looked a little sheepish, as though mentioning himself in the role of husband was putting brutish pressure on his fiancée, who had already agreed to marry him, to become his wife. She reached out and took the hand resting on the tea table.
“I understand, Sam,” she said, quickly, before he could feel really embarrassed.
She was, herself, a little overcome. Partly by the idea of estates and gold and two hundred bedrooms with four-poster beds but mostly by a tender, twisting emotion which she couldn’t name but whose close relation she could. She gripped his hand and he rallied himself and, having managed to say what he came to say, felt confident enough to say something he hadn’t.
“And, you know, you’re a wonderful gel, you’ll be meeting all the right sorts and putting the place to rights and all that. High time, too.”
He tried for a rare smile, the kind that meant he was happy, which Sybil thought were not nearly as bad as people made out, sometimes actually quite the opposite of their reputation, like the one she was looking at now.
“Yes, high time for you to be in your proper sphere, you know, an ornament and a use, I’d say.”
He patted her hand with his free one and she felt her treacherous heart sink, and felt it sink lower still, as she tried and failed to keep her smile from faltering.
Vimes had barely needed any persuading at all to put on evening dress for tonight’s shindig, only a mere forty-five minutes of a lecture from Willikins. He’d even found and affixed a tie to the general region of his throat, to the valet’s great relief. He had invited Captain Ramkin but in the mildest possible way, so that she knew she didn’t have to come. It was only a minor soiree, that half-wit Rust’s appalling ballroom with horrendous food but a serviceable array of drinks.
He tried to picture her in this sort of room, with these sort of people, most evenings a week. She looked marvellous, in his mind’s eye, a galleon among gaudy, painted little skiffs. He frowned.
“How about a damehood?” murmured Vetinari, who had appeared at his side without stooping to anything so commonplace as a sound or perceptible movement.
Vimes considered it.
“I don’t think so. I’m already a knight, you know, among all the other things,” he mused. “It would be rather an embarrassment of titles.”
“It could allow for a more active occupation,” said Vetinari, quietly, as though Vimes had not spoken. “But perhaps - you would not want the duchess to be over-taxed, your grace?”
Vimes took a much more measured sip of his brandy than he normally would at this sort of gods-awful affair. A chill fell over the conversation, which was handy for the nearby cheeseboard.
When he spoke, it was in a voice he rarely deployed, the tones of the Duke of Ankh. “I have no Policy on the responsibilities or activities which the future Duchess may choose, in any capacity, whether it be as a peer, a Vimes or a husband.”
It was always worth seizing the opportunity to be stuffy with Vetinari as it was nearly as satisfying as booting the horse-faced bastard up the arse, something he refrained from doing so’s as he could hang on to his feet.
“Quite so,” said the Patrician, smoothly.
Vetinari seemed… pleased? Vimes found it hard to tell. Hadn’t seen the black-coated misery pleased since they were at school and Downey had, in the course of chasing Dog-Botherer with the intent of holding him face down in a fountain, knocked himself out by opening a door.
Vimes glowered out at the assembled crowd of chinless wonders and red-faced boors.
“And we shall be seeing more of you at these events, I understand, your grace?”
“You will.”
“A blessing for the City, to see its most, if I may, exalted-“ Vimes narrowed his glare to a point that Vetinari would have said was impossible without actually closing one’s eyes. “- exalted nobleman to take such particular interest in its affairs. Committees, boards, charities - and taking an interest in the Embassies, as well, your grace? Most civic-minded. Most patriotic.”
Vimes said nothing. Vetinari looked mildly at Lady Rust, winched alarmingly into her corset, which seemed to have been made for a woman born without ribs, as she harangued one of the footman, who had committed the serious offence of making eye contact with the Duchess of Quirm8 while passing her a vol-au-vent.
“Your intended has such a… refreshing devotion to duty. That must be a comfort to you, knowing she will work so diligently to fulfill her responsibilities as the Duchess of Ankh.”
A light frost spread its fingers over the brie. Icicles began to form on the uneven cliff-face of the cheddar.
“It would be a shame to lose the Captain as an ornament to Society,” the Patrician observed.
Almost perceptibly, Vimes’s brow took on an aspect of a metal slightly softer than iron. He made a nearly human noise. There were the signs of a thaw in the air.
“But still more, I think, a shame to lose her as a use to society,” Vetinari continued, emphasising the small-s, watching Vimes carefully, who stared ahead stubbornly.
Yet, he was feeling something close to hope bloom in his chest. He relented, a little.
“Look, there’s no point in asking me. You’ll have to ask her yourself.” He paused and decided that, for once, he would offer the closest thing to advice anyone could offer the Patrician. “In so much, of course, as you ever ask anyone.”
Vetinari met his eye and if Vimes wasn’t drunk or mad, he felt sure he detected something like satisfaction in the man’s gaze.
“Well, your grace, I look forward to your wedding. It promises to be quite the event. My regards to the Captain.”
As Vetinari crossed the room to a rapidly-paling Downey, Vimes reflected that there were a few times in his life, only a few, when he missed Havelock, whom one could chat to companionably, if one didn’t mind companionable chats that made one feel that Havelock had been reading one’s diary10.
Of course, Vetinari may have, for his part, missed the Sam who had had a bit more cheer about him before he went away to get blown up and cut to ribbons in far-flung places, as well as some closer to home.
Vimes thought about Sybil, at this sort of thing, girt with ropes of emeralds, rubies, pearls, draped in satin. Chatting to Downey, Selachii, Rust, putting them in their place, showing them up without quite meaning to but not quite meaning not to. Sybil sitting on committees and actually reading the minutes and making sensible suggestions. Picking out something natty for one of the drawing rooms, a nice new wallpaper or something like that. Glittering about the place in whatever she’d like to wear, the least retiring-retired person on the Disc.
No one could have ever done it better, he thought as the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, barely perceptibly.
A week after their wedding (which had gone off really rather well, apart, of course, from Vetinari being shot with some bloody awful oojah-thingymajig-wotsit of some kind and Sybil being a little delayed, but only a little, by a daft bugger who wanted to put that new dwarf lad - though Vimes wasn’t entirely sure if he’d got that bit right - on a non-existent throne), Vimes was considering the plasterwork on the ceiling, which needed redone. Willikins was keeping a list of improvements to be made as Vimes found them and, Vimes was pretty sure, compiling a list of every decorator from here to Quirm.
Despite what Vimes’d been told by many men of his acquaintance, married life was altogether charming, if you were to ask him, and jolly interesting indeed, particularly during certain joint pastimes.
Perhaps he could have done without all the interior design but, as he’d conceded to Willikins, the place had to look less like a ransacked barracks and more like somewhere a respectable person of influence, authority and importance lived.
He was aware that Sybil, there on the other side of the dinner table, was deep in thought. One couldn’t help being aware of Sybil’s mind turning over information. It was like sitting across from several extremely observant tectonic plates mid-shift. He waited, patiently, making a note that the architrave on the north-western wall was about to collapse.
She picked at her food. She picked up her wine glass and put it down again. She looked at the watch she’d been given as her retirement gift, still somewhat surprised Corporal Nobbs hadn’t nicked it as she’d made her way out of the Yard.
“Sam,” she began hesitantly and then stopped. He looked away from a troubled cornice.
“Yes, dear?’
“Well, the Patrician called me in yesterday, to discuss Angua becoming Captain and taking over my duties and, you know, me picking up the duties of- well, of-“
“Duchess, dear,” said Vimes, helpfully.
“Well, yes, and he was talking about duty and responsibility, you know, gener’lly, and-“
Willikins appeared. “Captain Angua, sir.”
Without waiting, Angua strode in, holding a letter. Vimes rather approved of that sort of healthy disrespect towards a dining room.
“Your grace.” Sybil’s face went through a series of rapid-fire reactions at this greeting but before she could speak, Angua thrust the letter into her hand, as politely as a strong-willed woman bearing good news could.
Sybil read the contents. She read them again. She looked at Vimes, only slightly stricken.
Really quite determined-looking, actually, he thought, admiringly.
“The Patrician has requested-“ she glanced down again to check, “-yes, requested that I take up a new role, Sam.”
Vimes looked at her placidly, not trusting himself to look at Angua, who he felt might be happy enough to grin with all her teeth11, a prospect nearly as terrifying to many as the idea of Vimes grinning with all his teeth.
“Leading the Watch. Not the Night Watch. Well, yes, it as well but - you know, a whole Watch. With day-shifts.”
She paused and looked down at the letter again before passing it to Vimes who took it, without taking his eyes from her face.
“He says he hopes I see my duty where it lies.”
“I’ve never known you to do different, dear,” said Vimes, truthfully.
“Re-opening the old Watchhouses…” Sybil breathed.
Vimes read the letter, a slow and only slightly terrible grin spreading across his face.
“54 new recruits?” Sybil asked Angua.
“56, ma’am.” Angua said, a glint of joy in her eye at the thought of having some back-up on patrols, especially if she got to engage in an educational bit of terrifying said back-up.
“And anyone? More trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, vampires, the works?”
“Anyone, ma’am,” said Angua, “Lord Vetinari said quite clearly that recruitment would be open to anyone, with the uniform budget expanded to accommodate trolls and well, er, any officer who may need specific tailoring, ma’am.”
Sybil looked up at the ceiling dreamily - then, as though she’d remembered something, suddenly back at Vimes.
“Er. Sam. Should we disc-“
“Congratulations, my dear,” interrupted the Duke, firmly, “No one could deserve it more. Long overdue. They won’t know what’s hit ‘em, eh?”
The Chief Constable’s face lit up in such a way that Angua, who would normally have averted her gaze from any outward display of sentiment from her commanding officer, could not tear her eyes away. It was the rare look of a person who had their cake and was eating it too, after long years of people slapping cake out of their hand.
Vimes rose from his seat. “Well, officers, I’m keeping you from what I’d wager is awfully important work. Essential, in fact. So, if you’ll excuse me - ah, Willikins, let’s have the dinner things cleared and have some tea brought in for Corp- excuse me - Captain Angua and the Chief Constable.”
He let himself out and paused for a second outside the door to listen to the happy thrum of a conversation about which crossbow brand is most durable and whether they could stretch the budget to those new long-sights…
Feeling a rare sense of pleasure with the world and a small amount of compassion for Ankh-Morpork’s criminal classes, he trudged down to the dragon pens, whistling tunelessly but cheerfully, despite an all-time low in his blood alcohol level.
On his way, he made a mental note to remind Sybil that she’d have to be off-duty by six on Wednesday for the dinner at the Klatchian Embassy, no matter whom was robbing whom, as really the head of the CIty Watch ought to be at these functions, and if she was really bothered about it, then the carriage could drop her off at the Yard afterwards and he’d carry on home but she really ought to make a sincere effort to get her head down for a decent night’s sleep because the Patrician really couldn’t keep asking her to run herself ragged, absolutely ridiculous, who did the man think he was…
Footnotes
- Often deafening things themselves, many a person had reason to feel anxious when they saw Captain Ramkin quietly thinking her way through a problem. Coming to the fairest possible solution rarely suited the interests of most of Ankh-Morpork’s citizenry, particularly where crime had been involved. [ ▲ ]
- And had, in fact, relied on quite heavily, more than once. [ ▲ ]
-
Specifically, how Vimes had not carried it out in the finest traditions of the ancient house of Vimes and in his dignity as the Duke of Ankh.
“But, after all, Willikins,” Vimes would sometimes retort airily to the irate gentleman’s gentleman, “is it not the Century of the Fruitbat?” Generally though, he contented himself with a, “what a load of rot, man” and carried on with whatever disgraceful activity besmirched the name of Vimes. [ ▲ ]
- At any given point in the city, there was around a 60% likelihood that this was the case. [ ▲ ]
- Had the Duke been inclined to pick up a penny-engraving, he might have been astonished but would have nevertheless pointed out that these fellas, awful sewers though they may be, seemed to have a lot more on the bulging and rippling front than he did. [ ▲ ]
- Particularly Sam Vimes, whose armour hadn’t been polished for some time and whose knighthood had been given in recognition of his ability to personally remove arrows from places unmentionable in mixed company. [ ▲ ]
- A piece of military vocabulary which was also unmentionable in mixed company. [ ▲ ]
- A woman Vimes knew only as Bloody Sylvia. Not because of any particularly gory pastimes - it was simply a phrase used as explanation9 by Brenda Rodley, Sylvia’s mother-in-law, in response to any queries about the cause of the recent riots in Quirm.
- When she didn’t use her alternative explanation, of course, of ‘Bloody Gordon’, Brenda being a fair-minded woman who felt honour-bound to point out that her son, Gordon, Duke of Quirm, was also a Disc-Class idiot. [ ▲ ]
- Especially as one didn’t keep a diary. [ ▲ ]
-
Angua, an extremely pleasant-looking young woman, (not that, of course, Vimes noticed that sort of thing himself) didn’t have anything as unseemly as fangs creeping out across her very white, very even smile12.
No, it was something much worse that crept out from the corners of the mouth that a thousand painters would have died to get wrong, something very frightening indeed. Some people called it Justice. [ ▲ ]
- Or, at least, not during the greater part of the month. [ ▲ ]