Terry Pratchett: Making Money

'Yes, Stanley.'

'Head of Stamps, sir,' said Stanley.

'Yes, Stanley?'

'Lord Vetinari is in the coach yard, sir, inspecting the new automatic pick-up mechanism. He says there is no rush, sir.'

'He says there is no rush,' said Moist to Adora Belle.

'We'd better hurry, then?'

'Exactly.'

'Remarkably like a gibbet,' said Lord Vetinari, while behind him coaches rumbled in and out.

'It will allow a fast coach to pick up mailbags without slowing,' said Moist. 'That means letters going from small country offices can travel express without slowing the coach. It could save a few minutes on a long run.'

'And of course if I let you have some of the golem horses the coaches might travel at a hundred miles an hour, I'm told, and I wonder if those glowing eyes could see even through this murk.'

'Possibly, sir. But in fact I already have all the golem horses,' said Moist.

Vetinari gave him a cool look, and then said: 'Hah! And you also have all your ears. What exchange rate are we discussing?'

'Look, it's not that I want to be Lord of the Golems—' Moist began.

'On the way, please. Do join me in my coach,' said Vetinari.

'Where are we going?'

'Hardly any distance. We're going to see Mr Bent.'

The clown who opened the little sliding door in the Fools' Guild's forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn't very happy about any of them.

'We are here to see Dr Whiteface,' said Vetinari. 'I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth.'

The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick.

'This is the Fools' Guild,' he said. 'Expect… fun.'

There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side.

'I don't know why they persist in this, I really don't,' he said, sweeping through. 'It's not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard.' There was a groan from the dark behind the door.

'Mr Bent was born Charlie Benito, according to Dr Whiteface,' said Vetinari, pushing his way through the tent that occupied the guild's quadrangle. 'And he was born a clown.'

Dozens of clowns paused in their daily training to watch them pass. Pies remained unflung, trousers did not fill with whitewash, invisible dogs paused in mid-widdle.

' Born a clown?' said Moist.

'Indeed, Mr Lipwig. A great clown, from a family of clowns. You saw him yesterday. The Charlie Benito make-up has been passed down for centuries.'

'I thought he'd gone mad!'

'Dr Whiteface, on the other hand, thinks he has come to his senses. Young Bent had a terrible childhood, I gather. No one told him he was a clown until he was thirteen. And his mother, for reasons of her own, discouraged all clownishness in him.'

'She must have liked clowns once,' said Adora Belle. She looked around her. All the clowns hurriedly looked away.

'She loved clowns,' said Vetinari. 'Or should I say, one clown. And for one night.'

'Oh. I see,' said Moist. 'And then the circus moved on?'

'As circuses do, alas. After which I suspect she rather went off men with red noses.'

'How do you know all this?' said Moist.

'Some of it is informed conjecture, but Miss Drapes has got a lot out of him in the last couple of days. She is a lady of some depth and determination.'

On the far side of the big tent there was another doorway, where the head of the guild was waiting for them.

He was white all over — white hat, white boots, white costume and white face — and on that face, delineated in thin lines of red greasepaint, a smile belying the real face, which was as cold and proud as that of a prince of Hell.

Dr Whiteface nodded at Vetinari. 'My lord…'

'Dr Whiteface,' said the Patrician. 'And how is the patient?'

'Oh, if only he had come to us when he was young,' said Whiteface, 'what a clown he would have been! What timing! Oh, by the way, we do not normally allow women visitors into the guild building, but in these special circumstances we are waiving this rule.'

'Oh, I'm so glad,' said Adora Belle, acid etching every syllable.

'It is simply that, whatever the Jokes For Women group says, women are just not funny.'

'It is a terrible affliction,' Adora Belle agreed.

'An interesting dichotomy, in fact, since neither are clowns,' said Vetinari.

'I've always thought so,' said Adora Belle.

'They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.'

'Where do the squeaky balloon animals fit in?' said Moist.

'I have no idea. But I understand that when the would-be murderers broke in Mr Bent strangled one with quite a lifelike humorous pink elephant made out of balloons.'

'Just imagine the noise,' said Adora Belle cheerfully.

'Yes! What a turn! And without any training! And the business with the ladder? Pure battle-clowning! Superb!' said Whiteface. 'We know it all now, Havelock. After his mother died, his father came back and of course took him off to the circus. Any clown could see the boy had funny bones. Those feet! They should have sent him to us! A boy of that age, it can be very tricky! But no, he was bundled into his grandfather's old gear and shoved out into the ring in some tiny little town, and, well, that's where clowning lost a king.'

'Why? What happened?' said Moist.

'Why do you think? They laughed at him.'

It was raining, and wet branches lashed at him as he bounded through the woods, whitewash still dribbling from his baggy trousers. The pants themselves bounced up and down on their elastic braces, occasionally hitting him under the chin.

The boots were good, though. They were amazing boots. They were the only ones he'd ever had that fitted.

But his mother had brought him up properly. Clothes should be a respectable grey, mirth was indecent, and make-up was a sin.

Well, punishment had come fast enough!

At dawn he found a barn. He scraped off the dried custard and caked greasepaint and washed himself in a puddle. Oh, that face! The fat nose, the huge mouth, the white tear painted on — he would remember it in nightmares, he knew it.

At least he still had his own shirt and drawers, which covered all the important bits. He was about to throw everything else away when an inner voice stopped him. His mother was dead and he hadn't been able to stop the bailiffs taking everything, even the brass ring Mother polished every day. He'd never see his father again… he had to keep something, there had to be something , something so that he might remember who and why he was and where he'd come from and even why he'd left. The barn yielded a sack full of holes; that was good enough. The hated suit was stuffed inside.

Later that day he'd come across some caravans parked under the trees, but they were not the garish wagons of the circus. Probably they were religious, he thought, and Mother had approved of the quieter religions, provided the gods weren't foreign.

They gave him rabbit stew. And when he looked over the shoulder of a man sitting quietly at a small folding table, he saw a book full of numbers, all written down. He liked numbers. They'd always made sense in a world that didn't. And then he'd asked the man, very politely, what the number at the bottom was, and the answer had been: 'It's what we call the total', and he'd replied: 'No, that's not the total, that's three farthings short of the total.' 'How do you know?'