The Crown of Dalemark (23 page)

“And I'm for Brid Clennensdaughter,” Moril called from the cart.

The porter smiled at them. Maewen had to look away from his teeth. “I'm sorry for it, but you're all too early. Sending Day doesn't start till midday. Come back then, and I'll let you in with pleasure. You're not the only ones I've had to turn away. You'll find the town's full of you. But,” he said to Hestefan, “you can come half an hour ahead if you want to set up to sing. The other Singer will be coming back then.”

Hestefan frowned to hear of another Singer to compete with and began to turn the cart round. “Thank you. I shall only perform in the town then. But my apprentice will be back to see his sister.”

Nobody pointed out that the riders from Hannart had been let in at once. Nobody even remarked that since they had been let in, this meant they were not just a chance band of hearthmen but members of the Earl's household on important business. Yet they all knew it, even Maewen. They rode back the way they had come very soberly.

The other Singer was now camped just outside the town. They saw him as soon as they came round the trees, a neat black, white, and gold cart at the edge of the wide green, surrounded by sacks and bundles of provisions. Someone—presumably the Singer—was sorting through the bundles in a rather hopeless way.

Moril, at the sight, tugged excitedly at Hestefan's arm. Hestefan whipped up the mule. The green cart, in a most uncharacteristic way, went rollicking and bumping across the turf toward the black and white one. Moril stood up on the seat, waving and shrieking, “Dagner!
Dagner
!”

The Singer, a slightly built young man with reddish hair, who looked very little older than Mitt, had just picked up one of the sacks. He turned round at the noise and let out a bellow of his own. “
Hestefan!
MORIL!” He dropped the sack and came racing over to hang on to the step of the green cart, laughing as if this was the most wonderful meeting in the world. The three of them fell into instant eager talk.

As Maewen came up with Navis and Mitt, she thought she had never seen Hestefan look so animated. They hung about a short distance away, none of them sure how private the Singers wanted to be, and admired the new Singer's turnout. The horse, which was enjoying a nosebag, was as black and glossy as the black paint on the cart, and its harness was white. The austere colors served to show up the fact that instead of a name painted on the cart, there was a large and complicated coat of arms.

Moril turned and shouted to them, “It's my brother! Isn't it wonderful! Dastgandlen Handagner!”

“Oh, I've heard of him,” Mitt said, decidedly impressed. “Aberath folk said he was the best.”

“Let us be introduced,” Navis said.

But before they had come within talking distance, Moril had said something to Dagner which seemed to alarm him acutely. Dagner backed away from the green cart, asking anxious questions. Next moment he was running for his cart and hurling the sacks and bundles in anyhow, latching the tailgate, and running again to take the nose bag off the horse. The horse's head came up. It looked as surprised as everyone else. “Sorry, Stiles,” Dagner called out. “Later.” With that he was in the driving seat and untying the reins, and the cart was in motion. All in seconds.

“But what about
Brid
?” Moril yelled.

“You're here now. You can give her my love!” Dagner shouted back. “Get
up
, Stiles. I want your best pace.” The horse broke into a trot. The black and white cart went in a swift near circle past Navis, Mitt, and Maewen. Dagner leaned out to call as he passed, “I'd have followed you, too, lady, if this hadn't happened!”

Maewen realized he was talking to her and managed to shoot a smile in reply. Then the horse was going faster still. The black and white cart went careering away into the distance, raising a cloud of moisture and grass seeds behind its flying wheels.

“What got into him?” Mitt asked.

“I told him Fenna was hurt,” Moril said. “He's in love with her. He's going straight to Adenmouth by the green road above Hannart.” It was clear Moril was very pleased by his brother's devotion.

“And why does he carry a coat of arms?” asked Navis. “It looked like the arms of the South Dales to me.”

Moril grimaced. This was something which did not seem to please him so much. “It is,” he said. “Dagner's Earl of the South Dales. Since last year, when our cousin got killed. He told me Earl Keril made him put the arms on his cart, but I know Dagner only agreed because it takes up less space than his names do.” He looked fondly after the galloping cart. “Dagner's only proud of being a Singer,” he said.

Navis had one eyebrow right, right up. “Is Tholian dead then?”

“Yes,” said Moril.

“Well, well,” said Navis. “One hesitates to say good riddance, since he was obviously a near relation of yours, but—”

“We have to sing in the market square,” Hestefan interrupted. He was back to his schoolmaster manner.

“Well, well,” Navis said again as they followed the green cart back into the town. “Tholian dead! If I had to choose between Tholian and Keril, I might, even at this moment, choose Tholian.”

“Never met him,” said Mitt.

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” said Navis. He did not say anything else until they were in the confusion of the market again. Then he said, “Mitt, how about a decent breakfast at the inn?”

“That,” said Mitt, “is the best thing I heard today.”

The two of them threaded their horses between the stalls toward the large inn at one side of the square. Maewen had no money. She was watching them rather wistfully when Navis turned round and called, “You, too, lady. This is my treat.”

Maewen followed gratefully. They clopped under a huge archway into a stable yard, where a boy with a raw face and yellow hair spit out the straw he was chewing and came to listen to Navis's instructions. He wanted the horses to have a good breakfast, too. Maewen patted her horse and let the boy take it away with the other two. A nice horse, she thought, as she followed Navis into the inn, but one without any character at all. If it
was
Noreth's horse, the girl must have used it like a bicycle. What
had
become of her?

The front rooms of the inn were wide open to the square, where tables were set out under a sort of covered way supported by old gnarled pillars with creepers trained up them. A nice arrangement in summer, Maewen thought. It reminded her of the pillared balconies at the front of the Tannoreth Palace. But what did they do in winter? Kernsburgh was many degrees warmer than Gardale even now. People in these times seemed to be so hardy. They lived out of doors much more than Maewen was used to.

The only free table they could find was a long way from the end of the square where Hestefan had stopped his cart. Maewen could hear his voice faintly, behind all the rest of the din, calling to people to come and listen, but any view was blocked off by a gnarled pillar and a big stall selling iron pans. It was a slight disappointment. Maewen had never yet heard the Singers perform. Still, as she agreed with Mitt, it was good to be sitting in a proper chair listening to Navis ordering food from a cheerful, hurried man in a dirty apron.

“And beer for three,” Navis finished.

Help! thought Maewen. Coffee came from abroad, of course, and it was not much drunk until a hundred years later than this. She would have preferred water—except from the way this town
smelled
she was sure the water was not fit to drink. Oh well. Beer couldn't be that bad, or people wouldn't drink it. Hestefan and Moril were singing now. Maewen leaned back, trying to pick out the sound from behind the shouts, the talk, the yelling of animals, and the bonging of the pans in the ironware stall. It was not a tune she knew.

The food came promptly on enormous wooden platters, sizzling hot: bacon, kidneys, eggs, mushrooms, and hot bread to go with it, with butter and honey for the bread. With this arrived three pewter tankards of sour-smelling yellow stuff. Maewen tried it. Yuk. But she was very hungry, and all that food needed something to wash it down. She kept drinking, in valiant sips.

Mitt could no longer contain his anxiety. “They let Hannart in early,” he said to Navis. “I don't like that. What do we do?”

“Play it as we see it,” Navis answered. “At least we're here.”

“And what's this Sending Day?” Mitt asked, wolfing down food he hardly noticed.

“As I gather, it's the day most pupils go home for the summer,” Navis said. “Not that anyone thought to inform me. I asked Noreth's aunt.”

“Then you can take her away,” Mitt said.

“So can Hannart,” Navis pointed out. He was, as usual, trying not to show his feelings, but Mitt could tell Navis was as strained and gloomy as he was himself.

There was applause from the distance. Hestefan began a new song. Maewen thought it was perfectly lovely, but it was low and sweet, and she kept losing it in the noise.

“Suppose,” said Mitt, “that Hannart has been and gone by the time they let us in?”

“There's a closing ceremony,” Navis replied. “Surely even Hannart can't remove a pupil before that. And of course neither can we.”

“First moment we can then,” Mitt said urgently.

“Whatever's possible,” Navis agreed.

They ate in worried silence after that. Hestefan seemed to be telling a story. There were bursts of laughter and clapping, but Hestefan's voice was almost inaudible. Maewen was straining to hear when Navis pulled himself together and turned to her politely.

“I fear we have been leaving you out of our private concerns, lady,” he said. “As you may have gathered, we became your followers not entirely out of personal conviction.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Mitt. “I'm convinced.” He turned to Maewen, waving a hunk of bread and honey in one bony hand. Here was something to take his mind off Hildy. “Tell us your beliefs, Noreth. Convince him.”

Help!
thought Maewen. She stared at the pots and pans swinging on the stall, hoping for inspiration. Mitt was leaning toward her eagerly as if he thought she really did have beliefs. Probably Noreth did have beliefs, but Maewen had no way of knowing what those were. She had simply been getting by on a messy muddle of beliefs from her own day, mixed up with what she knew had happened in the last two hundred years. Dalemark had changed, almost out of recognition, in that time, and not wholly for the better at that.

“It is possible she just follows the will of the One,” Navis remarked in his usual sarcastic way.

This bounced Maewen into speaking. She did not want to let Mitt down. “I believe there has to be change,” she said. A disgustingly safe thing to say. Something seemed to be wrong with her, adding to her difficulty. Her face buzzed, and the sounds from the market had gone quiet and distant. Moril was singing. She could just pick out his voice among the deep belling chords of his cwidder. She would have liked to think it was the cwidder doing this to her, but she was fairly sure it was the beer. And the way Gardale smelled like a filthy farmyard. Maewen swallowed. “There's a lot in Dalemark that hasn't come out yet,” she said. “Wonderful people, and talents and richness. Some of the reason it hasn't come out is that all the ordinary people are too poor for different reasons”—am I going to be sick?—“but the
main
reason is that everybody is too busy thinking of themselves as North and South. They need to be one country and—and be
proud
of it before—before they can show what's … really in them.” There. I believe that. Maewen pushed back her chair. She knew what was wrong with her now. A truly vicious stomachache. Nerves? Those mushrooms? She could not help it that Mitt's eager face was going puzzled and disappointed. “I'm sorry… I have to—Do you know where is the—”

Navis understood instantly. “It'll be round in the stable yard. First door. Women to the right.”

Maewen bolted that way. She raced under the arch. And—bless Navis!—there was the door. It was dark inside, with a sticky mud floor, but she was led to the right door by the smell. Yuk! She nearly
was
sick. Inside, it was clean enough in its primitive way, with whitewashed walls and a bundle of rags instead of paper, but the
smell
! Why hadn't things smelled anything like this bad up on the green roads? Did Wend really look after that kind of thing as well as the roads?

It was not a place to stay long in. Maewen finished as quickly as she could and unlatched the door to the dark muddy passage with relief. That's better. Now I can go back and talk sense to Mitt.

A hard arm grabbed her round the throat. A hand, with the faint glint of a knife accompanying it, rose and came down, stabbing.

“Help!”
Maewen screamed. The hard arm cut her scream off to a squawk. She struggled furiously. What an
awful
place to be killed in! I
will
not die here! She twisted sideways against the grip on her throat and kicked where she could feel legs behind her. The rest of her twisted and bucked mindlessly. It was horrible the way she could
feel
the man. Intimate. Beastly. It never occurred to her to use the knife and short sword she had just hitched aside to fasten her breeches. She kicked madly, trying to fall out of the man's grip into a sort of squat. That unbalanced him. The hand with the knife swept away sideways and banged on a wooden wall as he tried to stay upright. His arm loosed her throat enough for her to give a high, whistling scream.