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 colors began to come back to her because the sun was rising. Mitt did not dare talk anymore, in case some one 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 there 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 toward 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 onto the decking and scrambled toward 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.