Drowned Ammet Read online

  Mitt thought about the new motion of Wind’s Road. It felt much more as if she were in a current to him, which suited him perfectly. In which case they were not where that flaming amateur at the tiller thought they were.

  “Where does the current begin?” Hildy demanded.

  “That’s the trouble,” Ynen admitted. “It may be Hoe Point, or it may not be till Little Flate. I’m not sure.”

  Mitt cast his eyes to the elegant ceiling. The current began off Hoe Point, and Hoe Point came after Little Flate. I thought everyone knew that, he thought. Anyway, what’s the fuss about? You can go right out to sea and get out of it again.

  But Wind’s Road was simply a pleasure boat. Ynen had never been out of sight of land in her. And he had always had sailors with him before who knew the coast. “I think perhaps you’d better fetch me the chart,” he said to Hildy. “It’s in the rack over the port bunk.”

  “I think I’d better, too,” said Hildy, and she set off.

  Whoops! thought Mitt, as he heard her coming. The time had come for him to act. He snatched up Hobin’s gun and cocked it as he scrambled off the bunk. Then he grabbed open the door and whirled through it, just as Hildy was trying to come in.

  They collided heavily. Hildy was slightly taller than Mitt and weighed a great deal more. But Mitt was moving twice as fast. Hildy crashed over backward with a shriek. Mitt was thrown against the cabin. The gun went off with a bark and a jerk and all but kicked itself out of Mitt’s hand. It was like being hit over the wrist with a hammer. The shot, in a spatter of splinters, plowed across the deck and into the sea. The well filled with sharp-smelling smoke.

  “Ye gods!” wailed Hildy. She thought her back was broken.

  Mitt choked for breath against the cabin door and peered resentfully through the smoke at the gun. He thought Hobin might have warned him that it kicked like that. Then, as the smoke cleared, he saw Ynen in front of him, hanging on to the tiller and the rope from the mainsail, very white in the face, and staring at the long splintered groove in Wind’s Road’s beautiful planking. A right ninny, Mitt thought. Cares more about his boat being damaged than he does about his brother—sister, I mean. Hildy was painfully up on one elbow, glaring at Mitt. Mitt looked at both of them with the utmost contempt. They both had such a smooth look, with their skin well filled and their hair thick and dark and healthy. He could see neither had gone hungry in their lives. What aroused his dislike most—though he did not realize it—was that Hildy and Ynen both inherited their looks from their father. Mitt looked at Ynen and saw a gentle version of Hadd’s nose and at Hildy and saw the narrow, pale face of both Navis and Harchad, and though he did not recognize either, he detested them both on sight. And since his opinion of females was low, anyway, he encountered Hildy’s glare and thought: She makes me sick—worse than her brother!

  It was not surprising that they felt much the same about Mitt. They stared at Mitt’s young-old face and his lank, dull-colored hair. They saw his bony hand was gripping a gun that looked like a collector’s piece, that his pea jacket was ragged, and that green mud was peeling from his long, skinny legs. They knew he must be riffraff from the waterfront. They suspected he was a thief, too. They thought he was disgusting.

  “Well, we know what the soldiers were after. And where all the mud came from,” said Hildy.

  “Are you badly hurt?” Ynen asked her. He felt very helpless. He dared not let go of the tiller to help Hildy, nor did he dare turn straight round and head back to Holand, much as he wanted to, for fear this disgusting stowaway loosed off with his gun again.

  “No. I’m all right,” said Hildy, and struggled to her feet. “He missed me, of course.”

  “I was not aiming to hit you,” Mitt said with great scorn. “You ran into me like a whole herd of cows. You want to look out. This is a hasty kind of gun.”

  “I like that!” said Hildy.

  “If it’s that hasty, why don’t you put it away?” Ynen suggested.

  Mitt ignored him. He looked up at the sail and the streaming flag at the masthead. It was a fair wind for the North, all right. The land was low blue hummocks to his right. It took Mitt only one glance to spot Hoe Point nearly a mile astern. The hump Ynen had taken for Hoe Point was Canderack Head. Mitt was impressed. It was still an hour off sundown, too. He could not help grinning.

  “Well, well,” he said. “A good fast boat you got here. All set for the North, aren’t we?”

  Ynen’s face went rather whiter as he grasped what the stowaway might be planning. “We’re not going to take you North,” he said. “If that’s what’s in your mind.”

  “Not got much choice, have you?” said Mitt. He pretended to rub the gun on his sleeve. He did not really rub it, because he was very much afraid it would go off again. “I’ve got this gun, haven’t I?”

  “You can shoot me if you want,” said Ynen. “But I’m not taking you North.” He wondered if it would hurt very much and thought that it probably would. He could only hope he would die quickly.

  “Ynen, don’t be an idiot!” said Hildy.

  “He thinks I wouldn’t dare,” said Mitt. “Well, I would. Because I happen to be a desperate man.” That sounded good. And it had the advantage of being true. Mitt began to enjoy himself. “If you won’t take me North,” he said, “I wouldn’t kill you. I’d just put a bullet in your leg. Maybe both legs.” He was pleased to see Hildy glaring at him. “Then in her,” he said. “And then it would be rather a pleasure to knock this boat about a bit—scrape off the pretty paint, carve silly pictures in the decking, and so on.”

  As Mitt had hoped it would, this threat truly upset Ynen. “You dare touch my boat, you guttersnipe!”

  “He doesn’t know any better,” said Hildy.

  “I thought that would worry you,” Mitt said in high glee. “All you’ve got to do to stop me is carry on as you are. Just keep sailing North.”

  Ynen and Hildy exchanged a miserable look. They seemed to have gone from perfect happiness to a nightmare in a matter of seconds. Hildy wondered what had possessed her to lead Ynen into this. She had known there were revolutionaries at large. They should have stayed in the Palace. Ynen was thinking mostly of that current and how he could persuade the boy that Wind’s Road simply could not take him all the way North.

  “Look here,” Ynen said, trying to sound fair and reasonable. “We can’t go North. We have to be back in Holand tonight or people will worry. What do you say to our landing you somewhere on the way back? How about—” Ynen looked over at the land and could not help feeling extremely uneasy about the shape of it. “Hoe Point?” he said doubtfully.

  Mitt gave what he hoped was an evil laugh. “Go on! You couldn’t get back to Holand tonight even if you went this second! You’re in a nice fast northerly current, and in this wind you’ll be lucky if you make it back by morning. Hoe Point is where that current starts, and that’s Hoe Point back there, you flaming amateur! Look at your chart if you don’t believe me.” He saw he had demoralized them. Ynen’s face was warm pink, and he was staring at Hildy as if the end of the world had come. Mitt was so pleased that he added, “I was sailing out of Holand before you were born.” That was a mistake. Hildy gave him a jeering look. Mitt scowled at her. “Just sail North and don’t give me any trouble,” he said. “And you won’t have any trouble from me. I can’t say fairer than that, can I?”

  Hildy sighed to cover up her thoughts. Unpleasant as this boy was, he did bluster rather. To judge by Ynen’s face, he was right about the current, but that did not mean he had thought of everything. “I suppose we’d better humor him, Ynen,” she said. She stared hard at Ynen, slowly shutting her eyes and opening them, to show him that the boy would have to sleep sometime.

  Mitt knew that, too. Even a sweet boat like Wind’s Road would take three or four days to reach North Dalemark waters. No one could stay awake that long. Mitt was tired to death already. He felt his only course was to keep these children thoroughly intimidated by being as rough and danger
ous and brutal as he could. He seemed to have made a fairly good start. So, while Ynen was nodding gravely at Hildy to show her he understood, Mitt roared out, “Right, then. Now that’s settled, go and get out your eatables. I’m starving. Hurry up!”

  Hildy gave him a poisonous look. But it was fully suppertime, and she was hungry herself. She got up and dragged one of the sacks of pies out of the locker. Ynen took a careful breath, hoping it was not his last, and said, “I’d rather you didn’t speak to my sister like that.”

  “What’s she done to deserve any better?” Mitt said nastily. “You watch it.” He was annoyed to see the two of them exchanging a look which was anything but intimidated. “Come on. What’s in that sack?”

  He was relieved to see it was pies. He had been wondering how he could eat and still keep hold of Hobin’s gun. He was afraid that if he let go of it for a moment, he would find himself being pushed overboard. But he could eat a pie with one hand.

  The pies were scarcely as tempting as they had been. Gravy had run and juice had leaked, and then mingled and soaked back into other pastry. But Mitt was not in a state to care. He had not properly eaten anything since breakfast. He intended to go on with the intimidation by eating with great gobbling noises and huge slurpings, but as soon as he had a pie in his hand, he forgot everything but how hungry he was. He only thought of eating. He was hardly able to attend to the splendid, unusual tastes, he was so frantic for food. He ate five steak pies, a pheasant patty, six oyster puffs, a chicken flan, four cheesecakes, and nine fruit tarts. He thought, as he drew at last to a gentle halt, that his gluttony had served to intimidate the children almost as well as making noises. They were staring, looking thoroughly chastened. Mitt managed, with no effort at all, to produce a monstrous belch, to make sure they knew exactly how rough and foul he was.

  In fact, Ynen and Hildy were simply awed. They had not known it was possible to be so hungry.

  That explains those thin legs, Hildy thought, looking at them. The sun was melting down into the sea, in a buttery haze. By its strong yellow light, Hildy saw that most of the mud had flaked off the boy’s legs, showing him to be wearing odd old-fashioned breeches, with one leg red and the other yellow. The sight gave Hildy such a jolt that she burst out, “I know who you are! You threw that bomb Father kicked away!”

  12

  Mitt looked from Hildy to Ynen. He saw the likeness now. His huge meal had left him slow and almost unbearably sleepy. His first thought was that it was funny. Hadd ruined him. Navis spoiled all his plans. And now these were Navis’s children who were willy-nilly rescuing him. He chuckled. “Now that’s what I call justice,” he said. “Navis is your pa then?”

  Hildy stuck her chin up and did her best to overawe Mitt. “Yes,” she said haughtily. “And I’ll have you know that I am betrothed to Lithar, Lord of the Holy Islands.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Ynen said uncomfortably. “You sound just like the cousins.”

  Hildy had been imitating her cousin Irana boasting of her betrothal. She was annoyed with Ynen for noticing. She turned her back on him and looked hopefully at Mitt, hoping she had upset him by it at least.

  Mitt laughed. “Betrothed!” People got betrothed at Lydda’s age, when they were eighteen and grown-up. Hildy was only a little girl in pigtails. “Bit young for that, aren’t you?” Then the implications struck him. He was quite as alarmed as Hildy could have hoped, but he kept on laughing. He dared not let them see he was upset. This girl was important, all right. He remembered Milda telling him about Lithar. That made certain that ships would pursue them from Holand, and more ships would be out to meet them from the Holy Islands. Mitt knew he was going to have to make them take this boat right out into the ocean. It was going to take days, and even then he might be caught. Just to think of it made him feel tired. “Well, it’s your business,” he said. “Doesn’t worry me.” He stood up. “I’m off for a visit to that silly bucket in the cupboard. The one with roses on. No tricks while I’m gone now.”

  Ynen’s face was pink in the yellow light. “They aren’t roses. They’re poppies,” he said.

  “Roses,” said Mitt. “And with a golden rim, too. Amazing the way your kind has to have things pretty!” He went into the cabin.

  Ynen shouted after him, “Your kind built this boat!” Then, as soon as Mitt was at the end of the cabin, he whispered to Hildy, “What are we going to do?”

  Now that Mitt had laughed at Hildy for being betrothed, she was determined to get the better of him. “I’ve got an idea,” she whispered, “to make him go to sleep.”

  “Then we’ll turn round,” Ynen agreed. “What idea?”

  “What are you whispering about?” Mitt yelled.

  They dared not whisper anymore. Ynen looked at the long splintered groove in Wind’s Road’s planking and shivered. It was getting hard to see now. The sun had swum down below the horizon, leaving a yellow sky spread with straight black clouds. The sea was a melting, lighter yellow, as if the light had soaked into it. Hildy’s face was dark. “We’re saying we ought to have a light at the masthead,” he called. “It’s the law.”

  “Haven’t you noticed?” Mitt bawled. “I got nothing to do with the law.”

  “Unlike you, we were brought up to be lawful,” Hildy called. “Can I light the lamp in the cabin at least?”

  Mitt came out of the cupboard and fumbled his way through the cabin. It was certainly getting dark. He felt sour and grim, and he ached all over. The red and yellow breeches would not do up properly after his great meal. He came out of the cabin and flopped down on the lockers. “Please yourself,” he said. He was horribly weary.

  Hildy smiled slightly and went into the cabin, where she was some time fiddling about before the lamp came on, as yellow as the sky outside. Then she moved on to the fat little water barrel, which was clamped to a special shelf above the stove. She undid the clamps and shook it. The barrel was completely full, so full that it did not even slosh. It took all Hildy’s strength to shake it convincingly, but she had been prepared for that, because it was always kept full. No one dared let Hadd’s family go thirsty.

  “Oh dear!” Hildy said. She was surprised how convincing she sounded. “There’s no water in this at all! I’m horribly thirsty, too.” This was true, but she thought she could bear it in a good cause.

  As soon as she said this, Mitt realized that one of the many things wrong with him was an appalling thirst. It was all those highly spiced pies he had eaten. The thought of going without water for all the time it took to get North nearly made him burst into tears. Ynen was almost equally dismayed. His mouth suddenly seemed quite dry, and he had a moment when he would have liked to report those negligent sailors to Uncle Harchad. He licked his sandpapery lips and said, “They sometimes keep wine in the lockers over the starboard bunk. Have a look, Hildy, for Old Ammet’s sake!”

  Hildy turned round to hide a triumphant smile and fetched the two bottles she had already found there. One was a half-full bottle of wine. The other was a square bottle of arris. It had been full before Hildy had poured a generous dollop of it into the wine. One way or another, she thought she had done for this wretched boy.

  “Which will you have?” she said, showing Mitt the bottles in the twilight.

  Mitt knew the rough, foul drink was arris. But he hated it too much. “I’ll have the wine,” he said, and he snatched the bottle from Hildy, feeling he could make up on roughness and foulness that way, and took a long, guggling swig from it before Hildy could get him a cup from the cabin. He intended to drink the lot. But it tasted rather unpleasant. He passed Hildy back the bottle, a good deal less than a quarter full.

  Hildy distastefully wiped the neck of the bottle and shared the rest into two cups for herself and Ynen. They sipped it and settled down to wait, while twilight grew into night.

  Shortly, Ynen began to feel cheerful and Hildy slightly dizzy. As for Mitt, the wine, on top of his weariness, on top of his huge meal, had the inevitable effect. The low black humps of
land kept spreading under his eyes like inkblots. The stars came out and looked fuzzy. His head kept dropping forward. At length he stood up unsteadily.

  “Going to have a lie-down,” he said. “No stunny fuff, now. Got ears in the back of my head.” He staggered off into the cabin, while Hildy and Ynen each stuffed a fist into their mouths in order not to scream with laughter, and flopped heavily down on the port bunk.

  Hildy nudged Ynen meaningly and sat down with her back against the lockers, where she could see into the cabin. They waited for Mitt to fall asleep. But, with the best will in the world to do so, Mitt could not go to sleep. The movements of Wind’s Road and the movements the wine had set up in his head seemed to be in direct conflict. Sometimes he was convinced the boat had got into a whirlpool. Sometimes he was sure his legs were high above his head. He sat up several times to see what was going on. And each time the elegant gilded cabin was exactly as it should be, gently rising and falling, and the lamp swinging. At length he realized the queer things only happened when he had his eyes shut. So he kept them open.

  The result was a set of horrible, half-waking dreams. Mitt stared at Harchad’s face in a gilded porthole, paralyzed with terror. He ran endlessly from soldiers. He struggled through innumerable dikes. Several times he was shot in the stomach. Once he threw his bomb in front of Hadd, and Poor Old Ammet bent down, put out his straw arms, and threw the bomb in Mitt’s face. “You’re in really bad trouble,” he said, and he sounded just like Hobin. Then he fell to pieces like Canden. Mitt sat up with a yell of horror. After this, when he lay down again, things got a little quieter, until it was Libby Beer’s turn. She ran at Mitt, with her fruity eyes wobbling on stalks, and kicked the bomb at him. “I brought you up to do this, Mitt,” she said reproachfully. Then the bomb exploded, and Mitt started up with a scream.

  Hildy and Ynen wished he would stop yelling and go to sleep. They wanted to turn round and sail home. The yells perturbed them. The boy must be disgustingly sinful. And the sounds made them think of the things they had heard about Uncle Harchad, and that terrible day the Northmen had been hanged. Meanwhile, true night came on, and Ynen became frankly terrified. By this time he had been at the tiller longer than he had ever been in his life. He had never sailed at night before. He was cold and cramped and tired, and scared of shoals he could not see. What he could see scared him even more. It was not dark the way it was in a closed room. The sea was there, faintly, all round, heaving and swelling limitlessly. The sky was a huge empty bowl, dark blue, covered with a littering of stars, and the land was only a feeling, far away to the right. The sail noises, and the swish and fizz of waves passing, only seemed to show how small and lonely Wind’s Road was. Ynen suddenly became aware of fathoms and fathoms of empty water underneath them, too. He was hanging all alone in the middle of nowhere. Ynen clenched his teeth and kept the Northern Cross grimly over Wind’s Road’s bowsprit, and it was all he could do not to yell out the way the boy in the cabin kept doing.