Cart and Cwidder (12 page)

Though Dagner was far too nervous to show any pleasure at all, Brid knew he was not displeased because he left her to do all the announcing. That meant that Brid could more or less choose what they sang. She did her best to put together the things they had practiced in the order she thought would be most impressive. She began them with general favorites. Moril felt terrible. Without the deep rolling voice of Clennen, they sounded to him thin and strange, and they lacked the body Lenina usually gave them on the hand organ. Moril began to feel they had nothing to offer the crowd, except perhaps some well-trained playing on cwidder and panhorn.

Brid felt much the same. To encourage them, she announced that they would now play, in trio, the “Seven Marches.” That was one thing she was sure they could do well. And they did. The most successful part was when Dagner, on the spur of the moment, signaled to Brid to play soft during the “Fourth March,” and played his treble cwidder in double time against Moril's slow and mellow tenor. They looked at one another while they were doing it. Moril knew they were neither of them exactly enjoying it, but they were both by then desperate for some applause from the silent crowd, and they had the dour kind of satisfaction of knowing they were giving an exhibition of real skill. They were rewarded by a burst of clapping and a little shower of coins falling into the hat.

Then they did Clennen's “Cuckoo Song,” which always made people laugh. After that Brid, feeling that the sooner Dagner got his part over, the better he would be for the rest of the show, announced that Dagner would now sing some of his own songs.

Brid was glad she had said “some.” Dagner was so nervous that he only managed three. If she had not said “some,” it was probable that he would only have sung one. Moril was disappointed and Brid exasperated, and it was altogether a pity, because the crowd liked Dagner's songs. “The Color in Your Head” went down particularly well. Brid could tell he had the crowd's sympathy. They thought of him as bravely following in Clennen's footsteps and wanted to encourage him. But Dagner was mauve and shaking, and he stopped.

Crossly Brid took the center of the cart and sang herself. Moril, without being told, came to her aid on the cwidder, while Dagner gasped to himself in the background. Brid did well. An audience always helped her. She sang a number of ballads, though she was forced to avoid “The Hanging of Filli Ray,” which she did best, because of the corpse dangling on the gallows behind the crowd. Her success was undoubtedly the patter song, “Cow-Calling,” which she did instead of “Filli Ray.” Brid always enjoyed it. You started with a sort of yodeling cry, to the whole herd, then you called the cows one by one, and each verse you added a new one.

Brid sang, and no one looking at her could have realized that she was frantically wondering what else she could put into their unusually short show before her voice gave out. At “Old cow, old cow,” inspiration came. Brid bowed at the end of the song. Coins clattered into the hat.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, my brother Moril will sing four songs of Osfameron.”

Moril gulped and glared at Brid. He had never performed any of the old songs in public before. But Brid had gone and announced him, so he was forced to take the center of the cart, with his wet hands shaking on the cwidder. To make matters worse, he suddenly met Kialan's eye. Kialan was standing near the fountain, looking cool, attentive, and slightly critical. From where Moril stood, the hanged man on the gallows appeared to be dangling over Kialan's head. Moril took his eyes off both of them and began to play. He knew he was going to make wretched work of it.

For a short while he could attend to nothing but the queer fingering and the odd, old-fashioned rhythms. Then his tension abated a little, and he was surprised to discover that his performance was pleasing him. As Moril's voice was naturally high, he did not need to sound cracked and strained, the way Clennen did. And not being yet expert and not anyway liking the noise the old fingering made, he found he had been unconsciously modifying it, into a style which was not old, nor new, but different. Osfameron's jerky rhythms became smoother, and Moril felt that if he could have spared time to attend to them, he might almost have understood the words:

It sounded good to Moril. And it was his own doing, he was positive, and not the cwidder's. When he had finished, however, there was silence in the square. The crowd had never heard the old songs done that way and did not know what to think. Kialan made up their minds for them by clapping loudly. Other people clapped. Then came a burst of applause which made Moril feel ashamed of himself—he was only a learner, after all—and more coins went into the hat.

The applause seemed to worry Olob. From then on he became restive. He tossed his head, he stamped, he tried to go forward, and he threatened to back. Brid pulled him up, and he backed in earnest, throwing Moril into Dagner. Brid had to take the reins up again, which put her half out of action. Seeing this, Dagner pulled himself together and led into some songs with rousing choruses, hoping the crowd would join in. He had little luck. People were in the mood for listening. But they had come to the end of all they had practiced, so Dagner was forced to go on to “Jolly Holanders” and finish.

Olob was still behaving like a colt, so Moril got down and went to his head. The crowd shifted away from the cart. Moril heard Brid say to Dagner, “Shall I go shopping? I know what to get,” and the hat chinking.

“No, I'll go,” said Dagner. He still seemed nervous, although the show was over. He took the hat and climbed down from the cart. Almost at once, several men that Moril recognized as friends of Clennen's came up and crowded round Dagner.

“What's this, Dagner? What's this about Clennen?”

The upshot was that Dagner went off to have a drink with them, taking the hat. Moril did not see which inn they went to because he found himself being talked to by a kindly man just then. This man first gave Moril a pie, then told him—in a fatherly way—that he had sung the old songs all wrong, and things were going to the dogs if people could take those kind of liberties.

Moril took a leaf out of Dagner's book. “Yes, but I can't do it like my father did,” he said with his mouth full. He was extremely grateful for the pie, or he would have told the man his real opinion of the old songs.

When the man had gone, muttering that he didn't know what the young were coming to, Moril remembered that Brid would be a prey to murmuring gentlemen. He looked up at the cart, wondering what he would do if she was. There was—or had been—a murmuring gentleman. Brid was glaring at him like a tiger, and the gentleman was retreating, very red in the face. “I do hope Dagner remembers the shopping,” Brid said to Moril, pretending the gentleman had never existed.

So did Moril. They waited, and waited, Moril at Olob's restive head and Brid in the cart, for well over an hour. Moril saw Kialan at intervals, hanging about in the square, evidently waiting, too. But Kialan made no attempt to come near them. Moril rather irritably wondered why not.

Olob tossed his head furiously. Brid said, “There's Dagner!” Moril saw Dagner hurrying back across the square with the empty hat rolled up in one hand. “Where's the shopping?” Brid wondered. Dagner waved cheerfully and came hurrying on. He had almost reached the cart when two large men advanced, quietly and purposefully, on either side of Dagner. One took Dagner's shoulder in a large hand.

“What—?” said Dagner, trying to shake free.

“You're under arrest, in the Earl's name,” said the man. “Come on quietly and don't make any trouble now.”

For a moment Moril had another glimpse of Kialan, looking absolutely horrified, in the crowd beyond the fountain. The people near, seeing someone being arrested, drifted quickly away from around the cart. Kialan seemed to get lost in a moving group and was gone the next second. Moril stood by Olob's head in an empty space, quite irrationally angry with Kialan. Not that anyone could do anything if the Earl took it into his head to have Dagner arrested, but even Kialan would have been better than no one. He looked despairingly at Dagner. Dagner had only time for one hopeless look back before the two men led him away across the square toward the jail. The crowd hurried away from all three—as if Dagner had a disease, Moril thought angrily. He wished Dagner would walk upright, instead of going bent and guilty-looking.

“I've never been so furious in my life!” said Brid. “Never! Of all the unjust—” She stopped, and looked uneasily round the empty space by the fountain, realizing she was on the way to getting herself arrested, too.

The two men vanished with Dagner inside the frowning jail. Moril had never felt more lonely. “I've just realized,” he said. “We didn't have a license to sing, did we?”

“We're entitled to operate on Father's for six months,” said Brid. “Father told me, and I
know
that's the law. I hope Dagner remembers. They can't
do
this! They're just trying—”

A man approached across the empty space, rather grudgingly, carrying what looked like a sack of oats. He stopped some way off the cart. “Your brother ordered this,” he said. “Do I take it away again?”

“You'll do no such thing!” Brid said haughtily. “It's paid for—that I do know. Put it in the cart.”

“Please yourself,” said the man unpleasantly. He dumped the sack on the flagstones and went away.

That was nasty, somehow. Moril saw that everyone was going to avoid them now. Angrily he supposed that Kialan had deserted them in the same way. He left Olob, who seemed to be quietening down, and dragged the sack over to the cart. “What shall we
do
, Brid?”

“Do?” said Brid, more furious than ever. “I'll tell you what to do. I'll have to stay here, in case Dagner ordered anything else, but you're to go over to the jail at
once
and ask to see Dagner. Go on. Tell them he's related to the Earl. Say Mother's Tholian's niece. Make a fuss. Ask them to send for Ganner. Make it quite clear that we're well connected. And when you see Dagner, tell him to do the same. Go on. They're just trying to frighten us into paying for another license, I know they are!”

Obediently Moril scurried off across the square. He was so shaken that he could think of nothing else to do, even though he knew in his heart that it was no good. In the South, when they arrested people, even for small offenses, it took more than a boy talking about noble relatives to get them out of prison. At the least it took a lot of money. And as they had not got a lot of money, the doors of the jail could well have closed on Dagner for good. Moril wished Ganner had found them, after all. By the time he reached the cold archway into the jail, he was heartily wishing they had never left Markind.

“Please,” he said to the man on duty there, “I want to see my brother.”

The man looked down at him, not unkindly. “Clennen the Singer's son?” Moril nodded. “And how old are you, lad?” asked the man.

“Eleven,” said Moril.

“Eleven, are you?” said the man. “They don't hang your kind till they're fifteen, you know, so you're lucky.” Moril thought this was meant to be a joke and smiled politely. “Look, lad,” said the man. “Take some good advice. Get in that cart of yours and drive off. You won't do any good here.”

Moril looked up at him in helpless irritation. “But—”

“Be off!” said the man, urgently. Footsteps were coming through the dark passage behind him. Moril could see the man meant kindly, but he did not move. He waited to see if the person coming would let him see Dagner.

The man who came was one of the two who had arrested Dagner. He glanced at Moril, without seeming very interested. Then he looked again—sharply. “That's another of them, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man at the gate, and he gave Moril a reproachful look, as much as to say, “Now see what you've done.”

“Come with me, lad,” said the other man. Moril, with his stomach hopping as it had never done before, even before this last show, followed him into the dark passageway, through a dismal courtyard and up some stone stairs. They went into a blank room with yellow walls and a bench by one of the walls, where the man told him to sit and wait. Then he went out and locked the door.

Moril sat on the bench for some time, feeling terrible. He wondered if he was arrested, too. It looked like it. He tried to see out of the window, but it was high up and barred. He dragged the bench over to it, but he still could not see much except gray walls. There was no hope of wriggling out between the bars. He dragged the bench back to its original position and sat on it again.