Frances Hardinge - Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

‘Poor little currant-bun,’ said Mistress Bessel, fixing Mosca with eyes the blue of a midwinter morning. ‘Look at the dear, draggled thing – don’t you just want to wring her out like a dishcloth?’ She turned to the landlady. ‘Now don’t you worry about us, my lovely. My girl and I will take ourselves up to our room and be out of your way, won’t we?’

Still retaining eager custody of the stew bowl, and hugging her blankets around herself, Mosca followed Mistress Bessel’s stocky form up a stairway almost too narrow for her. They entered a box-like, windowless, dark-panelled room with a drably draped bed and a busy little hearth.

Once the door was closed and Mosca had crouched by the fire, Mistress Bessel fixed her with her gimlet gaze, and then very slowly put her fists on her hips. Maybe it was a trick of the light thrown upwards by the fire, but Mistress Bessel’s face seemed thinner than Mosca remembered it, and more haggard. Perhaps the death of summer had not been kind to her either.

Mosca did not see the accusing glare as a reason to stop eating, but instead decided to scoop food faster until her spoon became a blur. If there was a danger that she would have to flee into the night once more, she was determined to do so with as much stew inside her as possible.

‘ You .’ All the warmth had drained out of Mistress Bessel’s tone, leaving it as wintry as her eyes. ‘You would turn up now, like a witch’s imp come to claim a soul. What hell-cat coughed you up on my doorstep, tonight of all nights?’ Her gaze dropped to the dribble of soup running down Mosca’s chin. ‘I better not be paying for your dinner!’ she snapped.

‘You can’t be short of money if you’re going to the Pawnbrokers’ Auction,’ answered Mosca through a mouthful of parsnip. It was a wild shot, but why else would the woman be out so late? Mistress Bessel flinched, and Mosca guessed that she had hit her mark.

Mistress Bessel gave a quick glance over her shoulder. ‘All right,’ she said in a low mutter, ‘where is he? If you’re here, your partner in crime can’t be far away. I’ve still got a bone to pick with him.’

‘Mr Clent’s in the debtors’ prison in Grabely, and set about with creditors. If you want to pick his bones clean, you’ll have to join the queue.’

‘I do not mean Eponymous!’ Mistress Bessel glared at her, and this time Mosca noted a decidedly apprehensive look in her eye. ‘I mean that… thing of yours.’

Saracen tended to leave a strong impression. Months before, while on their travels, Clent and Mosca had stayed for a brief interval at Mistress Bessel’s shop. While Mosca was away on a shopping trip, Clent had tried to make a present of Saracen to Mistress Bessel. Mosca had had her own ideas about this, as had Saracen, and Saracen had ended up making a cripplingly strong impression upon Mistress Bessel, Mistress Bessel’s apprentice, a counter, two tables, a window and most of the contents of her shop.

‘Saracen’s not here.’ Wish he was.

Mistress Bessel relaxed somewhat, and then Mosca’s previous words seemed to penetrate.

‘Did you say that Eponymous was in Grabely? So… you’re still gallivanting around after him, are you?’ Mistress Bessel’s face furrowed for a moment with an expression halfway between bitterness and wistfulness. Then the softer expression vanished, leaving only creases of suspicion in her brow. ‘So that’s it.’ Her voice was a knife. ‘He sent you to find me. He still thinks he can honey-talk money out of me, after all this time. How did he know where I was?’

‘He didn’t! I didn’t!’ Mosca held up one wrist, where the red marks from her bonds were still visible. ‘I was in Grabely an’ some beaky maggot grabbed me to be his scribe at the auction cos he couldn’t read, and he’d have killed me afterwards if I hadn’t run off and I didn’t know you were here and I don’t know where here is and I don’t even know how to get back to Grabely…’

Mosca trailed off only when the air in her lungs was exhausted, but to her relief she saw the suspicious look in the stocky woman’s face fade and relax a little.

Mistress Bessel settled herself in a hearthside chair which received her with a creak. For a few moments she stared pensively at Mosca, her eyes widening and narrowing as if to allow in thoughts of different sizes.

‘Well, why not?’ she said at last with a sigh. She pulled her shawl up around her neck and suddenly gave Mosca a broad, freckled, summery smile. ‘Don’t let me keep you awake with my chattering, blossom. You look like a bundle of wet kindling.’

Mosca did not answer, partly through surprise at the change of tone, and partly because her last hasty mouthful had caused her to sneeze barley into her nose.

‘Pop your head down and get some sleep,’ said Mistress Bessel in her most motherly tone, ‘and tomorrow I’ll take you back to Grabely and we can go visit Eponymous together.’

Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion’s voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that there is a scorpion somewhere in the room but can’t see where it is. She did not much like the idea of settling down where Mistress Bessel could watch her sleep either, but what other option was there? Nothing but the moors and the owls and the cold and Skellow with his thumb-cutting knife.

Mosca pulled off her wet stockings and kerchief to hang in front of the fire, and nestled down in her blanket by the fireplace. She pretended to sleep, all the while keeping a sly watch on the woman in the chair. Mistress Bessel however seemed to forget her instantly, instead gazing with rapt intensity at the dancing flames, as if her own thoughts were performing for her within the theatre of the hearth.

The plump fingers of one hand stroked the gloved palm of the other, as if soothing a wounded or frightened animal. There was a brightness in her eyes, as if she too had been wounded or frightened. The expression on her face made Mosca uneasy, in the same way that it is troubling to see a bell cord swaying in a wind you cannot feel, or watch a caged bird twittering in fear of an intruder you cannot see. Mosca did not understand what the expression meant, but was sure that she had glimpsed the same look hovering on the stocky woman’s face when she had first been shown into the parlour, before she saw Mosca. Clearly Mosca was not the only one with worries, and whatever it was that haunted Mistress Bessel, it had nothing to do with Mosca Mye.

The events of the preceding night had taken their toll on Mosca, and she did not wake until mid-morning, when the sound of voices and scraping pewter from the kitchens below finally penetrated the fog of exhaustion.

The hangings of Mistress Bessel’s bed were pulled back, and the rugs that covered the mattress pushed aside. Clearly Mosca’s new mistress’ had already risen. Mosca’s shed clothes had dried now before the fire, but their muddy drenching had left some of the fabric stiff and rough as canvas. There was still something luxurious, nonetheless, about pulling dry stockings on over her cold feet.

Lost: one bonnet, two clogs. Kept in spite of the odds: two thumbs, one life. Mosca poured a little water from a ewer into a bowl and quickly washed the blackberry scratches on her arms, the bluish bruises and cuts left by her nocturnal climb and the red marks on her thin, pale wrists. She was alive. Somehow, impossibly, she had survived the night. Better yet, she now recalled with a malicious satisfaction, she had probably sent the murderous Skellow on a wild goose chase to meet his Romantic Facilitator in the wrong place at the wrong time.