Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 hoped so. But Harl, Hadd’s eldest son, managed to put himself into Hadd’s good books by suggesting a way to deal with the four Earls. Harl, fat and indolent though he was, could sometimes be seen with his brother Navis and a crowd of beaters, servants and dogs, walking over the Flate and shooting birds with a long silver-inlaid fowling piece. Harl was allowed to use a gun, being an earl’s son. No one else was, apart from lords and hearthmen, because there had been so many uprisings in the South. Big ships carried cannon, as a protection against the ships of the North, but guns were other wise banned. But, said Harl, why not give all the soldiers guns as well? That would make the four Earls think twice before attacking Holand.

      Hadd agreed that it would. And that put paid to the hopes of Mitt and the Free Holanders. Up went rents and taxes and harbour dues. The people of Holand admitted grudgingly that Hadd was up to everything, even while they groaned.

      “It’s not right,” said Ham. “Give Harchad’s men guns and they’ll be ten times worse than they are now. But you have to admire Hadd. Fair play.”

      But Hadd took other precautions too. The Earl of Canderack, since most of the coast north of Holand was his, owned a fair-size fleet he could send against Holand if necessary. Holand also had its fleet. But to be on the safe side, Hadd betrothed his granddaughter Hildrida to the Lord of the Holy Islands, north of Canderack. The ships of the Holy Islands were famous. As Siriol remarked to Ham, the Holy Islands fleet was probably the main reason why the North had not long since conquered the South and brought freedom to everyone. Milda, as she sewed with three other women at a great bedspread to be covered with blue and gold roses, thought of it from another point of view. One of the women said that Lithar, Lord of the Holy Islands, was twenty years old. And, another added, Hildrida Navisdaughter could only be about nine.

      Milda remembered she had once been interested in Navis and his family. “Then in that case I don’t think it’s fair at all!” she said warmly.

      

      IT DID NOT seem fair to Hildrida Navisdaughter either. She thought at first she was in trouble. She and her brother, Ynen, had gone sailing. They had been tired of being told they were too young to go out in a boat alone and of being taken tamely up and down the coast by the sailors the Earl employed to sail his family. Ynen had wanted to sail a boat himself. So they slipped away and borrowed their cousins’ yacht. It had been splendid fun, and very frightening too. Ynen had nearly laid the boat on her side, just outside the West Pool, before he got used to the wind. And they had twice found themselves nearly aground in the shoals beyond. But they had managed. They had brought the yacht back and not even bumped the jetty.

      Then, as soon as she reached the Palace, Hildy was told her father wanted to see her. Naturally she thought he had found out about the sailing.

      Too bad for him! Hildrida thought, while she was having a good dress put on and her windblown black hair brushed. I shall be very angry. I shall say we’re never allowed to do anything. I shall say it’s my fault, and I shan’t let him send for Ynen. And I’ll tell him that it doesn’t matter whether we drown or not. It’s not as if we were important.

      The lady-in-waiting who led Hildrida by her hand through the lofty corridors to Navis’s rooms rather thought Hildrida must have found out what was in store for her. СКАЧАТЬ