Drowned Ammet by Diana Wynne Jones

saying, quite loudly, “What’s happened then?” and, “Who are you shoving?”
    Mitt, to his extreme astonishment, plunged out from the back of the crowd into a narrow street. Hey! he thought. This won’t do. He stopped. He turned round and saw the backs of the people filling the street heaving and bumping about as the soldiers tried to force their way through after him. He cast a longing look up the narrow street. He could really almost get away. They would not run fast in those boots.
    Better make it easier for them, Mitt thought, sighing. And he went back into the crowd.
    Out in the open space, the procession had re-formed and was straggling toward the water’s edge. Hadd behaved as if nothing had happened at all. As soon as Mitt vanished among the soldiers, he went on walking as if the whole thing were not worth thinking about. Hildy could not help admiring him. That was how an earl should behave! Hadd’s behavior was so dominating that Hildy and everybody else were soon watching the procession going up and down the quays, drumming and droning and skirling, as if Mitt had never existed.
    Mitt was in the crowd just beneath Hildy’s window. He found he was still wearing one red and one yellow sleeve. They were a nuisance, so he took them off and threw them on the ground. He seemed to have lost his cap. He stood there in his threadbare undershirt, hoping the soldiers would recognize him by his two-colored breeches. But he was surrounded by tall citizens and nobody saw him. Above the noise of the procession he could hear the boots of the soldiers hammering away up the narrow street.
    Right fools, some people are! Mitt thought. Better make myself obvious.
    He squirmed his way along the painted wall of the house until he came to its front door. It had six steps up to it, for fear of flooding, as did most houses in Holand. People were crowded on the steps, staring out toward the harbor. Mitt climbed up and squeezed in among them. He was easy enough to see, had anybody been looking his way. But everyone was watching the Festival.
    The procession had formed into a line along the jetty, with Hadd and Navis in the center. The heads on poles were lowered. Garlands were taken off. Everyone waved these downward, pretending to beat the water. In fact, the water was too far below to reach, but the Festival went back to the days when Holand harbor was just a low ring of rocks and none of it had been altered since. The same old words were said:
    â€œTo tide swimming and water welling, go now and come back sevenfold. Over the sea they went, on the wind’s road. Go now and come back sevenfold. For harbor’s hold and land’s growing, go now and come back sevenfold.”
    This was repeated three times by everyone in the procession. It was a growling, ragged chorus. Yet, by the third repetition, Hildy’s arms were up in goose pimples from sheer awe—she did not know why. Mitt’s eyes pricked, as they always did, and he was annoyed at himself for being so impressed by a load of out-of-date nonsense. Then the musicians gave vent to a long groaning chord. Hadd raised Poor Old Ammet above his head, ready to throw him in the harbor.
    A little star sparkle of flame blossomed for a second on one of the ships tied up at the side of the harbor. Hadd jerked, half turned, and slid quietly to the ground. It looked at first as if he had suddenly decided to lay Poor Old Ammet carefully at Navis’s feet. Then came a tiny, distant crack .
    Nobody understood for a moment. One of Hildy’s cousins laughed.
    After that there was a long, groaning uproar. Mitt’s voice was in it. “Flaming Ammet! I been diddled !” The fat woman beside him was saying, over and over again, “Oh, what bad luck! What terrible bad luck!” Mitt had no idea whether she meant bad luck to Hadd or to Holand. The ladylike girls overhead somewhere were screaming. Mitt leaned his head against their painted