Twilight Robbery

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘I’ll run for a constable!’ squeaked Mosca. Mistress Bessel’s broad right hand snatched out, taking a firm grasp on Mosca’s forearm and pulling her off balance. The next moment, quite unexpectedly, Mistress Bessel released her hold with an oath. Mosca, who had been straining against her grip with all her might, promptly fell bewildered to the ground, losing her grasp on Saracen.

  Mosca had no time to wonder at her sudden release, however. As her flank hit the turf there was a snapping sound, and then an ominous silence. She lay winded for a moment, then gingerly pushed her bonnet back from where it had fallen over her eyes. She froze, belly pressed to the ground.

  Somehow during her fall, the frame of Saracen’s muzzle had become cracked. She was just in time to see him shake it from his face. His wings were half raised and his neck extended before him. Something had bumped and bruised him, and he was trying to work out what it was.

  A second passed in which Mosca, Clent and Mistress Bessel stared at him wordlessly, then they all moved as one. Or rather, they moved as three – three each individually bent on self-preservation. Clent swiftly slipped in through the pavilion door and climbed on to a wicker chair, the seat of which promptly gave out under his weight, leaving his legs trapped within the frame. Mistress Bessel displayed remarkable agility, not to mention a pair of chocolate-and-cream striped stockings, as she hoisted her skirts and clambered into a nearby nymph-bedecked fountain. Mosca settled for wrapping both arms over her bonneted head and staying as flat and low as she could.

  All were acquainted with the full destructive might of a Saracen enraged.

  ‘Might I ask,’ Clent ventured at last, his tone no louder nor angrier than a summer breeze, ‘what has brought you down upon us like a thunderbolt?’

  ‘That girl,’ murmured Mistress Bessel, her voice mellow as a cooing dove, ‘has ate my stew, milled my handkerchiefs, cheated the good doctor before he could buy me dinner and forked my money. And I’ll dance coin that she did so on your orders.’

  ‘You was going to leave us to rot in Grabely,’ was Mosca’s muffled offering. She paused to spit out a mouthful of dandelion clock. ‘Anyways, got in, didn’t you?’

  ‘How does that help me?’ Mistress Bessel’s tone sharpened, and then as Saracen swung his head to look at her, it once again became carefully buttery. ‘I did have enough money to get me through Toll and out the other side, before you stole from me. Now I’m scoured out.’ She examined Mosca and Clent keenly. ‘And you’re no better, are you, my sweetmeats? We’re all high and dry, flapping our gills and praying for rain.’

  ‘My most inestimable madam –’ Clent’s eyes slid from side to side, following Saracen’s patrol march – ‘you have not brought the constables down on our heads, so I must surmise that either you have your own reasons for not wanting them involved, or that you need us for something. Or . . . perhaps both?’

  ‘Not too tardy, my sugarplum, not bad at all.’ Mistress Bessel’s teeth were starting to chatter, due to the fountain water soaking into her stockings and petticoats. ‘If you will sing to my pipe, I think I have a scheme that will garner enough for you to pay what you owe me – stolen money, shop and all – and all three of us will still have enough to leave town.’

  ‘Sounds like your end of the bargain tastes sweeter than ours,’ muttered Mosca.

  ‘Don’t scorn to grab a thorn bush when you’re drowning,’ snapped Mistress Bessel. ‘After all, my spring pea, you’re born under Palpitattle. Nightbound as owl pellets. In three days you’ll be banished to darkness.’

  ‘My dear Jenny-wren, you do have a portion of a point.’ Clent dared to extricate one of his feet from the wicker chair. ‘You have our attention.’

  ‘Then listen well.’ The breeze obediently hushed, and even the lapping of the water around Mistress Bessel’s legs seemed to grow quieter. ‘There’s one thing in this town worth more than an elephant’s weight of silver.’

  ‘And that would be . . .’ Clent’s grey eyes had taken on a shine that was not fear. Jackdaw eyes, Mosca thought suddenly. Steel and avarice and pin-sharp wits.

  ‘The Luck,’ said Mistress Bessel.

  ‘The . . . Do you mean the Luck of Toll?’ Clent’s eyes widened.

  ‘Mr Clent –’ Mosca dared to tip back her hat brim a little to peer at him – ‘thought you said the Luck was like to be tuppence worth of glass pot? Nuffink said ’bout silver . . .’

  ‘Child, a thing is worth what people will pay for it. If the people of Toll believe that the Luck is the only thing keeping them from falling into the Langfeather, then it is worth more than a cataract of diamonds.’

  ‘So if they was to lose track of it . . .’ Mosca voiced the unspoken thought.

  ‘. . . and somebody was kind enough to tell them where it might be found . . .’ continued Clent.

  ‘. . . then there might be a good deal of gratitude of the jingling sort,’ finished Mistress Bessel.

  ‘So – the Luck – what is it, then?’ asked Mosca. There was an unpromising silence. ‘Do you even know?’

  The large woman’s countenance suddenly become cloudy, cautious and inscrutable. ‘I have had a muckle of trouble getting folks here to talk about it,’ she murmered, ‘but a town’s Luck is commonly something small. A chalice, or a skull, or the withered core of an apple ate by a saint.’

  ‘If it’s so small, what do you need us for?’ Suspicion gave Mosca’s neck hairs a storm-weather tingle. ‘It won’t be too heavy for you to manage by yourself. Mr Clent, I’ll wager the only thing she wants us to carry is the blame. She’s looking for someone to go to prison for her.’

  ‘Hush, child, that is hardly a courteous—’

  ‘Actually, she is right in a way,’ cut in Mistress Bessel.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never you mind what the Luck is,’ said Mistress Bessel, pushing away an inquisitive duck with the point of her parasol, ‘but I’ll tell you where I think it is. The mayor has it tucked away in the one place with more locks than any other – the top floor of the town jail. It’s up in the Clock Tower by the bridge.’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘So some ferret-faced little scrap of mischief,’ Mistress Bessel gave Mosca a pointed look, ‘gets hauled to the Pye-powder Court for a spot of purse-plucking, and thrown into the jail overnight. There this little canary-bird flies out of her cell by some certain secret means. She finds the Luck, hides it in her apron and walks out next morn when her kind friends come to clear her name and pay her fine.’

  ‘If it’s so easy,’ snapped Mosca, ‘why don’t you do that?’

  ‘There’s a spot of wriggle-work involved, needs to be a child. And anyway,’ Mistress Bessel added quickly, ‘my name’s too good. Jennifer – it’s a bundle of good meanings, fair and smooth and bonny and white. Nobody would believe ill enough of me to throw me in the roundhouse.’

  ‘Bet they’d change their minds if you took yer gloves off!’ hissed Mosca.

  Mistress Bessel went deathly white. Mosca held her eye, but felt a prickle in her stomach that told her she might have gone too far.

  ‘We play things my way, my buttercups,’ the stout woman said at last, very quietly and evenly, ‘or we do not play at all.’

  ‘Then I say fie to your game, Mistress Bessel!’ Mosca leaped up. ‘Find yourself some other playmates!’

  Saracen, who had been swaggering to and fro in some uncertainty, was delighted to see Mosca on her feet and screaming at somebody. At last he knew how to choose his enemy. There was a froth of white wings and a splash as he joined Mistress Bessel in the fountain.

  For a few seconds Mistress Bessel and Saracen disappeared amid a mash of foam, muslin, feathers and flying lily pads. Then something in a sodden bonnet scrambled out of the stone basin and made good use of a pair of stripy-stockinged legs, leaving a broken parasol floating in the fountain. After a few seconds Saracen hopped nonchalantly on to the lip of the basin, water droplets gleaming on his white plumage.

  ‘You know –’ Clent ca
refully emerged from the pavilion and watched the stout woman’s surprisingly athletic departure – ‘Mistress Jennifer Bessel can be a very dangerous woman to cross.’

  ‘I reckon you’re right, Mr Clent,’ agreed Mosca cheerfully, plucking grass seeds from her hair. ‘But I’d still hazard a shilling on Saracen if he and she was matched in the pit.’

  ‘I wonder how she paid her way into Toll after you relieved her of her money?’ mused Clent. ‘Ah, but I should not speculate thus about a lady . . . particularly one who, in her day, had the most cunning fingers in the “profession”.’ The ‘profession’ was, of course, the one that had left Mistress Bessel with a ‘T’ for ‘thief’ branded on each hand. ‘Alas, Jen.’ He sighed. ‘Mosca, I fear that you have the right of it. Whatever her plan was, it would probably have left the two of us in irons, your feathered friend in a cooking pot and Jen herself plump in the pocket and on her way to Chanderind. What a work is womankind!’

  He sighed again while Mosca picked up the pieces of the muzzle, knotted them into something that might hold and persuaded Saracen to don them again.

  ‘We are no further on,’ he muttered. ‘We have of course utterly confounded Mr Skellow’s attempts to meet with the Romantic Facilitator, who by now has almost certainly decided the whole business was a trap and fled the county. Yes, Mosca, we can congratulate ourselves on having done our duty and thrown these kidnappers into confusion . . . but self-congratulation will not pay our way past the toll gate.

  ‘As it is, I see only one resort left to us. Madam, we are working alone . . . and we have a street to find before dusk: Brotherslain Walk.’

  ‘But . . .’ Mosca felt herself dowsed on the instant by a host of midnight sensations. The memory of rain, cold steel, jagged stone and fear. ‘But that’s where Skellow’s going to be . . . this evening!’

  ‘Yes.’ Clent had a starry look. He seemed half terrified, but it was plain that some silvery idea had hooked him like a perch. He had a plan so radiant, so beautiful, that he could not resist it. ‘Yes, he will. He will be waiting to meet the Romantic Facilitator for the first time, tell him about his mission and perhaps pay him some more of his fee. And it would not do for Mr Skellow to wait in vain.’

  ‘Do I have to come?’

  Mosca found a hundred ways to ask the same question as she walked beside Clent through the tight-wound streets of Toll. And Clent found a hundred ways of saying yes. Worst of all, they were all good reasons.

  She could identify Skellow and his friends by sight. Clent would need a lookout in case of a double cross, or in case the real Romantic Facilitator decided to turn up to Skellow’s first suggested meeting point after all. Clent might need somebody else close by to create a distraction. And this was what she wanted, was it not? Scotching Skellow had been her plan, had it not?

  ‘Madam, our cogs are caught in this business now. We must grind on, or we are locked here.’

  It was all true, but, as he spoke, it made Mosca feel as if they were indeed small cogs in a great and grinding clock, being driven in ways they could not control, stifled and locked from a clear view of the sky. She had made a decision, or she had thought she was making one. She had brought them to Toll. And now events were driving her forward, to a nightmare-named alleyway where Skellow waited knife-faced to cut off her thumbs.

  Clent looked at her with a thoughtful, impenetrable pout.

  ‘Daylight is our weapon,’ he remarked quietly. ‘Let us use it to view this rendezvous at our leisure. You will have a better stomach for this when we have half a dozen tricks and schemes in our pockets.’

  The first person they asked for directions was a washerwoman. She hesitated, the heavy basket of linen on her head creasing her brow into a false frown.

  ‘Brotherslain Walk – hey, Cowslip! Do we still have Brotherslain Walk? Does it still exist here?’

  ‘Brotherslain? Yes . . . it’s duskling. It’s here and it’s there. It’s over in the Ravens, or what’s left of them.’

  ‘Here and there?’ asked Clent.

  But the women just gave each other the briefest glance, then launched into a long and baffling set of directions, smiled him on his way and went about their business. Mosca snorted a laugh at their retreating backs.

  ‘You get the feeling we just stubbed our toe ’gainst another thing nobody wants to say much about, Mr Clent?’

  ‘Every five minutes, Mosca, every five minutes. Whatever “duskling” or “here and there” mean, I will wager it touches on the nightbound. And asking about the nightbound appears to be an excellent way of ending conversations in Toll.’

  Following the directions, Mosca became aware that although they were going uphill, they were unquestionably going ‘downtown’. The streets were quieter here, the houses less well kept, and the sunlight fell to the cobbles only in stray slices.

  Since Saracen kept shrugging off his broken muzzle, Clent insisted that they find a tavern as close to the Ravens as possible, book a room and leave him in it. Saracen’s displeasure at being shut away in a little chamber was soothed considerably by the sight of a large bowl of barley and dried figs. The weary, pock-faced landlady seemed startled by the arrival of a goose-guest and puzzled by Clent’s eloquent and repeated injunctions that she should not open the door to the chamber whatever sounds she heard, but the pressure of a coin into her palm seemed to convince her.

  The Ravens proved to be a criss-cross set of alleys, most barely wide enough for two to walk shoulder to shoulder. There had clearly been a fire here long ago, for the oldest houses still had singed timbers, and Mosca guessed that this colouration had given the Ravens its name. She could even see gaps where the houses on the edge of the district had been pulled down to stop the spread of fire. Given how much of the town seemed to be a collage of white plaster and dark timberwork, Mosca was not surprised at the signs of fire.

  ‘Brotherslain Walk is somewhere here – it has an old summoning bell, they did say,’ Clent murmured.

  One alleyway was a little wider than the rest, and at the far end they found an old bell hanging from a hook, blue with corrosion and pitted as an old fruit.

  ‘Good. Now we need to find a ferret hole for you to watch from. There’s little enough life in these houses – see if the ghosts have left the doors unlatched.’

  Mosca obediently scurried around the nearest row of houses, retraced her steps, then stood and stared.

  ‘Mr Clent –’ Mosca found she had hushed her voice by instinct – ‘I know people block up windows sometimes so they won’t get charged for Window Tax, but . . . does anywhere have a door tax?’

  ‘A . . . I beg your pardon?’ Clent’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘I been all round this row of houses . . . and they’ve got no doors.’

  There was something eerie about it, like finding a face with no nose or mouth. Upon investigation, several other rows also proved to have no doors at all.

  ‘So . . . the doors have been blocked.’ Clent was clearly becoming uneasy. ‘Plague, possibly. Or giant rats. Or of course there was that old superstition that you could increase the life of a town by bricking up sixteen feral black cats . . .’ He was blinking rapidly, as if his eyes had noticed that his words were not improving morale and were desperately signalling to his mouth to stop moving.

  In the end, it turned out that one of the doorless houses had windows, and that one window had a loose shutter that could be prised open. The shop within – an old dairy – had clearly been untenanted for some time, and even the looting it had suffered had happened a long time before.

  ‘Well?’ Clent tap-tapped at his collar and glanced up and down the street as Mosca quietly slipped in through the window. ‘Will it do?’

  ‘Close enough. Least they can’t see me from the street.’ Mosca peered at one dust-clouded pane. ‘And these windows give me some view of the roofs and the lanes.’

  ‘So . . .’ Eponymous toyed with the chain of his long-pawned watch and glanced at the sky to judge the hour. The sun was alre
ady declining towards the horizon, and evening had come early in the narrow streets of the Ravens as the light faded out of the higher sky. ‘Our primary plan is . . .’

  ‘You talk to ’im like you’re the Romantic Facilitator,’ Mosca recited obediently, trying not to shiver, ‘and try to get your fee out of ’im or get ’im to talk about how he means to snatch the Marlebourne girl. And I keep an eye out in case he’s got a couple of bravos waiting with cudgels.’

  ‘Good. Secondary plan?’

  ‘If aught starts to look queer or chancy, I throw a stone some way off, and you talk like you’re skithered of being overheard and show ’im your heels.’

  ‘And . . . tertiary plan?

  ‘We run like Midsummer butter. Down-past-the-bell-turn-right-second-left-down-the-passage-past-the-cobblers-left-right-across-the-square-and-into-the-tavern.’

  A five-minute sprint. The pair of them locked eyes and nodded – a nod that said that if it came to running neither would wait for the other. Then Mosca pulled the window shut, and Clent went to stand by the summoning bell like a magician waiting for his demon. Mosca could see Clent’s face, pompous and wily, the lips moving silently as he worked through lines, his expression shifting imperceptibly as he practised looks of surprise, pleasure, indignation.

  In the midst of this silence came the distant sound of a bugle. Fifteen minutes until the mysterious ‘changeover’.

  Mosca stirred her feet restlessly, hearing the mess of dropped crocks and churns crunch under her soles. Resting her fingers on the window frame, she felt something fuzz and tickle at her fingers. She looked down, and saw between her fingertips the corpses of a dozen or so jet-black flies. Drawn in by the choking reek of dust and sick milk, with its lies of sweetness and warmth.

  And somewhere in the shadows, the little god Palpitattle laughed his thorny laugh at her.

  Where do the flies go in winter, Mosca Mye? Where do they go?

  She stared at the glossy little beads of death with their leg tangles uppermost.