The Bone Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

never laughed. It was generally agreed that he would be off one day, but for the moment he showed no sign of moving on.
    Cadvan’s black moods made the villagers wary of him, but they also earned him a curious respect. They treated him as one of their own afflicted, like Mad Truwy, who had to be avoided in his fits but otherwise was a good man. These moods happened every few weeks. In their grip, Cadvan didn’t leave his house for days on end. The first time he didn’t appear, it was thought he might have died in his sleep, and Taran, as his known friend, was sent in to check. He emerged quickly, and afterwards wouldn’t say what he had seen, aside from roughly telling the inquisitive to leave Cadvan alone. Several children, daring each other, climbed the apple tree next to his house and peeped through his bedroom window to see what he was doing. They all reported the same thing: he was lying in his bed like a dead man, staring at the ceiling.
    Cadvan emerged from these seclusions pale and haggard, and headed straight for the tavern. There he stood for hours in the corner, drinking mug after mug of the harsh apple spirit without showing any sign of drunkenness. The tavern keeper, Jonalan, said that in those moments he feared to speak to him: he looked like a man haunted by death. The next day he would be normal again.
    It would have been considered the height of bad manners to pry into Cadvan’s affairs when he clearly wished them to remain private, so the villagers were forced to shrewd guesses. It was clear that Cadvan was, or had been, a Bard, now fallen on hard times. The mean-minded thought that he had a Dark Past, and suggested that a terrible crime had exiled him from his kind; but general sympathy endowed him with Tragedy. Others, making the sign against evil, ventured that he was cursed. None of these guesses was so far from the truth, but the rumours gave him an unlikely glamour. Some of the local girls noted how handsome he was, and would greet him prettily in the road as he passed.
    Fortunately for his peace of mind, Cadvan was oblivious to this speculation: if he had known how keenly he was discussed, he would have been deeply embarrassed. But the village gossip moved on after a month or so. Five new gangs from Shodarin, six families in all, provided plenty of new material; and then the talk died away altogether in the flare of a scandal that dominated the village all summer. It was discovered that Jorvil, whom everybody knew beat his wife, had been cheating his team, selling his coal for a higher price than he told his gangers and keeping the difference. He was lucky not to be murdered for it: such behaviour betrayed the core of the miners’ code of honour. The verbal bargains struck with a gang leader were considered sacred.
    Using his authority as a disinterested outsider, Cadvan arbitrated the dispute without bloodshed, hammering out a settlement that everyone (except Jorvil, who smarted under a sense of ill-usage) agreed was just. Cadvan privately considered that the most important part of his judgement was the condition which stipulated that if Jorvil hit his wife again, he would be run out of the village. Such violence was uncommon in Jouan, and the villagers considered it shameful and unmanly; but for all that, men were seldom punished for it, as it was considered a private matter. Perhaps, thought Cadvan, that might change. He hoped so. The previous week he had treated Jorvil’s wife for a broken nose and bruises, and the fear in her eyes had set a cold anger in his bones.
    By now, Cadvan the Bard in Exile was old news. He was an unremarkable, if slightly odd, part of the village landscape. His days were undemanding, but surprisingly full: like everyone else, he grew much of the food he ate, and there was the cobbling, and villagers routinely came to him for healing. He flatly refused payment for the healing, and so was often paid, anonymously, in kind. One memorable morning he woke up to find a