Terry Pratchett - Night Watch

“Steady, Fred,” murmured Nobby.

“I didn't mean—” Ping began. “I mean…was I where, sarge?”

Colon leaned on the desk, bringing his round red face an inch away from Ping's nose.

“If you don't know where there was, you weren't there,” he said, in the same quiet voice.

He stood up straight again.

“Now me an' Nobby has got a job to do,” he said. “At ease, Ping. We are going out .”

“Er…”

This was not being a good day for Corporal Ping.

“ Yes? ” said Colon.

“Er…standing orders, sarge…you're the ranking officer, you see, and I'm orderly officer for the day, I wouldn't ask otherwise but…if you're going out, sarge, you've got to tell me where you're going. Just in case anyone has to contact you, see? I got to write it down in the book. In pen and everything,” he added.

“You know what day it is, Ping?” said Colon.

“Er…twenty-fifth of May, sarge.”

“And you know what that means, Ping?”

“Er…”

“It means,” said Nobby, “that anyone important enough to ask where we're going—”

“—knows where we've gone,” said Fred Colon.

The door slammed behind them.

The cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn't know what happened next. They didn't know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn't know what hit them. They'd gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city's bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much.

Most of the Watch got buried there. Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn't see.

For once, it wasn't raining. The breeze shook the sooty poplars around the wall, making them rustle.

“We ought to have brought some flowers,” said Colon, as they made their way through the long grass.

“I could nick a few off some of the fresh graves, sarge,” Nobby volunteered.

“Not the kind of thing I want to hear you saying at this time, Nobby,” said Colon severely.

“Sorry, sarge.”

“At a time like this a man ought to be thinking of his immortal soul viz ah viz the endless mighty river that is History. I should do that, if I was you. Nobby.”

“Right, sarge. Will do. I see someone's doing it already, sarge.”

Up against one wall, lilac trees were growing. That is, at some point in the past a lilac had been planted there, and had given rise, as lilac will, to hundreds of whippy suckers, so that what had once been one stem was now a thicket. Every branch was covered in pale mauve blooms.

The graves were still just visible in the tangled vegetation. In front of them stood Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's least successful businessman, with a sprig of lilac in his hat.

He caught sight of the watchmen and nodded to them. They nodded back. All three stood looking down at the seven graves. Only one had been maintained. The marble headstone on that one was shiny and moss-free, the turf was clipped, the stone border was sparkling.

Moss had grown over the wooden markers of the other six, but it had been scraped off the central one, revealing the name:

John Keel

And carved underneath, by someone who had taken some pains, was:

How Do They Rise Up

A huge wreath of lilac flowers, bound with purple ribbon, had been placed on the grave. On top of it, tied round with another piece of purple ribbon, was an egg.

“Mrs Palm and Mrs Battye and some of the girls were up here earlier,” said Dibbler. “And of course Madam always makes sure there's the egg.”

“It's nice, the way they always remember,” said Sergeant Colon.

The three stood in silence. They were not, on the whole, men with a vocabulary designed for times like this. After a while, though, Nobby felt moved to speak.

“He gave me a spoon once,” he said, to the air in general.

“Yeah, I know,” said Colon.

“My dad pinched it off me when he come out of prison, but it was my spoon,” said Nobby persistently. “That means a lot to a kid, your own spoon.”

“Come to that, he was the first person to make me a sergeant,” said Colon. “Got busted again, of course, but I knew I could do it again then. He was a good copper.”

“He bought a pie off me, first week I was starting out,” said Dibbler. “Ate it all . Didn't spit out anything .”

There was more silence.

After a while Sergeant Colon cleared his throat, a general signal to indicate that some sort of appropriate moment was now over. There was a general relaxation of muscles.

“Y'know, we ought to come up here one day with a billhook and clear this lot up a bit,” said the sergeant.

“You always say that, sarge, every year,” said Nobby as they walked away. “And we never do.”

“If I had a dollar for every copper's funeral I've attended up here,” said Colon, “I'd have…nineteen dollars and fifty pence.”

“Fifty pence?” said Nobby.

“That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,” said Colon. “Before your time, o'course. Everyone said it was an amazin' recovery.”

“ Mr Sergeant? ”

The three men turned. Coming towards them in a high-speed sidle was the black-clad, skinny figure of Legitimate First, the cemetery's resident gravedigger.

Colon sighed. “Yes, Leggie?” he said.

“Good morrow, sweet—” the gravedigger began, but Sergeant Colon waved a finger at him.

“Stop that right now,” he said. “You know you've been warned before. None of that ‘comic gravedigger’ stuff. It's not funny and it's not clever. Just say what you've got to say. No silly bits.”

Leggie looked crestfallen. “Well, good sirs—”

“Leggie, I've known you for years,” said Colon wearily. “Just try , will you?”

“The deacon wants them graves dug up, Fred,” said Leggie in a sulky voice. “It's been more'n thirty years. Long past time they was in the crypts—”

“No,” said Fred Colon.

“But I've got a nice shelf for 'em down there, Fred,” Leggie pleaded. “Right up near the front. We need the space , Fred! It's standing room only in here, and that's the truth! Even the worms have to go in single file! Right up near the front, Fred, where I can chat to 'em when I'm having my tea. How about that?”

The watchmen and Dibbler shared a glance. Most people in the city had been into Leggie's crypts, if only for a dare. And it had come as a shock to most of them to realize that solemn burial was not for eternity but only for a handful of years so that, in Leggie's words, “my little wriggly helpers” could do their work. After that, the last last resting place was the crypts, and an entry in the huge ledgers.

Leggie lived down there in the crypts. As he said, he was the only one who did, and he liked the company.

Leggie was generally considered weird, but conscientiously so.

“This isn't your idea, right?” said Fred Colon.

Leggie looked down at his feet.

“The new deacon's a bit, well, new,” he said. “You know…keen. Making changes.”

“You told him why they're not being dug up?” said Nobby.

“He said that's just ancient history,” said Leggie. “He says we all have to put the past behind us.”

“An' did you tell him he should take it up with Vetinari?” said Nobby.

“Yes, and he said he was sure his lordship was a forward-thinking man who wouldn't cling to relics of the past,” said Leggie.

“Sounds like he is new,” said Dibbler.