Mitt’s stomach, for the first time in his life, gave a cold little jolt. He lowered his eyes from Harchad’s face and gently backed away. Wonder how he’d look if he knew I was right beside him, he thought. Accomplice, was I? O flaming Ammet! I think everything’s gone wrong. He tiptoed hurriedly sideways to join the nearest group of hurrying citizens.
The man in braid shouted. “There he is now! That’s him!”
“Who?”
“The brat who threw that bomb.”
Mitt had the merest glimpse of them all staring at him. Harchad’s face jutted out of the rest in a way that dried Mitt’s mouth, tongue and all, and almost wrung a scream out of him. It was as horrible as his nightmares about Canden. He turned and ran, mindlessly. His only idea was to make his legs go faster than their fastest. He had to get away from the gathering shouts behind him. He had to escape from that face. He shot across the waterfront, not knowing whether he hit people or avoided them as he ran. He dived into the nearest road and ran there for all he was worth. It filled with banging feet behind him. Mitt ran harder still, turned a corner and ran, and ran again, and went on running. The only thing in his mind was the shouting and ringing feet behind him, and he did not stop running until they had grown faint and died away.
When his breath came back, he wandered wearily round a corner into the next street. He was deeply ashamed of himself. What had got into him? What had made him, the free soul, fearless Mitt, who had never turned a hair during all the errands he had run for the Free Holanders—what had possessed him—to panic at the mere sight of Harchad and run away? Mitt could not understand it. What had made everything go so wrong?
“Here, love. Have hold of this and cheer up.”
Mitt looked up to find himself in an airy, respectable street, quite some way above the waterfront. It was full of handsomely painted houses. Mitt dimly remembered the one just up the hill from him, with the double gable and the two stiff figures painted on it. The street was full of quiet, cheerful people in respectable holiday clothes, who were buying things at the stalls which lined the street. It did not seem as if a whisper of the events at the harbor had reached this far. All was peace and sober enjoyment.
The person who had spoken to Mitt was a woman behind one of the stalls. She was leaning forward across rows of little Ammets and Libbys, holding a toffee apple out toward Mitt. She smiled when he looked, and waggled the apple invitingly on its stick. “Here. Take this for luck. Your face is as long as Flate Dike, my love.”
Mitt did his best to grin. Running had filled his mouth with thick, bitter juice. He did not want a toffee apple. But he could see the woman meant to be kind. “Oh, no, thanks, lady. I just lost a lifetime’s work, see, and I’m off my food a bit.”
“Well, then, you need an appetizer,” said the woman, and she tried to push the toffee apple into Mitt’s hand.
Mitt found he really could not bear the thought of sticky toffee and sour apple, and he backed away. “No, thanks, lady. Honest. Much obliged.”
“Please yourself,” she said. “But I’ve got to give you something now I’ve started, or it’s bad luck for both of us. Here.” She picked up one of the little images of Libby Beer from the line on the front of the stall and held her out to Mitt. “You can have her then. I’m just clearing up to go, anyway.” Mitt did not know if the woman really wanted luck or if she was simply trying to cheer him up, but he took the little image and tried to grin again. “And don’t try eating her. She’s made of wax,” said the woman. “The year’s luck to you.”
“Luck to you, ship and shore,” Mitt said politely, just as he should. He wandered on down the street, clutching the knobby little figure and wondering what to do with it. Perhaps I could make Harchad a present of her, he thought.
He was three stalls lower down when boots hammered on the flagway behind him. Six soldiers with an officer at their head swung round the corner the way Mitt had come and halted by the woman’s stall. “Hey, you. Anyone. Seen a boy in Festival breeches, no jacket, very skinny?”
The sober respectable hum in the street died away completely. Nobody moved. Mitt froze, bending over the stall beside him, pretending to look at little Ammets. He tried to will himself to make a dash down the street and bring the soldiers after him. But there was no question of that, somehow. He could only wait for the woman who had given him Libby Beer to give him away.
“Yes, indeed, I have seen him, sir,” she said. “Just this minute. I offered him a toffee apple, and he went away down the street.”
The soldiers nodded and came on down the street.
Mitt stood with a bright imitation Libby Beer in one hand and the other stretched out to touch the plaited corn of an Ammet and still could not move. He did not blame the woman. Other people had seen her talking to Mitt, and she dared not deny it. In the old days it used to make him amused and rather scornful, the way even respectable people like these went in dread of Harchad’s soldiers. It made him think he must be the only free soul in Holand. But now he did not seem to be a free soul any longer. He dared not move. He had to stand there till the soldiers saw him.
The boots clomped by. Mitt could see and feel everyone’s eyes moving between him and the green uniforms. But nobody said a word. The boots clomped on to the end of the street and faded out of hearing. There was sighing and shifting all round. Someone behind Mitt, who must have blocked the soldiers’ view of him, said, “Go on, lad. Run while the going’s good.” Mitt did not see who said it, but he ran.
Isn’t that Holand people all over! he thought as he ran back round the corner and plunged downhill toward the harbor again. Where they could be, they were kind. But you could never count on it. Yesterday this kindness had amused him. Now there did not seem to be anything left to laugh at. Tears trickled across Mitt’s cheeks as he ran, as he thought of all those years of planning gone to waste.
I wonder if there’s something wrong deep inside of me, he thought. It don’t surprise me. He tried to wipe the tears off his face and found he was brushing it with something knobbly. He looked, and there was the little Libby Beer, made of wax cherries and rose hips and miniature apples, glistening with his tears. “Goh!” said Mitt, and stuffed her angrily in his scarlet pocket. Crying did no good. Next time he met any soldiers, there would be no mistake. He was going to get caught.
He came down into the old town, through a street of peeling houses breathing the smell of the poor quarters out through their open front doors—the smell of too many people, dirt, damp plaster, and cheap food. All the children from the houses were playing in the road. There was hopscotch nearest, marbles a little way on, and then two of the running, shouting kind of games. And through the shrill yells, Mitt sensed more soldiers coming. The rhythm of their boots was in the very air.
Mitt did not decide what to do. He moved without thinking, round the hopscotch to the game of marbles, and dropped down to squat in the ring of smaller boys. It was a trick he had often played three years back. Unless the boys were doing something very secret, they usually did not mind. But as he hurriedly wiped the tears off
his face with his wrist, Mitt was amazed at himself. Here, he thought. What am I doing?
The rhythm of boots beat in the dirty pavement under him and a green block of soldiers swept round the corner. When they saw the children, the clump-clump of their boots slackened and became a slow puttering. They had broken step and were coming slowly down the street, looking very carefully indeed.
The yelling and the games stopped. The children stood in awkward rows, staring. The small boys round Mitt were not really playing marbles anymore. They were waiting for the soldiers to pass. And Mitt crouched with them, in such terror that he could hardly see or feel. He had not known it was possible to be so frightened. He knew he stuck out like a sore thumb among these children. He was half as big again as any of them. His red leg blazed and his yellow leg shone. And he could not trust little kids like these not to give him away, either by accident or on purpose, for spoiling their games. At any moment a shrill voice might say, “That’s the one you want, mister.”
As the soldiers puttered toward him, Mitt no longer had any doubt what he was doing. He was trying not to be caught. And as wave after wave of pure fear swept over him, he knew he was going to go on trying. By the time the soldiers were level with him, his terror was worse than the worst pain he had ever known. Mitt crouched down over his blazing legs, squeezing himself into himself to look as small as possible, and forced himself to put out a hand, take a marble, and roll it casually into the middle of the ring. He had to fight his terror every inch in order to move at all. He thought he could have rolled Siriol’s boat across the pavement more easily. The effort made him weak.
As soon as the marble left his hand, he was sure he had done the wrong thing. The boy next to him shot him a nasty look. The puttering boots went slower, as if the movement had attracted their attention. Mitt almost lost his senses, he was so terrified. Time swam forward, sickeningly slow and blurred.
The boots puttered down past the hopscotch, stopped, and started again, in step this time. Clump-clump-clump, they went, away into faintness.