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 smelled 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.”
13
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 she 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 water bed, 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 realized 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.”
“You think he got hurt then?” Mitt asked.
“Yes, but he won’t say,” said Moril.
They came to the gate and the man with bad teeth. Moril gave him a beaming smile. “Do you think you could take care of my cwidder until I come out?” That was how he got the ride in the coach, Maewen thought, watching the porter try to pretend that no one had ever asked him such a thing and then give in and take the cwidder carefully in his arms. Singers learned to get round people.
“Through the garden and turn right to the small quadrangle,” the man said, as he said to everyone.
Nobody looked at the garden. Moril and Maewen passed through on the cobbled path, trying to keep up with Navis and Mitt. They swept through an archway on the right and came to a square court surrounded by buildings. Here stood a long row of young people in gray, with broad white collars. Some were much younger than Moril; some were nearly grown-up. Most seemed around Maewen’s real age. Many of them were already greeting parents and other relatives, and most of the rest were staring sideways at the archway, looking for their own families. There were no hugs or shouts and almost no jigging about. Evidently the way of this school was to pretend you were very grown-up. It made things very awkward. Mitt, Navis, Moril, and Maewen went crabwise along the line, and the ones waiting stared coolly past them, until Navis stopped in front of a thin dark girl, whose pale face seemed to be set in a permanent little frown.