Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  There was no answer to this question. All that Stallwrath could report as he crouched behind the safety of the coffeehouse chimney was that they were suddenly surrounded by a convoy of little boats, whose grimly smiling captains saluted them but offered no explanation. For the moment there was little danger of being shot, and as little chance of firing at their attackers on the bank. Everyone on the Bower quickly realized they could get on with the argument they’d been itching to have.

  Miss Kitely was sure that if the Watermen knew what was happening, they would rush back to defend the Laurel Bower, then charge to the coast to stop the Birdcatchers. Everyone else thought that the Watermen were unlikely to accept the word of a huddle of outlaws against the word of a duke.

  Goshawk wanted to send one of his men on a fast horse to the Locksmith troops waiting upstream, so that if everyone in the Laurel Bower perished, ‘the Duke would pay the price’. Everyone else thought this sounded extremely dangerous, and they were not at all keen on the bit about everyone in the coffeehouse dying.

  Hopewood Pertellis suggested that he should borrow a little dinghy from the convoy and approach the shore under a flag of parley to explain everything ‘and stop all this foolishness’. Everyone else was very polite about this idea, then changed the subject completely.

  ‘There is another way,’ Eponymous Clent said. In fact, he said it several times without anyone hearing, but Copperback accidentally sparked the powder in his pan, deafening everyone and filling the room with smoke. While they were all still coughing, Clent declared loudly, ‘There is another way. Perhaps the Watermen will not listen to us, but they will certainly listen to the Stationers’ Guild. The two guilds have been on excellent terms for years.’

  ‘Which does us little good, since the Stationers’ Guild will certainly not listen to us,’ retorted Copperback, as he primed his rifle again.

  ‘They will listen to me,’ Clent declared with simple grandeur. ‘Particularly when they learn that someone has tried to trick them into a guild war.’

  There was an impressed silence. ‘So,’ Pertellis said slowly, ‘you are saying that we should send you to tell the Stationers about Lady Tamarind’s plot against the Locksmiths and persuade them to warn the Watermen about the Birdcatchers?’ A hush followed this question while everyone tried to piece the sentence together in their heads. ‘Oh dear, this is complicated . . . perhaps if I drew a diagram to make things clearer?’

  ‘Whatever happened to simple plans?’ muttered Blythe, still sighting along his gun through the doorway.

  ‘Do you have a better idea, sir?’ asked Clent coolly.

  ‘I’m far too confused to have a better idea!’ flared Blythe.

  Mosca found herself warming to him.

  Blythe looked Clent up and down. ‘How well do you swim?’

  ‘Ah . . .’ Clent dropped his eyes. Most of the radicals and Locksmiths were looking similarly sheepish.

  ‘I can swim,’ said Mosca.

  Clent raised his eyes to heaven. ‘What was I thinking? Gentlemen, this girl was brought up in a drowned village, nursemaided by frogs and swaddled in lilies. She can swim like a Timberline trout, and she is a contracted apprentice of the Stationers’ Guild.’ He drew Mosca with both hands into the centre of the room. ‘She can take a missive from me to the Stationers at the Telling Word coffeehouse. Miss Kitely, do you have a small boat of any sort?’

  ‘I fear we do not, Mr Clent, but there is a wooden washing tub in which we sometimes lower one of the girls when we need to look to the hull.’

  Mosca had flushed bright red and suddenly couldn’t understand anything that was being said, although the fog of faces was smiling at her. She seemed to have volunteered, and things were happening so quickly she could hardly keep her feet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Goshawk beckon Clent over, whisper to him, and place two keys in his hand.

  ‘Miss Mye –’ Pertellis was looking into her face with his usual expression of dazzled concern – ‘no one will blame you if you choose not do this.’

  ‘That isn’t true, is it, Mr Pertellis?’ Mosca whispered back gently.

  Miss Kitely took control. While Clent wrote his letter, Mosca was to eat a little supper in the back room and compose herself. Mosca was glad of the privacy, but she had no stomach for the apple pie that was brought to her. She had just pushed it aside when Blythe entered, stifling a cough. He looked embarrassed to find himself observed, and settled for staring at an ornamental anchor hanging on the wall. Blythe reminded Mosca of the civet, trapped in a battle it did not understand, its eyes reflecting images of its lost freedom.

  ‘So, do you want to marry Miss Kitely?’

  ‘If she’d have me.’ Blythe looked as if he would like to be angry at the question but had too much to think about. If Mosca said nothing more, he would start thinking about the heath again.

  ‘She’s got strange eyes.’

  ‘She has very fine eyes.’ The highwayman sounded affronted. ‘She’s . . . like no one I’ve met before. A real lady. And . . .’ A dreamy look crossed his face. ‘. . . she can clean, load and present a pistol in twenty heartbeats.’

  Mosca thought this a much better reason to be in love with someone. But Miss Kitely seemed so unlikely in every other way, so prim and high-collared. Then she remembered the gentle way the coffee mistress had said the highwayman’s name, Clam . . .

  ‘Were you born under Goodman Sicklenose—’

  ‘He Who Lures the Shelled Fish into the Hungry Net. Yes.’ Blythe peered at her. He mouthed the name ‘Mosca’ to himself, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Palpitattle?’ Mosca nodded, and they exchanged a smile of grim sympathy.

  ‘It would have been my twenty-ninth nameday two weeks from now.’

  ‘It would have been my thirteenth in eleven months.’

  This seemed to be all that needed to be said.

  ‘All right,’ growled Blythe. ‘Let’s go. Our friends need Black Captain Blythe to be a hero, and you have a washing tub to catch.’

  T is for Trial by Combat

  When Mosca emerged from the back room, Clent placed a sealed letter in her hand, but seemed reluctant to release his end of it.

  ‘You . . . you do swim well, I trust?’

  ‘Like a Timberline trout,’ Mosca replied promptly.

  ‘Ha. Hum. Mosca, when you have delivered this letter, make your way to the Ashbridge. If our dice fall ill, leave Mandelion with all dispatch. If you see smoke rising from the river, assume the worst.’

  ‘If the worst comes . . . you’ll let Saracen out of ’is box, won’t you, Mr Clent?’

  ‘I swear it upon my muse.’

  Mosca knew that, like Clent, she wore the expression of one who has heard a trickle above become a rumble, and is waiting for the avalanche. They did not know what was happening in Mandelion, but they were fairly sure it would end up happening to them.

  ‘They’re . . . they’re like a sack of kittens chucked in a river,’ Mosca whispered as Clent accompanied her through the crowd of radicals. He slowly lowered his lids once in silent agreement.

  Fear made everyone look very alive in a strange and fragile way, like the last flare of a candle before it dies. It cannot end well, said a leaden weight in Mosca’s stomach. Some of them will die, perhaps all.

  Mosca wanted to say goodbye to the Cakes, but the older girl was still being saved by Carmine. Indeed, the Cakes seemed to be so very, very safe that Mosca began to wonder if marriage might not rub off on her after all.

  In the galley, a trapdoor had been opened in one wall, and a large, sturdy-looking cedar washing tub was being fastened to lines from the ceiling.

  ‘Madam, take some care climbing in, you are blessing the company with sight of a generous extent of your stockinged . . . oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the child is still wearing her breeches . . .’

  Miss Kitely slid a bracelet over Mosca’s wrist, and Mosca saw that tiny wooden figures with carved skeletal faces dangled from it. They were the Little Goodkin
, and she realized to her surprise that Miss Kitely thought of her as a child.

  Many hands hauled on the ropes. They guided the tub’s giddy ascent towards the hatch, and suddenly Mosca was in the open air, steam from the galley surging out around her, the skin of her face feeling stripped and cold. The tub lowered in jolts, banging against the side of the coffeehouse all the way to the waterline. Under the ‘coffeehouse’ was an ordinary hull, against which the water cast dancing hieroglyphs of light.

  Mosca loosed the hooks that held the tub to the lines, and a sudden plunge left the tub lolling in the lap of the river as it fell quickly astern of the Laurel Bower.

  ‘Ahoy! Catch hold there, we’ll haul you in!’

  A line end stung Mosca’s cheek, and she grabbed at it automatically. A little bumboat of the sort that sold provisions to large ships in dock was bobbing in the wake of the Catnip. Over the gunwale peered two burnished faces. The two girls wore their plaits down and, like most gypsies, they wore rich waistcoats over their workday clothes, with the meandering of the River Slye embroidered across their chests.

  As water was seeping in between the slats of the tub, Mosca made the line fast to one of the handles. The gypsies hauled it in, arm over arm, and then reached over the side to pull her into the bumboat.

  ‘Is everyone hale in the Bower?’ was the first question after they had recovered their breath.

  ‘Not holed yet, as I saw. The Duke’s men just shot a fish and killed a kettle,’ replied Mosca, feeling her arms where the gypsies’ strong fingers had left tender places.

  ‘What about Him?’ asked the younger of the two,

  ‘Him?’

  ‘It’s no secret,’ explained the older. ‘When he swung out and cut away the mooring ropes with his sword, Mr-Woolnough-the-Physician’s-youngest-daughter-Tinda caught a sight of him, and couldn’t stop herself squealing out his name. The Duke’s men and everyone else heard her, and the constables started shouting that Black Captain Blythe was aboard, and if the Bower didn’t pull to they’d run to the Western Spire, drop a carcass in the cannon, and burn ’em to the waterline.’ Mosca had read enough of piratical battles to know that a carcass was a can of oiled rags that could be used to set fire to buildings or ships. ‘Well, we couldn’t be having with that. Not a coward trick like that against brave Captain Blythe.’

  ‘Brave and handsome Captain Blythe,’ the younger added. ‘Is he as handsome as they say?’

  ‘Three times as handsome,’ Mosca answered without hesitation. ‘An’ . . . he got a commandin’ eye which makes him look six times as handsome.’

  ‘What colour are his eyes?’

  Mosca paused. She had no idea what colour Blythe’s eyes were.

  ‘Well, they sort of change like the sky when the clouds are skittish. When he’s starin’ down a foe, all undomitable, they’re all silvery grey like stone in moonlight. And . . . when he smiles they go a merry sort of blue. And other times they’re all sorts of other colours.’

  ‘But sometimes they’re green?’

  Mosca could not mistake the note of hope in the younger gypsy’s voice.

  ‘Oh yes. Course. Most of the time they’re green.’

  ‘I knew it. Didn’t I say Captain Blythe would have green eyes?’

  The musket-wielding deputies on the bank paid the little bumboat All-awry very little heed as it detached itself from the convoy surrounding the Laurel Bower and made for the bank. After all, there were only three gypsy girls aboard, and youthful ones at that. So what if one of them seemed a good deal paler than her companions? Her eyes were as black as theirs, if not blacker.

  ‘The Telling Word is moored at Whitherwend Street until the next bell,’ the eldest gypsy whispered as Mosca climbed out, ignored by the waterside throng.

  The cathedral bell rang when Mosca was halfway down Witherwend Street, and the Stationers’ coffeehouse was still distant. The Telling Word had, it seemed, been searched, along with the other coffeehouses, and outside its fantastical collage walls a number of bewigged and bespectacled gentlemen waited with patient belligerence, many still holding their coffee dishes. As the bell rang, however, they started to file back along the gangplank. The crew on the roof was readying the sails and preparing to cast off.

  Everyone in Mandelion seemed to have seethed to the waterside to watch the drama on the river – cooper and cockle-seller, weaver and wheelwright. The carriages could find no way through, nor did they seek it, and dozens climbed on to the motionless wagons for a better view of the water. Facing a wall of fustian fronts and woollen backs, Mosca realized that she was going to miss the coffeehouse.

  With trembling hands, she pulled her printed apron from her capacious skirt pocket, and flung it over her own head. She emitted what was meant to be a blood-curdling shriek, but which came out sounding more like the battle cry of a militant shrew. However, the screams that ensued all around her were a lot more convincing and impressive.

  ‘It’s print! Print! Hide your eyes!’

  Suddenly there were no bodies pressed against her. She ran forward, praying to the Palpitattle in her head, to the Little Goodkin around her wrist, and to any Beloved who might be skilled at preventing young girls running blind off the edge of jetties. Just as she was thinking that she must be nearing the Telling Word, someone snatched the apron away from her face, and she found herself staring up at the red-headed constable from the jail. Fortunately he busied himself with flinging the apron into a herring barrel full of brine and lunging at it with his sword to make it sink, so she sprinted the last few steps to the coffeehouse and jammed her clog in the door as it was closing.

  ‘I got an important message for Mr Mabwick Toke, from Mr Eponymous Clent!’

  Two minutes later she was standing in the Telling Word, watching as Mabwick Toke broke the seal on Clent’s letter. He unfolded it, shaking out the two small and elaborate keys Mosca had seen Goshawk give to Clent. Toke read quickly, drawing the side of one long finger to and fro against his tongue, as if sharpening it.

  ‘Your employer tells me,’ Toke said at last, raising his eyes to Mosca’s face, ‘that he has secured a wealth of evidence against Lady Tamarind as a traitress, dissident and queen of a poison press, all of which he promises to place in my hands in the fullness of time if I act against her now. Is any of this true?’

  Mosca nodded.

  ‘He says that you carry proof of the . . . old enemy’s involvement?’

  The printed apron was drowned in the herring-barrel, so there was nothing for it. Mosca rolled up her sleeve and showed her forearm, bending back her hand to smooth the creases on her wrist.

  ‘’Fraid I got no Stationers’ seal,’ she remarked, her Chough accent thickening the words in her mouth like dry oats. ‘You goin’ to burn me?’

  ‘Not while your skin is evidence, girl.’ The corners of Toke’s mouth dragged sharply down in what seemed to be a curious sort of upside-down smile. Then he sat in silence, his eyes flitting, unseeing, from one side of his desk to the other, as if Mosca had passed him a secret thread and he was following it to find out how it twisted through a mighty web.

  ‘What a mind that woman must have!’ he said with admiration. It was the hushed tone of a jeweller studying the largest and finest diamond he will ever see. ‘Where did you find the press?’

  ‘Ragman’s raft, down under a trap.’

  ‘Of course . . . rags . . . no wonder we could not trace them through their paper, they were making their own . . . That explains the wool threads mixed in with the cotton, and the poor pulping . . . clever rats, clever rats. But we have our own clever rats, don’t we, girl?’ He gave her his upside-down smile again. ‘Where is the press now?’

  ‘Still in the raft, most likely. I ’ad to skip out quick. Didn’t want the ragmen findin’ me.’ The press is mine mine mine mine . . .

  ‘No, of course.’ His pale, unblinking eyes were fixed on her face. ‘Let us hope those devils have left the raft tethered far downstream – if I read the wind aright
, the next high tide in the estuary will rush the river and cause wild water for miles. The river can tear loose all but the strongest moorings when it’s in that mood, and chew boats to pieces.

  ‘Now, I trust that you can leave more quietly than you arrived . . .’

  As soon as the coffeehouse had made fast to the shore and the door had shut behind Mosca, Toke’s yellow head snapped up like the lock on a pistol.

  ‘Wove! Take two men, and do not let her get out of sight!’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘The ferrety-looking girl with the unconvincing eyebrows, of course! The world is full of liars of different humours. Coy liars drop their eyes. Bold liars forget to blink. I saw that girl bite a truth into silence, and that’s a lie in another coat. I’m sure she knows where the press is. She believed my fairy story about the estuary tides, so she’ll soon be running to the press to make it safe. Follow her long enough and she will lead you to it – go!’

  Wove left with two stout men. Toke took paper from his writing box, penned a hasty letter, then folded and sealed it.

  ‘Jot! Ride upstream until you find a Waterman – deliver this letter to them and bid them take it to their leader. There is a river battle the Watermen must halt before too many lives are lost. And there is a ship coming from the coast which must be stopped before it reaches Mandelion. Find a fast horse and teach it to fly – go!’

  As Jot ran from the room, Toke exhaled and went back to studying the invisible web.

  ‘What a pity I will never play cards with Lady Tamarind.’ And yet he did feel that he was playing cards with her, trying to read signs in her implacable, snowlike countenance. ‘Do you know what courage is? Not a willingness to fling oneself into danger without proper thought – that is nothing, nothing. There is cowardice in all impulse. Real courage lies in thinking things through, seeing all the risks, and taking them anyway. Lady Tamarind has courage. The question is, do I? I think she has misplayed her hand, but dare I gamble our lives upon it?’ For a few seconds he shook the two keys in his palm like dice, then came to a decision.