Drowned Ammet

“But I might not be heard,” said Mitt. “No – I’d have to get myself taken. Then when Harchad comes to ask questions, I tell him the Free Holanders set me on to do it. But how can we get hold of some of that gun stuff?”

“We’ll get some,” said Milda. “We’ll think of a way. But you’ll have to do it before you’re old enough to hang. I couldn’t bear to think of you taken and hanged!” She was so excited that she went out and spent the rest of her wages on fruit and sweets to celebrate.

Mitt looked at the bundles of toffee apples as dourly as Siriol. He sighed. He saw he would have to put off throwing any kind of bomb until he had earned enough money to rent another farm for Milda. She would certainly starve if he was arrested and she left to manage all by herself. He thought he might have to wait until he was at least as old as Dideo.

It did not happen that way. A week later Mitt came home from selling fish, smelly, slimy and pinched with cold. He wanted only to go to bed. But to his annoyance, his mother was entertaining a visitor. The visitor was a square, sober-looking man, with an air that reminded Mitt vaguely of something – or someone – else. He was wearing much more respectable clothes than most people wore on the waterfront, and to Mitt’s further annoyance, Milda had squandered her money this week on a bottle of Canderack wine for this visitor. Mitt stood in the doorway glowering at him.

“Oh, Mitt!” Milda said happily. She was looking very pretty, and the dimple was back in her face. “You remember Canden?” Mitt did remember Canden – too well. He was still having nightmares about him after the Festival. He had to hold hard to the doorpost when he heard the name. Milda, quite unaware how Mitt was feeling, said, “Well, this is Canden’s brother, Hobin, all the way from Waywold. My son, Mitt, Hobin.”

The visitor smiled and came forwards, holding out a square, useful-looking hand. Mitt shuddered, clenched his teeth, and put out his own fishy hand. “I’m all covered with fish,” he said, hoping the visitor would not like to touch him.

But the warm, square hand seized his and shook it. “Oh, I know what it’s like to come in dirty from work,” Hobin said. “I’m a gunsmith myself, and sometimes I think I’ll never get the black off. You go and wash and don’t mind me.”

Mitt smiled shakenly. He realised Canden’s brother was a very nice man. But that did not alter the fact that he had a nightmare for a brother. Mitt went over to the bucket in the corner to wash, hoping that Hobin would go back to Waywold at once and never be seen in Holand again.

That hope went almost immediately. “Yes, I’ve got a tidy little house, up in Flate Street,” he heard Hobin telling Milda. “Workshop below, plenty of room to live upstairs. Earl Hadd’s done me proud.”

Mitt realised that Hobin had come to live in Holand. He was so dismayed that he called out, “And who did Earl Hadd turn out of there, in order to do you proud?”

“Oh, Mitt!” said Milda. “You mustn’t mind him,” she told Hobin. “He’s a real free soul, Mitt is.”

Mitt was furious. She had no right to tell a stranger private things like that. “Yes,” he said. “Bit poor and common for you here, aren’t we?” And, to make sure that Hobin would not want to visit them again, he wandered round the room swearing as hard as he could. He could tell that worried Hobin. He kept giving Mitt sober, concerned looks. It worried Milda too. She apologised for Mitt repeatedly, which made Mitt angrier than ever. When Hobin at last put out his hand to say goodbye, Mitt turned his back and pretended not to see it.

“You didn’t have to be like that, Mitt!” Milda said reproachfully when Hobin had gone. “Didn’t you understand? He’s a gunsmith! And you can see he was fond of Canden. If I can only get him to join the Free Holanders, then we can have that bomb – or a gun would be better. You could shoot Hadd from this very window, then!”

Mitt only grunted. He knew he would rather take a gun off a soldier in the open street than get one from Canden’s brother.

To Mitt’s acute misery, Hobin called again, repeatedly. It took months of visits before Mitt could forget Hobin had a brother who fell to pieces in his nightmares. When he did, he found he quite liked Hobin. Meanwhile, Hobin was firmly but kindly resisting all Milda’s persuasions to become a freedom fighter. He agreed that the Earls made life needlessly hard. He agreed that things were bad in Holand. He grumbled at taxes like everyone else. But he did not hold with freedom fighting, he said. He called Canden – sadly and a little severely – a boy who played with fire, and when Milda talked eagerly of injustices, he smiled and said it depended on her circumstances. After a while he took to scolding her kindly for buying him wine she could not afford.

Ham grew increasingly gloomy over that winter. Mitt could not understand why, until the spring, when Flower of Holand was gliding out on the tide one morning.

Siriol said, “Your ma going to marry that Hobin?”

“No!” Mitt said indignantly.

“Good for the cause when she does,” Siriol said.

Ham sighed. “Good for her too,” he said nobly. “Hobin’s a good man.”

Mitt was furious. And when Siriol and Ham proved right, it made another grudge he bore them. Milda did marry Hobin. And all through the wedding Mitt was muttering to himself that he would get Siriol and Ham for this if it was the last thing he did. Probably will be too, he thought. Since last Festival, he had been living as if there was nothing to look forward to, beyond the moment he somehow planted a bomb under Earl Hadd. The only good thing he could see in this wedding was that he would be living in reach of a store of gunpowder.

Milda and Mitt moved into the upper part of the house in Flate Street, some way west of the waterfront. It was a good house, though small and peeling. It even had a yard with a mangle in it, and a target on its dingy brick wall where, to Mitt’s interest, Hobin tested the guns he made. Mitt had his own room for the first time for years, and though he was far too proud to admit it, very lonely he was in it too. Milda gave up her sewing and bustled round their four upstairs rooms, singing and laughing, and the crease of worry seemed to have left her face for good. It saddened Mitt. He had only been able to send that crease away from time to time, yet Hobin had banished it for ever. Hobin offered to send Mitt to school, but Mitt preferred to go on working. The Free Holanders would not find much use for a boy who was tied up at lessons all day. And besides, Mitt felt that freedom fighting was almost the only tie left between himself and Milda.

It was then that Hobin showed a surprising strictness. “You’re a fool, Mitt,” he said. “You’ve got a brain and you ought to learn to use it, not waste your time talking freedom with a bunch of boatmen who don’t know what the word means. You’ll wish you’d done otherwise when you grow to be a man.”

This kind of argument is always irritating. Mitt twisted about and did not answer. He wanted to say he was not going to grow up – he was going to kill Hadd instead – but with Hobin’s sober blue eyes fixed on him, he did not like to.

“Well, if you must work,” said Hobin, “you can do one job and one only. You can learn my trade from me, or Siriol’s from him, or you can sell fish if you want. But you do no more than one.”

Mitt passionately wanted to go on selling fish. He enjoyed shouting out rude things about Hadd even more than he loved fooling Harchad’s soldiers. Fishing – well, he was glad of any excuse to stop doing that. On the other hand, he knew that he would have far more chance of getting his hands on some gunpowder if he was Hobin’s apprentice. He shifted about, kept his eyes on the floor, and finally swallowed his annoyance enough to say grudgingly, “I’ll learn your trade, then.”

“You did quite right, Mitt,” Milda said, and hugged him delightedly. That consoled Mitt somewhat.

But it was unexpectedly awkward when Hobin went with Mitt to Siriol’s house to explain to Siriol and buy out the remainder of Mitt’s apprenticeship. Alda threw both arms round Mitt and gave him an arris-scented kiss on both cheeks. Slow tears trickled down Lydda’s face. “I shall miss you on the stall, Mitt,” she said. Mitt was prepared for this. But what he had not been prepared for was the look of disappointment and resignation on Siriol’s face.

“I should have thought of this,” Siriol said, and he got out the arris bottle and poured everyone a glass, by which Mitt knew that this was a special occasion. “Yes, I should have thought,” Siriol said when they were all sitting stiffly round the table. “You got right on your side, Hobin, and Mitt’s worth a better trade than fishing. But it’s not easy for me – having no son of my own.”

Hobin looked uncomfortable. Lydda and Alda cried. Mitt sat squirming on his stool. “It made me feel all slimy, sort of,” he told Milda afterwards. “As if I was covered in fish juice. And I can’t abide the taste of arris.”

Siriol fetched the crumpled paper that Milda had signed on Mitt’s behalf nearly two years back. At first he refused to take any money for it. Hobin insisted. Everything got more and more awkward, until Ham was called in to witness the bargain. Ham clapped Hobin on the shoulder, and wrung Mitt’s hand until Mitt wondered if he would have the use of it again, and was generally so cheerful and so pleased for Mitt that all the awkwardness vanished. Everyone had another glass of arris – Mitt poured his secretly into Alda’s glass – and then he and Hobin came away.

“But I feel bad, I do, really,” Mitt told Milda. “As if I owe it them to tell them we need the gunpowder.”

“Well, why don’t you tell them?” Milda said. “Dideo knows how to make a bomb. It wouldn’t do any harm to get them to help.”

“You mean, bring the Free Holanders into it, really?” Mitt said. It seemed a very good idea.

Unfortunately Hobin came in at that moment and caught the words Free Holanders. Again he showed surprising strictness. “I’m not having freedom-fighting talk in this house,” he said. “Silly cloak-and-dagger stuff! And don’t get the idea I’m scared of Harchad either. He knows I can go back to Waywold if I want. What gets me is the way those boatmen don’t grow up. It’s like a game to them, just like it was to Canden. Nobody’s playing that silly game in my house!”

Mitt and Milda could only continue their talk in utmost secrecy, either in snatched moments or when Hobin was out at the Gunsmiths’ Guild. The upshot of their planning was that Mitt lied himself blue in the face to Hobin and managed to attend the next meeting of the Free Holanders. There he laid before them his suggestion: that he steal enough gunpowder for a bomb and plant it under Hadd when he next carried Old Ammet down to the harbour to drown.

The suggestion made a startled hush. Ham broke it by saying reproachfully, “It wasn’t because of the gunpowder I was glad for you, Mitt. I hope you don’t think that.”

“Funny. I made sure you was expecting it,” said Mitt, who could seldom resist teasing Ham.

“Now, Mitt—” Ham began.

“Hush,” said Siriol. “Learn to take a joke, Ham. Mitt, that’s a risk. Horrible risk. You’d get taken.”

This was fighting talk from Siriol. He was really considering the idea. Highly delighted, Mitt made haste to assure Siriol that he had no intention of being taken. “Suppose I was dressed up in red and yellow, like the Palace boys. They’d not know who I was until it was too late. I can run.”

“I know you can run,” said Siriol. “Your ma never agrees, does she?”

“Ask her,” said Mitt. “Only not when Hobin’s there. She can sew the clothes if we can get her the stuff.”

Siriol pondered, long and deep.

“Mitt looks just like any other lad I ever saw,” Dideo said persuasively. “Half the time I don’t recognise him myself. And I would love to get making a bomb.” Indeed, all the other Free Holanders were loving the thought too. They leant forwards, murmuring eagerly across the night-light.

“Boom!” said someone. “Up goes Hadd. Lovely!”

“And all Holand rises to us!” said someone else. “He can do it, Siriol.”

“Quiet!” said Siriol. “I know he can do it. But he has to get away after. This is going to take careful planning.”

Mitt scampered home to Flate Street, wholly delighted. “We did it!” he whispered to Milda when she met him anxiously on the stairs. “We’re on!”

“And you’re not afraid at all?” Milda whispered, wonderingly.