She finished the refrain, stopped, and opened her eyes. “You left off singing,” she said.
“I don't think I'm fit to sing with you,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said, turning scarlet. “Besides, if you don't finish the song, I'll never find out what happened to the captain.”
“What do you think?” I said. “You're the mermaid, to sing your hearers overboard. No wonder you went into a dream at a few notes of music, there in the tavern last night. It's your element, the air you breathe. What could draw you away from it?”
She smiled at the memory. “I do go into the song and out of the world, don't I?”
“My brother was like that, too,” I said, “the younger one, Saeverth. Everywhere we traveled, he would pick up a different sort of flute, and by the next voyage he'd have mastered it. If only he could be here; to hear the two of you together would be the world's wonder!”
Hwyn, knowing that the brother I spoke of was dead, reached out shyly to put a hand over mine. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Still, he was not the only musician in your family. I have not heard a false or faltering note in all the song. Once we've learned to harmonize, I think we'll take the festival by storm. Finish the song, now, and begin again so I can join you.”
So I gathered my courage and my breath, closed my eyes, and sang the end of the tale. When I began again, I was struck with how much of the song Hwyn had already learned on one hearing. By the time Trenara woke, she was beginning to test out counterpoints to the refrain, and I was beginning to like “The Captain and the Mermaid” better than I ever had at sea.
We paused to share last night's leavings of bread with Trenara, washed down with water from the skins Conor had given us, then hurried back to our singing, all thought of seeking new day-labor gone. Even when noon brought us back to the White Cat, we remained in the music, scrubbing floors to “The Captain and the Mermaid,” washing sheets to a sheep-shearing song Hwyn had taught me that morning, scouring pots to “The Drunken Sailor and the Wooden Lady.” The courtesans who'd been piqued by the thought of a Tarvon in their inn were greatly amused by the mermaid song and began requesting it over again. After the eleventh repetition, the innkeeper bawled, “Sing something else, for the gods' sakes!”
Hwyn considered, then began tossing out verses two by two about a white cat. At first I puzzled over whether I might have heard the song anywhere, but when the white cat had gobbled up a mermaid, thinking it just another fish, I realized that it was all a joke on the name of the inn that Hwyn was making up as she went along: a couplet, then a pause to think, then another couplet, hands busy all the while with the scrubbing brush. I can't remember the words now—it was a song of the moment only, never repeated—but I remember well the glint in her eye and the smile of complete abandon stretching across her angular face as each new couplet was born in her brain. The white cat climbed the Tree of the Moon and sharpened her claws on the moon. She could not get down until she fell with the nuts in autumn. At Aude's urging, she tired out all the tomcats in Sebrin. There was much more, some of it clever, some of it dreadful, but I had never before heard anyone spin verses out of nothing while polishing tankards; it was all I could do to keep my eyes on my job as I listened.
At the end of our third night at the White Cat, when Morvath again offered the same terms for the next day's work, Hwyn shook her head. “Penny and a half each. The festival's three nights away, and work will be plentiful. Besides, we've given you music as well as labor.”
“I didn't ask for the music,” the innkeeper said. “Only one kind of pleasure my customers come for. Same terms or nothing.”
“The providers of the other sort of pleasure seemed to be enjoying the music,” Hwyn said. “They won't be pleased when we go.”
“They'll forget,” Morvath predicted implacably.
“Fine,” said Hwyn. “We'll find better work than this. Trenara, Jereth, come.” We gathered up our things to go. As we reached the threshold, Hwyn said over her shoulder, “The White Cat song could be altered into a satire, you know.”
The next morning, after very little sleep, we were up with the birds to steal some time for singing together before setting out to look for more work.
“Do you know ‘The Female Cabin Boy’?” I said.
“Another seagoing song? No,” said Hwyn. But when I'd sung the first verse and refrain, she cried, “It's ‘The Lady Knight-at-Arms’!” She sang a verse to show me; the tune was the same, and the exploits of the disguised heroine seemed to run along parallel paths.
“All right,” I laughed. “You do know this one. Let me finish it the way I know it, and then hear yours. We'll see which we want to use at the festival.” The question was not resolved before we had to break camp and enter the walls of Sebrin to seek work inside.
Following the plan Hwyn and I had discussed, I led the way to the massive gate, chanting a simple prayer to the Rising God as I went. Hwyn followed with bowed head, carrying our packs, my cloak over her head like a hood, Trenara at her arm.
A sentry at the door, dressed in the purple livery of the Count of Sebrin, demanded our business.
“These two penitents and I have been on a long pilgrimage,” I said. “Can we find any harbor in this town?”
The sentry peered suspiciously at Hwyn and Trenara, but found the two women busy attending to a couple of the beggars who lingered near the gate. Hwyn gave each of them one of the twelve farthings she'd earned in three days' toil at the White Cat. The sentry noted this with a grunt and said, “They're not worth your pity, good sister. But let's see. The Tarvon Monastery will welcome you, of course, good brother. It's a little way down the East Way, near the Lane of the Potters: you can't miss it. These pious ladies will have to see whether the Order of St. Rignid by the northern gate can put them up, or lodge at an inn. They'll all be full by festival-time, so hurry.”
“Thank you, good sir. I should escort these women first. By the north gate, you said?”
“Yes, in the weavers' district,” said the sentry. “Good day.”
“May the Rising God bless your vigil,” I said, and we passed through the gate, holding our breaths and our air of piety until we were well away from him.
Sebrin looked unremarkable, a town like many others I had known: whitewashed timber houses of two and three stories with thatched roofs and kitchen-gardens, some boasting little cherry-orchards bloody with ripening fruit and alive with bees. A few women and children bent over the kitchen-gardens in nothing but their shifts, sleeves rolled up to their elbows, feet bare, prepared for what promised to be a hot day.
Yesterday's table-leavings seemed a distant memory, and we eyed the fallen cherries hungrily, but even these were already claimed: hogs scavenged under the trees, or dogs guarded the orchards. When we reached a corner onto a side lane, the houses were smaller and shabbier, the garden-plots narrower, the children in them skinnier. There was no fruit on the ground, for the children had eaten it all.
We moved toward the center of the city, stopping at the odd shop to ask if any day-labor were wanted. A tailor, plying her trade under the sign of the shears, said frostily that she had use for apprentices, not day-laborers. Nonetheless, shaking her head at Hwyn's incomplete garment, she called us back when we had almost shut the door. “I have an extra bit of woolen, not enough for much, but it might make a sleeve for you, little one. Can you attach it yourself?”
“I can,” I said, then made bold to add, “if I have thread.”
She gave us a little skein of thread and a scrap of woolen cloth unevenly dyed red, then swept us out the door as though she might regret her generosity. I folded it all together carefully and stashed it in my pack for later.
“It's red,” Hwyn said admiringly. “This dress was blue once, but the color's all weathered out. Well, it's not a job, but it's something.”
“I'll piece it together later,” I said. “Shall we try another shop, or an inn?”
In the end, we settled for more inn-labor, at scarcel
y better wages than Morvath had paid us. The innkeepers were sadly unimpressed with my languages, for few foreigners came to Swevnalond in the shadow of the Troubles. However, one was piqued when Hwyn walked in singing her satire of the White Cat—the beds were its furballs, the beer was its urine, the food was the mice it caught. Harwel, the proprietor of the Golden Chain, offered us six farthings a day to work, amuse the guests, and mock the competition, agreeing to let Trenara spoil the inn's elderly cat in the kitchen while we worked, so long as she stayed out of the way.
The Golden Chain harbored no obvious courtesans, but a number of mice kept apartments deep in its foundations, venturing out at times to sample the fare. We sounded off to set them scurrying, refilling sleeping-pallets to “The Mowing of the Hay,” polishing the decorative shields that hung round the public room to “The Battle of Hamford,” scrubbing floors to “The Long Gray Tides.” The other drudges would laugh at us as we faltered through a song for the first time, making me all the more flustered and prone to mistakes in both the song and the task at hand. But as we went on, I become more used to both the laughter and the work, more able to become caught up in the song while my hands worked without me. Once, as I swept out the kitchen hearth, I was startled out of the song we were singing by the applause of the cook and scullion. I looked up to see Hwyn juggling onions from the pile she'd been set to chopping, the motions of her hands keeping perfect time with the song.
This time, as the supper-guests trickled in, the innkeeper urged us to keep up the flood of song as we moved among the tables with trenchers of roast fowl and pitchers of honey-colored beer. Hwyn managed it well enough; but I soon lost the thread of the song, my attention caught up in shuttling from table to table, remembering who wanted five courses and who just wanted beer, avoiding the outstretched feet, knapsacks, and dogs that thrust out treacherously into my path. She was the better part of the duet, anyway; I overheard an old man look up from his beer to sigh, “Gods, she must have traded her face to a sorcerer for that voice. And it may have been worth it.”
“Enjoy it while you can,” said his companion. “It may be the best you get all holiday. All the clever folk go south, these days.”
“Small wonder,” said another. “There's war in Brunfells, insurrection in Branwith, and all sorts of madness—stirred up by ghosts, they say. The whole North is moontouched.”
“More than that,” said the second man. “The very land is going mad. They say in Lastweard, it was summer all year.”
“I'd like summer all year,” said the first man. “Here, it's cold too long.”
“You don't know what you're wishing for,” the second man said. “The streams dried up; the grain parched; the apples rotted on the tree; the flies and ants and crawling things teemed beyond all imagining. I heard this from a man that fled. The town is empty now—as all the North will be empty before long, if things don't change.”
They were not the only ones speaking of the Troubles. As I dished out the first of five courses, mushroom soup, to a couple of merchants in a table half hidden by a painted screen, I heard one of them say, “I heard that in Branwith, the mob rules now; the royal family all butchered, the prince's head on a pike at the city gate. He was no more gentle with his foes while he lived— but all the same, it's a shocking thing to hear of, the fall of a household honored since the time of the High King.”
It was none of my business, but after six years copying chronicles in the monastery, I could not resist saying, “The High King is a myth. There was never one king over all Swevnalond.”
“What do you mean, a myth?” said the merchant, a wiry, sharp-faced man with an aquiline nose and gray hair. “Everyone knows the High King fought the Kettran invasion.”
“The Chronicle of St. Hiugod dates from the time of the invasion, and has been copied and continued faithfully ever since,” I said. “If there had been a High King, St. Hiugod would surely have mentioned him. He did not. It was then as now, a king or count or lord for every petty town in Swevnalond, all fighting each other when they weren't fighting the Kettrans. The High King was a tale spread by the House of Larioneth to rally opposition to the Kettrans under their own banner.”
The hawk-nosed merchant gave me a skeptical look. His companion, whose face had been hidden from me, turned toward me then to exclaim, “You again!” It was Turl of Ectirion, the same merchant who'd bent my ear in the last inn. “Jereth of the White Cat. What are you doing here?”
“I swear I'm not following you,” I said. “The pay's better here.”
“So's the food,” grunted Turl. Turning to one of the skinny boys who sat beside him, he said, “See, Torrin, this man once thought joining the Tarvon Order was a good plan, and now he'd rather scrub inn floors than go back.”
The boy to whom these remarks seemed directed, a sallow-faced, black-haired lad of twelve or thirteen, evaded his father's gaze, solemn black eyes wandering off at an angle to stare at nothing, unable to resist but refusing to acquiesce with even a glance. That little trick of the eyes sent a shudder of recognition through me. Had I looked like that eighteen years ago? “Well,” I said, “each man must find his own calling—or his own name, as St. Tarvi said.” At these words, the boy's scorched-black eyes fixed on me till I thought they might burn a hole in me. The smaller boy, meanwhile, stared intently into his soup, as if it were the only thing in the room not likely to resent his attention.
“A man's name must be found with those that named him,” Turl said. “He's my boy. I named him.”
I said in the Old Tongue, “We think we name our children, but the gods have been there before us.” Neither father nor son showed any sign of comprehension. “Excuse me, sirs,” I added in Swevnian, “I hear the cook calling me to fetch the next course.”
When I returned to the half-curtained table with fish baked in cabbage leaves, the dark-eyed boy blurted out, “Was that the Old Tongue?”
“Don't speak till you're spoken to, Torrin,” chided Turl.
“Yes, lad: Golden Age dialect, just before the Kettran invasion,” I said.
“How many languages do you know?” Turl said, as curious as his son.
I set down the last plate of fish to count on my fingers. “Aside from Swevnian, six, counting High and Demotic Magyan separately.”
“Why would you want to know demotic?” said Turl. “Isn't that the jargon of the filthy mob?”
“Yes, but even the cleanest-fingered Magyans will use it among themselves before your face to deceive you if they think you don't know it,” I said.
“When were you in Magya?” said Turl.
“Many times,” I said. “I was born halfway there.”
The boy who'd been staring into his dish, looked up, hazel eyes round as soup bowls. “What, on the mountaintop? Or in the sea?”
“Tadric!” his father warned.
But I laughed. “In the sea, of course—with a ship's hull under me.” With that I had to scurry off to fetch a drink for one of the locals.
When time came to bring the merchants the main course of roasted quail, I noticed the dark-eyed boy, Torrin, staring fixedly at me as I set each dish down. Don't speak till spoken to, I thought. “Young sir,” I said, “why do you stare? Do you require anything else?”
He turned red. “No, I—I wanted to know what you were saying. In the Old Tongue. I haven't had very much schooling.”
“It was a saying of St. Elfrith of Larioneth: We think we name our children, but the gods have been there before us.”
“But what does that mean, really?” the boy persisted.
Gods, I thought, he's a Tarvon from the cradle: always another question, another meaning to be found. “If you find the answer, tell it to me,” I said, avoiding his father's eyes as I rushed away to refill the tankards of the locals by the door for what seemed the hundredth time. When I returned with the fourth and fifth courses, cheese and seed-cake, Turl was in deep discussion of the price of brocaded indigo silk, and posed me no more questions. Dark-eyed Torrin
gave me about half a smile, furtive as a prisoner's knock on the wall.
At the frayed end of the night, Hwyn and I took our six farthings each and our table-leavings—better this time than at the White Cat. Hwyn particularly pursued the sweet seed-cakes, pocketing the smallest fragments, even from the floor, as though they were gold for the taking. Then we collected Trenara and crept off to sleep in the temple courts, three among dozens of paupers and transients in the one part of the city where we could not be turned away.
I woke to the sound of the Dawn Chant to the Rising God, for though this was a lunar temple, consecrated to the Turning God and the Hidden Goddess, every priest must at least nod to all the Four Great Ones who surround the world. My old order had been devoted to the Rising or Upright God, and the song emanating from the temple was a familiar touchstone among so many unfamiliar things. Almost without realizing it I began singing with the unseen priests—and though the chant was a prayer for the blessings of wakefulness, to join my soft voice to the chorus was almost to lose myself in a dream that nothing had changed, that I would rise from this unaccustomed bed to prayers in the temple, bread and water in the refectory, and a long day's work in the scriptorium, copying the Chronicle of St. Hiugod.
Then Hwyn's voice softly joined mine, like a stream of bright water cutting through the languid heat of the morning. I faltered and almost lost the thread of the melody, but then found the fit of it, my deep voice moving under her high one like the shadow under a bird in flight. Trenara opened her eyes and watched us solemnly. Around us, our fellow paupers were waking.
“What do they think—” one blustered.
“Shh,” hissed his companion. “Listen.”
Caught up in the lift and swoop of the melody, when the singing in the temple ceased, I continued through the longer version I'd learned in the monastery. Hwyn did not follow, and the strangers around us began chattering and bustling about their business. Hwyn, nonetheless, listened in silence, her good eye fixed on me. When I had finished, she said, “That was beautiful. I didn't know there were so many verses. Will you teach them to me?”
The Eye of Night Page 6
