Nothing like this had happened to Mitt for years. He was as humiliated as he was angry. He struggled hard. They bashed against the cupboard, a bunk, and the cupboard again. “Let go of me!” panted Mitt as they bounced against the gilded door.
Al, by this time, had both Mitt’s hands helpless under one brawny arm. “Right you are,” he said. He plucked the gun out of Mitt’s belt and let go of Mitt the same instant. Mitt was flung against the bunk again.
“How dare you!” said Hildy.
“Give that back, please,” said Ynen.
Both of them had come into the cabin, too, which explained why Wind’s Road was tipping about so, Mitt realized, as he was rolled onto the floor.
Al raised the gun. “You see to the boat, guvnor,” he said, and walked toward the cabin door. Ynen, Hildy, and Mitt, too, backed out in front of him in a dismayed cluster, treading on one another along the tipping floor. Ynen seized the tiller and set Wind’s Road to rights again, while the other two crammed themselves beside him, as far as they could get from Al in the cabin doorway.
“That’s right,” said Al. “Now this is much more comfortable. I didn’t feel safe with this gun where it was. Went off once already, didn’t it?” he said, pointing to the splintered groove beside the well. He turned the gun over admiringly. “Where did you pinch this?” he asked Mitt. “This is one of Hobin’s—one of his specials.”
Mitt set his face sullenly. He was not going to discuss Hobin with Al.
“Well, it’s in good hands now,” Al remarked. “Five shots in it. Got any more?”
“No,” said Mitt.
In rippling, rope-creaking silence, Al swung himself up to sit facing them on the cabin roof, with his legs dangling and the gun laid across one knee. Mitt watched his square, smug face and was almost shamed enough to cry. He knew he was having a very vivid experience of exactly how Ynen and Hildy felt when he first came out of the cabin himself, and it made him feel sick. It seemed hard on Ynen and Hildy to be having it again.
“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 t
o 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.