Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Ah, that sounds like Goodlady Winterblossom’s fanfare,’ Kohlrabi murmured. ‘She always likes to get her word in first. The others won’t be far behind. Well, I suppose we have privacy of a sort. No one is listening.’ Kohlrabi smiled at Mosca. It felt oddly exciting to be part of a little faction daring enough to leave their ears unblocked.

  ‘So why were you followin’ Mr Clent?’

  ‘I was in Long Pursing on an errand for Lady Tamarind when I first heard his name. He had vanished overnight, leaving ruinous debts to about a dozen tradesmen. That same night the landlord he owed two months’ rent apparently fell into his own well and drowned. I promised the dead man’s son that I would listen out for word of Clent, and that promise has led me a ragged route from hostelry to hamlet, following his trail. I lost track of him in Chough . . . only to find when I returned to Mandelion that Clent was already here.’

  Mosca thought of herself snatching Clent from beneath the nose of the patiently pursuing Kohlrabi, and little prickles came and went across her face.

  ‘There is blood on that man’s hands,’ Kohlrabi added quietly. ‘I haven’t found proof yet, but I don’t doubt it is there to be found.’ Mosca could not speak, but watched him with eyes as hard and shiny as obsidian coins. Kohlrabi leaned towards her. ‘Mosca – do listen to me when I say this. No one is as they seem, particularly in Mandelion. You may see them day after day, until their every gesture becomes as familiar as the song of the birds, but still you do not know them.

  ‘Perhaps I can explain what I mean with a story. As you know, twenty years ago the Birdcatchers were chased into hiding, and those that were caught were hanged or burned. In one parish the congregation gathered every year in their church to celebrate their victory over the Birdcatchers. One night, when the celebration was at its height, someone smelt smoke and found that the church was on fire. No one had time to do anything about it, though, because a moment later the flame reached the gunpowder stored in the vault. Later the few survivors worked out that the man they had hired to sweep out the crypts had been buying and smuggling in gunpowder for over four years. He was a Birdcatcher waiting for vengeance, and no one had guessed.’ Kohlrabi smiled wryly. ‘I . . . tend to remember this well. My father was lost in the explosion – you might say that it was rather a formative incident.’

  ‘My father just died one day. He went into his study sayin’ he had a headache, an’ then when I brung in potage he was dead, so I went an’ hid in the Chimes’ kiln. I would have stuck there in the study if I’d thought everyone was goin’ to burn his books. All of them . . . all. I’d never even had the chance to read most of ’em.’ Mosca frowned to keep her face from crumpling.

  ‘Do you have anything of his?’

  ‘I had his pipe.’ Mosca sniffed, thinking regretfully of the much-chewed pipe in Jen Bessel’s hand. ‘I used to chew on the stem, cos then I could taste his pipesmoke. I couldn’t make his voice in my head. I mean, if you know someone well, you can sort of make them say things they’d say in your head, an’ I can do Palpitattle any time I like, but I can’t do my father. Still, when I could taste his pipesmoke, it was sort of like he’s there at a desk next to me, an’ we’re both too busy to talk, but I’m there in the study with the books an’ I can think clearly . . . He didn’t like Chough, I know he didn’t.’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a place for a scholarly man, if that’s what he was.’

  ‘He was more than that.’ Mosca gave Kohlrabi a sly, wary look. ‘He was Quillam Mye.’

  ‘Quillam Mye!’ Kohlrabi’s eyebrows climbed. ‘Quillam Mye’s daughter!’ He sat back in his chair and stared at her, while in the city beyond the door bell after bell raised its voice in excitement.

  ‘“I had to leave Mandelion because of an altercation” – that’s all he ever said about it to me,’ Mosca said, feeling shy and alarmingly important.

  ‘I saw him once!’ Kohlrabi leaned forward again. Outside was a chaos of metal tongues, and he was forced to shout. ‘The height of the “altercation”, Mosca! I was ten years old, and running with a crowd through the streets, because we’d heard that the Stationers were sending men to arrest Quillam Mye. Hundreds of us, you could not breathe for the press of bodies.’

  Mosca leaned across the table, hands cupped around her ears to funnel his words into them.

  ‘His windows were dark, he had sent his servants away so they would not be arrested. And when we got there, a Stationer carriage was at his door. He came out with no fear on his face, and climbed into the carriage, but we . . .’ Kohlrabi gave a flinching smile and half-covered his ears. Mosca could only hear snatches of his words now. ‘. . . knew they would take him to his death . . . crowd swarmed the carriage . . . hurled off the driver, detached the horses . . . dragged the carriage through the streets ourselves . . . to safety . . . and I saw his face at the window . . . Hundreds of us, Mosca! Hundreds . . . all shouting his name . . .’

  Her father, a hero then, drawn through the streets of Mandelion. Her father, dying amid the dull hostility of Chough, where nobody knew what he had been.

  Outside the doors of the tavern a thousand strident bells argued like an army clashing their shields. Kohlrabi’s words were swallowed, but Mosca could see him still shouting and gesturing, his eyes bright with excited memory.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she shouted, knowing that Kohlrabi could not hear her. ‘I want to tell you everything, Mr Kohlrabi, I want to, but I can’t!’

  Kohlrabi was still speaking, more sombrely now, an earnest and rather sad light in his eyes, as if he had noticed some of the anguish in her face.

  ‘It’s too late!’ she went on. ‘I didn’t know ’bout Mr Clent’s wolfkin ways, an’ now I’m in blood up to my wading breeches.’

  Kohlrabi ceased speaking, gave her a wincing laugh, and covered his ears.

  ‘An’ I can’t bear to tell you now, not when I might get away with it, not when maybe you don’t ever need to know what Quillam Mye’s daughter done. I’m sorry, Mr Kohlrabi, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’

  She sat staring at Kohlrabi while the bells’ clamour waned. When Goodman Boniface’s deep chime signalled the passing of the ‘Hour’, she took her hands from her ears and stood up.

  ‘I got to go back to Mr Clent now, Mr Kohlrabi.’

  ‘Mosca . . . if you learn anything of Clent’s plans, or if you need my help, then for Daylight’s sake come and find me at my coffeehouse, the Hind at Bay. Do not try to ride this out alone.’

  Mosca could not look into Kohlrabi’s face. The secret of Partridge’s murder seemed to have bound her to Eponymous Clent more surely than if Bockerby had wed them. She walked out of the tavern in silence.

  O is for Oath

  For three whole days after her conversation with Kohlrabi, Mosca felt less alone. It was a strange and shiny new feeling, and she decided not to think about it too hard, in case she wore the paint off it.

  It was a difficult time. Clent seemed uncomfortable in Mosca’s presence, but unwilling to have her far away from him. He sent her on countless errands and snapped at her to hurry back quickly. If she was gone for long, he would be pacing by the time she returned. If she came back before he expected her, he would look annoyed, and his fingers would start playing rapid sonatas on imaginary harpsichord keys at the table edge.

  Mosca had nothing sharp to say to him now. She lived in fear of him, and slept with Saracen on her chest for safety. Hour by hour she thought of running away, but she was sure he would come after her to silence her, or somehow blame her for the death of Partridge. Furthermore, she could not flee without Saracen, whom Clent now kept in the closet during her errands ‘for safety’s sake’.

  ‘We will lie low here for now,’ Clent said each day, ‘and wait for Her Ladyship’s response.’ And Mosca, who secretly knew that no letter would arrive, was sent out into streets that fizzed and buzzed with gossip about the Locksmiths’ arrest and Goshawk’s escape – excited, frightened, doubtful and scandalized by turn. She brought back broad
sheets so that Clent could scan them for signs of the guild war.

  One morning, every sheet roared of a fire that had broken out at the Papermill the night before.

  ‘Aramai Goshawk’s first move,’ muttered Clent. ‘It is a warning shot over the Stationers’ bows, I fancy. As I thought, he blames the Stationers for the Locksmiths’ arrest – and he means to frighten the Stationers into arranging their pardon. Fruitless, fruitless.’

  Days passed, and the date of the Locksmiths’ trial approached, with no word of a pardon for them. ‘Run down to the kitchen,’ he would say from time to time. ‘I am certain I heard the front door slam. Find out if the constable is visiting again, and if he is, pray stretch those voluminous ears of yours and try to catch a word or two. And . . . hurry straight back.’

  And Mosca would slip down the corridor and huddle behind the kitchen door, ready to dodge away if she heard steps. Usually there would be no sound but the clatter of plates as the Cakes made cakes, while singing a snatch of something that sounded very much like Clent’s ballad to Captain Blythe. Sometimes Mosca would feel a draught and realize that the front door was open, and hear the Cakes’ voice as she haggled with a hawker from the ragman’s raft.

  Mosca spent hours tucked into the window, watching the parade of nervous, drunken or excitable couples approach the door. Some of the brides looked rather round-bellied, though they usually tried to hide the fact under their cloaks.

  ‘Run down to the chapel,’ Clent would say, when the door was opened to another pair, ‘and see if any of them keep their gloves on even to the exchanging of the rings,’ and Mosca knew that he was afraid of the Locksmiths coming after him.

  But one day, when she had been sent down for the thirteenth time to listen at the kitchen door, Mosca did indeed hear the constable’s voice, asking questions about strangers in the marriage house.

  ‘Oh, some folks come to the door to ask after nuptyals,’ the Cakes was explaining, ‘but no one gets into the house without they’re gettin’ married. An’ the back rooms, they’re all for happy couples to stay in after the ceremony.’ She clearly thought this the most romantic thing imaginable. ‘All their names are safe down in the register, an’ you can be sure that no one else has been in the house ’cept Mr Bockerby and me.’

  ‘And your regular lodgers,’ the constable added.

  ‘Oh yes, ’cept them.’ There was a silky, slopping sound, as if the Cakes was whipping up a syllabub for her guest.

  ‘Tell me . . . these guests of yours, do they have a goose?’

  ‘Why yes, that they do, a fine, white, fat one. I never see one so big. Why?’

  ‘We’ve had a bit of excitement this morning, that’s all. Did you ever hear the pair of ’em mention a man called Partridge?’

  ‘Not to my face that I remember,’ the Cakes said slowly, ‘but I do start to think I might have overheard the name once, while I was passing their door. I keep my ears folded shut, mind, and I don’t go eavesdropping, but I can’t be held to blame if they will go shouting at each other all the time. But they might have been talking about a partridge to put in a pie, or something.’

  ‘Do you often discuss recipes so loud you can be heard in the next room?’

  ‘Well, no . . .’

  ‘Is Mr Clent in the house this moment?’

  ‘I think so – he stays in most mornings.’

  ‘Then I think I’d like to talk to him.’ There was a sudden scrape of chair feet against the floorboards, as if someone had risen to their feet quickly. ‘What was that? I thought I heard a rustling outside in the passageway.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be nothing but some bundles of honesty I hung to dry in the Chapel of Goodman Pulk the Tardy. They make quite a din when the seedheads pop.’

  Sure enough, when the constable pushed open the kitchen door and cast a curious glance up and down the corridor there was no one to be seen, and no movement but the gentle swinging of a row of honesty bundles in an unfelt draught. He walked the length of the corridor and knocked on the door at the end. A voice answered in calm tones, and when he pushed the door ajar he found Clent alone. Clent was reposing in the window seat in a pose suggestive of poetic abstraction, a roll of paper curling across one knee, a quill delicately imprisoned between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, his gaze adrift above the city as if the clouds were sharing their secrets with him.

  When his gaze fell upon the constable, he rose and offered a gracious bow, blinking slightly as if he needed to refocus his eyes in order to look upon ordinary, worldly things.

  ‘A welter of pardons, my good sir. I thought you were Bockerby’s girl servant with a dish of tea. Do take a seat.’

  The constable sat himself down on the room’s only chair.

  ‘Your own girl’s not about?’

  ‘Ah, no, I sent her to buy ink.’

  ‘Too bad. It was the girl I particularly wanted to speak to. No matter. I can tell you now that we have discovered the name of the dead man found at Whickerback Point. Have you heard the name Halk Partridge?’

  Clent raised his eyebrows, and seemed to consider for a few moments.

  ‘The name is faintly familiar, but the hook floats free and will not catch upon anything.’

  ‘The Watermen were worried that the poor cove we found in the nets might have been knifed by a spider boat working the quays, so they put out a description of the dead man to see if anyone recognized it and could put a name to him. The river water made this hard, since by the time they pulled him out he was tending to the blue and bilious, if you see my meaning, sir. But he had a little kink in his wrist, just here.’ The constable pulled back his cuff, and rubbed at the knob of his wrist bone. ‘A most particular kind of a kink, and one of the porters on the jetty remembered seeing a barge captain with just such a kink.’

  Clent wore a patient and polite expression, as if the high matters of his poem were calling to him and he was trying not to hear them.

  ‘So we went down to Dragmen’s Arches,’ continued the constable, ‘and we found out that barge skipper had not been seen for about a week, and we heard his first mate was bowsing at the Wide-eyed Kipper. So we searched the mate out at the Kipper, and one of my men laid a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. And quick as you can blink, the fellow looked up, saw us in the Duke’s colours, and threw his stew at my head. He was a right dog for a fight, and it was only when we had three men sitting on his chest that we got any sense out of him.

  ‘He had it in his head we’d come to arrest him for smuggling, and swore his own soul black as a kettle, laying curses on the pair he thought had cackled on him. A pair of passengers the barge had taken up at Kempe Teetering, was how he put it. I think his exact words were, “a bloated viper with a lawyer’s pretty manners, and a ferrety-looking girl with unconvincing eyebrows”.’

  Clent shifted uncomfortably at this unflattering description, and for an instant his eyes did have a furtive, viperish expression.

  ‘He also mentioned a goose.’ The constable looked meaningfully at the floor, which was strewn with tiny white feathers from Saracen’s grooming and the pale blots of his droppings.

  ‘Invaluable birds,’ Clent smiled brightly. ‘Far better for guarding one’s domicile than a mastiff.’

  ‘Mr Clent.’ The constable leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. ‘I hope you can understand my position. I have no wish to harass a gentleman in the pay of the Lady Tamarind, or to risk a scandal which might besmulch her name, but I cannot be in any doubt that you know this man Partridge, and know a good amount about his dealings. This whole business has become too serious to ignore.

  ‘And so, Mr Clent, I have to ask you a question, and I think you know what it is going to be.’ The constable sat back, folded his arms, and peered at Clent’s carefully blank expression with narrow dislike. ‘Who has been melting down gods to make gunshot?’

  Clent’s poker face broke down at this unexpected question, and he simply boggled.

  ‘I entreat your
pardon . . . perhaps you could elucidate . . . I find myself a little . . . What?’

  ‘Once we had the first mate in darbies, we tracked down the rest of the crew. Most of them stayed mum, but the youngest got leaky, and told us they’d dropped off their smuggled cargo at a potter’s on the waterside. We turned the place over, and found nigh on a hundred and forty god statues under the floorboards. As you know, most god likenesses have a core of lead in them, so they won’t get blown over in their shrines. They’re about the only source of lead that wasn’t melted down during the war to make shot. And there under the floorboards, sure enough, was a set of bullet moulds and smelting gear. It is no secret that our noble Duke is seeking the ringleaders in a Diabolical Radical Plot against the Twin Queens . . . and we suspect that these bullet-makers may be part of the plot.’

  ‘Good sir, I can assure you that I know no more about this than the greenest pea fresh-popped from its pod. It is true that my secretary and I did travel from Kempe Teetering by barge for a time, and if you say the captain’s name was Halk Partridge I will not gainsay you, but if the first mate fancied that we were aware of his dark doings I can only tell you that he was deluded . . .’

  The constable gave a slow nod, but not as if he was satisfied.

  ‘Very well, Mr Clent.’ He stood to leave. ‘You may realize that you remember more about our friend Partridge, and when you do I hope you will tell me about it. And when your secretary comes back, I’d thank you to bring her to the watch house to answer some questions. You see, she was seen climbing aboard Partridge’s boat the day after he disappeared, and talking to one of his crew.’

  Clent remained motionless as the constable left the room, and he stayed so until the front door slammed. Then with tiptoe haste made absurd by his bulk, he tripped silently to the window to peer into the street. Only when he was satisfied that the constable really had left the marriage house did he tweak his coat off his bed, revealing the crouched form of Mosca, who had been listening to the interview with some confusion, and watching through a buttonhole.