Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  Mosca fumbled in her pockets for her new pipe and then, gripping it between her teeth, went to sit on the bed. The stem waggled as she chewed on it, frowning all the while into space. Then, still frowning, she swung herself off the bed again, scooped up her bonnet from the top of the wigstand, and went back to the mirror.

  She put the bonnet back on her head and fastened the ribbons in the fashionable style that the lavender girl had shown her. The ribbons rested neatly against the creases in her cheek, and the knot rubbed against a red dent under her chin. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the marks on Mosca’s face had been caused by the bonnet ribbon. But in answering this small mystery she found herself faced with a larger one.

  Why would Partridge have been wearing a woman’s bonnet?

  The black-eyed imp in the mirror rested its chin on its hands and stared back at Mosca, champing all the while on its pipe. And then the movement of the chewing jaw slowed, and the black eyes became round, as the mistakes and misunderstandings brushed away like cobwebs, leaving the true shape of things bare before her mind’s eye. Suddenly she could see what must have happened the night of the beast fight. Which of course meant . . .

  ‘Oh, Saracen!’ Mosca exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘What have we done?’

  Saracen had just taken a big beakful of feathers from a pillow and was too busy snapping his beak and spluttering to share in Mosca’s moment of revelation.

  What could she do? Kohlrabi might not call by for days, and she could hardly count upon poor, confused Mrs Nokes to carry a message this important. No, she would have to go back and find the Cakes herself. She would only be gone a little while; she could return before anyone missed her and worried. Saracen would be safe enough in the little room. Providing, of course, he did not become restless and start overturning furniture, and providing Mrs Nokes did not come up to investigate the sound, and providing he did not burst out upon a rampage as soon as the door was opened . . .

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ Mosca sighed.

  The shop was not yet open, so Mosca could not hope to slip out through a mill of customers. However, Mrs Nokes was busy arranging satin flowers and stuffed hummingbirds in a pale-green wig, and she did not notice as Mosca crept along behind the counter on all fours, Saracen’s leash wound around her wrist. At the door, as an afterthought, Mosca caught up a large, dark-red wig box and tucked it under one arm.

  ‘It’s only borrowing,’ she explained to Saracen when the door was safely closed behind them. ‘Borrowing don’t count.’

  The box’s rounded lid slid off easily. It slid on again rather less easily once the box was full of goose, since Saracen was not at all happy about the sky being blocked out, and he kept trying to peer his beak out through the crack.

  ‘You’re too recognizable, Saracen,’ Mosca explained, pushing the lid firmly into place. There was a leather strap so the box could be tied to luggage when travelling by coach, and Mosca found that it could be slung over her right shoulder and buckled under her left armpit.

  The market bell had rung, so the Cakes would be at the market.

  The air was chill, but for now the wind had slackened. Mosca had half expected the streets outside to be deserted, while everyone peeped through their shutters and waited for war, but here were dozens of housewives and housekeepers, gripping their baskets and filling the air with the steam of their breath, chattered conversations, and the slap of their slippers against the cobbles.

  Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

  The old marketplace within the city walls had been too far east for the Duke’s sense of symmetry, so he had given orders for a new street to be run through it, and the foundations laid for a set of new houses. He had found a nice new site for the marketplace, which was much nearer the city centre. Unfortunately the new site was full of ungrateful and unreasonable people who liked their houses and did not care that knocking them down would make the maps look neater. While the Duke’s men struggled to evict these people from their homes, the morning market had moved by unspoken consent to a space of grazing land south of the Ashbridge.

  The river was still oozing mist as Mosca walked across the Ashbridge, which was so named because of the sheer number of times it had been burnt by pirates, robber barons and, finally, Parliamentarians.

  At the far side the marketplace spread out like a fan, vivid with stalls of fruit and spices.

  There was no sign of the Cakes among the stalls. However, the market did not end where the water began.

  For the first hour after the market bell rang, the Water Market appeared as if from nowhere. Like a cluster of lily pads, a rocking plain of little boats gathered around the island of Goodman Sussuratch, tethered the one to the other, the furthest indistinct in the mist. Those with a little more money to spare shared a crammed wherry to the island, and leaned over the side to barter and buy. Many chose instead a more precarious route.

  Starting at the base of the bridge, and tracing a winding path to the island, a line of boats was strung, each linked to the next by grappling chains. Little gangplanks bridged the gaps between them. The housewives hitched their skirts up and sidled carefully along the planks, their baskets and carrying yokes slung over their shoulders. Sometimes, where the boats were laden low and the mist was thick, they appeared to be walking upon the surface of the river itself.

  ‘Pretty,’ said the old woman in the first boat, looping two nooses of scarlet ribbon over Mosca’s arm. ‘Make you look pretty as a May morning, these will.’ Mosca tottered, disentangled herself, and continued along the dipping plank-walk.

  The boats nearest the shore sold wares much like those in the market square. One was loaded to the brim with pumpkins and celeriac. Another was heavy with crates of live chickens and rabbits. However, as Mosca drew near to the island of Sussuratch, she noticed a change. The river was the domain of the Watermen, and the usual laws of the land did not apply. Here the other guilds and the Duke had little power, and a different kind of market seller had glided out of the shadows.

  Here chymists sold from their little, bobbing stalls without fear of the Apothecaries’ Guild. Cat’s teeth floating in bottled hyacinth water, toadstones, essence of garden tansy to aid childbirth, whole stuffed badgers as treatment against gout, and ground millipedes as a cure for earache.

  The triple ball of the pawnbroker’s sign hung from some masts. Mosca saw one such broker haggling with a woman in a tattered black cambric shawl who had spread across her lap a dozen pigtails, all crudely severed. She cast a black look over her shoulder when Mosca paused to peer, and Mosca guessed that she must be one of the notorious scissor-women, who would snip the locks off unguarded children to sell to wigmakers. The pigtails lay like fat, silken ropes, their sad little ribbons still attached.

  In the next boat, a seller casually tossed a blanket over three sleeping pistols as she passed, and his conversation with his customer fell into a lull.

  Around the island of Sussuratch itself, the boats lay flank to flank. This made it easier to step from one to the next, though no doubt if someone had fallen through a gap, it would also have made it easier for them to drown beneath the boats without anyone noticing.

  Not far from the island’s jetty, Mosca finally saw the Cakes, the baskets of her carrying yoke laden down with fruit and philtre bottles. When Mosca sidled up to her, the Cakes stiffened, but she continued ladling blood-red juice out of a cauldron into a pot she had brought for the purpose.

  ‘I haven’t seen you,’ she said, a little primly. ‘I’m buying stewed prunes and loveapples and payin’ you no mind.’

  ‘All right,’ Mosca said with unusual meekness. Paying her no mind did not seem to stop the Cakes talking to her, so she supposed that was good enough. ‘Cakes – I got to ask you somink.’

 
‘I ain’t talking to you,’ the Cakes explained. ‘I’m just mutterin’ to myself, that’s all.’

  ‘Right – but you might just happen to mutter ’bout the same thing as I’m asking? I’m trying to – I’m trying to fix everything that’s broken.’

  The Cakes made a disapproving little mouth as she pushed the cork into her pot, but she seemed to be listening.

  ‘The day after we married your parents – I remember you sayin’ a couple came in with the bride so sloshy she could hardly stand. Can you remember anything about them?’ Mosca bit her lip. ‘I s’pose you’d need to check the register . . .’

  ‘Course I wouldn’t!’ The Cakes was so surprised by the suggestion that she turned to Mosca and quite forgot to mutter. ‘I could tell you every name on that register for every day this month, right here and now in my clogs. And I remember that day because I was merry as a cricket because . . . oh, you know why. There was a bride that had been making good cheer, and had to be propped up every step by her sweetheart – he had to guide her hand across the register to draw her “X” as well, but that often happens, you know. They took a room for the night, and must have left next morning while I was out at market.’

  ‘Do you remember what she looked like?’ Mosca had trouble keeping the excitement out of her voice.

  ‘Don’t recall seeing much of her face – she had her bonnet pushed forward on to her forehead. Not a lady. Sunburned and doughty. She had on a yellow stuff gown, I can tell you that much. And a cream-coloured casaque over the top, with blue woollen embroidery at the collar and cuffs, all done like daisies. Oh – and I do remember that she had a little bulging bone under the skin just here.’ The Cakes tapped the side of her wrist. ‘I remember feeling sorry for her, thinking maybe she drank a lot out of loneliness, and maybe she fell over and broke her wrist that way. So I was pleased for her, imagining her waking up the next morning, and finding herself married.’ The Cakes beamed.

  ‘What about the feller – do you remember him?’

  The Cakes frowned, and shrugged a little.

  ‘Too good for her, I remember thinking. Trim, with a gentlemanly way, and a nice silk stock collar. I remember the name, because it was a queer one. Duplimore Gweed.’

  ‘Duplimore?’ Mosca crinkled her forehead.

  ‘Looked it up afterwards.’ The Cakes looked pleased, like a fisherman describing a rare catch. ‘It’s sacred to Goodlady Judin of the Borrowed Face – if a babe’s born while the sun’s coming up for Goodman Greyglory’s day, it’s a child of Judin.’

  ‘Cakes,’ Mosca said in a small, quiet voice, ‘you wouldn’t get anybody named Duplimore.’

  ‘Not often, no. I mean, what’s the odds of being born just at sun-wake on that particular day?’

  ‘No . . . I mean, even if you were. Judin’s about the unluckiest Beloved to be born under – nobody wants to name their child for her. So they wouldn’t, Cakes. They’d squint at the sun and say it was as near up as not, and name the babe after Greyglory. The nursemaid wanted to say I was born before sunset, so I’d be a child of Boniface, not Palpitattle, only my father was . . . my father wasn’t like anybody else.’

  ‘You mean . . . people might . . . lie about names?’ The two girls stared at one another as they grappled with the concept. It was like trying to imagine someone peeling off their own face to put on a false one. How would they put their own name on again afterwards? Wouldn’t the Beloved they were born under be angry? The name you gave a child was as indelible as a brand, it was who they would become . . . and nobody, not even the slippery Eponymous Clent, ever lied about their name . . .

  ‘I think somebody has,’ Mosca said slowly. ‘Did you see where the couple came from?’

  ‘The river, I think. Yes, that was it, I saw them stepping off one of the ragmen’s boats when I was out feeding the chickens. I suppose he must have given them a lift out of kindness.’ The Cakes’ smile faded as she remembered that she was not talking to Mosca.

  ‘I’m going to fix everything,’ Mosca promised, without knowing quite what she planned to do. ‘Where do I find the ragmen?’

  ‘Most of them are at the market – west side of the island.’ The Cakes had withdrawn behind a stony expression once more, so Mosca took the hint and left her to herself.

  It was true, then. The revelation that had dazzled her as she sat before the mirror was true. Why had she never stopped to wonder how Partridge had entered the marriage house in the first place? Now she knew.

  Partridge had entered the house disguised as a woman, with a full-brimmed bonnet that fell over his face. He had been guided into a chapel, he had been married for a handful of shillings, he had been helped in signing the register, he had been half carried to one of the private rooms. And Partridge had objected to none of this because Partridge had already been dead.

  So who was the name-changing bridegroom, the man in the silk stock collar? The murderer, almost certainly. What could such a man be like? He must have had blood like icewater to walk through a public street with his arm around the man he had killed. He must have had nerves of iron to go through a whole wedding ceremony, never knowing if someone might glimpse a male face under the bonnet, or touch the bride’s hand and find it suspiciously cold. He must have had a strange, playful, twisted mind even to think of such a plan in the first place.

  One further thing Mosca knew about this man without the slightest doubt: he could not possibly be Eponymous Clent. He had been at the Grey Mastiff all evening, and besides, the Cakes would have recognized him immediately.

  Until today, Mosca had been haunted by images of Clent coming after her with revenge in mind. Now she was troubled by visions of him being chased over cold fields by men with muskets, trying to hide his plump and trembling bulk in hedges and under barrows. He was probably guilty of a hundred hanging offences, thefts and cheats and lays and lies, so perhaps it did not matter if he was hanged for one crime he had not committed. And yet it did matter. Mosca knew that she had to save him, and the only way to do so was to find the real murderer.

  The ragmen’s decks were not so much laden as littered, scraps and frills and whole garments locked in multi-coloured mêlée. Most of the vessels were simple, square rafts, but there were a couple of small barges with fringed awnings like those on tilt-boats, to keep the dew off the rags. Servant girls, seamstresses and housewives scrambled over the mounds, tugging at this and that like gulls picking at scraps.

  ‘’Scuse me.’

  Two elderly women on one of the rag barges stopped their stitching and lifted their heads as Mosca raised her voice. They both wore a strangely stitched patchwork of snippets and sequins. ‘My uncle got a lift with a ragman a week ago, an’ he never come home . . . I was trying to find out where he was heading.’

  ‘You’re mistaken, my butterfly,’ said the thinner of the two women. Her nose was so crooked that it seemed to have a knuckle in the middle. ‘Ragmen don’t give lifts – Watermen’s rules. That’s right, isn’t it, Butterbara?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed her plumper friend. ‘Isn’t that right, Tare?’ A younger man looked up from his little raft and nodded vigorously, but insisted on calling his brother Sorrel to back him up, who in turn called upon his friend Dregly to agree with him. The word passed around all the ragmen, who agreed unanimously that no ragman could possibly have offered anyone a lift.

  ‘Perhaps it was just a scruffy-looking wherry,’ Butterbara suggested helpfully.

  Mosca narrowed her eyes, but nodded. The ragmen lost interest in her and turned their attention to loosing their chains and casting off. Mosca was about to turn away when something on one of the rafts caught her eye.

  Among the torn petticoats and bruised linen dangled a sleeve of cream-coloured linen. The light was still poor, but Mosca could make out a daisy pattern around the edge, embroidered in blue. She clambered down from the barge to the raft, which was small but laden with a rag heap almost as high as her head. As she crouched, she heard the rubbery patter of Sarac
en’s webbed feet from inside his box, as if he was dancing sideways in an attempt to keep his balance. She unstrapped the wig box, and placed it down beside her.

  Mosca pulled at the cream-coloured fabric, gingerly at first for fear of toppling the whole rag heap into the water, then more firmly, but still the sleeve resisted. Pushing at the mound with her shoulder, Mosca managed to clear enough of the deck to see that the sleeve was clenched fast in a closed trapdoor set in the deck.

  The trapdoor had a ring, and Mosca was able to lift it and pull the whole length of fabric free. Sure enough, it was a woman’s ‘casaque’, a practical, short-sleeved, flared jacket meant to be worn over a gown. It was made for a woman of ample dimensions; it had blue woollen embroidery around the collar and cuffs, and in every particular it matched the Cakes’ description of the casaque worn by the ‘bride’ during the macabre ceremony. And there, near the stomach – was that a smudge of mud or gravy, or something quite different? The fabric bore the marks of many bootsoles, and it was hard to tell.

  Perhaps this was all she needed to clear Clent. Perhaps she did not need to find out why Partridge had been killed, or why this dress was here on the raft . . . or why a rag raft needed a trapdoor.

  Mosca lifted the trapdoor and peered down into a darkness punctured only by the occasional gleam of morning light on metal. She leaned as far forward as she dared, and her nose caught something that smelt the way warm metal tastes. The next moment she leaned forward far further than she had intended as the raft lurched into motion, and she showed Goodman Sussuratch the soles of her clogs as she tumbled in through the hatchway.

  ‘Have we struck something?’ A voice from above. Mosca was too winded to speak, lost in a blackness where blurred red stars came and went. She could only only guess that the trapdoor must have fallen shut behind her.

  ‘Not at this depth. We bumped hips with the Letitia, that’s all.’

  ‘Tare.’ The first man’s voice had become lower and more serious, with a dangerous edge to it. ‘What’s this doing here?’