Drowned Ammet

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Mitt marveled that he could have taken that intricate mass of plaited corn for a drowned man. Old Ammet still had arms, legs, and a tufted head, but he was now more the shape of a starfish than a person. Most of his fine red ribbons were gone, and his face was cockeyed and blurred. He was a Poor Old Ammet indeed. All the same, they were delighted to see him. They all shouted, “Welcome aboard, Old Ammet, sir!” which they all knew was what you said. Mitt turned Wind’s Road joyfully back on her way again, while Hildy and Ynen first did an unsteady dance of triumph on the cabin roof and then set about fixing Old Ammet to the prow like a figurehead—which was the other thing you were supposed to do.

  Poor Old Ammet was limp and waterlogged. It was no easy matter to make him into a figurehead. Ynen fetched rolls of twine and rope. Mitt called advice. Hildy ransacked the cabin for things which might support that weight of wet wheat. Mitt called so much advice that Hildy snapped, “Oh shut up! We all know you get Old Ammet out of the sea every year!”

  There was really no answer to that. Mitt shut up, bitterly annoyed, and soothed himself by muttering, “Flaming females! They’re all the same. It goes right through.” He watched, haughtily, Old Ammet being threaded on a besom, a gilded picture rail, and two wooden spoons and then being lashed to half the door of the gilded cupboard that concealed the rose-covered bucket. Then he was tied very firmly across the bowsprit, where he lifted and fell proudly to the movements of the boat. Mitt knew he could not have done it better himself. So he said knowledgeably, “He’ll stiffen up. He’s full of salt. Mind you, he may niff a bit.” Then he gave way to honest pride. “Looks good, doesn’t he?”

  Ynen and Hildy thoroughly agreed. “But,” Hildy said, “why doesn’t anyone ever find Libby Beer?” She lay down to peer under the mainsail, as if she expected to find Libby Beer just in the offing, in the other half of the gray, leaping sea.

  “She’s all grapes and squashy berries,” said Ynen. “She must get waterlogged in no time. It would be a miracle if we had her, too.”

  Mitt laughed and slapped the knobby pocket of his red and yellow breeches. “I clean forgot to this moment! Miracle it is. Here. Look.” He dragged the little wax model of Libby Beer out of his pocket. Like Poor Old Ammet, she was rather the worse for wear. The wax berries were flattened, with cloth marks imprinted on them, and the ribbons were muddy strings. But she could hardly have delighted Ynen and Hildy more had she been new and gay and gleaming.

  “Oh, beautiful!” said Ynen. “We must be the luckiest boat in the world. May I lash her to the stern?”

  “Carry on,” said Mitt.

  “She’s lovely!” said Hildy, fingering Libby Beer while Ynen unrolled more twine. “I’ve always wanted one of these, but they won’t let us buy things at the stalls. Those little tiny rose hips. How did you get her?”

  “While I was on the run,” said Mitt. “Lady at a stall gave her me for luck.”

  “You mean she knew you were running away?” Hildy asked, reluctantly giving Libby Beer to Ynen to be tied behind the tiller.

  “No,” said Mitt. He fixed his eyes on the gently heaving horizon and wished this silly female would understand what Holand was like for the likes of him. “She found out I was on the run just after, when the soldiers came asking. She gave me Libby Beer to cheer me up—I had a face as long as Flate Dike, see, not knowing where to go or what I dared do. Then, when the soldiers asked, she had to say she seen me. She didn’t dare not tell. That’s how people are. It’s different for you.”

  Ynen considered this while he tied careful knots round the wax figure. “We’re on the run, too, now—in a way. Why is it different? If a fisherman sees Wind’s Road, he’ll tell. And I don’t feel miserable about it.”

  Mitt knew Ynen had missed the point. He thought of Milda, Hobin, and the babies, of all the waterfront people who used to laugh at him selling fish, all the dozens of people he would never see again, and he was almost exasperated enough with Ynen to push him from the stern, where he was crouching, into the sea. “But you’ve not put yourself outside the law, have you?”

  “Yes, we have, in another way,” Hildy said. She thought Ynen had missed the point, too, and the only way to cover it up seemed to be to let Mitt know that they had their difficulties as well. She told him about their pretended escape with the bedspread and their real escape with the pies. Mitt tried not to grin. It was all a game to them.

  It did not seem to Ynen that he had missed any point. He looked admiringly at the little Libby Beer, already shiny with spray, and proudly over at Old Ammet, lifting and falling at the bowsprit, while he thought over all he now knew about Mitt. It did not add up properly. He wanted to know why. “Look here,” he said. “You must have known you’d be on the run, and what it would be like, once you’d thrown the bomb. Didn’t you make any plans to get away?”

  “Were you standing there waiting to be blown up?” Hildy asked, thinking this would explain Mitt’s odd behavior on the waterfront.

  Mitt eyed the heaving horizon. He supposed he might as well tell them, if they could tell him about their silly escape with their pies. There was something odd about Hildy’s story, though—something not quite right. Mitt felt that as strongly as Ynen evidently felt it about his. “They made plans—the Free Holanders,” he explained, “but it wasn’t in me to listen, because I was planning to get myself taken. I was aiming to kill Hadd, and when they caught me, I was going to tell them the Free Holanders set me on, to pay them out for informing on my father. It was them that informed on him. I’ve been planning that half my life. You might say my mother brought me up to do it. And your pa goes and spoils it in half a second. That’s what had me standing there—the waste!”

  There was silence from Ynen and Hildy. Mitt did not wonder he had shocked them. He took his eyes off the horizon and caught them exchanging a look that was not shocked but deeply puzzled.

  “And so it was a waste!” he told them aggressively. “Three years I saved gunpowder. Five years me and my mother planned it. And your pa kicks the bomb instead of grabbing me. Then I run straight at those fool soldiers, and they lose me. What was I supposed to do after that? Walk in the Palace gates and say, ‘Here I am’?”

  “It’s not that,” said Ynen. “You keep saying everyone informs because they’re frightened—and I believe you—but why do you blame the Free Holanders for informing and not the woman who gave you Libby Beer?”

  “She wasn’t a friend of mine, was she?” Mitt said gruffly.

  There was a further silence, puzzled and uncomfortable, filled only with the sound of Wind’s Road’s ropes pulling in a wind that seemed to be slackening. Hildy and Ynen looked at one another. They were both thinking of the Earl of Hannart’s son and wondering how to say what they thought.

  “I don’t understand about mothers,” Hildy said cautiously. “Not having one myself. But—” She stopped and looked helplessly at Ynen.

  “You do know,” Ynen blurted out, “your mother does know, does she, the kind of things that happen when people get arrested for your kind of thing? Do you know about my uncle Harchad?”

  Harchad’s face, and the terrible fear that had gripped Mitt when he saw it, seemed to have mixed in Mitt’s mind now with his nightmare of Canden shuffling to the door. Under his thick jacket, his skin rose in gooseflesh. But he was not going to let Hildy and Ynen know how he felt. “I’ve heard things about Harchad,” he conceded.

  Hildy shivered openly. “I saw. One thing.”

  “That’s why we said we’d take you North,” said Ynen.

  “Thanks,” said Mitt, and he stared woodenly at the horizon. He was not sure quite what was the matter with him. He felt sick and cold. He shook Canden and Harchad out of his mind, but he still felt as if a load of worry had fallen on him, making his head ache and drawing his face into a strange shape. Ynen and Hildy stared, because Mitt’s face seemed all old, with scarcely any young left in it. “See here,” Mitt said, after a minute, “I feel wore out again. Mind if I go for a lie-down?�
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  Hildy took the tiller without a word. Mitt plunged into the cabin, onto his favorite port bunk, and fell heavily asleep.

  “Ynen, what did you have to go and say all that for?” Hildy whispered, wholly unfairly.

  “Because I didn’t understand,” said Ynen. “I still don’t. Why has he gone to sleep like that?”

  “I think it’s because you—we—upset him more than he wanted to think about,” Hildy answered. “He’s in an awful muddle. It must be lack of education.”

  “He’s muddled me, too,” Ynen said crossly. “I don’t know whether to be sorry for him or not.”

  The slackening wind brought a drizzle of rain. Ynen and Hildy found a tarpaulin and wrapped it round their heads and shoulders. The rain increased, and the wind strengthened slowly, until the sea was so choppy that Hildy found it hard to steer and hold the sail rope, too. The sail was yellow-gray and heavy with rain.

  “Miserable!” she said. Water dripped off the end of her nose and chin.

  “I wonder if we ought to take in a reef,” Ynen said.

  Just before midday, the choppiness woke Mitt. Wind’s changed, he thought. Coming more off the land.

  He stumbled muzzily out into the well to find a real downpour. Rain was battering down into the well and swirling along the planking, going putter, putter on the tarpaulin over Hildy and Ynen’s heads, and making myriad pockmarks in the yellow-gray waves alongside. Mitt was not sure he liked the angry tooth shape of all those pockmarked waves.

  “I’ve been wondering if I ought to reef—just in case,” Ynen said to him.

  Mitt looked at him, frowning sleepily against the cold water in his face. Beyond Ynen, the little figure of Libby Beer was shiny as new with rainwater. Beyond her, dim behind veil upon veil of silver rain, was what looked like a mountain walking up the sky from the land, monstrous, black and impending.

  “What do you think about reefing?” Ynen asked.

  Mitt stared at that mountain of black weather, aghast. Last time he had seen anything like it, Siriol had made for Little Flate as fast as Flower of Holand could move, and they had hardly got there in time. This was twice as near. There was no chance of making land. Those two had been sitting with their backs to it, but all the same! “Flaming Ammet!” said Mitt.

  “Well, I thought I’d reef,” Ynen said uncertainly.

  “What am I doing standing here letting you ask?” Mitt said frantically. “You should have woke me an hour ago. Three reefs we’ll need, and let’s be quick, for Old Ammet’s sake! I bet this boat handles real rough.”

  Ynen was astounded. “Three?” Hildy was so surprised that she lost her hold on the wet tiller. Wind’s Road tipped about, and the boom swung over their heads. Mitt caught it, braced himself against the weight of wind and sopping sail, and tied it down with such haste that Ynen began to see he was in earnest. He slipped out from under the tarpaulin and scrambled onto the cabin roof in the hammering rain, to the ropes that lowered the mainsail. When he saw the weather the tarpaulin had been hiding from him, he did not feel quite so surprised at Mitt’s command. Ynen had never been out in any weather so black himself, but he knew when the sky looked like that, you saw all the shipping making for Holand as fast as it could sail. He let the huge triangle of the sail down a foot or so. Mitt began tying the resulting fold down against the boom by the little strings that dangled from the canvas, and tying as if for dear life. “We have got a storm sail,” Ynen called.

  Mitt shook his head, knowing how long it would take two boys to get in this mass of great wet sail and bend on another. “We’d be caught with our pants down. Maybe we are, anyway. She rides awful high. Get tying. Quick!”

  They tied cold, wet reef knots until their fingers ached. Hildy stood on the seat, with her foot on the tiller, and laced away at the sail over her head. Mitt and Ynen crawled up and down the cabin roof, tying knots there. They did it again with a second fold, and then all over again with a third. By this time, Wind’s Road’s sail was an absurd little triangle, with the long bare mast towering above it. The rain was coming in gusting clouds now. They could see nothing much beyond a gray circle about thirty feet across. But, inside that circle, the waves were yellow-green, heaving high and pointed. The bare mast swept back and forth. The deck was up and down, sickeningly steep both ways.

  “Don’t untie that boom till we got the foresails in,” Mitt shouted at Hildy. Somehow the weather was much louder, though it was hard to tell what was making the noise. Mitt and Ynen hauled and grappled at the clapping sails in the bows, slithering on the wet planks round Old Ammet. One moment they were skyward, soaring into lashing rain. The next Old Ammet was plunging, like a man on a toboggan, down and down a freckled tawny gray wave side.

  Ynen swallowed giddily. “Is it going to be bad?” he yelled.

  Mitt did not try to deceive him. “Real shocker!” he bawled back. But he thought it was just as well that he did not have breath to spare to explain to Ynen that these autumn storms sometimes went on for days. Mitt knew they would be drowned long before the day was out. Now he was fully awake, he knew, with nasty vividness, that Wind’s Road would capsize. He could feel it in the movement of her. She was only a rich man’s pleasure boat, after all. And as Old Ammet launched himself furiously down another freckled hill of water, Mitt was as terrified as he had been when he crouched among the marble-playing boys in Holand. He was blind with panic. It was as if he had run away from himself and left the inside of his head empty. Mitt knew this would not do. It was no use thinking Ynen could manage by himself. He had to run after himself, inside his head, and bring himself back with one arm twisted up his back before he was able to pick up an armful of soaking sail and stagger with it to the hatch. He thought, as he pushed and kicked it down and clapped the cover on and banged the bolt home, that there really was nothing left of the old fearless Mitt anymore. He had never been in charge of a boat before. He wanted to whimper because Siriol was not there.

  He and Ynen crawled back across the seesawing cabin roof. Hildy, seeing them coming, obeyed instructions and started to untie the lashings round the boom. She knew they had been idiots, she and Ynen, sitting under that tarpaulin and letting the storm creep up on them. She had been trying to behave with smart efficiency ever since. She did not want people like Mitt thinking her a fool. But she had no notion how fierce the wind was now. She loosened the main knot.

  The wind tore it all out of her hands. The sail slammed round sideways, jerking Wind’s Road broadside on to the next huge wave. The boom mowed across the cabin roof and caught the side of Ynen’s head with a thuck. It knocked him clean out. He was carried helplessly with it toward the side.

  14

  Hildy screamed. Mitt flung himself after Ynen and just managed to catch him round the ankle with both hands. Water thundered down over them, hard and heavy, and fell away, sucking and rilling, pulling Ynen against Mitt’s straining arms and dragging both of them down the tilted cabin roof. Mitt had no idea how they survived, any more than Hildy. Hildy knew Wind’s Road had gone like a bullet, slantwise through the top of that wave. But how she came to have the fighting tiller in one hand and the sail rope in the other she did not know.

  “Ye gods! I’m sorry!” she screamed at Mitt when she saw him, drenched and horrified, sliding down from the cabin roof and heaving Ynen after him.

  “Don’t dare do that again!” Mitt screamed back. Wind’s Road was plunging downhill now, and he made use of it to slide Ynen into the cabin. Ynen was alive, to his great relief, stirring and muttering miserably. Mitt did not dare linger with him. He wedged him hurriedly in place with blankets. “Don’t move!” he bawled, though the cabin was almost quiet. “You took a knock there.” Wind’s Road, trembling sickeningly, mounted upward again. Mitt threw himself downhill into the well and wrestled the tiller out of Hildy’s weak hand. The storm was too loud even for screaming now.

  Mitt found he had arrived just in time. The huge autumn storm roared and howled and bashed around them. Wind’
s Road was half sideways in the trough between two heaving walls of water, caught in the backwash of the last wave. Worse still, while she wallowed there, half the thundering gale was blocked by the water. The sail was coming smashing across and threatening to capsize her. Mitt, as he worked at the sluggish tiller, shrieked and made gestures at Hildy to pull the rope in and hold the sail. It seemed a lifetime before she understood and the rope came yelling over its blocks into her hands. She still had a silly, puzzled look on her face, but Mitt had no time to attend. He could only thank Old Ammet he was stronger since he was last in a boat. Wind’s Road was the hardest thing he had ever had to handle. She would not come about. They were creeping crabwise up a great slope of water, up and up, until they were hanging, almost over on one side, just beneath the raving crest of the wave. Wind’s Road had suicidal urges. Mitt felt her going over, and heaved on the flaccid tiller.

  The full force of the storm hit them as he did so. Mitt and Hildy both screamed. Their voices burst out of their throats without their being able to help it. The wind hit with a roar and a crash. The sail rope yelled out from between Hildy’s fingers, nearly dislocating both her shoulders. Great lumps of water loomed and fell, smashing across the bows, banging down on the cabin, thundering over Hildy and Mitt, until they were as bruised as they were wet, and went fizzing and boiling away behind.

  The man in the bows with the flying fair hair understood their danger and leaned into the wave, dragging at Wind’s Road’s forward rigging. Wind’s Road did not want to come, but Mitt thought the man dragged her round by main force. He saw him clearly for a moment, with his hair as white as the snarling spray, gesturing aside the horses that were trying to overwhelm Wind’s Road. Then Wind’s Road lashed herself over the edge and down another watery hillside, and Mitt had all his work cut out to hold her straight. Beside him, Hildy, to his relief, was trying to help the sail rope as it came rattling in again when Wind’s Road plunged.