Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘I suppose there is a good reason why you have paused to take in nature’s marvels? Perhaps your goose has entreated a moment to lay an egg for our breakfast?’ For one of such portly build, Clent had kept a fast pace along the treacherous path.

  Mosca stared at Clent.

  ‘He’s a gander,’ she exclaimed. She could not have been more amazed if Clent had mistaken Saracen for a cat.

  ‘Really?’ Clent pulled a shabby pair of chamois gloves from his waistcoat pocket, and used them to flick a few burrs from his shoulder. ‘Well, in that case, I recommend that you wring the bird’s neck and have done with it. It would be a pretty pass if our dinner were to get away from us, would it not? Besides, you will find a dead bird easier to carry and simpler to hide.’

  Saracen shifted in Mosca’s grasp, and made small noises in his throat like water being poured from a jug. He understood nothing of Clent’s suggestion, but he resented the way Mosca’s arms were tightening around him.

  ‘Saracen isn’t dinner.’

  ‘Really? Then perhaps I may venture to ask what he is? Our guide through the mountains, perhaps? A bewitched relation? Or does our route cross a toll bridge where a payment must be made in waterfowl? May I point out that our provisions will be exhausted all the faster with an extra beak to feed?’

  Mosca flushed.

  Clent turned his head away slightly and examined her sideways along his cheek. Someone lean, clever and watchful seemed to be peering out of his eyes. ‘I assume we do have provisions? I am sure that my new secretary would not have made fugitives of us without bringing more than an inedible goose? No? I see. Very well then, this way, if you please.’

  He led her uphill along a tiny path that ended before a brightly painted shrine no bigger than a kennel. Beneath its sloping roof a wooden statue of a man held out his hands in stiff benediction.

  ‘Mr Clent!’ Mosca reached the shrine in time to see her new employer scooping a handful of fat, golden berries from the pewter offering-bowl.

  ‘No need to become shrill, girl.’ Clent peeled a piece of damp leaf mould from the side of the statue’s head. ‘I am merely borrowing a few provisions, which we will of course repay in the fullness of time. This good fellow . . .’

  ‘Goodman Postrophe,’ Mosca added automatically.

  ‘. . . Goodman Postrophe is an old friend of mine. He has been looking after some trifles for me.’ Clent’s large, trimly manicured hand reached into the darkness of the shrine, and reappeared gripping an oblong bundle bound in burlap.

  ‘But . . .’ Mosca stopped, suddenly afraid that she would sound childish and superstitious.

  But, she thought desperately, if we take the Goodman’s mellowberries, how will he defend the village from the wandering dead? How will he squeeze the juice into their eyes so that they cannot see the way home? To be sure, none of the bodies in Chough’s graveyard had yet done anything as interesting as rising from the ground and returning home to screech down the chimneys. But perhaps, Mosca reasoned, Goodman Postrophe had kept them at bay until now.

  ‘I am surprised to find you squeamish, given your obvious penchant for felony.’ Wrapping the berries in his handkerchief, Clent slid them into a capacious pocket. ‘Arson, indeed . . . a nasty business. Little better than high seas piracy as far as the courts are concerned . . . Whatever possessed you to start setting fire to mills?’

  A series of pictures chased each other across Mosca’s tired brain as she thought of the mill burning. She imagined the string of the old switchbroom that had often blistered her hands burning through and spilling its sticks. She imagined the tapers she had been scolded for squandering souping into a yellow puddle. She imagined her uncle and aunt shrieking as they strove to rescue sacks of bubbling flour from the blaze, without thinking to look for a charred niece.

  ‘It was an ugly sort of a mill,’ was all Mosca said.

  ‘I once saw a boy of about ten hanged for setting fire to a schoolhouse,’ Clent added in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Everyone pitied him, but, with a crime so severe, what was the magistrate to do? I recall his family wailing piteously as the cart took him to Blitheangel Square.’ Clent gave Mosca a calculating glance. ‘Of course, arson cases are all tried in the Capital, and when the hanging is over they give the body to the university to be dissected. I hear they cut out the hearts and examine them, to see if they are colder and blacker than the hearts of ordinary men.’

  Despite herself, Mosca placed one hand over her heart, to find out whether it was giving off an icy draught. Certainly she felt as if there was a chill band around her chest obstructing her breathing. Was she being racked with guilt? If she was a diabolical criminal, then she must be due for her first rack round about now. And yes, when she thought of jolting her way by cart through hostile crowds, she felt a sickening throb of remorse.

  However, when she imagined herself escaping justice her spirit became quite tranquil again. ‘Ah, thought Mosca with grim satisfaction, as she fell into step behind her employer, I must be rotten to the core. The truth was, she felt less sorry about the fate of the mill than for giving Clent information he could use against her.

  This I will never see again, nor this, nor this . . . It seemed to Mosca that she should take note when she left the paths she knew. However, the moment when her woods became strangers’ woods was lost in mist and haste. The early birds testing their voices sounded like the cries of distant pursuers.

  The path was a troublesome, fretful thing. It worried that it was missing a view of the opposite hills and insisted on climbing for a better look. Then it found the breeze uncommonly chill and ducked back among the trees. It suddenly thought it had forgotten something and doubled back, then realized that it hadn’t and turned about again. At last it struggled free of the pines, plumped itself down by the riverside, complained of its aching stones and refused to go any further. A sensible, well-trodden track took over.

  ‘Wait. Raise your chin, madam.’ Clent dabbed at Mosca’s cheeks, rearranged her kerchief so as to hide the worst of the moss stains on her bodice and sighed. ‘Well, there is little that can be done now. Let us hope that the good people of Kempe Teetering do not mistake you for some forest wight, come to bite the noses off their babies.’

  ‘We’re going to Kempe Teetering?’

  ‘Yes – everyone will expect us to make for Trambling Spike, where the main highways cross, then head towards the Capital or Pincaster. They will not expect us to head for a river port.’

  ‘So we’re getting a boat then, are we?’ asked Mosca.

  Clent did not appear to hear her.

  The forests were yielding to soft slopes of green, studded with conical haystacks gathered around central staves. Wide, shallow steps had been cut into the hillside to make it easier to farm, so that from a distance it seemed that a giant comb had been dragged sideways through the fields.

  Mosca was fascinated by the leather waistcoats of the farming men, their broad, black-buckled hats and loose, shabby white shirts. The women all wore coarse print frocks, far fuller than Mosca’s sand-coloured dress. Over their white mob caps they wore wide straw bonnets, tied under the chin with ribbons of different colours. Like all the other women and girls of Chough, Mosca wore a tight-fitting cap of waxed linen which smelt of old fat but kept most of the water out. It seemed strange to her to wear two hats instead of one but, to judge by the way the farm girls tittered at her, they thought quite the reverse.

  Kempe Teetering could be heard long before it could be seen. At the heart of the wind’s bluster there was a throaty fluting, like a hundred people blowing into the necks of bottles. There was a click, clack, clatter like loose machinery. There was a keen and steely yodelling.

  The hills fell back, and the tumbling tributary which the people of Chough had always thought of as The River joined the real river. This was no shallow treacherous bandit of a river, ragged with foam. This was a sleek and powerful lordling, some thirty feet wide. This was the Slye.

  Across the Slye, rip
pling and fluttering like a carnival carriage, stretched Kempe Teetering.

  Most of the town was built across the great two-tiered bridge, the little shops and houses flanking the main thoroughfare. Rope ladders trailed from window and rooftop, and wooden stairways zigzagged between bridge and jetty. A web of clothes lines criss-crossed every available space, so that Mosca’s first impression was of a flutter of brightly coloured cloth – saffron, mauve, sky blue, mint green. It was the first real town Mosca had ever seen, and it seemed too big and bright and busy to hold in her head all at once.

  Above, the gulls spun and floated like tea leaves in a stirred cup. They followed each boat along the river, tearing off narrow strips of sound with their sharp beaks. They squabbled over spillages, and tried to scare the errand girls into dropping something. Every roof was decorated with a brightly painted wooden windmill, or a whistle in the shape of a bird, or clattering dolls on strings, in a vain attempt to scare away the gulls.

  And the boats! Grim, old barges being loaded to the waterline with bales and boxes, while the hauliers bellowed laughter and spat tobacco juice into the water. Coracles like a row of turtle shells, keel-upwards for careening on the waterfront. Sculls and wherries, some with great kites reclining on their decks, each emblazoned with the colours of the Guild of the Watermen.

  Clent led the way up the wooden steps to the bridge proper, and paused before the door of a shop.

  ‘We shall call here briefly,’ he remarked over his shoulder. ‘Within lies a dear friend of mine whom I have promised to visit, and who will be invaluable in our state of extremis. May I stress that silence is a fine quality in a secretary?’

  He ducked through the doorway, and Mosca followed.

  The inside of the shop looked rather as if an excitable gorgon had run amok. On table and sill were clustered stone feathers, stone briars and stone flowers. Two bird skeletons hung against the window, so that their delicate bone structures could be seen against the light. There were crumpled and crumbling caps and sandals, stone pennies, scarves and ribbons stiff as the robes of a mausoleum angel. Mosca recognized all these strange ornaments as oddments petrified in the waters of Chough.

  ‘Here we are . . . Ah – Mistress Jennifer Bessel!’

  Mistress Bessel was sturdy and sun-browned, and she brought a glow of warmth into the room as she entered. She had a dusting of flour on her bare arms, and under her cap a thick plait of hair was twisted like a bread swirl. Curiously, her hands were hidden in a pair of fingerless muslin gloves.

  ‘Mr Clent!’ Mistress Bessel’s smile widened still further, and her dimples became wells. ‘So my sweet friend has not got himself scragged after all.’

  ‘No, no – there is no man, god or beast that could prevent me keeping an appointment with you, dearest Jen.’

  Something in Jen’s laugh suggested that she did not believe him.

  ‘Ah . . . and this is my niece, from . . .’

  ‘Chough,’ Jen finished promptly. ‘My dear bumblebee, look at her eyebrows!’

  The little Chough bonnet was all very well for keeping one’s hair dry. Eyebrows were a different matter. The Chough water turned them so pale that they were almost invisible, making everyone from Chough look very surprised all the time. Mosca was no exception.

  ‘Still as sharp as a gimlet you are, Jen.’ There was a slight note of annoyance in Clent’s tone. ‘Yes, she has been staying in that unpleasant little village. Chough has left our clothes so chill and damp I fear the child will perish any moment. Jen, my sweet plum, I was hoping you might spare us some clothes that are a little less . . .’

  ‘Recognizable?’ asked Mistress Bessel.

  Mosca was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Mistress Bessel knew Eponymous Clent rather well.

  Clent lowered his lashes and smiled winningly at his hostess’s top button.

  ‘Well, I’ll take your old clothes in payment, then,’ declared Mistress Bessel. She turned to Mosca. ‘Listen, blossom, take that door, climb the ladder to the loft and you’ll see a leather chest right in front of you. There’s a gown of grey stuff which’ll do for you, and you can try on a couple of the bonnets and caps. Don’t go touching anything else, mind.’

  Mosca obediently climbed to the attic and hunted out the chest of clothes. Then, her new clothing draped over one arm, she much less obediently sneaked back down the ladder, so that she could listen at the door while she changed.

  ‘Rather young for you, isn’t she?’ asked Mistress Bessel.

  ‘Ah . . . a very sad case. I found her starving on the village outskirts, and no man with any feeling could have left her to—’ Clent’s sentence broke off with a sudden squawk. Peering through the crack of the door, Mosca saw that Mistress Bessel had playfully taken a pincer-hold on his nose with the sugarloaf cutters.

  ‘Now, Eponymous, when I want a story from you I’ll pay for it. Speaking of which, do you have any thieves to sell me this month?’

  Mosca felt her mouth go dry. Could Clent really mean to sell her out already?

  ‘Of course, Jen. Four of them. An angler, a diver and two knights of the road.’ From reading the more lurid chapbooks, Mosca knew that ‘anglers’ were thieves who sat on roofs and used long, hooked poles to tweak bags from the top of coaches. A ‘diver’ was a pickpocket, and a ‘knight of the road’ was a highwayman.

  Mistress Bessel reached out eager hands and received a bundle of rough pages, printed in large type. Each bore a large seal of red wax, the seal of the Company of Stationers. Mistress Bessel was too busy slowly and silently mouthing out words to observe the corner of another packet of papers jutting from Clent’s burlap package. Clent noticed it, however, and pushed it back into hiding with a furtive urgency. The moment was not lost on the secret watcher.

  ‘Ooh . . . I do like to keep abreast of news in the profession, even now.’

  ‘I thought you would like to see this one, Jen.’ Clent extracted a particular sheet and began to read. ‘“An Account of the Ingenious Crimes and Stratagems of the Gang led by Rosemary Peppett, otherwise known as Lady Lighttouch . . .” Here we are . . . “not since the time of the infamous Mistress Fleetfinger have we seen such Craft and Courage in a Female Breast, and such Cunning use of her Sex’s softer charms that the Victims might even count themselves blessed . . .”’

  Mistress Bessel gave a wistful laugh.

  ‘Slop and feathers!’ she exclaimed. ‘Softer charms indeed – I never made use of my looks as Mistress Fleetfinger. I could have done though.’

  ‘That you could, Jen,’ Clent said gently.

  The corners of Mistress Bessel’s mouth drooped slightly, and she thoughtfully smoothed the back of her gloves. Then she gave a sniff and looked up at Clent with a forced brightness.

  ‘So – what kept you?’

  ‘I fear I made myself rather popular in Chough, so much so that they could not be persuaded to part with me. Indeed, when I finally tried to depart, they . . . put me in the stocks.

  ‘Ah, your taking ways. So how much did you take before they caught you?’

  ‘I was not caught,’ Clent declared in an affronted tone. ‘I fancy I was betrayed – I know that a stranger stayed in Chough with the magistrate last night. And . . . ah, perhaps I am growing old and fearful, but I have been feeling a shadow at my back since I left the Capital.’

  ‘The gallows casts a long shadow,’ murmured Mistress Bessel, ‘and sometimes it cuts out the sun. I got tired of feeling the chill of it on the back of my neck, which is why I turned respectable. That, and these.’ She held up her hands. There were dark shapes on their backs, faintly visible through her light gloves, each in the shape of a ‘T’. Felon’s brands, thought Mosca. T for thief.

  ‘It is not the fear of the gallows, my inestimable Jen. My shadow is flesh and bone and walks on two legs. Jen . . . I cannot linger here. It will not be long before the rabble of Chough work out where I have gone.’

  ‘Eponymous –’ Mistress Bessel sounded quite serious – ‘what devil
ish soup have you got yourself into? We were in fellowship once, and now you will not even tell me who you have been working for so secretively this last two years.’

  There was a long silence. Clent chased a chapbook around the tabletop with a fingertip. Finally Jen gave a short, bitter sigh. ‘Your girl’s been gone a long time,’ she remarked. ‘She’s got long fingers, I noticed that. If I miss anything from upstairs, you’ll be floating away downriver, but not in a boat.’

  Mosca decided that this was a good moment to reappear.

  Mistress Bessel turned a motherly smile upon her as she pushed open the door. ‘Ah, now, that’s better, my blossom.’

  ‘Mosca,’ Clent interrupted quickly, ‘we will need a few things from the west bank.’ Mosca was quick enough to catch the purse tossed at her head. ‘A loaf of bread, some cheese – and an apple or two, if it will not ruin us. And, child –’ Mosca halted in the doorway – ‘we have yet to find a way of disguising the goose.’

  Reluctantly Mosca relinquished Saracen, and ventured on to the Kempe Teetering thoroughfare. She was well aware that Clent might be looking for a chance to abandon her, but it seemed less likely that he would decamp without his purse.

  On the far bank, Mosca glimpsed a soft slate-blue dome, and felt something cold slither across her heart like a toad across a stone. She halted, and was butted in the calves by a wheelbarrow of whelks.

  Unsteadily, half willingly, she turned her steps towards the church. If she was likely to be hanged for arson, then this was as good a time as any to scrub at her stained soul.

  Until now she had visited only the parish church at Hummel, which was little more than a barn sheltering a cluster of shrines. Visitors from a large market town would not have given the Kempe Teetering church a second look, but to Mosca it might as well have been a cathedral.

  Several centuries of gull droppings on the domed roof created a white tracery like an ivory fretwork. The great, carved-oak doors were a foot too tall for the entranceway, and leaned against the door frame, leaving a gap for visitors to squeeze between them. Although Mosca did not know it, they had been plundered during the civil war from the wreckage of another church further upstream.