Mistress of Reunions and Remembered Faces. During those hours, if you reunite two people who have been separated by chance, then it means you’ll have good luck the whole of the next year. So let’s see if we can match her up with her lost mistress. I’m sure her mistress will pay for the stew.’
Mosca had no idea how she would conjure a mistress out of thin air, but she was sure that inspiration would come more easily on a full stomach.
‘Well, we’ve only one lady staying here – and she left hours ago and hasn’t come back…’
As if to refute the landlord’s words, there came a brisk knock at the door. Mosca stiffened as she heard the door open and the landlady’s tones become sprightly and welcoming.
‘Good to see you back, ma’am. Quite a perilous cold night for you to be out in. Oh, do come and warm yourself by the fire!’
‘That would be most welcome, my currant-bun.’ A warm summer breeze of a voice. ‘Ooh, as you say, a most perishing night, but, well, business is business, isn’t it?’
‘Ye-e-es…’ The landlady was clearly unwilling to know too much about the business in question, and swiftly changed the subject.
Mosca stiffened, her jaw frozen mid-chew. The new voice was not unfamiliar
Two women came into the room. The first was the little wren-landlady. The second was sturdy and sun- browned, with a good-natured aura that seemed to pour into the room with her like warm custard. Under her cap a thick plait of grey-touched auburn hair was twisted like a bread swirl. A dark green travelling cloak swathed her stocky figure.
‘… this girl looking for her mistress.’ The flow of the landlady’s speech continued, oblivious of the way her two companions had locked stares and frozen, like cats in a contested alley. ‘And since you’re the only lady staying with us, we thought she must be yours… Do you know her?’
‘Oh yes, I know her,’ answered Mistress Jennifer Bessel.
Mosca and Mistress Bessel had indeed met before. Their acquaintance had been very brief, and had involved rather more screaming, breakage and hasty flight than is generally considered promising for a healthy friendship.
‘Oh, now, that’s wonderful!’ The landlady clasped her hands. ‘Well, settle yourself down, ma’am, I’ll take your cloak – and your gloves are all over mud; if you want me to take them away and clean them…’
‘No!’ Mistress Bessel’s answer was sharp enough for the landlady to falter and look anxious.
In a flash, Mosca remembered why Mistress Bessel wore gloves. When they last met, the gloves in question had been ladylike affairs in black lace, through which Mosca had just about been able to make out a dark mark shaped like a ‘T’ on the back of each hand. It was enough to tell her that once upon a time Mistress Bessel had been branded as a thief. Mistress Bessel now wore good kid gloves. Evidently she was becoming more careful, and less willing to let people see the marks.
It was an opening, a tiny promise of a foothold, and Mosca reached for it.
‘Hello, ma’am,’ Mosca said with a docile little bob of the head, her eyes wide insolent black pennies. She let her gaze drop for a barely perceptible instant to Mistress Bessel’s gloved hands.
‘Poor little currant-bun,’ said Mistress Bessel, fixing Mosca with eyes the blue of a midwinter morning. ‘Look at the dear, draggled thing – don’t you just want to wring her out like a dishcloth?’ She turned to the landlady. ‘Now don’t you worry about us, my lovely. My girl and I will take ourselves up to our room and be out of your way, won’t we?’
Still retaining eager custody of the stew bowl, and hugging her blankets around herself, Mosca followed Mistress Bessel’s stocky form up a stairway almost too narrow for her. They entered a box-like, windowless, dark- panelled room with a drably draped bed and a busy little hearth.
Once the door was closed and Mosca had crouched by the fire, Mistress Bessel fixed her with her gimlet gaze, and then very slowly put her fists on her hips. Maybe it was a trick of the light thrown upwards by the fire, but Mistress Bessel’s face seemed thinner than Mosca remembered it, and more haggard. Perhaps the death of summer had not been kind to her either.
Mosca did not see the accusing glare as a reason to stop eating, but instead decided to scoop food faster until her spoon became a blur. If there was a danger that she would have to flee into the night once more, she was determined to do so with as much stew inside her as possible.
‘
‘You can’t be short of money if you’re going to the Pawnbrokers’ Auction,’ answered Mosca through a mouthful of parsnip. It was a wild shot, but why else would the woman be out so late? Mistress Bessel flinched, and Mosca guessed that she had hit her mark.
Mistress Bessel gave a quick glance over her shoulder. ‘All right,’ she said in a low mutter, ‘where is he? If you’re here, your partner in crime can’t be far away. I’ve still got a bone to pick with him.’
‘Mr Clent’s in the debtors’ prison in Grabely, and set about with creditors. If you want to pick his bones clean, you’ll have to join the queue.’
‘I do not mean Eponymous!’ Mistress Bessel glared at her, and this time Mosca noted a decidedly apprehensive look in her eye. ‘I mean that…
Saracen tended to leave a strong impression. Months before, while on their travels, Clent and Mosca had stayed for a brief interval at Mistress Bessel’s shop. While Mosca was away on a shopping trip, Clent had tried to make a present of Saracen to Mistress Bessel. Mosca had had her own ideas about this, as had Saracen, and Saracen had ended up making a cripplingly strong impression upon Mistress Bessel, Mistress Bessel’s apprentice, a counter, two tables, a window and most of the contents of her shop.
‘Saracen’s not here.’
Mistress Bessel relaxed somewhat, and then Mosca’s previous words seemed to penetrate.
‘Did you say that Eponymous was in Grabely? So… you’re still gallivanting around after him, are you?’ Mistress Bessel’s face furrowed for a moment with an expression halfway between bitterness and wistfulness. Then the softer expression vanished, leaving only creases of suspicion in her brow. ‘So that’s it.’ Her voice was a knife. ‘He sent you to find me. He still thinks he can honey-talk money out of me, after all this time. How did he know where I was?’
‘He didn’t!
Mosca trailed off only when the air in her lungs was exhausted, but to her relief she saw the suspicious look in the stocky woman’s face fade and relax a little.
Mistress Bessel settled herself in a hearthside chair which received her with a creak. For a few moments she stared pensively at Mosca, her eyes widening and narrowing as if to allow in thoughts of different sizes.
‘Well, why not?’ she said at last with a sigh. She pulled her shawl up around her neck and suddenly gave Mosca a broad, freckled, summery smile. ‘Don’t let me keep you awake with my chattering, blossom. You look like a bundle of wet kindling.’
Mosca did not answer, partly through surprise at the change of tone, and partly because her last hasty mouthful had caused her to sneeze barley into her nose.
‘Pop your head down and get some sleep,’ said Mistress Bessel in her most motherly tone, ‘and tomorrow I’ll take you back to Grabely and we can go visit Eponymous together.’
Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion’s voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that there is a scorpion somewhere in the room but can’t see where it is. She did not much like the idea of settling down where Mistress Bessel could watch her sleep either, but what other option was there? Nothing but the moors and the owls and the cold and Skellow with his thumb-cutting knife.
Mosca pulled off her wet stockings and kerchief to hang in front of the fire, and nestled down in her blanket by the fireplace. She pretended to sleep, all the while keeping a sly watch on the woman in the chair. Mistress Bessel
