Mitt clutched the stone bench even harder. It was the perfect opportunity. All he had to do was walk over, pick the thing up, and stuff it down the front of his jacket. Noreth would rejoice. And with the school swarming with people, if somebody did notice the cup was gone and raise a shout, how were they to know which of the crowd had taken it? If Mitt took it and went now, through the valley and up to the green road, he could be gone before anyone could do anything. So why was he sitting here like an idiot, clinging to a stone seat until his fingers hurt?
Because it was stealing. Because he had made that promise to Alk. Because he had spoken words to Old Ammet and to Libby Beer – who had been around yesterday and today, perhaps to remind Mitt of those words. Mitt grinned, a bent, unfunny smile. Funny the way it was never enough to swear and promise just the once. You seemed to have to rethink and repromise every time the subject came up. Mitt’s smile narrowed away. This time he would be stealing from the One, and even sane, level Alk was cautious with the One. On the other hand, Noreth was the One’s own daughter, and the One wanted her to have the cup. And now, after Hildy and Kialan had mixed Mitt’s mind up, he felt like doing something bad. It would be a waste not to, really.
Mitt unclenched his fists from the bench and stood up. He listened. All the voices and footsteps he could hear were off in the distance. What he could see of the gravel court through the doorway was empty. So. Get it over with.
Mitt took three long strides to the altar. There he flinched and froze. He could have sworn a shadow, like an old man with a long nose, had swung through the room as he took the third step. As if someone had flitted across the doorway. But he stood and he waited and he listened and no feet crunched on the gravel outside. The new view he had of the court from here was empty. He stretched out a cautious hand and grasped the cup round its wide, uneven stem.
The domed room filled with crackling blue light.
Mitt leapt back. One arm was over his face and watering eyes. The other hand was fizzing, prickling and stinging, and he shook it frantically. The light was gone by then. Mitt blinked away tears and dazzle, panting. No wonder no one bothered to guard this cup. The thing looked after itself. He looked round nervously, hoping that no one had been near enough to see the One’s chapel suddenly fill with light.
Somebody must have been. There were shouts outside, loud and desperate, from somebody young.
MAEWEN HAD HAD enough of Hildy by then. Navis was being far too patient with her. “Now look, my dear,” he was saying, as they wandered through the garden by the gate, “it really is vital that you come away with us today. If you remain here, you’re playing into Earl Keril’s hands. He’s using you as a hostage for my behaviour – not to speak of Mitt’s.”
“Let’s not speak of Mitt,” said Hildy.
“All right, we’ll speak of you, then,” Navis agreed. “Everyone else goes away from here today, isn’t that right? Surely you would prefer not to be left all alone in this place all summer.”
The fierce little frown grew between Hildy’s brows. “Why are you bothering now? I was alone here for nearly two weeks at Spring Recess – at least, Biffa was here too, but it was nearly alone – and I didn’t mind.”
“Things have changed since then,” Navis said patiently.
“What things?” said Hildy.
“Politics. I know now that you were sent to this place as part of a plan,” Navis explained. “The plans I’ve made to counter the earls’ move could make it very dangerous for you. Keril knows you are here. He has only to take you away. Anyway, the only safe thing for you to do is to be with me for the next three months. I—”
“Three months!” Hildy interrupted. “But then I’d miss Harvest grittling and modes and the start of middle vokes— No!”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid you would,” Navis admitted. “But you’d be alive. You’d not be in prison. You can always come back next year, if things go our way.”
“If! Next year! Miss a whole year!” It was clear Hildy could not believe her ears. “Just for politics! No way!” She meant this so much that she actually made an effort to explain. “Father, you’re asking me to go back to junior vocation studies, just for politics.”
Navis looked exasperated and, for him, surprisingly helpless. His eyes flicked to Maewen. Maewen realised she must be some of his difficulty. She supposed it was because Navis had told Hildy she was someone called Ilona Something and Navis was not sure he dared explain who she really was – or who Navis thought she was. Oh, what a muddle! Maewen was sick of this. It was with enormous relief that she saw Biffa coming towering through the garden towards them. Maewen rushed to meet her.
“There you are!” Biffa said. “I hunted everywhere. Then I thought she’d decided to show you the One’s chapel and I came this way. Have you been there?”
“Not yet,” Maewen said. “Which way is it?”
But Biffa was gazing over Maewen’s head. “What’s wrong with Hildy? She looks near on in one of her rages.”
Maewen looked back at Navis and Hildy, bent towards one another arguing, against a great bush of lavender full of bees. She saw the anger in Hildy’s white face and the worry in Biffa’s healthy pink one, and she wondered how Hildy had managed to be friends with such a nice girl. “Navis wants to take her away with him,” she explained, “and she won’t go.”
“Why ever not?” said Biffa. “She’s been right gloomy all this week, saying she’ll be alone all summer here – you wouldn’t believe!”
Maewen could believe. “Then go and persuade her. Navis is worried to death,” she said. “Which way is the One’s chapel?”
“Over there,” Biffa said, pointing. “You’ll just have time before grittling.” She strode over to the lavender bush to loom anxiously over Hildy.
Maewen sighed as she trudged off the way Biffa pointed. She knew Biffa would persuade Hildy. She supposed it was a good thing, if Hildy was in danger. But the idea depressed her too much for her to bother to work out what the danger might be. There would be Hildy all the way to Kernsburgh, frowning angrily and pretending Mitt did not exist. And Mitt would have that look all the time, with that horrible jokey smile grafted on top of it. It hardly bore thinking of.
Chalk up another black mark to this Keril, she thought, as she came through the bushes and saw the One’s chapel across a gravel court. It was just as she had remembered it. But she had not remembered it here. The buildings must all have been in different places after two hundred years. I wonder why she didn’t show us it, Maewen thought. No, I know why. It’s not something she can call a silly name and mystify us with. Or maybe she’d call it Wunners.
The thought amused Maewen enough to give her the courage to advance slowly and quietly towards the small, domed building. She was not happy with the idea of stealing this cup. But she did think she ought to do something for herself. And of course she was in the fortunate position of knowing that she had done it. Just rush in, snatch it and out, she told herself as she advanced cautiously, slantwise to the door.
A funny blue flash made her jump round. The gravel crunched under quick footsteps. Maewen swung round further, almost in time. Someone muffled in a grey robe grabbed at her with one hand and raised a knife in the other.
“No, not again! Help!” Maewen screamed.
She went on screaming because this time he had not grabbed her throat. It was so much like last time that she was sure it was the same man. He had her arm instead of her throat, and he was trying to twist it so that she would hold still for him to bring down the knife into her neck. In spite of the way it hurt, Maewen seized the wrist of his knife hand with her free hand and frantically held it away. She could see his face over her head. It seemed to be made of grey cloth, except for his glaring eyes. The sight turned her weak. She could only push at his wrist and keep screaming, “Help! I’m being killed!”
Gravel scrunched and spurted, stinging her face. Someone said, “Flaming Ammet!” and then, “Drop that, you hooded horror, you!” Mitt’s u
nmistakable large bony hand closed over the first that was trying to stab Maewen. Everyone swayed, and grunted, and slid, in a shrill jangling of gravel. Then the attacker wrenched his hand, and his knife, free and ran, with Mitt after him like a greyhound. Maewen was left standing in a patter of small stones, still shouting.
“Oh, save me, Mitt!”
She heard herself say it, as the madly running grey man plunged into the bushes and trees of the garden and Mitt hurtled after him. She stood staring, feeling a total fool. Tears were running down her face, though she had no memory of when she had started crying. How – how totally … girly! “Oh, save me, Mitt!” she mimicked herself. Honestly!
She tried to walk to the chapel then, but her legs wobbled and refused to go, even though at the time they were carrying her round and round on the spot, like someone in a mad, giddy dance. She seemed to be trying to see all sides of the yard at once in case there were any more grey attackers. She made herself stop that. She managed to stand still and wipe her eyes, but that was all she could manage before Mitt came hurtling back with Navis running beside him. Both of them looked so anxious that tears came leaking down Maewen’s face again.
“Bastard got away in the bushes!” Mitt said disgustedly.
“What are you doing on your own here?” Navis demanded.
Maewen swallowed. “Cup,” she managed, but that was all.
“That’s easily solved,” said Navis. “Stay with her, Mitt.”
Before Mitt could say anything, Navis had crossed the gravel and briskly vanished into the chapel.
“Are you all right?” Mitt asked Maewen. He put both hands out uncertainly, with half a mind to take hold of her shoulders. But then he did not quite like to touch her. Maewen instantly found she was hurling herself against him. She pressed her face against his chest. Through the hard mail she could feel Mitt panting and his heart thumping. She was sure she was embarrassing him horribly, but this did not prevent her from wrapping her arms round him, tightly. One of Mitt’s arms came gingerly round her shoulders and he patted her back. “There, there. It’s all right.”
“Oh, Mitt, I’m so sorry!” Maewen blurted. “About me and about Hildy – about everything!”
“There, there,” Mitt repeated.
That was all they had time for before Navis trod briskly out of the chapel again, carrying something bundled in a large handkerchief. “Quite simple, you see,” he said.
Mitt stood back a bit, with a damp spreading patch on his jacket where Maewen’s face had been. “Simple?” he said. “It’s got a hex on it sizzles off like a thunderbolt when you touch it!”
“This being the North, I considered that,” said Navis, “and I didn’t touch it. Look.” He opened the silk handkerchief a fraction to show the cup nestled in it. Then he calmly stowed the bundle in one of his wide pockets. “We’d best take ourselves off to the great court,” he said as he made sure this pocket was arranged not to bulge more than the one on the other side of his coat. “We must attend a closing ceremony, it seems.”
They went there slowly. Maewen was still shaking, and her legs were not steady. Navis courteously put his hand under her elbow to help her along. Mitt avoided touching her. Maewen kept seeing him rubbing at the wet patch her face had made on his chest. She could hardly look at him for embarrassment.
“You persuaded Hildy to come along?” Mitt asked, rather too casually, giving his chest a further rub.
“Not yet,” said Navis.
Mitt’s face went tight and bony, like a skull. “She’s got to.”
“I know,” said Navis. “I’m hoping that extremely large friend of hers can make her see reason. In that hope I explained the whole situation to both of them.”
“Biffa?” said Mitt. “Is that safe?”
“I trusted her,” said Navis. “And this you won’t believe! The girl’s real name is Enblith!”
“After Enblith the Fair!” In spite of his skull-face of worry, Mitt began to giggle.
“Unkind, isn’t it?” Navis said. “Her parents made a serious miscalculation there. Not that she’s unbeautiful, poor girl. Just too big for one to see it.”
Maewen wondered how anyone could be so cool with the stolen cup in his pocket. Mitt tried to match Navis in coolness. He said, “I found out where Ynen is. It seems like bad news, but it could just be good – very good.”
“Later. Hush,” said Navis.
They came round a corner in a covered walk and found themselves at the top of wide steps overlooking the biggest courtyard. People were crowded on the steps below them, serious, parently people, all looking across to the main school building, where a line of grey-coated teachers stood. One stood out in front in a blue and grey gown. In front of them the courtyard was filled with rows and rows of uniformed pupils in bright white collars.
They had missed quite a bit of the ceremony. The gowned teacher was saying, in a voice that carried almost as well as Hestefan’s, “For those who now go out into the world, this is a solemn leave-taking. For those who will return here next Harvest, it is a temporary parting, accompanied, I hope, by new resolves and higher endeavours. I would like you all seriously to consider …”
Maewen let the strong voice fade to a drone in her ears. I don’t believe it! she thought. Headmasters must have made this speech ever since schools were invented!
Something scuffled behind. She and Mitt both jumped round. But it was only Moril, tiptoeing towards them. He looked white and worried. Mitt, at the sight of him, self-consciously rubbed at his chest again. “What’s up?”
“The cup!” Moril whispered back. “I went to get it and it wasn’t there!”
“Never fear,” Navis murmured. “The sacrilege has been committed already.”
“Is that why you all look so worried? Why don’t we just go, then?” Moril said.
People on the steps turned round and said, “Hush!” Navis put a finger to his lips. Maewen pulled herself together enough to take hold of Moril’s arm and tow him back round the corner.
“We have to leave with everyone else or they’ll know exactly who’s got it,” she whispered.
Moril was no fool. She saw him realise this as she was telling him. “Sorry,” he said. “But I told Mitt I’d get it. He—”
“It wasn’t Mitt. It was Navis.”
This obviously astonished Moril. Well, it astonished Maewen too, now she came to think of it. Navis was an adult and a sensible person. If he thought it was necessary to take the cup, this somehow made the whole matter more serious.
When they came back round the corner, the headmaster was saying, “We will now sing our customary prayer to the One, who is the special guardian of our school. What comes after that is something my staff and I know nothing about.”
For some reason almost everyone laughed. Then the grey rows of pupils broke into song. It was a solemn and simple invocation to the One and like nothing Maewen had heard before. Mitt was as startled as she was. The song was beautiful. The strange old tune swelled and mounted, warm and chilling at the same time, and full of reverence. While it lasted, something seemed to fill the vast courtyard that was not of this world. Maewen’s back prickled. Navis has done an awful thing! she thought. But Navis never turned a hair.
Moril listened critically. “I never care for those old tunes,” he said. “What’s going— Oh, I remember.”
The headmaster and the other teachers had vanished from the front of the building as if the ground had swallowed them up, and the ranks of grey-uniformed pupils were suddenly seething. Nearly every one of them was pulling over his or her head a coloured hood of some kind, and most were putting on clumsy gloves too. Quite a number of the hoods were grey, or grey with a blue or orange tuft on top. As soon as Maewen saw them, she understood how her attacker had managed to be so thoroughly disguised. He must have raided a cloakroom. The hoods covered faces except for the eyes. Sober pupils had now become blob-faced monsters, with formless grey, green, or red heads. The sight upset her.
There was confused shouting, muffled and strange, from under the hoods. It sounded like “Bad on” and “Herry’s gone”.
After a second Kialan came sauntering down the steps at one side, trying, from the look of him, not to look as silly and sheepish as he felt, and stopped slightly to one side of the milling monsters.
“They always ask the most important visitor to start it,” Moril explained.
“Eye, eye, eye,” came the muffled shouts. “Owe it eye.”
Kialan nodded. Someone on the steps tossed him a great brown ragged ball. Kialan took it in one hand, bent over sideways with it, and heaved it high into the sky. He probably intended it to come down somewhere in the middle of the crowd, but either the thing was weighted oddly or Kialan miscalculated his throw. The ball came down again almost where he was standing. Kialan saw it come and simply ran for his life.
“Nor don’t I blame him!” Mitt said.
The whole crowd of monsters closed on the spot, fighting like maniacs. Many fought with fists and feet. But weapons appeared too, which must have been hidden under the sober uniforms. There were clubs, whips and sticks, and at least one person was wielding a short plank. It looked as if someone would be maimed or trampled to death any second.
After a stunned minute Navis said, “This, I take it, is grittling?”
“That’s right,” said Moril.
“How comforting to know,” Navis said, “that the South is, after all, a comparatively peaceful place. And here was I thinking that all the bloodshed happened south of the passes.”
“Yes, but what are the rules?” Mitt wanted to know.
The rest of the spectators were shouting, “Up the reds!” and “Yellow, yellow, yellow!” as if they knew what was going on. Moril was not very sure, but he thought each of the colours was a team, and the aim was for one team to get the ball into its own special place round the edge of the big court. There were lots of places. There seemed to be at least seven teams. The fight rushed this way and that.
The Crown of Dalemark (UK) Page 17
