Fly By Night

incomparable leader of yours.’

The leader would be someone with eyes as sharp as glass shards, Mosca thought, a man whose mind cut to the heart of things like a knife through cheese, a man like her father. The leader would be a man calm in every crisis, with a clear gaze and a smile as frank as a handshake.

Pertellis held the door ajar for Mosca and Clent, and he followed them into the room. It had the sick-room smells of vegetable soup and laudanum, but the man seated in a mahogany chair was dressed crisply, not with the slack helplessness of the invalid.

The radical leader was Captain Blythe the highwayman.

S is for Sedition

Captain Blythe, the highwayman. Captain Blythe in a redingote of good green cloth, with his hair combed back in its pigtail, and cobbled boots on his feet.

‘This is the young lady with the printed heart.’ Pertellis diligently recounted Mosca’s words.

Blythe did not offer him so much as a glance. Nor did he look at Mosca. His eyes were set upon the face of Eponymous Clent, as if he hoped to pin him with his gaze like a butterfly to a board.

‘How long has this man been here?’ he asked sharply as soon as Pertellis had finished speaking.

‘Mr Eponymous Clent was one of many languishing in the jail when your men led the rescue mission using the information and keys that Mr Goshawk gave us. He is… not exactly of our party but we took him with us because, well, we were not sure what else to do with him.’

‘I need to speak with him. Alone, if you please.’ Blythe remembered Mosca and gave her a fleeting glance. ‘All right, his familiar may stay if she must.’ Pertellis left the room without complaint.

‘I must say,’ Clent declared, rallying from his shock, ‘this is not a total surprise to me. When we, ah, met by the road to Mandelion, even then I noted something of a twinkle in your eye and said to myself, here is a gentleman who is more than he seems. Thievery is a game that he plays to, ah, mislead those who seek the leader of the valiant, freedom-loving radicals…’ Something in Blythe’s glare quelled Clent’s flow of words.

The highwayman placed his hands upon his knees, and leaned forward, still piercing Clent with his eyes. ‘Are you aware that you and your infernal ballad have ruined my life?’

‘Ah…’

Blythe erupted to his feet and took a few angry paces down the room and back, gripping his own fist as if trying to crush it.

‘I always laughed at those gulls who thought going on the highway was the way to become a gentleman. I saw them riding in darbies to the tree in their velvet lapels, with lasses of the town pretending to weep for them. And I laughed at them – for I knew that was not how it was done. It should be blood, and business, and keep your dreams in your head.

‘Then your cursed ballad changed everything. All my men started hearing they were my Gallant Company of Merry Rogues, and they took a liking to it. Then one evening, I came upon a big man in a black cap bullying two village lasses. They hailed me as if they knew me – they didn’t ask me to help them, they beamed and told Black-cap that now I was there they would surely see his crown broken. So he rounded on me, and so I rounded on him, and… tapped his claret for him. He ran off with his broken nose, and I found myself with a bundle of rosemary and half a rye cake in thanks. I could hardly peel their arms from round my neck. Well, that…’

Blythe looked distracted and waved a finger.

‘That bit was not so bad.

‘But word got out. Black-cap was a beadle, it turned out, with a turn for bullying extra tax, and by morning the new songs had it that I was defending the poor and helpless against the Duke’s men. I was a hero standing between little lowly folk and their oppressors. And the little lowly folk believed it, and so did the oppressors, right up to the Duke himself, His Grace of the Cloven Brain.’ Blythe ran a distracted hand over his hair. ‘The Duke’s men searched every garret and barn for us. But the villagers hid us in cellars, they fed us and lent us their best boots when ours were run to rags, then turned hopeful eyes on us because they knew we had come to help them. So somehow I found myself stopping families being thrown out of their cottages, and beating off taxmen so that villagers could eat that night.

‘I was taken sick with an ague after hiding in the heather for three nights, and a family of farmers smuggled me into Mandelion in their market cart to find a physician. I have lain low in this coffeehouse ever since, and cannot show my face for fear of the constables.

‘Your damnable way with words has brought me to this pass. I am leader of a valiant resistance, whether I will or nay, and trapped beyond my wits to remedy. Any suggestions?’

Clent cleared his throat. He took some time about it, and Mosca guessed that his feverish mind was searching for words.

‘My dear good sir, your story is extraordinary, indeed one that I would be proud to have written, but I cannot see why your anger has turned upon me. You wished to become the stuff of ballads, and that you are. Perhaps you are a little more legendary than you hoped, but you have no one to blame for that but yourself. I fulfilled my part of the bargain, and you needed only to keep a cool head and revel in your glory until some other brisk blade with a good seat on a horse came along to steal your thunder.’

‘A cool head? A week ago the Duke’s men arrested a young farmer because he would not betray me. His wife rode through dark and storm in nothing but her gown to tell me of it, so that I should rescue her husband before he could be taken to Mandelion to stand trial. What was I to do? Say no?’

‘Yes,’ Clent replied promptly. ‘I would have done, and so would countless other men. If you have weakened to the siren songs of valour and virtue, I hardly see how you can blame me.’

The door behind Mosca opened again, and Miss Kitely put her head around it.

‘The boy we sent for Mr Trifish the barber-surgeon is back, Clam. He found a kerchief dropped on the step – the signal Mr Trifish said he’d leave if the Duke’s men had taken him.’

‘Cast off, then. Trifish is a milk-and-mallow cove, and will squeak if they prick him. The constables will be here any minute.’

Miss Kitely withdrew, closing the door behind her, and Blythe gave Clent a blazing look.

‘You see? They rely on me. Even she…’ He waved a despairing hand at the door. ‘… she relies on me.’

‘A-a-ah… I think I understand. There is a charming complication in the matter, a delicate dilemma, a sweet distraction…’ Clent halted as Mosca elbowed him sharply in the ribs. ‘My dear fellow,’ he continued more soberly, ‘if you have managed to complicate things by forming a sentimental attachment in less than a week, then I doubt there is anything I can do for you. You, sir, are a romantic, and I suspect your condition is incurable.’

There were feet moving on the roof above, and ropes ticked as they were played out. Paintings rattled against the wall as the room lurched, then accepted the river as a dancing partner. Suddenly there was the crash of a crockery catastrophe, raised voices in the next room, and feet thundering above.

Blythe threw the door open, and Mosca and Clent followed him through it.

‘What’s happening?’

A grimy boy Mosca recognized from the Floating School was recovering his breath.

‘The Duke’s men, sir – they’re searchin’ all the coffeehouses at moorings, sir.’

‘Cast off quickly! Cut the ropes if you have to! Have we men still ashore?’

‘Only Hamby and Foddle loosing the lines. Here they come!’

The street outside was sliding to the right and a dark mouth of a gap slowly opening between the waterfront and the doorstep. First one man and then a second leaped for the doorway, and each was caught by a forest of waiting arms and pulled to safety. When the doorway cleared, two coffeemaidens knelt on the threshold, bracing a broom and a warming pan against the street’s edge to push it away.

‘Miss Kitely! We’re like to catch our doorscraper in the figurehead of the Spry Squirrelhawk!’ squeaked the shorter and plumper of the two coffeemaidens, sidling up against the