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"As you know, your grace, I am not an easily surprised man." The Patrician was, in his usual manner, working through a pile of paperwork stacked neatly on his desk. Vimes had often wondered if it was artificially large to make those on the other side of the desk feel like a small, unimportant inconvenience in the Patrician's day.
"I did not expect to see you on official business again so soon." Vetinari looked up inscrutably at Vimes who had adopted, out of the deep groove of nervous habit, his up and to the left stare. "And, it is exceedingly rare that you actually ask for an appointment with me".
Vimes said nothing. He wasn't quite sure where to begin. The idea had been rattling around his head ever since Carcer had swung, and had only reinforced itself in the time spent with his newborn son. The idea of a statue he'd rejected out of hand, but it kept sneaking its way back.
"I might have some idea what this is all about." Vetinari closed the copybook that lay before him and leaned back.
Of course he knew. He always bloody did. How on earth does he do it. Is he a mind reader?
"But I'm not a mind-reader, no matter what you may think of me. We can't discuss what you wanted to see me about unless you, ahem, tell me."
Vimes glanced at him, and caught a smile that held the warmth of a wooly jumper that had frozen to the lawn overnight.
"Well. You see. Um." Vimes stopped and started. Why wouldn't the words come? He'd rehearsed his script the whole way over. He'd talked to his son about it, leaving out any less... Appropriate details. But now his words failed him.
Sighing, Vetinari rose from behind his desk. "Shall we take a turn in the palace gardens?"
The melody of gravel crunching underfoot and undercane was accompanied by empty remarks on the gardens and the clinking of mail. It was a fine day, the sky a fine blue with wisps of cloud escaping hubwards. Vimes wasn't entirely sure why he was wearing his mail, but it made him rather more comfortable. For this, he needed to be comfortable. The pair passed a lilac bush. It had begun to shed its blossoms into a purple snowdrift across the path. Finally, Vimes began on the subject at hand:
"Your lordship, how much do you know about the activities of the watch under Lord Winder?"
"I know of the existence of The Particulars, if that's what you are talking about." Vetinari replied, after a short pause. He looked up at a black headed gull that was passing overhead. It was on its way towards the ports.
"The Night Watch used to run what was nicknamed the Hurry Up wagon. We'd pick people up off the street who were out after curfew, and we would take them to the headquarters." Vimes rambled, focusing down at the path in front of him. He was sure most people alive at the time knew this information, but he needed to work up to what he was requesting.
"Yes, I saw it a few times from up on the rooftops." Vetinari said. Vimes had always supposed that Vetinari must have been out there, somewhere, but had never considered that they could have been in such close proximity. Their circles... Well. They didn't much mix at that time.
"We would take them there and not ask questions." Vimes continued, "Watchmen didn't ask questions. Well, not until I... Not until Keel came along." He glanced up at Vetinari, but saw no glimmer of notice for the slight slip-up.
"I imagine it was all part of the job." Vetinari equivocated. He did that a lot with things that couldn't be changed. Sure history could be changed, very easily as Vimes found out. This, though, this was more sacred. Vimes was slightly riled by the platitude.
"But we should have asked! Do you know what was done to those people? Did those files ever come across your desk? Did you ever bother to open them?"
"I believe those files were lost in the fire started during the rioting." Vetinari was right, of course. The Unmentionables had always objected strongly to featuring in another establishment's paperwork.
"Well... Right. That fire was started by me and Keel. After we saw what was done there." He shuddered as a ghastly slideshow of people and parts danced across his memory. The metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of ammonia rose from the past and assaulted him. His stomach clenched.
There was a cough, and Vimes snapped out of his horrid reverie. The Patrician was looking at him with a quizzical expression that approached concern.
Without ceremony, in a small, tired voice, Vimes spoke.
"Swing didn't deserve a trial."
Now he said it aloud, he didn't believe it. He sounded, unintentionally, unsure. He had believed it at the time, obviously, but now, saying it among the tranquil, if confusing, gardens of the palace it seemed wrong somehow. Surely there couldn't be anyone beyond the reaches of justice? Who was he to act as judge, jury and executioner?
"I couldn't possibly comment on the decisions of three decades ago. Certainly, if Keel were alive, I should not haul him up on trial over this revelation."
They continued on, to the pavillion. It was a building that had escaped the designs and machinations of B.S. Johnson by simple virtue of being designed and constructed a number of years after he passed. Some homage had been made to with the irregularly placed supports for the roof and the off centre placement of the apex of the roof, but even the most inventive mind could not match his unique design skills.
They sat, side by side, among the climbing roses that were bursting into bloom around the pavillion, looking out over the gardens. Vimes gazed at the deep crimson flowers that blossomed on the shiny green vines. He saw wounds, dripping, festering, interfered with, wriggling. He'd forgotten how those weeks and months after had felt, the first time around. He'd packaged them up. Numbed them away. His usage of alcohol had started there. This time he wasn't going to give in.
"I changed my mind. I want a statue."
"Of course. We could put it on Treacle Mine Road. Some of your men might be happy for the recognit..."
"No. Not of us. Of them."
"Of whom?"
"The victims. Some of them are probably still living you know, if they haven't been locked up." The dead, thankful eyes of those fortunate enough for a mercy killing gazed at Vimes from eternity.
"I see." The Patrician plucked a petal from one of the roses. He crushed it slightly and smelled it before dropping it to the ground.
"I don't think you do." Vines said nastily before he thought it. His momentum carried him away. "Those people, picked up for nothing more than being out late and an easy target, measured up and condemned to... To... Experimentation. To non-personhood. To... To... Hell. Hell on the Disc. Deprived of even the good fortune to die."
"Measured?" Vetinari interjected. Vimes blinked. He thought everyone knew.
"Um. Yeah, he measured people's skulls to see if they were bad. I think everyone we brought him was." Vimes thought he detected a hint of shock in the Patrician's disposition. Of course he wouldn't know, Vines reckoned, I bet all those toffs were told that only the hardened criminals, the really bad ones that committed the cardinal abominations of poverty and not being completely content, faced that treatment.
"A manipulation of calculation more than the science of his method, I presume." Silence prevailed once more. This one was the slightly awkward silence of one person being suddenly burdened by the oppressive and necessary information held by another.
Vetinari made an imperceptible signal towards the palace, and within a few minutes Drumknott had appeared.
"Yes, your Lordship?"
"Would you bring us some tea?"
With that, Drumknott scurried off. Not too long later, a maid appeared bearing a tray. She placed it on the bench between the pair. The tray held a fine teapot with a delicate lilacs pattern, small matching milk jug, sugar bowl (with silver sugar tongs) and two cups. One matched the teapot, and had a dainty saucer beneath and a small silver teaspoon to match the tongs. The other was an enamel mug that had seen better days, but was already filled with tea so strong you could stand a spoon in it. Vetinari dropped two sugars into the enamel mug, gave it a quick stir and handed it to Vimes.
"How did they know how I like my tea?" He peered into the cup, impressed and astonished.
"Really, your Grace, you should know better than to ask that." Vetinari smiled as he prepared his altogether more dainty brew.
Vimes placed the cup back onto the bench next to him, and reached out his cigar case. Offering one to, and being refused by, Vetinari, he lit up.
"If I'm not prying, what has brought this on all of a sudden?" Vetinari asked over the rim of his teacup.
"What's it to you?" Vimes muttered through his cigar.
"You don't need to answer if you don't want to." Vetinari was, for once, sincere in giving an out.
Vimes could feel the Patrician looking at him. He had fixed his own gaze on one of the gardeners who was battling with the rhododendrons on the other side of the garden, a couple hundred metres away.
"The birth of my son. My wife giving birth. One or the other." Vimes answered noncommittally.
"Ah." Vetinari said knowingly, "I've heard parenthood changes one's outlook on the world."
"Not like that. Nothing like that." Vimes sighed. He was the only one alive that knew this. He'd carried it for decades, but it was time he let the burden go. "There was a woman, Nancy Downspout. She lived on my street, we grew up together, though she was a few years older than me. She'd married that April, the same year as the uprising, and went missing in May. She'd been picked up on the wagon. Not by me. I didn't even know. We didn't discuss it on my street when someone went missing. We just hoped that they weren't in there."
"I never told her parents that I'd found her. I don't think, in all the chaos, the idea came to me. In hindsight, I don't think they'd want to know what I'd seen" The scent of blood and rot came back, as did the image of what had been her bouncing chestnut curls matted with blood and viscera. There were a few large patches where her scalp was missing, and her once bright eyes were staring at him desperately from a pallid, grimy, slick face. Her body was badly bruised, with a few select areas facing undue attention, and her arm lying at a wholly unnatural angle.
"I also found her baby down there. Still attached. Not alive. She'd probably been about 6 or 7 months along." With a wobble in his voice, he tried to block the mental image of the maggots that had been in the cell, and the look of the tiny, waxy, blue baby that lay on the floor of the cell in a puddle of dark fluid. He puffed a smoke ring. "Keel gave her what modesty he could and the only other thing she wanted before moving on."
Vimes was shaking slightly, though the June air was warm. He wiped a tear from his eye, and dried his brow with the handkerchief Sybil had given him. It was embroidered slightly sloppily with a V. Vimes stared at it. She'd wanted to take up a more "feminine" hobby, she said, so she made him this for his birthday and then promptly gave the whole horrid business up. The world seemed much brighter than it had done once.
The Patrician put down his cup and saucer, now empty.
The Watchman took a noisy slug of his tea.
He steadied himself a moment before concluding, "I don't think anyone except Keel and I saw her. Nancyball had fainted in one of the other cells."
A stiff breeze flowed through the garden, rustling and whipping up the various blossoms along the path. The trout pond briefly gained some waves along its length. The careful collection of dropped leaves that the gardener had collected was whipped out of his barrow and scattered. Even from this distance, you could tell he was not happy with this.
"I hope this hasn't caused you undue distress."
"What? No. No. Not really. Perhaps her memory will finally rest now."
"Very well. Does Cable Street work?"
"What?"
"Of course, you shall get your statue. It's the least I can do. For Sargent Keel, of course."
"Not for m.. not for him. For them. For the victims."
"Capital, you shall come see me tomorrow about it."
"No. I'm going back on leave."
"Ah, of course. Well, let me know when you have time."
---
"Well, my dear, how did it go?" Sybil was nursing little Sam in one of the large armchairs in front of the fireplace. It being summer, no fire was lit, and the sun streamed through the the southerly windows.
Before replying, Vimes gave thanks for the happy scene before him.
"Well. I think."
"You know if Havelock is giving you trouble..."
"No, no, I got what I asked for."
"Oh, so then why do you sound so rum?"
Vimes lit a cigar by way of reply. He slumped down in the other armchair, and smiled at his wife and child. Sybil smiled down at little Sam with the beatific expression of a new mother.
"I love you, you know. Both of you"
"Sam, of course you do." Sybil looked up at her husband, glad more than anything he was home and relatively settled.
"No, seriously. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you."
"You're not usually this expressive. What happened?"
"No it's... It's nothing. Just something from my past, is all."
Sybil was reminded of the scars that patterned her husband's back. She admitted to herself that her initial attraction to Vimes had been the slight sad dragon energy he had. She didn't push him for details on these things if he wasn't ready to share, and he rarely was. She finished feeding her son, burped him and stood.
"Here, you hold him for a bit would you?" She passed the little bundle over. "I've got to go freshen up a bit."
His son nuzzled into the blanket, that had been knitted by Mrs Colon, as Vimes gazed. He really couldn't believe that he'd been even a small part in such a wondrous little occurrence.
After a while of marvelling, he rose with little Sam in his arms. He bounced his son gently as he wandered over to the window. "Well, little man. I went and I got the statue. Yes I did." He looked out over the garden, and offered his finger. Little Sam grabbed it in his small paw. "Isn't your daddy big and important?"
"What were you saying, Sam?" Sybil re-entered the room in a fine house dress and with a towel wrapped around her hair.
"Oh, nothing. Just being thankful for the world he was born into, is all."