Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones

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      THAT AUTUMN, WHEN the Festival procession poured, scraping and banging and colourful, down to the harbour to drown Poor Old Ammet, it was guarded by soldiers with the new guns. Mitt did not like watching it. Each Festival brought back his nightmares about Canden falling to pieces in the doorway. But the tenement was so near the harbour that it was hard to avoid watching. This year Dideo came to lean out of the window between Mitt and Milda, with his netted eyes wistfully on those new guns.

      “The stuff they use in those,” he explained, “can blow a man up, used right. Years back I used to sail with a man who could get the stuff, and we went after fish with it. You might call it unfair to the fish, but I know to this day how to make a bomb. And I was thinking that a bomb in the midst of Old Ammet could rid the world of Hadd and give us uprising all over Holand in one moment.”

      Mitt and his mother exchanged a long, startled look over Dideo’s gnarled hat. That was it! What an idea! They discussed it excitedly as soon as the procession was over and Dideo gone.

      “If you were to get a bomb and throw it at old Haddock – you do throw bombs, do you?” said Milda. “You could shout out that Dideo and Siriol set you on.”

      “But I might not be heard,” said Mitt. “No – I’d have to get myself taken. Then when Harchad comes to ask questions, I tell him the Free Holanders set me on to do it. But how can we get hold of some of that gun stuff?”

      “We’ll get some,” said Milda. “We’ll think of a way. But you’ll have to do it before you’re old enough to hang. I couldn’t bear to think of you taken and hanged!” She was so excited that she went out and spent the rest of her wages on fruit and sweets to celebrate.

      Mitt looked at the bundles of toffee apples as dourly as Siriol. He sighed. He saw he would have to put off throwing any kind of bomb until he had earned enough money to rent another farm for Milda. She would certainly starve if he was arrested and she left to manage all by herself. He thought he might have to wait until he was at least as old as Dideo.

      It did not happen that way. A week later Mitt came home from selling fish, smelly, slimy and pinched with cold. He wanted only to go to bed. But to his annoyance, his mother was entertaining a visitor. The visitor was a square, sober-looking man, with an air that reminded Mitt vaguely of something – or someone – else. He was wearing much more respectable clothes than most people wore on the waterfront, and to Mitt’s further annoyance, Milda had squandered her money this week on a bottle of Canderack wine for this visitor. Mitt stood in the doorway glowering at him.

      “Oh, Mitt!” Milda said happily. She was looking very pretty, and the dimple was back in her face. “You remember Canden?” Mitt did remember Canden – too well. He was still having nightmares about him after the Festival. He had to hold hard to the doorpost when he heard the name. Milda, quite unaware how Mitt was feeling, said, “Well, this is Canden’s brother, Hobin, all the way from Waywold. My son, Mitt, Hobin.”

      The visitor smiled and came forwards, holding out a square, useful-looking hand. Mitt shuddered, clenched his teeth, and put out his own fishy hand. “I’m all covered with fish,” he said, hoping the visitor would not like to touch him.

      But the warm, square hand seized his and shook it. “Oh, I know what it’s like to come in dirty from work,” Hobin said. “I’m a gunsmith myself, and sometimes I think I’ll never get the black off. You go and wash and don’t mind me.”

      Mitt smiled shakenly. He realised Canden’s brother was a very nice man. But that did not alter the fact that he had a nightmare for a brother. Mitt went over to the bucket in the corner to wash, hoping that Hobin would go back to Waywold at once and never be seen in Holand again.

      That hope went almost immediately. “Yes, I’ve got a tidy little house, up in Flate Street,” he heard Hobin telling Milda. “Workshop below, plenty of room to live upstairs. Earl Hadd’s done me proud.”

      Mitt realised that Hobin had come to live in Holand. He was so dismayed that he called out, “And who did Earl Hadd turn out of there, in order to do you proud?”

      “Oh, Mitt!” said Milda. “You mustn’t mind him,” she told Hobin. “He’s a real free soul, Mitt is.”

      Mitt was furious. She had no right to tell a stranger private СКАЧАТЬ