send you letters,” Hildy had promised, when she went away, “to help with your reading.” The trouble was, she kept her promise.
Her first letters were carefully printed and quite full of news. The next few were dashed off, with an air of duty about them. Around then Mitt had learnt enough to be able to write back. Hildy had answered several of his letters with one of her own, carefully, point by point, but she had been quite unable to resist correcting his spelling. Mitt had kept writing – there had been a lot to tell – but Hildy’s letters had become ever briefer and further apart, and each one was harder to understand than the last. Mitt had waited well over a month for Hildy’s latest letter. And what came was:
Dear Mitt,
This grittling the boys on fayside were at trase with peelers, would you believe! They had sein right too, so it was all kappin and no barlay. We only had mucks. But Biffa was our surnam and you should have seen the hurrel. Now highside is doggers and we have herison from scap to lengday, and everyone looks up to us although we are to be stapled for it. In haste to trethers.
Hildrida
It was like a message from the moon. It hurt Mitt badly. Hildy and he had had little enough in common anyway, and now Hildy was making it clear that this little was gone. After that letter Mitt had told himself he did not care what became of Hildy, and then Earl Keril came along and forced him to behave as if he did care. As he rode on, he tried to tell himself that he was being noble about Hildy. This was not true. He did not want Hildy hurt, not when she was evidently having fun for the first time in her life.
The sun came up higher. People began passing Mitt on their way to the feasting at Aberath, calling out in the free way of the North that Mitt was going the wrong way, wasn’t he? Mitt called jokes in reply and urged his horse on. The horse, as usual, had other ideas. It kept trying to go back to Aberath. Mitt cursed it. He had a very bad relationship with this horse. His private name for it was The Countess. It held its head sideways like she did, and walked in the same jerky way, and it seemed to dislike Mitt as much as the real Countess did. They came to the place where the road forked, a rutty track going along the coast to Adenmouth and a wider and even ruttier one winding back right into the mountains at the heart of the earldom. People were streaming down this wider road and turning along the way Mitt had come, and the horse tried to turn back with them. Mitt wrestled its head round on to the Adenmouth road and kicked its sides to make it go.
“Going my way, hearthman?” somebody called after him.
Hot and annoyed, Mitt looked round to find a boy on an unkempt horse turning out of the main road after him. Another hearthman, by the look of the faded livery. Mitt did not feel like company, but people in the North never seemed to feel you might want to be alone, and it was a fact that the Countess-horse went better for a lead. So, as the two horses slid and stamped in the ruts, Mitt said a little grudgingly, “Going to Adenmouth, hearthman.”
“Good! Me too,” said the lad. He had a long, freckled face with a sort of eager look to it. “Rith,” he introduced himself. “Out of Dropwater.”
“Mitt,” said Mitt. “Out of Aberath.”
Rith laughed as they set off side by side up the narrower road. “Great One! You’ve come even further than I have!” he said. “What’s a Southerner doing this far North?”
“Came by boat – we went where the wind took us,” Mitt explained. “I think we missed Kinghaven in the night somehow. How come you knew I was a Southerner? My accent that bad still?”
Rith laughed again and pushed at the fair, frizzy hair that stuck out all round his steel cap. “That and your looks. The straight hair. But it’s the name that’s the clincher. Dropwater’s full of Southern fugitives, and they all answer to Mitt, or Al, or Hammitt. I’m surprised the South’s not empty by now, the way you all come to the North. Been here long?”
“Ten months,” said Mitt.
“Then you’ve had one of our winters. I bet you froze!”
“Froze! I nearly died!” said Mitt. “I never saw icicles before, let alone snow. And when they first brought the coal in to make a fire, I thought they were going to build something. I didn’t know stones could burn.”
“Don’t they have coal in the South?” Rith asked wonderingly.
“Charcoal – for those that could afford it,” Mitt said. “At least that’s what they used in Holand, where I come from.”
Rith whistled. “You did come a long way, didn’t you?”
By this time Mitt had forgotten he had wanted to be alone. They rode with the sea sparkling on one side and the hills climbing on the other, under the douce Northern sun, talking and laughing, while the Countess-horse followed Rith’s travel-stained little mount as smoothly as its jerky gait would allow. Rith was good company. He seemed genuinely interested to know what Mitt thought of the North now he was here. Mitt was a bit wary at first. He had found that most Northerners did not like criticism. “It’s this porridge they all eat I can’t stand,” he said jokingly. “And the superstition.”
“What superstition?” Rith said innocently. “You mean, like the Holanders throw their Undying in the sea every year?”
“And you lot put bowls of milk out for yours,” said Mitt. “Believe anything, these Northerners! Think the One’s a pussycat!”
Rith bowed on to his horse’s neck with laughter. “What else do we do wrong?” he said when he could speak. “I bet you think we’re inefficient, don’t you?”
“Well, you are,” said Mitt. “All runabout and talk and do nothing when a crisis happens.”
“Not when it matters, though,” said Rith. “And?”
And he went on coaxing Mitt until Mitt at last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. “They told me it was free here,” he said. “They told me it was good. I was badly enough off in the South, but beside some here I was rich – and idle. People are no more free here than – than—” He was trying to find a proper description when they came round a bend to find the road blocked house-high with earth and boulders. A stream sprayed from the top in a raw new waterfall and ran round their horses’ hooves. “This just about sums it up!” Mitt said disgustedly. “And your roads are all terrible!”
“The Southern roads are, of course, all perfect,” Rith said.
“I never said—” said Mitt.
Rith laughed and dismounted. “Come on. This is hopeless. We’ll have to lead the horses uphill and come back to the road where it’s clear.”
Mitt slid down from the Countess-horse and discovered he was more than a little saddle-sore. Ow! he thought. I wonder my pants aren’t smoking! But he did not like to confess this to Rith, who had ridden all the way from Dropwater and was obviously a seasoned hearthman. A small, tough boy, Rith. When they were both on their feet, Rith only came up to Mitt’s shoulders. Makes me look a big booby if I moan, Mitt thought, and he set off dragging the Countess-horse up the hill after Rith. Both horses were huge, heavy and reluctant. Their hooves slid in the slippery grass. Mitt’s horse put its ears back and tried to bite him.
“Stop that!” Mitt slapped its nose aside. “You Countess, you!”
Rith
