pulled them out of the water, and scrabbled for her stockings and shoes.
Word of what had happened would reach the marriage house before long, she suspected. Mosca had to get there before Word did, or her version of events would be lost. But the truth seemed to have rushed out of her too fast and washed away her strength. Her legs wobbled as she clambered to her feet.
Three men were lounging by the watch house, one whittling a spoon, two playing at cards. When a constable left the watch house, they abandoned these pastimes and trotted alongside him, like dogs flanking a chef with a joint. They caught at his sleeve and he relented, tossing them a few sentences like scraps. They looked sharply at one another, clapped the constable on the back, and then sprinted to the jetty.
The Word was already on the move, and it was not weak like Mosca, it was keen and as strong as a deer- hound.
Mosca began to run, but the three news-carriers were faster. One piled into a waiting scull and began plying his oars. Another ran to the nearest alehouse, which a moment later spewed out a dozen urchins, all with excited, purposeful faces. The third sprinted to the perilous edge of the jetty, where a coffeehouse was just pulling away, and cupped his hands around his mouth.
‘Ahoy and Hear Me – The Murderer of Whickerback Point is Uncovered, the Duke’s Men have arrested Mr Pennymouse Clent, for his bloody slaughter of a Riverboat Radical…’
The door of the coffeehouse swung wide, and a gentleman with a tight little bob wig appeared in the gap, steadying himself against the jamb to stop himself tumbling forward into the water. He tossed a pouch of coins to the runner, who was already holding up a hand in readiness. Excited voices were raised inside the coffeehouse, and someone started singing something that sounded like an anthem to freedom.
Mosca realized that the news-carrier in the scull had dropped his oars and was standing unsteadily in his boat so that he could call out to the cluster of little boats touching keels around the Sussuratch pillar. His voice was just audible to Mosca as she hitched her skirts and began to run in good earnest.
‘Ahoy and Hear Me – The Body of Whickerback Point Revealed to be a Waterman Spy named Pigeon, Horribly Murdered after Discovering a Reeking Radical Plot…’
On the street side a rabbit-featured boy in worn boots flung open the door of the Strangled Bird tavern.
‘News from the watch, word straight from the Justice of the Peace himself,’ he gabbled breathlessly. ‘A Great Radical Plot to Steal Statues from Every Church an’ Melt ’em Down an’ Pour ’em into Everyone’s Ears while they Sleep…’ He ducked too slowly to avoid the resultant coin shrapnel hitting him in the face, and had to fight off a swoop of other urchins with an eye to snatching his reward from the mud.
By the time Mosca paused for breath at the corner of East Straddle Street, another boy runner was reciting his message to a gaggle of sedan chairmen waiting outside the Simpering Squirrel.
‘… an’ then there was a big battle between the Duke’s men an’ the radicals, an’ they had to call in the Watermen to help, but the head of the radicals was this man called Spinymouse Lint, an’ he had this special cannon made so he could put whole statues in it, an’ he fired a statue right through the head of this one Waterman called Pilchard an’ he died right then and there…’
The shutters of the marriage house were fastened although it was mid-afternoon. Unlike Clent, Mosca had no key to the front door, and no one answered her quiet rat-a-tat. She threw pebbles up against the window of the Cakes’ room, and eventually one shutter opened just wide enough to let a couple of red ringlets fly free on the breeze.
‘We’re all closed up today. Out of… respect for the solemn festival of Goodman Grenoble.’
‘Cakes! It’s me! An’ besides, Grenoble’s the Goodman of Keeping Knots out of Moustachios…’
‘I can’t let you in. Mr Bockerby was in the Tattler’s Tale when the news-carrier come by an’ told us everything.’
‘It’s not true!’ Mosca bit her lip. ‘Well… probably not. What colour of everything?’
A thin slice of the Cakes’ face was visible through the shutter crack. She had the pale, miserable expression Mosca remembered from the days before the midnight marriage. ‘Mr Bockerby, he says any friend of Mistress Bessel’s is a friend of his, an’ any friend of any friend of Mistress Bessel’s likewise, an’ Mr Clent’s a friend of Mistress Bessel, but you ain’t any kind of a friend to Mr Clent. We heard how you got Mr Clent arrested, what with telling the constable that he’d been smuggling shrine statues into Mandelion hidden in dead partridges…’
‘Oh – that really
The Cakes opened the shutter a little further. Her face was peaked and pale, and the corners of her mouth drooped as if something had disappointed her.
‘So… it was you that shopped Mr Pertellis to the Stationers and the Duke’s men?’ There had been no easy way to leave this fact out of the story. ‘Mosca – it was you?’
Mosca’s mouth fell open. She did not feel ready to lie to the Cakes, but even if she had wanted to, she would have been too busy watching a series of memories parade across her vision. A picture of the Cakes carefully writing out each of the names in the marriage register. An image of the Cakes in the midnight chapel, her tearful face almost hidden under the white webwork of a shawl. A vision of a young girl crouching in an alleyway and noting down Pertellis’s words in her notebook, her hair hidden beneath a length of white lace… It had never occurred to Mosca to wonder where the Cakes had learned to write.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ the Cakes said sadly, and started to close the shutters.
‘Wait!’ There had to be more to say. ‘They tried to make me say Mr Pertellis killed the barge captain too, but I didn’t-’
‘Doesn’t help Mr Pertellis much, does it? Your goose is round the back – I led him out with a trail of barley.’ The shutters closed with a sad but resolute little click. Mosca stared up at them for a few turbulent seconds before the injustice of it overwhelmed her.
‘I’m never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated…’
Then,
When she found him, Saracen had finished his barley and was happily chewing at the corner of a sheet that had been spread across a hedge to dry. He had once discovered a tablecloth, and ever since had been optimistic about the effects of dragging cloths off the top of things. The miserable-looking chickens had holed up in a bucket, suggesting that Saracen had pre-empted Mosca’s schemes against them.
‘Come on, Saracen. The cakes are stale here, an’ the rooms are draughty, an’ there’s no sleepin’ with the endless marryin’ goin’ on.’ Mosca was stooping to pick up Saracen when a roughly tied bundle landed in a cloth dollop at her feet.
‘Kip the blankt genst the cold’ read the little note pinned to the top. Inside the blanket the soft-hearted Cakes had stowed two small loaves and a shilling. Mosca stared up at the windows, but there was no sign of anyone watching to see her reaction so she settled for smiling reassuringly at the chickens.
Back in the street, she noticed that the marriage house was not the only building that had shuttered its windows. Outside a neighbouring building two serving maids were hastily finishing their job of sweeping the front step.
‘… a huge store of bullets they say the radicals have stored away in a cave, like a squirrel’s acorns,’ Mosca heard one whisper to the other. ‘And no doubt muskets hid under flags in their cellars, all ready to storm the Duke’s spire.’
‘Will they come to common sort of houses after, d’you think?’
‘Most likely. And when they do, master’ll go the colour of custard and give them his money and anything else they’ve a mind to, and thank them kindly for taking it. Don’t you wish that we had a gentleman like that Captain Blythe on hand to keep us safe?’
The other serving maid answered with a sigh that spoke volumes.
Around the next corner a horse reared, startled by the flutter of paper amid the cobbles. Walkers recoiled, clearing a little round theatre of space around two curling sheets of parchment. They were printed in heavy, black letters, but they did not bear a Stationers’ seal.
‘What is it?’
‘Get back! Don’t look at it!’ One young mother scooped up her toddler son, burying his head against her dress so that he would not see the offending papers, and pushed her way through the crowd.
