Fly By Night

The truth is, back when Mandelion was little more than a village, a square little church stood on that very spot. It was not pretty; it looked as severe as a fortress – which is exactly what it was. The villagers at that time lived in fear of pirates, and a watchtower stood where the Eastern Spire now rises. When the lookout glimpsed the sails of a cutter, he would ring an alarm, and the whole village would run to hide in the church and hold off the attackers.

‘The walls of the church still stand, hidden under the gilt of the cathedral marble. To the west, although you cannot see them, there are spouts so that boiling oil can be poured down into the courtyard. In the southern wall, below the Heart of the Consequence, there are hidden arrowslits facing the river.

‘I think that when Lady Tamarind looks at you, she feels as the cathedral might if it suddenly remembered that once it had been a grim little church facing down musket fire and a cruel sea wind.’

That is all very well, thought Mosca after he had gone, it’s all very well me being a grim little church, but what do I do when I don’t know who the pirates are, or where they’re coming from, and I don’t have no arrows anyway? She amused herself with trying to think of ways to defend her room if she found herself besieged by pirates or anyone else, but even with Saracen as her champion this became boring after a while.

It is all very well being safe, thought Mosca, but how can I be safe if I don’t know what’s happening?

She gave Mrs Nokes money for news broadsheets, but poor Mrs Nokes was easily confused, and brought back improving stories about little girls whom the Beloved blessed because they never swore and worked harder than their brothers and sisters. Mrs Nokes smiled so hopefully that Mosca thought there was little point in complaining.

It was at an early hour on the second morning after the prison break that she turned her attention to the dressing table and mirror. There was a bone comb with nearly all its teeth, a brush with a cracked enamel back, a little pot of face powder, a block of rouge and all sorts of strange little brushes, patches and pincers. There were jars of wig powder coloured white, creamy yellow, lilac and pale peach respectively. She spent half an hour fiddling with her bonnet, and succeeded in arranging the ribbons as the lavender girl had shown her. Then, remembering Lady Tamarind’s marble pallor, Mosca dipped one of the brushes into the face powder and dabbed it experimentally on her face. She moved the candles nearer to the mirror and leaned forward so that she could examine her face more closely as she did so.

How strange it was to see her face reflected so clearly in a real mirror! Tiny candle flames were reflected in her eyes, which pleased her. She was even more delighted to notice that her eyebrows were starting to grow through, black at the roots. Saved at last from the Chough water, they were turning the same colour as her hair.

Mosca pulled off her bonnet and cap to extract a lock of her black hair so that she could hold it against her eyebrows and compare. She lifted a candle to let more light fall on her face, then set it down abruptly with a jolt.

Faint creases ran down each of Mosca’s cheeks, as if twin tears had worn grooves in them. They joined in a red crease under her chin. They were almost identical to the marks she had seen on the face of the dead Partridge.

Maybe all dead faces looked that way. Maybe death crumpled you up like a ball of paper. Maybe she was starting to die and hadn’t noticed and maybe the creases would become deeper and deeper and her skin would turn blue and…

… and perhaps there was a quite different explanation.

Mosca fumbled in her pockets for her new pipe and then, gripping it between her teeth, went to sit on the bed. The stem waggled as she chewed on it, frowning all the while into space. Then, still frowning, she swung herself off the bed again, scooped up her bonnet from the top of the wigstand, and went back to the mirror.

She put the bonnet back on her head and fastened the ribbons in the fashionable style that the lavender girl had shown her. The ribbons rested neatly against the creases in her cheek, and the knot rubbed against a red dent under her chin. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the marks on Mosca’s face had been caused by the bonnet ribbon. But in answering this small mystery she found herself faced with a larger one.

Why would Partridge have been wearing a woman’s bonnet?

The black-eyed imp in the mirror rested its chin on its hands and stared back at Mosca, champing all the while on its pipe. And then the movement of the chewing jaw slowed, and the black eyes became round, as the mistakes and misunderstandings brushed away like cobwebs, leaving the true shape of things bare before her mind’s eye. Suddenly she could see what must have happened the night of the beast fight. Which of course meant…

‘Oh, Saracen!’ Mosca exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘What have we done?’

Saracen had just taken a big beakful of feathers from a pillow and was too busy snapping his beak and spluttering to share in Mosca’s moment of revelation.

What could she do? Kohlrabi might not call by for days, and she could hardly count upon poor, confused Mrs Nokes to carry a message this important. No, she would have to go back and find the Cakes herself. She would only be gone a little while; she could return before anyone missed her and worried. Saracen would be safe enough in the little room. Providing, of course, he did not become restless and start overturning furniture, and providing Mrs Nokes did not come up to investigate the sound, and providing he did not burst out upon a rampage as soon as the door was opened…

‘You’d better come with me,’ Mosca sighed.

The shop was not yet open, so Mosca could not hope to slip out through a mill of customers. However, Mrs Nokes was busy arranging satin flowers and stuffed hummingbirds in a pale-green wig, and she did not notice as Mosca crept along behind the counter on all fours, Saracen’s leash wound around her wrist. At the door, as an afterthought, Mosca caught up a large, dark-red wig box and tucked it under one arm.

‘It’s only borrowing,’ she explained to Saracen when the door was safely closed behind them. ‘Borrowing don’t count.’

The box’s rounded lid slid off easily. It slid on again rather less easily once the box was full of goose, since Saracen was not at all happy about the sky being blocked out, and he kept trying to peer his beak out through the crack.

‘You’re too recognizable, Saracen,’ Mosca explained, pushing the lid firmly into place. There was a leather strap so the box could be tied to luggage when travelling by coach, and Mosca found that it could be slung over her right shoulder and buckled under her left armpit.

The market bell had rung, so the Cakes would be at the market.

The air was chill, but for now the wind had slackened. Mosca had half expected the streets outside to be deserted, while everyone peeped through their shutters and waited for war, but here were dozens of housewives and housekeepers, gripping their baskets and filling the air with the steam of their breath, chattered conversations, and the slap of their slippers against the cobbles.

Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

The old marketplace within the city walls had been too far east for the Duke’s sense of symmetry, so he had given orders for a new street to be run through it, and the foundations laid for a set of new houses. He had found a nice new site for the marketplace, which was much nearer the city centre. Unfortunately the new site was full of ungrateful and unreasonable people who liked their houses and did not care that knocking them down would make the maps look neater. While the Duke’s men struggled to evict these people from their homes, the morning market had moved by unspoken consent to a space of grazing land south of the Ashbridge.

The river was still oozing mist as Mosca walked across the Ashbridge, which was so named because of the sheer number of times it had been burnt by pirates, robber barons and, finally, Parliamentarians.

At the far side the marketplace spread out like a fan, vivid with stalls of fruit and spices.

There was no sign of the Cakes among the stalls. However, the market did not end where the water began.

For the first hour after the market bell rang, the Water Market appeared as if from nowhere. Like a cluster of lily pads, a rocking plain of little boats gathered around the island of Goodman Sussuratch, tethered the one to the other, the furthest indistinct in the mist. Those with a little more money to spare shared a crammed wherry to the