buttonhole.
Clent’s eyes were very bright. There was a vague smile on his face, and Mosca feared that he had gone insane under the pressure and might try to murder her at any moment.
‘Do you see it?’ he asked, holding up one finger.
Mosca looked at his finger then back at his face. She glanced up at the ceiling, to which the finger seemed to point, then back at Clent.
‘It is a glimmer of light. It is the faintest promise of escape from the dark caverns we have been walking. It is, I think, a Way Out. Give me a moment of absolute silence, and I shall find it.’ He closed his eyes, and his hand moved slightly, just as if he was really feeling along a rocky wall for a crack or a hole.
Mosca bulged her cheeks full of air and held her breath, not daring to move in case her skirts rustled.
‘I have it.’ Clent’s eyes flicked open again. His expression was wild but jubilant. ‘The fissure is narrow, but I believe that with will and courage we can squeeze through it. We shall feel the sun on our faces again. Listen – a week ago you saw Hopewood Pertellis polluting the minds of children with his treasonous teachings, yes? Afterwards, being a good and loyal child of your nation, you followed the villain to see where he went, and you saw him enter conversation with our friend Partridge, give him a purse of money, and walk away with him.’
‘But he didn’t…’
‘How do you know? Something like that may have happened – it probably did. If Partridge was not selling the leaden bullets to Pertellis himself, then he was probably selling them to one of Pertellis’s confederates. Have faith – this story is perfect, it ties up everything for the best. Let us say Partridge was murdered by radicals when he tried to blackmail them. The constable can preen himself on uncovering a radical plot and solving a murder at once, and we will be safe.’
‘But Mr Pertellis-’
‘Is a radical. He probably spends his nights dreaming of roasting baby princesses like chestnuts.’
It did not seem likely somehow. Mosca thought back to Pertellis’s baffled, spring-blue gaze, and tried to find the words to explain her doubts.
‘He tries to put squashed snails back together,’ was all she could say.
‘Then he is clearly insane,’ Clent answered confidently. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? The man is due to be hanged for high treason – one little murder will not make his situation any worse. Our position is too precarious to be nice about such things.’
Clent’s words did have a ghastly sort of logic. Mosca was lost for an answer, and offered no protest as Clent put on his coat and steadied his periwig.
‘Now, that is a solemn face to be wearing when our salvation is within reach. Child, I quite understand your reservations, but trust me – no one will be able to disprove your story, and I doubt they will even try. Come now. If we tarry, that will look like conspiracy.’
Mosca followed Clent through the streets like a sleepwalker. After all, would it be such a big lie? And besides, what choice did she have? If Clent hanged, he would see to it that she hanged beside him. Suddenly Mosca wished that she had told Kohlrabi everything after all.
‘Look at that,’ Clent murmured under his breath, gesturing with his cane at a ballad-seller near the bridge. ‘I write one ballad on Captain Blythe, and now every penny-a-page scribbler has a song about him. If they are to be believed, our poor friend Blythe spends his every working hour defending young maidens from unwanted advances, and giving money to starving beggars, and helping unfortunate farmers to escape from the beadles who would drag them to debtors’ prison. And apparently all the while he is a perfect picture of a gentleman with gallantries for every lady – I wonder where he finds the time to groom his horse and practise his gavotte.’
Clent’s mood seemed to have recovered miraculously.
‘Mosca, you must remind me to pick up some fresh quills on the way back. I have a mind to compose that letter you requested, recommending you to Lady Tamarind’s employ. Would you prefer to be painted as a loyal character with a soul as pure and true as diamond, or an able-witted, adaptable, quicksilver sort of animal? No matter, I am sure I can contrive a union of the two. You know, it is the most curious thing, but… I believe I shall actually miss you, Mosca.’
By a potter’s brick kiln, a waif-faced boy with a knuckle-shaped coal-smudge on his cheekbone paused to watch Mosca go past, a glowing pot gripped forgotten in his long tongs. His face was narrow and unforgiving.
‘It is strange to admit it now,’ Clent continued, ‘but there was a time when I felt that your companionship would be something of a burden to me. I was entirely mistaken, I confess it – you have proved a worth far beyond your years and the limits of your education. If your mind were not so set upon working for Lady Tamarind… ah, but I know that in that lofty castle dwells your dearest dream.’
The grey Eastern Spire rose in the distance like a finger admonishing silence. In the dark doorway of a wigmakers’ a young girl in a bent yellow bonnet imitated the gesture, bidding her younger brother be quiet with a finger to her lips, and then pointing across the street at Mosca and whispering.
‘As for myself, I feel a yearning to see the Capital again. It is all very well to be such a notable figure and so sought after, but sometimes it is more relaxing to be just one minnow in a great iridescent school. And when you are well established with Her Ladyship, as I have no doubt you shall be, you must persuade her to take you with her to the Capital to see the Crystalcourt. Every one of its million windows is thinner than your finger, and filled with a shard of glass cut cunningly so as to throw tiaras of rainbow colour upon the floor. Some of the ladies have trains so long that whole legends of days past can be embroidered scene by scene along their lengths. And when your mistress can spare you, I shall show you the Dizzyfeather Club, where one may sit beneath a green-fringed canopy and sip wine as dark as blackberry juice from glasses narrow as thorns. And there is no sight to equal the gilded barges along the Pettygall…’
There was no sight to equal the grim swing of the gibbet as rooks nipped at its links. Or the old watch house, round and battered-brown as a peaked pie, with the high walls of the jail behind it. In front of the watch house the red-headed constable shared his pipe tobacco with a tall man in Watermen’s colours, but when he saw Clent and Mosca his eye darkened, and he muttered a farewell to his smoking companion.
‘You found her then?’ he called out.
‘Fairly found, safe and sound, and filled with a tale which will gladden your heart, I think, sir,’ Clent called back cheerfully. ‘Might we step inside?’
‘You might.’ The constable was clearly somewhat perplexed by Clent’s change of mood.
They followed him in through a heavy oaken door into a poorly lit room where a tousled deerhound lay upon the stone flags, its flanks twitching in sleep. The room smelt of cold suppers and boredom. Mosca had never realized before that boredom smelt so much like egg custard. The constable ruffled the hound’s belly with his booted toe, and leaned back against the wall, his pipe bowl cradled in his palm.
‘Go on, then.’ He looked expectantly at Mosca, and she found she could not speak. Not that it mattered much, for Clent was uncurling the coloured ribbons of his story before she could draw breath.
‘Perhaps you are unaware of it, but a week ago this child was the Undoing of a Wild and Notorious Radical, known as Hopewood Pertellis. It was she who first reported him to the Stationers, having witnessed him presiding over the Infamous Floating School, where he cast Seeds of Evil into minds as pink and innocent as baby clams. It was she who informed them where they might find his Forbidden Books of Infamy. For you see, this man Pertellis-’
‘I know about Pertellis.’ The constable’s face did not look so tired now. He had an alert look as if he had glimpsed something round and white inside his oyster.
‘Very well, then. Overcoming the fluttering frailty and fears which belong to her sex, this intrepid young woman followed the Dissident through the dark and winding dockside alleys. And by the very waterside she saw Pertellis meet in a sly and sleekish manner with the captain of our river barge, and saw him offer him a purse of money, and depart with him. Clearly Partridge had some clandestine dealings with Pertellis… and perhaps he found out too much for the Vile Radical Conspiracy to let him live.’
‘Did she mention none of this before?’ The constable’s tone was sharp, but he seemed excited, not angry.
‘Oh, she did,’ Clent answered quickly. ‘But of course we were all far too interested in the Floating School to pay the rest of her story any mind, and for myself I had entirely forgotten it until she reminded me. She even went back to the captain’s barge herself the next day, so determined was she to uncover all evil doings, but he was not there.’
‘Is all this true?’ The constable looked directly at Mosca, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully, to show that he
