“Make us sure,” Elphaba said.
“Well, I saw it, I mean nearly. It had just happened and the knife was still there”—Ama Clutch worked for breath—“smeared with blood that hadn’t had a chance to dry.”
“What did you see? This is important.”
“I saw the knife in the air, I saw the Wind come to take Doctor Dillamond away, I saw the clockwork turn and the Goat’s time stop.”
“It was Grommetik, wasn’t it,” Elphaba murmured, trying to get the old woman to speak the words.
“Well, that’s what I’m saying, duckie,” said Ama Clutch.
“And did it see you, did it turn on you?” cried Glinda. “Did that make you ill, Ama Clutch?”
“It was my time to be ill,” said Ama Clutch gently, “so I couldn’t complain. And it is my time to die, so leave me be. Just hold my hand, dear.”
“But the fault is mine—” began Glinda.
“You would do me more good if you hushed, sweet Galinda, my duck,” said Ama Clutch gently, and patted Glinda’s hand. Then she closed her eyes and breathed in and out a couple of times. They sat there in a silence that seemed peculiarly servant-class-Gillikinese, though it was hard, later on, to explain why. Outside, Madame Morrible moved up and down the floorboards, pacing. Then they imagined they heard a Wind, or an echo of a Wind, and Ama Clutch was gone, and the overly subordinate pillowcase took a small spill of human juice from the edge of her slackened mouth.
6
The funeral was modest, a love-her-and-shove-her affair. Glinda’s close friends attended, filling two pews, and in the second tier of the chapel a flock of Amas made a professional coterie. The rest of the chapel was empty.
After the corpse in its winding sheet slid along the oiled chute to the furnace, the mourners and colleagues retired to Madame Morrible’s private parlor, where she proved to have sanctioned no expense in the refreshments. The tea was ancient stock, stale as sawdust, the biscuits were hard, and there was no saffron cream or tamorna marmalade. Glinda said reprovingly to the Head, “Not even a small bowl of cream?” and Madame Morrible answered, “My girl, I try to protect my charges from the worst of the food shortages by judicious shopping and by going without myself, but I am not wholly responsible for your ignorance. If only people would obey the Wiza
rd absolutely, there would be abundance. Don’t you realize that conditions verge on famine and cows are dying of starvation two hundred miles from here? This makes saffron cream very dear in the market.” Glinda began to move away, but Madame Morrible reached out a raft of cushiony, bulbous, bejeweled fingers. The touch made Glinda’s blood run cold. “I should like to see you, and Miss Nessarose, and Miss Elphaba,” said the Head. “After the guests leave. Please wait behind.”
“We’re nabbed for a lecture,” whispered Glinda to the Thropp sisters. “We have to be yelled at.”
“Not a word about what Ama Clutch said—or that she came back,” said Elphaba urgently. “Got that, Nessa? Nanny?”
They all nodded. Boq and Avaric, making their good-byes, said that the group was reconvening at the pub in the Regent’s Parade. The girls agreed to meet them there after their interview with the Head. They would manage a more honest memorial service for Ama Clutch at the Peach and Kidneys.
When the small crowd had dispersed, only Grommetik clearing away the cups and crumbs, Madame Morrible herself banked up the fire—a gesture of chumminess lost on no one—and sent Grommetik away. “Later, thingy,” she said, “later. Go lubricate yourself in some closet somewhere.” Grommetik wheeled away with, if it was possible, an offended air. Elphaba had to repress an urge to kick it with the tip of her stout black walking boot.
“You too, Nanny,” Madame Morrible said. “A little break from your labors.”
“Oh no,” Nanny said. “Nanny doesn’t leave her Nessa.”
“Yes Nanny does. Her sister is perfectly capable of caring for her,” said the Head. “Aren’t you, Miss Elphaba? The very soul of charity.”
Elphaba opened her mouth—the word soul always provoked her, Glinda knew—but closed it again. She made a wincing nod toward the door. Without a word, Nanny got up to leave, but before the door closed behind her Nanny said, “It’s not my place to complain, but really: no cream? At a funeral?”
“Help,” said Madame Morrible when the door closed, but Glinda wasn’t sure if this was a criticism of servants or a bid for sympathy. The Head rallied herself by arranging her skirts and the vents and braids of her smart parlor jacket. In orangey copper sequins she looked like a huge, upholstered, upended goldfish goddess. How ever did she get to be Head? Glinda wondered.
“Now that Ama Clutch has gone to ash, we shall, nay, we must move bravely on,” Madame Morrible began. “My girls, may I first ask you to recount the sad story of her last words. It is essential therapy in your recovery from grief.”
The girls didn’t look at one another. Glinda, in this situation the spokesperson, took a breath and said, “Oh, she spewed nonsense to the last.”
“No surprise, the dotty old thing,” said Madame Morrible, “but what nonsense?”
“We couldn’t make it out,” said Glinda.
“I had wondered if she talked about the death of the Goat.”
Glinda said, “Oh the Goat? Well I could hardly tell—”
“I suspected that, in her deranged condition, she might return to that critical moment. The dying often try to make sense, at the last possible moment, of the puzzles of their lives. Useless effort, of course. No doubt Ama Clutch was puzzled by what she came across, the Goat’s body, the blood. And Grommetik.”
