‘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, 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 th
e head, her eyes wide insolent black pennies. She let her gaze drop for a barely perceptible instant to Mistress Bessel’s gloved hands. If you cry me out for a criminal, two can play at that game.
‘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.’ All the warmth had drained out of Mistress Bessel’s tone, leaving it as wintry as her eyes. ‘You would turn up now, like a witch’s imp come to claim a soul. What hell-cat coughed you up on my doorstep, tonight of all nights?’ Her gaze dropped to the dribble of soup running down Mosca’s chin. ‘I better not be paying for your dinner!’ she snapped.
‘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 . . . thing of yours.’
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.’ Wish he was.
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! I didn’t!’ Mosca held up one wrist, where the red marks from her bonds were still visible. ‘I was in Grabely an’ some beaky maggot grabbed me to be his scribe at the auction cos he couldn’t read, and he’d have killed me afterwards if I hadn’t run off and I didn’t know you were here and I don’t know where here is and I don’t even know how to get back to Grabely . . .’
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 however seemed to forget her instantly, instead gazing with rapt intensity at the dancing flames, as if her own thoughts were performing for her within the theatre of the hearth.
The plump fingers of one hand stroked the gloved palm of the other, as if soothing a wounded or frightened animal. There was a brightness in her eyes, as if she too had been wounded or frightened. The expression on her face made Mosca uneasy, in the same way that it is troubling to see a bell cord swaying in a wind you cannot feel, or watch a caged bird twittering in fear of an intruder you cannot see. Mosca did not understand what the expression meant, but was sure that she had glimpsed the same look hovering on the stocky woman’s face when she had first been shown into the parlour, before she saw Mosca. Clearly Mosca was not the only one with worries, and whatever it was that haunted Mistress Bessel, it had nothing to do with Mosca Mye.
The events of the preceding night had taken their toll on Mosca, and she did not wake until mid-morning, when the sound of voices and scraping pewter from the kitchens below finally penetrated the fog of exhaustion.
The hangings of Mistress Bessel’s bed were pulled back, and the rugs that covered the mattress pushed aside. Clearly Mosca’s new mistress’ had already risen. Mosca’s shed clothes had dried now before the fire, but their muddy drenching had left some of the fabric stiff and rough as canvas. There was still something luxurious, nonetheless, about pulling dry stockings on over her cold feet.
Lost: one bonnet, two clogs. Kept in spite of the odds: two thumbs, one life. Mosca poured a little water from a ewer into a bowl and quickly washed the blackberry scratches on her arms, the bluish bruises and cuts left by her nocturnal climb and the red marks on her thin, pale wrists. She was alive. Somehow, impossibly, she had survived the night. Better yet, she now recalled with a malicious satisfaction, she had probably sent the murderous Skellow on a wild goose chase to meet his Romantic Facilitator in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And she was going back to Grabely. Mosca had talked to Mistress Bessel of returning there almost without thinking,
just as she had automatically asked Skellow for a fee that would cover Clent’s debts.
‘I’m going back there to find Saracen,’ Mosca told a splinter in her fingertip. ‘That’s all.’
When she arrived downstairs she found Mistress Bessel seated in the parlour, looking so warm and rosy that Mosca almost wondered whether she had imagined the haunted look she had glimpsed the preceding n
ight. The plump woman appeared to be in earnest conversation with a black-clad man. When Mosca entered he paused mid-sentence just long enough for his small grey eyes to glare at her from under his wild black brows with short-sighted intensity. This alarmed her until she guessed that he was hypnotized by his own fierce, flame-like thoughts and barely saw the things around him.
Mistress Bessel had her lips pursed to show that she was following his words with acute interest, but Mosca could not help noticing that her blue eyes looked a little glazed. She was wielding her porridge spoon in a way that struck Mosca as clumsy, though she could not pin down why.
‘My own hypothesis –’ the stranger clasped his long, bony hands in his lap – ‘is that the miasmatic theory can explain the sightings of ghosts. They are often seen in places where many people have died, yes? I believe that a special sort of noxious vapour is left by a corpse at the moment of death, tainting an area and poisoning the air. Everyone who lives in that area breathes the miasma each day without knowing it, allowing the tiny fragments to enter their system and attack the brain. The brain bulges and buckles inside the skull like an oyster in a shell too tight for it, and out of it come visions, hallucinations, waking dreams – in short the so-called ghosts.’
‘Why, that is quite marvellous, Doctor Glottis!’ exclaimed Mistress Bessel. ‘Queer how it all makes sense when you explain it. So the brains of gravediggers and hangmen must be full to the squeak with masmias and ghosts, then?’
‘Ah yes!’ The doctor looked dreamy for a moment. ‘How I would love to look inside the skull of a hangman! But one simply cannot get the bodies – according to the law only executed criminals can be taken for study, and only a set number of those, and the Guild of Barber-Surgeons claims most of them.’ He sighed. ‘But at least here on the borders, a region that has always been rich in war and death, at least here I can wander and look at the inhabitants and satisfy myself whether . . .’ he glanced towards the distant landlord and lowered his voice, ‘whether their skulls are bulging.’