The Crown of Dalemark (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Looks a good place for studying,” Mitt said. He tried to smile, but he knew his face had gone pinched and worried. Those Hannart riders were inside. He could glimpse horses between the bars of the gate.

  By the time they reached the gate, there was nothing to be seen through it but a garden and a cobbled path leading away between lavender bushes. An official walked to the middle of the gate. Maewen bit the inside of her mouth, or she would have laughed. He was wearing exactly the same uniform that the porters at the College wore in her day: baggy knee-length breeches and tunic in dark blue, with a wide white collar. It was obviously old-fashioned even two hundred years before that. He had bad teeth. She saw them as he spoke.

  “Visitors for Sending Day? Which of the scholars are you for?”

  Navis hesitated a fraction because of those riders from Hannart. “Hildrida Navissdaughter,” he said, with a shrug you could only have seen if you knew him.

  “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 towards 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 colours 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 nosebag 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 leant out to call as he passed, “I’d have followed you too, lady, if this hadn’t happened!”

  Maewen realised 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 towards 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 spat 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 smelt 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 leant 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 towards 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 smelt 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 stomach ache. 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 smelt 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.

  “With you!” someone said. Doors banged. Wood resounded. The knife gleamed in half-daylight. It had grown. No, it was a sword, being held by someone else. Maewen only glimpsed it before her attacker dropped her as if she was on fire and fled, kicking her as he barged across her, shoving the swordsman aside, and banging out through the door. Maewen could feel the pounding of his running feet as she lay on the sticky mud floor.

  “Are you all right? Noreth! Where are you hurt?”

  It was Navis. His hand was pulling at her arm. Maewen tried to sit up and found she had suddenly no strength at all. Navis hauled her upright and dragged her out into the comparatively pure-smelling yard.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  “I – I’m not … I … How did you— Who was he?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Navis. “It was far too dark. As I didn’t see him when I came along behind you, I conclude he was hiding in there.”

  “What a horrible place to hide!” Maewen managed to say. “Why did you—”

  “I told you,” said Navis. “Your aunt told me to look after you. Let’s get the horses and go out on the common. You should be safe out of the crowds. We should have stayed there as soon as we saw Hannart was in town.”

  MAEWEN SPENT WHAT was left of the morning sitting on the grass outside the town, more or less where Dagner’s black and white cart had been, hedged in by Mitt, Navis and the three horses. Even this did not make her feel safe. If someone came to untether a cow, or a goat bleated, or a lark went up from the grass, she jumped and stared round, expecting her throat to be grabbed and a knife to appear. She was, slowly, beginning to feel more rational when crowds of people came streaming out of town to follow the road to the Lawschool. Maewen started shaking again.

  “Nearly midday.” Navis stood up and brought her horse over.

  Maewen mounted, hoping s
he would feel better high up on a horse. It seemed to help a little. They rode sedately over to join the stream of carts, carriages, riders and walkers on the road, and she found herself hanging back nervously.

  “Get the Southerner to steal the Adon’s cup for you,” the deep voice said suddenly in her ear.

  Maewen felt like a waterbed, trembling all over from being trodden on. “Is that all you can say? Where were you? Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “You are not hurt. The Southerners were there to help,” said the voice.

  “Oh, thank you!” said Maewen. “You’re such a comfort!” She was trembling with indignation now. What use was a ghostly adviser who did not care that you might have been killed? Angrily she caught up with Mitt and Navis as they joined the busy road. They had almost reached the clump of trees before she realised that she felt much better. It made her smile. Perhaps the voice knew what it was doing after all.

  Outside the gracious buildings of the Lawschool there was now a picket line set up for horses, and boys in that old-fashioned uniform to guard it. The man with bad teeth was now letting people through the gate in slow twos and threes. Mitt jigged with impatience as they joined the line of people waiting to go in, and even Navis looked anxious.

  Moril got down from a waiting carriage which had evidently given him a lift and came jogging over to them with his cwidder bumping on his back. He was folding up a pie and corn cakes in an expensive-looking linen napkin and chewing as he arrived. “They gave me lunch too,” he explained. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

  “And where is Hestefan?” asked Navis.

  Moril looked a little anxious. “He said he’d have a rest and meet us at the waystone with Wend. I don’t think his health’s very good. He’s looked ill ever since the cart overturned.”