Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.
She couldn’t help wondering if Mrs Whitlow was a born witch who somehow missed her training. She was certainly laying siege to the future. There was a crystal ball under a sort of pink frilly tea cosy, and several sets of divinatory cards, and a pink velvet bag of rune stones, and one of those little tables on wheels that no prudent witch would touch with a ten-foot broomstick, and — Granny wasn’t sure on this point — either some special dried monkey turds from a llamassary or some dried llama turds from a monastery, which apparently could be thrown in such a way as to reveal the sum total of knowledge and wisdom in the universe. It was all rather sad.
‘Or there’s the tea-leaves, of course,’ said Mrs Whitlow, indicating the big brown pot on the table between them. ‘Aye know witches often prefer them, but they always seem so, well, common to me. No offence meant.’
There probably wasn’t any offence meant, at that, thought Granny. Mrs Whitlow was giving her the sort of look generally used by puppies when they’re not sure what to expect next, and are beginning to worry that it may be the rolled-up newspaper.
She picked up Mrs Whitlow’s cup and had started to peer into it when she caught the disappointed expression that floated across the housekeeper’s face like a shadow across a snowfield. Then she remembered what she was doing, and turned the cup widdershins three times, made a few vague passes over it and mumbled a charm (which she normally used to cure mastitis in elderly goats, but never mind). This display of obvious magical talent seemed to cheer up Mrs Whitlow no end.
Granny wasn’t normally very good at tea-leaves, but she squinted at the sugar-encrusted mess at the bottom of the cup and let her mind wander. What she really needed now was a handy rat or even a cockroach that happened to be somewhere near Esk, so that she could Borrow its mind.
What Granny actually found was that the University had a mind of its own.
It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they’ve got the time-span all wrong. From stone’s point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backwards and forwards in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well.
The rocks from which Unseen University was built, however, have been absorbing magic for several thousand years and all that random power has had to go somewhere.
The University has, in fact, developed a personality.
Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.
Granny found the child by following the threads of the University’s attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall …
‘—in there?’
The voice came from a long way away.
‘Mmph?’
‘Aye said, what do you see in there?’ repeated Mrs Whitlow.
‘Eh?’
‘Aye said, what do—’
‘Oh.’ Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages.
‘Are you all right?’
Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.
Fortunately Mrs Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.
In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs Whitlow’s ample favours. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.
‘There is another thing,’ she added.
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘I see you hiring a new servant — you do hire the servants here, don’t you? Right — and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything.’
‘What about her, then?’ said Mrs Whitlow, already savouring Granny’s surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.
‘The spirits are a little unclear on this point,’ said Granny, ‘but it is very important that you hire her.’
‘No problem there,’ said Mrs Whitlow, ‘can’t keep servants here, you know, not for long. It’s all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it’s not the same.’
‘Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won’t be any trouble as far as that is concerned,’ said Granny grimly.
‘If she can sweep and scrub she’s welcome, Aye’m sure,’ said Mrs Whitlow, looking puzzled.
‘She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is.’
‘How very helpful. When is this young lady going to arrive?’
‘Oh, soon, soon — that’s what the spirits say.’
A faint suspicion clouded the housekeeper’s face. ‘This ain’t the sort of thing spirits normally say. Where do they say that, exactly?’
‘Here,’ said Granny. ‘Look, the little cluster of tea-leaves between the sugar and this crack here. Am I right?’
Their eyes met. Mrs Whitlow might have had her weaknesses but she was quite tough enough to rule the below-stairs world of the University. However, Granny could outstare a snake; after a few seconds the housekeeper’s eyes began to water.
‘Yes, Aye expect you are,’ she said meekly, and fished a handkerchief from the recesses of her bosom.
‘Well then,’ said Granny, sitting back and replacing the teacup in its saucer.
‘There are plenty of opportunities here for a young woman willing to work hard,’ said Mrs Whitlow. ‘Aye myself started as a maid, you know.’
‘We all do,’ said Granny vaguely. ‘And now I must be going.’ She stood up and reached for her hat.
‘But—’
‘Must hurry. Urgent appointment,’ said Granny over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps.
‘There’s a bundle of old clothes—’
Granny paused, her instincts battling for mastery.
‘Any black velvet?’
‘Yes, and some silk.’
Granny wasn’t sure she approved of silk, she’d heard it came out of a caterpillar’s bottom, but black velvet had a powerful attraction. Loyalty won.
‘Put it on one side, I may call again,’ she shouted, and ran down the corridor.
Cooks and scullery maids darted for cover as the old woman pounded along the slippery flagstones, leapt up the stairs to the courtyard and skidded out into the lane, her shawl flying out behind her and her boots striking sparks from the cobbles. Once out into the open she hitched up her skirts and broke into a full gallop, turning the corner into the main square in a screeching two-boot drift that left a long white scratch across the stones.