Cart and Cwidder Read online

  Hearing Kialan talking behind him, Moril thought that the North had one new advantage. Kialan would leave them there.

  “I’ve said that six times now,” Kialan said. “Do you spend all your time a thousand miles away?”

  Moril was annoyed. His family could accuse him of dreaminess if they wanted, but Kialan was a stranger. “You’ve no right to say that,” he said.

  It was possible Kialan did not realize how annoyed Moril was. “You see,” Brid explained to him later, a good long way behind the cart, “even when you’re angry, you always look so sleepy and—and milky, that he probably didn’t even notice you were attending. Not,” she added tartly, “that he’d have noticed anybody’s feelings but his own, mind you.”

  What Kialan had replied was: “Oh, good grief! I know you’re the fool of the family by now, but you don’t have to be rude as well as stupid!”

  “And the same to you!” Moril retorted, and took Kialan completely by surprise by butting him in the stomach. Kialan fell backward heavily—and painfully, Moril hoped—onto the wine jar. Whereupon Moril found the prudent thing to do was to hop out of the cart double quick and scud off down the road behind it. And for the rest of the day he was forced to walk well in the rear for fear of Kialan’s vengeance.

  But it was Clennen who took the vengeance. When they camped for the night, he beckoned both Kialan and Moril up to him. “Are you two going to make up and apologize?” he inquired. Moril looked warily at Kialan, and Kialan looked most unlovingly back. Neither answered. “Very well then,” said Clennen, and banged their heads together. Nothing seems harder than another person’s head. Moril could only hope that Kialan had seen as many stars as he had. He was rather surprised that Kialan did not say anything to Clennen. “Next time, I’ll do it harder,” Clennen promised. Then, as if nothing had happened, he went on to give Moril a lesson. And to Moril’s annoyance, Kialan stood by and listened just as usual.

  The following day they reached a market town called Crady, and it came on to rain—big warm drops that seemed like part of the air and very little to do with the moist white sky. The raindrops made dark brown circles in the dust of the road and raised a delicious smell of wet earth. But it meant everyone crowding into the cart to change in great discomfort. Moril was not surprised that Kialan got out.

  “I’m not really interested in your show,” he said to Clennen. “I’ll meet you on the other side of Crady, shall I?”

  “If you like, lad,” Clennen said cheerfully. Brid and Moril exchanged seething glances in the hot dim space under the cover and wondered why Clennen did not box Kialan’s ears for him. But the only thing which seemed to perturb Clennen was the rain. “We shall have no audience in the open,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. We’ll go in with the cover up.”

  It was lucky that they did. By the time they came to the marketplace, the rain was coming in white rods and bouncing up off the flagstones. Olob was wearing his most long-suffering expression, and there was not a soul in sight. But Clennen had friends in Crady, just as he had everywhere else. Half an hour later they were installed under the great beams of a warehouse on the corner of the marketplace, and a crowd, damp but interested, was gathering into it.

  They gave an indoor kind of show. After Clennen had told everyone about Hadd and Henda, the Waywold money, the price on the Porter’s head, and the cost of corn in Derent, and the usual messages had been handed out, they sang songs with a chorus that the audience could join in. Dagner did his part early. Then, when good humor and attention were at their peak, Clennen told one of the old tales. This pleased Moril highly. He always felt rather too hot indoors, and playing the cwidder made him hotter still. But during a tale he was only needed once or twice. All the stories had places where there was a song. For the rest of the time Moril could sit on the dusty chaff of the floor with his arms wrapped round his knees and drink the story in.

  Clennen chose to tell a branch of the story of the Adon. It had to be only a branch because, as Clennen was fond of saying, stories clustered round the Adon and Osfameron like bees swarming. The songs which came in where the story needed them were the Adon’s own, or Osfameron’s. Moril always thought the old songs sounded rather better set in their proper stories, though he still wished the silly fellows had tried to sing more naturally. But their doings made splendid tales. Moril listened avidly to how Lagan wounded the Adon and the wound would not heal until Manaliabrid came out of the East to him. Then came the story of the love of both Lagan and the Adon for Manaliabrid, and how the Adon fled with her to the South. Lagan followed, but Osfameron helped them by singing a certain song in the passes of the mountains, so that the mountains walked and blocked the way through. And Lagan was forced to turn back.

  Here Clennen lowered his rich voice to say: “I shall not sing you the song Osfameron sang then, for fear of moving the mountains again. But it is true that since that day the only pass to the North is Flennpass.”

  The Adon for a time roamed the South with Manaliabrid, singing for a living, until Lagan found where they were. Then he stole away Kastri, the Adon’s son by his first wife, and the Adon followed. But Lagan was something of a magician. He made Kastri invisible and took on the shape of Kastri himself. And when the Adon came up to him, unsuspecting, Lagan stabbed him through the heart.

  Here came Manaliabrid’s lament, which Moril was supposed to sing. He took up his cwidder for it, glancing as he did so into the warm blue-gray depths of the barn at the attentive audience. To his surprise, Kialan was there. He was standing at the back, very wet and draggled, listening with as much interest as anyone there. Moril supposed he had decided he preferred a performance to a soaking after all. And he was annoyed with Kialan for coming. His head was full of grand things, journeys, flights, fighting, and the magic North of once-upon-a-time. Kialan was the everyday world with a vengeance. Moril felt as if he had a foot on two different worlds, which were spinning apart from one another. It was not a pleasant feeling. He took his eyes off Kialan and concentrated on his cwidder.

  Then Clennen went on to how Manaliabrid asked Osfameron for help. Osfameron sang, and made Kastri visible. Then he took up his cwidder and journeyed by a way that only he knew, to the borders of the Dark Land. There he played such music that all the dead crowded in multitudes to hear him. Once they were gathered, Osfameron sang and called the soul of the Adon to him. And—this part always gave Moril a delicious shiver—Clennen once more lowered his voice to say: “I shall not sing you the song Osfameron sang then, for fear of calling the dead again.”

  Osfameron led the Adon’s soul back and restored it to his body. The Adon arose, defeated Lagan, and reigned as the last King of Dalemark. He was the last king because Manaliabrid’s son, who was to have been king after him, chose instead to go back to his mother’s country. “And since that time,” said Clennen, “there have been no kings in Dalemark. Nor will there be, until the sons of Manaliabrid return.”

  Moril gave an entranced sigh. He had hardly the heart, after such a story, to join in “Jolly Holanders,” and he only managed to sing with an effort. After it he crept away to the other end of the barn to avoid the usual crowd, and sat under the cart, brooding, while Clennen greeted his friends and Dagner failed to explain how he made up songs. If only such things happened nowadays! Moril thought. It seemed such a waste to be descended from the singer Osfameron, who knew the Adon and could call up the dead, and to live such a dull life. The world had gone so ordinary. Compare the Adon, who lived such a splendid life, with the present-day Earl of Hannart, who could think of nothing better to do than to stir up a rebellion, so that he dared not show his face in the South. Or you only had to think of the difference between that Osfameron, Moril brooded, and this one, Osfameron Tanamoril, to see how very plain and ordinary people had become lately. If only—

  Here the plain and ordinary life interrupted in the person of Lenina, carrying the chinking hat to the cart. She was followed by the usual kind of murmuring gentleman. “And it must
be sixteen years now—” this gentleman was murmuring.

  “Seventeen,” Lenina said briskly. “Moril, come out of that dream and count this money.”

  Moril unwillingly scrambled out from under the cart. As he did so, Clennen turned his head, and his voice boomed across the barn. “No, I didn’t care for him at all, last time I was in Neathdale.” With his voice came a look that caused the murmuring gentleman to wither away into the crowd. Moril watched him wither, a little puzzled. He seemed to be the twin of the murmuring gentleman in Derent.

  The takings were not bad, which pleased Lenina. And Clennen was in good humor because an old friend of his had made him a present of a beefsteak. It was beautifully red and tender and wrapped in leaves to keep it fresh. Clennen stowed it carefully in a locker. He talked jovially of supper as they drove through Crady in the slackening drizzle. Kialan, to Brid’s contempt, was waiting for them under a tree just beyond the town.

  “Huh!” said Brid. “Not interested in our shows, isn’t Mr. High-and-Mighty! Did you see him, Moril? Drinking in every word!”

  “Yes,” said Moril.

  While the red steak fizzled over the fire, Brid said mock-innocently to Kialan: “Father told one of the Adon stories at the show. Do you know them at all?”

  “Yes. And a dead bore they are, too,” said Kialan. “All that magic!”

  “You would say that!” said Moril. “I saw—”

  “Silence!” said Clennen. “You’re interrupting the steak. Not another word until it’s ready to eat.”

  The steak was certainly worthy of respect. Even Kialan had nothing to say against it. They went on again after supper. In his carefree way, Clennen seemed to be quite as anxious as Moril to see the North again. He refused to let Olob choose them a meadow until the sun was nearly down and the sky ahead and to the left was a mass of lilac clouds barred with red.

  “Imagine that over the peaks of the North Dales,” he said. “But even in the South, Mark Wood is fine at this time of year. There’s nothing to beat a tall beech in spring. And do you know the Marsh at all, Kialan?”

  “A little,” said Kialan.

  “If we’d time, I’d take you through it just for the flowers,” said Clennen. “But it’s too far east, more’s the pity. The ducks there make your mouth water.”

  “There are rabbits in the South Dales,” Dagner suggested.

  “So there are,” said Clennen. “Look the snares out tomorrow.”

  By the end of the following day the landscape had begun to change. The rolling gray-green slopes gave way to higher, greener hills, and there were more trees. It was like a foretaste of the North. Moril began to feel pleasantly excited, although he knew that they were only entering the South Dales. Tholian, Earl of the South Dales, was reputed to be a tyrant fiercer even than Henda. It was still a long way to the North. Beyond these green hills lay the Uplands and Mark Wood, before they came to Flennpass and the North at last.

  Nevertheless, budding apple trees made a pleasant change from rows of vines. The nights were slightly cooler, and rabbits were plentiful. Every night Dagner went off to set snares round about the camp, and to Moril’s surprise, Kialan made his first helpful gesture and went with Dagner.

  “It’s only because he likes killing things,” Brid said. “He’s that type.”

  Whatever the reason, Kialan was surprisingly good at catching and skinning rabbits, and Lenina was good at rabbit stew. Since they had wine as well, they fed very well for the next few days. Moril was almost grateful to Kialan. But Brid was not in the least grateful because every time they stopped in a town or village to give a show, Kialan would put on his act of not being interested and announce that he would meet them outside the town. And every time, unfailingly, they would see him among the audience, as interested as anyone there.

  “Two-faced hypocrite!” Brid said indignantly. “He’s just trying to make us feel small.”

  “That wouldn’t do you any harm,” Lenina said, in her dry way. Brid was more indignant than ever. It was becoming clear that Lenina rather approved of Kialan. Not that she said anything. It was more that she did not say any of the things she might have done. And when Kialan tore his good coat in the wood, Lenina mended it for him with careful neat stitches.

  Kialan seemed far more surprised than grateful when Lenina handed him the mended coat. “Oh—thanks,” he said. “You shouldn’t have bothered.” His face was red, and he seemed actually a little scornful of Lenina for doing it.

  “Nothing to what I am!” said Brid. “He can go in rags for all I care.”

  The day after this they entered the part of the South Dales which was the lordship of Markind. They never gave shows in Markind. Brid’s dislike of Kialan came to a head while Olob was patiently dragging the cart up and down the steep little hills of this lordship. The reason was that Clennen, who never disdained an audience, began to explain to Kialan exactly why he always hurried through Markind without giving a performance.

  “I took Lenina from here, you see,” he said. “From the very middle of Markind, out of the Lord’s own hall. Didn’t I, Lenina?”

  “You did,” said Lenina. She always looked very noncommittal whenever Clennen told this story.

  “She was betrothed to the Lord’s son. What was his name? Pennan—that was it. And a wet young idiot he was, too,” Clennen said reminiscently. “I was asked in to sing at the betrothal—I had quite a name, even in those days, and I was a good deal in demand for occasions like that, let me tell you. Well, no sooner did I come into the hall and set eyes on Lenina than I knew she was the woman for me. Wasted on that idiot Fenner. That was his name, wasn’t it, Lenina?”

  “He was called Ganner,” said Lenina.

  “Oh, yes,” said Clennen. “I remember he reminded me of a goose somehow. It must have been the name. I’d thought it was his scraggy neck or those button eyes of his. Anyway, I thought I’d rely on my looks being better than his and deal with Master Gosler later. For the first thing, I concentrated on Lenina. I sang—I’ve never sung better, before or since—and Lenina here couldn’t take her eyes off me. Well, I don’t blame her, because I don’t mind admitting that I was a fine-looking man in those days, and gifted, too—which Flapper wasn’t. So I asked Lenina in a song whether she’d marry me instead of this Honker fellow, and when I came up to get my reward for my singing, she said yes. So then I dealt with him. I turned to him. ‘Lording,’ I said, most respectful, ‘Lording, what gift will you give me?’ And he said ‘Anything you want. You’re a great singer’—which was the only sensible thing he said that evening. So I said, ‘I’ll take what you have in your right hand.’ He was holding Lenina’s hand, you see. I still laugh when I think of the look on his face.”

  While the story went on—and it made a long one, for Clennen went over it several times, embroidering the details—Brid and Moril walked by the roadside out of earshot, watching the fed-up look settle on Kialan’s face. They had both heard the story more times than they could remember.

  “I suppose the thing about being a singer is that you like telling the same story a hundred times,” Brid said rather acidly. “But you’d think Father would remember Ganner’s name by this time.”

  “That’s all part of it,” said Moril. “I always wonder,” he added dreamily, “what would happen if we met Ganner while we were going through Markind. Would he arrest Father?”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” said Brid. “I don’t suppose it’s true, anyway. And even if it did happen, Ganner must have grown into a big fat lord by now and forgotten Mother ever existed.”

  Since this was Brid’s true opinion of the matter, it was a little unreasonable of her to be so angry when she found Kialan shared it. But one is seldom reasonable when one dislikes someone. They stopped for lunch, and Clennen, thoroughly in his stride, went on embroidering the story.

  “Lenina’s a real lady,” he said, leaning comfortably against the pink and scarlet wheel of the cart. “She’s Tholian’s niece, you know. But he cast he
r off for running away with me. And it was all my fault for playing that trick on Gander. ‘Lording,’ I said to him, ‘give me what you have in your right hand.’ Oh, I shall never forget his face! Never!” And he burst out laughing.

  Kialan had heard this at least three times by then. Moril had rarely seen him look so fed up. While Clennen was laughing, Kialan got up quickly to avoid hearing any more, and stumped off without looking where he was going. He nearly fell over Moril and Brid and became more fed up than ever.

  “Blinking bore your father is!” he said. “I’d be quite sorry for Ganner if I thought there was a word of truth in it!”

  “How dare you!” said Brid. “How dare you say that! I’ve a good mind to punch your nose in!”

  “I don’t fight with girls,” Kialan said loftily. “All I meant was I’m sick of hearing about Ganner. If your father remembers it that well, why on earth can’t he get the poor fellow’s name right?”

  “It’s part of the story!” screamed Brid, and threw herself at Kialan.

  Kialan, for a second or so, tried to keep up his claim not to fight girls, with the result that Brid punched his nose twice and then boxed his ears in perfect freedom. “You spiteful cat!” said Kialan, and grabbed both her wrists. It was in self-defense. On the other hand, he squeezed her wrists so painfully that he hurt Brid rather more than if he had hit her. She lashed out at his legs with her bare feet, but finding that made no impression on Kialan, she sank her teeth into the hand round her wrists. At this, Kialan lost his temper completely and punched Brid with his free hand.