Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones

back to the New Flate almost dangling from the hand of a huge trooper in the Earl’s green uniform. Mitt was sullen at first, disappointed and vaguely humiliated. And he was deeply disillusioned about the officer. Mitt had told him a valuable secret, and the officer had barely even listened. But the trooper was a cheerful man. He had children of his own, and it had been hot, wet work, hunting the revolutionary in the windless Flate. The trooper was pleased to have a rest. He was very jolly to Mitt, and before long Mitt cheered up and chatted happily about how far he had walked and how he thought he would like to be a soldier too, when he grew up, and a sea captain as well and sail the Earl’s ships for him.

      When they came to the New Flate, people came to doors and gates to stare at Mitt trotting along with his hand stretched above his head in order to reach the great warm hand of the trooper. The stares were unloving. Earl Hadd was a hard man and a vindictive one. The soldiers were the ones who carried out the Earl’s harsh orders. And lately the Earl’s second son, Harchad, had taken command of the soldiers, and he was even harder than his father, and a good deal more cruel. But since, all over Dalemark, an earl in his earldom had more power than a king, in the times when there were kings, Harchad and his soldiers did exactly as they pleased. Therefore, soldiers were hated heartily.

      Mitt understood none of this, but he saw the looks. “Don’t you look like that!” he kept crying out. “This is my friend, this is!”

      The trooper became steadily more uncomfortable. “Take it easy, sonny,” he said every time Mitt cried out. And after a while he seemed to feel the need to justify himself. “A man’s got to live,” he told Mitt. “It’s not work I enjoy, but what can a poor boy off the harbour edge do? When I get my bounty, I aim to take up farming, like your dad does.”

      “Did you fall in the harbour?” Mitt asked, fixing on the only part of this he understood.

      They came to Dyke End. Mitt’s parents had missed Mitt about half an hour before, and they were by then in a panic. Mitt’s father received him with a great thump, and his mother hugged him frantically. Mitt did not understand the reason for either. The vision of his perfect land had faded by then. He was not sure what he had gone away to do.

      The trooper stood by, very stiff and correct. “Boy was found out in the Old Flate,” he said. “Said he was looking for his home, or some such story.”

      “Oh, Mitt!” Milda cried joyously. “What a free soul you are!” And she hugged him again.

      “And,” said the trooper, “Navis Haddsson’s compliments and would you keep more of an eye on him in future.”

      “Navis Haddsson!” exclaimed both Mitt’s parents, Milda in considerable awe, and Mitt’s father with surprise and resentment. Navis was Earl Hadd’s third and youngest son.

      “Big of Navis Haddsson,” Mitt’s father said sarcastically. “Knows all about bringing up boys, I suppose?”

      “Can’t say, I’m sure,” said the trooper, and he made off, having no wish to get into an argument with such a thickset and aggressive person as the elder Alhammitt.

      “Well, I think it was very kind of Navis to send us our Mitt back like that!” Milda said when he had gone.

      Mitt’s father spat in the dyke.

      All the same, Milda remained extremely impressed by the kindness of Navis. She told people about it whenever her husband was not by to resent it, and most people she told were impressed too. Earl Hadd and his family were not, as a rule, kind to anyone. After that Milda took a great interest in Navis for a while and found out everything about him that she could. There was not very much known. The Earl’s eldest son, Harl, and his second son, Harchad, were the Earl’s favourites and the ones people heard most about. But about the time Navis sent Mitt home, Navis was enjoying a little more of the Earl’s favour. The reason was that three years or so before, the Earl had chosen Navis a wife, as he had chosen wives for his other two sons. Milda heard that Navis and his wife adored each other and went everywhere together. Then Navis’s wife gave birth to a daughter. That was the reason the Earl was pleased with Navis.

      The Earl valued granddaughters. He did not like girls in the least, but he needed granddaughters because he was an extremely quarrelsome man. Granddaughters could be married off to other earls and lords, who would then become Hadd’s allies in his quarrels. But so far only Harl’s wife had had a daughter. So when Navis’s wife, too, had a daughter, Hadd was delighted with them. Milda learnt that Navis’s wife was expecting a second child shortly, and Hadd was gleefully expecting another marriageable granddaughter.

      The baby was born the following month. He was a boy, and Navis’s wife died having him. It was said that Navis was so stricken with grief that he could not be bothered to find a name for his son. The nurses were forced to ask Earl Hadd to think of a name, and Hadd was so annoyed at not having a granddaughter that he called the boy Ynen, which was the name of a lord he particularly disliked. Hadd was consoled later on that year when Harl’s wife and Harchad’s both had girl babies. As for Navis, he gave up his commission in the Earl’s army and fell into total obscurity. It was soon quite impossible to learn anything about him or about his children, Hildrida and Ynen.

      Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break. But then he would shake off the feeling and laugh with his parents.

      It seemed to Mitt that the three of them could laugh at anything. He remembered laughing with Milda one evening during a rainstorm. Mitt was trying to learn his letters. He found them so difficult that he had to laugh. Then the door came clapping open in a gust of rain, blowing everything in the house to the end of the room, and there stood Mitt’s father, soaking wet and laughing, shouting above the gale that the cow had calved. At that the door came off its hinges and fell on Mitt’s father. And they all laughed till they ached.

      The very funniest thing happened when the calf had grown into a young and gamesome bull. Mitt and his parents were all in the pasture, trying to mend a place where the dyke bank was giving. The bull stood watching them, rather interested. Life was a little dull in the pasture. Then Hadd’s rent collector climbed over the fence and stalked irritably over to the dyke.

      “I’ve been all the way to the house,” he said. “Why couldn’t you—?”

      The bull, with a look of pure mischief in his merry red eye, lowered his horns and charged. He would not have dreamt of harming any of the family, but the rent collector was another matter. And in a misty, bullish way, he may have noticed that the family was not altogether pleased to see the rent collector. Anyway, up went the rent collector in a graceful arc, moneybag and all, and down he went again, moneybag and all, into the dyke, where he gave out a truly tremendous splash. He came up. He swore horribly. He floundered to the bank and tried to get out. The bull was there to meet him and simply prodded him back in again. It was the funniest thing Mitt had ever seen. It never occurred to the rent collector to cross the dyke and get out on the opposite bank where the bull could not reach him. He kept floundering up, clutching his moneybag. And prod, prod went the bull, and the rent collector was sitting in the dyke again. Over and over again, with the rent collector, floundering, reeling, sitting down splash, and squawking “Can’t one of you control this beast!” and Mitt’s parents leaning head to head, too helpless with laughter to do a thing about it. It was Mitt, laughing as hard as anyone, who at last hooked his finger in the ring on the bull’s nose and let the raging rent collector scramble out. And the rent collector was not pleased.

      “I’ll teach you to laugh, boy!” he snarled.

      He did. Next time he came for the rent, he asked double. When Mitt’s father protested, he said, “Nothing to do with me. Earl Hadd needs the money.”

      Probably Hadd was short of