Fly By Night

‘How do you feel, Mosca?’

‘Like I swallowed a dozen live jackdaws what hate each other.’ Mosca sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her hands.

‘The worst of it is the waiting.’ Kohlrabi crouched in front of her. ‘Trust me, compared to that, giving testimony will be the easiest thing in the world.’

‘’S funny,’ Mosca said. ‘All this time I’ve been skithered of standing up in court, but that bit of my brain’s gone numb now. Now it feels like the worst of it will be walking through the streets, an’ feelin’ like everybody knows I’m going there to blow the gab on someone, an’ wondering if they’ll throw stones at me again. I’m turning stag, and nobody likes that.’

‘All right,’ Kohlrabi said quietly. ‘I know a time when the streets will be empty.’ He left Mosca alone for a few minutes, then returned with two long scarves draped over his arm. ‘We can wrap these around our heads. And these -’ he held out a handful of what seemed to be fragments of waxed cloth – ‘we can put in our ears.’

‘You mean… Clamouring Hour?’

‘Yes. It starts in ten minutes.’

When they left Mrs Nokes’s shop, fifteen minutes later, the scarves swaddling their heads like turbans, Mandelion had pulled itself indoors and shuttered itself against the war of the bells. Even with her ears plugged, Mosca could feel the sound drumming against her skin like rain. The turmoil of the city had made the ringers more zealous and aggressive in their clanging competition.

Mosca felt filled with panic. She was an arsonist, runaway, thief, spy and murderer’s accomplice, and here she was of her own free will taking step after weak-kneed step towards the prison. She turned a final corner, and now she could see the prison waiting to pounce on her, crouched behind the watch house like a panther behind a mound. The prison – the ‘louse house’, the ‘tribulation’, the ‘stone jug’, the ‘naskin’. It would put out a great paw to pin her, and she would never escape it again.

Perhaps Kohlrabi shared her thoughts because he suddenly halted. But he was staring towards the prison gate, where a dozen scrolls of paper were rolling over lazily like cats so that the wind could stroke them. Spread-eagled on the ground lay three men in the Duke’s colours.

Kohlrabi signalled to Mosca to stay where she was, and he sprinted to the watch house. He beat on the door, but there was no response. He had started running back towards Mosca when the prison gates swung wide and three men ran out into the street. Their faces were muffled and they carried muskets.

Kohlrabi reached Mosca, grabbed her wrist and spun her around. The next moment the pair of them were running away from the prison at full pelt, with the heavens clamouring above them.

Q is for Questioning

They returned to the wigmaker’s shop at the tail end of Clamouring Hour and had to wait for Mrs Nokes to unfasten the door. Gently but firmly Kohlrabi guided Mosca inside, then ran off down the street again without explanation.

In her upper-room eyrie, Mosca pulled the stoppers out of her ears. One by one the bells lost breath and hushed, until one lone, monotonous bell rang without ceasing. Hugging her knees in the window seat, Mosca listened in an agony of suspense to running feet, shouted queries.

Two hours passed before Kohlrabi returned. Mosca’s heart plummeted when she saw his expression.

‘What is it?’

‘Mosca, I don’t want you to be worried or upset…’

Mosca was instantly worried and upset.

‘What’s happened? Something’s happened! I’m going to be arrested! You’re going to be arrested! Something’s happened to Lady Tamarind!’

‘No, steady, Mosca, none of those. But… there’s been a prison break.’

At first Mosca thought of Pertellis, perhaps being carried out by a mob of pistol-wielding children. Then another possibility occurred to her.

‘Mr Clent!’

‘Yes, it seems he has escaped… but that’s only a part of the truth. The fact is, the entire prison has been broken out. Every single convict. All of them.’ Kohlrabi gave a wry smile. ‘That, I suspect, is what comes of trying to keep Locksmiths under lock and key.’

This is what had happened.

Just after the start of Clamouring Hour, when all petty constables unlucky enough to be on duty in the streets had wads of cotton in their ears, a cart parading Stationers’ colours had sauntered up to the jail. Because so many pamphlets from the illegal press had been found, the sheriff had ordered a small furnace to be built by the jail, so that they could be burned quickly. The Stationers themselves had taken to bringing little cartloads of suspicious papers to burn in this furnace, and the guards had grown used to turning their faces away, as if they were plague carts carrying the dead.

The guards at the gate of the jail said later that the driver of the cart seemed to be shouting something to them, and gesturing with a sheaf of parchments, none of them bearing the Stationers’ seal. Then the wind rose, the driver gestured too freely, and the papers escaped, capering and spiralling upon the breeze.

The guards had, of course, reacted with horror. One paper wrapped itself playfully around a man’s leg, and he had buckled up as if it scalded him. One was chased around the corner of the wall by two tumbling sheets, which seemed to flank him like hounds pursuing a deer. The third man curled into a little ball, and was in no position to stop someone coshing him neatly on the head.

None of these guards had the key to the main gate of the jail, but it seemed that the intruders in Stationers’ clothing had. Furthermore, they seemed to have the keys to the holding cells, the Question cells, the Forgotten Fall, and the Vaults of Silence. Meanwhile, when the Duke’s men in the nearby barracks finally realized that something was amiss, the door to the barracks remained obstinately closed, and precious minutes were lost kicking it open. When they sprinted to the armoury, that door also snubbed them.

One guard inside the building, who was overcome, pinioned and gagged, explained later that when the first musket shot was heard, cell door after cell door had opened from the inside, and the Locksmiths had stepped out, casually kicking off their manacles as they did so. Without bothering to claim the guards’ keys, they had walked calmly through the passageways, picking all the locks with combs, spoons and spectacle frames, so swiftly that they scarcely broke stride.

Outside in the courtyard, the Duke’s men finally knocked in the door of the armoury and surged inside. They shouldered muskets and blunderbusses, seized pistols and pikes, turned to leave, and discovered that the door was jammed again.

The streets were virtually empty, and those few people who were hanging out of their windows to shake their bells were simply amused when they saw a scattered horde of men and women fleeing through the streets with their hands over their ears. Only when the Hour had ended, and the ears of the observers had stopped ringing, did they become aware of the sad, lonely clanging of the alarm bell.

Needless to say, the intruders were not Stationers at all, and the Stationers had no idea who they were.

‘Don’t look so alarmed, Mosca. The Duke’s men are raiding every rat-hole in the city, and will have rounded up most of the convicts by dawn. If Eponymous Clent is still in the city, he will be run to earth in no time. If he has fled Mandelion, he will be declared an outlaw, and perhaps you will never need to testify in court against him. Either way, I will see you safe, and so will Lady Tamarind. I have spoken with her again – she has an interest in you.’

‘Lady Tamarind! What did she say?’

‘“I think we must find work for that girl, or she will tear the spires apart with her fingernails, looking for it.” And then she laughed to herself. Her Ladyship never laughs. She sees something special in you, Mosca, and I think I understand why. Do you remember the part of the cathedral where the font of the Little Goodkin stands?’

Mosca nodded.

‘Perhaps you did not notice, but in that part of the church the roof is lower and the stone flags more chipped.