Drowned Ammet

“Not a bit,” said Mitt. And it was true. He was looking forward to it. He felt dedicated.

The Free Holanders began to lay their plans, carefully and thoroughly as Siriol did everything. Mitt and Milda laid theirs. And all of them very soon realised that it would not be next Festival that Mitt planted his bomb. As Siriol said, they would need to study the road the procession took, and the way the soldiers were placed, to find out where and when would be the safest time for Mitt. And he had to look into escape routes and possible hiding places for Mitt afterwards.

As Mitt had no intention of escaping, he never attended when Siriol talked of things like this. But after the first week he spent as Hobin’s apprentice, he knew that it would take him years, literally, to steal enough gunpowder to make Dideo a bomb. Hobin was only allowed enough gunpowder to test the guns he made. Harchad’s arms inspectors called once a week to make sure there was no more. Sometimes they made surprise visits, to make doubly sure. They would weigh the powders and count the guns, and, unless their seal was on everything, Hobin was not allowed to work. They were a great annoyance to Mitt, though Hobin did not seem bothered by them. He would joke with them, almost as if they were friends.

Gunpowder, Mitt discovered, was made of three things, which Hobin mixed, very carefully, himself. One was charcoal, which Mitt never bothered with. Dideo could get that easily. But the sulphur and the saltpetre were, as far as Mitt knew, impossible to get any other way than by stealing them. Mitt supposed they must be made somehow, but he never found out how. They were delivered in sealed bags by the inspectors and locked away by Hobin. It was months before Mitt was allowed even to touch any. He had to spend his time instead melting lead and casting boring little bullets in a string of small sausage-shaped moulds. And watching, watching.

Hobin himself was the other great drawback to Mitt’s plans. He was such a careful man, and so patient. Mitt suspected that even without inspectors, Hobin would have kept all his things under lock and key anyway. And he was much in demand. There was scarcely an hour when there was not someone else in the workshop besides Mitt and Hobin. Troopers and captains came, bringing guns which had problems. Other gunsmiths came, to consult Hobin on difficult technical matters. Mitt discovered that Hobin had invented a way of making a gun shoot true, by putting a spiral groove up the inside of the barrel. That was why the bullets Mitt so boringly cast were pointed, and not round like the shot Harl used when he shot birds on the Flate. Twice Hobin was actually summoned to Harchad to be consulted. By the time Mitt had graduated to carving butts and even weighing a little powder, he had grasped that Hobin was the best gunsmith in South Dalemark. Mitt was quite proud, and glad on his mother’s behalf. But it did mean he had chosen the very worst man to filch from. Hobin had a name for honesty. He was respected in the Guild. And for a long time Mitt dared not do anything but pretend he was honest too.

Hobin was truly anxious for Mitt to learn, and to become what he called “a decent citizen”. Mitt had to wear better clothes – which were certainly warmer in winter, but which he despised on principle. He had to wash when they came up from work. Once a week he was forced to wash all over in front of the fire, in spite of his conviction that washing took the strength out of you. And every evening Hobin produced a book. It was called A Reader for the Poor, and it bored Mitt to tears. “If you won’t go to school, you must learn at home,” Hobin said, and he made Mitt read a page aloud every night after supper.

Mitt’s only wonder was that he did not die of boredom in the first year. It seemed to him that he only came alive when he began to be able, at last, to take Dideo tiny packets of sulphur and saltpetre. Then it was even better than running errands for the Free Holanders. Mitt would lie to Hobin, as he told Milda, like a fishmonger’s scales, and slip off into the streets with his packet, knowing that if he was caught with it on him, there would be trouble indeed. It was a marvellous feeling of danger, and marvellous to know he was getting somewhere at last.

He did not get on very fast, either as a gunsmith or a thief. Hobin was a patient man, but he sometimes grew irritated with Mitt. Mitt’s mind was wholly on filching powders. He did not intend to be a gunsmith, so he attended to Hobin as little as he attended to the plans Siriol insisted on making about a hiding place for him after his bomb was thrown. Meanwhile, Milda had a baby, and another the year after. Mitt was rather astonished to find himself with two sisters long before he had a bomb. They were rather a nuisance. They would cry, and they would cut teeth, and they would take up Milda’s time when Mitt needed her. But they would not believe they were nuisances. Whenever Milda dumped a sister in Mitt’s arms, the baby would start to laugh and gurgle, as if Mitt liked her.

Mitt started to grow then. That astonished him too. He was used to being the smallest boy in the street. Now he was one of the bigger ones, with long, long, thin legs. The woman who had stolen the red and yellow cloth to make Mitt’s bomb-throwing clothes from had to steal more, and Milda put off making them until she was sure Mitt would not grow out of them.

“All to the good,” Siriol remarked. “If you keep on this way, you’ll have changed so after a year’s hiding that even Harchad’s spies won’t know you.”

The trouble was that Mitt needed a lot to eat, and Hobin became increasingly hard up. Hadd put the rents up again all over Holand. His guns had done very little good. Every other earl in South Dalemark had hastened to get guns too. Hadd was forced to bargain for peace, and bargains cost money. Hobin, Mitt was glad to see, grumbled just like everyone else. He led a petition from the Guild of Gunsmiths, asking to be allowed to raise the price of guns. Hadd refused.

“Now don’t you think there’s some use to freedom fighting?” Mitt asked him.

“It only makes things worse,” said Hobin.

“No, see,” Mitt said persuasively, “you could set all the earls fighting one another, then have an uprising, and the North would come and help us. They’d have to!”

“If the North did any such thing,” said Hobin, “you’d find the earls would stop fighting one another and start on the North. And you’d find yourself on their side, Mitt. You couldn’t help yourself. You’re born a Southerner. The North knows that better than you do. It’s history. It’ll take more than an uprising to make things better in Holand.”

“The trouble with you is you’re so patient!” Mitt said.

In spite of his patience, Hobin began to look a little worn by springtime. There were the babies and Mitt to feed. And Milda was still rushing out and “just happening to see” expensive things, though these days it was mostly furniture. Hobin began to talk seriously of moving back to Waywold.

“We can’t do that!” Mitt told Milda in a panic.

“I know. Not after I’ve trained you all these years,” said Milda. “But he’d stay if only Hadd was gone. Run and catch Siriol.” And she broke a whole bowl of eggs to give Mitt an excuse to go out.

Mitt was lucky enough to catch Siriol just as he was boarding Flower of Holand. Siriol stood on the quayside and thought so long that Mitt wondered whether to suggest he would miss the tide. “Ah,” said Siriol. “Well. You better do it this autumn then.”

“This autumn it is!” Mitt agreed, and the muscles at the back of his legs jumped with excitement. “And thank goodness! After three flaming years, I can’t wait much longer!”

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THERE WERE GREAT gales that spring. The sea broke the dykes in two places, and even in the harbour, boats blew this way and that and masts snapped. Siriol could not put to sea for a fortnight, and few people in Holand went out much because the wind in the street filled your face with sand and salt until you could barely see. Mitt was kept very busy. The old Earl of the South Dales died, and all the Earls of the South began to gather in Holand to invest the new Earl, as the custom was. People asked one another whether Hadd would manage to quarrel with them all or only half of them. Mitt thought Hadd must be determined to. Hobin was busy making and mending guns day and night. The Palace must have bristled with them. Mitt got little chance to look at any earls. He saw one windswept fine person, who looked as if he would very much rather have been indoors, but no one could tell Mitt if he was an earl or not.

“Down with him, anyway!” Mitt muttered, and hurried back indoors.