Fly By Night

Mosca; it was so lustrous and long, so glossy and brown, one could think it had sucked the life out of the little man whom it seemed to wear.

‘Ah… Master Printer Mabwick Toke? Ah, I am honoured to meet a man so celebrated among the Stationers-’

‘What I would like to know, Mr Eponymous Clent, is why you have chosen to meet me at all,’ Toke interrupted sharply. ‘We have agents of our own in Mandelion. Our whole reason for bringing you here was our wish to use someone who was not obviously connected to us.’

‘Assuredly, assuredly.’ Clent spread his plump hands reassuringly. ‘However, as a poetic practitioner it would be strange if I did not approach the Stationers about publishing my works. On this occasion -’ he passed his scroll of paper across the table – ‘I have taken the precaution of preparing an excuse for my visit.’

Mabwick Toke ran a quick eye over the ballad, droning the words to himself in his throat. Absent-mindedly, he caught up a quill to jot and correct, occasionally licking at the nib to wet it. This was clearly a habit of his, since the tip of his tongue had become as black as that of a parrot. He drinks ink, thought Mosca, looking at his black tongue. He eats nothing but paper, she added to herself, noting his dry, pale lips and the crumpled-looking skin of his face and hands.

‘Fair. A little florid, but it will sell. Your invalid lady is not named, but that is no great matter. You paint your highwayman in colours too bright for his craft perhaps. It lacks moral instruction. Could you add another verse to say that he has gone to the gallows, but that he repented his wickedness at the eleventh hour?’

‘With respect, my good sir, I hardly think so. The fellow still lives…’

‘Too bad. Well, I suppose we must print the ballad as it stands until this man Blythe has been caught and hanged.’ Toke rolled the ballad carefully, and laid it inside his mahogany writing box.

‘Good sir -’ Clent cleared his throat – ‘the truth is, without this man Blythe we would never have reached Mandelion so soon or so safely. It has been the only stroke of good fortune in a journey otherwise blighted by calamity. To relate the details would be to tell a tale of hazard, indignity, betrayal and misfortune… for which, ah, you are clearly too busy. Suffice to say that since leaving Long Pursing I believe that I have been followed. In Webwyke I heard that a well-spoken man had been asking for me by name, and in Lampgibbet he enquired after me by description. I tried to shake him off by taking the narrow roads, and took lodgings in a dismal hovel-stack called Chough, but I fancy he found me out even there. Some gentleman arrived there unexpectedly, I know that much, and spent hours talking with the magistrate. That very afternoon I was dragged from my tea table by a howling mob and clamped into the stocks. If I had not proved ingenious, I think his slanders might have seen me hanged. Master Toke, someone meant to prevent me reaching Mandelion.’

A gentleman arrived unexpectedly… Mosca suddenly remembered the conversation she had heard from the dovecote, between the magistrate and the man with the voice like warm milk. But she was already biting her tongue to stay mum and secretary-like, and she wasn’t sure she could capture her tongue again if she stopped holding it.

‘Mr Clent, were the seals on the letters I sent you intact?’

‘Letters? Good sir, I received only one letter, calling me to Mandelion and recommending secrecy.’

‘Two letters were sent. The second, which gave further details, has clearly been intercepted. I would assume therefore that someone knows all too well why you are here – and that you yourself have not the slightest idea.’

Clent ruefully inclined his head.

‘Very well, the reason for summoning you is this. There is an illegal printing press in Mandelion.’

A silence fell across the room, as if everybody there had expected his words but had hushed out of respect for the gravity of the announcement. One or two of the eavesdropping Stationers clutched reflexively at little Beloved talismans on chatelaines for reassurance. Clent raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a silent whistle, as if he had been told that Mandelion sat on a layer of gunpowder. Only the child of Chough thought that a printing press did not seem half so exciting after meeting a real live highwayman.

‘Caveat! The printed villainy!’ The quiver-cheeked young man approached with a step as rapid as a stutter, carrying a mahogany box as if he thought it contained live vipers.

‘Mandelion has been flooded with pamphlets.’ Toke unlocked the box to reveal a small square of brownish printed paper which seemed to have been torn from some larger sheet. Using a pair of tongs, Toke lifted the fragment and extended it towards Clent, whose eyebrows climbed as he read.

‘Madness, and mischief, and menaces of murder,’ Clent muttered under his breath. ‘Radicals, I assume.’

Mosca had heard a little about radicals from chapbooks about the trials of traitors. She had a fuzzy idea that most radicals shouted a lot, and threw grenadoes at anybody rich or powerful, and tried to stir people with hoes into charging at people with muskets. All the would-be kings agreed that they were mad and dangerous, and radicals could be prosecuted for treason in any part of the Realm.

‘It reads like the ranting of a radical,’ Toke said, taking back the paper. ‘There is the usual canting about equality for all, and suggestions of how many ploughmen’s families could be housed in the Duke’s private residence. But these pamphlets also reveal the Duke’s precise plans for rebuilding the city more symmetrically; for example, the fact that everything from Midmackle Street to The Crockles is to be levelled make room for a new marketplace. Those streets are now in uproar. When the last pamphlet came out a week ago, there was a riot, sir.’

Mosca remembered what Bockerby had said the night before about riots in Mandelion.

‘People are often excitable about losing their homes,’ Clent murmured.

‘That is not the point. No street-ranter could have known of these plans. Only someone at court, and close to the Duke,’ continued Toke. ‘I believe that somebody has tried to make these pamphlets look like the work of radicals, and has tried too hard. I see the hand of the Locksmiths in this. Aramai Goshawk is in Mandelion.’

The name was strange to Mosca, but she noticed that Clent had gone completely white.

‘But… I have heard no reports that he had left Scurrey…’

‘Reports from Scurrey? There are no reports from Scurrey. Since Scurrey became a Locksmith city six months ago, there is a new city gate, solid oak and heavy with locks, and hardly a soul has been permitted to leave or enter.

‘Goshawk undoubtedly was in Scurrey. His Thief-takers too, secretly hiring half the felons in the city, and claiming rewards for “catching” any criminals that would not work for him.’ Toke’s bitter little mouth gave a twitch which might have been a smile. ‘When Goshawk’s tame cut-throats and pilferers were causing enough trouble to frighten the mayor, the Locksmiths came forward and offered to crush the crime wave. That buffoon of a mayor agreed, gave them half his treasury, and signed charters to give them special powers. The next day a boatload of guards in Locksmith liveries turned up with masons to rebuild the city walls. And now, anything might be happening in Scurrey, for all we know.

‘Now the Locksmiths have sent Goshawk to Mandelion, and he is trying to play exactly the same trick with our Duke. The Duke’s dearest dream is to see his beloved Queens ruling Mandelion, and he has a morbid fear of seeing them assassinated by insane radicals. The rogue pamphlets read like something from his worst nightmare – raging against the Twin Queens, and calling them “A Monster of Nature which might Count to Twenty-one on its Fingers”. It has thrown the Duke into frothing and fits, and he would do anything to find the people responsible.

‘Of course, he first turned to us to hunt down the perpetrators. For the last month we have trawled the city for the press. We arrest anybody found with one of these pamphlets, but it always turns out that they found it pinned to a tree, or pushed through their window. There is no pattern to where these pamphlets appear – east side, west side, the press seems to dance where it will. The paper is crudely pulped and unfamiliar, and we can learn nothing from it. Every few days more scandal sheets from this invisible press appear in our streets, in spite of our efforts. The Duke is fast running out of patience.

‘Who stands to gain from all this? Why, the Locksmiths themselves. Goshawk has promised the Duke that if he will call in Locksmith troops and give them special powers, they will find the rogue press where we have failed. I believe that Goshawk himself is writing these scandal sheets, in order to persuade the Duke that there is a radical conspiracy, so that the Duke will call in Locksmith help to crush it. If we do not find this accursed press, and fast, the Duke will agree to Goshawk’s terms, and another city will fall into the hands of the Locksmiths.’

Lady Tamarind’s words returned to Mosca’s mind: The Locksmiths are on the rise, and if I cannot stop them, Mandelion will be theirs. I must know if others mean to act against the Locksmiths. The Stationers, in