‘How ingenious,’ Clent remarked. ‘Have you thought of having posters made? Perhaps making it clear that this is a limited opportunity to buy, since a Coalition of Criminals has declared you their Mortal Foe due to your Effect upon their Livelihoods…’
The little trap-pedlar started to laugh, with a sound like a cat coughing up furballs. ‘Ah now, I does like the way you talks in capitals,’ he remarked. ‘It’s as good as… well, now, will you look at that? It’s another of ’em fell foul of the Trollhole.’
Ahead, the road took a sudden dip. The dip had clearly been rather too sudden for the large wheels of the biggest and most elegant carriage Mosca had ever seen. It blocked the road, tilting in a fashion that could only mean a wheel had come off. Two white horses grazed upon the gorse while two white-clad footmen were stooping to examine the damage. The white box of the carriage perched in fringed splendour on a frame of curling metal tendrils so slender that it almost seemed to float in the air on its own. The entire equipage looked far too fine and fairy-like for the real world, Mosca thought, and the rugged road clearly thought so too.
‘Bit of business,’ smiled the pedlar, and lowered himself off the cart.
The little pedlar, it seemed, fancied that he had the tools to fix the wheel. The footmen were glad to hear this, and agreed with him that he should be paid handsomely for such a service. There was some disagreement as to what constituted ‘handsome’, however. The discussion of the attractiveness of various sums looked set to continue for some time.
Mosca sighed and Clent blinked as a single raindrop tapped him peremptorily between the eyes. They clambered down from the cart and approached the bargainers.
‘For five minutes’ work? That’s daylight robbery!’ the carriage driver was exclaiming.
‘Ah,’ Clent intoned ominously, ‘better daylight robbery of this consenting sort than something bloodier, would you not say? After all, you would hardly care to be stranded out here come twilight, what with -’ he paused dramatically – ‘Black Captain Blythe on the loose.’
‘Who?’
‘Ah, I dare say you know him by a different name. The Widowmaker, probably.’
‘Or the Devil’s Friend,’ Mosca added quickly. A number of eyes turned to her questioningly, two of them belonging to Clent. ‘Yeah, he’s so uncanny with the things he knows, some people say he’s got an imp given him by the Dark Gentleman, who tells him things. Like, when he attacks he always seems to know who’s carrying a pistol, and he shoots them before they can draw.’ She had the satisfaction of seeing the carriage driver and one of the footmen go white. ‘Right through the gullet,’ she added cheerfully.
Clent raised his eyebrows slightly, and gave the tiniest nod of approval.
At the carriage window the breeze set a curtain of fine lace quivering as if in alarm. The movement caught Mosca’s attention. A single muddy droplet hung from the top of the window. The wind rolled it gently to and fro, then it became too self-important, and fell. It sank greedily into a sleeve like snow, leaving a spot the colour of coffee. A white handkerchief appeared in a slender, white-gloved hand and smoothed at the stain, smoothed and smoothed until it was no more. Mosca’s gaze followed the glove as it withdrew into the shadow of the carriage, and she looked in on a world of white.
Until this moment Mosca had thought she understood white. White was old, white was ugly, white was something that had been left in the water too long.
Until this moment Mosca had thought that she understood riches. Riches was the smell of goose fat, riches was a red roll of fat on belly and jowl that kept out the chill.
This strange new world held a multitude of clinging raindrops, but each drop was a pearl.
Mosca had never seen pearls before. And there were so many of them, playing ring-a-lilies across fields of spotless silk, hanging in long strings from the wrist and throat of the carriage’s single occupant.
A face hung in the darkness, porcelain-pale and perfect. Above it rose an intricate mound of whorls and curls, pinned in place and powdered until the whole might have been carved out of marble. If there had ever been any warmth or expression in the face, it had long since been smoothed away and stifled with powder. And Mosca suddenly understood that real riches was not a roaring fire or a red woollen cloak. Real riches was snow.
‘Heatherson, what is wrong?’
The words were cool, soft, feathery, and Mosca suddenly realized that the woman behind the marble face was young.
‘Heatherson, what is happening?’
The woman leaned forward a little to give herself a better view of the road, and Mosca saw that on the gleaming surface of the lady’s cheek lay a faint lacework of an even more brilliant white. It was a scar, splaying like a snowflake across the lady’s right cheekbone.
‘My lady, I think that we might have to…’ The driver’s voice trailed away in a sick little hiccup. ‘… I think we might… I think…’
The discussion around Mosca had stilled. The pedlar no longer chirruped, the footmen no longer grumbled, Clent’s delighted tones no longer painted pictures in the air. The driver above her had raised his hands above his ears. His face was as white as the lace curtain.
Some four or five men had risen from their hiding places among the gorse. Each held a pistol, carefully trained upon the group around the carriage.
E is for Extortion
Mosca had never seen a pistol before, but she had jealously bartered for
How strange it was to look down the barrel of a pistol! It was not exactly fear, more a soft shock, like being hit in the stomach with a snowball. She seemed to be able to think quite clearly, but at the same time her thoughts seemed to move so slowly that she could watch them trundle past with a feeling of disinterest.
Most of the men were young, she noticed with a frosted calm. One of them kept swallowing, as if he was nervous, and adjusting his grip on the pistol. His head kept twitching, as if he was trying to avoid peering over his shoulder, and a moment later she heard what the robber had already heard, the sound of horses’ hoofs. None of the armed men seemed alarmed by the noise. They seemed to expect it.
A raindrop fell unexpectedly into her eye, and she instinctively reached up to brush it away before she had time to consider how the robbers might react to such a sudden gesture. She froze, her fingers still on her cheek, pins and needles running through her chest in preparation for a hail of bullets. The robbers did not seem to consider the twelve-year-old girl a mortal threat, however. Half of their attention was trained on the coach’s attendants and half upon the man whose head and shoulders now became visible above the bracken, beyond the road’s bend.
A few moments more, and a sturdy-looking grey turned the corner, dappled like slush. To judge by its panting, it had come some way.
The rider of the grey was neither tall nor of Fine Athletic Build. Mosca looked in vain for any sign that he was carrying a flageolet or wearing a claret-coloured cape. But no, he was not even wearing a periwig.
A round-brimmed hat was pulled low on his brow, keeping the wind from his ears. Beneath this, a faint attempt had been made to tie back his ragged hair into a pigtail, but many strands had mutinied. A rough cloak of hessian was flung around him, over his greatcoat.
His face was a fearful sight. It was a good few moments before Mosca understood the meaning behind his reddened eyes, his drawn-back upper lip and the occasional puckering of his face, and she realized that the highwayman was suffering from a streaming cold.
‘Black Captain Blythe,’ Clent muttered wearily under his breath.
‘Take those men off the coach,’ Blythe ordered his men, ‘and turn out their coats.’
He did not sweep off his hat in greeting.
‘Get the passengers out of the coach where we can see them.’
