Terry Pratchett Book Club: <i>The Shepherd’s Crown</i>, Part I

The death of a legend, you might say. Well… she certainly wouldn’t.

She’d like that you said so, though, even if she’d never admit it.

Summary

Tiffany’s ancestor, Daniel Aching, finds an echinoid fossil that he keeps and gets passed down to family. Tiffany finds herself drawn to the stone circle above the Chalk and isn’t sure why, but Jeannie also sent Rob there, so she’s getting a vibe too. Tiffany talks to the kelda, who tells her that she needs someone to look after her while she’s busy looking after everyone else. Lord Swivel has three sons, one beyond the “heir and spare” number rich folks prefer to have. The elder two are Harry and Hugh; the youngest is named Geoffrey, who learns from his tutor Mr. Wiggall about the whole world. His father eventually sends his tutor away, so Geoffrey takes to hanging out with McTavish, who works at the stables. He helps nurse a runt baby goat to health and calls it Mephistopheles, and the goat follows him everywhere and defends him. Geoffrey sees a witch on a broom and wants to be one and be free that way, but he’s required to join a fox hunt. When he refuses to partcipate properly, his father beats him. Geoffrey stops the beating and tells his father that he’s leaving home. He takes his goat and a cart and hears the wind whisper “Lancre” to him. Granny aids a young lumberjack who almost took his own leg off with an ax and brings him home to his mother. She helps people for the rest of the day, and suddenly knows she’s about to die.

Death comes to retrieve her and compliments her on a life well-lived. As she goes, the Disc reverberates with her passing… while in another world, an elf named Peaseblossom knows the Disc’s edges are once again weak to attack. Tiffany midwifes a birth that was supposed to be twins, but it turns out to be two boys with a triplet sister. The family names the girl after Tiffany, but none of them seem to care about the girl at all, which worries Tiffany. You shows up, and Rob arrives to tell her that she needs to go see the big hag. Tiffany arrives at Granny’s to find Nanny Ogg, then finds Granny in bed with her usual sign now reading “I IS PROBABLY DEAD.” She’s woven her own coffin from willow and written a note leaving her steading to Tiffany. Tiffany understandably balks at this, but Nanny insists that they do what needs doing and not worry about that at present. Mustrum Ridcully hears the news and cries, and makes to leave the University at once for Esme’s funeral, while Mrs. Earwig is keen to have one of her girls installed in Granny’s place. Tiffany stays up a long while to watch over Granny’s body and wonders what she’ll do about all of this.

The next morning, Tiffany and Nanny bring Granny’s body downstairs and take her to the spot where she wanted to be buried, leaving her there with no special marking, not even a stone. Woodland creatures arrive from the forest to pay respects. Mustrum Ridcully lands at the house and asks if it’s true. Then he asks to be taken to Esme’s resting place and cries, and heads home a little drunk on Nanny’s booze. People from town start arriving and bringing little gifts, mostly of food. Then the witches arrive, and there’s eating and drinking and dancing. The senior witches have a discussion about who will take the steading, but Nanny is adamant that Granny’s last words be followed and shows them all the card she left, naming Tiffany as her successor. Tiffany doesn’t feel good about this, or ready for it, but the choice has been made. In the fairy realm, the Queen is angered at her diminished glory since going up against Tiffany, and also angered that the goblins are no longer doing their bidding. She meets with a renamed goblin, now called Of the Lathe the Swarf, who has brought iron into the kingdom (he works on the railway) as a threat and might aid her just to mess with humans, if the queen treats him better. He tells her Granny is dead.

Tiffany cleans Granny’s home until it’s spotless and goes home for a few days. She’s shuffled back and forth; it doesn’t seem that there’s ever enough time, with two steadings to look after. One night she’s home with family and her brother Wentworth mentions that he might want to work for the railroad, while their father won’t hear of it; it’s his job as the only son to inherit their land. Tiffany’s father gives her a shepherd’s crown (the fossil) that belonged to Granny Aching, something he saved just for her. Tiffany begins to cry at the table and her parents tell her she needs to rest and that they’re worried for her. Tiffany’s mother gives her the latest letter from Preston. Geoffrey is nearly to Lancre; the locals at the pub meet his goat who can count and use the privy. He breaks up a fight between two bruisers with ease. Tiffany is still having difficulty with two steadings, and Nanny suggests she let some of the apprentices take work off her plate in Lancre. Tiffany visits Miss Tick and suggests that she might need to train and apprentice for the Chalk too, but Miss Tick insists that she doesn’t need to worry about the doubt Mrs. Earwig has been planting in everyone’s heads.

Commentary

The book’s dedication reads:

It’s the last Discworld book. The last book, full stop, in fact. Pratchett’s assistant and friend, Rob Wilkins, has stated that many parts of this book were being written in the midst of writing Raising Steam, and that it was not entirely finished. That Pratchett wanted to write more of it. Another author (whose name I don’t need to bring up right now given recent allegations) claimed that Pratchett’s original plan had been for Granny to have placed her consciousness into You the cat: Death would have truly collected her in the epilogue to the story, where she’d “leave on her own terms.”

I find myself wondering if Pratchett would appreciate having those thoughts revealed. Not because those choices were bad or good in one way or another, but because he was so very adamant about leaving behind precisely what he left. He had a steamroller run over his hard drive with unused work and notes—he did not want anyone picking at the bones of his ideas, publishing unfinished scenes and mullings and marveling over what might have been ad nauseam. *stares at the Tolkien Estate* Whatever his reasons, I wonder how he’d feel about those little bits making their way out. Because you can’t unknow them, once you do.

Either ending is frankly a fitting one for Granny Weatherwax, though I understand the impulse to give her the final say in her exit, and to give her the chance to watch after Tiffany a little while longer. But the important endnote is in what she says to Death, with her enduring lack of fuss:

She is one of Terry Pratchett’s greatest characters, and this was all she desired. Perhaps not all she ever desired—we know about Mustrum and paths not taken, we know that she didn’t always want to be good, that it was difficult and painful to stick to it—but it’s what she wanted the most often. Often enough to make a life of that task.

The cloying adage goes “Protect your peace.” Granny Weatherwax instead says “Protect your piece”—of the world, of your moment in time. Nurture and look after it, guard it from harm as best you can. It’s not likely that you’ll get thanked for it, but when you die, you’ll have Death’s respect. And not many people can say that.

I hope that Terry Pratchett felt the same way, when he left.

It tells us something that she was the one who left with him. For an author who never put stock in killing off characters for shock value: This happened because it was important. The Disc will continue to grow and change (in our minds if nothing else), but it will do so without him and without her. They had a small part of the world that they kept safe—and now they’re gone. That shelter is lost, and we can only retrieve it through memory.

I only wish that reading it didn’t feel like losing them all over again.

But the work continues for everyone else, of course. And Tiffany’s part in this story is built of her ongoing need to learn how to ask for help. She’s already getting better at it—she tries to ask Miss Tick to help her find an apprentice to train, something that I don’t believe she’d have done even one book previous—but there’s not enough confidence yet to really demand the support she requires.

And then there’s Geoffrey, which brings me to this quote from Tiffany, that ironically doesn’t have anything to do with him at all:

It’s a funny one because what I assume Tiffany is meaning is that being a witch demands a level of competence that people assume only men have, but in reality only women achieve? I think? I’m pretty sure that’s the takeaway we’re meant to have. I suppose it could be a simple as: People think that men’s jobs are harder, but they’re plainly not at all. It’s an understandable thing to say in a moment of frustration, though we’re being set up to learn that witching can, in fact, be a man’s job on occasion.

But I can’t deny that I love the weird symmetry of Granny’s arc in these books; her very first story was about bringing a little girl to the city to become a wizard, and her final chapter ends with a young man who is clearly on his way to being a witch. More of that later, of course…

Asides and little thoughts

• The narrative tells us that Geoffrey’s mother believed he “had a star in his hand.” I believe that’s an old saying meant to suggest that a person will have great influence over important things in the world? But I’m not sure where exactly it came from…

• The importance of Tiffany’s family in this story, of her various supports, really shine through here: The need to have Jeannie around to talk to; the way her parents can see that she’s struggling; the talk Nanny tries to give her about letting the Lancre apprentices take some of the weight. Tiffany is a character who is more comfortable handling things on her own, but the people around her have learned to pay attention to that impulse and to at least attempt to intervene.

• I dunno, just the fact that the two people who were most important to Tiffany were one biological and one surrogate grandmother. The importance of good grandmothers, even the sort who never had kids. More of that in fiction, please.

Pratchettisms

Next week we’ll read chapters 7–13!