Fly By Night

‘It was an ugly sort of a mill,’ was all Mosca said.

‘I once saw a boy of about ten hanged for setting fire to a schoolhouse,’ Clent added in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Everyone pitied him, but, with a crime so severe, what was the magistrate to do? I recall his family wailing piteously as the cart took him to Blitheangel Square.’ Clent gave Mosca a calculating glance. ‘Of course, arson cases are all tried in the Capital, and when the hanging is over they give the body to the university to be dissected. I hear they cut out the hearts and examine them, to see if they are colder and blacker than the hearts of ordinary men.’

Despite herself, Mosca placed one hand over her heart, to find out whether it was giving off an icy draught. Certainly she felt as if there was a chill band around her chest obstructing her breathing. Was she being racked with guilt? If she was a diabolical criminal, then she must be due for her first rack round about now. And yes, when she thought of jolting her way by cart through hostile crowds, she felt a sickening throb of remorse.

However, when she imagined herself escaping justice her spirit became quite tranquil again. ‘Ah, thought Mosca with grim satisfaction, as she fell into step behind her employer, I must be rotten to the core. The truth was, she felt less sorry about the fate of the mill than for giving Clent information he could use against her.

This I will never see again, nor this, nor this… It seemed to Mosca that she should take note when she left the paths she knew. However, the moment when her woods became strangers’ woods was lost in mist and haste. The early birds testing their voices sounded like the cries of distant pursuers.

The path was a troublesome, fretful thing. It worried that it was missing a view of the opposite hills and insisted on climbing for a better look. Then it found the breeze uncommonly chill and ducked back among the trees. It suddenly thought it had forgotten something and doubled back, then realized that it hadn’t and turned about again. At last it struggled free of the pines, plumped itself down by the riverside, complained of its aching stones and refused to go any further. A sensible, well-trodden track took over.

‘Wait. Raise your chin, madam.’ Clent dabbed at Mosca’s cheeks, rearranged her kerchief so as to hide the worst of the moss stains on her bodice and sighed. ‘Well, there is little that can be done now. Let us hope that the good people of Kempe Teetering do not mistake you for some forest wight, come to bite the noses off their babies.’

‘We’re going to Kempe Teetering?’

‘Yes – everyone will expect us to make for Trambling Spike, where the main highways cross, then head towards the Capital or Pincaster. They will not expect us to head for a river port.’

‘So we’re getting a boat then, are we?’ asked Mosca.

Clent did not appear to hear her.

The forests were yielding to soft slopes of green, studded with conical haystacks gathered around central staves. Wide, shallow steps had been cut into the hillside to make it easier to farm, so that from a distance it seemed that a giant comb had been dragged sideways through the fields.

Mosca was fascinated by the leather waistcoats of the farming men, their broad, black-buckled hats and loose, shabby white shirts. The women all wore coarse print frocks, far fuller than Mosca’s sand-coloured dress. Over their white mob caps they wore wide straw bonnets, tied under the chin with ribbons of different colours. Like all the other women and girls of Chough, Mosca wore a tight-fitting cap of waxed linen which smelt of old fat but kept most of the water out. It seemed strange to her to wear two hats instead of one but, to judge by the way the farm girls tittered at her, they thought quite the reverse.

Kempe Teetering could be heard long before it could be seen. At the heart of the wind’s bluster there was a throaty fluting, like a hundred people blowing into the necks of bottles. There was a click, clack, clatter like loose machinery. There was a keen and steely yodelling.

The hills fell back, and the tumbling tributary which the people of Chough had always thought of as The River joined the real river. This was no shallow treacherous bandit of a river, ragged with foam. This was a sleek and powerful lordling, some thirty feet wide. This was the Slye.

Across the Slye, rippling and fluttering like a carnival carriage, stretched Kempe Teetering.

Most of the town was built across the great two-tiered bridge, the little shops and houses flanking the main thoroughfare. Rope ladders trailed from window and rooftop, and wooden stairways zigzagged between bridge and jetty. A web of clothes lines criss-crossed every available space, so that Mosca’s first impression was of a flutter of brightly coloured cloth – saffron, mauve, sky blue, mint green. It was the first real town Mosca had ever seen, and it seemed too big and bright and busy to hold in her head all at once.

Above, the gulls spun and floated like tea leaves in a stirred cup. They followed each boat along the river, tearing off narrow strips of sound with their sharp beaks. They squabbled over spillages, and tried to scare the errand girls into dropping something. Every roof was decorated with a brightly painted wooden windmill, or a whistle in the shape of a bird, or clattering dolls on strings, in a vain attempt to scare away the gulls.

And the boats! Grim, old barges being loaded to the waterline with bales and boxes, while the hauliers bellowed laughter and spat tobacco juice into the water. Coracles like a row of turtle shells, keel-upwards for careening on the waterfront. Sculls and wherries, some with great kites reclining on their decks, each emblazoned with the colours of the Guild of the Watermen.

Clent led the way up the wooden steps to the bridge proper, and paused before the door of a shop.

‘We shall call here briefly,’ he remarked over his shoulder. ‘Within lies a dear friend of mine whom I have promised to visit, and who will be invaluable in our state of extremis. May I stress that silence is a fine quality in a secretary?’

He ducked through the doorway, and Mosca followed.

The inside of the shop looked rather as if an excitable gorgon had run amok. On table and sill were clustered stone feathers, stone briars and stone flowers. Two bird skeletons hung against the window, so that their delicate bone structures could be seen against the light. There were crumpled and crumbling caps and sandals, stone pennies, scarves and ribbons stiff as the robes of a mausoleum angel. Mosca recognized all these strange ornaments as oddments petrified in the waters of Chough.

‘Here we are… Ah – Mistress Jennifer Bessel!’

Mistress Bessel was sturdy and sun-browned, and she brought a glow of warmth into the room as she entered. She had a dusting of flour on her bare arms, and under her cap a thick plait of hair was twisted like a bread swirl. Curiously, her hands were hidden in a pair of fingerless muslin gloves.

‘Mr Clent!’ Mistress Bessel’s smile widened still further, and her dimples became wells. ‘So my sweet friend has not got himself scragged after all.’

‘No, no – there is no man, god or beast that could prevent me keeping an appointment with you, dearest Jen.’

Something in Jen’s laugh suggested that she did not believe him.

‘Ah… and this is my niece, from…’

‘Chough,’ Jen finished promptly. ‘My dear bumblebee, look at her eyebrows!’

The little Chough bonnet was all very well for keeping one’s hair dry. Eyebrows were a different matter. The Chough water turned them so pale that they were almost invisible, making everyone from Chough look very surprised all the time. Mosca was no exception.

‘Still as sharp as a gimlet you are, Jen.’ There was a slight note of annoyance in Clent’s tone. ‘Yes, she has been staying in that unpleasant little village. Chough has left our clothes so chill and damp I fear the child will perish any moment. Jen, my sweet plum, I was hoping you might spare us some clothes that are a little less…’

‘Recognizable?’ asked Mistress Bessel.

Mosca was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Mistress Bessel knew Eponymous Clent rather well.

Clent lowered his lashes and smiled winningly at his hostess’s top button.

‘Well, I’ll take your old clothes in payment, then,’ declared Mistress Bessel. She turned to Mosca. ‘Listen, blossom, take that door, climb the ladder to the loft and you’ll see a leather chest right in front of you. There’s a gown of grey stuff which’ll do for you, and you can try on a couple of the bonnets and caps. Don’t go touching anything else, mind.’

Mosca obediently climbed to the attic and hunted out the chest of clothes. Then, her new clothing draped over one arm, she much less obediently sneaked back down the ladder, so that she could listen at the door while she