Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones

shout rude things about Hadd.

      “You want to watch it, Mitt,” Siriol said whenever he heard Mitt’s sales talk. But he let Mitt go on. After all, there was always a laughing crowd round the stall, buying fish. Even the Palace lackeys sniggered as they bought.

      Then one day, as soon as Flower of Holand was out of the harbour and no one could overhear, Siriol amazed Mitt by asking him if he wanted to join the Free Holanders.

      “I’ll have to think,” Mitt said. And he missed selling the fish that next morning, in order to hurry home and ask Milda what he ought to do, before she went to work. “I can’t join, can I?” he said. “Not after what they did to Dad?”

      But Milda went dancing round the room, her skirts held out and her earrings swinging, and her dimple deep and clear. “This is your chance!” she said. “Don’t you see, Mitt? This is your chance to get back at them at last!”

      “Oh yes,” said Mitt. “I suppose it is and all.”

      So Mitt became a Free Holander, and great fun it was too. At first it was simply the great fun of being in the secret, with, behind that, the further secret that he was only in it to get revenge for his father. Mitt grinned to himself at both secrets all through long, boring watches when he was alone at Flower of Holand’s tiller, and the stars wheeling overhead seemed to glimmer with sheer glee.

      “Ah, shut up, he’s useful!” Siriol said to Ham when Ham protested. “Who’s going to bother with a lad who looks just like all the other kids? People think boys don’t count. Look at the way he gets away with selling fish. He’s safer than what we are.”

      Taking messages for the Free Holanders was pure bliss to Mitt. He revelled in going unnoticed through the crowded streets. It was good to be small and ordinary-looking, so that he could get the better of Harchad’s soldiers and spies. He would memorise the message carefully and slip off after selling the fish, mingle with the crowd in this street, watch a fight in that alley, loiter round the barracks, joking with the soldiers, and still go unsuspected. He was Mitt of the free soul, who did not know the meaning of fear. And the greatest fun of all was when he chanced to be in a street while soldiers stopped off both ends of it and questioned everyone in it about their business.

      Harchad ordered this done quite often, as much to keep people properly subdued as to catch revolutionaries. In a tense silence, broken only by the clopping of soldiers’ boots, his men would go from person to person, searching bags and pockets and asking each one what he was doing in this street. Mitt delighted in inventing business. He loved giving his name. It was marvellous to have the commonest name in Holand. Mitt, with perfect truth, could call himself Alham Alhamsson, Ham Hamsson, Hammitt Hammittsson, and Mitt Mittsson, or any combination of those that he fancied. He enlivened boring hours of fishing by thinking up new ways to fool Harchad’s men.

      The only trouble about being a Free Holander was that Mitt did not understand what the meetings were about. Once the novelty wore off, they bored him to tears. They would sit in someone’s shed or attic, often without a candle even, and Siriol would start by talking of tyranny and oppression. Then Dideo would say that the leaders of the future were coming from below. Below what? Mitt wondered. Someone would tell a long tale of Hadd’s injustice, and someone else would whisper things about Harchad. And sooner or later Ham would be thumping the table and saying, “We look to the North, we do. Let the North show its hand!”

      The first time Ham said this, Mitt felt a shiver of excitement. He knew Ham could be arrested for saying it. But Ham said it so often that Mitt lost interest. He found he was using the meetings to make up sleep in. He never got enough sleep in those days.

      Mitt felt this would not do. If he was to get his revenge on the Free Holanders, he needed to know what they were up to. “What do they think they’re doing?” he asked Milda. “It’s all looking to the North, or whisper, whisper, about Harchad, or tyranny and that. What’s it about?”

      Milda looked nervously round the room. “Hush. They’re getting at rebellion and uprising – I hope.”

      “They don’t get at it very fast,” Mitt said discontentedly. “There’s no plans at all. I wish you could come to meetings and see if you could make some sense of them.”

      Milda laughed. “I might – I bet they wouldn’t have me, though.”

      When Milda laughed, the crease on her face gave way to a dimple again. It was a thing Mitt always tried to encourage if he could. So he said, “I bet they would have you. You could stir them up a bit and get them to come out with something. I’m sick of old tyranny and the rest!” And since this made Milda smile broadly, Mitt did his best to keep her smiling. “Tell you what,” he said. “While I’m getting back at them for informing, I’d like to get back at old Hadd too. I’d like to give him what for, because of him trampling you underfoot all these years.”

      “What a boy you are!” said Milda. “You don’t know what fear is, do you?”

      After that, it was understood between Mitt and Milda that the mission of Mitt’s life was a double one. He was to break the Free Holanders and rid the world of Earl Hadd. Mitt was sure he could do it. So was Milda.

      Milda joined the Free Holanders too. Mitt was delighted. He had high hopes of it. Milda came to meetings, and she talked as eloquently as anyone there. She loved to talk. She loved leaning forwards over the secretive night-light and seeing everyone’s listening faces shadowy and attentive. But the sole result was that Milda became as ardent a freedom fighter as anyone there. She talked revolution to Mitt whenever he was at home.

      “Flaming Ammet!” Mitt said disgustedly. “It’s like being at a meeting all the time now!”

      All the same, Milda’s talk did make things clearer to Mitt. He was soon able to talk of oppression and uprising, tyranny and leadership from below, and feel he knew what it meant. And when he had leisure to think – which he sometimes did while Flower of Holand ploshed her sturdy way to the fishing grounds – he decided that what it amounted to was that there were two parts to Dalemark: the North, where people were mysteriously free and happy, and the South, where the earls and the rich people were free and happy enough, but where they made darned sure that ordinary people like Mitt and Milda were as unhappy as possible.

      Right, Mitt said to himself. I reckon that sums it up. Now let’s get busy and do something about it.

      But the Free Holanders seemed simply content to talk, and Mitt became increasingly annoyed by them. He was very pleased when another secret society actually killed four of Harchad’s spies. Siriol was not. He told Mitt, with a glum sort of gladness, that things would be very much worse now. And they were.

      Harchad imposed a curfew. Anyone found in the streets after dark was marched away and never seen again. Siriol forbade Mitt to carry messages during that time. Mitt did not quite understand why he should not.

      Then a thief on the waterfront tried to rob a man. He knocked the man down and was taking his money when he found a gold button with the wheatsheaf crest of Holand on it, hidden in the man’s coat. The thief knew it was the badge Harchad gave all his spies, and he was so frightened that he jumped into the harbour and was drowned. Mitt did not understand this story at all.

      “Well, if you don’t, I’m not telling you,” was all Siriol would say.

      Then Earl Hadd quarrelled with four other earls at once. Everyone in Holand groaned. Much as they detested Hadd, they almost admired him for being so very quarrelsome. “Fallen out with Earl Henda again, has he?” the women in Milda’s sewing shop would say. “Honestly, I never knew anyone like him!” This time, however, Hadd fell out not only with Henda, but with the Earls of Canderack, Waywold and Dermath too. And so powerful were these Earls, and owned so much of South Dalemark between them, that there was some doubt in Holand whether Hadd could hold his own against them all.

      “Bitten off more than he can chew this time for sure, the old sinner,” Dideo said to Mitt. “Maybe this is where the Free Holanders get their chance.”

      Mitt