Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

‘One moment. Just let me make sure the coast is clear.’ Mistress Leap opened the door a crack, peered out, then gave Mosca a smile over her shoulder. ‘It all looks safe enough,’ she whispered. And with that she stepped out through the door on to the step, stiffened and toppled sideways out of sight.

When Mosca scampered out to join her, she found the midwife slumped against the door jamb nursing her temple, her bonnet knocked askew. The culprit was clearly visible, a chunk of masonry that lay shattered on the step. Mosca glanced upwards in case more of the house threatened to fall on their heads, but the midwife shook her head.

‘No, it was thrown from down there.’ She pointed down the street.

Mosca peered into the darkness, but could see no sign of any lurking assailants. Feeling exposed, she quickly helped the wobbly midwife indoors. A bleary, half asleep Walter blundered over just in time to help his stunned wife into her chair, and then set about rummaging through boxes for some ointment to smear on the injury. Mosca peered suspiciously at the older woman’s head and found a rosy swelling bump, but thankfully nothing worse.

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘No, just a blur at the street corner. Probably some lads throwing rocks for sport, without realizing that I was about to open the door.’The midwife glanced up at Mosca’s doubtful face and patted her hand reassuringly. ‘My dear, do not worry, I will be all right. Go! Find those friends of yours at the Twilight Gate! After all, if you do not, then we will have no tithe for Saint Yacobray, and we will all be lost.’

Mosca hesitated, concerned at the prospect of leaving Mistress Leap so soon after her injury. However, the midwife had her husband to attend to her, and time was running out.

‘All right, but keep Saracen here to guard you. And… you better lock the door behind me.’

Rocks thrown for sport? Mosca was not a great believer in innocent explanations, and that went double in Toll-by-Night. But why would anybody hurl rocks at a kindly midwife and then run away? Just for a moment, Mosca wondered if perhaps the mysterious attacker had not seen his victim’s face, but just a bonneted head peering around a particular door. Was it possible that the missile had been meant for the skull of Mosca Mye?

There was no such thing as a safe street in Toll-by-Night, but at least after walking with Mistress Leap Mosca could hazard a guess at some of the safer streets. The day map in her skirt pocket was now criss-crossed with her own additions – names scribbled out and others added, new walls or highways drawn in. However, it was still early in the evening, and early meant danger.

After her sojourn in non-existence the fading twilight seemed curiously bright, and she wondered if the bugles might have been mistimed, until she realized that the wheeling shapes she could see against the sky were not birds but bats.

By now she knew what sort of person would be lurking by the Twilight Gate, like cats around a mousehole. Cut-throats, looking for some plump victim loaded down with all his earthly possessions, eyes still dazzled with the darkness of his new world. ‘Landlords’ with crocodile smiles, who would welcome strangers in for the night and then smother them or sell them to the toil-gangs. Pickpockets. Scissorwomen, waiting to steal the hair of children and young girls. She would need to weave her way past them, like a perch past pikes.

I’ll take the route along the town wall, she decided. And then, with a leap of the heart, Yes, that way I can look in at the letter chink first. See if Mr Clent has left a message for me.

The moon was low enough to be sallow, and everything cast shadows that might have been made for the Mosca Myes of the world.

There were patrols along the top of the wall, of course, making sure that nobody tried to scale it, but it was their task to look for rash souls rearing up in silhouette on the wall’s crest. They did not notice the slight figure that ran from one patch of shadow to the next, a pint-sized attic-creature hastily fashioned from jumble and rags.

Even in the dim light Mosca could make out the stone faces of the Beloved carved into the wall. At last she glimpsed the curmudgeonly features of Goodman Belubble, He Who Snuffs the Last Candle Before Sleep. There. Goodman Belubble’s surly slit of a mouth. That’s where the letter will be. She crouched, scanned the wall for patrols, and counted the seconds till her moment by instinct, like a housecat watching blackbirds.

Two seconds. One second. Now.

And then the darkness reached out a hand and gave her a polite prod between the shoulder blades.

‘I really would not do that if I were you.’

Meanwhile, unbeknown to Mosca, another darkling meeting was taking place.

The little door that led to the Twilight Gate creaked open, and six men emerged into the night town, breathing steam and staying close to one another.

Their leader cast a glance up and down the street, and felt not disappointment but a grim resignation. If the girl that Sir Feldroll had told them to expect was there to meet them, she was doing an excellent impression of a cobblestone.

‘Blades take it, the little mort’s probably already been caught,’ he muttered. ‘All right, everyone, we’ll wait for her a while, but not here in the bold of the moon. This is wolf country. If we huddle and bleat where everyone can see us, we deserve to be mutton.’

Briefed by both Sir Feldroll and the mayor, he knew something of the town into which he was stepping. His birth under Goodman Snatchavoc the Gambler thirty years ago that very night had given him a ‘night name’ in the opinion of the Committee of the Hours, who as a result considered him to be a fiend of card and dice, reckless, undisciplined, lavish in vice and certainly unsuited to daylight. Perhaps the committee had really believed that he would be more at home in the nocturnal town but right now he could feel the enmity of Toll-by-Night tickle his neck hairs as if his collar was full of spiders.

Accompanied by his five colleagues, he slipped into the shadow beside the Clock Tower and waited. The hands of the clock above them moved, but it seemed to have lost an hour or two somewhere, and he could not tell how truly it told the minutes as they crawled by. It seemed that a winter’s worth of nights passed before they finally saw a short figure tripping determinedly towards them, keeping close to the wall and muffling its footsteps as much as possible.

It was definitely not a twelve-year-old girl. However, neither was it particularly intimidating. It was a man. A short man, alone, his small, pale, forgettable face just visible between his large, lopsided hat and the whorls of his two great scarves. Despite the new arrivals’ attempts to hide themselves, he made his way directly towards them, gloved hands slightly raised in a gesture of harmlessness and timid appeal.

‘My word. How good it is to find you.’ There was something odd and drab in his tone. Perhaps it was caused by fear, or a desire to keep his voice low. ‘Stout fellows capable of swinging a cudgel, just as promised.’ He paused, and seemed to notice for the first time that he was surrounded by suspicious gazes and tense pistol hands. ‘Friend of Mosca Mye,’ he offered in the same limp voice.

‘Describe her, then,’ hissed the leader.

‘Stands this high.’ The little man made a flat of his hand and let it droop in the air before him. ‘Black eyes, black hair, ferrety features.’ The new arrivals glanced at each other, exchanged nods, and relaxed a little. ‘Ran into some trouble at the letter drop. Somebody was waiting for her. She got away. Injured though and terrified. Poor child asked me to come in her place.’ The little man could not seem to keep his head still, but kept turning it to look this way and that, eyes luminous and watchful. ‘And it is a pleasure to speak with you gentlemen but here there is a danger of interruption. If you will permit me to show you somewhere more relaxing.’

He’s terrified, concluded the leader. Well, what do we do? The girl is not here. If we do not trust him, what else can we do and where else can we go?

In his pocket his fingertips stroked the knucklebone dice sacred to the Beloved that had given him his name. He chewed his cheek and took a gamble.

The voice that had sounded behind Mosca was adult and male, but crisp and light-toned. It sounded as if it might sidestep deeper, gruffer voices without difficulty and deftly jab a pointed remark under their guards.

Mosca leaped away from the sound and spun round, braced to flee into the night. The shape in the doorway behind her, however, made no attempt to lunge for her, but remained flattened against the panels of the door, in a strip of darkness which had concealed it from Mosca’s notice. She could make out little more than the subdued gleam of a cream waistcoat and the pallor of a face.

‘If you are looking for sentries, my dear, you are looking at the wrong wall. There is a fellow who has been sitting in the eaves just across the road from your letter drop ever since quarter past bugle.’