Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones

Harchad’s men, and how would that help the city to rise and overthrow the Earl? The society split in half over it. The younger members went with Mitt’s father to fire the warehouse. The older members stayed at home. And when the younger ones reached the warehouse, Harchad’s men were waiting for them. All that Milda knew beyond that was that someone had managed to start a fire even so and that no one had come back from it except Canden to say that Siriol, Dideo and Ham had informed on them. And Canden was dead too.

      Mitt considered all this. “Why did Siriol and them inform, though?”

      The crease of worry down Milda’s face drew into a tighter seam. “Because they were frightened, Mitt, like I am now.”

      “Frightened what of?” Mitt asked.

      “Harchad’s soldiers,” Milda said, shivering. “They might come banging at this door any moment now.”

      Mitt considered what he knew of soldiers. They were not so frightening. They brought you home when you were found wandering in the Flate. “How many soldiers are there? More than everyone else in Holand?”

      In spite of her misery, Milda smiled. To Mitt’s relief, the crease on her face turned into a dimple again for a moment. “Oh no. The Earl couldn’t afford that number. And I don’t suppose he’d bother to send more than six or so to come and take us away.”

      “Then,” said Mitt, “if all the people in this house, or all the people in Holand, all got together, they ought to be able to stop the soldiers, oughtn’t they?”

      Milda was forced to laugh. It was quite beyond her to explain why everyone in Holand lived in dread of soldiers, and even greater dread of Harchad’s spies, so she said, “Oh, Mitt, you’re a real free soul, you are! You don’t know what fear means. It seems such a waste when Hadd and the Free Holanders have done for us between them, it does really!”

      Mitt realised that by talking in this sturdy way, he had managed to comfort his mother. He had sent the hateful crease of worry out of her face twice. Better still, he had made Milda comfort him by calling him a free soul. Mitt was not sure he knew what a free soul was – it never occurred to him that his mother had no idea either – but he thought it was a splendid thing to be. By way of earning it, he said stoutly, “Well, you’re not to worry any more. I’ll make it all right for you.”

      Milda laughed and hugged him. “There’s my Mitt!”

      

      MIRACULOUSLY, NO SOLDIERS came for Milda and Mitt. It seemed as if Dideo, Siriol and Ham had contented themselves with getting rid of the younger half of the Free Holanders and had not bothered to include wives and families. All the same, Milda and Mitt had a hard time of it for a while. When, after a week or so, Milda dared to go back to work, she found her place had been taken. Mitt was furious.

      “It’s the way things are in this town,” Milda explained. “There’s hundreds of poor women willing to work their fingers into blisters. And the rich people have to have their curtains ready on time.”

      “Why?” said Mitt. “Can’t the poor people get together and tell the rich ones where they get off?”

      That was the kind of question which made Milda call him a free soul. Mitt knew it was, so he made a point of asking such things. It was a great comfort to know he was a free soul who did not know what fear was, while Milda was out trudging from workshop to workshop. Mitt himself, hungry and miserable, spent the days hanging round the back doors of counting houses, or on the edges of boatbuilders’ yards, hoping to be sent on an errand. Few errands came Mitt’s way. He was too small, and there was always the crowd of bigger, quick-spoken city boys to jostle Mitt aside and run the errand instead. And of course they jeered at Mitt too. But Mitt would tell himself that he was a free soul, he was, and wait patiently on. It helped him greatly.

      At night Mitt had horrible dreams. He dreamt repeatedly that Canden was coming shuffling to the door again. Then the door would open, and there would be Canden, hanging on to the doorpost and slowly falling to pieces like Poor Old Ammet in the harbour. “All dead,” Canden would say, as pieces dropped off him, and Mitt would wake up trying to scream. Then Mitt would lie and tell himself sternly that he did not know what fear was. In the middle of the night that was not always so easy to believe. But sometimes Milda woke up when Mitt yelled. She would tell Mitt stories she had learnt as a girl until he went back to sleep again.

      Milda’s stories made good listening. There was magic and adventure and fighting in them, and they all seemed to happen in North Dalemark in the time when there were kings – though there were earls in the stories too, and ordinary people. Mitt puzzled about the stories. He knew Holand was in South Dalemark, but this North Milda talked about seemed so different that he wondered for a while if it was real.

      “Do they have kings still in the North?” he asked, to see what Milda would say.

      But Milda knew disappointingly little about the North. “No, there’s no kings any more,” she said. “I’ve heard they have earls in the North just like we do, only the earls there are all freedom fighters like your dad was.”

      Mitt could not understand how an earl could be anything of the sort. Nor could Milda explain.

      “All I can say is I wish there were kings again,” she told Mitt. “Earls are no good. Look at Hadd – us poor people are just rent on two legs to him, and if we do anything he doesn’t care for, he claps us in prison, or worse.”

      “But he can’t put everyone in prison,” Mitt objected. “There wouldn’t be anyone to catch his fish for him or sew his clothes.”

      “Oh, you are a free soul, Mitt!” Milda exclaimed.

      Mitt was not sure when or how it happened, but in the course of these talks he had with Milda in the night, it began to be understood between them that Mitt was one day going to avenge his father and put right all the wrongs in Holand. It was an accepted thing, even before Milda found work. She found work fairly soon, in another sewing house, because the one thing she could really do well was fine embroidery. They managed to pay the rent on their room in time to prevent the landlord turning them out. But they were still short of food. Milda spent the rest of her week’s earnings on a new pair of shoes.

      “To celebrate,” she said. “I just happened to see them. Aren’t they pretty?”

      Mitt would have been very hungry indeed had not Siriol, the dour-faced informer, sent round his daughter, Lydda, with a basket of sea fry. Lydda was a fat, meek girl of twelve. She showed Milda how to cook the fry, and she much admired Milda’s pretty new shoes. Perhaps she described them to her father. At any rate, Mitt and Milda had a square meal, and there were still enough fish for breakfast. Milda put them out on the windowsill of their room to keep fresh. The ants came out of the wall in the night and ate them up. When Mitt opened the window to fetch in breakfast, all he found was some tiny scraps of bone. He was looking miserably at them when Siriol came clumping up the dark stairs in his clogs and came into the room without being invited.

      “Lost your breakfast, I see,” he said. “You’d better come round to mine and have some. And best thing I can see, Milda, is for him to sail with me in future. I was thinking of taking an apprentice.”

      “Well—” said Milda.

      “Free Holanders look after their own,” said Siriol.

      Knowing what he knew about Siriol, Mitt was speechless. He had to stand there and let Milda do the refusing for him. But to his astonishment, Milda smiled gratefully at Siriol, thanked him over and over again, and agreed that Mitt should sail with Siriol.

      “I don’t need breakfast,” was all Mitt could think of saying.

      “Be round at my place in half an hour,” Siriol said, and clumped away