The sun pricked holes in the weave of her hat and danced from ripple to ripple as the Maid eased its way through a haze of midges and a chase of jewelled damselflies. As the barge approached, moorhens abandoned their gossiping in mid-river, and in the green darks among the nettles coots crouched and stared down their white beaks.
Each vessel they passed flew a flag proudly announcing its royal allegiance. In theory, everybody in the country agreed that the Realm needed a monarch again, and was on tenterhooks to discover who the Committee of Kingmakers would choose to fill the throne. In practice, the Committee had been on the brink of a decision for twenty years, and many of the would-be kings and queens waiting in exile had died and handed on their claims to their children. In the meantime the Realm had broken up into a series of smaller city-states, each avowing allegiance to a different distant monarch, and leaving only the Capital truly under the control of the Parliament.
In theory, Chough lay in an area where everybody supported King Prael. In practice, Mosca knew nothing about him except that all the carvings of him looked rather old, and gave him a long chin.
As she watched, a barge painted with the Weeping Owl heraldry of King Cinnamon the Misjudged passed by a wherry that flew the crossed crimson swords of the Parliament. To Mosca’s slight disappointment, everybody seemed more interested in hauling ropes than engaging in naval warfare. Each crew made a brief offensive gesture towards the other boat, but no one seemed to have their heart in it.
Mosca was also fascinated with the hauliers of the Mettlesome Maid, partly because she had never been able to watch anyone hard at work without being expected to do her part. Compared to the water-whitened villagers of Chough, they seemed tawny and terrible as tigers. Sun and sweat had left them hard and conker-brown, and they seemed to think nothing of the python-thick ropes they dragged as they strained their way along the bank. The jokes they exchanged were like clods of earth thrown at the face, meant good-humouredly – but meant to bruise as well.
The captain was a grim-smiling river-king named Partridge. There was something crooked in the make of his right wrist, as if it had been broken and never quite healed, and something crooked in the corner of his smile, as if that too had been broken and put back together slightly wrong.
‘I could never have stomached one of the Watermen’s little passenger wherries,’ Clent remarked, waving a dragonfly away from his face. ‘They are always in such a hurry, and one finds oneself rubbing elbows with so many undesirables.’
For a mad moment, Mosca almost believed that she and Clent had deliberately chosen the barge as the most elegant way to travel, and not because they were fugitives from the law. He seemed so comfortable and glad to have her company that she almost believed that he had not meant to desert her after all, that there had been a mix-up with the purse, that Mistress Bessel had lied about the goose . . .
Clent offered her some of the mellowberries, and she took them. Leaning over the edge of the boat to spit pips at the ducks, she caught sight of Clent’s reflection as he watched her with that queer, lean, calculating look she had seen on his face before. The taste of the berries bittered in her mouth, and she knew that he still meant to leave her or sell her to the authorities at the first opportunity.
For a savage moment, she thought of slipping ashore with his mysterious burlap package when the boat moored, and running away on her own. But she knew that she needed him. She had never been further than five miles from Chough – without a guide she would do little better than a tumbled fledgling. A twelve-year-old girl travelling alone, furthermore, would be an easy mark for footpads, gonophs and conmen. She had no contacts, no money, no friends. All she had was a homicidal goose . . . and Eponymous Clent.
In Mandelion, things might be different. Mosca squinted at a blurred memory. She had a recollection of her father talking about a ‘ragged school’ in Mandelion, and over the years her wishes had painted the memory with a false clarity. Surely he had said that the school never turned away a clever child? Surely he had said you could turn up with nothing but a shilling and a hunk of bread in your kerchief, and if you could read six fiendish pages without a slip of the eye they would welcome you in for the tiniest fee . . .
Mosca gave Clent a wide, friendly grin, which seemed to unnerve him, and took another mellowberry out of his hand. Of course, if she turned ‘evidence’ against Clent, perhaps they would give her a reward, and then she would at least have some money. But what could she tell them about him? Nothing much, nothing as bad as arson. And he would just unroll his tongue and talk his way off the gibbet, leaving her to take his place . . .
So . . . how to win the advantage again? Mosca’s eyes dropped for a tiny second to the package that sat between them. Somewhere inside lay the little packet he had been so eager to hide from Mistress Bessel. Perhaps later, if she and the parcel found themselves alone . . .
The sun slid to rest, and the western sky gleamed like a copper kettle in firelight. Mosca, watching the sun’s last gleam, saw it split by the flight of a buzzard, which seemed to douse the light in that instant with its black wings before swooping away to land on top of a haystack. Without warning, the hills which had been sunning themselves like so many contented dogs closed in, black and ragged as wolves.
As the wind became chill, the hauliers’ grumbles rose to an ominous level.
‘We’ll take our sup at the Halberd,’ Partridge declared. ‘Ye’ll dine with us.’
The Halberd had once been a little watchtower set up to prevent pirates sailing up the river from the sea and attacking inland towns. During the war, brimstone had bitten off its roof like the crust from a loaf, and pushed out one of the walls. The rubble remained, now moss-covered, and a rough roof of thatch had been used to shut out the sky.
The crew made the Mettlesome Maid fast, and all but two accompanied Clent and Mosca to the tavern’s door. Inside, the air was thick with pipesmoke and the moist scent of the earth floor and the cloying smell of overcooked tripe. To judge by their clothes and sunburned faces, most of the customers were boat crew or hauliers. They were, of course, all men. The tables were a jumble of upturned coracle wrecks, and long deck planks rested on barrels to serve as trestles. The seats were bales of greying straw. Against a far wall huddled a handful of straw mattresses, on each of which a man lay sleeping in his shirtsleeves.
They sat themselves at one of the wider coracles, Mosca noticing with a hungry pain beneath her ribs that a plate of small loaves and a jug of water were already set upon the table. She was also intrigued to notice that when he took up his ale, Partridge first swayed it over the loaves for a moment, before drinking. In Chough, everybody always waved their drinking cups over a jug of water to show that they were drinking a toast to King Prael, the ‘king across the Tosteroy Sea’. However, she knew that Partridge’s gesture was in honour of King Hazard, the ‘king across the Magora mountains’, as represented by the loaves.
At the next table a haulier spilt a little water on the table and wafted his cup over it, in honour of King Galbrash, the ‘king over the Fallowsmere Lake’. His friend seated opposite waved his tankard over the fingers of his own left hand, to show his allegiance to the Twin Queens, ‘the monarchs beyond the Jottland foothills’. A dozen or so royal allegiances seemed to be represented in the Halberd, and yet none of them showed any sign of leaping at each other’s throats amid a flurry of ale foam. The business of kings did not seem to be a fighting matter.
Mosca did not know it, but she was staring at a sign of changing times. The days when followers of rival kings would exchange blows or musketfire on sight were long gone. Every town now accepted with a sigh its share of the different allegiances, and every barkeep carefully laid out a jug of water and a bowl of little loaves on each table so that his customers might toast any monarch they chose.
A captain from a lighter joined their table, and was soon deep in conversation with Partridge.
‘So – what news in Mandelion?’ Partridge asked, stooping to l
ight his pipe at the candle.
‘Well, the Duke’s worse each day. Did you hear about the new Spires of Prosperity?’
Partridge crooked an eyebrow.
‘Twin spires, would they happen to be?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Still pairs with him, then?’ Partridge sighed, and shook his head.
Amid the stream of strange names, Mosca sometimes lost the thread of the conversation. There was a lot said about a group called ‘the Locksmiths’, which sounded like the name of a guild, but one she had never heard before. The lighter captain said they were growing stronger in Mandelion, which was something he had hoped never to see. Partridge said it was all right, the Duke’s sister would never let them take over Mandelion the way they had taken Scurrey. If the Locksmiths were just a guild of lock-makers, Mosca could not imagine why people looked so grim and frightened when they talked about them.
The beer in Mosca’s cup seemed as weak as river water, and tasted much as if a hundred ducks had been washing their feet in it. But after a while Mosca started to feel a warm and empty buzzing space near the back of her head. When she tried to understand the conversation, it was like trying to pick up a thread with Saracen’s webbed foot instead of her own fingers.
‘Your niece is looking a little dusky around the eyes. Better put her to bed before she falls off her chair and into the fire.’
‘Bed’ proved to be one of the straw mattresses by the far wall, set somewhat aside from the others. Mosca dared not undress, and she lay down fully clothed, with her bonnet tipped forward to shade her face. From under the brim, she watched Clent brush down his own mattress with fastidious care, remove his coat for use as a blanket, and lay himself down. To her disappointment, he tucked the package under the mattress first.
For the next five hours Mosca stared into darkness, listening to the crunch and rip of Saracen tearing her mattress apart. She had no intention of letting Clent slip off without her again, and she dug straw stems into her palms to keep herself awake. But, exhausted as she was, it was impossible not to doze off, and she was shaken awake at dawn.
‘Shake a leg, there.’ Partridge grinned down at her, not unkindly.
She followed him out to the boat, her stomach raw and green from lack of sleep. Clent was sitting not far from the stern, peeling a boiled egg with his fingers. There was no sign of his parcel.
As Mosca sat down beside him, she became aware that he was observing her narrowly. He took a bite out of his egg, stared thoughtfully at the deck for a moment, then looked back at Mosca.
‘My dear, I hope you have slept well?’ Clent’s tone was courteous, but as cold and crisp as the morning. He paused for a moment to pick at his teeth with his little fingernail. Only when Partridge had moved out of earshot did he continue. ‘Has it struck you that the river is rather . . . higher this morning?’
‘Didn’t hear any rain.’ Mosca stared out at the river, which seemed as languid as ever.
‘I do not mean further up the banks, child, I mean further up the sides of the boat. We are lower in the water than we were yesterday, and I think we cannot put all of that down to the beer and bread in our bellies.’
‘You mean . . . they got us off the boat so we wouldn’t see ’em loading up with something else?’ Mosca squinted about the boat. ‘Is it hid among the bales?’
‘No,’ answered Clent, a little too quickly. ‘No, I think not. Cast your eyes upon the deck. The planks beneath us keep the cargo from bruising the barge’s belly, but in this case I fancy they are fulfilling another purpose.’ Like most barges of its type, the Mettlesome Maid had no hold, and the hay bales were piled up on the deck. The deck was a flat layer of planks some little way above the barge’s elmwood bottom.
Mosca noticed for the first time that some strands of straw were clamped between the deck planks, as if the planks themselves had been removed and then replaced. She looked up at Clent, her eyes wide with a question.
‘Now, under that canvas awning is the place where the crew sleeps. There will be no one there now, and if you were to say you wished to rest there for a while, no one would object. Then you need only lever up one of the planks, slip into the belly of the boat, and we shall have our questions answered.’
‘But—’
‘Come now. The powers that be have saddled me with a ferrety-looking child, and as far as I know ferrets have only two uses – poor-quality fur trim, or sending down holes after rabbits. Pray be a good ferret, and be quick about it.’
Mosca mimed a yawn, and picked her way along the deck towards the stern. At the gunwale Partridge rested a lazy hand on the great tiller, his eyes on the river ahead. He paid little attention as Mosca pulled up the awning, and slipped into the darkness beneath.
Prising up the planks was no mean feat. Mosca’s fingernails were short, and the planks were solid oak and a foot wide. She eventually found that she could slide one of the scraps of metal from Clent’s pouch between the planks, and after some painful minutes one rose out of its groove.
Mosca reached deep into the hole, and the flat of her palm struck the grooved wood of the barge bottom. She waved a hand through the darkness, and something knobbed batted at her fingers. Grabbing it, she lifted it into the half-light. It was a small, heavy, wooden figure of Goodman Greyglory, He Who Guides the Sword in Battle. Was there a whole tribe of icons, ripped from their shrines, huddling in the darkness like captives in the hold of a slaveship? And why would anyone be secretly transporting them down the river?
Biting her lip white with caution, she lowered the Goodman back into darkness, and replaced the plank. She pushed the canvas aside, and emerged on hands and knees, and began crawling alongside the hay bales on the side furthest from the bank, and from Eponymous Clent.
The secret cargo was not hidden among the bales, but she was fairly certain that something else was.
Why had Clent hidden the parcel of papers? Perhaps he was afraid that a waterman’s scull might slip alongside the barge and he might be forced to open it. Where had he hidden it? Somewhere out of sight, but easy to reach in a hurry if he had to make a quick escape.
If Mosca had not been looking for something of the sort, she would never have noticed the string trailing from between two bales. Simple, but effective. In an emergency, he could pull the string, and . . .
She drew on the string, and the parcel slid out from its hiding place. Taking the bundle binding in her mouth, she cat-padded her way back on all fours, and dived into the darkness beneath the canvas awning.
When she had dragged off the string and pulled away the burlap, Mosca found herself with a lap full of printed papers. Most were chapbooks of criminals’ lives, the pages roughly stitched into their cloth covers. Some were large loose pages, or ‘broadsheets’, most of which had ballads printed upon them. All bore the seal of the Company of Stationers. Between them, however, was the packet Clent had laboured to hide. It opened to Mosca’s eager fingers, and she was at first disappointed to find that it seemed to be a letter of introduction, ‘. . . Testifying that Eponymous Clent is acting upon the behalf of the Company of Stationers in investigating certain illicit . . .’
The page suddenly became a great deal easier to read as the canvas awning was twitched back, and Eponymous Clent pushed his head into the little cave.
His smile slid away like water off a candle, and his plump face became absolutely expressionless in a way that told Mosca that he was very angry. She stared back, her black eyes burning with triumph.
‘How did you find those?’
‘You’re working for the Stationers? You’re a spy?’
‘You can read?’ Clent stared at her in disbelief as he struggled into the makeshift cabin.
‘Full of surprises, me,’ whispered Mosca savagely.
At this moment the awning was flung violently aside and, as one, Mosca and Clent jumped to sit on the papers, landing with a thump, hip to hip.
Partridge was stooping at the opening, the crooked corner of his
mouth flexing and relaxing like an angry fist.
‘Are you people trouble to me?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Only there’s five or so Watermen wherries blocking the river up ahead, and it looks to me like they’re searching boats.’
D is for Daylight Robbery
Mosca and Clent exchanged glances, and silently settled a single matter between them. They were on thin ice, on the brink of disaster, but for now they were also on the same side.
‘Ah, now, it would seem that we have an interest in common,’ Clent began quickly, turning back to Partridge. ‘You do not wish the Watermen to discover that you have been taking passengers illegally, and we . . . we are in no hurry to be found. So let us hurry to an understanding, and, ah . . .’
‘And what? What exactly do we do, you lily-handed sack of suet?’
In answer, Clent reached down and knocked once on the planks of the deck, which answered hollowly.
‘What, stow you below boards and risk your bootnails inside the belly of the Maid? I’ll see you gull food first. Dotheril!’ The head of another crewman appeared at the opening in the awning. ‘I think you’d better hail the Watermen and tell ’em we’ve just this minute found a couple of stowaways. Doesn’t it look that way to you?’
‘I’d say so, sir,’ agreed Dotheril coolly. ‘Guess they must have crept aboard while we was docked at the Halberd.’
‘If you give us up,’ hissed Mosca, ‘I’ll tell them about the other stowaways already down there. They don’t seem to be hurting your boat none. More of holiness than holes down there, I’d say.’
Clent rallied well, considering that he had no idea what Mosca was talking about.
‘Yes, I fear the secret is out. We know that your boat, like many other “maids”, hides a secret in her belly. My niece, you see, has an enquiring mind and, while I have tried to damp her desire to peek and pry, it is her nature and there is little I can do about it. Well, Captain, I am at my wits’ end – have you decided what is to become of us all?’