1
“Do come out of that dream, Moril,” Lenina said.
“Glad rags, Moril,” said Brid. “We’re nearly in Derent.”
Moril sighed reproachfully. He had not been in a dream, and he felt it was unfair of his mother to call it that. He had merely been gazing at the white road as it wandered northward, thinking how glad he was to be going that way again, and how glad he would be to get out of the South. It was spring, and it was already far too hot. But that was not the worst of the South. The worst, to Moril’s mind, was the need to be careful. You dared not put a foot, or a word, out of place for fear of being clapped in jail. People were watching all the time to report what you said. It gave Moril the creeps. And it irked him that there were songs his father dared not sing in the South for fear of sounding seditious. They were the best songs, too, to Moril’s mind. They all came from the North. Moril himself had been born in the North, in the earldom of Hannart. And his favorite hero, the Adon, had once upon a time been Earl of Hannart.
“You’re dreaming again!” Lenina said sharply.
“No, I’m not,” said Moril. He left his perch behind the driving seat and climbed hastily into the covered back of the cart. His mother and his sister were already changed into their cheap tinsel-trimmed show dresses. Lenina, who was pale and blond and still very beautiful, was in silver and pale gold. Brid, who was darker and browner, had a glimmering peacock dress. Lenina hung Moril’s suit above the rack of musical instruments, and Moril squeezed up to that end to change, very careful not to bang a cwidder or scrape the hand organ. Each instrument was shiny with use and gleaming with care. Each had its special place. Everything in the cart did. Clennen insisted on it. He said that life in a small cart would otherwise become impossible.
Once Moril was changed, he emerged from the cart as a very flamboyant figure, for his suit was the same peacock as Brid’s dress and his hair was red—a bright, wild red. He had inherited Lenina’s paleness. His face was white, with a few red freckles.
“You know, Mother,” Brid said, as she had said before every show since they left Holand, “I don’t think I like that color on Moril.”
“It makes people notice him,” said Lenina, and went to take the reins while Clennen and Dagner changed in their turn.
Moril went to walk in the damp springing grass on the roadside, which was rough-soft under his toes, where he could have a good view of the cart that was his home. It was painted in a number of noticeable colors, principally pink and gold. Picked out in gold and sky blue along the sides were the words Clennen the Singer. Moril knew it was garish, but he loved this cart all the same. It moved softly, because it was well sprung and well oiled, and ran easily behind Olob, the glistening brown horse. Clennen always said he would not part with Olob for an earldom. Olob—his real name was Barangarolob, because Clennen loved long names—was harnessed in pink and scarlet, with a great deal of polished brass, and looked as magnificent as the rest of the turnout. Moril was just thinking that his mother and Brid on the driving seat looked like two queens—or perhaps a queen and a princess—when Clennen stuck his head out of the canvas at the back.
“Admiring us, are you?” he called cheerfully. Moril smiled and nodded. “It’s like life,” Clennen said. “You may wonder what goes on inside, but what matters is the look of it and the kind of performance we give. Remember that.” His head popped back inside again.
Moril went on smiling. His father was always giving them odd thoughts to remember. He would probably want this one repeated to him in a day or so. Moril thought about it—in the dreamy way in which he usually gave his attention to anything—and he could not see that their turnout was like life. Life was not pink and gold. At least, some of theirs was, he supposed, but that was only saying the cart was life.
He was still pondering when they came under some big trees covered with pale buds, and the canvas cover went down with a bit of a clatter, revealing Clennen and Dagner dressed in scarlet and ready for the show. Moril scampered back and climbed up with them. Clennen smiled jovially. Dagner, whose face was tight and pinched, as it always was before a show, pushed Moril’s cwidder into his hands and Moril into the right place without a word. He handed the big old cwidder to Clennen and the panhorn to Brid, and took up a pipe and a long, thin drum himself. By the time they were all settled, Olob was clopping smoothly into the main square of Derent.
“Ready,” said Clennen. “Two, three.” And they struck up.
Derent was not a big place. The number of people who came into the square in response to their opening song was not encouraging. There was a trickle of children and ten adults at the most. True, the people sitting outside the tavern turned their chairs round to get a better view, but Moril had a vague feeling, all the same, that they were wasting their talents on Derent. He said so to Brid, while Lenina was reaching past him to receive the hand organ from Dagner.
“All your feelings are vague!” Lenina said, overhearing. “Be quiet.”
Undaunted by the sparse crowd, Clennen began his usual patter. “Ladies and gentlemen, come and listen! I am Clennen the Singer, on my way from Holand to the North. I bring you news, views, songs and tales, things old and things new. Roll up, draw up chairs, come near and listen!” Clennen had a fine rolling voice, speaking or singing. It rumbled round the square. Eyes were drawn to him, for his presence matched his voice. He was a big man, and not a thin one, though the scarlet suit made his paunch look bigger than it really was. He had a good sharp curl of ginger beard, which made up for the bald patch at the back of his head—now hidden by his scarlet hat. But the main thing about him was his enormous, jovial, total good humor. It seemed to fetch people by magic or multiply those there out of thin air. Before his speech was over, there were forty or fifty people listening to it.
“So there!” Brid said to Moril.
Before the performance could start, however, someone pushed up to the cart, calling, “Have you got any news from Holand, Clennen?” So they had to wait. They were used to this. Moril thought of it as part of the performance—and it certainly seemed to be one of their duties—to bring news from one part of Dalemark to the others. In the South particularly, there were few other ways in which people could get to know what was happening in the next lordship, let alone the next earldom.
“Now, let’s see,” said Clennen. “There’s been a new earl invested for the South Dales—the old one’s grandson. And they tell me Hadd has fallen out with Henda again.” This surprised nobody. They were two very quarrelsome earls. “And I hear,” said Clennen, stressing the hear, to show that he was not trying to stir up trouble, “I hear the cause of it had something to do with a shipload of Northmen that came into harbor at Holand last month.” This caused confused and careful muttering. Nobody knew what to make of a ship from the North coming into Holand, or whether they were br
eaking the law to think of it at all. Clennen passed on to other news. “The Earl of Waywold is making new money—copper and goodness knows what else in it—worth nothing. You get more than two thousand to one gold. Now the price on the Porter—you’ve all heard of the Porter, I suppose?” Everyone had. The Porter was a notorious spy, much wanted by the earls of the South for passing illegal information and stirring up discontent. Not one of the earls had been able to catch him. “The price on the Porter’s head now being two thousand gold,” said Clennen, “it’s to be hoped that he’s not taken in Waywold, or you’ll have to collect your reward in a wagon.” This caused some cautious laughter. “And the storm last month carried off the lord’s roof in Bradbrook, not to speak of my tent,” said Clennen.
Lenina, by this time, had sorted out the strips of paper on which she had written messages from people in other places to friends and relatives in Derent. She began calling them out. “Is there someone called Coran here? I’ve a message from his uncle at Pennet.” A red-faced young man pushed forward. He confessed, as if he were ashamed of it, that he could read, and was handed the paper. “Is there a Granny Ben here?”
“She’s sick, but I’ll tell her,” someone called.
So it went on. Lenina handed out messages to those who could read, and read them out to those who could not. More people hurried into the square, hearing there was news. Shortly there was a fair throng of people, all in great good humor, all telling one another the latest news from Holand.
Then Clennen called out: “Now I’m putting my hat on the ground here. If you want a song of us, too, do us the favor of filling it with silver.” The scarlet hat spun neatly onto the cobblestones and waited, looking empty and expectant. Clennen waited, too, with rather the same look. And after a second the red-faced Coran, grateful for his message, tossed a silver coin into it. Another followed, and another. Lenina, watching expertly, muttered to Brid that it looked like good takings.
After that the performance began in earnest. Moril did not have much time even for vague thinking. Though he did not do much of the singing, his job was to play treble to the low sweet notes of his father’s big cwidder, and he was kept fairly busy. His fingers grew hot and tingly, and he leaned over and blew on them to cool them as he played. Clennen, as he had promised the crowd, gave them old favorites and new favorites—ballads, love songs, and comic songs—and some songs that were entirely new. Several of these were his own. Clennen was a great maker of songs. Brid and Dagner joined him for some of them, or played panhorn, drum, and third cwidder, and Lenina played stolidly on the hand organ. She played well—since Clennen had taught her—but always rather mechanically, as if her mind were elsewhere. And Moril fingered away busily, his left hand sliding up and down the long, inlaid arm of his cwidder, his right thrumming on the strings until his fingertips glowed.
Every so often Clennen would pause and send a cheerfully reproachful look toward his hat. This usually caused a hand to come out from the crowd and drop a small, shamed coin in with the others. Then Clennen would beam round at everyone and go on again. When the hat was more than half full, he said: “Now I think the time has come for some of the songs out of our past. As you may know, the history of Dalemark is full of fine singers, but, to my mind, there have never been two to compare with the Adon and Osfameron. Neither has ever been equaled. But Osfameron was an ancestor of mine. I happen to be descended from him in a direct line, father to son. And it was said of Osfameron that he could charm the rocks from the mountains, the dead from their sleep, and the gold from men’s purses.” Here a slight raising of Clennen’s sandy eyebrows in the direction of the hat called forth an apologetic penny and a ripple of laughter from everyone. “So, ladies and gentlemen,” said Clennen, “I shall now sing four songs by Osfameron.”