Drowned Ammet. Diana Wynne Jones
Everyone had another glass of arris – Mitt poured his secretly into Alda’s glass – and then he and Hobin came away.
“But I feel bad, I do, really,” Mitt told Milda. “As if I owe it them to tell them we need the gunpowder.”
“Well, why don’t you tell them?” Milda said. “Dideo knows how to make a bomb. It wouldn’t do any harm to get them to help.”
“You mean, bring the Free Holanders into it, really?” Mitt said. It seemed a very good idea.
Unfortunately Hobin came in at that moment and caught the words Free Holanders. Again he showed surprising strictness. “I’m not having freedom-fighting talk in this house,” he said. “Silly cloak-and-dagger stuff! And don’t get the idea I’m scared of Harchad either. He knows I can go back to Waywold if I want. What gets me is the way those boatmen don’t grow up. It’s like a game to them, just like it was to Canden. Nobody’s playing that silly game in my house!”
Mitt and Milda could only continue their talk in utmost secrecy, either in snatched moments or when Hobin was out at the Gunsmiths’ Guild. The upshot of their planning was that Mitt lied himself blue in the face to Hobin and managed to attend the next meeting of the Free Holanders. There he laid before them his suggestion: that he steal enough gunpowder for a bomb and plant it under Hadd when he next carried Old Ammet down to the harbour to drown.
The suggestion made a startled hush. Ham broke it by saying reproachfully, “It wasn’t because of the gunpowder I was glad for you, Mitt. I hope you don’t think that.”
“Funny. I made sure you was expecting it,” said Mitt, who could seldom resist teasing Ham.
“Now, Mitt—” Ham began.
“Hush,” said Siriol. “Learn to take a joke, Ham. Mitt, that’s a risk. Horrible risk. You’d get taken.”
This was fighting talk from Siriol. He was really considering the idea. Highly delighted, Mitt made haste to assure Siriol that he had no intention of being taken. “Suppose I was dressed up in red and yellow, like the Palace boys. They’d not know who I was until it was too late. I can run.”
“I know you can run,” said Siriol. “Your ma never agrees, does she?”
“Ask her,” said Mitt. “Only not when Hobin’s there. She can sew the clothes if we can get her the stuff.”
Siriol pondered, long and deep.
“Mitt looks just like any other lad I ever saw,” Dideo said persuasively. “Half the time I don’t recognise him myself. And I would love to get making a bomb.” Indeed, all the other Free Holanders were loving the thought too. They leant forwards, murmuring eagerly across the night-light.
“Boom!” said someone. “Up goes Hadd. Lovely!”
“And all Holand rises to us!” said someone else. “He can do it, Siriol.”
“Quiet!” said Siriol. “I know he can do it. But he has to get away after. This is going to take careful planning.”
Mitt scampered home to Flate Street, wholly delighted. “We did it!” he whispered to Milda when she met him anxiously on the stairs. “We’re on!”
“And you’re not afraid at all?” Milda whispered, wonderingly.
“Not a bit,” said Mitt. And it was true. He was looking forward to it. He felt dedicated.
The Free Holanders began to lay their plans, carefully and thoroughly as Siriol did everything. Mitt and Milda laid theirs. And all of them very soon realised that it would not be next Festival that Mitt planted his bomb. As Siriol said, they would need to study the road the procession took, and the way the soldiers were placed, to find out where and when would be the safest time for Mitt. And he had to look into escape routes and possible hiding places for Mitt afterwards.
As Mitt had no intention of escaping, he never attended when Siriol talked of things like this. But after the first week he spent as Hobin’s apprentice, he knew that it would take him years, literally, to steal enough gunpowder to make Dideo a bomb. Hobin was only allowed enough gunpowder to test the guns he made. Harchad’s arms inspectors called once a week to make sure there was no more. Sometimes they made surprise visits, to make doubly sure. They would weigh the powders and count the guns, and, unless their seal was on everything, Hobin was not allowed to work. They were a great annoyance to Mitt, though Hobin did not seem bothered by them. He would joke with them, almost as if they were friends.
Gunpowder, Mitt discovered, was made of three things, which Hobin mixed, very carefully, himself. One was charcoal, which Mitt never bothered with. Dideo could get that easily. But the sulphur and the saltpetre were, as far as Mitt knew, impossible to get any other way than by stealing them. Mitt supposed they must be made somehow, but he never found out how. They were delivered in sealed bags by the inspectors and locked away by Hobin. It was months before Mitt was allowed even to touch any. He had to spend his time instead melting lead and casting boring little bullets in a string of small sausage-shaped moulds. And watching, watching.
Hobin himself was the other great drawback to Mitt’s plans. He was such a careful man, and so patient. Mitt suspected that even without inspectors, Hobin would have kept all his things under lock and key anyway. And he was much in demand. There was scarcely an hour when there was not someone else in the workshop besides Mitt and Hobin. Troopers and captains came, bringing guns which had problems. Other gunsmiths came, to consult Hobin on difficult technical matters. Mitt discovered that Hobin had invented a way of making a gun shoot true, by putting a spiral groove up the inside of the barrel. That was why the bullets Mitt so boringly cast were pointed, and not round like the shot Harl used when he shot birds on the Flate. Twice Hobin was actually summoned to Harchad to be consulted. By the time Mitt had graduated to carving butts and even weighing a little powder, he had grasped that Hobin was the best gunsmith in South Dalemark. Mitt was quite proud, and glad on his mother’s behalf. But it did mean he had chosen the very worst man to filch from. Hobin had a name for honesty. He was respected in the Guild. And for a long time Mitt dared not do anything but pretend he was honest too.
Hobin was truly anxious for Mitt to learn, and to become what he called “a decent citizen”. Mitt had to wear better clothes – which were certainly warmer in winter, but which he despised on principle. He had to wash when they came up from work. Once a week he was forced to wash all over in front of the fire, in spite of his conviction that washing took the strength out of you. And every evening Hobin produced a book. It was called A Reader for the Poor, and it bored Mitt to tears. “If you won’t go to school, you must learn at home,” Hobin said, and he made Mitt read a page aloud every night after supper.
Mitt’s only wonder was that he did not die of boredom in the first year. It seemed to him that he only came alive when he began to be able, at last, to take Dideo tiny packets of sulphur and saltpetre. Then it was even better than running errands for the Free Holanders. Mitt would lie to Hobin, as he told Milda, like a fishmonger’s scales, and slip off into the streets with his packet, knowing that if he was caught with it on him, there would be trouble indeed. It was a marvellous feeling of danger, and marvellous to know he was getting somewhere at last.
He did not get on very fast, either as a gunsmith or a thief. Hobin was a patient man, but he sometimes grew irritated with Mitt. Mitt’s mind was wholly on filching powders. He did not intend to be a gunsmith, so he attended to Hobin as little as he attended to the plans Siriol insisted on making about a hiding place for him after his bomb was thrown. Meanwhile, Milda had a baby, and another the year after. Mitt was rather astonished to find himself with two sisters long before he had a bomb. They were rather a nuisance. They would cry, and they would cut teeth, and they would take up Milda’s time when Mitt needed her. But they would not believe they were nuisances. Whenever Milda dumped a sister in Mitt’s arms, the baby would start to laugh and gurgle, as if Mitt liked her.
Mitt started to grow then. That astonished him too. He was used to being the smallest boy in the street. Now he was one of the bigger ones, with long, long, thin legs. The woman who had stolen the red and yellow cloth to