to risk one of their own, and didn’t care if the Locksmiths killed him, but
‘The bravest man I have ever known,’ Kohlrabi said simply.
Mosca’s waterlogged petticoats clung to her legs, and her teeth were starting to chatter. She realized suddenly that she had wanted Kohlrabi to laugh at her, and deny everything, and show her where she had been stupid. Instead, he continued to smile as if everything was still a game, and a game that Mosca was playing rather well.
‘You’re a Birdcatcher,’ she said in a small, stifled voice.
‘Birdcatcher is a word,’ said Kohlrabi. ‘The whole country is frightened of a word. Mosca, the word has no poisoned bite. It has never smothered a baby. You cannot fire it out of a cannon. And yet, say “Birdcatcher” to a company, and they will scatter like rabbits at the scent of a fox. You are better than that, Mosca. You are not a rabbit.’
Mosca sniffed, and wrinkled her nostrils, very much like a rabbit. An icy tickle plagued her nose, but she dared not move her hands to scratch it.
‘Will you let me tell you what the name Birdcatcher means? A Birdcatcher knows that there is something higher and better in this world than the dirt and darkness which surrounds us. Not the Beloved, sitting in their little shrines like wooden shopkeepers, with everyone trying to buy their favours with gold and flowers and turnips. No, something else, something pure, something so bright that its light could enchant everything else, like sunlight through a stained-glass window. Now, are you going to shun someone just because they believe the world has meaning?’
Mosca shook her head slowly.
‘Then can we please bring in the raft?’ Kohlrabi still wore an expression of tender good humour.
Mosca shook her head again, and snuffled out a single word.
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘Partridge,’ she repeated, with muffled fierceness. ‘The barge captain. He was a crotchet an’ a bully an’ he left bruises on my shoulders, an’ he was stealing the Beloved out of their shrines, but… then someone stuck a knife in him ’fore I’d decided what I thought of him. An’ maybe there was a story to the way his wrist was broken, and the way his smile looked like he was suckin’ crab apples, an’ nobody will ever care enough to find out. But leastways, someone ought to care ’bout the last bit of his story, the bit where he died.
‘It’s funny, I mean, everyone thought he got killed cos he was a Waterman spy, or cos he was blackmailing radicals, or cos he went after Mr Clent wantin’ money. But it wasn’t really ’bout any of that stuff. He died cos of a goose. And… cos of me.
‘All he wanted was his barge back, the one my goose Saracen sort of stole by mistake. An’ so when he saw me, he chased me cos he needed me and Mr Clent to take Saracen away. An’ then, right in front of a coffeehouse, I disappeared an’ he couldn’t find me. So I ’spect he searched up and down, an’ then someone took his penny and said, “Yeah, we seen the ferrety-looking girl. Popped under a gentleman’s cloak, she did.” So he got a description of the gent with the cloak, an’ started asking to find out where he’d gone.
‘Sooner or later he tracked him to a ragman’s raft. Maybe he even spied the gent comin’ up out of the hatch. Then… I think I see how it went. He pushed his way past the gent and climbed down through the trap-door, thinkin’ I was hidin’ below. But I wasn’t. An’ suddenly there Partridge was in the dark, and in front of him was the printing press an’ lots of pages of Madness and Mayhem drying on racks… and behind him there was
Kohlrabi’s face had no expression at all, and suddenly Mosca could barely recognize him. His face had always seemed so honest, like an unshuttered window through which emotions shone without disguise. Perhaps his expressions had always been a magic-lantern display, a conjurer’s trick.
‘You had to get rid of the body, an’ you wanted to scotch Mr Clent, so when we was out you dressed Partridge up in women’s togs, and brought him to the marriage house. I can just imagine the marriage, Partridge lollin’ and saggin’, you sayin’ he’s drunk and dippin’ your ear to his mouth so you can pretend he’s talkin’ to you, Mr Bockerby nippin’ through all the ver-sadiddle cos a pot of porter is waitin’ for him by the hearth, an’ the Cakes throwin’ honesty pods over you, with her eyes too tear-fogged to take a good, hard look at the bride… an’ you carry the bride off to the private chambers with your pockets full of wedding cakes, strip off the bonnet and gown, an’ leave the body sitting up straight an’ smart on Mr Clent’s bed…’
‘Halk Partridge was a pillager and thief of the lowest sort,’ Kohlrabi said quietly. ‘He had an ugly temper, and would have ended up bleeding his thoughts into a tavern’s floorboards sooner or later. The river runs more cleanly without him riding its back.’
‘Yeah, but you didn’t know all that when he had his back to you, did you?’ Perhaps Kohlrabi’s face had worn just this mask-like look when Partridge had turned in bewilderment from the printing press, his lips ready with a question that was never asked.
‘What if it had been
‘Do you really believe that?’ Kohlrabi tilted his head a little, and his eyes were bright with something that might have been hurt, and might have been moon. ‘Little god, you see the world through such black eyes.’
‘Got no choice. My father give ’em to me.’
‘I think he gave you more than that, Mosca.’ Kohlrabi’s tone set something jangling in the depths of Mosca’s soul like a bucket in a well. ‘I told you how I worshipped Quillam Mye when I was growing up. My own father was dead, and your father became my hero. He spoke out against the Stationers when they were trying to burn all books touched with our philosophy. It inspired me. I became certain that he must secretly be a member of our faith. The Stationers destroyed nearly all his books, but I found a few copies and read them. Mosca… down in the hold is a copy of one of his works. It is called
‘No! I don’t believe you!’
‘The hatch is right there. Take a look below for yourself. Or if you are afraid that I might leap on to the raft in a single bound, cast your mind back. Did it never seem to you that your father’s views were… uncommon?’
For the hundredth time in her short life Mosca conjured up a remembered image of her father. In her mind’s eye she set his desk halfway between herself and Kohlrabi and saw him writing there busily, despite the reeds tickling against his calves and the feeble light offered by the moon. A moth blundered through his head, but he did not even look up in annoyance.
‘Mosca, your father wrote that the Beloved were no more real than the dolls that children give names and squeaky voices. Do you know what he said of them? He said, “They are best used as poppets and toys for green young minds while they are learning to understand the world, and it is the most miserable thing that our grown men cannot bring themselves to lock away the Beloved with their hoops and wooden soldiers.”’
The imagined Quillam Mye dipped his pen, and wrote eagerly, silently mouthing the very words the Birdcatcher was speaking. Mosca’s eyes misted. The manner of speaking was all too familiar.
‘He was right, Mosca, can you not see that? The Beloved, with all their nursery-rhyme names, just distract everyone from the Greater Truth, the Brighter Light. Mosca, I believe that in your deepest heart you hunger for that kind of brightness. You looked at Lady Tamarind and thought you saw it: something shining, beautiful, pure, raised above the rest of the world. Of course she disappointed you, for she is only a human woman. She believes in nothing really – except power, in the same way that a pike believes in feeding. You need something sacred.’
‘I don’t think I like sacred very much,’ Mosca called back. ‘’Cept maybe Palpitattle… an’ he’s not
