“Clothing and food is prepared for the little ones,” she said to Lithar.
Lithar giggled. “Little ones! A bit more respect, please, Lalla. You wouldn’t believe how important they are! Shall I send them with her?” he asked Al. Al shrugged.
18
To Mitt’s heartfelt relief, Lalla took them out of that dangerous room. A crowd of small brown island women were waiting for them outside, with beautiful dark faces and hair either snowy white or light-fair. No one could have been kinder or more concerned than these women. They hurried all three of them upstairs again to rooms where baths were waiting.
Hildy and Ynen, in spite of the situation, were very glad to have a bath. Mitt was hugely embarrassed. He was not used to baths. He was not used to being undressed in front of strangers. Two of the kindly women helped him, soaping and scrubbing and then drying him. Mitt was afraid he seemed unpleasantly dirty. And they kept shaking their heads distressfully over him and talking about him in soft voices almost as beautiful as their faces.
“He is too thin, this one. Look at those legs on him, Lalla. But see the shoulders, and the span on them. There is the makings of a thick man, and the flesh of a sparrow to cover him.” Mitt writhed.
At length, feeling rather as if he had been put through the mangle in Hobin’s backyard, Mitt tottered out into a long, cheerful room with barred windows, where Hildy and Ynen were waiting to begin breakfast. Mitt hardly knew them. Hildy had been given a faded blue island woman’s dress with white embroidery down the front, which made her look grown-up and haughty. Ynen’s black hair was wet and shiny and smooth. He had been given a secondhand suit so faded that it was the color of blue-green distance. Mitt became very conscious of the good suit of new bottle green they had given him to wear. He had never worn anything half so good. It gave him a feeling there had been a mistake somewhere, because it was certainly better than Ynen’s.
They were left alone to eat breakfast. There were piles of smoking sea fry, new bread, crusty outside and moist within, salty butter, and bunches of green grapes, smaller and sweeter than those of Holand. As Ynen said, it made a wonderful change from pies. But Hildy simply sat looking haughtier and haughtier and not eating.
Mitt found her very annoying. “Do eat,” he said irritably. “Keep your strength up.”
“I can’t,” Hildy said, tight and toneless. “Uncle Harchad’s dead. And half the cousins.”
“So what? Good riddance, if you ask me,” said Mitt.
“Uncle Harl’s a murderer,” said Hildy. “He’s no better than Al.”
“Well, you knew that before,” Mitt pointed out, “and you didn’t let it put you off your food then.”
“Yes, do eat, Hildy,” said Ynen.
“Don’t you see?” said Hildy. “Uncle Harl has probably killed Father, too.” Two tears ran slowly down her narrow cheeks. “Because we got away, people think he was with us.”
Ynen looked at Mitt, appalled. Mitt sighed, rather. He felt he had enough troubles of his own, without sharing theirs. “I always thought it was wrong somewhere,” he said, trying to think it out, “what you told me about when you were coming away. Looks as if your uncle Harchad may have been out to kill you.”
“You mean,” Ynen asked, “that when those soldiers fired at us in the West Pool, it wasn’t because they thought we were you, it was because Uncle Harchad had given them orders to stop us?”
Mitt nodded. “Could be. Harchad or Harl. If you ask me, you were luckier than you knew there.”
“Lucky!” exclaimed Hildy. “You call us lucky when Father’s probably dead and Al’s going to sell us to Uncle Harl!” Tears came down her cheeks in pulses. “Lithar’s an imbecile!” she said. “And I boasted so! There’s no such thing as luck. Life’s horrible. I hate everything about it. I think I always have done.”
“You like sailing in Wind’s Road,” Ynen said, rather hurt.
“With two murderers,” said Hildy, “into captivity.” She bent her head over the pale oak table and sobbed miserably.
Mitt was offended. “Stop that!” he said. “If I hadn’t had to get away, you’d be lying dead in Holand at this moment, and you know it! Ynen’s worse off than you, and he’s not crying. All this means is that we’ve got to get out of here and go North. So will you stop crying and eat something!”
Tears whisked over the table as Hildy raised her head and glared at Mitt. “I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anyone so much as I dislike you!” she said. “Not even Al!” She snatched up a bunch of grapes and began to eat without noticing the taste.
“How can we get away?” Ynen asked anxiously.
Mitt got up and tried the door. It was locked. Rather dashed, he looked over at the bars on the windows. Somehow he had not expected the island women to lock them in.
“Iron bars,” said Ynen.
“Of course, stupid!” said Hildy. “This is a nursery. The bars are to stop babies falling out.” Eating the grapes made her suddenly realize how very hungry she was. She began wolfing lukewarm sea fry. “Ye gods!” she said as she wolfed. “I haven’t been shut in a nursery for—for some time.”
Ynen and Mitt left her eating and went to look at the windows. They looked out on the mainland, rolling into green distance, and the shingly causeway which led to it from the back of Lithar’s mansion. Little boats were drawn up to the causeway, nudging the shingle on either side. Immediately below them was a courtyard, with a gateway opening on the causeway. It was full of people, and people were walking backward and forward along the causeway, too.
“We could get down,” Ynen said. “Next window along. There’s a drain that goes right down to the yard wall. We’d better wait till there are fewer people and then try.”
Mitt cautiously forced open the window over the drain and tried if he could get his head through between the bars. He found he just could. And, he knew from experience, where his head would go, the rest of him could follow, sideways on. Since he was bigger than Ynen, that meant that Ynen could certainly get through, and probably Hildy, too. So they settled down to wait until there were fewer people about.