Fly by Night (4 page)

He was plump, in a soft, self-important way. His puffed-out chest strained the buttons of his waistcoat. They were fine buttons, though, and much polished, as if he took a pride in his appearance. His coat was a little crumpled and disarranged, but this was hardly surprising since he was suspended upside down, with his feet locked into a set of moss-covered stocks. A beaver hat and periwig lay sadly in the stream below, sodden and weed-strewn.

Since there was little he could do about his situation, he seemed determined to strike as picturesque and dramatic a pose as possible. The back of one hand rested despairingly across his forehead, while his other arm was thrown wide in a flamboyant attitude. The only part of his face visible, therefore, was his mouth, which was pursed and plump, as if the world was too hot and coarse for his palate and he felt the need to blow it cool. The mouth was moving, spilling out long, languorous sentences in a way which suggested that, despite his predicament, the speaker rather enjoyed the sound of his own voice.

‘. . . before even the Travesty in Three Acts had seen print . . .’ The speaker sighed deeply, and combed his fingers through his dishevelled hair before placing his hand back across his eyes. ‘. . . and this is to be the end of Eponymous Clent, left out in the wilderness to be devoured by the savage geese and weaselly faced imps of the forest . . .’ The flow of words stopped abruptly. Cautiously he uncovered his eyes once more. ‘Are you human?’

It was a fair question. Rust, grime and lichen covered Mosca’s face like warpaint, and dove feathers still clung to her hair and arms. The unlit pipe in her mouth also gave her an other-worldly, young-old look.

She nodded.

‘What do you want?’

Mosca swung her legs over to sit in the ‘saddle’ more comfortably, and took the pipe out of her mouth.

‘I want a job.’

‘I fear that adverse circumstances have deprived me of all monetary advantages and simple luxuries and . . . did you say a job?’

‘Yes.’ Mosca pointed to the stocks. ‘I got the keys to those, but if I let you out, you got to give me a job and take me with you.’

‘Fancy,’ Clent said with a faint, desolate laugh. ‘The child wishes to leave all this.’ He glanced around at the dripping trees, the bone-white stones and the cold colours of the distant village.

‘I want to travel,’ Mosca declared. ‘The sooner the better,’ she added, with an apprehensive look over her shoulder.

‘Do you even have the first idea of what my profession entails?’

‘Yes,’ said Mosca. ‘You tell lies for money.’

‘Ah. Aha. My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.’

Mendacity
, thought Mosca.
Mellifluous
. She did not know what they meant, but the words had shapes in her mind. She memorized them, and stroked them in her thoughts like the curved backs of cats. Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.

‘I hear you told theWidow a story ’bout how you was the son of a duke and was going to marry her when you came into your lands, but how you needed to borrow money so you could hire a lawyer and make your claim.’

‘Ah. A very . . . emotional woman. Tended to take, ah, figures of speech very literally.’

‘And I heard you told the magistrate a story ’bout how there was this cure for his aches which you just needed to send for, but which cost lots of money. And I heard you told all the shopkeepers a story ’bout how your secretary was coming any day and bringing all your trunks and the rest of your money so you could pay all your bills then.’

‘Yes . . . er . . . quite true . . . can’t imagine what can have happened to the fellow . . .’

‘They brand thieves’ hands, don’t they?’ Mosca added suddenly. ‘S’pose they’ll brand your tongue for lying. S’pose it stands to reason.’

Everything was very quiet for a few moments except for the rattle of water on rock and the sound of Clent swallowing drily.

‘Yes, I . . . I have quite lost patience with that secretary of mine. I suppose I must let him go, which means that I have a vacancy. Do you . . . do you have any qualifications or assets to offer as a secretary, may I ask?’

‘I got these.’ Mosca jangled the keys.

‘Hmm. A practical outlook and a concise way of speaking. Both very useful qualities. Very well, you may unlock me.’

Mosca slid down from her stone throne and scrambled up the craggy pedestal to slot the key into the lock.

‘Purely out of interest,’ Clent asked as he watched her, upside down, ‘what so bewitches you about the idea of the travelling life?’

There were many answers Mosca could have given him. She dreamed of a world without the eternal sounds of glass beads being shaken in a sieve and goblins chuckling in the ravines. She dreamed of a world where her best friend did not have feathers and a beak the colour of pumpkin peel. She dreamed of a world where books did not rot or give way to greenblot, where words and ideas were not things you were despised for treasuring. She dreamed of a world in which her stockings were not always wet.

There was another, more pressing reason though. Mosca raised her head, and stared up the hillside towards the ragged treeline. The sky was warmed by a gentle redness, suggesting a soft but radiant dawn. The true dawn was still some three hours away.

‘Very soon,’ Mosca said quietly, ‘my uncle will wake up. An’ when he does . . . he’s likely to notice that I’ve burned down his mill.’

B is for Blackmail

Mosca was
almost
certain that setting fire to the mill had not been part of her plan when she had decided to rescue Clent. She had escaped from the locked mill through the hole in its roof with the ease of long practice. The malthouse wall, however, had presented more of an obstacle. She had known she would need Saracen to frighten off Brackle and Grabspite on the Whitewater plain, but the wall was too high to climb with a goose under one arm. It had made perfect sense to grab armfuls from the gorse stacks which the village used as fuel, and pile them against the wall. And when she had clambered up to the top of the wall, ignoring the sweet smell of dying summer and the stems which prickled against her face, it had made sense to light an oil lamp.

She did not remember deciding to drop the lamp, but nor did she remember it exactly slipping from her grasp. What she did remember was watching it fall away from her hand, and bounce so softly from one stack to another that it seemed impossible that it should break. She remembered seeing the wrecked lamp sketch a faint letter in white smoke shortly before the dry stems around it started to blacken and a hesitant flame wavered first blue, then gold . . . and she remembered a rushing thrill of terror as she realized that there was no going back to her old life.

Now, as Mosca and Clent fled Chough, the wind followed them like a helpful stranger, offering them the smell of smoke from the burning mill as if it thought it might belong to them.

At four o’clock the feverish wind sighed and settled. Mosca had always enjoyed clambering the cliff paths at this hour, watching the frogs bulging on their rocky pulpits while the trees lost their roots among the early-morning mist. When their path crossed the track down to Hummel, she halted nervously, but it was too early for any of Hummel’s red-scarfed women to be hefting sacks of grain to Chough’s mills.

‘I suppose there is a good reason why you have paused to take in nature’s marvels? Perhaps your goose has entreated a moment to lay an egg for our breakfast?’ For one of such portly build, Clent had kept a fast pace along the treacherous path.

Mosca stared at Clent.

‘He’s a gander,’ she exclaimed. She could not have been more amazed if Clent had mistaken Saracen for a cat.

‘Really?’ Clent pulled a shabby pair of chamois gloves from his waistcoat pocket, and used them to flick a few burrs from his shoulder. ‘Well, in that case, I recommend that you wring the bird’s neck and have done with it. It would be a pretty pass if our dinner were to get away from us, would it not? Besides, you will find a dead bird easier to carry and simpler to hide.’

Saracen shifted in Mosca’s grasp, and made small noises in his throat like water being poured from a jug. He understood nothing of Clent’s suggestion, but he resented the way Mosca’s arms were tightening around him.

‘Saracen isn’t dinner.’

‘Really? Then perhaps I may venture to ask what he is? Our guide through the mountains, perhaps? A bewitched relation? Or does our route cross a toll bridge where a payment must be made in waterfowl? May I point out that our provisions will be exhausted all the faster with an extra beak to feed?’

Mosca flushed.

Clent turned his head away slightly and examined her sideways along his cheek. Someone lean, clever and watchful seemed to be peering out of his eyes. ‘I assume we
do
have provisions? I am sure that my new secretary would not have made fugitives of us without bringing more than an inedible goose? No? I see. Very well then, this way, if you please.’

He led her uphill along a tiny path that ended before a brightly painted shrine no bigger than a kennel. Beneath its sloping roof a wooden statue of a man held out his hands in stiff benediction.

‘Mr Clent!’ Mosca reached the shrine in time to see her new employer scooping a handful of fat, golden berries from the pewter offering-bowl.

‘No need to become shrill, girl.’ Clent peeled a piece of damp leaf mould from the side of the statue’s head. ‘I am merely borrowing a few provisions, which we will of course repay in the fullness of time. This good fellow . . .’

‘Goodman Postrophe,’ Mosca added automatically.

‘. . . Goodman Postrophe is an old friend of mine. He has been looking after some trifles for me.’ Clent’s large, trimly manicured hand reached into the darkness of the shrine, and reappeared gripping an oblong bundle bound in burlap.

‘But . . .’ Mosca stopped, suddenly afraid that she would sound childish and superstitious.

But, she thought desperately,
if we take the Goodman’s mellowberries
,
how will he defend the village from the wandering dead? How will he squeeze the juice into their eyes so that they cannot see the way home?
To be sure, none of the bodies in Chough’s graveyard had yet done anything as interesting as rising from the ground and returning home to screech down the chimneys. But perhaps, Mosca reasoned, Goodman Postrophe had kept them at bay until now.

‘I am surprised to find you squeamish, given your obvious penchant for felony.’ Wrapping the berries in his handkerchief, Clent slid them into a capacious pocket. ‘Arson, indeed . . . a nasty business. Little better than high seas piracy as far as the courts are concerned . . . Whatever possessed you to start setting fire to mills?’

A series of pictures chased each other across Mosca’s tired brain as she thought of the mill burning. She imagined the string of the old switchbroom that had often blistered her hands burning through and spilling its sticks. She imagined the tapers she had been scolded for squandering souping into a yellow puddle. She imagined her uncle and aunt shrieking as they strove to rescue sacks of bubbling flour from the blaze, without thinking to look for a charred niece.

‘It was an ugly sort of a mill,’ was all Mosca said.

‘I once saw a boy of about ten hanged for setting fire to a schoolhouse,’ Clent added in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Everyone pitied him, but, with a crime so severe, what was the magistrate to do? I recall his family wailing piteously as the cart took him to Blitheangel Square.’ Clent gave Mosca a calculating glance. ‘Of course, arson cases are all tried in the Capital, and when the hanging is over they give the body to the university to be dissected. I hear they cut out the hearts and examine them, to see if they are colder and blacker than the hearts of ordinary men.’

Despite herself, Mosca placed one hand over her heart, to find out whether it was giving off an icy draught. Certainly she felt as if there was a chill band around her chest obstructing her breathing. Was she being racked with guilt? If she was a diabolical criminal, then she must be due for her first rack round about now. And yes, when she thought of jolting her way by cart through hostile crowds, she felt a sickening throb of remorse.