Fly by Night (41 page)

Another shot punctured the door and tore apart the head of a stuffed fish that decorated the wall, showering bystanders with sawdust.

‘How do you come to have so much lead shot, Miss Kitely?’ Pertellis seemed bewildered by the laden appearance of the girls.

‘Mr Copperback has been expecting something of this sort for a while. He has been making his own shot, and it seemed most sensible to hide it on the
Bower
.’ Miss Kitely continued to clean out a pistol barrel in a business-like manner.

‘But where in the name of goodness did you find the lead?’

Copperback opened his mouth to say something, but forgot what it was when Miss Kitely gave him a meaningful look.

‘It is a long story,’ Miss Kitely explained coolly, as she took a snuffbottle from Mosca and began trickling the powder into the pan. In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell. In this case she thought it probably involved stolen shrine icons.

‘Um . . . I could swear that this bullet has an eye.’

‘A freak of the mould, Mr Pertellis.’

Mosca left the last pouch of shot in the eager hand of Copperback, then ran to press her eye to a knothole in the shoreward wall. She could see a gaggle of Duke’s men in black and green standing on the jetty, now a reassuring distance away. There was a downy puff, like a dandelion clock being torn apart by the wind. Only as the smoke unravelled did Mosca glimpse the musket barrel behind it. Just as she was wondering how the gun had fouled, she heard a crack and felt the wall tremble against her cheek.

It was all so odd and unreal, she could not feel any sense of danger. She was marvelling at this when a dun yellow cloth slid across the scene like a theatre curtain. Her cry of surprise was echoed by several others nearby.

‘It’s the
Catnip
! They’ve pulled alongside us!’ was the call from above.

‘Call out to them! Let them know they’re likely to be caught in the crossfire!’ Miss Kitely called back.

‘They’re saying nothing, but they’re keeping pace and giving us the wave.’ Stallwrath sounded bewildered.

It was true. The little lighter with the yellow sail had slowed to hold its place between the
Laurel Bower
and the jetty where the Duke’s men levelled their muskets in vain. ‘Her mainsail is shaking, but they’re making no move to right her. I think . . . she’s shielding us from fire.’

From Mosca’s knothole she could see nothing but the yellow sail, but a minute later she heard gasps from a couple of the radicals at other spyholes.

‘It’s the
Peck o
’
Clams
,’ cried Miss Kitely, ‘sails close-hauled to hide us, dragging anchor to slow her down to our pace. What are they doing?’

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.