‘No matter, there is a better option.’ Clent adjusted his badge. ‘Thanks to the ingenious mendacity of Miss Mye, Mr Skellow and his Romantic Facilitator will soon be waiting in vain for each other at different meeting places… and we know exactly when and where. Both can be intercepted if we are wily.’
The mayor’s eyes took on a fierce and glimmering interest, like embers glowing in a hoary log.
‘Go on,’ he growled.
‘This Romantic Facilitator believes he will be meeting Mr Skellow in Lower Pambrick at nine of the clock tomorrow morning,’ Clent explained crisply. ‘Send a few men out first thing tomorrow – or better still tonight – and have them seize a man waiting by the stocks wearing a Fainsnow lily.’
The response of both Marlebournes was to look appraisingly at the clock, then at one another.
‘Perhaps there is time…’ The mayor’s face took on a grim and urgent resolution. ‘A pity that you did not come an hour ago – I might have been able to contact my High Constable before he locked up for the night. No matter. Have all the men come in here a moment!’ Half a dozen footmen crowded into the room. ‘Now -’ he deigned to glance Mosca’s way – ‘what manner of man is the Romantic Facilitator looking for? Did you give him a description in your altered letter?’
Mosca rubbed at her nose. She had indeed written a description of Skellow, though one that owed more to spleen than charity.
‘Told ’im to look out for a bony, ugly old bag o’ spindles with skin like sackcloth and a grin like a sick fox,’ she muttered.
‘Bony and ugly,’ the mayor murmured under this breath. ‘You there, Gravelip! You are the boniest and ugliest, I fancy. Smile for us – as unpleasantly as you can!’
Gravelip, a young, slight footman with a pocked nose and large ears, obediently gave a smile like toothache. He seemed less than delighted to have outpaced his friends in the ugliness race.
‘Where’s my secretary?’ called the mayor. ‘There you are. Draft a letter to the Committee of the Hours asking whether there exists such a person as Rabilan Skellow, and whether he left Toll recently. Gravelip, as soon as it is written I want you to take it to the committee’s office… and then set out immediately for Lower Pambrick.’
Gravelip boggled and went pale. His mouth made helpless fish shapes that wanted to be a ‘but’. His eye crept fearfully to the darkening window. Mosca could not help noticing that other servants were hurrying in and out of the room with soft-footed urgency, closing shutters, lighting candles and in some cases moving furniture.
‘Oh, Father!’ Beamabeth seemed to have noticed his plight, and her eyes were big limpid pools of sympathy. ‘Father, we cannot! At
There it was again. Something unsaid, something too ominous to mention.
‘Oh… very well.’ The mayor’s tone was far gentler as he reached out to pat his adopted daughter’s shoulder. ‘Gravelip – delivering the letter will suffice, and you may hurry back here afterwards. You will have just enough time to reach Lower Pambrick if you set off immediately after bugle tomorrow morning, with three stout fellows at your back. Collar this Romantic Facilitator for us.’
Gravelip looked quite weak with relief, and after the mayor had signed the letter, took it and hurried out without further ado.
‘Now – Mr Clent – I am loath to ask you to leave, but -’
‘Let them stay just a little longer. Please.’ Beamabeth turned her face, and rested her cheek against the mayor’s sleeve like a younger child. ‘I want to hear more.’
‘All right.’ The mayor glanced at the clock again. ‘But quickly. We exist for only a little longer.’
‘My lord mayor -’ Clent sipped his wine – ‘you mentioned a name just now. Who
There was a pause during which father and adopted daughter exchanged glances, and something thawed and relented a little in the former’s gaze.
‘Brand Appleton was a friend of the family – about a year older than me.’ It was Beamabeth who spoke. ‘He was an apprentice to a physician, and well thought of, and would probably have become a full partner in a year or two. And…’ she turned a little pink, ‘well, it all seemed a little like we might be married. But then it happened.’
‘What happened?’ asked Clent.
‘Mandelion,’ Beamabeth answered simply. ‘Mandelion was taken over by radicals overnight. People have explained it to me.’ Her brow crinkled. ‘Radicals are terribly dangerous, and if you don’t flush them out of your town then they eat away at everything like woodworm and, next thing you know, everything falls apart, and respectable people are hanged from the ramparts, and nobody has any coffee or chocolate.’ She looked a little sadly into her cup of hot elderberry. ‘Of course we’re safer here in Toll, with the Luck to protect us, but still…’ It took a moment before Mosca remembered the bridge guard talking of the Luck of Toll, the town’s mysterious protection against all disaster.
‘Anyway,’ continued Beamabeth, ‘everybody agreed that the radicals were a terrible threat. So the Committee of the Hours had to go back to their book of the Beloved and decide which of them were
‘Reclassified? You mean… they got their daylight took away from them?’ asked Mosca.
‘Yes – the ones with radicalish names. And that’s when it all came out. Brand was born under Goodlady Sparkentress, She Who Helps Burn the Stubble to Ready the Earth for New Growth. And all these years we’d believed she was a lucky sort of Beloved – a bit hot-tempered perhaps, but very loving and courageous. But that day we found out that Sparkentress had been reclassified. All these years we’d known him, Brand must have been a radical underneath. It was a great shock to all of us. He seemed quite surprised too.’
‘I bet he did,’ muttered Mosca. It had been bad enough walking into Toll and having everyone treat her even more like vermin than usual. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like waking up one morning to discover you had gone from golden boy to public enemy without having done anything to deserve it.
‘Obviously I broke off his engagement to Beamabeth.’ The mayor took over the story. ‘The mere idea of some radical nightowl marrying a girl with the best name in Toll…’
‘Not quite the best,’ Beamabeth corrected him with a modest little moue.
‘No matter. It is a golden name, and you, my dear, are better loved than anyone else in this town. But rather than accept my decision Brand Appleton went utterly berserk and tried to fell me with a bust of Goodlady Syropia. My men had to roll him in a carpet before they could carry him from my house. And even now, despite being unable to walk in daylight, he has hounded my daughter by leaving gifts for her in the courtyards and gardens. He nearly blocked the western chimney by dropping rocks down it with poems wrapped around them.’
From outside there came the faint sound of a bugle.
‘My dear –
‘Yes… yes, I see they must.’ Beamabeth stood, walked over to Clent and held out her hands for him to take. Her smile was very simple and very sweet. ‘Thank you, Mr Clent. Thank you for coming to warn me. I would be much more afraid if you were not here, if I did not know that you were investigating this to keep me safe.’
‘I…’ Clent looked about him with the trapped gaze of a spider sinking into honey. ‘The pleasure and honour is mine, my dear Miss Marlebourne. Rest assured, I shall discover more and keep you informed. Farewell for now, and good fortune to you.’
Mosca kept her tongue pushed into her cheek where it could do no damage until she, Clent and Saracen had been shown out of the house and were back on the sunset courtyard.
‘So,’ she began when she could hold in her words no longer, ‘this reward, then.’
‘Will be ours, child, will be ours. When the mayor has his proof. But first we have a duty to that poor girl -’
‘
‘… to that brave little sylph to discover more about the shadowy threat-’
Something bitter that had been welling in Mosca’s stomach exploded out of her.
‘We did our duty! We warned her! And she’s got footmen and guardians and the mayor and
‘Mosca -’ Clent stopped walking for a moment – ‘I seem to remember that coming to Toll, scotching Mr Skellow
