Cart and Cwidder (15 page)

“What? Father?” Moril said, puzzled.

“Yes. Your father,” said Kialan. “You don't mean to tell me you didn't know he was the Porter?”

“He was
not
!” Brid said angrily. “The Porter's a spy with a price on his head.”

“Yes, of course, in the South,” said Kialan. “They were mad to catch him here, because he was the main agent for the North. You must have known! He brought all the important messages and most of the refugees. They must have come in this cart. And he organized people here against the earls—I know that, because Konian told me. Konian sent a message to your father for help, during the trial, but it didn't get to him quick enough.”

There was a somber pause. Olob clopped patiently upward, zigzagging with the road across the steep hillside, while Brid and Moril tried to take in what Kialan had said. “I thought,” Moril said, “that your father had quarreled with ours?”

“So did I,” said Kialan. “But I think that was a pretense. I found out last year—I wish people told me things!—because my father vanished and I needed him for something. And Konian told me to shut up, because he'd gone to meet Clennen the Singer like he always did, but no one was supposed to know. I think they arranged what to do next then.”

“I refuse to believe that my father was a common spy!” said Brid. “Why didn't he
tell
me? He ought to have told me! It's so sneaky, somehow!”

“Don't
shout
!” Moril said, with an anxious look round at Tholian's mansion, which had come into view again, lower down and farther off.

Kialan laughed outright. “But he wasn't sneaky! That was the splendid thing about him! I couldn't believe he really was the Porter at first. I saw this fat man with a great big voice, who spent all his time trying to impress people, and I thought there'd been an awful mistake. Then I saw him go into towns, in this shocking bright cart, in a scarlet suit just to make sure people didn't miss him, and sing his head off, and call out at the top of his voice that the price on the Porter's head was two thousand in gold. It was incredible! Then he and your mother would call out messages and hand out notes, right in front of everyone, and I knew half of them were illegal. But no one would believe it, because it was all done so openly. Nobody thought he was anything more than a very good singer. And I really think Clennen thought that was the best joke about it.”

Moril blinked a little at this view of his father. But Kialan had hit Clennen off in a way. Clennen
had
treated their shows as a rather serious joke. If he was really the Porter all along, then that would be why. “I suppose that's where Dagner went wrong,” he said sadly. “Trying to be secret.”

“Dagner was awfully stupid to think he could carry on where Father left off, anyway,” said Brid.

“He didn't,” said Kialan. “Dagner wasn't trying to do that for a moment. But Clennen asked him to finish off the important things if he could. Then he was to go North and stay there. And the message to Neathdale was important because it was about a spy who'd got in among them there.”

Moril sighed. He did not say that Dagner thought he had given the message to that very spy. There seemed no point. He said, “Dagner said I was to tell you Henda has asked for a ransom for you. And Tholian is gathering an army.”

“Oh damn!” Kialan said wearily. “Then I'll
have
to get through somehow, won't I? You saw Dagner? Tell me.”

Moril told Kialan all that happened to him in the jail. He could not help speaking low and looking nervously at Tholian's mansion each time it came into view. He was relieved when they crossed the brow of the first hill and could not see it anymore.

“You were lucky, Moril,” said Brid. “If you'd known all the things Kialan's just told us, we might be in jail at this moment.” Moril nodded soberly. He certainly could not have acted the surprise he felt when they told him what Dagner had been arrested for. But he knew it had been the merest good luck that he had not happened to mention Kialan.

“I couldn't think,” said Kialan, “why Clennen made such a point of not telling you two anything. He wouldn't let me say who I was, and neither would Dagner. But I think it saved our skins. I wish it could have saved Dagner's.”

“You don't think Dagner was really arrested because of you?” Moril asked.

“I did at first,” said Kialan. “I thought we'd all had it, all the time I was sitting in the hedge. I could hardly believe it when I saw the cart coming. No. I think Dagner's trouble is separate, and thanks to you, Moril, they think he just did a bit of freedom fighting on the side. But I hope it doesn't get round to the Earl. Tholian will put two and two together all right.”

“Why did Tholian kill Father?” said Moril.

“He was looking for me,” said Kialan, “and he didn't want anyone to know, because I'm supposed to be Hadd's prisoner—or Henda's, only they were still arguing about that when I escaped. Dagner thought that maybe the Neathdale spy—or perhaps it was the fellow
they hanged—might have given Tholian a hint about your father. But he couldn't have known much, or we'd all have been arrested. Tholian's the sort who says dead men tell no tales, so he kills Clennen and then beats the woods for me.”

“If only we'd known!” said Brid. “Where were you all that time?”

“Up a tree,” said Kialan, “rabbits and all. They were crashing about searching all the time you were playing that cwidder, Moril, and it worried them like anything. They kept saying that blessed boy and his music made their heads go round. Tholian suggested going back and killing you, too, but none of them could quite be bothered to. And when you left off, they'd had enough and they went.”

“Could you pass it me?” said Moril. Kialan obligingly crawled back to the instrument rack and reached the big cwidder over to the driving seat. Moril took it and clutched it to him. It felt fat and hard and comforting. Apart from the fact that it seemed to have saved both his life and Kialan's, it was in its rather more awesome way as good as Olob's nose. He felt he needed it, somehow, after the events of today.

“Play something,” suggested Kialan.

“No, don't,” said Brid. “Not until we've decided what to do. We're slap bang in the middle of Tholian's earldom, and we've obviously got to get North, and everyone knows this cart. And we've no money. I daresay Father meant to go this way because it would have looked suspicious if he didn't, but I vote we turn east and try to get North through the Marshes.”

Kialan fetched the map out and scowled at its sketchiness. “I suppose we could try the sea,” said Moril. “We might find a boat that wants a singer.”

Kialan glared at the map. “We'd take ages, either way. And we can't be more than four days off Flennpass here. Don't either of you understand? Tholian's getting an army together to invade the North, and Henda's sent to my father to say he'll ransom me, so my father thinks I'm a prisoner and daren't do a thing! And I suppose,” he added, “Henda's message is the first news my father gets that we're not both drowned. If you don't mind, I'd like to get North as quickly as I can—but it's your cart, of course.”

Moril glanced at Kialan and decided that his hectoring tone had much to do with the tears in his eyes. Brid did not notice. “Oh,
is
it our cart?” she said. The result was that Kialan managed to laugh, rather sheepishly.

“We'll go straight on,” Moril said, suddenly deciding. “We'll do it Father's way and be quite open about it. It worked for him, and it worked for me in the jail.”

Brid and Kialan seemed to be relieved that Moril had taken the lead. But as Olob dragged the cart into the level ground of the first Upland, they began to make nervous objections.

“Innocent little children is all very well,” said Brid. “What about when the Earl hears of Dagner doing the Porter's business?”

Moril looked round on fields with green corn showing and sheep grazing. The hills of the North towered against the sky, so high and blue-gray with distance that, on first glance, Moril took them for a bank of cloud.

“A certain pink cart will be looked for,” said Kialan. “Could you paint it?”

“Dark green would be best,” said Brid. “But we've no money.”

A village came in sight, looking very small against the hills of the North. Moril roused himself before Kialan and Brid could have any wilder ideas. “Tholian knows me,” he said. “He recognized me up a ladder in Markind. That's the trouble with having red hair.”

“Wear a hat,” said Kialan.

Moril turned round to quell Kialan. “What about this village?” As he said it, he realized that Kialan was tired out. His face was as white as such a brown complexion could be, and there were dark rings under his eyes. All the watching at night and the suspense in Neathdale had been rather too much for him. “Get down in the cart,” Moril said, taking pity on him. “I'll put the cover half-up.”

Kialan lay thankfully down beside the wine jar, and Moril pulled the canvas forward until it hid him. They drove straight through the village, Brid holding the reins and Moril sitting beside her, gently strumming the cwidder. On the heights above the village there was an odd little gray tower, belonging to the Lord of the Uplands. Brid looked at it and quivered with terror, knowing as she did that the Earl of Hannart's son was hidden in the cart. But Moril knew it was no different from any other risk they had run without knowing. The tower and the mountains made him think of his imaginary Hannart. He felt soothed and peaceful.

Several people looked up, or out at doors, hearing the cart and the cwidder. When they saw what it was, they smiled and waved. Brid did her best to smile and nod back. Then a woman came out of a house and walked beside them.

“Have you been through Neathdale today?”

“Yes,” said Moril.

“They tell me there was to have been a man hanged.”

“Yes,” said Moril. “He was. We saw him.”

“I knew it!” the woman said, smiling. “He was bound to come to it!” She seemed so gleeful that Moril thought she must have hated the hanged man, until he noticed the tears in her eyes. Then he saw she was just trying to hide her feelings. He wanted to say something kind to her, but she left the cart and went back into her house. Moril wondered whether Clennen had known her, and what her connection was with the hanged man.

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