“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.
FOR THE REST of the day Mitt sat fishing. Neither venison, oyster, nor 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 offence. 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. Goodnight, 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.
Hildy spent her watch thinking wretchedly of Uncle Harl. Ye gods! It was as if she, or Ynen, had paid Al to shoot Navis. Hildy felt so sickened that she was truly thankful Mitt had forced them to sail North, out of that horrible situation. Only now they had Al on board. Hildy knew they were going to need all their cunning, and Mitt’s too, to escape from Al once they did reach land. And she had quarrelled with Mitt. Of all the stupid things to lose her temper over! After what Al had said, Mitt was not going to believe in anything friendly Hildy said. Hildy hated Al for the way he had treated Mitt. It was like Uncle Harchad and the Earl of Hannart’s son, except that Al had used words instead of kicks.
She tried to show Mitt she was friendly by being very pleasant when she woke him up for his watch. Mitt hardly spoke to her. He pretended to be very sleepy and stumbled past her into the well, mumbling. When he took the tiller and set Wind’s Road heeling away into the faintly silvering sea, he was too perplexed and miserable to notice what he was doing. The awful similarity between himself and Al was all he could think of. “He did it for money, and I did it for a cause – that’s all the difference I can see,” he said to himself. “But what cause?”
He felt a sharp nudge on his back. He looked up to find Wind’s Road yawing about in a white sea, against a white sky. The wind had dropped and changed. It was quite a bit colder. Mitt set Wind’s Road to rights, buttoned his coat, and turned to have a good look at Libby Beer. She was a tiny, dark figure, too far away to have nudged him. Yet she had.
“See here, lady,” Mitt said to her, in his misery, “can I talk to you? Will you answer?” The little dark knobby shape did not move or make any sign. “What I want to know,” said Mitt, “is: am I going to end up worse than Al if I started so young?” Libby Beer gave no sign of having heard. “All right,” said Mitt. “I promise to leave murdering alone in future. Will you help me now?” There was silence, except for the fitful rilling of water. “I can’t seem to think things in my head without talking them,” Mitt explained. “I went through life thinking I was on the right side – one of the good ones, you know – and now I can see I’m as bad as Al. So I got it all to think about again. I want to know what I thought I was doing there in Holand.” There was still no sign from Libby Beer. She sat at the end of the tiller among her twine lashing, and the faded colours began to come back to her because the sun was rising. Mitt did not dare talk any more, in case someone in the cabin heard him. He stared round the welling yellow waves. There was still no land in sight.
No land came in sight all that day. The wind sank to a light, fitful breeze, in which they all buttoned their coats and shivered. It was so much colder that they were sure they must be in Northern waters. That was their one comfort. The pies were smelling strange, the water was low, and got lower still when Al refused to shave in seawater – and ther
e was Al.
Al announced he was bored. “You must have brought a pack of cards or some dice with you,” he told Mitt, evidently thinking he was the most likely one.
Since Libby Beer had nudged him in the dawn, Mitt felt just a little more equal to Al. “Me?” he said. “People in my station can’t afford games.”
Al roamed about grumbling for a while. Then he suddenly went below and came up with the bottle of arris. “This’ll have to do then,” he said. “Should just be enough. Mind you, little lady, I’m not grumbling, but you should be sure your bottles are full before you sail.”
He settled himself on the cabin roof and got drunk. They could all see Hobin’s gun stuck in his belt, but Al’s hand was never far off it, and he patted it lovingly from time to time. Al sang a little. Ynen looked yearningly at the sail. But the wind was so light that he knew the boom would only give Al a gentle bump if he did swing it over. He sighed and handed the tiller over to Hildy, hoping she would have better luck.
When Al had drunk half the arris, he began to talk again. They all closed their ears. It was easy to do. They were all half asleep after their night watches. For an hour not one of them heard a word Al said. Then he began to laugh uproariously and shout at them.
“I tell you, I’ve been around all right! And my advice to you is two games at once! Rich against rich – they pay better – but rich against poor, if you can’t have that. I’ll tell you – I’ll tell you – Come here and look, the lot of you!”
Hildy was steering, but Ynen and Mitt did not dare disobey. Reluctantly they went towards the cabin roof, where Al was fumbling and pawing at his jacket and staring at them with angry, unfocused eyes. As they reached him, he managed to turn the top of his jacket inside out, to show the drab strip of tape in the lining. Fixed to the tape was a tiny round piece of gold with a wheatsheaf crest on it.
“There. Know what that is?”
“Yes,” said Ynen. “You’re one of Harchad’s spies.”
Al slapped himself with triumph. “Right!” he said. “Right, right, right! Been Harchad’s man for seven years now. So you see what I done?” he asked shrewdly, and became earnest and confiding before either of them could answer. “Rich against rich is the best way. Harl pays me to shoot old Haddock. Harchad gives me a bounty to shoot old Haddock. Offers of safety from both. Al’s all right whatever happens, see.”
“Just what we’d have expected of you, Al,” said Mitt.
Ynen was quite unable to stay near Al any longer. He backed away beside Hildy and was glad when she took a chilly hand off the tiller and squeezed his arm so hard that it hurt.
Al seemed quite content to concentrate on Mitt. He laughed and waved one finger under Mitt’s nose. “You take my advice and go in for the double game. Do what I done. You can’t beat the earls, so you join them. Find freedom fighters, join them with the Earl’s blessing. Then bust them up. I done that all over South Dalemark. Harchad pays – wants information. Earls pay. Lovely life.”
Mitt felt his face being pulled elderly as he listened. There seemed no end to the similarities between Al and himself. He turned away from Al’s wagging finger and saw that Hildy and Ynen were as hard hit as he was. Their heads were hanging at wretched doll-like angles, and their faces were blurry. Mitt would have liked to say something – something rude to Al, at least – to cheer them up. But he was in such a blazing misery himself that he thought: Being nice is a high-price luxury. Why should I bother? He jumped up on to the decking and scrambled towards Wind’s Road’s bows.
“Hardest bunch of freedom fighters are in Waywold,” said Al. “Where are you going?”
“To talk to Poor Old Ammet,” said Mitt. “He’s better listening. He keeps quiet.”
“But the cushiest job,” said Al, as if Mitt had not spoken, “was in the Holy Islands. They don’t know the meaning of freedom fighting there – only I’m not telling Harchad that. I’m on to a real good thing there.” He laughed. “They think the world of me. And all because of my name. Did you know my name was Alhammitt? But I’m not telling that in Holand. I’d have half Holand coming and trying to set themselves up in style there.”
“Oh shut up!” Hildy whispered.
But Al talked on, until there was very little arris left in the bottle. Then he sang the Ballad of Fili Ray. It was about a man who was hanged.
“At least he knows what he deserves!” Ynen said. “Hildy, I know where I saw him before. He was in the Palace last week. The first time I saw him, he was with Uncle Harchad. The other time was out at the back, where Father was having those new houses built. Al came out and talked to Father there, I’m afraid.”
Hildy knew, by the dead, sick feeling inside her, that she had feared this all along. “You – you think Father paid him to shoot Grandfather too?” If Navis had been expecting someone to shoot Hadd, it would explain his unusual presence of mind.
“I don’t know,” Ynen whispered wretchedly. “He kicked Mitt’s bomb away.”
“But that could have been because it wasn’t part of the plan,” said Hildy, and they both looked over to Mitt’s hunched shape beyond the mast. They were both quite sure Mitt would want nothing more to do with them now.
The song stopped. Al drank the last of the arris. Then he stood up and staggered towards the well. Hildy and Ynen, both thoroughly frightened, pressed back against the stern and stared up at his swaying, grinning face. There was simply no knowing what Al would choose to do next.
“Funny thing, guvnor and little lady,” Al said slurrily. “You look as though you seen a ghost. Another funny thing – I don’t feel quite myself. Think I’ll go and lie down.” He came off the edge of the roof and collapsed on his knees in the well. Neither Hildy nor Ynen could bear to touch him. They turned their feet sideways out of his way, as he floundered around and crawled into the cabin. After two attempts he got on to a bunk and was shortly snoring.
“The gun’s underneath him again,” Hildy said hopelessly.
They waited for Mitt to come back to the well. It seemed the most important thing in the world that Mitt should come and be friendly with them. It had nothing to do with the fact that they were both sure Mitt was the only one who might get the better of Al. It was that if Mitt disowned them, then they were disowned indeed. But Al snored for two hours before Mitt moved. Old Ammet was as little help to Mitt’s misery as Libby Beer had been, although Mitt reached out several times and pleadingly touched the stiff, salty straw of him. Mitt knew he would have to talk to someone. The only way he could think was aloud.
Wind’s Road’s movement altered. The dip and swing of her became shorter and stronger, though the wind was still the merest chilly breeze. Mitt knew they must be in coastal waters again. He jumped up, but there was still no sign of land. He hurried across the cabin roof to tell Hildy and Ynen what he thought, but when he looked at them, below him in the well, he wondered if he was going to be able to speak to them at all. Their searching expressions, and their very faces, put him off. Ynen’s nose had blistered in the weather, but it was still Hadd’s nose. Hildy’s two pigtails were loose and puffy, and wisps of black hair blew across her narrow cheeks, but the sharp, tanned face was like Harchad’s even so.
Hildy made an effort to talk about Navis. “I know what you’re thinking—” she said to Mitt.
“I’m no good at thinking,” Mitt said sadly. “Not like you.” It sounded much nastier than he intended. Hildy took it for a snub and did not go on.
After that none of them tried to talk about anything important, much as they all wanted to. The things Al had said were like a sore place none of them wanted to touch. This had a very odd effect. They found themselves chattering, and even laughing, about things that were not important, so that someone who did not know might have thought they were three great friends. They got the pies out again and picked out the parts that were still good. The rest – more than half – they had to throw in the sea.
They had just finished eating when Hildy exclaimed, “Seagulls!” W
hite birds were bobbing on the water behind, riding high and light like Wind’s Road herself. Others wheeled above the well on big bent wings, each with a bead of an eye watching for more pie. Ynen looked at Mitt.
“Land,” said Mitt. “Can’t be too far off.”
They exchanged excited looks. Not only was the long voyage nearly over, but if they could reach land while Al was still asleep, they had a real chance of getting away from him. Ynen tiptoed into the cabin and rustled all the charts there were off the rack above Al’s bunk. Al did not move. He tiptoed back to the well with them. Most of the charts, naturally enough, were detailed maps of the water round Holand, but there was one that showed the whole curved coastline from Aberath in the far North to the sands round Termath in the South. Just above the middle of the curve, there was the large diamond-shaped block of Tulfa Island, about thirty miles out from Kinghaven. Below Kinghaven was the wicked spike of the Point of Hark, dividing North from South Dalemark waters. Below that again, much closer inshore, was a scatter of small and large blobs that were the Holy Islands.
“We should recognise that,” Ynen whispered, pointing to Tulfa Island, “and I think we’d know the Point of Hark too. It looks like sheer cliff. I wish we knew how far North we’d come.”
“There’ll be light on Tulfa, if—” Mitt began.
Al surged out of the cabin like a bloodshot bear. “What’s all this whisper, whisper, guvnor? Can’t a man sleep?”
The three of them exchanged baffled looks. “Seagulls wake you?” asked Mitt.
“You don’t get charts out for seagulls,” said Al. He gave the horizon the benefit of his bloodshot look, and seemed as annoyed as they were at finding no land there. “Fuss about nothing. Where’s the food?”
They took pleasure in assuring him that all the pies were gone. There was, in fact, a hunk of cheesecake left, but none of them saw any reason to waste it on Al. Al annoyed them by taking the news philosophically. He said his stomach was not too good, anyway, and turned to go back to his bunk.
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