Cart and Cwidder (The Dalemark Quartet 1) - Page 15

“How do you know?” Brid wept. “Why did she go straight off to Ganner like that?”

“Because she’s always wanted to, of course!” said Dagner. “Only she couldn’t, because she thought it wasn’t honorable. I told you you didn’t understand,” he went on, in an odd, agitated way. “You’re too young to notice. But I’ve seen—oh, enough to know Mother hated living in a cart. She wasn’t brought up to it like we are. It was all right while we were in the Earl of Hannart’s household—we had a roof over our heads and that wasn’t too bad for her—but—I suppose you don’t remember.”

“Not very well,” Brid admitted, sniffing. “I was only three when we left.”

“Well I do,” said Dagner. “And Father would leave, though he knew Mother di

dn’t want to go. And in the cart she had to bring us up and keep us clean and cook—and she’d never done anything like that in her life till then. And sometimes there was no money at all, and we were always on the move and always—well, there were other things she didn’t like Father doing. But Father always got his own way over them. Mother never had a say in anything. She just did the work. Then she saw Ganner again in Derent, after all those years, and she told me it had brought her old life back to her and made her feel terrible. I just don’t blame her for going back to what she was used to. You can see Ganner’s not going to order her around like Father did.”

“Father didn’t order her around!” Brid protested. “He even offered to take her back to Ganner.”

“Yes, and I thought Mother was really going to call his bluff for a moment then,” said Dagner. “He knew darned well Mother wouldn’t go, because it wasn’t her duty, but he had an anxious moment all the same, didn’t he? And then he took good care to point out how much cleverer he was than Ganner.”

“That was just his way,” said Brid.

“It was all just his way,” said Dagner. “Look, Brid, I don’t want to pull Father to pieces any more than you do, but in some ways he was—oh, maddening. And if you think about it, you’ll see he and Mother weren’t at all well matched.”

Moril was blinking a little at all this. It was so unlike Dagner to talk so much or so clearly. He marveled at the way Dagner managed to put into words things Moril had known all his life but not truly noticed till this moment. “Don’t you think Mother was fond of Father at all?” he asked dolefully.

“Not in the way we were,” said Dagner.

“In that case, why did she run off with him like that?” Brid asked, triumphantly, as if that clinched the matter.

Dagner looked pensively at a new vista of apple trees coming into view beyond Olob’s ears. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but I think that cwidder had something to do with it.”

Moril swiveled around and cast an apprehensive look at the gleaming belly of the old cwidder, resting in its place in the rack. “Why do you think that?” he asked nervously.

“Something Mother said once,” said Dagner. “And Father told you there was power in it, didn’t he?”

“There probably is, if it belonged to Osfameron,” Kialan observed in a matter-of-fact way.

“Don’t be silly! It can’t be that old!” Moril protested.

“Osfameron lived not quite two hundred years ago,” said Kialan, and he really seemed to know. “He was born the same year as King Labbard died, so it can’t be more than that. A cwidder’d surely last as long as that if you took care of it. Why, we’ve—I’ve seen one that’s four hundred years old—though, mind you, it looks ready to drop apart if you breathed on it.”

Moril cast another look, even more apprehensive, at the quiet, prosperous shape of the old cwidder. “It can’t be!” he said.

“Well,” Dagner said diffidently, “you get used to thinking things like that were only around long ago, but—I’ll tell you, Moril—didn’t you get the impression you kept Father alive with it this morning?” Moril stared at Dagner with his mouth open. “I thought so,” Dagner said, a trifle apologetically. “I’ve never heard it sound like it did then. And—and Father was dead awfully quickly after you left off, wasn’t he?”

Moril was appalled. “Whatever am I going to do with a thing like that!” he almost wailed.

“I don’t know. Learn to use it, perhaps,” said Dagner. “I must say I was glad Father didn’t give it to me.”

Everyone subsided into thoughtfulness. Brid sniffed wretchedly. Olob clopped steadily on for a mile or so. Then he took a look at the sinking sun and decided to choose them a camping ground. Dagner dissuaded him. He refused to let Olob turn off the road three times, until Olob got the point and did not try again. They went on and on and on, downhill, uphill, through small valleys, pastures, and orchards. The sky died from blue to pink and from pink to purple, and Brid could bear no more.

“Oh, do let’s stop, Dagner! Today seems to have gone on for about a hundred years!”

“I know,” said Dagner. “But I want to get a really good start.”

“Do you think Ganner will really follow us?” said Moril. “He ought to be glad we’ve gone. Then he needn’t fuss about roofs and things.”

“He’s bound to,” said Kialan. “A man with a conscience—that’s Ganner. He’ll probably send some of his hearthmen out tonight and set out himself first thing tomorrow. That’s what—I mean, if it had been just Dagner and me, he—”

“Go on. Say it. You think Moril and I shouldn’t have come,” Brid said bitterly.

“I didn’t say that!” snapped Kialan.

“Just meant it,” said Brid.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones The Dalemark Quartet Fantasy
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