Drowned Ammet Read online

  Better make it easier for them, Mitt thought, sighing. And he went back into the crowd.

  Out in the open space, the procession had re-formed and was straggling toward the water’s edge. Hadd behaved as if nothing had happened at all. As soon as Mitt vanished among the soldiers, he went on walking as if the whole thing were not worth thinking about. Hildy could not help admiring him. That was how an earl should behave! Hadd’s behavior was so dominating that Hildy and everybody else were soon watching the procession going up and down the quays, drumming and droning and skirling, as if Mitt had never existed.

  Mitt was in the crowd just beneath Hildy’s window. He found he was still wearing one red and one yellow sleeve. They were a nuisance, so he took them off and threw them on the ground. He seemed to have lost his cap. He stood there in his threadbare undershirt, hoping the soldiers would recognize him by his two-colored breeches. But he was surrounded by tall citizens and nobody saw him. Above the noise of the procession he could hear the boots of the soldiers hammering away up the narrow street.

  Right fools, some people are! Mitt thought. Better make myself obvious.

  He squirmed his way along the painted wall of the house until he came to its front door. It had six steps up to it, for fear of flooding, as did most houses in Holand. People were crowded on the steps, staring out toward the harbor. Mitt climbed up and squeezed in among them. He was easy enough to see, had anybody been looking his way. But everyone was watching the Festival.

  The procession had formed into a line along the jetty, with Hadd and Navis in the center. The heads on poles were lowered. Garlands were taken off. Everyone waved these downward, pretending to beat the water. In fact, the water was too far below to reach, but the Festival went back to the days when Holand harbor was just a low ring of rocks and none of it had been altered since. The same old words were said:

  “To tide swimming and water welling, go now and come back sevenfold. Over the sea they went, on the wind’s road. Go now and come back sevenfold. For harbor’s hold and land’s growing, go now and come back sevenfold.”

  This was repeated three times by everyone in the procession. It was a growling, ragged chorus. Yet, by the third repetition, Hildy’s arms were up in goose pimples from sheer awe—she did not know why. Mitt’s eyes pricked, as they always did, and he was annoyed at himself for being so impressed by a load of out-of-date nonsense. Then the musicians gave vent to a long groaning chord. Hadd raised Poor Old Ammet above his head, ready to throw him in the harbor.

  A little star sparkle of flame blossomed for a second on one of the ships tied up at the side of the harbor. Hadd jerked, half turned, and slid quietly to the ground. It looked at first as if he had suddenly decided to lay Poor Old Ammet carefully at Navis’s feet. Then came a tiny, distant crack.

  Nobody understood for a moment. One of Hildy’s cousins laughed.

  After that there was a long, groaning uproar. Mitt’s voice was in it. “Flaming Ammet! I been diddled!” The fat woman beside him was saying, over and over again, “Oh, what bad luck! What terrible bad luck!” Mitt had no idea whether she meant bad luck to Hadd or to Holand. The ladylike girls overhead somewhere were screaming. Mitt leaned his head against their painted front door and cursed. All he could think of was that the unknown marksman had cheated him. “Half my life, and now it’s wasted!” he said. “Wasted. Gone!”

  Overhead the cousins hung on to Hildy and to one another, whimpering and crying. Hildy found herself saying, “Ye gods, ye gods, ye gods!”

  A soldier in the room behind shouted, “He’s in that boat—Proud Ammet! Run, you, and we’ll get him!”

  “They mustn’t leave! We’re not safe!” screamed Harilla.

  They had already left. The door behind Mitt burst open, and soldiers pelted out of it. Mitt leaped clear. But he had no chance to make himself obvious. Everyone on the steps was pushed off and toppled in all directions. The fat woman landed almost on top of Mitt and knocked him sprawling. By the time he had picked himself up, and then her, the soldiers had pelted off.

  “Shut up!” Hildy snapped at Harilla. She was trying to see what was happening on the waterfront. Navis was bending over Hadd, and the rest of the procession was crowding round. Soldiers were running. People from the crowd were surging forward to see. Uncle Harchad, keeping prudently among a crowd, was running, too. Hildy saw her father stand up and point to the boat where the shot had been fired, wave to the soldiers, and wave the crowd back. Then he stooped again, and stood up holding Poor Old Ammet. He turned this way and that with him, showing people what he was doing, and then threw him into the harbor with the traditional shout. Then he picked up Libby Beer and slung her after.

  Hildy felt a mixture of pride and horrible embarrassment. She could see her father was trying to assure the citizens of Holand that this did not mean unmitigated bad luck. But it was doubtful if anybody noticed. People were surging about. Numbers were leaving. Soldiers were running out to Proud Ammet along the curving harbor wall. There were screams and shouts which drowned Navis’s voice. Nevertheless, the rest of the procession followed his lead. In a ragged, unconvinced way, garlands began to loop out from the quay and fall on the water. By this time Uncle Harchad had reached the waterfront. Hildy watched him and Navis kneel down beside her grandfather, with red and yellow garlands sailing around them, until the harbor seemed full of bobbing fruit and wet flowers, and wondered what they were feeling. She could see Hadd was dead, but she seemed to have no feelings about that at all.

  8

  The fat woman was very grateful to Mitt. She clung to him, and he had to help her to the street beyond the house. “You’re a sweet boy,” she kept saying. “Come on up to the stalls, and I’ll buy you something.”

  Mitt refused. He had to be where the soldiers were. It was the only thing left for him to do. Half his life’s work had fallen to someone else’s bullet. Hands to the North, curse them! he thought. He knew he would never get a chance to be revenged on Hadd now. But the other half remained. He had to get caught and get questioned and, with the utmost reluctance, let out that it was Siriol, Ham, and Dideo who set him on to plant the bomb. So, as soon as he had shaken off the fat woman, he went back to the waterfront.

  By the time he got there, the other murderer had very thoroughly stolen his thunder. Soldiers were shouting to people to get back and get home, while other soldiers tried to open a path for what was left of the procession, carrying Hadd’s body. More soldiers were in and out of the house where the screaming girls were. The place was full of groups of people hurrying purposefully this way and that, in uniform, in Festival dress, or in holiday best. The result was utter confusion. The only thing which did not seem to be happening, Mitt thought bitterly, was the revolution the Free Holanders had confidently expected once Hadd was dead.

  Mitt shrugged. For lack of any better plan, he did as he used to do three years back and joined a hurrying group of total strangers. With them, he was swept right across the waterfront to the other side of the harbor. And when we’re there, I bet we hurry all the way back again, he thought.

  He was right. An officer stopped them near the harbor wall. “Only authorized persons past this spot.”

  Mitt’s group obediently turned away. “Alham must have gone up Fishmarket then,” someone said, in a worried, busy voice, and they all set off again in the opposite direction.

  Mitt lagged and let them hurry away. He could see the masts of the smaller boats from here, sawing the sky as heavy soldiers jumped from one to another, hunting the murderer. Even the masts of the big ships were swaying sedately, so many were the soldiers searching them. A group of seamen who had been on the ships were being herded and prodded roughly along the harbor wall. They’ll catch him all right, Mitt thought resentfully.

  A new group of people surged up beside him. These were clearly important. They were officers in braid, well-nourished men in good cloth, with, in their midst, a tall, thin man with a pale jagged profile. The man’s clothes had a wonderful
sober richness. Mitt saw the sleek glint of velvet, and fur, and the flicker of jewels, worn where they did not show, because the man was too used to having them to bother with their value. Mitt knew that pale, jutting face, though he had never, to his knowledge, seen the fellow before. It had the same bad-tempered lines as Hadd’s. The nose was the one he had whirled his rattle under. The rest of the features were like the ones he had seen advancing on him behind Libby Beer to kick the bomb away. This could only be Harchad.

  Proper flinty flake off the old block, he is, Mitt thought, looking up at him with interest. Wearing six farms and ten years’ fishing on his back, and he don’t care!

  “Oh, stop bleating, man!” Harchad snapped at the man with the most braid. “Those seamen are to be questioned till we get something. I don’t care if you kill them all. And I want the brat who threw the bomb, too. He was obviously an accomplice. I want him brought to me when you find him.”

  Mitt’s stomach, for the first time in his life, gave a cold little jolt. He lowered his eyes from Harchad’s face and gently backed away. Wonder how he’d look if he knew I was right beside him, he thought. Accomplice, was I? O flaming Ammet! I think everything’s gone wrong. He tiptoed hurriedly sideways to join the nearest group of hurrying citizens.

  The man in braid shouted. “There he is now! That’s him!”

  “Who?”

  “The brat who threw that bomb.”

  Mitt had the merest glimpse of them all staring at him. Harchad’s face jutted out of the rest in a way that dried Mitt’s mouth, tongue and all, and almost wrung a scream out of him. It was as horrible as his nightmares about Canden. He turned and ran, mindlessly. His only idea was to make his legs go faster than their fastest. He had to get away from the gathering shouts behind him. He had to escape from that face. He shot across the waterfront, not knowing whether he hit people or avoided them as he ran. He dived into the nearest road and ran there for all he was worth. It filled with banging feet behind him. Mitt ran harder still, turned a corner and ran, and ran again, and went on running. The only thing in his mind was the shouting and ringing feet behind him, and he did not stop running until they had grown faint and died away.

  When his breath came back, he wandered wearily round a corner into the next street. He was deeply ashamed of himself. What had got into him? What had made him, the free soul, fearless Mitt, who had never turned a hair during all the errands he had run for the Free Holanders—what had possessed him—to panic at the mere sight of Harchad and run away? Mitt could not understand it. What had made everything go so wrong?

  “Here, love. Have hold of this and cheer up.”

  Mitt looked up to find himself in an airy, respectable street, quite some way above the waterfront. It was full of handsomely painted houses. Mitt dimly remembered the one just up the hill from him, with the double gable and the two stiff figures painted on it. The street was full of quiet, cheerful people in respectable holiday clothes, who were buying things at the stalls which lined the street. It did not seem as if a whisper of the events at the harbor had reached this far. All was peace and sober enjoyment.

  The person who had spoken to Mitt was a woman behind one of the stalls. She was leaning forward across rows of little Ammets and Libbys, holding a toffee apple out toward Mitt. She smiled when he looked, and waggled the apple invitingly on its stick. “Here. Take this for luck. Your face is as long as Flate Dike, my love.”

  Mitt did his best to grin. Running had filled his mouth with thick, bitter juice. He did not want a toffee apple. But he could see the woman meant to be kind. “Oh, no, thanks, lady. I just lost a lifetime’s work, see, and I’m off my food a bit.”

  “Well, then, you need an appetizer,” said the woman, and she tried to push the toffee apple into Mitt’s hand.

  Mitt found he really could not bear the thought of sticky toffee and sour apple, and he backed away. “No, thanks, lady. Honest. Much obliged.”

  “Please yourself,” she said. “But I’ve got to give you something now I’ve started, or it’s bad luck for both of us. Here.” She picked up one of the little images of Libby Beer from the line on the front of the stall and held her out to Mitt. “You can have her then. I’m just clearing up to go, anyway.” Mitt did not know if the woman really wanted luck or if she was simply trying to cheer him up, but he took the little image and tried to grin again. “And don’t try eating her. She’s made of wax,” said the woman. “The year’s luck to you.”

  “Luck to you, ship and shore,” Mitt said politely, just as he should. He wandered on down the street, clutching the knobby little figure and wondering what to do with it. Perhaps I could make Harchad a present of her, he thought.

  He was three stalls lower down when boots hammered on the flagway behind him. Six soldiers with an officer at their head swung round the corner the way Mitt had come and halted by the woman’s stall. “Hey, you. Anyone. Seen a boy in Festival breeches, no jacket, very skinny?”

  The sober respectable hum in the street died away completely. Nobody moved. Mitt froze, bending over the stall beside him, pretending to look at little Ammets. He tried to will himself to make a dash down the street and bring the soldiers after him. But there was no question of that, somehow. He could only wait for the woman who had given him Libby Beer to give him away.

  “Yes, indeed, I have seen him, sir,” she said. “Just this minute. I offered him a toffee apple, and he went away down the street.”

  The soldiers nodded and came on down the street.

  Mitt stood with a bright imitation Libby Beer in one hand and the other stretched out to touch the plaited corn of an Ammet and still could not move. He did not blame the woman. Other people had seen her talking to Mitt, and she dared not deny it. In the old days it used to make him amused and rather scornful, the way even respectable people like these went in dread of Harchad’s soldiers. It made him think he must be the only free soul in Holand. But now he did not seem to be a free soul any longer. He dared not move. He had to stand there till the soldiers saw him.

  The boots clomped by. Mitt could see and feel everyone’s eyes moving between him and the green uniforms. But nobody said a word. The boots clomped on to the end of the street and faded out of hearing. There was sighing and shifting all round. Someone behind Mitt, who must have blocked the soldiers’ view of him, said, “Go on, lad. Run while the going’s good.” Mitt did not see who said it, but he ran.

  Isn’t that Holand people all over! he thought as he ran back round the corner and plunged downhill toward the harbor again. Where they could be, they were kind. But you could never count on it. Yesterday this kindness had amused him. Now there did not seem to be anything left to laugh at. Tears trickled across Mitt’s cheeks as he ran, as he thought of all those years of planning gone to waste.

  I wonder if there’s something wrong deep inside of me, he thought. It don’t surprise me. He tried to wipe the tears off his face and found he was brushing it with something knobbly. He looked, and there was the little Libby Beer, made of wax cherries and rose hips and miniature apples, glistening with his tears. “Goh!” said Mitt, and stuffed her angrily in his scarlet pocket. Crying did no good. Next time he met any soldiers, there would be no mistake. He was going to get caught.

  He came down into the old town, through a street of peeling houses breathing the smell of the poor quarters out through their open front doors—the smell of too many people, dirt, damp plaster, and cheap food. All the children from the houses were playing in the road. There was hopscotch nearest, marbles a little way on, and then two of the running, shouting kind of games. And through the shrill yells, Mitt sensed more soldiers coming. The rhythm of their boots was in the very air.

  Mitt did not decide what to do. He moved without thinking, round the hopscotch to the game of marbles, and dropped down to squat in the ring of smaller boys. It was a trick he had often played three years back. Unless the boys were doing something very secret, they usually did not mind. But as he hurriedly wiped the tears off
his face with his wrist, Mitt was amazed at himself. Here, he thought. What am I doing?

  The rhythm of boots beat in the dirty pavement under him and a green block of soldiers swept round the corner. When they saw the children, the clump-clump of their boots slackened and became a slow puttering. They had broken step and were coming slowly down the street, looking very carefully indeed.

  The yelling and the games stopped. The children stood in awkward rows, staring. The small boys round Mitt were not really playing marbles anymore. They were waiting for the soldiers to pass. And Mitt crouched with them, in such terror that he could hardly see or feel. He had not known it was possible to be so frightened. He knew he stuck out like a sore thumb among these children. He was half as big again as any of them. His red leg blazed and his yellow leg shone. And he could not trust little kids like these not to give him away, either by accident or on purpose, for spoiling their games. At any moment a shrill voice might say, “That’s the one you want, mister.”

  As the soldiers puttered toward him, Mitt no longer had any doubt what he was doing. He was trying not to be caught. And as wave after wave of pure fear swept over him, he knew he was going to go on trying. By the time the soldiers were level with him, his terror was worse than the worst pain he had ever known. Mitt crouched down over his blazing legs, squeezing himself into himself to look as small as possible, and forced himself to put out a hand, take a marble, and roll it casually into the middle of the ring. He had to fight his terror every inch in order to move at all. He thought he could have rolled Siriol’s boat across the pavement more easily. The effort made him weak.

  As soon as the marble left his hand, he was sure he had done the wrong thing. The boy next to him shot him a nasty look. The puttering boots went slower, as if the movement had attracted their attention. Mitt almost lost his senses, he was so terrified. Time swam forward, sickeningly slow and blurred.