Chapter 10 In Which Gretsella Encounters Some Unanticipated Plot Twists #3
It didn’t take long for Janet to notice her.
That was exactly the point. Following someone so subtly that they didn’t notice you was extremely difficult.
Following someone so incredibly unsubtly that they noticed you, cooed in delight, tied a bow around your neck, and pranced around feeling as if they were the protagonist in a play about a scrappy little orphan was extremely easy.
If you were willing to put up with being bathed, squeezed, and given some playfully ironic name, like Jaws or Bruiser, you could find out every last one of your enemy’s secrets in under a week.
That is, if they weren’t a witch, of course.
A real witch wouldn’t be taken in for a moment by the old scrappy-little-dog gambit.
Janet, fortunately, was a witch in firm denial.
When she saw Gretsella in her doggy disguise, there was a passing moment when a peculiar expression crossed her face.
It was an expression that said, simultaneously, “Is that my employer’s meddling old witch of a mother here to spy on me in disguise as a sweet little shaggy dog?
” and “Of course it isn’t, don’t be absurd, only a paranoid loon would think of something like that.
” Then she gave a big, stupid smile and said, “Hello, boy! Come here, come here, boy! Aren’t you a sweet little fellow! Yes, yes, you are!”
Gretsella trotted closer, allowed Janet to scratch her ears—she refused to admit to enjoying the sensation—and resolutely did not give Janet a thoroughly deserved bite on the ankle. Sweet little fellow indeed, when anyone with an ounce of sense would immediately realize that Gretsella was a bitch.
In any case, Janet was perfectly delighted to let Gretsella trot along at her heels as she went about her evening’s business.
Her first business was at a pub, where she gave sheet music in praise of Herman to the piano player and then sat down at the bar to order a glass of beer.
All perfectly in order, Gretsella thought.
The piano player started up the song, which was one of several pro-Herman songs that Janet had submitted for Gretsella’s approval several weeks earlier.
A general chorus of objections rippled through the room.
“This again,” a man said, to broad agreement.
“I can’t stand this song. Who wants this Herman when we’ve got our Good King Bradley already?
Give us the good song, Janet! The one about the jester! ”
“Yes,” someone else called out. “Give us the jester song!”
“Oh, really,” Janet said in a modest sort of way.
“I don’t know why you’re all so wild for that silly little song.
I suppose I can play it for you if you promise to vote tomorrow!
” Then she offered her glass of beer to the piano player and claimed his place on the bench.
She played a few introductory chords. Gretsella found herself impressed, after all, by Janet’s dedication to her work. Then Janet began to sing.
Our Herman is an honest man, on that you can rely,
Hardworking and dependable, a steady stand-up guy.
He’ll keep this country on its track, he won’t disrupt a thing,
Not like the chaos that you’d see if a jester were the king!
It continued in that vein. If a jester were the king, Janet informed the crowd, flower sellers would wear silk gowns and dukes would serve them tea, and common manners would soon be called true propriety—which would, of course, be dreadful, hence why they ought to vote for Herman.
The patrons in the pub, who had clearly heard and enjoyed the song many times before, were pounding their fists on the tables to the beat and howling happily along to the chorus.
As a bit of propaganda, it was highly effective.
The fact that Janet was, probably without realizing it, applying a touch of magical influence to the crowd as she sang didn’t hurt.
There was no doubt in Gretsella’s mind that a significant percentage of the people in the room had formed, somewhere in the back recesses of their brains, the half-formed thought that it might be a clever little joke to show up to vote and write in Janet’s name.
Gretsella sat down on her furry little haunches and quietly seethed, then continued to seethe as she followed Janet to several more pubs, where she watched her repeat that exact performance to increasingly rowdy and enthusiastic crowds.
Janet was a sneaking, scheming, underhanded creature absolutely no better than she ought to be.
Gretsella admired that. What annoyed her was that Janet had gotten away with it.
The election was in the morning. If the mood Janet had created in the first pub held true in pubs across the city, then there was no chance that Gretsella’s plan to get Herman elected would come to fruition.
Gretsella could forgive many things—arson, embezzlement, when people spat a little when they talked, murder-for-hire—but what she could not forgive was another witch (an untrained one, at that!) underhandedly turning her own underhandedness into a scheme that benefited herself.
Gretsella was not a woman who allowed her machinations to be machinated.
If word got out among the other witches that Janet had twisted Gretsella’s well-laid plans to serve her own ends, Gretsella might as well hang up her pointy hat for good: No one would ever take her seriously again.
Janet’s plan had to be disrupted. Gretsella was more than capable of that.
With a few nudges, suggestions, minor spells, and veiled threats, it would be simple enough to shift the election so that the democracy enthusiasts split their votes between Janet and Herman, with the romantic traditionalist faction coming out ahead and once more choosing Bradley to be their king.
It would, of course, be awfully rough on poor Bradley if Gretsella chose to fully crush Janet’s ambitions.
What he wanted wasn’t so very much: his familiar little village, and his hair salon, and a ball to kick around with the boys on the weekends.
He had been so grateful to Gretsella for helping him too.
Such a nice, honest, trusting boy, her Bradley. Such a loving and devoted son.
Gretsella shook herself, which, since she was in the shape of a dog, was a more than usually refreshing experience. She was a witch, by devil. A witch was nothing without her pride. She might as well not be a witch at all. And what was Gretsella, outside of being a witch?
On the sticky floor of the sixth pub she’d trailed Janet to that evening, Gretsella formed a new plan.