My goddamn axle was grinding. I couldn’t pause to mend it, I hoped I could reach Lowespass before it burnt through. This is the problem with being poor. You struggle against the shrinking world. It’s not the day-to-day stuff. It’s the unexpected disasters you can’t afford to fix, you can’t afford to escape. Even something small, that a rich lass would laugh off, knocks you into a spiral and you fall far and fast, accelerating, trying to clutch some support, there’s nothing to grab; you can fall to your death.
After Oscen the mud sucked at the wheels, causing more friction and I smelt it scorching. Biddy slipped in the cannon ruts, snorting resentfully.
A fyrd detachment was marching up the road behind me. I could see the first men in my mirror. It looked like a whole division, and the captain started shouting quite some distance back: ‘Out of the way! Shitty Litanee!’
I tweaked Biddy onto the verge and immediately the wheels began to sink in. ‘Come on, lackeys,’ I muttered. ‘The slaughter awaits you.’
The soldiers passed, whistling and cat-calling. Behind them, six-horse limber teams were dragging cannon bigger than I’d seen before. Two abreast, the stupid fuckers filled the road and their revolving wheels were set to scrape against my paintwork, so I urged Biddy onto the very edge of the ditch.
All the soldiers passing stuck their arms out against the wagon side and pushed. My left wheels slipped into the ditch and the wagon tipped over. The axle snapped, I slid off the seat into the ditch water, and all my belongings inside crashed into the left wall.
I stood up, waist deep in mud. The traces had pulled Biddy onto her side and she was kicking like mad. The soldiers pissed themselves laughing. They stared over their shoulders as they marched, and their fucking raucous laughter bellowed for ages after the last of them was lost to my glare.
Stinking with slime, I unharnessed Biddy and brought her upright. The wagon was jammed at an angle on the slope. Fuck soldiers. Fuck lackeys. Fuck men. I was starving and very, very weak.
I climbed into the wagon. My crockery had smashed and the stove was on its belly. I fetched a rope and yoked Biddy, but the grey mare simply pulled my wagon off its broken axle and gouged it into the grass.
So I tried again from the back, and she gradually hauled my home onto the road, leaving the front wheel behind. I rolled the wheel up to the road and stood with it resting on my hip, wondering with bleak despair how I could possibly refit it, when in the distance came the clamour of hooves going at a fast gallop.
Two horses, a palomino and a black, were racing necks out like the last stretch at Cherrywood. Their riders were high up and forward, with shortened stirrups, and yelling like crazy. I jumped out of their way, they hurtled past and splattered me head to foot in liquid mud from a long puddle.
It was a girl and a young man. The girl’s flaxen hair flew, and she had the Castle’s sun on her saddle rug. The only person it could have been was Lightning. That made the guy on the gold mare, all in black with the sharp face, Comet.
I stared after them. Mud was soaking into my jumper. They snapped round the curve as the road descends to Calamus Bastion – slammed through the checkpoint without breaking pace – so they were surely Eszai. Comet’s racehorse edged ahead of Lightning’s purebred as they went like the clappers up the hill. He crested it ahead of her and they disappeared.
I wiped mud off my face, lugged the wheel out of the puddle and turned, to find that Biddy had bolted and my home had slipped into the ditch again.
Nobody was going to help me. I’ve never felt so desolate. Nothing matters any more. I no longer cared for my life, for myself, for my safety. For anything … at all. I sat down against the back wheel and stared at nothing, while the grey daylight began to fade, and the cold, to clench.
Stiff, chill and with stabbing starvation, I knew I’d have to force myself up … Force myself up, to stumble after Biddy, catch her and ride her bareback – to Awndyn, and to Swallow.
CHAPTER 31
Connell: how I met Swallow
When my precarious existence brings me to the maple sap harvest, I roll here, to the wood outside Drussiter, where in a clearing I’ve made a beautiful hideaway. There’s a hearth, and a log seat I’ve carved, and all around the sugar-maples rustle and the birds sing. I need so little, to be happy – which is lucky, really. I wake with the dawning sky and the first trill of the chaffinches. I dip my white enamelled jug in the clear woodland spring. Every dusk I curl up in my caravan with its doors open, and see the pheasants flying up to roost, and the badgers emerge from their sett to tumble off down their well-worn track.
I have all of February to practise the necessary art of sitting by the fireside and looking at the stars. I repaint the caravan and repair any damage, oil the axles and Biddy’s trapping, keep them up to scratch. I sharpen my knives, scour my pans and sew my clothes. You people who are trapped in permanent employment, in needless gain and stress, when did you last have time to think things through?
I pick mushrooms and dry them to sell to restaurants. I pack a cargo of maple sugar, which the soldiers at the Front go crazy for. Then off across the world I go, and by August I’ve rolled up at the Castle. In we come, in wagons, from the four corners of the world. Their harvest is a reliable three months on which I hang the rest of the year. The steward likes to see me – from experience she knows I’m trustworthy. They never give us important work, just labour plain and simple.
I park my caravan by the river, lower its legs and unhitch Biddy. And there I stay from August till November, longer than I stay anywhere else. You see, I’m free. Unlike the farm hands, who mutter with envy, I’m not tied to the Castle. I’m not tied to any employer, not to this land nor any country at all. The work is menial but it means they can’t keep me. I owe them nothing, and any time I want to, I move on. I live on the desperate edge of now. You think it’s exciting? It’s hard.
So, this day that changed my life. I’d been tying sheaves in the most enormous field, from first light till the shadows lengthened, and up at its far end men with scythes were still snicking along. At sundown I joined a queue in the field corner, at the cashier’s little desk under the tan awning. I received the day’s pennies and walked slowly back to my wagon, my hands glowing raw and warm from the cornstalks.
I opened the rose-painted doors, dropped the coins into a box and smiled when I heard them clink. They’ll see me through a month of scarce work. Dozy with fresh air and the fatigue of a day’s labour well done, I scooped the jug off the dresser and turned to the steps. And a woman was standing there! Trying to see in!
I yelled, ‘Hey, get away!’ She made no move, so I picked up my breadknife. That backed her off a few steps, but then she stood as cheekily as before, leaning on her stick. Rooted people have a fascination with the interior of my home. Just because it’s in a field doesn’t make it public.
I left to fetch water, locked the door pointedly and went to the pump. The damn woman followed me. She carried a guitar under her arm – it was entirely laminated in mother-of-pearl, with dirt between the cracks.
‘I heard your party last night,’ she said.
I placed the jug on the drain cover under the pump, listening carefully. It hadn’t been a party, it was just a normal night. But if any Rooted complain about our music, we stop it straight away. We need their good will – I mean, their money – too much to be accused of making disturbance. But Demesne village, where the Castle’s staff live, was three kilometres distant and they’d never complained before.
‘A lot of music and dancing.’
I pumped water all over the jug. With my back to her I said, ‘If it annoys you, we’ll shut up.’
‘Oh – no! I loved it! …I want to learn it.’
‘What?’
‘Litanee music. I like it. I don’t want it to be lost.’
‘Lost?’ I hefted the jug and turned to my wagon. ‘Where’d you think it’s going?’
The ginger woman followed. ‘I’m Governor Swallow of Awndyn,’ she
murmured. ‘I watched you dance.’
‘Did you?’
‘From outside the firelight. You played the guitar. You were by far the best.’
‘If you’re really a governor, what the hell d’you care about that?’ I laughed, and she stopped. You see, I’d halted her at the appropriate distance from my wagon. I slipped inside and began to slice bread and make tea. Hunger pangs hollowed my belly – I hadn’t eaten since midday, and that’d been just cheese and oatcakes.
When I glanced out she was still there. She seemed the sort who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had great, fiery waves of copper-coloured hair, and a green velvet beret, of all things. Her skin was unseasonably pale and her nose and shoulders freckled. Her velvet dress was so short her stocking tops and suspenders showed, she wore riding boots and held under one arm the shabby guitar. I couldn’t place her at all. She spoke Awian with a sterling accent, but she was short and plump, and I wouldn’t have given sixpence for her clothes.
‘Go ask Allen,’ I called. ‘Blue wagon with the windmills. He plays the fiddle.’
In answer she swung her guitar to her front and began plucking one of the tunes that we’d played last night – but better. Much better! She didn’t change it but she improvised it our way, making it more Litanee. She embellished it with thrills that made me salivate, pedalling notes on the lower strings, with hammer-ons, pull-offs and wide string bends.
It was like seeing a mirror that reflected your image ten times more sophisticated, more beautiful and focussed than your own face could ever be. She stopped with a flourish and I hankered for more. We were mesmerised! I was halfway down the steps before I controlled myself, and out of the wagons all around my friends were pouring.
Allen’s kids clustered round her, pulling at her dress, crying out for more.
‘Maestro!’ I called.
She broke the trance and started towards me, a grin on her face.
‘If you want to learn Litanee, start by knowing you should ask permission to approach a wagon.’
‘All right. May I approach your wagon?’
‘Sure.’
She tromped up the steps and I moved back to make room. She looked shocked at the size of my living space, but only for an instant.
‘You can sing?’ she asked.
‘Pretty well.’
‘And you know all the dances?’
I laughed.
A lock of her enormous hair kept falling in front of her face, and she pushed it back. She was looking at my check shirt, open at the throat and rolled to the elbow, showing my arms. She was trying to discern my tattoos through my tan.
No use there. But because we Litanee are used to reading symbols, I saw Awndyn’s leaping dolphin insignia, in marquetry, on the neck of her guitar.
She’d figured out how to lower the sofa and was sitting, ginger wings crammed up. Rooted people normally goggle at the pale, varnished cupboards and comfortable bed, but she was looking at the opposite wall, at my painting of Princess Gerygone escaping from her tower of caramel.
‘It’s a copy,’ I said. ‘Of Gerygone, by—’
‘By Jaeger. I know.’
‘Why the surprise? Just ’cause I work in a field doesn’t mean I’m a donkey.’
‘Sorry. Sorry. It’s just that … I’ve seen the original. It hangs in Rachiswater.’ She nodded at Gerygone, who was fleeing with very sticky plaits. ‘It’s a good copy. She’s beautiful.’
‘Oh, yes. It’s a great story, too.’ Because if your father imprisons you in a tower of caramel, all you have to do is shift your weight to one side and wait for a really hot day. ‘Gerygone didn’t need any goddamned princes … If you’re really Swallow, what are you doing here?’
‘I gave him the slip. The goddamned prince.’ She fluttered bitten-nailed fingers in the direction of the Castle. ‘So I could hear your music. And, having done so, I want to invite you and your tribe to my festival.’
‘My “tribe”? You mean my troupe?’
‘No, I mean all the Roses. As many Roses and Oaks as you can find.’
I stared at her. ‘But isn’t the festival for orchestras?’
‘No! It’s for every type of music. Blues. Jazz. Awian ballet and Brandoch shanties. Anything you can think of. All music’s important … Um …’
‘Connell.’
‘Connell …’
‘Connell Rose.’
‘Your music has qualities unattainable by a directed orchestra.’
I laughed.
‘That’s it!’ She wiggled her fingers. ‘Vitality! Energy! Spontaneity! … How much does the Castle pay you to do all this haying?’
I told her and she looked scandalised. ‘I’ll double it. Come to Awndyn, bring in my harvest. Do you need some sort of contract?’
I just laughed and laughed. I’d never seen a contract in my life! She studied me with fascination – like a piece of opal I was dull and cloudy to her at first sight, but when she turned me in her hand she saw beautiful colours. ‘Do you want some tea?’
‘Tea? Where did you get tea?’
‘I worked passage to Tris on a clipper. Just for the hell of it. Join us for supper.’
‘No, no. I have to …’ she gestured in the direction of the Castle again. ‘… Dress for dinner. Um. I have to go now, Connell. Old Umbrella Wings will be looking for me.’ She sighed and glanced round the wagon. ‘But can I see you again?’
‘If you want to learn real music, come to the campfire tonight. You have to participate, though.’
She gave me a longing glance and quit the wagon. I carried the sliced bread to the fire where Allen was baking trout.
‘How can a Rooted play like that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you heard? She’s not just any Rooted. She’s Lady Governor Swallow Awndyn and she visited my wagon. She’ll join in tonight.’
Join in! Did she ever! We’d no idea how amazing she was. All my friends’ foreboding at having a Rooted join us just melted away. Swallow soaked up our repertoire like a sponge, and spun it into new forms, and played it back. With clever variations, and more songs that thrilled us – we clapped and cheered and shouted for more. Soon she led our best musicians, who were like children stumbling in her wake, and she was so unassuming, in her threadbare pine-green dress, that not even Fullam minded.
The season drew to an end. We’d reduced the fields to stubble, with rooks flying in under an overcast sky, and a chill edge to the breeze. I was dragging my tin bath of water from my awning to dump it in the river, wrapped in a sarong with my hair in a towel.
Swallow was leaning on her stick, watching us tidy the ground and harness our horses. She saw me and broke into a rapturous smile. ‘Connell, I’m glad I caught you!’
‘I’m leaving today.’
‘Half the wagons have gone.’
‘The boys have rolled for the Front already.’
Her expression clouded. ‘Why?’
‘To dig ditches and build walls. I don’t fancy that. Too close to bugs.’
She came to my side as I tilted the bath over the riverbank. We watched the water cascade into the Moren. I felt rather sorry for the river – as it circumscribes the Castle in a pretty, manmade meander it has no idea what’s in store for it in Hacilith.
‘Where will you go?’ she murmured.
Water passed us in silver swirls, boating autumn leaves along. I assumed a vague air, as I do when any Rooted asks me about my movements, though in truth they’re carefully planned. ‘Oh … I cart firewood to the city in winter. Late spring maybe Awia … carrying coke to the foundries. Wrought estuary at Samphire Hoe, armpit-deep in silty water, cutting reeds for the thatchers, horsehides from the knackers’ yard to the tanners. June is the Great Housekeeping at Tanager Palace … boy, do feathers make dust … we lay all the sheets on the lawn. Then back here for the next haying.’
‘You don’t have to do any of that,’ she said.
I turned to her, puzzled by her tone.
‘I want you to come
to Awndyn,’ she said, hopeful and excited.
‘Why? Have you got work for me?’
‘I’ll think of something.’ And she stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek.
CHAPTER 32
Connell: Val and the Grey Rose
That morning the first frost had appeared in the shade of the wagons, tracing their outlines as crisply as a portrait silhouette. Swallow climbed onto the driver’s step beside me, bright with excitement, cradling a mug of tea, and her copper hair sparkling over her coat and scarf.
She was a rare thing. Brimming with life. I let her hold the reins and Biddy’s back rippled on. She kept her childhood enthusiasm, did Swallow. I don’t think she’d ever grown up. It’s the source of her music, and one of the reasons I’m coming to love her.
We strained to see the road in the soda-grey light, for when morning comes in November, it scarcely brings the day. The sycamore leaves limned with rime crunched under our wheels. Our breath misted and steam rose from her mug. She was all smiles.
I leant and kissed her cheek, by her ear. She giggled and snuggled up to me. The tip of her nose was cold. I put my arm round her, my other hand taking the reins, and kissed her as we rolled on, under the lowering sky.
‘I love the roses,’ she said, fingering the giltwork.
‘I carved them myself.’
‘Really? Wow.’
‘I made the whole wagon.’
She blinked at me, and smiled. I shrugged. ‘Everyone does. You have to be good at fixing your wagon. The only way to learn is to build your own.’
‘Did you build Biddy, too?’
‘Silly …’
Mine is a kite wagon, red and gold. The roof is solid birch, with a mollycroft skylight and a steel chimney on the left. The wheels are widely-braced, against the mud of Lowespass. My pride and joy survives there, where the bowtops perish.
‘Did you do the paintings?’
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