Mitt stood looking a moment. The lane ran straight as a ruler through the two fields. Then he sighed and turned to go back.
Moril was standing a few yards down the hill. The two of them simply stared at one another for a moment. Then Moril licked his lips and cleared his throat. Still, his voice came out scratchy with awe. “Wh-who was that?”
“Old Ammet,” said Mitt. “The Earth Shaker.” His voice was not in much better shape. “What are you doing here?”
“You forgot to take any bread,” Moril said.
“It was like a flaming grey rock this morning,” Mitt said. “There’ll be critters in it by now.”
“Well, anyway, I brought—” Moril started to hold out the bundle in his hands. And stopped and stared at it. Then he unwrapped the cloth and held out a crusty new loaf. Mitt could smell the newness of it on the wind. He looked ruefully down at the cheese and onions he had not yet bothered to eat. The onions were the same but the cheese was now a fresh pale wedge. It smelt as wonderful as the bread.
He held it out to Moril. “Want some?”
Moril nodded. He arranged the cwidder on his back and sat down by the hedge. As Mitt sat down beside him, it occurred to him that this cwidder was as much of a sore place to Moril as those names were to him – and more of a nuisance too. Moril had barely let go of the thing since Hestefan had threatened to take it away.
They tore the crusty fresh loaf in two, broke the cheese in half, and ate like wolves. “All the same,” Mitt said, going back to what Moril had first said, “it’s not like you to run after me with bread.”
“I wasn’t spying,” Moril said, with as much dignity as someone who is crunching a pickled onion can. “I only saw him. I didn’t hear a word he was saying. And he must have known I was there, because of the bread.”
“So?” said Mitt.
“Something’s wrong,” said Moril. “This morning I was on top of the rocks, trying to get warm. I heard that voice telling her to kill us.”
Mitt felt his appetite go. “And?”
Moril swallowed the pickled onion as if it was a lump in his throat. “I heard it before. I heard it tell her to find the Adon’s gifts. It seemed all right then.”
Mitt went on eating although his appetite had gone. If you had once been poor in Holand, you never wasted a chance to eat. “So what do you think?”
Moril was eating in the same dutiful way. Singers met hard times too. “I think,” he said, “that it isn’t the One that speaks to her.”
Mitt knew this was why Old Ammet had looked kind. It was something he did not want to think about. “Who is it then?”
“Kankredin,” said Moril.
So it was out. Mitt nodded. “I think you’re right. You know what this means, then?”
“He started talking to her when she was young and worked her up to this gradually,” Moril said, thinking about it. “He’s disembodied, so he could pretend to be the One.”
“Probably, but I don’t mean that,” Mitt said. “Just stop and think what it means if she got to be Queen. She may be all right, but she’d go everywhere with this voice telling her to do what Kankredin wants. And she’d do it too. She does.”
“But,” said Moril, “this morning she was sounding sarcastic, rather the way your Navis does.”
“Maybe, but she’ll do it in the end,” Mitt said. “Don’t you see? He works her along, like you said. He tells her she’s got to be Queen and she’s the One’s daughter, and she sets out to ride for the crown. For all we know, she’s got no claim at all. Alk thought not. It means this whole ride is a load of old crab apples.”
“So what should we do?” Moril asked.
Mitt smiled his most unfunny smile. “It looks as if I better do what the Countess and your Keril wanted in the first place. Kill her somehow. It’s a laugh!”
It was a horrible thing to say. Mitt almost choked on it, thinking of Noreth’s nervous, freckly look – which seemed to get to him more now he knew her so much better – and how plain frightened she had been when that man attacked her in the Lawschool. He was still surprised at how very frightened she had been. She would be the same, or worse, when she found Mitt after her.
He was fervently relieved when Moril said, firmly and quietly, “No.”
“But she’s got to be stopped,” Mitt protested hopefully.
“Yes, but if she’s dead,” Moril said, “won’t Kankredin just move on to somebody else? Somebody who’s more – you know – ruthless?”
Like Navis, Mitt thought. That would be worse. The idea snapped his brain clean out of the bind Keril and the Countess seemed to have put on it. “Then it’s Kankredin we ought to go after.” This was the way Old Ammet had been trying to make him think, he realised. “Can this cwidder of yours do anything there?”
Moril put his chin on his knees and twiddled the last crust of his bread while he thought. “It’s got to be truth,” he said. “I think, if we could catch him talking to her again, I could make him appear in his true shape. Would that be enough?”
“Could be just right!” Mitt said. “I’ve a name or two up my sleeve I could use as long as I know where he is.”
Moril put the crust of bread in his mouth. “I hoped you might have,” he said, munching it. “There are stories about you.”
They got up and dusted off crumbs. “Don’t give Kankredin any kind of hint,” Mitt said.
“What do you take me for?” said Moril. They smiled at one another, conspirators, but not at all happy about it.
Mitt thought, as they walked back between the rustling corn, The worst of it is, if it goes wrong. I might have to kill her anyway. The hot sun seemed to weigh on him. He felt as if he was in mourning already.
The others were waiting impatiently under the ash tree. They said, almost in chorus, “Where were you?” The rest of the bad grey bread had been tipped into the ditch. Mitt and Moril looked at it guiltily.
“We got lost,” Moril said. “I think we ought to stop at a farm for more bread.”
“Teach your grandmother,” said Maewen. Mitt could see her, as they mounted and rode on, looking from him to Moril and wondering what they had been plotting. She had her nervous, freckly look. He knew he ought to do something about it, but the Countess-horse was baulky in the heat and kept Mitt busy wrestling with it all through the long, blazing afternoon. Despite his warning to Moril, Mitt kept wanting to tell the horse, Cheer up! Come Kernsburgh, you could be carrying my dead body! He could see himself too, dead hands trailing on one side, limp boots swinging on the other, and the whole thing starting to smell in the heat. He had to keep biting his tongue not to say it.
Maewen and he did not say one word to each other until they were camped that night – in a proper field with cowpats in it, near a farm. While Wend and Navis were away at the farm, buying bread, and Mitt and Maewen were doing the horses, Mitt took a deep breath and said, “Are we not on speaking terms or something?”
She jumped and turned to him gratefully. “Yes. Probably. You didn’t have to wait under that tree and listen to Navis and Hestefan being sarky to one another.”
Though Mitt knew there was much more to it than that, he said, “If you shoot someone’s horse, he’s not likely to love you. Mind you,” he added, watching Hestefan fussily washing down the wheels of the cart, “if that Hestefan wasn’t a Singer, he’d be teaching school and living alone in a house with the door barred.”
“Yes! Wouldn’t he!” Maewen said, quite delighted.
They chatted lightheartedly after that, until they saw Wend and Navis returning with cans of milk and armfuls of cheese and bread. Maewen said guiltily, “Oh dear. I bet Navis paid for it all. I hate the way we seem to be living off him.”
Mitt’s attitude to money was much more carefree. “Well, we can’t hardly wave a golden statue at them,” he said.
It was the wrong thing to say. She gave him a nervous, freckly look and went off to meet Navis. Mitt sighed. All the same, he and Moril took good care never to be far awa
y from Maewen in case the voice spoke to her again. But nothing happened that night.
When they went on next morning, they found the farms thinning out again, giving way to more and more bracken and tumbled rocks. The Shield here descended slightly in a series of waves, downwards towards Dropwater and the coast, and the green road went with it, up and over and down, up and over and down. The warm, itchy rain came over in waves too. You could look back and see each white shower travelling back along the way you had come, up and up and up, like a ghost going upstairs, until it was lost in the high green distance.
In the middle of the afternoon Mitt was looking back after the latest shower, having watched it as it came climbing up and swept over them, when he thought he could see a darkish blot, right up at the top, where the road and the rain went out of sight. Next time he looked, the blot was more definite, wavering forwards in the high distance.
“Ay-ay,” he said. “Looks like there might be a troop of horses coming down behind.”
Heads snapped round. Hestefan and Moril leant out on either side of the cart. It was what everyone had been dreading.
“Looks to be at least twenty,” Wend said.
“In good order,” said Navis. “Quite a body of hearthmen, I would say. Can anyone see what livery?”
“Too far off,” said Hestefan.
“But coming quite fast,” said Moril.
“And they must have seen us,” said Navis, “if we can see them.” He turned to Wend. “Is there anywhere we can get off this road while we’re in a dip and they can’t see us?”
Wend’s solemn face twisted anxiously. “Not for some miles.”
“Then get in the cart,” said Navis. “Let’s get there as fast as we can.”
Wend took three running strides and heaved himself over the tailgate of the cart. Hestefan whipped up the mule. The cart set off rattling up the next rise, and the rest of them kept pace. It was maddeningly slow to Maewen. The mule was trying, but the cart was heavy, and it slowed down over every long, undulating rise. She grew a crick in her neck from looking back. The horsemen were gaining steadily. Every time she looked, there were fewer hills between them. Before long, they could tell that there were, in fact, only about fifteen of them. But as Mitt said, that was quite enough against six.
“Perhaps they aren’t after us at all,” Maewen said hopefully.
“Would you bet on that?” Navis asked. “Between us we have stolen a cup and a ring and attempted to start an uprising. I wish I could see the livery. That would give us a clue.”
And stolen a horse, Maewen thought guiltily, looking at the patient ears of the horse she had hoped was Noreth’s. Would someone ride all the way from Adenmouth after a stolen horse in these days? She wished she knew.
“And someone may think we sneaked Hildy along,” Mitt said, with his head turned back over his shoulder. “Are they Hannart?”
The rain was blinding over in white clouds. It was never possible to see the horsemen except as a wavering dark blur, but they saw them most of the time. When the cart was down in a dip, the blur was cresting a rise, and as the cart laboured uphill, the pursuers had already been down in the next dip and were wavering into sight again. They came closer and closer.
Navis was looking off into what could be seen of the countryside. It rose steeper and steeper to the left and not so steep to the right. Most of it was covered in head-high bracken. If they did go off the road, the cart would make tracks in that bracken that a blind man could follow. “How much further?” Navis snapped at Wend.
“Just down to the river,” Wend said anxiously. “Not far.”
By the time they came down the last slope to see a small river cutting across the green road, the horsemen were only three hills behind. They were almost invisible in what seemed to be a final cloud of rain. As the cart splashed into the moist edge of the river, weak sunlight travelled after the rain and made everything golden-white.
“Stop a moment,” Wend called. He leant out of the back of the cart. “Will you play your cwidder now?” he asked Moril.
Moril leant out to look at him. “Does it matter what?”
“Yes.” Wend jumped down into squashy turf. “Play anything you can think of about the witch Cennoreth,” he said, going to the mule’s head.
Moril wrenched the cover away from the cwidder and hurriedly plucked out the chorus to The Weaver’s Song:
Thread the shuttle, throw the shuttle,
Weave the close-bound yarn.
As he moved on to the tune of the verses, Wend led mule and cart in a half-circle, with much splashing and swaying, until it was facing up to the left, along the riverbank.
“Follow me upriver,” he said to the others, under the music.
They rode after him along the wet grassy verge, none of them very hopeful. The light was brighter and more golden than before. Mitt looked at the tracks of the cart and the prints the horses were leaving and thought that even in another shower of rain the riders behind could hardly miss them. Maewen wondered if Moril had got the music wrong in his hurry. She knew The Weaver’s Song, and she had never known it had anything to do with the witch Cennoreth. Navis rode trying to look back up the green road, but the rise of the land cut off the view almost at once.
“This is going to take a miracle,” he murmured.
The lawn-like riverbank turned into a proper track, leading easily upwards among bracken and rocks. As the cart clattered on to the higher, rockier part, they all distinctly heard the drumming of several dozen hooves, mixed with the rattle of tack and mail, and a few voices. Navis stopped his mare and, in a resigned way, fetched out his pistol and cocked it. Above, the cart went on, and Moril continued to play.
To everyone’s amazement, the drumming of hooves barely paused. It slowed and broke into separate noises, but that was mixed with the splashing of water and the clack of rolled stones as the party crossed the river. Then the regular drumming took up again and faded off into the distance.
“Missed us!” Mitt said. He could hardly believe it.
“Let’s hope they don’t come back before we’re out of sight,” Navis said, turning his mare back to the path.
Above the rocky section, the river was a mere stream, flowing out of a fair-sized lake, cupped inside steep black crags. The banks were squashy with marsh, but the path avoided it by mounting higher, among clumps of tall rushes. Maewen could not resist leaning sideways to trail her hand in the feathery heads. They were the scented kind of rushes. Clouds of strong pollen filled the air with a lovely smell, like nothing else she knew. Mitt sneezed. Navis pushed through the rushes in clouds of more pollen and caught up with the cart. Moril had stopped playing by then.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Navis asked Wend.
“Of course, sir,” Wend said. “This is Dropthwaite where my sister’s croft is. No one can find us here.” He smiled in his pent-up way and pointed out into the lake where a number of fat white ducks were swimming beside a patch of white-flowering weed. “Those are my sister’s ducks.” The way he smiled, Maewen thought he and his sister must have some private joke about them.
THEY CAME THROUGH the rushes to find a small ragged field with a stone trough in the middle. Hens wandered there. Two goats were tethered further off, and there was a vegetable garden beyond that. The croft was a low stone house built against the crags, among fruit trees and lilacs. Everything was warm and fragrant because the rocks went round the holding in a high horseshoe and cut off all but the west wind.
Wend walked through the orchard with long strides and knocked at the house door. It was opened almost at once by an old woman leaning on a stick.
“His sister?” Navis said, watching the two talking eagerly together.
“More like his granny,” said Mitt. “Still, we might get a bed for the night out of it.” And a bedroom had a door you could bar, in case Kankredin persuaded Noreth to do her killing now.
Oh yes! Maewen thought. And a bath!
Navis looked nervously b
ack down the path. “They won’t find us here,” Moril said to him. “Promise.” Navis looked at Moril’s cwidder, but not as if he was convinced.
Wend came striding back. He seemed almost as carefree as when he had taken charge of the cwidder. “She says you’re welcome to camp in this field here,” he said cheerfully. “And if the young ones like to go to the door when the horses are seen to, she’ll have milk and eggs and cheese ready for you.” Whistling a little tune, he untethered the goats and led them away round the side of the house.
Bother! Mitt and Maewen thought, though both for different reasons.
“The old lady likes her privacy, I see,” Hestefan said glumly. Evidently he had been hoping for a bed too.
“It’s not a very big house,” Moril said as he unhitched the mule. Apart from Wend, he was the only one who was happy with the arrangement. Navis continued to watch the path, and he insisted on setting up the camp where it could not be seen by anyone coming up from the lake. This meant a long trudge across the grass to the trough, which Mitt felt was unnecessary. He was the one who fetched the water. The trough fascinated him. Clear water bubbled up in it the whole time, but it never, for some reason, overflowed.
When the horses were rubbed down and feeding, Moril jerked his head towards the house. Mitt winked and left Navis to see about the rest. They were both a little put out to find Maewen coming with them through the orchard trees. They did not consider Noreth as one of the young ones. Maewen saw it. But she had come along almost without thinking, and it seemed a little late to go back now. Besides, she was curious about this sister of Wend’s.
Wend opened the door to them. “Come you in,” he said. “This way.”
He led them quickly through a kitchen-room and opened a door to the back of the house. Maewen looked around curiously, but all she had time to see was a scrubbed wooden table and a banked-up fire of smoky peat, with a copper kettle singing on it. The room at the back of the house was even harder to see at first. It had only one window, which was half blocked by a big loom with woollen cloth being woven on it. It smelt of warm wood and, even more, of slightly oily wool. The ceiling was low and beamed. The walls were dark from being panelled in old wood – very beautifully carved, in a mass of half-seen designs – and the rest of the dim space was nearly full of stack upon stack of tall, chubby wooden things. These things were where the wool smell was coming from. Large bobbins, they seemed to be, wound with woollen yarn of every conceivable colour.
The Crown of Dalemark (UK) Page 20