Cart and Cwidder. Diana Wynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ but Moril had lost interest in Kialan by then and did not care. Kialan folded the coat – not as carefully as such a good garment deserved – and used it as a pillow while he pretended to go to sleep. Brid knew he was only pretending, because he started up every time any travellers passed them and looked through the opening of the cover to see who they were.

      There was not much traffic on the road. Mostly it was slow wagons, which Olob trotted past without any difficulty, sending spurts of white grit from beneath the cartwheels, until Moril, trotting in the rear, seemed to have hair the same colour as Clennen’s. But there were a few horsemen, and these overtook Olob as easily as Olob overtook the wagons. Once, quite a group of riders came past, raising a whirl of white dust, and were scanned by Kialan with great interest. One of the group seemed equally interested in them. He craned round in his saddle as he passed to get a good look at the cart.

      “Who was that fellow?” Clennen said to Lenina.

      “I couldn’t say,” she answered.

      “Funny,” said Clennen, “I seem to have seen him before.” But since the man was a perfectly neutral-looking person, neither dark nor fair and neither young nor old, Clennen could not place him and gave up the attempt.

      Shortly after that, as the sun was getting low, Olob left the road of his own accord and jolted the cart among gorse bushes into a heathy meadow. He stopped near a stream.

      “Olob thinks this’ll do,” Dagner said to Clennen. “Will it?”

      “You don’t really let your horse choose where to stop!” Kialan exclaimed.

      “He doesn’t often let us down,” said Clennen, surveying the meadow. “Yes, very nice. Horses have a gift for stopping, Kialan. Remember that.”

      The fed-up look settled on Kialan’s face, and he watched, a little scornfully, while Dagner unharnessed Olob and led him off to drink. He watched Moril wiping the dust off the cart and Brid collecting firewood.

      “Don’t offer to help, will you?” Brid muttered in his direction.

      While Lenina was cooking supper, Clennen fetched the big cwidder down, polished it, tuned it carefully and beckoned Moril. Moril came reluctantly. He was rather in awe of the big cwidder. Its shining round belly was even more imposing than Clennen’s. The inlaid patterns on the front and arm, made of pearl and ivory and various coloured woods, puzzled him by their strangeness. And its voice when you played it was so surprisingly sweet and quite unlike that of the other cwidders. Clennen took such care of it that Moril still sometimes thought – as he had when he was little – that this cwidder was an extra, special part of Clennen, more important than his father’s arm or leg – something on the lines of a wooden soul.

      “Let’s have that song of Osfameron’s,” said Clennen.

      Moril liked the old songs so little that he was making very heavy weather of learning them. Clennen corrected him, made him go back to the beginning, and twice stopped him in the middle of the second verse. To make matters worse, Kialan came over and stood himself in front of Moril, listening. Moril, in self-defence, went into a dream between two notes, and stopped. He was with the Adon, on a green road in the North.

      “Do you really need to teach him?” said Kialan.

      “How else,” asked Clennen, “do you think he’d learn?”

      Kialan seemed a bit confused. “Well – I sort of supposed they picked it up–from giving shows,” he said.

      “Or it grew naturally, along with hair and fingernails?” Clennen suggested.

      “No – I – Oh, that’s silly!” said Kialan, and to Moril’s relief, he drifted away. But he drifted back when Moril had finished and Brid took his place. Kialan caught Moril’s sleeve. “I say, you all know all this music, but I suppose you can’t even read and write, can you?”

      Moril removed his sleeve. “Of course I can,” he said. “My mother taught us.” Before Kialan could ask any more impertinent questions, he scurried off among the gorse bushes to the stream. He stayed there, lost in vagueness, watching the bright water hurry over the different brightness of the stones beneath, until he heard Brid shouting.

      “Supper! Wash, Moril!”

      Supper was not very good, and what little bread they had was stale. “I say, this tastes peculiar!” Kialan said, pushing his share about on his plate.

      Lenina’s face, which never had much expression, went quite blank. “I meant to buy bread and onions in Derent,” she said. “But there was no time.”

      There was a heavy pause. Then Clennen said, “Look, lad, we’ve got to travel more than a hundred and fifty miles together, you and us. It needs a little give and take, don’t you think? I’d hate to have to break a good cwidder over your head.”

      The sun was setting then, and the light was red. But Moril thought that this did not entirely account for the colour of Kialan’s face. Kialan, however, said nothing. He silently accepted some of the wine and drank it, but he did not speak again until much later. By then Clennen had become very jolly with the wine. Beaming in the firelight, he leant back against the wheel of the cart and said to Dagner, “Give us that new song of yours.”

      “It’s not quite ready yet,” said Dagner. But, since this was not a performance, he willingly fetched his cwidder and picked out a sketch of what Moril thought was a very promising tune. And without a trace of nervousness, he half sang, half spoke the words.

       “Come with me, come with me.

       The blackbird asks you, ‘Follow me.’

       No one will know, no one will know,

       Wherever you go, I shall go.

       Come with me. Morning spreads,

       Clouds are high in milky threads,

       The moon looks like a white thumbnail,

       Larks are singing up the dale.

       The sun is up, so follow me.

       I’d like us to go secretly

       Along the road, across the hill

       Where water runs and woods are still.”

      “And then I think the first four lines again,” Dagner said, looking up at Clennen.

      “No,” said Clennen. “Won’t do.”

      “Well, I needn’t have them again,” Dagner said humbly.

      “I mean the whole thing won’t do,” said Clennen.

      Dagner looked very dashed. Kialan seemed unable to stop himself saying indignantly: “Why? I thought it was going to be a jolly good song.”

      “The tune’s all right, as far as it’s gone,” said Clennen. “But why spoil a tune like that with those words?”

      “They’re СКАЧАТЬ