Drowned Ammet (14 page)

The boots puttered down past the hopscotch, stopped, and started again, in step this time.
Clump-clump-clump
, they went, away into faintness.

“Buzz off,” said the boy. “You spoiled my go.”

Mitt stumbled to his feet. He felt dizzy, and as cramped as if he had spent a winter night fishing. He had to limp down the street. None of the games started again. The children watched Mitt as they had watched the soldiers. Bad, that was bad. They would tell of him to someone. Mitt hoped they would not tell too soon because he felt far too tired to run. He felt like curling up in the nearest doorway and crying himself to sleep.

Get a hold of yourself! he thought angrily. You're on the run, that's all. People go on the run all the time in this place. I don't know how it keeps happening, but it's like I can't help myself from running. What's gone wrong with me? This was a question Mitt simply could not answer. He only knew that he had got up this morning, intending, as he had intended for the last four years, to finish Hadd and the Free Holanders at one stroke. And now he had failed to finish Hadd, his one idea seemed not to be caught.

Oh, now, wait a minute! Mitt stopped and pretended to loiter in a yard doorway. There were still the Free Holanders. If he was too scared to get himself caught, he could easily just go to Siriol's house, or Dideo's. Where Mitt went now, Harchad's spies would swiftly follow. It was just as good a way of getting the Free Holanders caught. But the reason Mitt stopped, leaning on the doorpost and gaping at nothing, was that he was not even tempted. “Not even tempted!” he repeated to himself. And it was true. It was nothing dramatic. Mitt could not tell himself he would rather die than go to Siriol's house—he knew he would do anything rather than die—but he was still not going there. Or to Dideo. “What do you think they are then? Friends?” Mitt asked himself derisively.

It seemed as if they were. He remembered the smile on Dideo's netted face when Mitt brought him the first little packet of saltpeter, and Siriol glowering at him over a rope's end but never hitting him more than just that once. And I reckon he ought to have done, Mitt thought. He ought to have knocked me through a Mitt-shaped hole in the side of
Flower of Holand
, over and over. He found himself smiling a little. Siriol always understood his jokes, and Ham scarcely ever did. Then there was Alda, puffing arris at everyone, and Lydda going to marry that sailor off
Lovely Libby
. I got to know them too well, Mitt thought.

It did no good to stand there, smiling and staring. Mitt walked on. He supposed his best plan was to use the escape arrangements Siriol had so carefully made for him.

“No!” Mitt exclaimed. It was not that he did not want to use them. He did. He would have given his ears to. But he could not remember a thing about them. Thinking he would not need to escape, he had attended to Siriol's plans probably even less than he had listened to Hobin telling him about guns. He had a vague idea there was a cart somewhere and a password. But that was absolutely all he knew. Of all the fools!

But what was he to
do
? He could not spend the rest of his life sneaking round the streets of Holand. If he looked for all the carts he could find, he would certainly be caught. The soldiers would think of that. He dared not go home. That would get Hobin and Milda arrested, too. The only thing he dared do was take to the Flate, like so many freedom fighters before him. But he knew a bit about that. You got hunted down there. And it was a miserable life unless you were lucky enough to have a gun and could shoot marsh birds for food. Mitt had no gun. He knew where guns were, though: locked up in Hobin's workshop. And he dared not go near there. Oh, it went round in circles.
Why
hadn't he attended to Siriol? Mitt knew why, really. He had simply not thought of anything beyond the moment when he was to plant that bomb. I must be flaming insane! Mitt said to himself.
Do
something, can't you!

He wanted to go home, that was what he wanted to do. And he dared not.

Or dared he? Hobin was out for the day. Milda was at Siriol's with the babies. If Mitt went there, spies would follow. But spies would probably go there, anyway, because Hobin had gunpowder. Suppose Mitt were to go there, take gun and ammunition, and make it look like a burglary? It would have to look like a burglary, anyway, because he would have to break locks and the seals of the inspectors to get anything. Hobin could not be blamed for being burgled. It would be a way of keeping suspicion from him. In fact, the more Mitt thought about it, the more it seemed his duty to go and burgle Hobin. Then do what? Go out in the Flate and try to get North, Mitt supposed.

It made a considerable difference to have a purpose again. Mitt felt far less tired. Flate Street was quite near. Mitt purposely doubled the distance to it. He wanted to be seen in as many places as possible, to confuse the spies. When he finally arrived behind the high greasy wall which cut the light off the back of the workshop, Mitt was fairly confident that any spy trying to trace him would not arrive until tomorrow. He thought two days was more likely. But he said tomorrow, because it never paid to underestimate Harchad's spies.

The wall made one side of an alley, with another sightless wall opposite. Mitt stood facing it, breathing deeply. He had to reckon on being seen going over the top of the wall. If he allowed time for whoever saw him to fetch help and break down the front door of the workshop—or fetch soldiers to do it—there should just be time to take what he wanted and then break the place up a bit. But it was only a very short time. Mitt knew it might be a close thing. He wished his knees would not tremble and his heart knock so. He was not
used
to being frightened like this.

9

“And I missed everything!” was Ynen's disgusted comment when at last Hildy arrived back at the Palace and he managed to find her.

The Palace was all doubts and hushed voices and indecision. Only one thing was certain: Hadd was dead, and Harl was now Earl of Holand. But when you had said that, you had said everything. Nobody knew if there was an uprising, or whether to take off the Festival clothes, or what would happen about the feast which had been prepared. Harl did nothing but sit in his room. He had not given one order. Harchad came and went and gave orders perpetually, but nothing seemed to come of them.

“Well, in that case there can't be an uprising,” Hildy said rather snappishly when Ynen told her what it had been like. “We didn't see anyone but soldiers all the way back.” She felt as if she wanted to be alone, but Ynen looked so lost that she stayed with him. They wandered stairs and corridors together, among people who had as little idea as they had what to do.

Ynen told Hildy some of the rumors about the murderer. He had been caught; he had not been found. He was a discontented seaman; he was a dangerous revolutionary and an agent for the North. He was a superb marksman; he was a fool who had fired a lucky shot; he had used a new secret weapon from the North. He had poisoned himself; he had jumped into the harbor and escaped. No one knew what the truth was. “Now tell me what it was
like,
by the harbor,” Ynen said.

“I don't know,” Hildy said, quite honestly. “Anyway, you know what it's like when Harilla has hysterics.” But she did try to describe what had happened. It was not Ynen's fault he had missed it.

“Did Father really do all that?” Ynen asked. “I didn't know he could move fast enough.” He added wistfully, “I
wish
I could have seen that boy twirl a rattle under Grandfather's nose.”

“It wasn't as funny as you think,” said Hildy. “It—it was queer. He didn't run away. I suppose he's caught by now.” Then she found she really did need to be alone and went to her room. But Ynen came with her, and she had not the heart to tell him to go away. He sat curled up on the window seat, while Hildy sat cross-legged in the middle of her big square bed.

Here Hildy tried for the hundredth time to sort out how she felt. It was a very shocking thing that her grandfather had been murdered. That she knew. And it was a shocking time to kill him. Everybody said it meant terrible bad luck. Hildy found she was still far more embarrassed than proud at the way her father had tried to save the day. It was the way nobody had noticed that made her so uncomfortable. But about the actual murder, she simply felt awed and respectful—and subdued all over, so that she moved gently and quietly and wanted to be alone. She could not manage to feel strongly about it. And this was odd, because she knew that somewhere, about something, she felt very strongly indeed. She was raging with feelings, but she did not know what
about
. It reminded her of the way she had felt when her father had told her she was engaged to Lithar.

Here Hildy sprang up. “Wait,” she said to Ynen when he sprang up, too. Ynen sat down with a sigh, and Hildy sped to her father's rooms.

She knocked at the heavy door. There was no answer. Hildy, a little hesitantly, turned the handle and went in. There was no one in the first room. She went on to the second.

Navis was sitting by the window, still in his Festival clothes. Perhaps he was trying to sort out how he felt, too. At any rate he was not reading the book he had in his hand. He was staring out into the Flate.

Hildy saw at a glance that he had gone back to being cold, idle, and proud. There was little chance of anybody making him do anything which was not absolutely necessary. Hildy ground her teeth with fury. How could he rise to the occasion at the waterfront and then sink from it like this? And if he was still mourning about her mother, Hildy had no sympathy for him whatsoever. He had been like this far too
long
!

“Father,” she said.

Navis jumped slightly. “Did I forget to lock my door?”

“I'll go away in a minute,” said Hildy. “Are you sorry Grandfather's dead?”

“Er,” said her father. “He was an old man.”

Hildy thought angrily that
that
was no way to speak. She wondered whether to flatter him by saying she thought he had behaved extremely well by the harbor. But it was beside the subject, it was not true, and she did not think it would rouse Navis, anyway. “I came to ask you,” she said, champing at the words because she was so angry, “if I need to marry Lithar now.”

“What's that got to do with the situation?” Navis asked.

“Grandfather arranged it,” Hildy said, trying to be patient. “But I don't want to marry him. So will you cancel it, please?”

Navis looked at his book as if he would rather attend to that than Hildy. “I think you'll find the alliance is prized quite as much now.”