Fly By Night

troubled by visions of him being chased over cold fields by men with muskets, trying to hide his plump and trembling bulk in hedges and under barrows. He was probably guilty of a hundred hanging offences, thefts and cheats and lays and lies, so perhaps it did not matter if he was hanged for one crime he had not committed. And yet it did matter. Mosca knew that she had to save him, and the only way to do so was to find the real murderer.

The ragmen’s decks were not so much laden as littered, scraps and frills and whole garments locked in multi- coloured melee. Most of the vessels were simple, square rafts, but there were a couple of small barges with fringed awnings like those on tilt-boats, to keep the dew off the rags. Servant girls, seamstresses and housewives scrambled over the mounds, tugging at this and that like gulls picking at scraps.

‘’Scuse me.’

Two elderly women on one of the rag barges stopped their stitching and lifted their heads as Mosca raised her voice. They both wore a strangely stitched patchwork of snippets and sequins. ‘My uncle got a lift with a ragman a week ago, an’ he never come home… I was trying to find out where he was heading.’

‘You’re mistaken, my butterfly,’ said the thinner of the two women. Her nose was so crooked that it seemed to have a knuckle in the middle. ‘Ragmen don’t give lifts – Watermen’s rules. That’s right, isn’t it, Butterbara?’

‘That’s right,’ agreed her plumper friend. ‘Isn’t that right, Tare?’ A younger man looked up from his little raft and nodded vigorously, but insisted on calling his brother Sorrel to back him up, who in turn called upon his friend Dregly to agree with him. The word passed around all the ragmen, who agreed unanimously that no ragman could possibly have offered anyone a lift.

‘Perhaps it was just a scruffy-looking wherry,’ Butterbara suggested helpfully.

Mosca narrowed her eyes, but nodded. The ragmen lost interest in her and turned their attention to loosing their chains and casting off. Mosca was about to turn away when something on one of the rafts caught her eye.

Among the torn petticoats and bruised linen dangled a sleeve of cream-coloured linen. The light was still poor, but Mosca could make out a daisy pattern around the edge, embroidered in blue. She clambered down from the barge to the raft, which was small but laden with a rag heap almost as high as her head. As she crouched, she heard the rubbery patter of Saracen’s webbed feet from inside his box, as if he was dancing sideways in an attempt to keep his balance. She unstrapped the wig box, and placed it down beside her.

Mosca pulled at the cream-coloured fabric, gingerly at first for fear of toppling the whole rag heap into the water, then more firmly, but still the sleeve resisted. Pushing at the mound with her shoulder, Mosca managed to clear enough of the deck to see that the sleeve was clenched fast in a closed trapdoor set in the deck.

The trapdoor had a ring, and Mosca was able to lift it and pull the whole length of fabric free. Sure enough, it was a woman’s ‘casaque’, a practical, short-sleeved, flared jacket meant to be worn over a gown. It was made for a woman of ample dimensions; it had blue woollen embroidery around the collar and cuffs, and in every particular it matched the Cakes’ description of the casaque worn by the ‘bride’ during the macabre ceremony. And there, near the stomach – was that a smudge of mud or gravy, or something quite different? The fabric bore the marks of many bootsoles, and it was hard to tell.

Perhaps this was all she needed to clear Clent. Perhaps she did not need to find out why Partridge had been killed, or why this dress was here on the raft… or why a rag raft needed a trapdoor.

Mosca lifted the trapdoor and peered down into a darkness punctured only by the occasional gleam of morning light on metal. She leaned as far forward as she dared, and her nose caught something that smelt the way warm metal tastes. The next moment she leaned forward far further than she had intended as the raft lurched into motion, and she showed Goodman Sussuratch the soles of her clogs as she tumbled in through the hatchway.

‘Have we struck something?’ A voice from above. Mosca was too winded to speak, lost in a blackness where blurred red stars came and went. She could only only guess that the trapdoor must have fallen shut behind her.

‘Not at this depth. We bumped hips with the Letitia, that’s all.’

‘Tare.’ The first man’s voice had become lower and more serious, with a dangerous edge to it. ‘What’s this doing here?’

‘What?’

‘The cream casaque – this should have been burned or ripped for scraps long since. We don’t want it recognized.’

Mosca, who had drawn a breath to call out to the crew above, let the air out of her lungs slowly.

‘I’ll take it below and deal with it now, if you’re ghaisted about it.’ A pale square of sky appeared above, and a ladder of knotted rags tumbled down to brush the floor of the hold with its bottom rung.

Mosca scrambled to a crouch. Beside her squatted an object that to her night-stricken eyes looked a lot like a wrought-iron harpsichord. Mosca’s long fingers told her that there were no keys to this harpsichord, but there were two iron shelves. The gap between them was narrow, but large enough to admit a Mosca, so she wriggled in, head first, while the rope ladder swung and jerked. By the time two heavy boots struck the floor of the hold, Mosca was tucked out of sight.

As she listened to the sound of someone ripping cloth with a knife, her curious fingers were still exploring. The shelf above her did not feel like metal. It had a slightly downy roughness, like the hide of a drum, and with a shock she realized that she was stroking paper. She lowered her hand and ran it over the shelf upon which she lay. It was slightly oily, and covered in jutting shapes that felt like row upon row of little teeth. Her fingertips, when she held them in front of her eyes, were stained black as coal.

On the upside, Mosca was now one of the few people in Mandelion who knew where the infamous illegal printing press was. On the downside, she rather suspected that she was in it.

R is for Redemption

At least, thought Mosca, at least his hand isn’t nowhere near the lever. So I probably won’t get printed to death when I’m not expecting it.

Through the crack between the metal plates, Mosca watched the glimmering knife of the ragman called Tare as he rent the cream casaque into little squares and tossed the fragments on to a pile of rags in the corner. He slid the blade through the fabric with a patient and careful pride – obviously a man who enjoyed using knives. When the task was over, his silhouette moved across to the wall, where a dozen or so pale squares hung in the darkness.

‘Paper’s nearly dry,’ he called up.

‘Quiet, until we’re out of hearing of the town,’ was the growled response from above. ‘Let’s try to make good speed towards Fainbless before the mists clear. The breeze will be rising soon.’ The music of gullsong, horses’ hoofs and street cries were becoming softer. Somewhere above, a pole churned through the water, and the beams of the raft creaked like the frame of a broken bellows. The river had remembered a lot of deep things it wished to say, and spoke them at length.

From time to time there came a tiny, ponderously regular sound like a whip-crack, which became louder and louder until it was almost deafening, and then was gradually left behind. In between times, curlews and warblers dropped thin spirals of sound into the stillness.

The ragman in the hold grew bored with ripping rags. His trunk of darkness approached the side of the press, and, from somewhere above her, Mosca heard two clicks, like a key turning in a stiff lock. The plate above her jolted and dropped an inch.

‘Tare? Come up and take a look at this.’

The dark shape at the side of the press receded, and there followed the sounds of someone climbing the ladder.

‘What is it?’

‘Take a look for yourself – I’m manning the pole. There, by the hatchway. Do you recall seeing that