“Thank goodness! You go to the foresails,” Ynen whispered.
Hildy crept forward, round the starboard side, to avoid any noise near Mitt. Ynen could see her clearly against the pallor of the sails. As soon as she was ready, he put the tiller over hard. Wind’s Road surged round. Her sails ran out to the end of their ropes and swung back. The wind seemed suddenly twice as strong. Ynen kept his foot against the tiller and hauled in the mainsail frantically. Hildy collected the clapping foresails and dragged them the other way. Wind’s Road stood still, head on to the wind, and seemed to flap and tremble in every part. Then she was round, tipped over much farther, and apparently rushing through the water, but actually making very little way against the current. Ynen hauled in the mainsail as close as he could, in order not to waste time tacking, and they were now headed back to Holand. Hildy came back to the well, and they both sagged with relief.
Holand meant safety and bed and warm rooms. They had got the better of that dreadful boy. That was their first thought. Then they both remembered the trouble they would be in once they were back. That could not be helped, but they did wish the thought of the trouble did not go along with an empty, forsaken feeling. It was no good pretending Navis would defend them from the uncles. On the other hand, Uncle Harchad might forgive them a great deal if they brought him the boy who had thrown the bomb.
Hildy and Ynen peered at one another’s faces, trying to see what the other thought about that. The boy was a criminal. He had tried to murder their grandfather. Perhaps he was a friend of the man who had actually done so. But all the same, he was a human being, much the same age as they were, and having bad dreams in the cabin. They both thought of Uncle Harchad kicking the Earl of Hannart’s son, and the Earl’s son cringing. It was easy enough to replace the Earl’s son with a picture of that skinny, cocksure boy, and quite as unpleasant.
“We could put him off at Hoe Point, couldn’t we?” Ynen whispered, and relieved Hildy’s mind considerably.
Mitt, as he slept, was encountering Poor Old Ammet and Libby Beer at once. They rushed at him, one from either side. The world spun about and went wrong somehow. When Mitt opened his eyes, he knew the world was still wrong. It was going with a blunt, blundering, bucking motion, and tipping the wrong way. Those early years with Siriol had put some things deep in Mitt’s brain. Funny, he thought. Close-hauled against a current. Flaming Ammet! He snatched up Hobin’s gun and burst out of the cabin. He did not even notice the door had been bolted.
Outside, he had only to feel the wind on his face to know he was right. The children’s smitten faces in the lamplight confirmed it. So did the Northern Cross low down behind them.
“Turn her back round!” he yelled. “You sneaking idle rich, you! You think you can do just as you like, don’t you! Go on, turn her back round!”
At this, despite the waving gun, Hildy lost her temper. He spoiled her entire scheme, and then he shouted insults. “Don’t you talk to me about doing just as we want!” She was so angry that she stood up and yelled in Mitt’s face. “You sneak aboard our ship, and order us about like dirt, and eat our food, and make us go where you want to go, and then you have the nerve to say we always do what we want! You’re worse than—than Grandfather! He was honest about it at least!”
“Honest!” bawled Mitt. “Haddock honest! Don’t make me laugh. He was robbing all Holand for years!”
“So you try to murder him, and order us about like dirt on top of that!” Hildy screamed.
“You are dirt, that’s why!” Mitt thundered, waving the gun. “Turn this boat back round!” Ynen clutched the tiller and feared for Hildy’s life. In fact, neither he nor Mitt noticed that Mitt had not even remembered to cock the gun. He had not spun the empty barrel on either.
Hildy did not know and did not care. “If we’re dirt, I shudder to think what your family is!” she roared.
“Oh shut up!” Mitt pointed the gun at Ynen. “Turn this boat round, I said!”
For the second time that night Ynen thought he was about to be shot. It gave him a cool kind of resignation. “You did try to murder our grandfather,” he said. “Give me one good reason why we should do anything to help you.”
Mitt noticed he was pointing the gun at Ynen and realised that Ynen did not regard the gun as a good reason. It sobered him rather. He felt considerable respect for this smooth-faced, hawk-nosed little boy, though, as for his sister—! “Well then,” he said, “your precious grandfather bust up my family. Is that a reason?”
“How did he do that?” Ynen asked, shivering with cold and weariness.
Hildy added angrily, “Whatever he did, we didn’t do anything to you!”
“I’ll tell you,” said Mitt. He rested his arm on the cabin roof and began to talk, jerkily and angrily at first, and then more reasonably, as he realised neither of them was trying to interrupt. He told them how he had been born at Dike End, and how the rent had been doubled, and how this had forced his father to work in Holand and then forced them out of the farm. He told them how his father had never found proper work and so joined the Free Holanders, and how he had been betrayed over the warehouse—though he did not mention names—and disappeared, leaving Milda and himself to manage alone. He described how they had lived after that, and he could not help thinking, as he talked, that this was a funny kind of way to tell your life story, with Wind’s Road bucking through the water in the dark, and the half-lit faces of Hadd’s grandchildren staring up at him as he talked. He told them about Hobin. “And if it hadn’t been for him,” he said, “we’d have been turned out into the street when they knocked the houses down to make the Festival safe.”
“They didn’t just turn them out, did they?” Hildy said. “I thought—”
“Father had houses built for them,” said Ynen. “But I don’t think anyone else was going to bother. All the same,” he said to Mitt, “you and your mother weren’t there then. You were all right. You still haven’t given me a reason.”
“Isn’t that a reason?” Mitt demanded. “There was Hobin never daring to put a foot wrong for fear of the arms inspectors, and us near on as hard up as ever because Hadd would put the rents up all the time. But never the price of guns—not he! We had to pay through the nose to support those soldiers, so that they could make us scared to stir hand or foot. You don’t understand—can’t you think how it feels when everyone you know is scared sick all the time? You couldn’t trust people. They’d turn round and tell on you, anytime, even if it weren’t you done it, because they didn’t want to get marched off in the night themselves. That’s not how people should be.”
“It isn’t,” Hildy agreed.
“I grant you that,” said Ynen. “But you’re talking about everything. You haven’t told me one thing Grandfather did to you. I still don’t see why we should help you. But I’ve heard things about Uncle Harchad. I don’t mind landing you at Hoe Point, so you’ll have a chance to get away.”
Yes, Mitt thought, in full view of all the ships coming out to look for them. Very safe. Talking to this boy was like bashing down a weak little plant that kept springing up again in your face. “You might as well take me back to Holand and be done,” he said. “If I’m not caught landing, I’ll be caught in the Flate straight after.”
“Well, you did throw a bomb,” said Ynen. “And I can’t see why you did. There must have been lots of people in Holand far worse off than you. Why did you do it?”