back an alarming series of bolts, many of which had all but rusted into place through disuse, wrenched a couple of great keys in the splinter-edged locks and heaved the door open.
It was a tapering room shaped like a wedge of cake, one small barred window set in the rounded wall. Near it was a narrow hearth, which curiously appeared to have been cleaned with care. No furniture, no bed. A slack iron chain, one end fixed to a ring set low on the wall, the other to a set of leg irons.
‘Best room in the house.’ The Keeper’s tone was one of real pride. ‘That little window’ll give you a view as far as the sea on a clear day. You can even pick out the spires of Penchant’s Mell. That there is the very corner slept in by Hadray Delampley, the rebel earl of Mazewood, during the Civil War.’
Unlike the other cells, this one did not stink of rot and the chamber-pot. Indeed, the only sign that anyone had been in the cell of late was the recently scrubbed hearth. The Keeper noticed her looking at it.
‘Keep ideas of that sort out of your costard,’ he rumbled in her ear. ‘You’re not the first to have thought of leaving by the chimney. Not a week ago some folks showed charity to a young lad who had been caught miching, and paid for him to stay in this cell. Quick as tricks, up the chimney he goes… and finds there’s a cast iron grate blocking the flue. And while he’s trying to shake it loose he takes a tumble, dashes out his wits. Same thing happened three weeks ago as well. Young girl. Same luck. I get full weary of mopping that hearth…’
Mosca swallowed and gave this information due consideration while Mistress Bessel bargained with the Keeper for ‘luxuries’. Yes, Mistress Bessel would pay to see Mosca free from leg irons. No, she would not pay for her meals. Yes, she would hire a blanket for her. No, she would not buy faggots for the hearth.
‘Well, I will leave you ladies to talk.’ In spite of the entreaty in Mosca’s face, the Keeper withdrew.
‘You poor suffering dear,’ Mistress Bessel said as the door closed behind him, in tones of icy and eternal enmity. ‘See, I have brought you muffins.’The door clicked to, and Mosca backed to the furthest extent of the cell.
‘So… what was it you last said to me?’ asked Mistress Bessel, carefully adjusting the cuffs of her gloves. ‘Was it not “Fie to your game, Mistress Bessel”? Just before you set that feathered hell-thing on me?’
And in a flash Mosca remembered their last conversation, and the game that she had cried ‘Fie’ to. Mistress Bessel’s plan. The one that required Mosca to be a prisoner in the jail of the Clock Tower. The one that involved her finding a way to slip out of her cell by night… and steal the Luck of Toll.
‘I think you’ll play my game now, my dumpling.’ Mistress Bessel’s tone was still sweet. ‘I think you’ll play it for your life.’
There was a long silence, then Mosca sniffed hard and rubbed at her nose with the back of one hand. ‘Those real muffins in your basket?’ she asked in a small, hard voice.
Mistress Bessel’s mouth tightened, then spread into her warmest smile as she recognized the unwilling consent in Mosca’s tone.
‘Brought up by wolves, you was, I think.’ The portly woman approached and crouched next to Mosca, then watched as the latter filled her mouth and apron with currant muffins. ‘All teeth and stomach, no manners.’
Mosca could not speak, but managed a few nonchalant, dry rasping noises as she munched, her cheeks and open mouth bulging with unswallowed cake.
‘Now, listen well. I have word that the Luck of Toll is hid in the room above this pretty chamber of yours. Seems you can reach that room by the stairway outside… but there’s great heavy doors barring the way, with more locks than a miser’s spoon chest, and with guards that stand outside night and day. So there’s no point trying that way.’ She nodded towards the entrance to the cell. ‘No – you’ll have to go up the chimney.’
Mosca managed to gust out a crumb-laden squeak of protest. The hearth was a miserable width, the flue likely to be more miserable still, and the Keeper’s darkly allusive tales had not increased her confidence.
‘Don’t be such a warbler – nobody will light a fire under you,’ Mistress Bessel continued without sympathy. ‘There are two chimneys out the top of this building. The one on the north side serves the guardsmen’s quarters, but the other on the south side serves nothing but this room and maybe the one above. And I say it
Mosca covered her mouth and managed to swallow enough to speak.
‘Well, small surprise in that!’ she exploded. ‘Everybody who tries climbing this chimney ends up dead in the cinders! And you want me to climb
‘Yes,’ said Mistress Bessel. And somehow, although there were a thousand protests Mosca could make, there was no real answer to that one stony word.
‘So – s’posing I even reached the other room, what if there’s a guard inside it, lookin’ after the Luck? If there’s smoke from the chimney, a fire must be lit for
Mistress Bessel simply shrugged her motherly shoulders.
‘Then you had better hope that his sleep is heavy and your step is soft, my buttercup.’
‘But… what if I can’t work out what the Luck is? Or what if it’s locked away or chained to the wall?’
‘If you cannot use those long, thieving fingers of yours, use your eyes.’ Mistress Bessel stood, her empty basket in hand. ‘Tomorrow I will be back with more muffins and counsel for the poor wicked children who have fallen into sin and crime. If you have a Luck to give me, then that means coin for you and Eponymous, enough to pay your way out of Toll and see out the winter. If not… then you had better be able to tell me every inch of that other cell so I can come up with a better plan. Either way, if you’ve done your part, then you’ll walk out of prison with Jennifer Bessel.’
‘How?’ This still sounded too good to be true. ‘I got thrown in the Grovels on the mayor’s own orders. How you going to get me out when he’s brimmin’ with bile?’
‘Have a little faith. Jennifer is a name to conjure with in this town, and if I vouch for you the doors will fly back on their hinges so fast the breeze will leave you breathless. As for your mayor -’ a catlike smile crept across Mistress Bessel’s apple-broad face – ‘it will not be the first time I have talked a gentleman out of a temper.
‘But if I come back tomorrow, and you are sitting here with no word of the Luck… then there’s no more luck for you in this life, my little mulberry tree. Once you have given them your shoes and buttons to sell, the jailers here will watch you starve to death… and they won’t even carry out your corpse unless somebody pays them to do it.’
The little window was too narrow to let through much light or any hope of escape, but was just broad enough to allow in a dismal slither of a draught that chilled the whole cell. Mosca crouched and shivered on the wooden floor, wrapped in the Keeper’s scant blanket, warming her frozen nose tip in her apron.
At night there was less likelihood of the Keeper dropping into Mosca’s cell to extort money from her. More hope that any guards around the Luck would be drowsy or asleep. A better chance that the ‘supper time’ fire in the upper room would have cooled so that she would not get burned or choke on the smoke.
Hours passed, and Mosca chewed her fingertips and thought of days passing and the Keeper becoming less courteous and the cudgel at his belt and nobody caring. Rat in a trap.
She heard the flues stealthily flute and boom with draughts, and smelt a faint trace of smoke.
She heard the bugle, and felt the taste of the air change as day became night.
She heard the second bugle.
And it was too big a decision to make, too terrifying a plan to consider. So while she was busy not considering it, Mosca carefully and silently slid off her clogs, pulled off her stockings and tied back her hair. Then she removed her dress to reveal her chemise and the wading breeches she still wore under her skirts, even though she had long since left the waterlogged village in which she had been brought up.
She crouched down in the hearth and very carefully straightened, with the upper part of her body inside the absolute darkness of the chimney. She felt panic tighten around her chest like a corset and reflexively ducked down again, banging her head. Then she made herself straighten once more and groped around with her hands, feeling the feathery tickle as her fingertips dislodged soot.
It was chokingly narrow, and if she braced herself badly she might stick at any moment. Climbing it would be
