Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Ahoy and Hear Me – The Murderer of Whickerback Point is Uncovered, the Duke’s Men have arrested Mr Pennymouse Clent, for his bloody slaughter of a Riverboat Radical . . .’

  The door of the coffeehouse swung wide, and a gentleman with a tight little bob wig appeared in the gap, steadying himself against the jamb to stop himself tumbling forward into the water. He tossed a pouch of coins to the runner, who was already holding up a hand in readiness. Excited voices were raised inside the coffeehouse, and someone started singing something that sounded like an anthem to freedom.

  Mosca realized that the news-carrier in the scull had dropped his oars and was standing unsteadily in his boat so that he could call out to the cluster of little boats touching keels around the Sussuratch pillar. His voice was just audible to Mosca as she hitched her skirts and began to run in good earnest.

  ‘Ahoy and Hear Me – The Body of Whickerback Point Revealed to be a Waterman Spy named Pigeon, Horribly Murdered after Discovering a Reeking Radical Plot . . .’

  On the street side a rabbit-featured boy in worn boots flung open the door of the Strangled Bird tavern.

  ‘News from the watch, word straight from the Justice of the Peace himself,’ he gabbled breathlessly. ‘A Great Radical Plot to Steal Statues from Every Church an’ Melt ’em Down an’ Pour ’em into Everyone’s Ears while they Sleep . . .’ He ducked too slowly to avoid the resultant coin shrapnel hitting him in the face, and had to fight off a swoop of other urchins with an eye to snatching his reward from the mud.

  By the time Mosca paused for breath at the corner of East Straddle Street, another boy runner was reciting his message to a gaggle of sedan chairmen waiting outside the Simpering Squirrel.

  ‘. . . an’ then there was a big battle between the Duke’s men an’ the radicals, an’ they had to call in the Watermen to help, but the head of the radicals was this man called Spinymouse Lint, an’ he had this special cannon made so he could put whole statues in it, an’ he fired a statue right through the head of this one Waterman called Pilchard an’ he died right then and there . . .’

  The shutters of the marriage house were fastened although it was mid-afternoon. Unlike Clent, Mosca had no key to the front door, and no one answered her quiet rat-a-tat. She threw pebbles up against the window of the Cakes’ room, and eventually one shutter opened just wide enough to let a couple of red ringlets fly free on the breeze.

  ‘We’re all closed up today. Out of . . . respect for the solemn festival of Goodman Grenoble.’

  ‘Cakes! It’s me! An’ besides, Grenoble’s the Goodman of Keeping Knots out of Moustachios . . .’

  ‘I can’t let you in. Mr Bockerby was in the Tattler’s Tale when the news-carrier come by an’ told us everything.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ Mosca bit her lip. ‘Well . . . probably not. What colour of everything?’

  A thin slice of the Cakes’ face was visible through the shutter crack. She had the pale, miserable expression Mosca remembered from the days before the midnight marriage. ‘Mr Bockerby, he says any friend of Mistress Bessel’s is a friend of his, an’ any friend of any friend of Mistress Bessel’s likewise, an’ Mr Clent’s a friend of Mistress Bessel, but you ain’t any kind of a friend to Mr Clent. We heard how you got Mr Clent arrested, what with telling the constable that he’d been smuggling shrine statues into Mandelion hidden in dead partridges . . .’

  ‘Oh – that really isn’t true . . .’ With a warm flood of relief, Mosca at last let the whole truth spill out of her: the discovery of Clent with the body of Partridge, the unspeakable task of moving the body, and the final scene in the watch house. When she had finished, she looked up expectantly.

  The Cakes opened the shutter a little further. Her face was peaked and pale, and the corners of her mouth drooped as if something had disappointed her.

  ‘So . . . it was you that shopped Mr Pertellis to the Stationers and the Duke’s men?’ There had been no easy way to leave this fact out of the story. ‘Mosca – it was you?’

  Mosca’s mouth fell open. She did not feel ready to lie to the Cakes, but even if she had wanted to, she would have been too busy watching a series of memories parade across her vision. A picture of the Cakes carefully writing out each of the names in the marriage register. An image of the Cakes in the midnight chapel, her tearful face almost hidden under the white webwork of a shawl. A vision of a young girl crouching in an alleyway and noting down Pertellis’s words in her notebook, her hair hidden beneath a length of white lace . . . It had never occurred to Mosca to wonder where the Cakes had learned to write.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ the Cakes said sadly, and started to close the shutters.

  ‘Wait!’ There had to be more to say. ‘They tried to make me say Mr Pertellis killed the barge captain too, but I didn’t—’

  ‘Doesn’t help Mr Pertellis much, does it? Your goose is round the back – I led him out with a trail of barley.’ The shutters closed with a sad but resolute little click. Mosca stared up at them for a few turbulent seconds before the injustice of it overwhelmed her.

  ‘I’m never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated . . .’

  Then, I’ll get Saracen, she thought, and I’ll set him on their chickens.

  When she found him, Saracen had finished his barley and was happily chewing at the corner of a sheet that had been spread across a hedge to dry. He had once discovered a tablecloth, and ever since had been optimistic about the effects of dragging cloths off the top of things. The miserable-looking chickens had holed up in a bucket, suggesting that Saracen had pre-empted Mosca’s schemes against them.

  ‘Come on, Saracen. The cakes are stale here, an’ the rooms are draughty, an’ there’s no sleepin’ with the endless marryin’ goin’ on.’ Mosca was stooping to pick up Saracen when a roughly tied bundle landed in a cloth dollop at her feet.

  ‘Kip the blankt genst the cold’ read the little note pinned to the top. Inside the blanket the soft-hearted Cakes had stowed two small loaves and a shilling. Mosca stared up at the windows, but there was no sign of anyone watching to see her reaction so she settled for smiling reassuringly at the chickens.

  Back in the street, she noticed that the marriage house was not the only building that had shuttered its windows. Outside a neighbouring building two serving maids were hastily finishing their job of sweeping the front step.

  ‘. . . a huge store of bullets they say the radicals have stored away in a cave, like a squirrel’s acorns,’ Mosca heard one whisper to the other. ‘And no doubt muskets hid under flags in their cellars, all ready to storm the Duke’s spire.’

  ‘Will they come to common sort of houses after, d’you think?’

  ‘Most likely. And when they do, master’ll go the colour of custard and give them his money and anything else they’ve a mind to, and thank them kindly for taking it. Don’t you wish that we had a gentleman like that Captain Blythe on hand to keep us safe?’

  The other serving maid answered with a sigh that spoke volumes.

  Around the next corner a horse reared, startled by the flutter of paper amid the cobbles. Walkers recoiled, clearing a little round theatre of space around two curling sheets of parchment. They were printed in heavy, black letters, but they did not bear a Stationers’ seal.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Get back! Don’t look at it!’ One young mother scooped up her toddler son, burying his head against her dress so that he would not see the offending papers, and pushed her way through the crowd.

  ‘What do we do, heap earth on it so it doesn’t get away?’

  ‘The Stationers! Fetch the Stationers! They’ll know what to do.’

  The wind picked up, and the paper rolled itself back into a scroll, and tumbled gently towards the kennel ditch of the street, the crowd clearing before it with a scuffle of frightened feet. One larding-pin-seller, bolder than the rest of the throng, stepped forward, one hand shielding his eyes, and kicked a clod of horse m
anure on to the wicked paper. After this it lay, weighted to the cobbles, but still curled and uncurled its corners in a lazy, beckoning motion.

  Five minutes later, a small cart racketed up, with two men in Stationers’ livery gripping their hats to their heads and their writing boxes to their chests. They dismounted, and with great care one used tongs to put the dangerous paper on a curious long-handled spade, held by the other. The Stationer with the spade took a moment to clean his spectacles, then surveyed the crowd sternly.

  ‘Did anyone look at it?’

  ‘He did! He did!’ The manure-kicker was pushed to the front.

  ‘No I never! Well, not hardly . . . ’sides, I can’t read.’

  ‘Ooh, what a lie, I saw his eyes moving from side to side like they was following words . . .’

  ‘We’d better take him along too, then. Come on, sir, into the cart, don’t make a fuss. If it turns out you can’t read after all, then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? Otherwise . . .’ The paper-scooper and the hapless larding-pin-seller were loaded into the Stationers cart, and the bay mare nodded sleepily at a twitch of the reins and ambled into motion.

  The cart had just reached the corner when a rock flew from somewhere in the crowd, and struck one Stationer solidly on the back of the skull.

  ‘That’s for Mr Pertellis!’ A youthful shout with no apparent owner.

  The crowd turned for the source in vain. Amid the gasps of outrage could be heard murmurs of approval.

  ‘Radicals!’ bellowed one man, and, ‘Locksmiths!’ another. Both calls were taken up, but pell-mell, so that it was impossible to tell if they were accusations or rallying cries. The Stationer who had been struck cried, ‘Call the constables!’

  Soon the rim of the crowd was buckling before a handful of men in the Duke’s colours who strode in shouldering muskets.

  ‘A rock . . .’

  ‘Locksmiths! Somewhere in the . . .’

  ‘If so, we’ll find them. You! Take off your glove! Let’s see your right hand!’ The Duke’s men barged through the crowd, muskets levelled, forcing each man in their path to strip off his right-hand glove. Mosca knew they were looking for the Locksmiths’ key brand.

  Not far from Mosca a man in a ragged, brown coat shoved his way free of the crowd and bolted for an alleyway.

  ‘Stop!’ A Duke’s man levelled his musket. Footsteps continued to ring out from the alley.

  A summer’s worth of thunder in an instant, and a surge of musket smoke. A woman standing next to Mosca screamed and clutched a powder-burned cheek. One petty constable sprinted into the alley.

  ‘There’s nothing but a thief’s brand on the fellow’s hand!’ came his cry. Amid the crowd, angry whispers fizzed to and fro like water beads on a griddle.

  Perhaps the world has always been like this, Mosca thought as she pushed her way through the crowd. Like a broken honeypot that looks whole, but just holds together because the shards are resting in place and are glued together with honey. You just need to prod it a bit, and it all starts oozing apart. And perhaps, when Clent had cackled on her, the world would come oozing after Mosca in a mass of madness and misheard gossip, accusing her of mill-burning and mischief and multiple misdemeanours. She needed to find somewhere to hide.

  Kohlrabi.

  His favourite coffeehouse was the Hind at Bay. When it drew near to its usual mooring place on Merryhell Row, it became clear that a fracas was taking place on board. Two men had hit the wooden wall with such violence that they had knocked a hole in it, and now their upper bodies protruded through the splintered gash, where they struggled over a tiny pistol gripped between their interlocked fists. The ball rolled out of the barrel and hit the water with a sad little plish, but the combat continued unabated. A plum-faced lawyer shouted a hoarse diatribe against the Locksmiths, while a young apothecary said nothing, happy in the knowledge that a bitten eyebrow was worth a thousand words.

  ‘’Scuse me,’ Mosca called out to the two coffeemaidens busy trying to pull the combatants back from the drop, ‘but is there a Mr Kohlrabi supping there, please?’

  ‘Not this last hour, me dove,’ one called as she wound her fingers into the lawyer’s cravat and hauled him back by force. ‘Try in the cathedral, I would, dearie. He’s often there at this time.’

  But this was no easy matter. The road to the cathedral was full of crowds and excitable voices. Mosca’s legs were weak and her arms were full of Saracen.

  There were other faces in the throng as well, child faces with tight mouths, and eyes that followed her. Word of Mosca’s part in the arrest of Hopewood Pertellis had travelled fast. Grim-faced and grimy-locked, the children of the Floating School left their mops and their marbles and followed her to the doors of the cathedral, first at a trot, then at a jog, then at a run.

  Darkness was kind to the cathedral, and hid the scars left by flames, war and time. Mosca saw only rich hanging tapestries and pillars of rose-coloured marble, whorled in whisker-fine gold leaf. Until now she had seen the Beloved only in their wooden, workaday faces, but here they were languorous in marble, some indolently holding a sword or a set of scales in a drooping hand. High in the dome above were arches where more Beloved appeared in attitudes of mild surprise, as if they had opened the wrong door by mistake and found themselves above a perilous drop.

  In the middle of the main aisle stood a mighty marble font, full of dried rose petals. An inscription on the side explained that this was the last resting place of the Little Goodkin, three children who had been abandoned in the woods and starved to death, but whose skeletons returned to their village church a month later to shame their parents. Even Mosca had heard the tale that when a child was lost in a dark and lonely place the Little Goodkin would come to them and guide them home. The Little Goodkin had doubtless been responsible for keeping countless children from harm, for there is nothing like the prospect of acquiring three well-meaning but skeletal companions to persuade one out of dark and lonely places.

  Despite her haste, Mosca took a moment to snatch a handful of the petals and rub them against her face in the time-honoured manner, before letting them fall back into the font.

  ‘Fenfenny,’ she whispered, the common corruption of the old prayer ‘Friends defend me.‘

  . . . where is she is that her this way . . .

  The whispers were not far behind.

  The nearest wall was covered from floor to roof with the arched mouths of tiny shrines which in turn led into other shrines behind them, all part of the same interconnected warren. Most were too small and inaccessible to be visited easily, and rich worshippers generally paid a priest to carry their offering up to the correct shrine, while those of modest means were reduced to flicking coins up at the little arches that appeared in the front facade and hoping for the best.

  Mosca stowed Saracen in a nook beside Goodman Blackwhistle of the Favourable Wind, then scrambled in through the nearest shrine opening, bruising her hands on coins. Some connecting passages were little more than cracks in the masonry, and as she squeezed up through them she tried not to imagine herself getting trapped like a sweep in a chimney kink. Just as the pressing wall of the Warren was stirring panic in her, she saw light ahead and realized that she had reached an empty shrine, set twenty feet above the cathedral floor.

  . . . there she is where how did she get up there . . .

  For a while Mosca heard scufflings around and below her, and then one by one the children of the Floating School emerged back from the Warren and peered up at her. She had no idea how she had reached her current precarious position, and it was pretty clear that they hadn’t either. They stood by the font of the Little Goodkin, and as they discussed her in whispers each reached without thinking into the font to rub a handful of petals against his or her face and murmur the traditional benediction. It almost seemed as if they had gathered to pay their respects to Mosca, and it was a shock when the first flung stone stung her shin.

  But a new set of steps rang out across the m
osaic floor, and soon the stones ceased to clack against the stonework by her head. Mosca took a few deep breaths, drew her knees away from her chin and peered from beneath the brim of her bonnet

  ‘Hello, little god,’ said Kohlrabi. ‘What are you the deity of, may I ask?’

  ‘Hiding, and staying alive.’ Mosca rubbed at a new tear in her stocking, and felt the edges damp with blood. Someone had a good aim.

  ‘Who are you hiding from?’

  ‘Other children.’

  ‘Is it a game?’

  Mosca shook her head.

  ‘I don’t see any other children.’ Indeed, the children of the Floating School had chosen this time to float elsewhere. ‘In fact, I suspect you have been waiting here in ambush to swoop down and crush my hat again. But let’s see.’

  Kohlrabi paced a few leisurely steps to the main aisle, swept back his cloak and raised both his fists in an exaggerated yawn and stretch. There was a rapid patter of feet, and the cathedral door banged and juddered. ‘Well, I was wrong. Lots of children. What did you do to bring such wrath on your head?’

  For a moment Mosca thought about lying and telling him that it had been a game after all. But instead somehow she found herself pouring out the truth for the third time that day: the arrest of Pertellis, the murder of Partridge, the denunciation of Clent and the vengeance of the schoolchildren.

  ‘You better go now,’ she said when she’d finished, not wanting to look at Kohlrabi’s face in case he started hating her as well.

  ‘I bought you something,’ Kohlrabi answered, as if he had not heard her. Out of his pocket he drew a long briar pipe. ‘It’s a little large for you, but I think you’ll grow into it. It’s been used, so it has the scent of tobacco. But you . . . you’ll have to come down for it. I don’t want to throw it and risk breaking it. You are planning to come down some time, aren’t you? Or are you just hoping to live off food offerings in the shrines?’