by Kim Newman
Larry Laurence had tried to squeeze onto the Moth Club bench. Even if the Fourths bunched up, no room could be found for her. The titchy Third settled for a position of expectant adoration in front of Frecks, bony knees on the seat, sharp chin on the backrest. Long after the match was abandoned, Larry pointed out legs on the left. Even an impressive Thirty from the Coach and Six at Goodworth Clatworth – counting the coachman and two painted passengers – was too little too late. Larry took the rout personally. If she were at Frecks’ side (instead of Amy), she’d have magically detoured Rattletrap past a pub on the left called the Million Millipedes.
‘On the right,’ said Larry, at Sutton Scotney, ‘the Star! A duck!’
‘A duck has two legs, but scores no runs,’ said Frecks. ‘An answer begging for a riddle.’
Larry brayed with laughter, and footnoted how clever and amusing that was.
‘Lay off, Young Pocket,’ said Frecks fondly, tousling the younger girl’s hair.
That shut the Third up, and made her glow…
Thinking about it, Amy reckoned trifling with the mite’s affections was a smidge unfair. If Frecks were wearing her silver coif, it might tarnish. Passed on by her uncle, who flew with Pendragon Squadron in the War, its mystic protection thinned if the wearer’s purity of heart wavered. The Lady of the Lake held her knights to moral standards so high it was hard to maintain them and still breathe.
Amy diagnosed a spark of something not unlike jealousy in her own breast. Crushes should be treated kindly… but Frecks was her best friend. She should know better than to encourage Laurence.
Serafine Walmergrave, a girl with countless admirable qualities, was possessed of a confidence that could – if unchecked – verge on big-headedness. If Frecks ventured a bon mot, she needed the honest, proportionate response only a friend could give, not the uncritical, seal-flapping applause of a smitten disciple. Or else she’d lose perspective. Pendragons had fallen for less.
‘Here, have some sweeties,’ said Light Fingers, offering a bag of all-sorts.
Larry politely declined – as if suspecting the tuck were poisoned. Believing Frecks’ friends conspired to cast her into outer darkness, she was suspicious of everyday courtesies. Even the offer of an all-sort.
‘Please yourself,’ said Light Fingers, flipping a liquorice wheel into the air and catching it with her mouth.
Light Fingers was Amy’s Unusual best friend. Her Talent was swiftness. Emma Naisbitt was fleet of foot and quick in thought. She inherited it from her parents, who were convicted (if romantic) thieves. Conjurer and glamorous assistant in the evening, cracksman and lookout after midnight. Where Frecks was confident, Light Fingers was cautious. Frecks had a dramatic ginger mop… Light Fingers’ hair was of no particular colour. Light Fingers sometimes worried about the things that made them Unusual. ‘They call us flukes,’ she was eager to remind Amy, ‘no matter how nice they are to our faces.’
‘You should hear what they call me, kittens,’ Kali would say at that.
Amy and Light Fingers didn’t know what the girl meant.
‘On my first day at school, Arbuthnot asked me if it washed off?’
‘Your forehead dot?’
‘No. The soot. Girls used to stick fingers in my face and see if they came away black. I asked Peebles if she got her pasty fizz from chalk powder. She didn’t get it then. She don’t get it now.’
Amy didn’t either.
Kali was a moderniser. Her father was a silent-strangle or cutthroat sort of bandit. The Princess favoured the rat-tat-tat of tommy guns, the squeal of getaway car wheels and the explosive statement of ‘pineapples’ tossed through windows. She’d learned English from magazine stories about American gangsters and molls. She chewed gum, daring whips to make up a rule against excessive mastication.
‘Everyone’s a fluke,’ Frecks usually said, thinking that settled forever.
‘But some can take their helmets off and be Ordinary,’ Light Fingers would think or whisper, setting it all off again.
Only best friends could have this conversation over and over and still be best friends.
Amy wondered whether Light Fingers disapproved of Larry, an Unusual, choosing to bestow worship on an Ordinary? The Third wasn’t at all taken with fellow Talents like Amy or Light Fingers.
Or Honor Devlin and Charlotte Knowles.
Stretch and Miss Memory sat together, playing cat’s cradle. With extra joints and pliable bones, Devlin had an unfair advantage, but Knowles had crammed a thousand or so string configurations into her mind. Devlin and Knowles were Fifths, veterans of the Remove.
Haldane was next to Miss Gossage, on the backwards-facing bench behind Joxer’s cushioned seat. She proudly wore the double braid of Head Girl and Chief Whip on boater, blazer and overcoat. She looked like a rear admiral from a landlocked country whose navy made up in pomp what it lacked in ships. Kali said Headers was a sap for not unpicking the trim. Excess glitter would let Draycott’s know she was coming from a mile off. A good way to get gunned down in the gutter.
Sitting as far from Haldane as possible without moving to another bench was Hjordis Bok. The Goneril Sixth was school hop, skip and jump champion. She was hard to please, sinking into wordless gloom while girls she’d just beaten rallied round to clap her shoulder in good-humoured congratulation. Amy often saw Bok on her own in all weathers, practising – golf, discus, weight-lifting. Wybrew, her House Captain, insisted the team include a girl from Goneril, the sport house, otherwise it was dominated by the uncategorisables and Unusuals of Desdemona. The Great Game was not a sport in the sense Goneril understood it, but house pride must be satisfied. So Bok was with them.
The last of the team had a bench to herself. Nancy Dyall – Poppet – was a secret weapon, liable to blow up before deployment and wipe out the battalion. The Desdemona Third’s odd, uncontrollable Ability made her difficult to be around – all the more so when you forgot she was there, which she could make you do.
The team was a mix of Unusuals and Ordinaries. They represented the whole school, not just the Remove. Frecks was a fringe Unusual, by virtue of that ensorcelled chainmail balaclava. And it took an elastic definition of Ordinary to include Kali, heiress to a criminal empire. Haldane, with her methodical sneakiness, and Bok, made near-perfect by practice, might be as much use in the field as Stretch, with her party piece of reaching tall shelves, or Miss Memory, who could shove reams of rote learning into her mind but would eventually fall asleep and forget it all.
This was the Drearcliff Grange team.
Amy trusted Frecks, Light Fingers and Kali – the Moth Club – and saw the use of Larry, Bok and Knowles. Devlin was a good sort. Her cheeriness was more valuable to the side than her ductility. Morale was key, particularly when play went against the school. Haldane was no Lungs Lamarcroft, but – despite one or two of the things she would tell you about herself – she could be got round. And, in the end, Dyall was terrifying. A tactic would be to let Draycott’s collect the tobies, then have Poppet walk up and scramble their brains so they didn’t remember who they were and what they were doing, then take away the prizes and waltz home with them. Amy hoped it wouldn’t come to that but a decent showing for Drearcliff Grange was required.
Revenge must be had.
The Draycott’s team must have a leaf.
If it was there, she would see it.
It was something she’d discovered on her own and talked about with Light Fingers. Her friend had a similar knack, and was excited that they shared it. Nothing to do with their Talents, but a way of thinking, of approaching situations, of sizing up people. It worked on anyone, but was especially useful for Unusuals.
Spotting the leaf.
It was Amy and Light Fingers’ private term for a fatal weakness.
When mighty Siegfried bathed in dragon’s blood, an unnoticed linden leaf stuck to his heroic back so his skin wasn’t unpuncturable all over. A rotter eventually stuck a dirk into the tender spot, putting a tragic end to Sieg
fried’s saga and kicking off further trouble in the next opera.
The moral was that mighty heroes all have leaves.
Captain Adonis, who ran about in a circus outfit battling gang bosses with flat heads or iron teeth, drank a patent medicine that rendered him invulnerable to bombs, bullets and knives but deathly allergic to strawberries. If he accidentally ate one, he’d explode. Were Amy advising the American overman, she’d have suggested he keep quiet about his leaf – but he let it get in the papers. Duke D’Stard invented a tommy gun that sprayed strawbs instead of slugs. The Captain was splattered, but got out of dying somehow and dumped his nemesis in Sing Sing.
Amy was up on the leaves of her schoolfellows.
Pinborough of the Sixth, the boxing champion, tossed her fringe before delivering her roundhouse knockout. An opponent who knew that could duck under the blow and clip her glass jaw with an uppercut. Frecks’ charm depended on an abstract notion of ‘purity of heart’ that wasn’t always realistic. Knowles could know everything about a subject but not understand any of it. Even Light Fingers had a leaf, which Amy couldn’t explain to her. Hotly aware of the unjust treatment of Unusuals, she mistrusted Ordinaries even when she shouldn’t.
Fearsome as the competition was, they would have leaves. Amy hoped she would spot them.
But battle couldn’t be fought until the envelope was opened.
‘It’s so overcast it looks like sunset,’ Amy declared.
‘One thing you’ll find about me is that evasions—’
‘Get right up your nose?’ Frecks suggested.
While everyone was laughing, Amy leaned over and told Poppet to go and sit by the Captain.
Poppet was reading the Girls’ Paper. She folded over the corner of a page to keep her place in ‘Sally the Stowaway’ and handed the periodical to Amy. Dyall insinuated herself into a spot on the front bench between Bok and Headers. She slid slowly closer to Haldane, staying beneath her notice – under her nose! – and seeming to shrink within herself.
Amy waited a few minutes. Haldane’s face grew slack.
Rattletrap hit a bad patch of road. Girls slid along benches, bumping into each other. First accidentally, then on purpose. Devlin’s arm got bent in the wrong places. She snapped the extra elbows straight, eliciting groans and yucks.
‘Can’t be helped,’ she said, unashamed.
Swift as a hummingbird, larcenous as a magpie, Light Fingers took advantage of the distraction. She vaulted over bench backs, plucked the envelope from Haldane’s grasp, and leaped back to her place. Only Amy was close enough even to notice she’d moved.
‘We should open the envelope,’ said Amy. ‘Hang sunset.’
Light Fingers handed it over.
Haldane’s countenance betokened forthcoming rage at ‘the wicky trick’ then her anger vanished and puzzlement set in.
‘One thing you’ll find about me…’ she began, then trailed off.
From experience, Amy knew Headers was feeling hot and irritable, and wondering whence came the throb in her temples. She could look right at Nancy Dyall and not see her. And she wouldn’t want to look at Poppet, since that was quease-making. Then, she’d forget where she was, as if her concentration were drifting during Double Geog… When the mists cleared, she’d be in a different classroom, a Latin textbook open on the desk, not knowing how many hours she’d been ‘away’. Trying to think back to fill in the gap hurt like putting a finger into a candleflame.
Amy shuddered. It wasn’t Dyall’s fault she was born with a Talent. It was at least partially Amy’s fault Dyall had learned to apply it.
‘As you were, Poppet,’ said Amy.
Dutifully, Dyall returned to her lonely bench. Amy gave back her comic.
Haldane recovered from befuddlement. Miss Gossage pointed to her mouth. Headers raised a knuckle, embarrassed, and wiped off a thread of foam.
‘Sunset,’ she said, not knowing the meaning of the word.
Amy shivered, but it was done now.
Poppet unfolded the corner of her page and read on.
‘Amy should open the envelope, shouldn’t she?’ said Frecks to the charabanc in general.
‘What envelope?’ asked Haldane.
With a lash of mentacle, Amy whipped the seal off the packet.
III: Nine Hours Later: In the Fog
AMY ALIGHTED ON uneven ground. A sloping passage not a paved street. Just about wide enough for a bicycle – though cycling on these slippery cobblestones would be foolhardy. Buildings pressed in, leaning at each other. Yellowish water trickled in the gutter.
She had often heard of vile alleyways.
This would appear to be one of them.
She wasn’t impressed.
A jangling sounded. Her eyebrows prickled again.
A fire alarm? Danger!
No… Just ‘time, gentlemen, please’ being called.
A sign hung from an arch spanning the alley. The Midnight Bell. A duck in pub cricket.
Drinkers barged out into the fog and had coughing fits.
Amy rubbed Frecks’ scarf over her goggles, not improving her view much. Her nose stung from the fog.
How did city moths live with this?
She had spent most of her life in the country. Drearcliff Grange School was on the North Somerset coast, miles from the nearest town. Amy’s family home was in Crossway Green, a Worcestershire village. Her only experience of London was passing through the railway stations – and a visit to Oxford Street when she was little, to see the Christmas illuminations. But, through books and magazines, she thought she knew the city.
Growing up, she’d devoured stories of adventure steeped in picturesque fogs. Holmes and Watson barrelling through stippled halftone in a hansom cab to thwart the schemes of Professor Moriarty. Chance encounters between strangers leading to excitement and drama. Princes and paupers switching places. Frightful fiends stalking innocent prey in Whitechapel or Limehouse. Cheerful cockneys and foolish swells. Sweeney Todd and Spring-Heel’d Jack. Chirrupy flower girls and irrepressible urchins.
The sea fog that sometimes shrouded Drearcliff was salty, but white as a cloud.
In films, London fog was thin and ghostly. Curtains of misty muslin. Of course, flickers were black and white, unless tinted blue for night or green for the jungle.
Films were never stained this uniquely disgusting green-yellow.
That was why London fogs were called ‘pea-soupers’, she realised.
Her mouth filled with spit. Too many deep breaths and she’d spew. That would not show the school in the best light. She kept licking her teeth to get rid of the acrid taste. This pea-soup was fouler even than the sludge they made in the Drearcliff Grange kitchens.
Should she add a gas mask to her Kentish Glory costume? To keep out the worst of the pollution.
It would be simplest to remain a country moth.
There was plenty of evil to be fought outside towns and cities. The shires were less well-served by established adventurers like the Splendid Six, Dr Shade or the Most Valued Members of the Diogenes Club. Even the dour gents of the Undertaking more often showed their top hats and dark spectacles in built-up areas.
But Kentish Glory would go where she was most needed.
Even if it was horrid and she wasn’t dressed properly for it.
She tried to ‘listen’ out for Miss Gossage, but the teacher’s Talent didn’t work like that. She had to buzz you.
This was not going to plan.
Inside the envelope Light Fingers took from Haldane was a single sheet of paper, with a typewritten list. Clues leading to locations around London.
Helen’s Hole WC1
Burnt Pudding EC3
Rache in Red SW2
Villa de Ville W1
Bad Luck Bertram E1
The team had the inside track on the first riddle. Helen’s Hole was a code name for the Troy Club in Hanway Street, London WC1. Helen Lawless, the proprietress, was an Old Girl – Team Captain before the War when Drearcli
ff Grange racked a streak of wins in the Great Game. Dr Swan’s former cygnet was now a notorious receiver of stolen information and paymaster of half the spies in the city and had a flirty, on-and-off enmity-or-alliance with Dennis Rattray, the hard-hitting paladin the papers called Blackfist. They were continually rowing, canoodling, bantering or sparring. Neither had definitively come out on top, so their game continued. According to Dr Swan, Miss Lawless was shamming shadiness, covering her true calling as a loyal agent of the crown. She polished her medals in secret, selflessly living as an outcast from polite society in order to protect it. The school was proud of her, though Amy thought Miss Lawless should give that overbearing cad the push – or chop off his granite hand with a scimitar and let him bleed out.
Frecks said that the Undertaking must be taking pity on the wooden-spoon holders to lob such an easy one. Amy bristled slightly at that thought. Drearcliff Grange didn’t need or want special treatment.
Hjordis Bok was sent to Hanway Street. Haldane phoned ahead, using codewords Knowles supplied from memory. Miss Lawless knew to expect a Drearcliff girl, and to put off the other teams.
Bok could safeguard the toby till it was tucked in Larry’s pocket.
When the team put their heads together, they had ideas about most of the clues – though the only one they agreed on was ‘Burnt Pudding EC3’. That must mean Pudding Lane in Eastcheap, where the Great Fire of 1666 started. History said a baker was careless with his oven, but the Shadow Chronicle told another tale – involving runes, a fire demon, and a bitter hatred the diabolist Maurice Wyvil nurtured for the architect Christopher Wren. Pages torn from Samuel Pepys’ diary and pasted into the Chronicle gave the full story. The thief and fancy woman Moll Flanders was transported to Virginia rather than hanged on the condition she not reveal the real cause of the Great Fire (and the preceding Great Plague) in her memoirs. She wrote in plenty of scandal, gossip and amorous dalliance to fill gaps made by taking out terrifying truths.
