Beamabeth was determined to pray for the success of their enterprise, so everybody was gently but firmly cleared out of the reception room and sent off to sleep in spare rooms and parlours on chairs or chaises longues. As they departed Beamabeth could be seen kneeling on a velvet cushion, hands clasped under her chin like a much younger girl. To judge by the array of fruit and scented herbs around her, she intended to appeal to a large number of Beloved.
Mosca found Saracen in the little pantry where he had been sequestered, then curled herself around him and wrapped the hearthrug about them.
Children were told stories of the invisible winter spiders that scuttled in under doors in tides of cold and left their frost webs on the windowpanes. It was said that they would pinch and nip at the tips of fingers and toes and noses to turn them blue, and there was sickness in their bite. Goodman Rankmabbley was their enemy, and a toast to his name with a good hot posset was said to help keep them at bay. But now every time Mosca’s tired mind drooped towards sleep, she seemed to see Skellow as the King of the Winter Spiders, his profile sharp as a guillotine, sharpening the knives held in his many hands…
Remembering his threat Mosca tucked her thumbs inside her fists to protect them and hugged her anger for warmth.
At last there were sounds of movement in the house, so Mosca gave up on sleep and quietly levered her feet back into her clogs, wincing at the cold of the flagstones. The embers of the hearth were now squirrel-fur grey.
Out in the hallway she found the conspiracy gathering dull-eyed, exchanging scant whispers and rubbing at stub-bled chins. Dawn was close, and they all knew it. All ears were strained for the bugle. Sir Feldroll was particularly jumpy.
And then at last it came, one long stifled note, and the conspiracy scampered to their stations, Beamabeth fleeing upstairs to her room. Mosca took a moment to lead Saracen to the stairway, where she tethered him to a banister.
‘We’ll protect the silly hen, won’t we?’ Mosca murmured as she smoothed his shoulder feathers and felt his cool beak slide against her cheek. ‘It’s revenge on Skellow we’re after, that’s why we’re doing this. That and the reward money to pay the toll. So I’ll do my bit, and you’ll stand guard – but if you got to bite her on the shin while you’re guardin’ her, I won’t cry.’
From outside came a dull thunder of running feet on turf, and the jingle of keys. Clack. Slam. Tinkle. Crack- crick-creak. Bang. Lost chinks of light reappeared, and draughts pierced the smoky closeness of the house. The jingling departed and was swallowed by a bellow of wind.
Clent held up a hand and frowned at the clock, face puckering as he counted out each second. Then he gave a rapid nod.
Remembering her role, Mosca scooped up a coil of rope and headed to a back pantry, where she levered open a little window. She was just about to loosen the shutters when there was a jarring jangle of metal on metal just beyond the wall. One of her fellows started so violently that he upset a stack of pans, which set the rest of her companions jumping and flinching like cat-watched starlings. Mosca’s hand shook on the shutter bar. If she had pulled it back a second or two sooner, she might have found herself staring into the faces of the Jinglers…
The merry sleighbell sounds seemed to make a circuit of the house and dawdle around the side amid creaks and thuds before racing away again. It was half a minute before Mosca clenched her teeth, fists and will, opened the shutters and poked out her head.
No Jinglers lurked grinning in the grey light. She clambered out and waited, hopping from one leg to another, while her five companions climbed out after her, Sir Feldroll first.
Running at a stoop, Mosca led them round the side of the house and then nimbly across the small space of the open ground to the cover of a low ruined wall. Her coterie followed her lead, but tended to run into each other’s backs whenever she stopped to look for danger, and then swear at each other until she hissed at them.
‘Bad as a string o’ ducklings,’ she muttered under her breath, and was almost certain that nobody but Sir Feldroll heard her.
Like a parade of hunchbacks they scuttled until their circuitous route brought them to the outer wall of the well courtyard and the shattered back of the keep. Mosca looped her coil of rope over her own head, hitched her skirts and started to climb, the cold of the stone making it almost too painful to grip. She reached the jagged place where the wall was breached, tethered her rope to the remains of a beam and tossed the loose end down to her fellows, who started to climb in their turn.
If Skellow, Brand Appleton and the rest were following Clent’s plan, they would be hiding down the well already, waiting to spring out when Beamabeth entered the courtyard. They would not wait forever, of course. They were probably counting out the seconds even now, braced to clamber out and run if their prey took too long to arrive… or if they heard strange and suspicious sounds from the direction of the keep.
The ambush posse in the keep took up position, ready to roar down the uneven steps at a moment’s notice. They heard the front door of the mayor’s house open and shut. A short pause, and then those waiting in the keep could see a solitary figure in a pale blue dress and grey winter cloak stumbling carefully into view, face drowned in a kerchief and hidden by a bonnet. They all knew that this was a serving lad who had made the mistake of resembling Beamabeth in height and build.
The figure came to a halt in the middle of the courtyard, where it visibly shook in a fashion that suggested fear as much as cold. Occasionally it rubbed one foot against the opposite calf in a less than ladylike way. Beyond sight, the rest of the conspirators would be moving into position, waiting to close the trap and pounce on the kidnappers…
The wind through the wall breach was bitterly cold, and Mosca saw her cohorts grimacing as their limbs cramped. At last one of them exploded a sudden sneeze of such violence that another conspirator nearly fell backwards out of the keep in shock, and Sir Feldroll came within a hair of shooting himself in the jaw. Rooks erupted from the trees and then took a circular saunter across the lightening sky, but no hordes of would-be kidnappers broke cover in affright. Mosca felt a throb of disappointment.
Silence. The raw black complaints of the rooks. Then the sound of a bugle. Clent’s ‘window’ had closed.
‘Can… can I take these off now?’ asked ‘Beamabeth’ in a quavering tone.
‘Well, there is little point keeping them on now that you’ve wailed out in your own voice,’ snapped Sir Feldroll. ‘Come – we should at least search the well. There’s a chance we might find a rat or two trapped in there.’
The well did indeed seem to have a few rats, but only of the furred and whiskered sort. There were no kidnappers to be found skulking in the ruin of the round temple or in the remains of the castle buttery. When the nearby trees were shaken, night-dwellers singularly failed to tumble to the turf.
‘Let us report our fortunes to the lady,’ Sir Feldroll sighed, disarming his pistol with blue fingers, ‘and see if her people can rustle up a bowl of something hot.’
They entered to find a cluster of servants and overnight guests huddled at the base of the stairs with weapons gripped in their trembling fists. They were evidently planning an assault upon the stairway, where Saracen strutted with lordly confidence, head bobbing and ducking. To judge by the fresh bandages around several hands and one crown, this was not the first time they had tried.
‘Stop!’ Mosca pushed past them, thudded up the stairs and curled her arms around Saracen. ‘He’s just doin’ the job I left him to do, that’s all. I’ll find him a bite of something and he’ll be right as royalty.’
Sir Feldroll was the first to muster enough courage to edge past her, followed by a long train of young men who seemed determined to pretend that they had not all been held at bay by a walking roast dinner.
Loosing Saracen’s tether from the banister and prising a pair of pince-nez from the grip of his beak, Mosca could hear Sir Feldroll knocking quietly at an upstairs door and calling out in polite and gentle tones. There was a pause, and then some more knocking. Then louder and more sustained knocking.
There was a clatter of steps, and Sir Feldroll appeared at the head of the stairs. His features, which had never seemed particularly happy with each other, now seemed to have fallen out completely and were leaping and jerking in the most disturbing fashion.
