‘And you could have just married in the first place and gone off to be Lady Feldroll, but in Waymakem you might not be everybody’s golden girl, everybody’s special angel. No, why would you do that when you could stay here, with Sir Feldroll and everyone else courtin’ you and lettin’ you string ’em along? You wanted to keep your cake and eat it . . . and eat everybody else’s too.
‘And I bet it was easy, setting up your own kidnap, what with Brand Appleton being half mad in love with you. I bet he was pleased as a pig in slurry when you told him you wanted to elope with him using the money from the ransom. Bringing Skellow into the plan must have been your idea too – Appleton never liked him, never trusted him. Who was Skellow, then? Your black-market man? You must have been thick as thieves with him all along, plottin’ to double-cross Appleton when he’d served your turn and take the ransom for yourselves, so you’d be rich for the rest of your lives. But they were both nightside, weren’t they? You needed somebody dayside to make the kidnap happen. So you gave Skellow some money for tolls, and sent him out to hire the Romantic Facilitator at the Pawnbrokers’ Auction. Only . . . what you got instead was us.
‘But you put us to good use, didn’t you?’ Mosca could feel all the parts of the truth tumbling into place one after another like dominoes. ‘We got your father out of the way for you, and afterwards, that night, you went off to pray in the chapel – I remember. So when Skellow crept into the salvation hole to report in to you, you was kneeling ready to talk to him. It was you who told him we were imposters, you who told him about the trap we were laying.
‘You threw your trinkets and pins around your room, so it looked like there had been a struggle. Then you just climbed out your window and down Skellow’s ladder and away. And when we found your window open and you gone that morning, we all guessed there must have been a traitor in the mix . . . but none of us thought it might be you.’
All was quiet, but for the tutting of the clock and a scattering of bird notes like china splinters. One of the two of us, thought Mosca, is in a lot of trouble right now. I wonder which of us it is? She isn’t turning pale or plucking at her handkerchief. Oh draggles, I think it’s me.
‘Some people get a mad sickness from reading,’ Beamabeth said at last, her voice still calm. ‘If I say that your reading has driven you mad, everybody will believe me. If I say that you were in league with my kidnappers all along, everybody will believe me. If I say you came and threatened me just now, everybody will believe me.’ It was true. Mosca could feel it in her bones. Everyone would succumb to Beamabeth’s charm like beetles drowning in marmalade. At long last Beamabeth lowered her eyes and returned her gaze to her sewing. ‘Now I want you out of my sight. And by dusk I want you out of my town.’
‘You’re nothing but a name!’ Mosca clenched her fists. She knew everything, and it was unbearable to know that her knowledge was useless. ‘Without it, you would be nothing! All they love is your name!’
‘Oh?’ Up went the dark gold eyebrows. Out came the dimples and dainty little teeth. ‘And do you imagine that if you had my name you could ever be like me?’
‘No,’ snarled Mosca, tingling from toe to crown. ‘Not in a hundred thousand years.’ The cups on the breakfast table rattled as Mosca stamped out of the room and slammed the door.
‘Mr Clent! We been hoodwinked! By a shuffling, wheedle-cutting, shurk of a—’
‘Child, child!’ Clent raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Four nights in Toll-by-Night, and thus she returns to me,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Mosca, I wish sometimes that you did not pick up words quite so swiftly.’
However, as Clent listened to Mosca’s high-volume explanation she saw his expression pass through indulgence, incredulity, astonishment and outrage, making its final stop at a greyish shade of mauve.
‘Gambling Fates . . . and we have been risking gizzard and gullet for this precocious piece of perfidy and perniciousness!’
‘That’s exactly what I said at the time!’ agreed Mosca eagerly. ‘Only . . . with not quite the same words.’
‘Such treachery behind such a sweet . . . er, one moment. Did you say “said”? You have spoken of this? To whom? Not to her ?’
Mosca looked mulish. ‘There are words I can swallow, and words I cannot, Mr Clent! Not without them turning to poison in my belly. ’Twas all I could do not to take her nose between my knuckles and twist it till the freckles turned blue ow OW! Mr Clent, you are pulling off my arm!’
‘Madam, we are leaving!’ Clent had, with the dexterity of custom, snatched up his coat, Mosca’s arm and a bowl of dried fruit, taking only a moment to empty said bowl into his pockets. ‘May I point out that the last person to pose a threat to Miss Beamabeth’s secrets took a bullet through the vitals last night? For the moment she will be taken aback and out of step, but it will not be long before she realizes that the best way to blunt your blade is to blacken our names before we can tarnish hers. If we are to leave this accursed town, it must be NOW, before the wind changes and we find ourselves under the hatches again.’
‘But . . . that smirking spit-gobbet! She will get away with it all! We must show everyone what she is—’
‘Child, our credit still stands on the shakiest ground – nobody will believe us! Nobody. Yes, yes, by all means expose her – but perhaps by letter?’ Clent, gripped by his new momentum, had already dragged Mosca halfway across the room, and it was all she could do to pull free and run to collect Saracen. ‘Once we have put some town walls and several leagues between us? Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance – like a thrown trifle. Come!’
Mosca, Clent and Saracen took no leave of the mayor, for that would only have caused delays. Instead they strode purposefully through the curiously quiet and nervous town to the eastern gate, Clent with his best veneer of dapper confidence, Mosca with her arms full of goose, taking only one footman to show that Mosca was in ‘custody’, and the paperwork to show that she was being ‘evicted’.
The daylit streets looked peculiar to Mosca now. She kept glancing around for shortcuts she had learned over the last four nights, or seeing half-familiar corners gilded with sunlight. Could that gentle road full of glovers really be where she had seen the Clatterhorses clash? Could that homely lane full of drapers really lead into the Chutes? And could Toll-by-Day really turn on Mosca and Clent a second time, after all they had done?
Yes, probably.
At the eastern gate they requested passage out, and presented the toll they had taken so many risks to acquire. The guards were clearly suspicious of Mosca’s badge and the pair’s air of dishevelled urgency, and made a point of examining their papers thoroughly and counting the money with care. The presence of a footman in the mayor’s livery, however, seemed to be a point in the favour of the would-be travellers.
The guards brought out a ponderous ring of keys and unlocked a small door set in one of the gates. A rush of cold, moor-scented air hit Mosca in the face, and she almost panicked. She had grown so used to Toll’s reek of closeness, its trapped animal smell, that she had forgotten how the air of freedom tasted. It was too good, it was too close, it would be taken away from her. The door opened to show a craggy rise shivering with weather-bleached grass . . .
‘Hey! You!’ One of the guards caught her by the arm as she was stepping through the door. Saracen’s neck rose into an ominous curve. ‘Hand it over!’
Mosca stared at the guard in incomprehension, until she realized where he was glaring. With an incredulous snort she pulled off her badge and dropped it in his hand.
‘This? Did you think I was planning to steal it? Do you think I ever want to see that – or your stinkin’ old pit of a town – again?’ She pulled loose from his grasp, staggered out through the gate and then broke into a run. She ran into the very throat of the wind, so her bonnet ribbons whipped against her ears and deafened her, and her lilac skirts were blown back against her legs.
She gave a banshee shriek of sheer glee and whirled about,
Saracen erupting from her arms, wings spread for his own little victory glide. There they were, the high walls of Toll, dull and rugged as stale cake, and she was outside them.
Ignoring Clent’s look of entreaty, Mosca caught up a small rock and threw it at Toll with all her might. It rebounded off the stonework above the gate with a ‘pick’ noise, startling a family of jackdaws above.
‘Goodbye, Toll, you old maggot barrel! Hope you fall off yer perch!’ The town’s arrow slits seemed to stretch in astonishment as they peered down at her tiny impudence. She scampered a little further away, snatched up another stone and flung it after the first. ‘Hope all your chimneys clog!’ Thrown stone. ‘And your clock falls off!’ Thrown stone. ‘And your . . .’ Her voice trailed away.
Her pursuit of better stones to throw had led her in a backwards scramble up the rise. Now, twisting around to stoop for yet another missile, she at last saw what lay beyond the rise.
Looking down across the declining plain of wind-whipped moss she could see a long road twisting between the gorsestrewn shoulders of the crags, all the way down into the levelling moors. Up this road, in the direction of Toll, surged a river of people. Hundreds of men, trudging in columns with pikes along their shoulders. Great wagons, laden with sacks and barrels. The stubby black muzzles of mortars, twitching as they were hauled up the uneven path. And behind them a few full-blown cannons, dragged by teams of horses. To judge by the different standards fluttering in the breeze, the three nearest cities had massed their forces to march on Mandelion after all, and it seemed the march had already started, even without Toll’s permission.
Perhaps, like Mosca, Sir Feldroll had lost patience with Toll and decided to throw stones at its walls. However, it looked as if his stones were bigger than hers.
Mosca’s glee burned itself out in a second. She dropped down to sit on a boulder like a lilac-coloured imp. All these troops and weapons were meant for Mandelion, for people she knew And so she could only stare at the soldiers raising tan-coloured campaign tents, the riflemen cleaning their guns, Eponymous Clent handing a paper over to Sir Feldroll in exchange for a small purse of money . . .
Clent did not look round as Mosca ran to join him, but continued pointing out details on the map in his hand with a tone of airy pride, as if everything it showed belonged to him.
And, as you can see, it was originally a map of Toll-by-Day, but some of the night-time alterations have been added in ink, should your men find themselves fighting their way through the streets after dark. And I have marked in a few “murder holes” I noticed above the gates for dropping hot sand or pitch on invaders –’
‘Hopefully this will not be needed,’ responded Sir Feldroll, whose face had now settled into a steady crimson twitch-gavotte. The close attention he was paying to the map rather suggested that he thought it would be needed. ‘My thanks, Mr Clent – Miss Mye – you at least have been as good as your words throughout this bitter business. I am glad to
see that the pair of you are leaving, before everything becomes . . . difficult.’ He halted, clenched his jaw and regarded the walls of Toll with a resentful but appraising eye.
‘This is our last chance to strike against Mandelion before winter settles in,’ he added through his teeth. ‘If not now, then the radicals of Mandelion will have months – months! – to strengthen their position and find their feet. I have given the mayor an ultimatum. If he does not keep his promise and arrange for the troops to have passage through Toll by noon . . . then perhaps a carcass over his walls will serve as a warning and show him how serious I am.’
Mosca boggled. She remembered carcasses from Mandelion, great barrels of burning matter hurled out of a cannon.
Sir Feldroll the mild-mannered, attentive fop had vanished. This was a nobleman who was not used to being opposed, and who was reaching an impressive powder keg of temper at the end of a two-month fuse. Perhaps he still cared about winning Beamabeth’s goodwill, but evidently not enough to stop him bombarding her town.
‘But, Sir Feldroll –’
Mosca’s outrage was clipped before it could fly by Clent grabbing her arm and dragging her away, directing a warm and engaging smile over his shoulder at Sir Feldroll as he did so.
‘Mr Clent!’ squeaked Mosca. ‘You sold him my map!’
‘And why not?’ answered Clent in an undertone, still guiding her from the simmering knight. ‘We have no further need of it, and that gentleman might do. What we do need at this time is travelling expenses . . . with which we are now supplied.’
‘You got no more soul than a toadstone, Mr Clent!’ spat Mosca, yanking her wrist free. She screwed her features into a scowl and looked away so that he would not see the tears prickling into her eyes.
‘Do you really imagine that your scrawl of a map has just sealed the fate of Toll and Mandelion?’ Clent asked quietly but coolly. ‘Madam, it will make no real difference. We are simply not that important. We are ants watching the clash of dragons, and trying not to get cooked to a crisp by creatures that have barely noticed us.’
‘We did make a difference once.’ Mosca dug her nails into her hands. ‘We made a difference in Mandelion.’
‘Perhaps.’ Clent gave a long sigh. ‘Yes, in a small way we helped Mandelion to revolt. And even that – what good has it done? We have seen the whole area between the rivers plunged into a state of near famine, Toll collapsing from within and turning to the Locksmiths, and now the armies of the other cities marching in against the “radical threat”. And if Mandelion does not fall now more armies will march next year, and there will be yet more bloodshed. Bold actions have consequences, child.’
Mosca felt a tear threatening to tip out of one of her eyes, and she wiped it angrily away with her knuckle.
‘I ain’t sorry.’ She glared at him. ‘Even with all that has gone wrong since, it was right. We made a good difference!’ And maybe that is the only thing either of us will ever do that was worth anything. And if Sir Feldroll’s army gets there it will have been for nothing.
‘Well . . . put your mind at peace. The mayor is unlikely to give in to Sir Feldroll, even when he does start pelting the town with burning debris. He will count on the Luck to stop Sir Feldroll invading successfully. So instead the mayor will turn to the Locksmiths and sign papers with them all the faster, a couple of unlucky people will be cooked in their houses and Toll will become a Locksmith town by nightfall. There will be a siege until Sir Feldroll gets bored, some people will starve . . . and Mandelion will be safe a little longer.’
‘But that . . .’ That was not much better. ‘There has to be a way . . .’
Clent’s expression had set up camp somewhere between amusement and pain. ‘Sometimes I forget that your small size is the result of youth, not pickling. You are . . . young, Mosca.
‘To be young is to be powerless, but to have delusions of power. To believe that one can really change things, make the world better and simpler in good and simple ways. To grow old is to realize that nobody is ever good, nothing is ever simple. That truth is cruel at first, but finally comforting.’
‘But . . .’ Mosca broke in, then halted. Clent was right, she knew that he was. And yet her bones screamed that he was also wrong, utterly wrong. ‘But sometimes things are simple. Just now and then. Just like now and then people are good.’
‘Yes.’ Clent gave a deep sigh. ‘Yes, I know. Innocent people force one to remember that. For you see, there is a cruelty in all innocence.’
Mosca remained silent for a few moments, daunted by the colossal sadness in his voice. ‘I’ll never understand you,
Mr Clent,’ she said at last.
‘Mosca,’ he replied simply, ‘I truly hope you never do.’ They might have spent another few minutes in pensive
silence, if down by the road Saracen had not decided to begin
the war on his own.
To be fair, he had been provoked. Two soldiers who had already pitched camp had broken open a loaf without any thought for the hun
ger of waterfowl in the vicinity. The soldiers in question were now hiding on the far side of one of the provisions wagons, and one had sneezed gunpowder over his arm and shoulder while trying to load his pistol in too much haste.
‘Don’t shoot!’ Mosca sprinted down towards Saracen’s enraged green-and-white form. Nonetheless she might have been too late, had another figure not run in to place a restraining hand on the soldier’s arm.
‘No, please, I know this goose, it belongs to a friend of mine –’
‘Mistress Leap!’ It was indeed the midwife, with her bundle of goods on her back and her husband in tow, who had interceded on Saracen’s behalf. ‘You got out of Toll!’ Mosca was genuinely relieved, for she had been worried that the Locksmiths might have guessed at the Leaps’ involvement in Beamabeth’s escape and stopped them leaving.
The soldier with the pistol very reluctantly lowered it, all the while meeting the gaze of Saracen’s fearless, unblinking black button eyes. The man did not seem reassured, but there was little he could do with a happy reunion taking place between him and his enemy-in-plumage.
Mistress Leap pulled Mosca into a hug, and then the pair of them held each other at arm’s length and studied each other by daylight for the first time. Despite the overcast sky, the midwife was having to squint against the light, but her spirits seemed to be giddily high. Her husband stood nearby, and had the look of a rabbit that has just realized the pen door is open and is staring at everything beyond it with rapt terror. He seemed particularly afraid of gorse.
‘Look at you!’ Mistress Leap beamed, and Mosca could see how dingily pale and hollow her cheeks were and had probably always been. ‘Your eyes really are jet black! I thought they were. I am so glad you managed to escape as well! We have been waiting out here for you since we left town last night – and I was worried, but then I saw your goose, so I knew you must be nearby.
‘Oh, and Mr Clent safe as well!’ Mistress Leap beamed at Clent as he approached, walking carefully around Saracen’s animated dissection of the bread loaf. ‘Glad to see you well, sir. Why do we not all travel to Waymakem together?’