‘Hush, child, that is hardly a courteous-’
‘Actually, she is right in a way,’ cut in Mistress Bessel.
‘What?’
‘Never you mind
‘So…’
‘So some ferret-faced little scrap of mischief,’ Mistress Bessel gave Mosca a pointed look, ‘gets hauled to the Pye-powder Court for a spot of purse-plucking, and thrown into the jail overnight. There this little canary-bird flies out of her cell by some certain secret means. She finds the Luck, hides it in her apron and walks out next morn when her kind friends come to clear her name and pay her fine.’
‘If it’s so easy,’ snapped Mosca, ‘why don’t
‘There’s a spot of wriggle-work involved, needs to be a child. And anyway,’ Mistress Bessel added quickly, ‘my name’s too good. Jennifer – it’s a bundle of good meanings, fair and smooth and bonny and white. Nobody would believe ill enough of me to throw me in the roundhouse.’
‘Bet they’d change their minds if you took yer gloves off!’ hissed Mosca.
Mistress Bessel went deathly white. Mosca held her eye, but felt a prickle in her stomach that told her she might have gone too far.
‘We play things my way, my buttercups,’ the stout woman said at last, very quietly and evenly, ‘or we do not play at all.’
‘Then I say fie to your game, Mistress Bessel!’ Mosca leaped up. ‘Find yourself some other playmates!’
Saracen, who had been swaggering to and fro in some uncertainty, was delighted to see Mosca on her feet and screaming at somebody. At last he knew how to choose his enemy. There was a froth of white wings and a splash as he joined Mistress Bessel in the fountain.
For a few seconds Mistress Bessel and Saracen disappeared amid a mash of foam, muslin, feathers and flying lily pads. Then something in a sodden bonnet scrambled out of the stone basin and made good use of a pair of stripy-stockinged legs, leaving a broken parasol floating in the fountain. After a few seconds Saracen hopped nonchalantly on to the lip of the basin, water droplets gleaming on his white plumage.
‘You know -’ Clent carefully emerged from the pavilion and watched the stout woman’s surprisingly athletic departure – ‘Mistress Jennifer Bessel can be a very dangerous woman to cross.’
‘I reckon you’re right, Mr Clent,’ agreed Mosca cheerfully, plucking grass seeds from her hair. ‘But I’d still hazard a shilling on Saracen if he and she was matched in the pit.’
‘I wonder how she paid her way into Toll after you relieved her of her money?’ mused Clent. ‘Ah, but I should not speculate thus about a lady… particularly one who, in her day, had the most cunning fingers in the “profession”.’ The ‘profession’ was, of course, the one that had left Mistress Bessel with a ‘T’ for ‘thief’ branded on each hand. ‘Alas, Jen.’ He sighed. ‘Mosca, I fear that you have the right of it. Whatever her plan was, it would probably have left the two of us in irons, your feathered friend in a cooking pot and Jen herself plump in the pocket and on her way to Chanderind. What a work is womankind!’
He sighed again while Mosca picked up the pieces of the muzzle, knotted them into something that might hold and persuaded Saracen to don them again.
‘We are no further on,’ he muttered. ‘We have of course utterly confounded Mr Skellow’s attempts to meet with the Romantic Facilitator, who by now has almost certainly decided the whole business was a trap and fled the county. Yes, Mosca, we can congratulate ourselves on having done our duty and thrown these kidnappers into confusion… but self-congratulation will not pay our way past the toll gate.
‘As it is, I see only one resort left to us. Madam, we are working alone… and we have a street to find before dusk: Brotherslain Walk.’
‘But…’ Mosca felt herself dowsed on the instant by a host of midnight sensations. The memory of rain, cold steel, jagged stone and fear. ‘But that’s where Skellow’s going to be… this evening!’
‘Yes.’ Clent had a starry look. He seemed half terrified, but it was plain that some silvery idea had hooked him like a perch. He had a plan so radiant, so beautiful, that he could not resist it. ‘Yes, he will. He will be waiting to meet the Romantic Facilitator for the first time, tell him about his mission and perhaps pay him some more of his fee. And it would not do for Mr Skellow to wait in vain.’
Goodlady Evenax, Mistress of the Twilight Chimes
‘Do I have to come?’
Mosca found a hundred ways to ask the same question as she walked beside Clent through the tight-wound streets of Toll. And Clent found a hundred ways of saying yes. Worst of all, they were all good reasons.
She could identify Skellow and his friends by sight. Clent would need a lookout in case of a double cross, or in case the real Romantic Facilitator decided to turn up to Skellow’s first suggested meeting point after all. Clent might need somebody else close by to create a distraction. And this was what she wanted, was it not? Scotching Skellow had been her plan, had it not?
‘Madam, our cogs are caught in this business now. We must grind on, or we are locked here.’
It was all true, but, as he spoke, it made Mosca feel as if they were indeed small cogs in a great and grinding clock, being driven in ways they could not control, stifled and locked from a clear view of the sky. She had made a decision, or she had thought she was making one. She had brought them to Toll. And now events were driving her forward, to a nightmare-named alleyway where Skellow waited knife-faced to cut off her thumbs.
Clent looked at her with a thoughtful, impenetrable pout.
‘Daylight is our weapon,’ he remarked quietly. ‘Let us use it to view this rendezvous at our leisure. You will have a better stomach for this when we have half a dozen tricks and schemes in our pockets.’
The first person they asked for directions was a washerwoman. She hesitated, the heavy basket of linen on her head creasing her brow into a false frown.
‘Brotherslain Walk – hey, Cowslip! Do we still have Brotherslain Walk? Does it still exist here?’
‘Brotherslain? Yes… it’s duskling. It’s here and it’s there. It’s over in the Ravens, or what’s left of them.’
‘Here and there?’ asked Clent.
But the women just gave each other the briefest glance, then launched into a long and baffling set of directions, smiled him on his way and went about their business. Mosca snorted a laugh at their retreating backs.
‘You get the feeling we just stubbed our toe ’gainst another thing nobody wants to say much about, Mr Clent?’
‘Every five minutes, Mosca, every five minutes. Whatever “duskling” or “here and there” mean, I will wager it touches on the nightbound. And asking about the nightbound appears to be an excellent way of ending conversations in Toll.’
Following the directions, Mosca became aware that although they were going uphill, they were unquestionably going ‘downtown’. The streets were quieter here, the houses less well kept, and the sunlight fell to the cobbles only in stray slices.
Since Saracen kept shrugging off his broken muzzle, Clent insisted that they find a tavern as close to the Ravens as possible, book a room and leave him in it. Saracen’s displeasure at being shut away in a little chamber was soothed considerably by the sight of a large bowl of barley and dried figs. The weary, pock-faced landlady seemed startled by the arrival of a goose-guest and puzzled by Clent’s eloquent and repeated injunctions that she should not open the door to the chamber whatever sounds she heard, but the pressure of a coin into her palm seemed to convince her.
The Ravens proved to be a criss-cross set of alleys, most barely wide enough for two to walk shoulder to shoulder. There had clearly been a fire here long ago, for the oldest houses still had singed timbers, and Mosca guessed that this colouration had given the Ravens its name. She could even see gaps where the houses on the
