Fly By Night

island, and leaned over the side to barter and buy. Many chose instead a more precarious route.

Starting at the base of the bridge, and tracing a winding path to the island, a line of boats was strung, each linked to the next by grappling chains. Little gangplanks bridged the gaps between them. The housewives hitched their skirts up and sidled carefully along the planks, their baskets and carrying yokes slung over their shoulders. Sometimes, where the boats were laden low and the mist was thick, they appeared to be walking upon the surface of the river itself.

‘Pretty,’ said the old woman in the first boat, looping two nooses of scarlet ribbon over Mosca’s arm. ‘Make you look pretty as a May morning, these will.’ Mosca tottered, disentangled herself, and continued along the dipping plank-walk.

The boats nearest the shore sold wares much like those in the market square. One was loaded to the brim with pumpkins and celeriac. Another was heavy with crates of live chickens and rabbits. However, as Mosca drew near to the island of Sussuratch, she noticed a change. The river was the domain of the Watermen, and the usual laws of the land did not apply. Here the other guilds and the Duke had little power, and a different kind of market seller had glided out of the shadows.

Here chymists sold from their little, bobbing stalls without fear of the Apothecaries’ Guild. Cat’s teeth floating in bottled hyacinth water, toadstones, essence of garden tansy to aid childbirth, whole stuffed badgers as treatment against gout, and ground millipedes as a cure for earache.

The triple ball of the pawnbroker’s sign hung from some masts. Mosca saw one such broker haggling with a woman in a tattered black cambric shawl who had spread across her lap a dozen pigtails, all crudely severed. She cast a black look over her shoulder when Mosca paused to peer, and Mosca guessed that she must be one of the notorious scissor-women, who would snip the locks off unguarded children to sell to wigmakers. The pigtails lay like fat, silken ropes, their sad little ribbons still attached.

In the next boat, a seller casually tossed a blanket over three sleeping pistols as she passed, and his conversation with his customer fell into a lull.

Around the island of Sussuratch itself, the boats lay flank to flank. This made it easier to step from one to the next, though no doubt if someone had fallen through a gap, it would also have made it easier for them to drown beneath the boats without anyone noticing.

Not far from the island’s jetty, Mosca finally saw the Cakes, the baskets of her carrying yoke laden down with fruit and philtre bottles. When Mosca sidled up to her, the Cakes stiffened, but she continued ladling blood-red juice out of a cauldron into a pot she had brought for the purpose.

‘I haven’t seen you,’ she said, a little primly. ‘I’m buying stewed prunes and loveapples and payin’ you no mind.’

‘All right,’ Mosca said with unusual meekness. Paying her no mind did not seem to stop the Cakes talking to her, so she supposed that was good enough. ‘Cakes – I got to ask you somink.’

‘I ain’t talking to you,’ the Cakes explained. ‘I’m just mutterin’ to myself, that’s all.’

‘Right – but you might just happen to mutter ’bout the same thing as I’m asking? I’m trying to – I’m trying to fix everything that’s broken.’

The Cakes made a disapproving little mouth as she pushed the cork into her pot, but she seemed to be listening.

‘The day after we married your parents – I remember you sayin’ a couple came in with the bride so sloshy she could hardly stand. Can you remember anything about them?’ Mosca bit her lip. ‘I s’pose you’d need to check the register…’

‘Course I wouldn’t!’ The Cakes was so surprised by the suggestion that she turned to Mosca and quite forgot to mutter. ‘I could tell you every name on that register for every day this month, right here and now in my clogs. And I remember that day because I was merry as a cricket because… oh, you know why. There was a bride that had been making good cheer, and had to be propped up every step by her sweetheart – he had to guide her hand across the register to draw her “X” as well, but that often happens, you know. They took a room for the night, and must have left next morning while I was out at market.’

‘Do you remember what she looked like?’ Mosca had trouble keeping the excitement out of her voice.

‘Don’t recall seeing much of her face – she had her bonnet pushed forward on to her forehead. Not a lady. Sunburned and doughty. She had on a yellow stuff gown, I can tell you that much. And a cream-coloured casaque over the top, with blue woollen embroidery at the collar and cuffs, all done like daisies. Oh – and I do remember that she had a little bulging bone under the skin just here.’ The Cakes tapped the side of her wrist. ‘I remember feeling sorry for her, thinking maybe she drank a lot out of loneliness, and maybe she fell over and broke her wrist that way. So I was pleased for her, imagining her waking up the next morning, and finding herself married.’ The Cakes beamed.

‘What about the feller – do you remember him?’

The Cakes frowned, and shrugged a little.

‘Too good for her, I remember thinking. Trim, with a gentlemanly way, and a nice silk stock collar. I remember the name, because it was a queer one. Duplimore Gweed.’

‘Duplimore?’ Mosca crinkled her forehead.

‘Looked it up afterwards.’ The Cakes looked pleased, like a fisherman describing a rare catch. ‘It’s sacred to Goodlady Judin of the Borrowed Face – if a babe’s born while the sun’s coming up for Goodman Greyglory’s day, it’s a child of Judin.’

‘Cakes,’ Mosca said in a small, quiet voice, ‘you wouldn’t get anybody named Duplimore.’

‘Not often, no. I mean, what’s the odds of being born just at sun-wake on that particular day?’

‘No… I mean, even if you were. Judin’s about the unluckiest Beloved to be born under – nobody wants to name their child for her. So they wouldn’t, Cakes. They’d squint at the sun and say it was as near up as not, and name the babe after Greyglory. The nursemaid wanted to say I was born before sunset, so I’d be a child of Boniface, not Palpitattle, only my father was… my father wasn’t like anybody else.’

‘You mean… people might… lie about names?’ The two girls stared at one another as they grappled with the concept. It was like trying to imagine someone peeling off their own face to put on a false one. How would they put their own name on again afterwards? Wouldn’t the Beloved they were born under be angry? The name you gave a child was as indelible as a brand, it was who they would become… and nobody, not even the slippery Eponymous Clent, ever lied about their name…

‘I think somebody has,’ Mosca said slowly. ‘Did you see where the couple came from?’

‘The river, I think. Yes, that was it, I saw them stepping off one of the ragmen’s boats when I was out feeding the chickens. I suppose he must have given them a lift out of kindness.’ The Cakes’ smile faded as she remembered that she was not talking to Mosca.

‘I’m going to fix everything,’ Mosca promised, without knowing quite what she planned to do. ‘Where do I find the ragmen?’

‘Most of them are at the market – west side of the island.’ The Cakes had withdrawn behind a stony expression once more, so Mosca took the hint and left her to herself.

It was true, then. The revelation that had dazzled her as she sat before the mirror was true. Why had she never stopped to wonder how Partridge had entered the marriage house in the first place? Now she knew.

Partridge had entered the house disguised as a woman, with a full-brimmed bonnet that fell over his face. He had been guided into a chapel, he had been married for a handful of shillings, he had been helped in signing the register, he had been half carried to one of the private rooms. And Partridge had objected to none of this because Partridge had already been dead.

So who was the name-changing bridegroom, the man in the silk stock collar? The murderer, almost certainly. What could such a man be like? He must have had blood like icewater to walk through a public street with his arm around the man he had killed. He must have had nerves of iron to go through a whole wedding ceremony, never knowing if someone might glimpse a male face under the bonnet, or touch the bride’s hand and find it suspiciously cold. He must have had a strange, playful, twisted mind even to think of such a plan in the first place.

One further thing Mosca knew about this man without the slightest doubt: he could not possibly be Eponymous Clent. He had been at the Grey Mastiff all evening, and besides, the Cakes would have recognized him immediately.

Until today, Mosca had been haunted by images of Clent coming after her with revenge in mind. Now she was