Drowned Ammet (26 page)

Above him, Mitt could hear Al asking if they had anything to eat but pies. He added discontentedly that it seemed rather a rich diet. Yes, let's have you seasick again, Mitt thought, and went up the cabin to the rosy bucket.

When he came out, Al's voice was in the well, saying, “Oh, no offense, little lady. It's not my place to question the provisions. I just thought you could get that lazy boy to catch a few fish now and then. His kind get above themselves if they're let stay idle.”

“You can fish if you want,” Ynen said. “We don't want you idle either.”

“That's right, guvnor,” Al agreed heartily. “I'll go and set him to it, shall I?”

There was a frustrated silence in the well. Al bent down and entered the cabin. Mitt braced himself against the remaining half of the cupboard door, ready to whisk past Al and out on deck. Al would soon find Mitt was nobody's servant. Al advanced. Mitt waited his moment and shot forward. But instead of sliding by under Al's elbow, Mitt found himself hurtling into Al's solid body and grunting with the impact. He was seized in a punishingly strong grip. Al laughed in his ear. “No, you don't!”

Nothing like this had happened to Mitt for years. He was as humiliated as he was angry. He struggled hard. They bashed against the cupboard, a bunk, and the cupboard again. “Let go of me!” panted Mitt as they bounced against the gilded door.

Al, by this time, had both Mitt's hands helpless under one brawny arm. “Right you are,” he said. He plucked the gun out of Mitt's belt and let go of Mitt the same instant. Mitt was flung against the bunk again.

“How dare you!” said Hildy.

“Give that back, please,” said Ynen.

Both of them had come into the cabin, too, which explained why
Wind's Road
was tipping about so, Mitt realized, as he was rolled onto the floor.

Al raised the gun. “You see to the boat, guvnor,” he said, and walked toward the cabin door. Ynen, Hildy, and Mitt, too, backed out in front of him in a dismayed cluster, treading on one another along the tipping floor. Ynen seized the tiller and set
Wind's Road
to rights again, while the other two crammed themselves beside him, as far as they could get from Al in the cabin doorway.

“That's right,” said Al. “Now this is much more comfortable. I didn't feel safe with this gun where it was. Went off once already, didn't it?” he said, pointing to the splintered groove beside the well. He turned the gun over admiringly. “Where did you pinch this?” he asked Mitt. “This is one of Hobin's—one of his specials.”

Mitt set his face sullenly. He was not going to discuss Hobin with Al.

“Well, it's in good hands now,” Al remarked. “Five shots in it. Got any more?”

“No,” said Mitt.

In rippling, rope-creaking silence, Al swung himself up to sit facing them on the cabin roof, with his legs dangling and the gun laid across one knee. Mitt watched his square, smug face and was almost shamed enough to cry. He knew he was having a very vivid experience of exactly how Ynen and Hildy felt when he first came out of the cabin himself, and it made him feel sick. It seemed hard on Ynen and Hildy to be having it again.

“Now let's make sure we understand one another,” Al said comfortably. “I've been having a good deal of trouble lately, and it's made me nervous. I don't want any more, understand—guvnor? Little lady? You?”

“The name's Mitt,” said Mitt. “What trouble?”

“I'll tell you,” said Al, “so you won't get any wrong ideas about me. I'm a marksman. Best shot in the South—so do remember I don't want more trouble, won't you? That's why I'd rather be on the right end of this gun—nothing personal. As for the trouble, I had the good fortune to be employed by a noble gentleman in Holand—well, let's call him Harl, shall we?—to take one of my best shots at a certain Earl—let's call him Hadd, not to beat around the bush—”

Hildy's eyes and Ynen's slid sideways to each other.
Wind's Road
veered. Mitt had to nudge Ynen before he realized. Mitt felt nearly as bad himself, and the nature of the badness dragged his face elderly again.

“And I did,” Al said earnestly. “It was as sweet a shot as you ever saw and dropped Hadd like a stone. But then the trouble started because I had to get away, hadn't I? Naturally, Harl had promised me I'd be safe, but I knew better than to trust that kind of promise. Noble gentlemen who make these arrangements always prefer you to be dead, too. You can't blame Harl. I'd have done the same myself. So I made a little outlay of my own, on some soldiers, not to search a certain ship's boat where I was. But there were so many soldiers, and they got so eager, that I had to knock a couple into the water and then cast that filthy tub loose. And I got shot at, and rowed after, and if I hadn't happened to catch the tide, I wouldn't be here now. So I don't want more trouble this time. You don't blame me, do you, little lady?”

“I can't honestly say,” said Hildy, “that I don't.”

Al blinked a little at this, and scratched his tousled head. He smiled incredulously at Ynen. “She's a sharp one, your sister. She is your sister, isn't she? Lucky I never mind what people say.” He moved Hobin's gun round on his knee until it pointed to Mitt. “You. Find some tackle and catch us a fish for lunch.”

“If you don't mind what people say—no,” said Mitt.

Al snapped back the trigger so that Hobin's gun was ready to fire. “You can say what you like as long as you do it,” he said, and the look he gave Mitt made it quite clear he intended to shoot him.

“There may be some tackle in one of those lockers,” Ynen told Mitt, in the slow, serious way people only use when they are truly frightened.

16

For the rest of the day Mitt sat fishing. Not venison, oyster, or pheasant tempted any fish to bite. Mitt sullenly watched the line trailing a little pucker in the sea and hated Al more every hour. It was no comfort to see Ynen and Hildy hated him, too, for Al had divided them from Mitt in every possible way.

Al liked talking. He lounged on the cabin roof, between Mitt and the well where Ynen and Hildy were, laying down the law about this, telling them the truth about that, and always treating Hildy and Ynen with great deference and Mitt with none at all. He told them the North was nothing like as free as it was cracked up to be, that a diet of pies would give them scurvy, and that Waywold was a better place to live than Holand. Then he came round to Poor Old Ammet and Libby Beer.

“Funny superstition, having a couple of dummies in your boat,” he said, waving from the straw figure to the wax one. “It's not as if you Holanders believed in them. When I was in Waywold, they had a saying there that Holanders kept gods they didn't own to. And that's true. I bet you didn't know they were gods one time.”

“They're all right now,” Mitt said.

“And we know they're something special,” said Ynen.

“Surely you do, guvnor. No offense. But I've been in the Holy Islands all this year past, and I know a bit more than you do. They call those two things gods there. That's how the islands got their name, see. But—this is a funny thing—they don't call them anything there. You ask what are the names of these two dummies, and people just look at you. Oh, they're funny people—half crazed with god fearing, if you ask me—and all the gods are is two dummies.”

“I think you might let Mitt stop fishing now,” said Hildy.

“Little lady,” said Al, “you've a kind heart, and he can stop when he's caught a fish. You hear that?” he said to Mitt. “She's a nice girl—considerate. All her kind are like that. They can afford to be nice, and frank, open, and generous, too. They've got the means behind them, see, where your kind and mine can't afford it. It's a high-priced luxury, being nice is.”

Mitt humped his shoulders bitterly. He was sure Al was right. Al could not have chosen any better way of describing the way Ynen and Hildy had treated him all along. It hit the nail on the head.

Ynen said to Hildy as Al talked on, “Who
is
he? I've seen him before somewhere.”

Hildy knew Ynen had a far better memory for faces than she had. “I don't care who he is,” she said. “I'm going to push him in the sea.” She meant it.

But Al was too old a hand to let any of them have a chance to harm him. Having divided them from one another, he talked until he had bored them into numbness. Then he demanded food. Then he talked until nightfall, and still no land was in sight. By now they all thought of land as the thing which would rescue them from Al.

“Well,” said Al, as soon as supper was over, “I think I'll be turning in.”

They made an effort to suggest he took a watch during the night.

“Who, me?” said Al. “I don't know the first thing about this game. I'm a landsman.”

“You had a sail up in that boat,” Ynen said. “And you're a Holander. I've seen you. Holanders aren't landsmen.”

“I never denied it, guvnor. But that was all years back, before your time. Good night, then.” And, since none of them could stop him, Al went into the cabin and fell asleep with the gun hidden under his body where nobody could get it.

While Mitt was dourly stowing the fishing tackle back in the locker, Hildy looked vengefully into the cabin. “He's just like the cousins, Ynen, only I hate him more.”

“I hate him harder every time he calls me guvnor,” said Ynen.

“He's bound to,” Mitt said, kicking the locker to vent some of his feelings. “He's respectful of you.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask them if he had been as bad as Al, but he had not the heart to. He knew he had been. Instead he found himself arranging the night's watches, in a constrained and businesslike way, and taking the dawn watch himself again. Mitt felt in his bones it would be dawn when they sighted land.

In fact, the numb hatred they all felt for Al was very different from the way Ynen and Hildy had felt about Mitt. Ynen pondered about this while he steered
Wind's Road
into darkness. Mitt had scared them horribly at first. But Ynen had never felt unequal to him, the way he felt with Al. As soon as Mitt had started to argue, Ynen had stopped being scared. There were things they had in common with Mitt, but with Al there was nothing. You could not trust him or argue with him. Ynen hoped the wind would be fresh tomorrow, because if it was and if Al stayed on the cabin roof, he was fairly sure he could bring himself to give the tiller a quick shove and sweep Al off the roof with
Wind's Road
's boom.