Just when her ribs were bruised with bouncing and her limbs soaked to the bone, she was tugged off the back off the horse and set on her feet. The sack was dragged off her head.
The town was gone, and all around was nothing but craggy moor. She was standing beside Skellow and two of his men in the shelter offered by a crab-apple tree, the grass still dotted with the amber pulp of rotting fruit. The clouds had come down to earth and oozed softly between the heaped granite, the throaty purple of foxgloves.
‘Come on.’ Skellow took hold of her arm and gestured towards a shadow in the face of the nearest crag. Staring at it through her wet lashes, Mosca realized that behind the dismal trickle of water from above was the entrance to a cave. ‘And try to look grateful. Not many girls like you will ever get a chance to attend a Pawnbrokers’ Auction.’
Mosca might have found it easier to feel privileged if she had not been sopping, half shod and all too aware of a knife prodding her in the back as Skellow followed her into the cave. His comrades made no attempt to accompany them.
Mosca had heard of the Guild of Pawnbrokers, though until now she had had little expectation of attending one of their auctions. Once the pawnbrokers had simply been a means by which desperate people could gain money quickly, leaving their valuables in the care of the pawnbroker in exchange for a small sum, in the hope of returning later and buying their possessions back. During the last thirty years, however, the Realm had seen countless times of trouble, and the Pawnbrokers had found themselves in possession of varied and valuable things whose owners were a little too dead to reclaim them.
Their subsequent auctions of these curious items had become legendary. Over time the auctions had become stranger, more secretive and more exclusive. It was said that if you could only earn an invitation to one such auction you would find all sorts of unusual and unimaginable things on sale – the skulls of kings, the services of assassins, crystal balls with wicked spirits trapped in them, deadly secrets, beasts with tusks and wings…
Just within the cave an iron hook had been hammered into the wall, and from it hung a dark-lantern. In its narrow bar of light stood a walnut desk, at which a man in a smart waistcoat and cravat sat with his quill poised expectantly over a great leather-bound book. He looked like an ordinary clerk but for one thing – he had no head. Then Mosca drew closer and realized that he did have a head, but that it was shrouded in a black hood with eyeholes. Above him hung a frame on which were suspended three metal globes, the sign of the Pawnbrokers.
‘Heydayhare,’ murmured Skellow in his gravelly tones, and the man nodded. Mosca guessed that this must be a password. ‘Name of Skellow.’
‘Expected.’ The hooded man ticked something in his book. ‘What’s that?’ The quill pointed at Mosca. Mosca opened her mouth to speak, then felt the point of the knife press against her spine and closed it again.
‘It’s my scribe,’ said Skellow.
‘Very well. You are responsible for its behaviour during the auction.’ Two grey cloth masks were pushed across the desk. ‘Once past this point you must not remove these masks, nor must you speak a word to anyone but each other, and even then not loud enough for others to hear. If you break these rules, you will lose
There was something in the man’s cold, incisive tone that suggested that breathing might be one of these ‘rights’.
Despite herself, a little flame of curiosity started to burn in Mosca’s chest as she walked down a narrow, rough-hewn passageway, the mask feeling rough but dry against her cold cheeks.
At the end of the passage the rock opened out in all directions, and Mosca found herself standing on the edge of a huge cavern, some of it craggy and natural, some bearing the marks of picks and chisels. Dozens of lanterns dotted the darkness, each resting on a table at which a grey-hooded figure was seated. From the cave roof hung a far larger pawnbrokers’ sign. The globes were circular cages in which many candles had been set, so that the contraption helped illuminate the chamber like a peculiar chandelier and silently dribbled pale wax on to the cave floor.
Against the back wall stood a timber frame platform, to which was still affixed a pulley that had once been used to lower buckets into a square shaft in the floor below. On this platform stood a pulpit-like structure, behind which stood a black-hooded figure in black overalls. Other similarly clad figures scurried through the cave, taking slips of paper from those seated at the tables and carrying them to the waiting hand of the auctioneer at the front. He in turn read each slip and called out a series of numbers in a nasal monotone.
Bidding on pieces of paper. No wonder Skellow needed a scribe.
Skellow was shown to one of the empty desks and yanked at Mosca’s arm so that she was forced to kneel beside him.
The current auction seemed to be entering a state of subdued frenzy, and Mosca listened spellbound to the auctioneer.
‘… thirty-five guineas… forty guineas… gentlemen, remember the sacred nature of these relics; surely a few guineas more…’
On the pulpit before the auctioneer was a candle in its last throes, scarcely more than a cratered stump. Mosca realized that this must be an auction ‘by candle’. When the candle died, the auction would be over. As its flame flickered blue, several bid carriers broke into a run, and it was all the auctioneer could do to seize the flourished papers in order.
‘… we have fifty… we have… done! The candle is dead, gentlemen. The knucklebones said to have belonged to Saint Wherrywhistle herself go to Guest Forty-nine…’
‘No!’ An echoing cry filled the cavern, as one of the grey-hooded figures in the main body of the cavern leaped to his feet. ‘This is an atrocity! Why will you not wait until we have more money? The knucklebones should never have been stolen from our cathedral in the first – what? – wait!’
A dozen black-masked figures had homed in on the shouter without the slightest fuss and laid hands upon him. In a second he was swept off his feet and borne forward towards the auctioneer’s platform. Legs cycling furiously, the hapless rule-breaker was hurled without ceremony into the waiting shaft, which threw back only his descending, despairing wail.
‘Guest Twenty-four’s rights revoked,’ the auctioneer declared sharply, tapping at his gavil with his hammer.
Skellow’s cloth-covered face leaned close to Mosca’s cloth-covered ear.
‘Hush up,’ he whispered almost inaudibly. The injunction was unnecessary. Mosca had never felt more like hushing up in the whole of her life.
‘Now,’ the auctioneer continued unflappably, ‘we are pleased to place on auction the services of one Romantic Facilitator.’The mess of the last candle was scraped away with a knife, and a new stub lit in its place.
Skellow nudged Mosca vigorously with his elbow and pushed the quill and ink on the desk towards her hand.
However, she obediently wrote down the sum that Skellow whispered in her ear, and handed it to one of the swift-footed messengers in black masks as they hurried by. She thought about writing, ‘Help, I’ve got a knife in my back,’ but decided against it. She had the feeling that nobody except Skellow would care.
‘Five guineas.’ Mosca’s eyes crept to Skellow’s hood again as his bid was read out. Surely even Skellow couldn’t be
desperate for a ladyfriend? And could he really have that sort of money?
For the first two minutes the bids came slowly, intermittently. Skellow turned out to be someone who cracked his knuckles when he was nervous, and Mosca winced each time he did so, in case the sound was enough to see them shafted. Then the lip of the candle collapsed, hot wax spilling creamily on to the tabletop, and the room was galvanized. There was a frenzy of scribbling, then the pat-a-pat of feet as the bid-carriers ran to and fro. Clearly Skellow was not the only person interested in the Romantic Facilitator.
Six guineas. Eight. Twelve. Frantically Mosca wrote down each sum Skellow growled in her ear. The candle’s flame was growing squat and uncertain.
‘Fifteen guineas!’ hissed Skellow. ‘Write it fast! Faster!’ The knifepoint jabbed at her spine. Hand shaking, Mosca scribbled the bid, waved the paper over her head and watched heart in mouth as a runner tweaked it from
