Frances Hardinge - Fly By Night

He ducked through the doorway, and Mosca followed.

The inside of the shop looked rather as if an excitable gorgon had run amok. On table and sill were clustered stone feathers, stone briars and stone flowers. Two bird skeletons hung against the window, so that their delicate bone structures could be seen against the light. There were crumpled and crumbling caps and sandals, stone pennies, scarves and ribbons stiff as the robes of a mausoleum angel. Mosca recognized all these strange ornaments as oddments petrified in the waters of Chough.

‘Here we are… Ah – Mistress Jennifer Bessel!’

Mistress Bessel was sturdy and sun-browned, and she brought a glow of warmth into the room as she entered. She had a dusting of flour on her bare arms, and under her cap a thick plait of hair was twisted like a bread swirl. Curiously, her hands were hidden in a pair of fingerless muslin gloves.

‘Mr Clent!’ Mistress Bessel’s smile widened still further, and her dimples became wells. ‘So my sweet friend has not got himself scragged after all.’

‘No, no – there is no man, god or beast that could prevent me keeping an appointment with you, dearest Jen.’

Something in Jen’s laugh suggested that she did not believe him.

‘Ah… and this is my niece, from…’

‘Chough,’ Jen finished promptly. ‘My dear bumblebee, look at her eyebrows!’

The little Chough bonnet was all very well for keeping one’s hair dry. Eyebrows were a different matter. The Chough water turned them so pale that they were almost invisible, making everyone from Chough look very surprised all the time. Mosca was no exception.

‘Still as sharp as a gimlet you are, Jen.’ There was a slight note of annoyance in Clent’s tone. ‘Yes, she has been staying in that unpleasant little village. Chough has left our clothes so chill and damp I fear the child will perish any moment. Jen, my sweet plum, I was hoping you might spare us some clothes that are a little less…’

‘Recognizable?’ asked Mistress Bessel.

Mosca was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Mistress Bessel knew Eponymous Clent rather well.

Clent lowered his lashes and smiled winningly at his hostess’s top button.

‘Well, I’ll take your old clothes in payment, then,’ declared Mistress Bessel. She turned to Mosca. ‘Listen, blossom, take that door, climb the ladder to the loft and you’ll see a leather chest right in front of you. There’s a gown of grey stuff which’ll do for you, and you can try on a couple of the bonnets and caps. Don’t go touching anything else, mind.’

Mosca obediently climbed to the attic and hunted out the chest of clothes. Then, her new clothing draped over one arm, she much less obediently sneaked back down the ladder, so that she could listen at the door while she changed.

‘Rather young for you, isn’t she?’ asked Mistress Bessel.

‘Ah… a very sad case. I found her starving on the village outskirts, and no man with any feeling could have left her to-’ Clent’s sentence broke off with a sudden squawk. Peering through the crack of the door, Mosca saw that Mistress Bessel had playfully taken a pincer-hold on his nose with the sugarloaf cutters.

‘Now, Eponymous, when I want a story from you I’ll pay for it. Speaking of which, do you have any thieves to sell me this month?’

Mosca felt her mouth go dry. Could Clent really mean to sell her out already?

‘Of course, Jen. Four of them. An angler, a diver and two knights of the road.’ From reading the more lurid chapbooks, Mosca knew that ‘anglers’ were thieves who sat on roofs and used long, hooked poles to tweak bags from the top of coaches. A ‘diver’ was a pickpocket, and a ‘knight of the road’ was a highwayman.

Mistress Bessel reached out eager hands and received a bundle of rough pages, printed in large type. Each bore a large seal of red wax, the seal of the Company of Stationers. Mistress Bessel was too busy slowly and silently mouthing out words to observe the corner of another packet of papers jutting from Clent’s burlap package. Clent noticed it, however, and pushed it back into hiding with a furtive urgency. The moment was not lost on the secret watcher.

‘Ooh… I do like to keep abreast of news in the profession, even now.’

‘I thought you would like to see this one, Jen.’ Clent extracted a particular sheet and began to read. ‘“An Account of the Ingenious Crimes and Stratagems of the Gang led by Rosemary Peppett, otherwise known as Lady Lighttouch…” Here we are… “not since the time of the infamous Mistress Fleetfinger have we seen such Craft and Courage in a Female Breast, and such Cunning use of her Sex’s softer charms that the Victims might even count themselves blessed…”’

Mistress Bessel gave a wistful laugh.

‘Slop and feathers!’ she exclaimed. ‘Softer charms indeed – I never made use of my looks as Mistress Fleetfinger. I could have done though.’

‘That you could, Jen,’ Clent said gently.

The corners of Mistress Bessel’s mouth drooped slightly, and she thoughtfully smoothed the back of her gloves. Then she gave a sniff and looked up at Clent with a forced brightness.

‘So – what kept you?’

‘I fear I made myself rather popular in Chough, so much so that they could not be persuaded to part with me. Indeed, when I finally tried to depart, they… put me in the stocks.

‘Ah, your taking ways. So how much did you take before they caught you?’

‘I was not caught,’ Clent declared in an affronted tone. ‘I fancy I was betrayed – I know that a stranger stayed in Chough with the magistrate last night. And… ah, perhaps I am growing old and fearful, but I have been feeling a shadow at my back since I left the Capital.’

‘The gallows casts a long shadow,’ murmured Mistress Bessel, ‘and sometimes it cuts out the sun. I got tired of feeling the chill of it on the back of my neck, which is why I turned respectable. That, and these.’ She held up her hands. There were dark shapes on their backs, faintly visible through her light gloves, each in the shape of a ‘T’. Felon’s brands , thought Mosca. T for thief .

‘It is not the fear of the gallows, my inestimable Jen. My shadow is flesh and bone and walks on two legs. Jen… I cannot linger here. It will not be long before the rabble of Chough work out where I have gone.’

‘Eponymous -’ Mistress Bessel sounded quite serious – ‘what devilish soup have you got yourself into? We were in fellowship once, and now you will not even tell me who you have been working for so secretively this last two years.’

There was a long silence. Clent chased a chapbook around the tabletop with a fingertip. Finally Jen gave a short, bitter sigh. ‘Your girl’s been gone a long time,’ she remarked. ‘She’s got long fingers, I noticed that. If I miss anything from upstairs, you’ll be floating away downriver, but not in a boat.’

Mosca decided that this was a good moment to reappear.

Mistress Bessel turned a motherly smile upon her as she pushed open the door. ‘Ah, now, that’s better, my blossom.’

‘Mosca,’ Clent interrupted quickly, ‘we will need a few things from the west bank.’ Mosca was quick enough to catch the purse tossed at her head. ‘A loaf of bread, some cheese – and an apple or two, if it will not ruin us. And, child -’ Mosca halted in the doorway – ‘we have yet to find a way of disguising the goose.’

Reluctantly Mosca relinquished Saracen, and ventured on to the Kempe Teetering thoroughfare. She was well aware that Clent might be looking for a chance to abandon her, but it seemed less likely that he would decamp without his purse.

On the far bank, Mosca glimpsed a soft slate-blue dome, and felt something cold slither across her heart like a toad across a stone. She halted, and was butted in the calves by a wheelbarrow of whelks.