Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Against the door rested a time-ravaged basket chair, strands of its broken wicker splayed like spokes. In the chair lay Skellow, his mouth so wide open he seemed to be silently singing. From somewhere behind his cravat came the lizard-hiss snore.

Although nowadays Mosca did her best to avoid praying to the Beloved, at least until they provided her with decent evidence of their existence, she still reserved the right to mutter silent imprecations against them when her path was scattered with more thorns than she considered reasonable.

There was no escape through the door. Mosca picked her way carefully across the room, skirts hitched so that she would not knock over the line of yellow bone dominoes or set the wooden bowls rolling.

There – a small shuttered window set high in one wall. Narrow, but wide enough to allow a Mosca through.

She climbed gingerly on to a stool, worked the shutter bolt free and opened the shutters. Then she heaved the upper part of her body on to the windowsill and started wriggling through the gap, the night air rushing in past her so icily that it made her ears ache. There was sky ahead with stars drowned in it, black trees waving as if trying to mime a warning…

Behind her there was a faint clack-clack-clack-clack like a skeleton impatiently drumming his fingers. In her mind’s eye, Mosca could almost see the first domino teetering in the breeze, then falling to trigger the others. The lizard-hiss snore stopped abruptly, and then there was a hoarse cry, enough to tell Mosca that Skellow had woken, looked up, and seen that the nearest window was full of wet petticoat and frantically kicking legs.

There are times for caution and carefully planned descents. And there are times for hurling oneself out of a window willy-nilly and trusting to luck.

As it happened, luck decided to break Mosca’s fall with a blackberry hedge. A few seconds were spent in bewildered flailing before she worked out why the sky was covered in dead leaves and why the ground had stars in it. Dozens of tiny thorns set in her clothes as she struggled to right herself. Only the sound of a door cracking back on its hinges gave her the panicky strength to yank herself free, leaving her bonnet to the brambles’ embrace.

Which way to run? Anywhere. Anywhere not here.

‘Get a lantern! Get a lantern!’ Voices from the bastle house.

But it takes time to find a lantern in the dark, long enough for two quick legs to sprint away into the heaving labyrinth of gorse. It takes time too for sleep-fumbled hands to strike tinder and nursemaid the trembling flame to the wick, long enough for small, cunning hands to snap off a fern-fan the right size to shield a black-haired head from sight. And by the time three men stood at the door of the bastle house surveying the night, there was no sign of the fugitive, and no sound but for the restless wind, and the disappointed fluting of owls skimming unseen over the mouseless moor.

There is nothing more miserable than being cold, wet, exhausted and hungry without any likelihood of becoming less cold, wet, exhausted and hungry. If the future does not hold that comforting promise of shelter and dry clothes, and a bowl of hot soup, then the damp and cold is free to sink into one’s very marrow because there is no hope to keep it out. Eventually, however, the dim starlight showed Mosca the twin grooves left by uncounted cartwheels, and she realized she had found a rough road. Following it, she at last discovered a clutch of slate-rooved, rugged-faced cottages huddling in the heather like eggs. Bonnetless and bedraggled, she limped into the village. It was silent, every window shuttered.

Mosca ran her numb fingers through her hair and tried to tame it into something less like a rookery, then knocked on the nearest door. There was no response, but on a second knock she heard a shuffling step and took a pace back, in time to look unthreatening as the door opened a crack to show a neat slice of nightcap, suspicious elderly face, linen bedgown and fire iron.

‘Please, sir – I been robbed.’ It was important to say this first. If she had had her money taken from her, she had some chance of being considered respectable. If she admitted that she’d never had any money in the first place, it was much more likely that she would be cast out and distrusted. Respectable people were funny like that. And after all, Skellow had promised Mosca money and not given it to her. What was that but robbery?

‘Spare us sores!’ The old man took in her drenched dress and stockinged feet, and did not seemed inclined to hit her with the fire iron. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I was taking some money and a message for my mistress…’ Mosca paused to note the effect of her words. Yes, the words ‘my mistress’ had worked their magic, and she was transformed in the stranger’s eyes from youthful beggar to diligent serving girl. And a mistress was even more respectable than a master. ‘And these men, they dragged me off and robbed me, and locked me up, and I think they was goin’ to kill me cos I saw their faces, but I got away…’

‘Local men, were they?’ The old man gave a speculative glance down the street.

‘I don’t know – don’t think so, sir. I think they was here visiting. They… They come for the Pawnbrokers’ Auction -’

The moment the words were out of Mosca’s mouth she knew that she had made a mistake.

‘We don’t know anything about the Pawnbrokers!’ the old man declared, his bristled chin wobbling. Behind his face a door had slammed shut, and a moment later the door in front of Mosca did exactly the same thing.

‘Hope yer roof falls in,’ Mosca told his door knocker conversationally.

A slammed door meant that this village did know about the Pawnbrokers’ Auction, and were eager to know no more than they had to. It occurred to Mosca that a guild who would happily throw their clients down mineshafts if they broke rules of anonymity would probably not be much kinder to anyone who snooped on the comings and goings around their auctions. Best to bolt the doors and fasten the shutters and wait for the auctioneers and their mysterious buyers and sellers to go away.

She limped on between the silent houses, trying to judge the friendliness of each. She was just about to raise another knocker when she spotted a glimmer of light ahead. Unlike its fellows, the last building’s chimney churned smoke, and on a wall bracket swung a lantern, illuminating a gleaming sign which swung above the door, and upon which three painted dogs bore down a painted stag. Beneath it the lettering read: ‘The Broken Hart’.

A tavern! The village had a tavern, and one evidently willing to welcome visitors, however strange and dangerous they might be, even on this night. Winter was winter, after all, and money was money.

The door swung open to her knock. The smells of trout and muffins and blackberry sauce pushed into Mosca’s insides like a spoon and scraped her empty stomach. A tall blond man in an apron stood in the doorway, the firelight behind him turning each golden hair on his muscular red arm into a tiny thread of flame. His eye slid off Mosca and out on to the dark road behind her, as if hoping she was errand girl for a coach, or at the very least a horseman.

‘Yes?’ he asked the empty road.

‘I been robbed…’ Mosca saw the door start to close, and had the presence of mind to push her clogless foot into the gap, a painful decision but one that kept the door open. ‘And… And I think my mistress said she was coming here. I was supposed to meet her, but I got grabbed and dragged off over the moor…’

The door opened warily.

‘Your mistress’s name?’

Exhaustion suddenly fogged Mosca’s mind. She snatched for a fistful of names, only to have them crumple in her hand like dead leaves, leaving her with nothing. She was just about to blurt out Clent’s name in desperation, when a woman’s voice interrupted.

‘Kale! What’s wrong with you? Don’t ask the lady’s name!’ The door was pulled wider, and Mosca found herself looking into the brown eyes of a woman not much taller than herself. Her neatness and pert precision of movement made Mosca think of a wren, a freckled little wren in a muslin gown. ‘We don’t ask for names on this night – you should know better. Now bring the girl in, and we’ll see if we can’t find her mistress.’

Mutely Mosca followed her diminutive champion to the fireside, where her legs decided that their work was done for the evening and crumpled under her. She was draped in a blanket that smelt of horse and had a burn hole in it, but which was gloriously, blissfully dry. Soon a wooden bowl of hot stew was in her hands, and in overeagerness she burned her tongue so that she could taste nothing but metal.

On the other side of the room she could hear a murmured conversation between her two new acquaintances, whom she guessed were probably the tavern keeper and his wife.

‘… let her in until we knew whether she was telling the truth.’

‘Oh, Kale! It’s past midnight. You know what that means? These three hours are sacred to When you least,