Free Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

listen for him, on the way North. And Mother goes and drives straight off to Markind! How could she!”
    â€œShut up, Brid,” said Dagner uncomfortably.
    â€œI shan’t! I can’t!” cried Brid. “How could she! How could she! Ganner’s so stupid. How could she!”
    â€œWill you be quiet!” said Dagner. “You don’t understand.”
    â€œYes, I do !” Brid cried. “Ganner and Mother arranged to have Father murdered—that’s what happened!”
    â€œDon’t talk such blinking nonsense!” Kialan said sharply. “That had nothing to do with either of them.”
    â€œHow do you know?” Brid wept. “Why did she go straight off to Ganner like that?”
    â€œBecause 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.”
    â€œNot very well,” Brid admitted, sniffing. “I was only three when we left.”
    â€œWell I do,” said Dagner. “And Father would leave, though he knew Mother didn’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.”
    â€œFather didn’t order her around!” Brid protested. “He even offered to take her back to Ganner.”
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œThat was just his way,” said Brid.
    â€œIt 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.
    â€œNot in the way we were,” said Dagner.
    â€œIn 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.
    â€œSomething Mother said once,” said Dagner. “And Father told you there was power in it, didn’t