‘That is a very charming story, Mosca. Never tell it again.’
‘My father didn’t believe in the Beloved, but he didn’t believe in the Heart of the Consequence either – he wasn’t a Birdcatcher. Mr . . .’ Mosca had been about to say, Mr Kohlrabi worshipped him but he’d got him all wrong. But she was not ready to think about Kohlrabi yet. When she thought of his name she felt nothing, but she felt nothing in a way that hurt.
‘No, from what you say your father was an atheist, an out-and-out unbeliever. Atheism will see your head spiked on a church spire just as soon as Birdcatchery.’
Mosca was silent for a few moments.
‘But, Mr Clent,’ she said at last, ‘what if he was right? What if it’s true?’
‘I think we will have to leave the clerics and scholars to decide that.’
‘Why?’ Mosca slowed her pace.
‘Who else should?’ Clent gave her a sideways glance. ‘You perhaps? Ah, I foresee frightful things when you are old enough to work your will on the world. Cathedrals torn down, mention of both the Consequence and the Beloved banned from the common speech, and children brought up to believe in an empty, soulless heaven . . .’
‘No, I . . .’ They were passing a cluster of shrines. As she watched, a troop of grateful citizens trooped past the shrines, dropping different thanksgiving offerings before each icon. A biscuit for Goodman Blackwhistle. A mackerel for Goodman Sussuratch. A shiny coin for Goodman Greyglory. The little gods looked so good-humoured, sitting side by side, none of them fighting to have all the worshippers to themselves, and Mosca felt a rush of weary tenderness for the Beloved. It was so different from the cold, inhuman zeal of Kohlrabi. Perhaps, as her father had thought, the Beloved were toys that a childish world needed. Perhaps, too, the world was growing up, and even now was starting to put them aside, affectionately but forever.
‘Beloved are all right,’ she murmured gruffly. ‘Wouldn’t want to go burning ’em.’
‘Not even in the service of truth?’
‘That’s not serving truth!’ Mosca thought back to what she’d already said to Kohlrabi, and tried to make sense of her scattered thoughts. ‘I mean . . . if I told people what to believe, they’d stop thinking. And then they’d be easier to lie to. And . . . what if I was wrong?’
‘So . . . if you may not decide what is true, and the men of letters may not, who may?’
‘Nobody. Everybody.’ Mosca looked up at the windows where the jubilant people of Mandelion swung their bells. ‘Clamouring Hour – that’s the only way. Everybody able to stand up and shout what they think, all at once. An’ not just the men of letters, an’ the lords in their full-bottomed wigs, but the streetsellers an’ the porters an’ the bakers. An’ not just the clever men, but the muddle-headed, and the madmen, and the criminals, an’ the children in their infant gowns, an’ the really, really stupid. All of ’em. Even the wicked, Mr Clent. Even the Birdcatchers.’
‘Confusion, madam. The truth would be drowned out and never heard.’
‘Maybe.’
‘People would close their ears and beg to be told what to think.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Terrible ideas would spread like wildfire from tongue to tongue, and nobody would be able to stop them.’
‘Maybe.’
Clent was right, and Mosca knew it. Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men’s heads inside out and warp their destinies. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled. And this was a good thing, a wonderful thing . . . and in her heart Mosca was sure that Clent knew this too. Mosca recalled the words she had heard Pertellis reading to the Floating School – words that she now knew had been written by her father, Quillam Mye.
. . . there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would try to silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far . . .
In Suet Street, currant-scented steam eased through a gash in the diamond-paned window of a baker, lighting a flame in Mosca’s stomach and a concern in her mind.
‘What ’appened to the Cakes, Mr Clent?’
‘She lives and thrives, though I fancy she will be busy for a time, tending to that young admirer of hers until his shoulder recovers.’
. . . the Cakes piling Carmine’s bedside with cinnamon treats and brandy-apple pies, open treacle pastries covered in flourishes of cream, and all the while wearing the pink-faced, bright-eyed look that made her seem less pert and pointed . . .
‘What ’bout Mr Pertellis an’ the radicals? They won’t be arrested, will they?’
‘I think not. The radicals have spoken with the guilds, and I fancy an uneasy truce will be struck. Neither side will be happy with it, but Man is born to walk this world in misery.’
‘So . . . really, the Locksmiths an’ the rest will be taking over the city after all?’
‘Ah no – Blythe and his radicals would never allow that, and at the moment he has the backing of the whole city. And I think even when the hubbub has died down he will do well enough with Pertellis and that alarming ladle-wielding ptarmigan to advise him.’
. . . Blythe sitting uncomfortably in the Duke’s spire and scowling his way through sheaves of papers, while Pertellis patiently leans over his shoulder to point and explain, and Miss Kitely frowning at a map of Mandelion as if it were the pattern for a smock that needed adjusting for a new owner . . .
‘Hopewood Pertellis asked a great deal about you while we were in the coffeehouse,’ Clent added in a deliberately casual manner.
‘You didn’t tell him I was dragged out of a burning building by a goose, or kidnapped by gypsies, or any of those things?’
‘I was the model of candour. I told him that you were an inscrutable little animal and never told me anything, but that I believed your parents were dead.’
They were crossing the Ashbridge. Unexpectedly, Clent slowed and halted.
‘Mosca, give me the leash for a moment.’ She obeyed, compelled by the unusual seriousness in his manner. ‘The Guildmasters may have banished us, but their displeasure lies chiefly on my shoulders . . . and perhaps that of the goose. The truth is, they care little where you go. Pertellis has an interest in your welfare, and if you went to him I have no doubt he would take you in.’
It was true, Mosca felt it. And as if she were riffling the years of her life like the pages of her book, she saw in a very few seconds what would happen and how it would all go. Pertellis’s spring-blue eyes would brighten and he would take her in without hesitation or reproach. Miss Kitely would pick out some clothes for her, and she would find herself taking dictation in the Floating School, then teaching the younger children when it was noticed how well she read. In a hundred quiet little ways she would become trusted, and appreciated, and finally necessary. One day Pertellis would look up at her as she marshalled his library, and he would realize that she was not twelve now, she was twenty. And she would marry him, or someone very like him . . . as her mother had done.
‘No,’ said Mosca.
‘You have a chance of security here – food, shelter, friends, prospects . . . books . . .’
‘No.’ Mosca bit her lip and shook her head firmly. Books no longer seemed quite enough. I don’t want a happy ending, I want more story.
‘Mosca . . . I am not even certain whither I am wending. What can I offer a secretary but a life of sleeping in hedges, chicken-stealing, and climbing out through midnight windows to avoid paying innkeepers in the morning?’
Nothing, except . . . loose strands of possibility snaking like maypole ribbons. Roads fringed with russet bracken, roads sparkling with frost, hill roads split with the rising sun, forest roads livid with fallen leaves, the Crystalcourt with its million windows throwing tiaras of rainbow colour upon the floor, ladies with legends of days past embroidered along their trains, wine dark as blackberry juice sipped under a green-fringed canopy, accents as strange as a walking cane worn by another hand,
estuaries bold with man-o’-war ships, and perhaps beyond it the shimmering, much-dreamed-upon expanse of the sea . . .
‘You need someone to look out for you, Mr Clent. You’re a rotten liar. Good liars lie only when they need to. ’Sides, if I left you with Saracen you’d just eat ’im.’
Mosca held out her hand for Saracen’s leash, and after a moment’s hesitation Clent gave it back to her, with a small but ceremonious bow.
Disclaimer
This is not a historical novel. It is a yarn. Although the Realm is based roughly on England at the start of the eighteenth century, I have taken appalling liberties with historical authenticity and, when I felt like it, the laws of physics.
‘A delightful historical fantasy about the power of books – with a thoroughly unexpected heroine. Sophisticated, funny and fresh; I loved it’ Meg Rosoff
‘Frances Hardinge’s phenomenally inventive Fly By Night is remarkable and captivating, masterfully written and with a wealth of unexpected ideas . . . Full of marvels’ Sunday Times
‘Mosca is, rather like Philip Pullman’s Lyra, a fierce black-eyed street survivor . . . Fly By Night is like delving into a box of sweets with a huge array of flavours’ TES
‘Fly By Night is a wonderful and wondrous novel, wholly original while following brilliantly in the footsteps of Joan Aiken, Leon Garfield and DianaWynne Jones. Frances Hardinge has joined the company of writers whose books I will always seek out and read’ Garth Nix
Author Biography
Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge, isolated old house on a hilltop in Kent that ‘wuthered’ when the wind blew and inspired her to write strange, magical stories from an early age. After leaving school she read English at Oxford University. Fly By Night, her first novel to be published, was immediately snapped up in several countries and has been shortlisted for a number of awards. Frances lives in Oxford.
Also by Frances Hardinge
Verdigris Deep
Gullstruck Island
Twilight Robbery
Acknowledgements
I would also like to thank the following people: Maureen Waller for her fascinating and colourful book, 1700: Scenes from London Life, from which I learned about marriage houses, ‘a fair mark’ and countless other fascinating details of eighteenth-century life; the Duelling Association, for showing me a historical world full of wit, wickedness and panache; Colin Shaw of Roving Romania, who showed us around the wild countryside of that bruised and beautiful country, with its tiny shrines, name-day celebrations and ‘weddings of the dead’, and the denizens of Zehazel for all their support over the years.
First published 2005 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2006 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-47716-1 EPUB
Copyright © Frances Hardinge 2005
The right of Frances Hardinge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night
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