Frances Hardinge - Fly By Night

‘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.

However, when she imagined herself escaping justice her spirit became quite tranquil again. ‘ Ah , thought Mosca with grim satisfaction, as she fell into step behind her employer, I must be rotten to the core . The truth was, she felt less sorry about the fate of the mill than for giving Clent information he could use against her.

This I will never see again , nor this, nor this … It seemed to Mosca that she should take note when she left the paths she knew. However, the moment when her woods became strangers’ woods was lost in mist and haste. The early birds testing their voices sounded like the cries of distant pursuers.

The path was a troublesome, fretful thing. It worried that it was missing a view of the opposite hills and insisted on climbing for a better look. Then it found the breeze uncommonly chill and ducked back among the trees. It suddenly thought it had forgotten something and doubled back, then realized that it hadn’t and turned about again. At last it struggled free of the pines, plumped itself down by the riverside, complained of its aching stones and refused to go any further. A sensible, well-trodden track took over.

‘Wait. Raise your chin, madam.’ Clent dabbed at Mosca’s cheeks, rearranged her kerchief so as to hide the worst of the moss stains on her bodice and sighed. ‘Well, there is little that can be done now. Let us hope that the good people of Kempe Teetering do not mistake you for some forest wight, come to bite the noses off their babies.’

‘We’re going to Kempe Teetering?’

‘Yes – everyone will expect us to make for Trambling Spike, where the main highways cross, then head towards the Capital or Pincaster. They will not expect us to head for a river port.’

‘So we’re getting a boat then, are we?’ asked Mosca.

Clent did not appear to hear her.

The forests were yielding to soft slopes of green, studded with conical haystacks gathered around central staves. Wide, shallow steps had been cut into the hillside to make it easier to farm, so that from a distance it seemed that a giant comb had been dragged sideways through the fields.

Mosca was fascinated by the leather waistcoats of the farming men, their broad, black-buckled hats and loose, shabby white shirts. The women all wore coarse print frocks, far fuller than Mosca’s sand-coloured dress. Over their white mob caps they wore wide straw bonnets, tied under the chin with ribbons of different colours. Like all the other women and girls of Chough, Mosca wore a tight-fitting cap of waxed linen which smelt of old fat but kept most of the water out. It seemed strange to her to wear two hats instead of one but, to judge by the way the farm girls tittered at her, they thought quite the reverse.

Kempe Teetering could be heard long before it could be seen. At the heart of the wind’s bluster there was a throaty fluting, like a hundred people blowing into the necks of bottles. There was a click , clack , clatter like loose machinery. There was a keen and steely yodelling.

The hills fell back, and the tumbling tributary which the people of Chough had always thought of as The River joined the real river. This was no shallow treacherous bandit of a river, ragged with foam. This was a sleek and powerful lordling, some thirty feet wide. This was the Slye.

Across the Slye, rippling and fluttering like a carnival carriage, stretched Kempe Teetering.

Most of the town was built across the great two-tiered bridge, the little shops and houses flanking the main thoroughfare. Rope ladders trailed from window and rooftop, and wooden stairways zigzagged between bridge and jetty. A web of clothes lines criss-crossed every available space, so that Mosca’s first impression was of a flutter of brightly coloured cloth – saffron, mauve, sky blue, mint green. It was the first real town Mosca had ever seen, and it seemed too big and bright and busy to hold in her head all at once.

Above, the gulls spun and floated like tea leaves in a stirred cup. They followed each boat along the river, tearing off narrow strips of sound with their sharp beaks. They squabbled over spillages, and tried to scare the errand girls into dropping something. Every roof was decorated with a brightly painted wooden windmill, or a whistle in the shape of a bird, or clattering dolls on strings, in a vain attempt to scare away the gulls.

And the boats! Grim, old barges being loaded to the waterline with bales and boxes, while the hauliers bellowed laughter and spat tobacco juice into the water. Coracles like a row of turtle shells, keel-upwards for careening on the waterfront. Sculls and wherries, some with great kites reclining on their decks, each emblazoned with the colours of the Guild of the Watermen.

Clent led the way up the wooden steps to the bridge proper, and paused before the door of a shop.

‘We shall call here briefly,’ he remarked over his shoulder. ‘Within lies a dear friend of mine whom I have promised to visit, and who will be invaluable in our state of extremis. May I stress that silence is a fine quality in a secretary?’