‘What?’ Mistress Bessel stared in disbelief as the portcullis finished its descent with a resounding clang, then glared through it at Mosca and Clent with such intensity that Mosca feared the metal grille might melt.
‘Friend of yours?’ one of the guards asked Clent in an undertone.
‘Er… not precisely.’ Clent took a few surprisingly nimble steps clear of the portcullis. ‘Ha… this lady is, ah, a very sad case… fell into a melancholia and lost her wits after her shop burned down and incinerated her husband…’
‘… And now when she’s in her fits she thinks Mr Clent here is her husband so she follows him everywhere…’ Mosca shrilled helpfully.
In the face of this assertion, Mistress Bessel went the most radiant shade of fuschia-pink, and proved incapable of anything more than throttled frog-noises in the depths of her throat.
‘… And she will make up any lies to be near me,’ huffed Clent.
‘… Even landed him in prison before now, so she could bring him flowers and poetry each day…’ added Mosca.
‘You… scampergrabs!’ Mistress Bessel appeared to have lost the ability to breathe. ‘You… scale-tongued… maggoty…’
‘You see how it is.’ Clent kept his demeanour solemn and compassionate despite executing a high-speed backwards caper. ‘Mad as a mushroom minuet. Alas. A tragic figure.’
The guard peered out at Mistress Bessel. There was little in her stocky figure to suggest melancholy or wilting devotion, but at present there was plenty to indicate insane rage, and the guard also took a step or two away from the grille around which Mistress Bessel’s plump fingers were now gripped.
‘All right, I’ll make sure the boys outside the gate know about her. And don’t worry – unless she’s got the money to pay admission, she won’t be troubling you.’
‘I’ll find you out, my honeybumbles!’ Mosca could hear Mistress Bessel shouting as the gatehouse door swung open before them. ‘I’ll reach you, my dumplings!’
‘Follow me,’ muttered the guard. ‘I’ll take you across the bridge so the Committee of the Hours can talk to you.’
As she followed Clent and the guard further into the gatehouse, Mosca could not quite resist pausing in the doorway to wave adieu to Mistress Bessel with one of her own handkerchiefs.
They found themselves in a short, unlit corridor, with a large number of pikes and halberds propped in racks against the walls. Emerging at the far end through an open arch, they found themselves staring down the length of the bridge.
The bridge itself was an impressive effort in timber some twenty feet long, its planked walkway flanked by hundreds of Beloved carved from black wood, their faces ravaged by weather-cracks. But it was not the bridge itself that took Mosca’s breath away. Without warning, the ground had run out.
Where the bridge began, the earth dropped away into sheer, giddying cliff face. On the other side of the abyss rose another cliff, interrupted here and there with the chalky streaks of waterfalls, and a few small trees that had decided to make the best of things and grow sideways out of the sheer face. Between them lay a plummeting gorge, at the base of which a seething white river hurtled, twisted, fizzed and roared through a maze of warped, slick black rock. Somehow over centuries it had carved, scooped and polished the rock bed into weird shapes and valleys and tunnels. The gorge itself was gauzed over with the mist and spray that drifted up from the churn of water. Here and there the chill winter sun painted the vapour with faint swathes of rainbow. Occasionally a white gull or coal-grey jackdaw sliced through the mist below.
Mosca had heard a hundred times that the Langfeather was unswimmable, unnavigable and all but unbridgeable. Now she started to understand why.
It was also said that the city of Toll had not been captured, razed or successfully besieged throughout the whole of the Civil War. Raising her eyes to gaze upon the town on the opposite bank, Mosca could readily believe this too.
At the far end of the bridge stood a full-blown tower, flags flying from its zenith. The town beyond it was ringed about with a great wall, its fortifications peppered with arrow slits and chutes, great dark weep-stains marking the brick beneath them where generations of inhabitants had used them to throw out their waste. The town had been built on the tilt, and had the unnerving appearance of having slid off the ridge down to its current location, stopping just on the lip of the precipice that would have sent it tumbling into the Lang-feather. Beyond the wall, Mosca could just make out clusters of dark-tiled roofs, jostling like rook wings. On the northern side of the town the wall suddenly became grey and ragged, and Mosca could see that it had been built into the remains of some ancient castle.
There had been other attempts to build bridges across the Langfeather, not only in these uplands across the roaring gorge, but also in the lowlands where the river was broad and muscular. None had survived, some burned during the Civil War or the Purges, some quickly losing their supports to the force of the water, others betrayed by the crumbling of the treacherous ground. Only the Toll bridge remained through some freak of luck and craftsmanship, defended by Toll’s walls.
‘It’s all right.’ The guard who had followed them through the keep smiled, misreading Mosca’s awe-stricken expression. ‘Don’t be scared to walk across. You can trust to the Luck.’
Mosca’s clogged foot hesitated above the first plank of the bridge. A moment before she had had no reason to doubt the bridge. But ‘trusting to luck’ didn’t sound particularly safe.
‘ To… luck?’
‘Not just luck. The Luck. The Luck of Toll. As long as the Luck stays within our town, we’re all safe as sunrise.’
‘Ah… I believe I have heard of such things!’ Clent sounded genuinely intrigued. ‘Certainly I know that some mansions and castles have a “Luck”, an object which it is said must remain inside its walls to guarantee prosperity. Often a glass chalice, or an ancestral skull, or a collection of breeding peacocks. So, what form does your Luck take?’
‘Oh no, sir.’ The guard touched the side of his nose. ‘We don’t talk of the Luck in case we rub the luck off it.’ Mosca wondered if he even knew the answer to the question. In his place she would certainly have wanted to know.
‘Now, if it weren’t for the Luck,’ continued the guard, ‘that cliff over there would be crumbling away like good cheese, and the city would be tumbling off its ledge like a pie off a window sill. And as for this old bridge, why, weather and time would have broke it apart like a breadcrust. It’d be falling in flinders into the Langfeather, and us along with it. But thanks to the Luck they’re all sturdy as steel -’
‘Wonderful,’ murmured Clent, whose knees had started to shake. ‘Admirable. Er… is there any chance that you could stop reassuring us now?’
The guard was happy to do so, evidently feeling that his work was done, and with new trepidation Mosca and Clent ventured out on to the bridge. The planks showed no particular inclination to give way underfoot, though some gave a slightly tuneful xylophone thunk when you stepped on them, and Mosca could not help noticing discolorations here and there that made her think nervously of rot. The air was cold and mint-crisp, scoured clean by the white river below.
Mosca was rather relieved when they reached the tower at the far side without the bridge having crumbled away. As she passed through the arch, again she found herself blinking in sudden sunlessness, then was ushered through a side door into a dim, high-vaulted, stone-walled room draped with long, fading banners. At a desk in front of them sat a squat little man with a straw-yellow wig and a face so knobbed and purplish that he immediately put Mosca in mind of a raspberry.
‘Names!’ barked the Raspberry. ‘Ah, greetings, if you will permit me to take upon myself the introductions for our party, I am Eponymous Clent, whose poems and ballads may even have reached this noble town, and this is my secretary, Miss Mosca Mye-’
‘Eponymous – that’s Phangavotte,’ snapped the Raspberry.
‘Mosca – that’s Palpitattle. Kenni
ng – the Book of the Hours!’
In response to these orders, a red-haired boy of about eleven clambered up on to a precarious-looking stool and disappeared between the leaves of a vast leatherbound book chained to a pulpit-like stand on which it rested.
Phangavotte? Palpitattle? Sure enough those were the Beloved under which Clent and Mosca had been born, but why this pompous interest?
‘Phangavotte’s names are daylight… just about,’ came the boy’s thin, chirping voice from within the book. ‘Committee of the Hours have considered it for endarkening six times though. On grounds of Phangavotte being a patron of wile, guile, tall tales and ruses. Acquitted on account of Phangavotte being a patron of inspiration, myth and proud dreams.’ The whisper of more pages. ‘Palpitattle – night. Children of Palpitattle judged to be villainous, verminous and everywhere that they’re not wanted. No plans to review this judgement.’ The boy reappeared, and the book gave a wumph as it closed.
There was a long cool silence, during which the Raspberry carefully wiped his quill before looking up at Clent with an air of pleased surprise, as if the latter had just that moment materialized most agreeably before him.
‘I see. Mr Clent, are you planning to stay long in our fair city?’ The Raspberry’s tone had suddenly become more civil. His pale blue eyes rested steadily on Clent, with not the slightest flicker in Mosca’s direction to acknowledge her existence.
‘Ahh, no alas, just passing through… I have patrons in Mickbardring who will not be denied…’ Clent himself seemed rather confused by the sudden change in reception.
‘Do you plan to stay longer than three days?’ continued the Raspberry. ‘No? Then, sir, we shall provide you and your household with visitors’ badges.’
Had Mosca imagined it? The tiniest pause before the words ‘your household’, and during that interval, the quickest, coldest flicker of a glance in her direction? No, she had seen it. She could feel that look stinging her cheeks like a snowball’s graze. She was used to being looked on with disdain, but the Raspberry’s eyes had held a contempt so deep that it was almost loathing. She looked around the room at the guards standing against the walls, and as she met the eye of each their gaze slid off her as though she was somehow indecent.
What? she wanted to demand. What is it? Whatever ‘it’ was, she could feel it surrounding her, like a patch of frost spreading from beneath her feet.
‘Visitors are permitted to remain in the daylight city for no more than three full days after the day of their arrival,’ continued the Raspberry, ‘and must report to the Committee of the Hours daily to have their badges renewed. After those three days, if they are still within the walls of Toll they are issued with a resident’s badge. Of course in your case, Mr Clent, you would still be eligible for daylight citizenship. A man with a good name is always welcome in this city.’
‘Ah… good.’ Clent seemed rather baffled. ‘That is… I…’ His eyes strayed uncertainly, almost guiltily, towards Mosca. He too had evidently noticed the slight emphasis on the word ‘your’. Whatever ‘daylight citizenship’ meant, Mosca had a strong feeling that it was not to be granted to the rest of ‘his household’.
Kenning, the eleven-year-old assistant, emerged from a side door with two wooden brooches. One brooch was of dark wood and had an outline of a fly carved into it. The other was of light-coloured wood and featured what looked a little like a crudely carved picture of a Punch and Judy box. Both had pale blue borders. Kenning brought both badges to Clent, taking a curved circuit so that he would not pass too close to Mosca herself.
Mosca stared at Clent’s badge, then at her own. It sounded rather as if Kenning’s great book had a list of all the Beloved, each marked as belonging to either ‘day’ or ‘night’. It was certainly true that the period of each year sacred to Palpitattle fell within the hours of darkness… but the same was true of Phangavotte. Why then did the Book of the Hours devote Palpitattle to ‘night’ and Phangavotte to ‘day’?
‘The “arrival day” visitors’ badges have blue borders,’ the Raspberry explained. ‘Tomorrow you will be issued with yellow-rimmed badges, then the following day with green-edged badges, and the day after that with badges bordered in red.
‘Now, it is very important to keep to your Hours,’ he went on. ‘Our town, that is to say the town of daylight, exists from dawn until sunset. Between sunset and dawn, however, please remember that none of us exists, and we are expected to act accordingly. So you will be requiring these.’ He pushed two slips of paper across his desk towards Clent. ‘Hand them in at any tavern, and you will be given a room for the night. The hostel owner will claim the money from us afterwards. It will not cover your food of course, but you will be off the streets. Each day when you come to change your badges, you will be given tavern passes for that night.
‘You will hear a bugle just before dawn. A little later you will hear a second bugle, and this will tell you that your doors have been unsealed from the outside, and you should feel free to unlock them, emerge on to the streets and start existing. There will be another bugle call at sunset – this will be a signal that you have no more than a quarter of an hour to get back to your appointed residence. You must – must – make sure that you do so.’ The Raspberry leaned forward over his desk, his pale eyes agleam with meaning. ‘After all, Mr Clent, no city can be expected to tolerate non-existent people wandering around and drawing attention to themselves.’
There was an icy and pregnant silence.
‘Ah. Yes. I see.’ Clent nodded sagely, then a little less sagely, then with the cautious air of one who thinks his head might fall off. ‘At least… that is… no. No, actually, I do not see at all. My good sir, I mean no slight to your shining town and your eminent self, but I really do not have the flimsiest idea what you are talking about.’
The Raspberry hesitated with a vexed and weary air, as if contemplating the prospect of a lengthy explanation, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. ‘Just treat it as a curfew, Mr Clent.’ He dipped his quill and signed a piece of parchment, then dribbled wax on to it and sealed it with his signet ring. ‘Toll has its own system for keeping respectable people like yourself safe from dangerous elements, that is all.’ He stood and offered a small bow, his manner still crisp and footman-formal, then handed Clent a piece of paper. ‘Nothing you need to worry about during your stay, sir. Thanks to our precautions, Toll is the safest town under the sun.’
Responding to this cue, a pair of guards at the far side of the room swung open matching doors, and Mosca and Clent were ushered through. Whereas Clent was allowed to continue down the corridor, Mosca almost immediately found Kenning by her side, beckoning her through a side door.
‘Excise wants a word,’ he whispered.
As it turned out, the two briskly dressed women on the other side of the door wanted more than a word. They wanted to find out if Mosca was smuggling in any chocolate, coffee, Laemark lace, pepper, ginger, laudanum, silks, tobacco or anything else that might show that she had been secretly trading with the abhorred radicals of the port town of Mandelion. They searched through their edicts with a scowl, before admitting that there was nothing to forbid the import of geese. Just when Mosca was wondering if they meant to turn her upside down and shake her till the contraband fell out, they changed their tack, and Mosca found herself vigorously interrogated to see if she had any pocks, pimples, pustules, plagues, agues, aches, quakes or queernesses that might indicate she was bringing some dire disease into the town. For a ghastly moment it seemed they might try to inspect Saracen for similar ailments, but thankfully some light in his beady black eyes deterred them from laying hands on him. Finally, just as Mosca really was feeling as if she might be some huge, disease-dripping housefly, they meaningfully read out a list of the punishments due for a range of petty thefts, and released her back into the corridor.
Clent she found in another room, where he appeared to have been given a bracing cup of hot wine and a plate of seedcakes.
‘A
h, there you are at last, madam. Well, if you have quite finished delaying these poor people…’ The door at the end of the corridor was swung open for them, and Clent and Mosca emerged on to the street, Saracen muzzled at their side.
And there it was – Toll, under the sun. Mosca took in an eyeful of colour and had to blink until she could see straight.
They had emerged from a building built into the side of a tower, evidently the same tower that they had entered from the bridge. From left to right ran a thronging thoroughfare, curving slightly away from them in either direction as it followed the town’s perimeter wall. Opposite was a long rank of townhouses some three or four storeys high, bold in their milk-white and butter-yellow paint, their walls criss-crossed with the stripes of dark timber beams, all varnished with dew.
The street was aglitter with people, and suddenly it seemed to Mosca that for the last long month the world had been washed drab of colour. And here was where the colour had been hiding – the rich red of market cloaks, the green-gold of young lemons in a basket hoisted shoulder high, peacock-coloured brocade spilling languorously from the door of a sedan. The people ducked through the timber archways that pocked every wall like mouse holes leading into dark, covered alleys. They greeted one another on the finely carved wooden balconies and footbridges that crossed the gaps between the upper storey.
There was a metallic chime from above Mosca, and she turned to find that the nearby tower was adorned with a large, gleaming clock face decorated in blue and gold. Directly beneath the face was a foot-high arch in which a tiny wooden figure of Goodman Jayblister could be seen, blowing his silver trumpet. As she stared a brief tinny ditty issued from the belly of the clock, and Jayblister receded jerkily into the darkness, to be replaced by the Goodlady Sylphony, made unmistakable by her pink-gold wings and long honey-dipping nose. Yes, she realized dizzily, this would be about the time that the hours sacred to Jayblister yielded to those devoted to Sylphony. Perhaps all the Beloved were hidden in miniature inside that great clock, waiting for their turn to waltz out and smile benignly over this sun-blessed city.
Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap Page 7