Fly by Night (44 page)

‘Pull yourselves together, men!’ someone was bellowing. ‘You dolts! You . . . you squirrels! It’s a goose, nothing but a goose. Just a distraction. Here, I’ll show you . . .’

The sounds that followed greatly resembled those that might be caused by locking half a dozen farmyard animals into a dresser and then pushing it downstairs. Somewhere in the confusion someone discharged a rifle. To judge by the edgy, hot-coals dance that the crew on the
Queens
’
Heads
were suddenly performing, they had just seen the bullet hole appear through the deck upon which they stood. The street door flung wide, and someone dived into the water and began swimming to the shore, leaving a cocked hat bobbing behind him.

Carmine scrambled to his feet and ran back to the trapdoor. He paused only for a second at the top of the rope ladder, but suddenly he was staring up at the sky. The deck had charged him from behind like a bully, and something seemed to be gripping his upper arm fiercely as if he might escape upwards into the sky. A wet heat was spreading across his shoulder, and as he tried to sit up the world raised its voice in a chorus of pain and pushed him down again.

Something was pulling at his leg. Looking down the length of his own body, Carmine could see the frightened face of Eponymous Clent, who had pushed his head up through the trapdoor and taken hold of Carmine’s ankle. Carmine wondered dully if Clent was trying to steal his boots, and whether anyone would notice. However, he let himself be dragged inch by painful inch, and at last felt someone grip him under the arms and lower him down through the trapdoor, where he seemed to sink into darkness like a drowner, amid a crowd of supporting hands. He was laid gently on to the floorboards. Voices echoed oddly in his ear, and there were red ringlets trailed across his face.

Blythe saw the young apprentice fall to a pistol shot but was too far away to do more than watch as Clent crept from cover to drag the boy to safety.
What a world this is
, he thought.
Children put us to shame with their pluck
,
and are shot in the back for it
.

The highwayman’s mind was filled with a terrible, aching clarity, for he had no doubt in his mind that he would be dead by evening. He hid this belief from his comrades, just as he hid the fact that his recent influenza had left his throat rough as bracken, and that from time to time his head became so light that the objects around him seemed to glisten darkly. The men who depended upon him needed to see him strong and able.

But they need more than Captain Blythe the hero
,
they need a dozen more men and as many guns
. . .
no
,
they need a miracle
. On the other coffeehouse, Blythe could see men hanging off the outside wall rungs, or perched on sills, or skulking on deck and veranda – anything rather than face whatever it was that was breaking furniture in the main coffeeroom. Carmine’s strange attack had bought the
Bower
time, but it would not be long before the
Queens
’
Heads
recovered from the crisis.

‘Ahoy the
Laurel Bower
! The Duke himself commands you to pull to and surrender yourselves to him and his men!’ The cry seemed to come from the veranda of the
Queens
’
Heads
.

Blythe thought again of Carmine’s face as the shot had torn through his arm, and his chest exploded with anger.

‘This is Captain Clam Blythe, and I challenge Vocado Avourlace, called Duke of Mandelion, to a test of pistols. I stand for the rights of the people he robs and oppresses, and will risk my body for my cause. I call upon him to stand against me for the Queens he claims to honour, and let the Beloved decide the Right of it.’ Blythe could hear his own words echoing long after he had spoken them. He realized that little sculls were bobbing not far from the shore, and that the men on them were bellowing his words to a listening multitude on the waterfront.

‘The Duke accepts.’

Praise be to Goodman Varple of Thieves and Vagabonds
,
and bless his ugly dog
, thought Blythe.
The Duke truly is mad
.

‘Mr Hind, captain of the
Queens
’
Heads
, shall be my second.’ It was the Duke’s voice.

Blythe gave Stallwrath a questioning glance, and received a nod.

‘Mr Stallwrath shall serve as mine.’

While the crew of the
Bower
hurried to clear the deck, Blythe stood up, so that he could be seen by the men of the
Queens
’
Heads
, the crew of the little boats bobbing nearby and the throngs at the riverside.
If they shoot me like a dog now
,
it will be remembered
. . .

His heart beat as a tall man in jewelled blues and golds climbed on to the roof of the
Queens
’
Heads
, the wind splaying the locks of his pale gold wig until it seemed to circle his head like a halo. With a throb the highwayman remembered that, as the man challenged, the Duke would be allowed to take the first shot.

As Blythe willed himself to stand firm, the Duke carefully polished a slender, girlish pistol with a flared muzzle, then turned to regard his enemy shoulder-on, and brought his pistol down to bear. The other coffee-house was close enough for Blythe to see the flash of the powder before the surge of smoke. There was a bang so loud it seemed as if someone had slapped their palms hard against the highwayman’s ears. He took a deep breath, and found that his lungs were still whole. The Duke had missed.

Blythe raised his own pistol and slowly lowered it, until he stared down the barrel at the figure of the Duke, bright as a damselfly. With a single shot he could take the Duke’s madness out of the world. But on either side, hundreds watched, and he felt the bating of their breath like the silence before thunder. Their eyes and hearts were full of Captain Blythe, the hero for whom villagers had risked the scaffold and the stocks, for whom the radicals would fight to the last man, for whom skippers of little boats would hazard fire and musketball. If he took mean advantage of a now unarmed man, the Duke of Mandelion would die, but so would the Hero.

Blythe raised his gun to aim far above the Duke’s head, and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet through the string of the pursuing coffeehouse’s master-kite. As he lowered his smoking gun, Blythe heard a roar of applause erupt from the banks. There were cheers nearby from the lighters and dugouts, the dinghies and sculls.

He was turning away from his opponent when the applause changed to a gasp. Blythe saw shock on the faces of the
Bower
’s crew, and turned to see the Duke pulling from his coat a second pistol, identical to his first, and levelling it with one smooth gesture. The beating of Blythe’s heart suddenly seemed too loud for one chest, as if he were hearing the heart of every watcher pounding for his peril. There was no time to throw himself flat. There was time only to think,
so this is how it feels to be a hero
. . .

Then the frozen second ended, and from the skies swooped the severed master-kite, its canvas juddering with a sound like a mighty wingbeat. It struck the Duke on the back of the head with a chopping-block thud and tumbled him overboard. After the splash, nothing rose to the surface but a seethe of bubbles and the Duke’s three-cornered hat.

Why have his men stopped firing at us?
Blythe wondered, as he leaned against the chimney for support. A glance over his shoulder answered his question. The sky was thick with kites, all bearing the Watermen’s insignia. The swift wherries had slipped in among the other river traffic, only now throwing up kites to declare their presence. There would be no more gunfire on their patch.

Skin me
, thought Blythe,
that girl must have got her message through to the Stationers after all
. The far cries of the crowds were as shrill and gleeful as gull calls over a ploughed field, and Blythe looked about him, dazed, as distant hats were hurled into the air, and little boats ran up flags of celebration.

Among the figures thronging the Ashbridge, Blythe thought for a moment he saw a short and slender figure in an olive-green dress, a point of stillness amid the jubilation. But a fit of light-headedness came over him again before he could be sure whether it was Mosca, and by the time it cleared the figure was gone.

U is for Undefended

So this is what living honesty is like
, Mosca thought as she waded through bristling, rustling plants. The thick green seedpods that patted the skin of her arms were as cool and rough as the pads of cats’ paws. The riverside paths had been easy enough to follow in daylight, but now the light was starting to dim. Her only hope of finding the ragman’s raft again was to follow the river, so she struggled along within sight of the water even when the bank became overgrown.

Ugly Mr Toke had told her that the high tide would cause wild water. The ragman’s raft was tethered by just one mooring pin in the soft bank. She needed to moor it more safely so that the river would not drag it loose and chew it to pieces, the way he had described. And she needed to find a better hiding place for it so that the Stationers did not find it.

No, she did not want the Stationers to find it; she knew that now. She had realized that while she was staring into Toke’s clever little eyes. The Stationers would cage the press like a wild animal, and break its spirit. Suddenly she had known that the printing press should be hers and hers alone.

There was a terrible excitement in the thought of the press lurking in its darkened lair with its iron grin and ink-stained teeth, ready to whisper forbidden secrets to her.
If there is paper, there may be books
, whispered a voice in her head.
Dangerous books
,
gunpowder books
,
books that could burn away the castles of the mind and change the colour of the sky
.

Of course it was madness to be out alone in the woods, let alone at such an hour. Mosca had read of Wry Petchers, the Manhandler of Scumpy Bank, not to mention countless other footpads, cut-throats and gangs preying through the waysides and wild places. Even an ordinary pedlar might snatch the chance of robbing a small and solitary girl. But somehow these thoughts and the tingling scratches left by the briars only made her more determined. Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.

On two occasions Mosca noticed a convoy of Watermen boats sail by, kites high. The first convoy was a flotilla of small, fleet boats. The second was a glide of larger tideboats and barges, flanked by wherries. Each time, she hid in the undergrowth until they had passed. By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

The river’s voice changed, and Mosca realized that it was struggling with a foaming tangle of boughs which chafed in the drag of the current. Her heart somersaulted as she recognized the dead tree where she had narrowly escaped the Birdcatcher ragmen. But surely it was foolish to imagine that they would still be waiting here in such a desolate place?

Using the ripple of roots as rungs, she climbed up on to the trunk of the fallen tree, and kicked her heels against the bark to knock off the mud. She pulled a few blackberries from the nearest bush, but they were still hard and bitter to chew, and she could feel their tiny hairs tickle her tongue and throat as she swallowed them. She was just thinking of climbing further up the fan of roots to reach a dark spray of elderberries when a firm hand was placed over her mouth and she was pulled backwards off the trunk. Despite her shock, Mosca made hearty use of her elbows until her attacker set her on her feet and released her. She turned, fear hammering in her chest.

‘Mr Kohlrabi!’ Mosca was flooded with relief. ‘I looked for you an’ couldn’t find you an’ lots of things ’ve ’appened an’ you weren’t at your coffeehouse where you said to look an’ Mrs Nokes couldn’t say . . .’ Mosca’s voice dropped to a whisper as Kohlrabi shook his head and raised a finger to his lips.

‘Hush . . . Mosca, you are being followed. You have been followed all the way from Mandelion. And I do not think you wish to lead them to the printing press, do you?’

Mosca shook her head silently.

‘Let’s see if we can lose them, then, shall we?’