Fly by Night (34 page)

Mosca stowed Saracen in a nook beside Goodman Blackwhistle of the Favourable Wind, then scrambled in through the nearest shrine opening, bruising her hands on coins. Some connecting passages were little more than cracks in the masonry, and as she squeezed up through them she tried not to imagine herself getting trapped like a sweep in a chimney kink. Just as the pressing wall of the Warren was stirring panic in her, she saw light ahead and realized that she had reached an empty shrine, set twenty feet above the cathedral floor.

. . .
there she is where how did she get up there
. . .

For a while Mosca heard scufflings around and below her, and then one by one the children of the Floating School emerged back from the Warren and peered up at her. She had no idea how she had reached her current precarious position, and it was pretty clear that they hadn’t either. They stood by the font of the Little Goodkin, and as they discussed her in whispers each reached without thinking into the font to rub a handful of petals against his or her face and murmur the traditional benediction. It almost seemed as if they had gathered to pay their respects to Mosca, and it was a shock when the first flung stone stung her shin.

But a new set of steps rang out across the mosaic floor, and soon the stones ceased to clack against the stonework by her head. Mosca took a few deep breaths, drew her knees away from her chin and peered from beneath the brim of her bonnet

‘Hello, little god,’ said Kohlrabi. ‘What are you the deity of, may I ask?’

‘Hiding, and staying alive.’ Mosca rubbed at a new tear in her stocking, and felt the edges damp with blood. Someone had a good aim.

‘Who are you hiding from?’

‘Other children.’

‘Is it a game?’

Mosca shook her head.

‘I don’t see any other children.’ Indeed, the children of the Floating School had chosen this time to float elsewhere. ‘In fact, I suspect you have been waiting here in ambush to swoop down and crush my hat again. But let’s see.’

Kohlrabi paced a few leisurely steps to the main aisle, swept back his cloak and raised both his fists in an exaggerated yawn and stretch. There was a rapid patter of feet, and the cathedral door banged and juddered. ‘Well, I was wrong. Lots of children. What did you do to bring such wrath on your head?’

For a moment Mosca thought about lying and telling him that it had been a game after all. But instead somehow she found herself pouring out the truth for the third time that day: the arrest of Pertellis, the murder of Partridge, the denunciation of Clent and the vengeance of the schoolchildren.

‘You better go now,’ she said when she’d finished, not wanting to look at Kohlrabi’s face in case he started hating her as well.

‘I bought you something,’ Kohlrabi answered, as if he had not heard her. Out of his pocket he drew a long briar pipe. ‘It’s a little large for you, but I think you’ll grow into it. It’s been used, so it has the scent of tobacco. But you . . . you’ll have to come down for it. I don’t want to throw it and risk breaking it. You
are
planning to come down some time, aren’t you? Or are you just hoping to live off food offerings in the shrines?’

‘I don’t think I can come down.’

‘Mosca, the world is not as bleak as it seems right now—’

‘No . . . I mean, I’m not sure I can find my way down again. I can’t really turn round easily neither, without falling off the ledge.’

When Kohlrabi extended his arms, Mosca dropped from her shrine hideaway, and managed not to crush his hat. He caught her under the armpits and set her on her feet, then squeezed her by the shoulders.

‘Well done, Mosca. Well done.’ Mosca got the impression that he was not talking just about her jump. He polished the pipe with his sleeve and presented it to her. It was a little singed about the bowl, but the wood was glossy and honey-coloured. Mosca chewed at the stem experimentally, and found that another set of teeth had left a little groove into which her own fitted.

‘It’s a different sort of smell from my father’s tobacco, but it’s . . .’ Mosca suddenly realized that she was going to cry and there was nothing she could do about it. She clenched her teeth on the pipe stem, but the world became misty.

‘Is it all right? Can you think with it?’

Mosca nodded, but couldn’t speak.

‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

Mosca could only shake her head.

‘All right . . . not to the marriage house, then.’ There was a pause, and Kohlrabi let out a long breath. ‘You’d better come with me.’

Saracen had decided he liked being a god, and was coaxed out of the Warren with some difficulty and several breadcrusts. Before leaving the cathedral, Kohlrabi wrapped the Cakes’ blanket around Mosca so that she would not be recognized, but when they reached the street there was no sign of the Floating School children. The crowds outside were still tense and unquiet, but calm pooled around Kohlrabi like a cloak. He smiled and whistled under his breath, as if he was carrying a secret; and after a while Mosca felt calmer, as if she knew it as well. They walked into a wigmaker’s which seemed to have been squeezed thinly between two larger shops.

‘Mosca, this is Mrs Nokes.’ A woman in a primrose-yellow cottager’s gown and cap tripped forward, her face wearing a vague smile, as if she had just heard the punchline to a joke and was waiting to understand it. ‘Mrs Nokes, Mosca will be taking that room of yours on the second floor. Can we have the key?’

Mrs Nokes had to spell out the keys on her chatelaine one by one with great care, and she finally held up the right one with an air of mute surprise and triumph. Kohlrabi folded her hand carefully around a few coins, and held her fingers in place a moment to make sure she did not drop them.

‘Mrs Nokes is not one for talking,’ Kohlrabi explained as he led Mosca up the stairs, ‘but she’s an excellent cook. Ah! Here we are. How is this, Mosca? Do you think you can survive here for a few days until things calm down?’

The room had a proper bed, with chocolate-brown curtains and embroidered pillows. There was a dressing table with, Mosca noted in amazement, a mirror two spans high. There were three candlesticks, good, long ones. There was a little hollow in one wall for visitors to place a pocket idol while they were staying. There was a stand for a wig, and a little bone comb. And . . .

‘It’s got
wallpaper
,’ Mosca said in awe.

Kohlrabi reached for the purse at his belt. ‘You will be safe here, providing you stay in this room and don’t open the door to anyone but myself or Mrs Nokes. Here’s a few coins to tide you over. Mrs Nokes will bring you meals, but if you need anything else, ask her to go out and get it for you, and give her the money.’

Mosca did not answer. In reaching for his purse, Kohlrabi had carelessly pushed aside his cloak, and suddenly she knew exactly why the children of the Floating School had run from him.

Kohlrabi’s eyes dropped to discover the object of Mosca’s fascinated gaze. ‘Oh, that.’ He pulled the cloak back to conceal the pistol strapped to his flank. ‘There is danger on the streets,’ he admitted. ‘Danger on the highways as well, or I might have tried to spirit you out of Mandelion. Some villagers have turned to banditry, they say.’

‘There’s going to be a war, isn’t there?’ Everything seemed to be unravelling.

‘In Mandelion?’ Kohlrabi seemed to be considering the question seriously. ‘Perhaps a little one, but only a little one. Mosca, things will get worse before they get better, but believe me when I tell you that everything will happen for the best.’ He studied her features with a worried smile-frown.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Lady Tamarind is a very clever woman, and has planned for everything. And when the time comes for you to appear in the Assizes to testify against Clent, I will make sure that you get there and back safely, no matter what hurly-burly there may be on the streets.’

‘What . . . I got to go back an’ tell everyone about it
again
?’ faltered Mosca.

‘It would be best,’ Kohlrabi said gently. ‘I can help you write up a deposition, but if you do not turn up at court, there is a chance that Clent may walk free. It is a capital crime, so he will be defending himself, but I hear that he is a gifted speaker . . .’

Mosca would have to hobble her way through her story again, in a courtroom this time, with the gaze of a thousand eyes pressing the breath out of her. Perhaps Cakes and Bockerby looking on with cold reproach, or the Floating School watching with eyes like coals. Around her laws and rules would lie like invisible wires, and she would snag and tangle in them blindly with every sentence. When she did, Clent would pounce on her mistakes, for Clent would be there, with his silver voice and cold grey eyes . . .

‘All right,’ she muttered gruffly.

Over the next few days, Kohlrabi brought her paper and ink, and helped her word her deposition. He also brought books of law, so that she could understand the traps that might be laid for her in the court. He seemed quite confident of her success. This strengthened Mosca during his absences, as she heard the subdued sea-cave roar of angry crowds, and the crackle of distant musket-fire.

Night after night, however, Mosca lay awake in the middle of her great bed between the cool, clean sheets, stroking the worn damask of the curtains to comfort herself. Her stomach kept trying to squirm out of her belly, and her mind wriggled around, looking for reasons to run away before the Assizes. But if she ran away, Eponymous Clent would slide through the fingers of the law, and when he came after her there would be no Kohlrabi to protect her . . .

All too soon, Mosca woke to her breakfast chocolate and realized that the first day of Clent’s trial had arrived. Kohlrabi had brought her a clean white dress and apron for appearing in court.

‘How do you feel, Mosca?’

‘Like I swallowed a dozen live jackdaws what hate each other.’ Mosca sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her hands.

‘The worst of it is the waiting.’ Kohlrabi crouched in front of her. ‘Trust me, compared to that, giving testimony will be the easiest thing in the world.’

‘’S funny,’ Mosca said. ‘All this time I’ve been skithered of standing up in court, but that bit of my brain’s gone numb now. Now it feels like the worst of it will be walking through the streets, an’ feelin’ like everybody knows I’m going there to blow the gab on someone, an’ wondering if they’ll throw stones at me again. I’m turning stag, and nobody likes that.’

‘All right,’ Kohlrabi said quietly. ‘I know a time when the streets will be empty.’ He left Mosca alone for a few minutes, then returned with two long scarves draped over his arm. ‘We can wrap these around our heads. And these –’ he held out a handful of what seemed to be fragments of waxed cloth – ‘we can put in our ears.’

‘You mean . . . Clamouring Hour?’

‘Yes. It starts in ten minutes.’

When they left Mrs Nokes’s shop, fifteen minutes later, the scarves swaddling their heads like turbans, Mandelion had pulled itself indoors and shuttered itself against the war of the bells. Even with her ears plugged, Mosca could feel the sound drumming against her skin like rain. The turmoil of the city had made the ringers more zealous and aggressive in their clanging competition.

Mosca felt filled with panic. She was an arsonist, runaway, thief, spy and murderer’s accomplice, and here she was of her own free will taking step after weak-kneed step towards the prison. She turned a final corner, and now she could see the prison waiting to pounce on her, crouched behind the watch house like a panther behind a mound. The prison – the ‘louse house’, the ‘tribulation’, the ‘stone jug’, the ‘naskin’. It would put out a great paw to pin her, and she would never escape it again.

Perhaps Kohlrabi shared her thoughts because he suddenly halted. But he was staring towards the prison gate, where a dozen scrolls of paper were rolling over lazily like cats so that the wind could stroke them. Spread-eagled on the ground lay three men in the Duke’s colours.

Kohlrabi signalled to Mosca to stay where she was, and he sprinted to the watch house. He beat on the door, but there was no response. He had started running back towards Mosca when the prison gates swung wide and three men ran out into the street. Their faces were muffled and they carried muskets.

Kohlrabi reached Mosca, grabbed her wrist and spun her around. The next moment the pair of them were running away from the prison at full pelt, with the heavens clamouring above them.

Q is for Questioning