“Now let’s make sure we understand one another,” Al said comfortably. “I’ve been having a good deal of trouble lately, and it’s made me nervous. I don’t want any more, understand—guvnor? Little lady? You?”
“The name’s Mitt,” said Mitt. “What trouble?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Al, “so you won’t get any wrong ideas about me. I’m a marksman. Best shot in the South—so do remember I don’t want more trouble, won’t you? That’s why I’d rather be on the right end of this gun— nothing personal. As for the trouble, I had the good fortune to be employed by a noble gentleman in Holand—well, let’s call him Harl, shall we?—to take one of my best shots at a certain Earl—let’s call him Hadd, not to beat around the bush—”
Hildy’s eyes and Ynen’s slid sideways to each other. Wind’s Road veered. Mitt had to nudge Ynen before he realized. Mitt felt nearly as bad himself, and the nature of the badness dragged his face elderly again.
“And I did,” Al said earnestly. “It was as sweet a shot as you ever saw and dropped Hadd like a stone. But then the trouble started because I had to get away, hadn’t I? Naturally, Harl had promised me I’d be safe, but I knew better than to trust that kind of promise. Noble gentlemen who make these arrangements always prefer you to be dead, too. You can’t blame Harl. I’d have done the same myself. So I made a little outlay of my own, on some soldiers, not to search a certain ship’s boat where I was. But there were so many soldiers, and they got so eager, that I had to knock a couple into the water and then cast that filthy tub loose. And I got shot at, and rowed after, and if I hadn’t happened to catch the tide, I wouldn’t be here now. So I don’t want more trouble this time. You don’t blame me, do you, little lady?”
“I can’t honestly say,” said Hildy, “that I don’t.”
Al blinked a little at this, and scratched his tousled head. He smiled incredulously at Ynen. “She’s a sharp one, your sister. She is your sister, isn’t she? Lucky I never mind what people say.” He moved Hobin’s gun round on his knee until it pointed to Mitt. “You. Find some tackle and catch us a fish for lunch.”
“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.
16
For the rest of the day Mitt sat fishing. Not venison, oyster, or 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 offense. 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. Good night, 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 quarreled 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.