Drowned Ammet (5 page)

Milda's stories made good listening. There was magic and adventure and fighting in them, and they all seemed to happen in North Dalemark in the time when there were kings—though there were earls in the stories, too, and ordinary people. Mitt puzzled about the stories. He knew Holand was in South Dalemark, but this North Milda talked about seemed so different that he wondered for a while if it was real.

“Do they have kings still in the North?” he asked, to see what Milda would say.

But Milda knew disappointingly little about the North. “No, there's no kings anymore,” she said. “I've heard they have earls in the North just like we do, only the earls there are all freedom fighters like your dad was.”

Mitt could not understand how an earl could be anything of the sort. Nor could Milda explain.

“All I can say is I wish there
were
kings again,” she told Mitt. “Earls are no good. Look at Hadd—us poor people are just rent on two legs to him, and if we do anything he doesn't care for, he claps us in prison, or worse.”

“But he can't put everyone in prison,” Mitt objected. “There wouldn't be anyone to catch his fish for him or sew his clothes.”

“Oh, you are a free soul, Mitt!” Milda exclaimed.

Mitt was not sure when or how it happened, but in the course of these talks he had with Milda in the night, it began to be understood between them that Mitt was one day going to avenge his father and put right all the wrongs in Holand. It was an accepted thing, even before Milda found work. She found work fairly soon, in another sewing house, because the one thing she could really do well was fine embroidery. They managed to pay the rent on their room in time to prevent the landlord turning them out. But they were still short of food. Milda spent the rest of her week's earnings on a new pair of shoes.

“To celebrate,” she said. “I just happened to see them. Aren't they pretty?”

Mitt would have been very hungry indeed had not Siriol, the dour-faced informer, sent round his daughter, Lydda, with a basket of sea fry. Lydda was a fat, meek girl of twelve. She showed Milda how to cook the fry, and she much admired Milda's pretty new shoes. Perhaps she described them to her father. At any rate, Mitt and Milda had a square meal, and there were still enough fish for breakfast. Milda put them out on the windowsill of their room to keep fresh. The ants came out of the wall in the night and ate them up. When Mitt opened the window to fetch in breakfast, all he found was some tiny scraps of bone. He was looking miserably at them when Siriol came clumping up the dark stairs in his clogs and came into the room without being invited.

“Lost your breakfast, I see,” he said. “You'd better come round to mine and have some. And best thing I can see, Milda, is for him to sail with me in future. I was thinking of taking an apprentice.”

“Well—” said Milda.

“Free Holanders look after their own,” said Siriol.

Knowing what he knew about Siriol, Mitt was speechless. He had to stand there and let Milda do the refusing for him. But to his astonishment, Milda smiled gratefully at Siriol, thanked him over and over again, and agreed that Mitt should sail with Siriol.

“I don't need breakfast,” was all Mitt could think of saying.

“Be round at my place in half an hour,” Siriol said, and clumped away again.

Mitt rounded on Milda. “But he informed!” he said passionately. “What did you want to go and agree for?”

Milda shrugged, with the crease in her face very deep and bitter. “I know. But we have to live. And maybe you'll see your way to getting even with him if you keep close to him.”

Mitt was mollified by that. And it made a great deal of difference that he had a job, too. Siriol was very scrupulous. Mitt had an apprentice's share of the takings, so that when the catch was good, he earned nearly as much as Milda. That almost made up to him for the kind of job it was. He did not like fishing. He did not like Siriol. He hardly knew which he disliked most.

Fishing was a mixture of boredom, hardship, and frantic bursts of work. Siriol was sour and surly and insisted that everything should be done exactly right. Mitt very soon learned that he was not allowed to make a mistake. The first day he forgot to coil a rope as Ham had shown him. Siriol picked up the end of the offending rope—which had a knot in it—and hit Mitt across the back with it. Mitt glared at him.

“Do it,” said Siriol. “Do it right. Or else. You'll be glad to know how one of these days.”

Small as Mitt was, he shared watches with big, slow Ham, who was Siriol's partner. He learned to patch the much-patched sail, to mend nets, and to gut fish. Siriol and Ham taught him to steer, at first by day, which was simple, then to find his way by night, by the stars, or in pitch dark, by the feel of the wind and the water, and the pull of the sails. They taught him to smell bad weather before it was near enough to hurt. Mitt also learned what chilblains were and how it felt to be too wet and too cold for too long. And he learned all these things, loathing them, until they were second nature, and learned them so young that they were with him all his life.

One thing that surprised Mitt was that he was never in the least afraid at sea. He expected to be. When he first climbed gingerly down into the
Flower of Holand,
and she rocked, and he knew there were only salt-swollen old boards between him and sinking into the sea like Old Ammet, he had to tell himself very hard that he was a free soul who did not know what fear was. Then
Flower of Holand
went dipping out to sea with all the rest of the fishing fleet, and he forgot all about it. Sailing was just a job, like Milda's sewing. And it was good to have a job and earn money when the host of bigger boys hanging round the waterfront had no such thing.

Sometimes, on a fine day, when Siriol's boat went bluntly out of the harbor on the tide, rich people's pleasure boats would be putting out, too, from the West Pool. The West Pool was a shallower mooring just beyond Holand, where the dues were so high that only wealthy people could keep boats there. Mitt enjoyed watching them. But Siriol and Ham had nothing but contempt for them. They spit in the water when they saw them.

“Rich men's toys,” said Siriol. “Half out of the water in this little breeze! Put one of those in a gale, and she's under in five minutes.” Siriol's respect was reserved for the stately merchant ships. Let the
Proud Ammet
or the graceful
Lovely Libby
come nodding out of Holand, crowding up sail as she came, then Siriol's face would light up, and Ham's also. “Ah!” Siriol would say. “That's a ship for you!” And he would look round his thick and fishy
Flower of Holand
as if she disappointed him.

After a year of fishing, Mitt felt himself the equal of any boy in Holand. He did not grow much—probably because he had to work so hard—but he was as tough and quick-witted as any lad on the waterfront, and much quicker-tongued. He knew every bad word there was. He had a retort for everyone. Boys and girls alike treated him with respect now. Indeed, many of them would have liked to make friends with Mitt. But Mitt kept himself to himself. These children, or children like them, had made his life a misery when he first came to Holand, and he found he could not forget it. He preferred grown-ups. He cracked jokes onshore and on board that made big slow Ham guffaw and even Siriol smile. That pleased Mitt. It made him feel grown-up and independent—a proper free soul.

It was just as well Mitt was independent. Milda had simply no sense of economy. It became a habit with her to “just happen to see” something whenever she came home with her wages. One week it would be a huge iced cake, the next, a pair of pretty earrings.

“You have to keep up your self-respect,” she told Mitt when he protested. “I'm being ground underfoot, I am, and if I don't keep my spirits up somehow, I shall just go under, I know I will!”

This was all very well, but if Mitt was out and the thing Milda “just happened to see” cost more money than Milda had, she did not scruple to take Mitt's hardearned money, too. Mitt had to hide his money, or they would have starved. He felt terribly put upon and responsible. One evening, when he crawled home, tired out, to find Milda had bought a whole tub of oysters, it seemed like the last straw. She had opened the tub, too, and left it in the sun under the window. It was already smelling rather queer, and the ants were swarming up the sides of the tub to investigate.

“What did you want to buy that for!” Mitt yelled.

Milda was injured. “Oh, Mitt! I thought they'd be such a treat for you.”

“But there's thousands of them!” Mitt bawled. “How are we going to eat all that lot? If you wanted oysters, I could have
got
you oysters—for nothing, from Dideo. Honest, you need more looking after than a kid! How am I going to pay Siriol out for informing, or do anything else, if you're going to carry on like this?”

“You sound just like your dad,” Milda said coldly. “Let me tell you, those oysters were a bargain at two silver, and you ought to be grateful.”

“Two
silver
!” Mitt raised both his chilblained hands to the blotchy ceiling. “That's no bargain. That's daylight robbery, that is!”

Mitt and Milda—and the ants—had oysters for supper and for breakfast, and after that they both felt unwell, although the ants seemed as lively as ever. Ham kindly helped Mitt throw the rest of the tub into the harbor.

“And she went and paid two silver for them!” Mitt groaned.

“Don't be too hard on her. She's used to better things,” Ham said. “She's a lovely good woman, she is.”

Mitt stared at him. “If I didn't feel sick as a dog already,” he said, “I would after I heard you say that!” And he went back upstairs, muttering, “Lovely good woman!” to himself in the greatest disgust. Of course he knew his mother was still young and pretty, in spite of that hateful crease on her face where her dimple should have been, and he knew she was not like those other ladies in the tenement who were always down on the waterfront, making up to the sailors whenever a ship came in, but for Ham to say
that
! Mitt had never noticed that Ham deeply admired Milda. Ham was too slow and shy to let Milda know it. And Mitt's feeling was that all women were born stupid and grew worse.

Alda, Siriol's wife, was the worst of the lot. Mitt supposed he should be thankful that his mother did not spend all her money on arris, the way Alda did. Alda was usually too drunk to sell the fish Siriol, Ham, and Mitt had caught. She sat on a barrel at the corner of the stall, while Lydda stood dumbly behind the heaps of fish, letting people have them too cheap. It pained Mitt to his soul. After all their trouble, out half the night pulling in fish in the drizzling rain, a rich merchant's housekeeper or a mincing man from the Palace had only to appear and point to a pile of sweet whitebait, and Lydda would humbly halve the price. It was not fair. The ones who could afford to pay the full price always got it cheap. But that was Holand all over.

At length, Lydda's spineless meekness was more than Mitt could bear. If the fish was to go cheap, he felt it should go cheap to the right people. He elbowed Lydda aside and tried selling the fish himself.

“Hadd, Hadd, haddock!” he shouted. “Fit for an earl, and dirt cheap, too!” When people stopped and stared, Mitt took up a haddock and waved it about. “Hadd,” he said, “ock. Come on. He won't eat you. You eat
him
.” He picked up an eel in the other hand. “And here's an earl—I mean a Harl—I mean an eel—for sale. Who wants a nice fresh Harl for supper?” It was great fun, and it sold a lot of fish.

After that Mitt always sold the fish. Lydda weighed and wrapped it, while her mother sat on her tub chuckling at Mitt and breathing arris fumes over the customers. Mitt was often very tired. His hands were chapped and covered with little cuts from the fish scales, winter and summer, but it was worth it, just to be able to shout rude things about Hadd.

“You want to watch it, Mitt,” Siriol said whenever he heard Mitt's sales talk. But he let Mitt go on. After all, there was always a laughing crowd round the stall, buying fish. Even the Palace lackeys sniggered as they bought.

Then one day, as soon as
Flower of Holand
was out of the harbor and no one could overhear, Siriol amazed Mitt by asking him if he wanted to join the Free Holanders.

“I'll have to think,” Mitt said. And he missed selling the fish that next morning, in order to hurry home and ask Milda what he ought to do, before she went to work. “I can't join, can I?” he said. “Not after what they did to Dad?”

But Milda went dancing round the room, her skirts held out and her earrings swinging, and her dimple deep and clear. “This is your chance!” she said. “Don't you see, Mitt? This is your chance to get back at them at last!”

“Oh yes,” said Mitt. “I suppose it is and all.”

So Mitt became a Free Holander, and great fun it was, too. At first it was simply the great fun of being in the secret, with, behind that, the further secret that he was only in it to get revenge for his father. Mitt grinned to himself at both secrets all through long, boring watches when he was alone at
Flower of Holand'
s tiller, and the stars wheeling overhead seemed to glimmer with sheer glee.

“Ah, shut up, he's useful!” Siriol said to Ham when Ham protested. “Who's going to bother with a lad who looks just like all the other kids? People think boys don't count. Look at the way he gets away with selling fish. He's safer than what we are.”