Fly By Night

‘Good enough,’ muttered the constable. ‘Ferrety-looking girl with pink hair and unconvincing eyebrows. She boarded the Telling Word.’

To the constable’s consternation, Kohlrabi bent to peer at the wet folds of the apron more closely.

‘Oh, Mosca Mye, what dangerous games you play. I had better find you before anyone else does,’ he murmured under his breath.

The constable’s attention was quickly diverted from he young man with the unassuming smile who had vanished back into the crowd. People were pushing forward so keenly to watch the river battle that those in front were in danger of being pitched into the water.

‘Sir…’ A petty constable tugged at his sleeve.

The constable turned to find the crowd parting in awe and consternation before a sedan chair decorated in whorls of gold and blue. There was no mistaking the heraldic device emblazoned on the side.

Oh Beloved Above, not now… The constable had often daydreamed of meeting the Duke, perhaps by catching a thief with one of His Grace’s rose-silk gloves, or by besting a burly footpad within sight of the ducal coach. But here and now the constable wished only that the Duke was away in his spire, having his teeth powdered, or his eyebrows scented, or some equally aristocratic activity.

He used his sleeve to clean the sweat from his face, and hurried to the side of the sedan. He was not sure when to bow, so he started bowing halfway to the chair, and trotted the rest of the way stooped, as if passing through an invisible tunnel.

At first glance the chair appeared to be entirely full of an enormous wig, powdered pale lilac and cunningly shaped to resemble a sultan’s turban. On second glance the constable discovered a long, handsome face beneath it, with beauty spots carefully painted in the same place on either cheek. The face was smiling, but the smile looked out of place, as if the Duke were holding it for someone else.

‘Why,’ asked the madly smiling, richly rouged mouth, ‘are none of your men on the river?’ The Duke’s voice was pitched higher than the constable had expected. ‘I am told that the highwayman Blythe and the seditious rabble responsible for every ill in Mandelion are mocking you from the waters with impunity.’

‘Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but no boat will take us.’ The constable could not prevent desperation and frustration creeping into his voice. ‘All the skippers say that it’s against the Watermen’s rules – only the Watermen’s wherries can take passengers… I swear it, Your Grace, I all but clapped a pistol to their heads, but they wouldn’t say different.’

‘Then call a wherry!’

‘Your Grace… there aren’t any. They’ve all vanished upstream… searching for the highwayman, some say…’ The constable licked his lips. ‘There’s the coffeehouses, of course, but you have to hand in your weapons when you enter them…’

‘They will not ask me to disarm,’ the Duke declared. ‘Feldspar! My hat and my walking wig.’ He ducked out of the enormous, turban-like wig, which remained exactly where it was, hanging from great pins that jutted out of the walls of the sedan. The Duke’s valet slipped a silky, flowing wig in the ‘natural’ style on his master’s head, and perched a triangular hat trimmed with peacock feathers on the top.

The crowd on the waterfront hushed as the Duke stepped out of the chair, resplendent in sapphire and kingfisher-blue, his silk waistcoat shimmering beneath his full-skirted velvet coat. The raised heels of his crimson shoes turned him from a tall man into a gleaming giant out of a court painting. Staring across the water, he treated his people to the sight of the famous, handsome profile of the Dukes of Mandelion.

‘See!’ He suddenly pointed upwards. High above hovered a great kite, decorated with two female heads that faced one another and seemed to smile a secret. ‘The owners of that kite honour Their Majesties, and so in turn they shall be honoured with our custom.’

The kite belonged to a coffeehouse known as the Queens’ Heads. The balding proprietor was clearly taken aback when he opened the door to find the glittering figure of the Duke bearing down on him, heralded by a constable, flanked by armed deputies, and followed by a middle-aged valet laden with boxes, muffs and spare wigs.

‘We are honoured… beyond honour… Your most gracious Graceness…’ This coffeehouse was a favourite haunt of persons who were fiercely loyal both to the Avourlace family and to the Twin Queens, and as the Duke strode in through the door the customers showed this by choking on their coffee and throwing themselves into a series of elaborate and possibly dangerous bows.

‘You may all be of the greatest service to Their Majesties,’ the Duke declared to the room at large. His long hand seized a curtain and tugged it down with one motion. He pointed a trembling finger out through the window towards the Laurel Bower. ‘Follow that coffeehouse!’

‘The Queens’ Heads is casting off again,’ remarked Miss Kitely. ‘Curious – she should be at her address on Mettlemonger Street for two more bells.’

‘Another for our convoy?’ Pertellis tried to focus on the distant coffeehouse through his borrowed monocle, but quickly gave up.

‘I doubt it somehow, Mr Pertellis. Most of her customers are Royalists of the old school, who will take a birch to a serving girl if she spills their tea, and will ride over a poor child rather than risk their carriage wheels in the kennel ditch.’

A rope ladder had been lowered from the trapdoor in the roof, and Blythe stood on the upper rungs, high enough to peer across the deck towards the other coffeehouse.

‘There are men taking positions at her windows,’ he called down. ‘Duke’s men – I see their colours.’

‘That is what I feared,’ murmured Miss Kitely. ‘It will take some time for her to gather away while she’s beam- reaching, but even if she cannot head us off, she will fall in behind us and try to take the wind out of our sails. She will press us hard – her master-kite is much bigger than ours, and she has eight dog-kites to our six. Take her a little to port, Mr Stallwrath.’

The pursuing coffeehouse was painted spring-green. It was lower and faster than the Laurel Bower, and at its stern was a little veranda for riverside supping. On this veranda two deputies now crouched, using an overturned table for cover. They disappeared behind a flower of smoke, and a sharp crack echoed across the water.

‘What was that, a shot across our bows to ask for surrender?’

‘No! Look at the Catnip!’ The helmsman of the lighter had slumped across his rudder, a dark patch spreading over his coat near the hip. As his fellow crewmen dragged him below, the prow of the Catnip began to wander. ‘Her mainsail’s taken the wind – she’s pulling away despite herself.’

‘I hope they’ve seen that aboard the Dry Spell and the Peck o’ Clams,’ whispered Miss Kitely, ‘or they’ll ram her as she turns.’

From within the Laurel Bower it was impossible to see past the struggling lighter, but from astern came a grinding crack that set everyone’s teeth on edge.

‘The Dry Spell has steered clear,’ Stallwrath called down, ‘but they’re standing a-luff now. The Peck o’ Clams has ploughed into the Catnip, and I think she’ll be tangled there for a time. The Queens’ Heads is going about, and her crew is whisker-poling the jib. Skipp’am, she’s goose-winged and bearing down on us.’

The pursuit was all the more tense owing to the fact that both coffeehouses were going rather more slowly than the average oyster barrow. A race run through treacle is very hard on the nerves.

‘We could go faster straddling a cat,’ Captain Blythe was heard to mutter.

Another shot was fired, and one of the little bumboats rowed away for the shore, water spewing in from a hole beneath its waterline. When those on the Laurel Bower could make out the pattern on the curtains of the pursuing coffeehouse, the pistols came into their own, and soon the main coffeeroom of the Bower was lost in a fog of gunsmoke. Still the Queens’ Heads gained, and as the Bower’s sails sagged the remaining gap closed all the more quickly.

‘What was that?’ A loud rattle above, from the neighbourhood of the chimney.

‘Boarders! It’s a grappling iron!’ Blythe’s legs disappeared as he scrambled up the ladder to the deck. ‘I think it’s meant to be, anyway,’ his voice continued more faintly. ‘It looks like part of someone’s grate…’