She could hear Navis behind now, asking Wend how much further it was to Gardale, and Wend answering that it would take another day. Maewen fell in on the other side of Navis, and as she had hoped, the voice did not speak to her again.
The fog thickened. By nightfall, when it was blue-dim, they stopped in another of those lumpy places that might once have been a town. There was a well-made firepit where Moril built a cheerful coal fire. Maewen reminded Mitt of his idea for cooking pickled cherries. Mitt could not bring himself to be natural. Gruffly he borrowed skewers from the cart and kept his back turned while he stuck them with cherries, cheese and dried meat to roast. It was terrible. Mitt tried to be polite and found himself agreeing fawningly with Noreth that a lentil stew would help. He tried to correct that and went gruff again. He could not seem to get it right. Plainly by the firelight, he could see the hurt, puzzled look among Noreth’s freckles. He could feel her wondering what she had done to offend him, and of course there was no way he could tell her.
Never mind. I’ll be seeing Hildy again in Gardale, he thought. For some reason he knew that would make things better.
While the lentils plopped and bubbled and turned too thick, Maewen tried to put Mitt out of her mind by thinking what she should do in Gardale. Should she make a speech? She had told Navis that her army would arrive by itself, but that was over on the coast. They were now a long way inland, where people would not know about Noreth. The trouble was that she had no idea what to expect. She had been to Gardale in her own time. She and Aunt Liss had driven there on a sightseeing trip. But she had a feeling that this was only going to confuse her.
Around then Wend politely asked Moril’s permission and played the cwidder again. Lilting tunes from the old days rang in the crags. Everyone seemed to feel better. They ate caked lentils and Mitt’s sooty skewered things quite cheerfully, and when they had finished, Hestefan surprised them all by telling tales. Most of them were stories that were around in Maewen’s day too, but she had only read them in books. It was another thing again to hear Hestefan tell them, gravely and plainly, as if every strange occurrence were the exact truth. The stories were suddenly unknown and new. Maewen had known what was going to happen nearly every time, but it still surprised her.
This is what it means to be a good Singer, she thought, and he really is good!
“I thank you,” Navis said when Hestefan finished. “I have never heard those tales better told.”
Hestefan bowed as he sat. “And I thank you. Never have I told them so well for so little in return.”
Navis laughed and tossed Hestefan a silver piece. Hestefan took it with a bit of a twinkle. It looked as if they were actually beginning to like one another. Maewen caught a little smile on Wend’s face as he carefully put the waterproof case round the cwidder, and she wondered.
The fog was worse in the morning. Probably they were down into the clouds again. Certainly the green road sloped gently downhill as if it were leading them back to the valleys. Before long it was branching past waystone after waystone, and Maewen was glad to have Wend striding out in front to show the right way. And this day, for the first time, there were other people using the road. It made sense, as Navis remarked. Up to now they had been ahead of or behind all the folk who had gone somewhere else to celebrate Midsummer. Now they came up with all those people returning home and also the usual traffic of people going into Gardale.
They passed riders, groups of walkers, and families with carts all coming towards them. Hestefan called out cheerfully to each. But when they passed the first person going the other way, who was someone driving a flock of geese, he said ringingly, “Hestefan the Singer here! Watch for me in Gardale.”
Maewen tensed. Hestefan had to advertise, of course, but so did she. She wondered whether to call out in the same way, Noreth Onesdaughter here! and ask the gooseman – no, it was a woman all bundled up against the fog – ask the goosewoman, then, to join her at Kernsburgh. She dithered. She hated the idea, and besides, the woman might tell the Earl of Gardale. On the other hand, perhaps she ought. For once she would have welcomed that deep voice speaking to her out of the air to tell her what to do. But of course, there were too many people near.
Meanwhile, more and more white triangular geese kept appearing out of the fog. As Maewen, still dithering, opened her mouth to imitate Hestefan, Mitt’s horse demonstrated that it considered geese a lower life form. It began moving at them in pounces, with Mitt hauling on the reins and cursing it. After ten feet of rocking-horse-like progress, the Countess-horse won and plunged in among the geese. Mitt fell off into an outrage of honking, flapping and running. Geese ran in all directions, except for two, which ran for Mitt with spread wings and outstretched necks. The lady driving them shouted mightily – most of it very rude things about Mitt and the horse.
Navis was into the fray almost instantly, using his riding crop on everything. The lady shouted at Navis too. But the two geese fled, Moril caught the Countess-horse and Navis hauled Mitt up. Everyone else chased geese for a while. By the time the flock was assembled again, Maewen’s nerve was gone. Even if the goose-lady had not been so very angry, she thought, watching Navis and Hestefan being wonderfully polite to the woman, the proper time to declare Noreth as Queen was when she had reached Kernsburgh with the Adon’s gifts and had something to show those earls. The decision made her feel utterly relieved and completely feeble in about the same proportions.
“I think this is yours, madam,” Navis said, bowing and handing the goose-lady the stick she had dropped.
“Just keep that big looby off his back and out of my geese,” she answered.
“Certainly,” Navis agreed. “But I’m afraid that would mean buying him a real horse, and we neither of us have the funds just now.”
At this the woman hooted with laughter. Mitt struggled back into his saddle again feeling like an utter idiot.
After that he kept tight hold of the beast whenever another traveller loomed through the fog.
WHEN THEY CAMPED that night, Wend said that Gardale was only a mile or so away, below in a valley they could not see.
It was odd, Maewen thought, that it had taken all this time to get that near, even coming straight through the centre of the mountains. When she had driven here with Aunt Liss, it had only taken four hours, and that was with a detour on the way to look at Hannart. Her sense of distance was all confused.
Her sense of everything was all confused. She was dreading Gardale. Mitt was still being so distant and gruff that she knew she was not going to ask him to steal the Adon’s cup for her. And Moril was younger than she was, and she was not going to ask him either. She would have to do it herself. But she still felt hurt at the way Mitt was behaving. She wanted to apologise, although she had no idea what she had done to annoy him. Perhaps they should all just go away and not bother about the cup.
No. Out of this muddle of thoughts came one thing that was clear – probably. Maewen and Aunt Liss had done the usual tourist thing and seen round the college at Gardale, where the old Lawschool was. Part of the Lawschool was the Chapel of the One. There had been – would be – a cup on the altar there, with a notice saying that this was only a replica of the cup that had been stolen two hundred years before. So it looked as if she had stolen – would be going to have stolen – the darned thing. In a mad, circular way, that meant she had to go down into Gardale and steal it because she already had.
It came on to rain. Oh, I give up! she thought.
Moril and Hestefan had the best of it. They vanished into the cart. The others draped the oilskin covers off their baggage over three large rocks and crawled underneath, where they spent a hot and sticky night, steamily full of the plopping and thrumming of rain. It was so uncomfortable that everyone woke and crawled out again at dawn. The rain stopped and became thinning mist, almost mockingly.
Maewen was clammy all over, and itchy, and – well – plain dirty. She could smell herself. She wanted to clean her teeth. But nobody seemed t
o bother about tooth cleaning any more than they appeared to worry about baths. At that moment Maewen felt she would have given her left ear and probably several toes as well for a nice hot bath full of rose-scented bath oil. And there was not even a hairbrush in her baggage roll! While Navis was shaving and Hestefan was clawing the kinks out of his beard, Maewen did what she could by taking her hair down from the little helmet, shaking it out and scratching hard at her scalp. Her hair smelt awful, of horse mostly, but dirty human hair was part of the smell too.
“What wouldn’t I give for a bath!” she said as she crammed the helmet back on her head.
“Me too,” Mitt said, surprisingly, looking up from tightening the buckles on the Countess-horse. This was always a wary business, of circling and darting, in order not to get kicked or bitten, and he was glad to be distracted. “I never thought I’d live to hear myself say that,” he said. “But I got spoilt this last year in Aberath. Alk’s got the whole place mined through with lead pipes and a furnace down in the dungeons. Water comes out boiling.”
A chuckle rose up in Maewen’s throat. Things were all right again. Mitt was back in form. Now she could almost look forwards to Gardale.
Mitt kept talking about Alk as they wound their slow way down into the valley. It matched a tender place in his mind where that promise to Alk was. So he was not sure why he was suddenly so cheerful. Maybe it was that the fog had gone. You could see mountains navy blue against pink dawn, peak after peak, right away to far-off Mount Tanil, which had a quiet feather of smoke coming out of its pointed head. Near to, there was still no sign of a valley – only a chasm of dark blue emptiness with mist boiling up out of it as if there were a giant version of one of Alk’s Irons down there.
“I hear there’s this great huge steam organ they have in Hannart,” he remarked, as the roiling, rising mist put him in mind of it.
Maewen nodded. She had seen the carefully preserved remains of that organ on that trip with Aunt Liss.
Maybe, Mitt considered, it was the sight just now of Noreth with her hair down from her helmet in long, frizzy clouds. Like that, she was the young lady he had felt so respectful to in her aunt’s hall, so different and so far away from Mitt that it was silly to be awkward with her. Or maybe he was simply looking forward to seeing Hildy again.
The track that led down from the waystone was nothing like as grassy and well made as the green roads. Mostly it was rubble and raw earth and quite dangerously frayed at the edge of the great drop-off, where the mist heaved and rose. It led down in zigzags beside a furious stream of white water splayed over wet rocks, and at every hairpin bend, the cart threatened to come off and pitch into the depths. Hestefan led the mule. Everyone else took turns leaning on the outer side of the cart, boots braced in sliding gravel, either above white water or horrifying mist-filled steepness, helping to ease the cart round. When Maewen took her first turn, a nattering and honking above made her look up. There were white triangular splotches some bends overhead. The goosewoman seemed to have caught up.
The splotches and the noise came nearer every bend. “The geese get down here more easily,” Navis remarked to Mitt as they leant side by side against the gold letters. Mitt laughed, and hoped they would not have to meet the goose-lady again.
As they slowly descended the track, the white stream enlarged into a mountain river roaring on a bed of green rocks, under a cliff hung with holly trees and small perilous rowans. The mist continued boiling its way upwards as they went down. Somehow it had miraculously changed from mist to a proper cloud hovering against the upper crags. The sun caught it there and turned it to a cloud of gold film, with the green-black bones of the rock showing through. Everyone began to feel dry again at last.
About then Maewen caught sight of a woman standing on the other side of the loud green river. At least she thought she saw someone, between two of the rowan trees. But when she turned her head, there were only the two trees. She saw Mitt’s head jerk, as if he had seen someone there too. Then, as if he was struck by a sudden thought, Mitt turned his head back and up to look at the zigzags of the track above. Maewen looked too. There was nothing up there. No gaggle of geese, no woman driving them. She could not even hear the geese chatting any more.
They’re out of sight on a bend, she thought.
Mitt thought, Libby Beer! Now what’s she playing at?
Wend came hurrying down to the cart in a slide of small stones, unslinging the cwidder from his neck as he came. “Is it all right to give this back now?” he called to Maewen. “I’ll have to leave you for a while. I’ll wait for you by the waystone south of Gardale Valley.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Maewen said, rather taken aback. “What if we take all day, though?”
“I’ll wait,” Wend promised, handing the cwidder to Moril. Moril settled it on his knees, and quite a weight of responsibility with it, from the look of him. They went on down. The last Maewen saw of Wend, before a shoulder of the hill hid him, he was leaping in great, splashing strides across the river.
Going to see that lady, Maewen thought. She was there, then.
At the next bend of the path Wend vanished from her mind. The path came out above the great green wedge shape of the Gardale Valley, with Gardale Town nestled into the pointed end just below them, seemingly at their toes, a mass of smoking chimney stacks. Maewen was astonished. She had known the place was bound to be smaller, but not this small! It was more like a large village than a town.
Two more turns of the road brought them into green meadows outside the town, and Maewen still marvelled. She knew it was absurd, but she had been expecting the high blocks of buildings and the tall shops she had seen on her visit with Aunt Liss. This Gardale was all low. The houses were all built of greenish stone, and none was more than three storeys high. The amount of smoke from all those chimneys astonished her. The track suddenly turned into a proper road paved with the same greenish stone and took them across a bridge over the same river, now flowing quietly and more brown than green, between stone walls where small boys sat fishing.
After that they were in the main street, and Maewen could hardly breathe. It’s like a foreign country! she thought. There were crowds of people. She had thought she had become used to being in the past. Now she knew she had only become used to the people travelling with her and the way those five people dressed and talked. Everyone who crowded the street here seemed to have more lines on their faces – or fewer – as if they all worried about different things from those that concerned people in Maewen’s own time. This set their faces into quite another shape, like people who spoke a foreign language. As to their clothes, the hearthman’s livery she had grown used to was the rarest kind here. The men wore bright wools and sober velvets in any number of styles, from tight-fitting suits with a coloured blanket thing folded over one shoulder, through the looser sort of clothes that Moril or Hestefan wore, to the elderly fellow pushing past in a long dark blue velvet robe with a jewelled chain round his neck. The women were in so many styles and colours – nipped waists, loose pleats, long flounces, calf-length gathers – that even when Maewen saw the outfit was home-made and probably redyed from another colour, they still made her feel dowdy and wrongly dressed. The place smelt of people and, almost chokingly, of smoke with, underneath that, most definitely cesspits.
“It seems very busy,” Navis remarked. “Market day?”
“That and more, I rather think,” Hestefan said. People had seen his cart by then and were pressing up to it all round, wanting to know when the Singer would perform. Hestefan enlarged his voice, in the Singer’s way, so that though he seemed to be speaking normally, his voice rang round the street. “In the market square in an hour’s time.”
“Oh, but—” Moril started to say. Then he saw faces turning and nodding eagerly. He gave up.
“What are our plans?” Navis asked Maewen. They were down to a slow walk, boot to boot, as they pressed through the crowd.
“Go to the college – Lawschool,” Maewen
said.
“That suits me,” Navis said, and he bent to the nearest person to ask the way.
It was out on the other side of the town. They had to go through the market square, where there was a frenzy of buying and selling going on, and such shouting mixed with smells of new bread, fruit, leather and cattle dung to add to the cesspit smell that Maewen’s stomach began to feel unhappy. Hestefan cast a professional eye over the chaos and agreed with Moril that they would have time to visit the Lawschool before people were ready to listen. So the whole party continued, out through the further end of the market square and down another street, to where the crowds and then the houses quite abruptly stopped and the street became a white dirt road leading across more green fields. There were animals – cows, goats and a donkey or so – tethered out in the fields, but the only other people in sight were a small party of horsemen some distance ahead on the road.
“Hannart livery,” Navis said. He and Mitt exchanged a significant, worried look. “I think we’ll let them get well ahead.”
That suited Maewen. In these times Hannart was a name to conjure with. As everyone reined in and hung back at the mule’s slowest pace, she looked anxiously at the horsemen until they vanished behind a clump of trees. “Do you think someone told the Earl of Hannart that the Adon’s ring was stolen?” she asked Mitt.
“I don’t reckon so,” Mitt said, almost equally worried.
“I’ll give a false name,” Maewen said, “if anyone asks.”
“A wise precaution,” Navis agreed. “At times like this I could wish Mitt and I were not so obviously Southerners.”
The Hannart horsemen had vanished by the time they came round the clump of trees and saw the Lawschool. Maewen had another moment of sheer surprise. She had known the School would have to be the oldest part of the College she and Aunt Liss had visited, but she had expected that this would be the part with all the towers and tall, pointed windows. She had not expected it would be these low, graceful greenish buildings topped with clusters of long, stylish chimneys. The windows were wide, one and all, and they had diamond panes. In the middle, an elegant archway filled by a wrought-iron gate joined two blocks of the buildings together. The rest were joined by a high stone wall.
The Crown of Dalemark (UK) Page 14