A third set of gloves tap-a-tapped a table in an inn, a table that offered an excellent view of a particular stretch of town wall. The tap-a-tapping only faltered when a certain plump poet known to his friends, admirers, enemies and creditors as Eponymous Clent strolled into view and came to a halt against exactly that portion of wall. His hands were behind him as if to cushion his back, while he gazed with apparent poetic rapture at the porridgey massing of the clouds above. His reverie over, Clent was on the move again, tucking something into his waistcoat pocket.
The gloves threw a coin down on to the table, then off they went in pursuit, the left glove slapping a hat on to a balding head, the right swinging a cane jauntily in time with the stride of a couple of well-brushed shoes. Nobody could suspect that anybody who walked so boldly and breezily could be a spy following a mark.
Clent himself walked in a leisurely fashion as if strolling alongside his muse, occasionally offering small bows to any passing ladies. Only his tendency to extend the same courtesy to small trees, empty sedan chairs and tethered whippets hinted at some distraction of mind. And after him went the gloves, the hat, the cane, the well-brushed shoes.
Clent took sudden turns through narrow passages, and the gloves took short cuts and quietly appeared behind him in the next street. Clent dallied to listen to a travelling orator, who was holding forth on the dangers of malignant levellers, to a relatively warm reception. The gloves waited in the crowd, applauding politely from time to time. Clent frowned at his watch, sped around the nearest corner . . . and the gloves rounded the turn after him, only to run head first into a substantial helping of Eponymous Clent.
A jolt of bodies. Near loss of balance. Each reaching out instinctively to steady the other, a recovery of equilibrium.
‘Ah – a thousand apologies!’
‘No, no, the fault is all mine –’
‘I have not ruffled your –’
‘No, see, all is well.’
The gloves had no choice but to continue past the poet at the same steady, jaunty pace until they were quite out of view. At the nearest corner, however, they halted so that their owner could peer back into the street, blunt moleskin fingers tap-a-tapping against the bricks.
Too late. The street that had held Eponymous Clent did so no longer. Somehow the portly poet had slithered through that gap of a few seconds and vanished into the crowd. The gloves tightened into fists of frustration, to a background harmony of sotto voce swearing.
A few streets away, Eponymous Clent strolled on in his ponderous fashion, his eyes skittering from one side of the road to the other in search of pursuers, his heart pattering like rain. During his collision, he had ‘steadied’ his pursuer with a firm hand at belt level and had felt the shape of a chatelaine beneath the cloth. He had been followed by a Locksmith. Worse still, he had left that Locksmith feeling foolish.
‘Ah – Mr Clent!’ The footman had barely opened the door to Clent’s knock when Sir Feldroll pushed past him, dapperly dressed in a scarlet redingote which brought out the redness in the lids of his sleep-starved eyes. ‘Mr Clent, what word? Your girl . . . the drop . . . is there word?’ His mouth quivered through a thousand nervous little shapes, while his eyes made high-speed reconnaissance missions across Clent’s countenance and aspect, noting the latter’s breathlessness and dishevelled air.
Clent gave a ruffled nod. ‘Ah, yes – news indeed, my lord, but a closed-doors matter, methinks.’ He cast a small significant glance at the footman, who was doing his best to veil his interest in the exchange. ‘Not words that we should let the wind catch.’
He was shown into the breakfast room, where he offered a somewhat distracted bow to the mayor. However, Clent might as well have capered in jester’s weeds for all the attention his courtesy earned. As soon as he pulled a letter from his pocket, nobody had eyes or thoughts for anything else.
The mayor seized it first, and read it aloud with a deepening frown.
‘Have found Lodgings with those persons we spoke of. BA well known hereabouts for getting Knocked Silly so he can win Candied Violets & Preserv’d Cherries & like Frippries for You Know Which Lady. I have spoke with him and will meet with him tomorrow when it would be well to have some Strong Arms to heft Cudgels so those Friends of our Friend needed Soon as Possible. Also think my Landlords might be a bit pixillated.’
‘Does anybody have the faintest idea what this means?’ The mayor’s eyebrows shot up interrogatively into two grey steel arches, and he thrust the missive into the eager hand of Sir Feldroll.
The younger man read it with an expression very like pain, tracing the lines with his fingertip again and again in his determination to absorb their meaning.
‘She’s alive,’ he murmured at last. ‘The sweetmeats – it must be for Miss Marlebourne. So she is definitely alive. And –’ the page quivered in his hand, and he smoothed it with his fingers as if trying to calm it – ‘at least . . . at least this ruffian Appleton seems to be taking some pains to see her treated well.’
‘Naturally, naturally,’ Clent cut in soothingly. ‘Dark as their hearts might be, those villains would as soon bowl with their own heads as harm that child. She is worth a fortune to most of them, and the very world to one of them, is she not?’
Sir Feldroll dropped into a chair. One sleepless night had evidently allowed him all too much leisure to imagine dark and terrible events befalling the mayor’s daughter.
‘And it would seem –’ Clent tapped the letter – ‘that our young spy has convinced Appleton to meet with her. BA can only be Brand Appleton.’
‘But why does she not describe the place where they are to meet?’ The mayor tweaked the letter back into his own grasp and tried to stare it into submission. ‘And these people with whom she is staying – who are they? Where are they? Why is she so damnably cryptic?’
Clent paused, drawing in a breath through pursed lips, and examined the mayor’s boots as if trying to guess their price.
‘Ah, yes,’ he answered pleasantly. ‘A curious string of obfuscations . . . but not I think inexplicable ones. Recall that she is a fly-child, fostered and fed all her life long on mistrust. Naturally she has a darkling mind and habits of secrecy. It is in her nature. It is in her name. And in this case . . . it is a very good thing. A very good thing indeed.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ asked Sir Feldroll.
‘I mean that if Mosca Mye had included the names of her hosts and the location of their dwelling in that letter I would not give this –’ he snapped his fingers – ‘for her life right now.’ Eponymous Clent drew himself up, his native sense of theatre overwhelming him for a second. ‘Gentlemen, someone has smelt us out. We are detected, decoded, discovered. Somebody was watching the letter drop.’
He left a dramatic pause, which his companions obligingly filled with consternation and exclamation.
‘With some degree of ingenuity,’ he continued, ‘I succeeded in losing the man who sought to follow me back here, but not before I had made good view of him. A Locksmith – I would stake my wits on it. The Locksmiths have doubtless read this letter, but left it where they found it so that we would suspect nothing and send a response, allowing them to learn more. So let us all spare a moment to thank Goodman Palpitattle for the tricky habits of mind that made young Mosca loath to include her own name – or anybody else’s – in her letter.’
‘But . . .’ Light was dawning in Sir Feldroll’s gaze. ‘What are we to do about this? If we cannot send Miss Mye letters through this drop . . .’
‘. . . then we cannot even warn her that the drop is compromised,’ continued Clent, clasping his hands and examining their interweaving. ‘Our young delver into the night town is herself in considerable danger. If we leave a note for her, it will be read. If we leave no note, they will know that we know that the drop is compromised. Mosca will become their only lead. They will follow her . . . or more likely wait to ambush her at the drop.’
Sir Feldroll creased his narrow, tufted bro
ws. ‘Half a dozen of my men will arrive later today – men with night names. His lordship the mayor is willing to make arrangements with the Committee of the Hours so that they can be let through the Twilight Gate tonight. Miss Mye is expecting them – if she has good sense, she will be waiting at the Gate to meet them. They can warn her about the drop then. And she can lead them to ambush this man Appleton at her next meeting with him.’
‘Assuming, of course,’ the mayor muttered dangerously, ‘that it is not the girl herself that has betrayed the location of the drop in exchange for her own freedom.’
A maid came in to clear the breakfast table, but the mayor continued speaking. Clent winced, and his hands made tiny involuntary motions, as if patting some restive child back to sleep. Hush, hush.
‘Indeed,’ continued the mayor, apparently oblivious to Clent’s concern, ‘if it were not for the testimony of Mistress Jennifer Bessel, I would have considerable doubts about placing my reliance this far on you, Mr Clent. However, given that you have managed to earn the respect of a lady of such elevated sensibilities and decency . . .’
A couple of expressions pulled Clent’s face to and fro between them like puppies trying to fight their way out of a bag.
‘Ah, yes – an admirable, ah, admirable creature. With boundless . . . qualities, and unfathomable . . . talent.’
‘I cannot imagine where this household would have been without her this last day or so.’ A gentle expression wandered on to the mayor’s angular features, where it looked rather out of place. ‘But then I suppose she discovered an inner strength and courage after the death of her husband.’
‘The death of her – ha, hmm, of course.’ After a brief convulsion Clent’s face took on the kindly expression of a pitying cherub. ‘So tragic. And . . . extremely unexpected.’
The maid departed again, tray in hand. Clent waited until the door closed behind her, eyes raised as if assessing the thread by which his good graces hung.
‘My lord mayor, I know that you have grave doubts about my secretary.’ He paused, then sighed. ‘Gentlemen, let me be perfectly candid with you. Before we came to Toll, Miss Mye and I had some . . . encounters with the Locksmiths – with Aramai Goshawk specifically. We did not precisely make an enemy of the gentleman, as you can see by the fact that we are both still above ground, but we most certainly did not make a friend.
‘Miss Mye knows all too well that crossing his path again would probably have fatal consequences. She cannot betray us to the Locksmiths without risking her own neck. If I might be blunt, you can place your trust in her because you are still her best . . . her only chance of weathering these disasters without being undone entirely.’
Neither of his listeners looked approving, but his words appeared to have sunk home.
‘Very well.’ The mayor settled back in his chair. ‘Then we had better contrive some letter to leave in the chink – something that will tell the Locksmiths nothing.’
‘And let us pray to the Little Goodkin that she goes to the Twilight Gate before the drop,’ murmured Sir Feldroll.
Like a good housewife eking out her store of dried fruits, Eponymous Clent knew how to make a little truth go a long way. It was a matter of theatre, like everything else. You sighed, as if you had given up all pretence, as if your listeners had been too shrewd for you. You spread your arms or your hands, as if flinging wide the doors of your treasury of secrets. And then, in tones of weary resignation, you said something like, Gentlemen, let me be perfectly candid with you . . .
In short, you let your audience examine your pockets so that they did not think to look up your sleeves. Eponymous Clent was sometimes candid. But he was never perfectly candid.
For example, his mind was currently full of thoughts that he had no intention of sharing with the mayor or Sir Feldroll at all. The letter drop had been discovered. How? Had Mosca betrayed them, or been clumsy and let herself be followed? Both were . . . possible. And yet he thought both unlikely.
Somewhere our secrets are spilling out of the sack and into the hands of the Locksmiths, he mused silently to himself as his feet led him away from the mayors abode. And I will wager my wits the hole is in the mayors own house. If I were Aramai Goshawk I would have placed a spy in the mayor’s household as soon as I arrived in Toll – before my horses flanks had even dried. And the mayor speaks of covert matters before his servants as if they had no more ears than a hatstand.
So. The Locksmiths have an agent in the mayor’s household, and so I suspect do the kidnappers. Are they one and the same? Are the Locksmiths and the kidnappers working together? Pray heavens they are not, or we shall have the devil’s own time rescuing the mayor’s daughter.
One thing was certain. Another means of contacting the night town was needed. And Clent’s daylight allies could not be trusted with knowledge of it.
An hour later, in a very different part of the town, a wooden door was flung abruptly open, so that daylight flooded into the scruffy little room beyond. The two figures within started and gaped, the fingers of one halting on the keys of his spinet, the other ceasing to drag his bow across the strings of his violin. In spite of their startled paralysis, music could still be clearly heard, and amid it the quavering of an invisible flute and the silvery glissando of an unseen harp. This phantom melody limped on for a few confused bars until the spinet player beat out a panic-stricken tattoo on the back wall with his fist, at which point the sound stumbled to a halt.
‘Sir!’ The violinist was the first to recover. ‘I . . . We are busy rehearsing, sir!’
‘Oh yes.’ The portly intruder offered him a beatific smile and invited himself into the room. ‘I was rather counting on that.’ He settled himself down on a battered chair and beamed. ‘I hope you will pardon me running you to ground in this irregular fashion, but I have a lifelong passion for the arts. I myself am a poet, but music – ah, music! Without it my soul has no wings. Oh, that I could only understand the way in which talented spirits like yourselves can pluck the very notes from the air . . .’ He stared about in ecstasy, as though untamed notes were flitting around him like silver fish.
The spinet player attempted a confused, seated half-bow, and the violinist managed a wan smile. Both were making a point of not glancing back at the wall from which the mysterious music had issued.
‘Though I must confess,’ continued the plump intruder in a lower tone, ‘I would be considerably more interested to know how one violin and a spinet can produce five instruments’ worth of melody.’
Both musicians promptly stammered and went crimson, which was more and at the same time less eloquent than they evidently intended.
‘Yes, I saw you perform at the mayor’s house a couple of nights ago. I daresay that in the better circles it is terribly bad form to notice that you two gentlemen are the only members of your troupe actually playing . . . and yet somehow managing to sound like a five-piece orchestra. Talking of manners, I have quite forgotten mine.’ The stranger pulled off his glove and held out his hand, so that his unbranded right palm was clearly visible. ‘Eponymous Clent.’
Recovering a little, the musicians each shook Clent’s hand, still regarding him warily.
‘I can guess how it happened.’ Clent’s narrowed eyes gleamed like parings from a silver coin. ‘The whole orchestra was made up of dayfolk, am I right? And then over time some of you were reclassified and sent into the night? And since then you have been rehearsing and performing in places where the walls are thin enough that your nightling brethren’s instruments can be heard as well as your own?’ He looked meaningfully towards the back wall, the one against which the spinet player had knocked his signal. From somewhere beyond it there was a stifled sneeze, and a muffled ‘hush’.
The two musicians glanced at one another. Then the violinist gave a small and rueful nod.
‘So you pay some day friends a few pennies to pose with instruments when you perform,’ continued Clent, ‘and most people do not notice, and the few that do turn a blind
eye to it. Of course they do. If they did not, then they would have to go without decent music. Now, I am sorry to breach etiquette in this fashion, but the moment I thought about your position properly I realized one important thing.’ Clent leaned forward and dropped his voice. ‘The whole orchestra simply had to meet up from time to time, in a place where you could hear one another. How else would you rehearse, or discuss where you would be performing next? And –’ he raised his voice a little, glancing towards the back wall – ‘if I could only interrupt such a rehearsal, I would have a way of getting a message to somebody in the night town. This is something I must do – as soon as possible.
‘Trust is always a gamble, is it not, my dear fellows? Particularly with a stranger. Can you trust me? Can I trust you? It seems I must. This is a matter of life, death and . . . remuneration.’
This last word brought a glimmer of light to the musicians’ eyes, and the violinist recovered the use of his voice. ‘Re . . . remuneration? What kind of remuneration?’
‘Well –’ Clent spread his hands – ‘I fear I have no actual money, but nonetheless I suggest we go and visit some of the town’s better shops. Strangely enough, since it became known that I was staying with the mayor, I have had no trouble acquiring credit throughout town. My dear fellow, money is no substitute for the right kind of friend . . .’
There was one more conversation that Clent needed, but before he sought it out he took certain pains. He obtained the services of a barber, ‘borrowed’ a cloth rose from a milliner by claiming he wished to compare it for colour to his new waistcoat and pounded some of the dust out of his coat. Hence when he met with Mistress Bessel in the pleasure garden he had all the extra dapperness that haste, eloquence and no money could apply.
She smiled at his flower, with the even smile of one who knows where their purse and wits are, thank you very much, and does not intend to be distracted into losing track of either.
‘I gather that your inestimable qualities have made a considerable impression on a certain esteemed gentleman,’ Clent remarked pleasantly. ‘I should doubtless shoot myself through broken-heartedness, or perhaps shoot him – I am yet to decide which would have greater romantic flourish.’