As the wind became chill, the hauliers’ grumbles rose to an ominous level.
‘We’ll take our sup at the Halberd,’ Partridge declared. ‘Ye’ll dine with us.’
The Halberd had once been a little watchtower set up to prevent pirates sailing up the river from the sea and attacking inland towns. During the war, brimstone had bitten off its roof like the crust from a loaf, and pushed out one of the walls. The rubble remained, now moss-covered, and a rough roof of thatch had been used to shut out the sky.
The crew made the Mettlesome Maid fast, and all but two accompanied Clent and Mosca to the tavern’s door. Inside, the air was thick with pipesmoke and the moist scent of the earth floor and the cloying smell of overcooked tripe. To judge by their clothes and sunburned faces, most of the customers were boat crew or hauliers. They were, of course, all men. The tables were a jumble of upturned coracle wrecks, and long deck planks rested on barrels to serve as trestles. The seats were bales of greying straw. Against a far wall huddled a handful of straw mattresses, on each of which a man lay sleeping in his shirtsleeves.
They sat themselves at one of the wider coracles, Mosca noticing with a hungry pain beneath her ribs that a plate of small loaves and a jug of water were already set upon the table. She was also intrigued to notice that when he took up his ale, Partridge first swayed it over the loaves for a moment, before drinking. In Chough, everybody always waved their drinking cups over a jug of water to show that they were drinking a toast to King Prael, the ‘king across the Tosteroy Sea’. However, she knew that Partridge’s gesture was in honour of King Hazard, the ‘king across the Magora mountains’, as represented by the loaves.
At the next table a haulier spilt a little water on the table and wafted his cup over it, in honour of King Galbrash, the ‘king over the Fallowsmere Lake’. His friend seated opposite waved his tankard over the fingers of his own left hand, to show his allegiance to the Twin Queens, ‘the monarchs beyond the Jottland foothills’. A dozen or so royal allegiances seemed to be represented in the Halberd, and yet none of them showed any sign of leaping at each other’s throats amid a flurry of ale foam. The business of kings did not seem to be a fighting matter.
Mosca did not know it, but she was staring at a sign of changing times. The days when followers of rival kings would exchange blows or musketfire on sight were long gone. Every town now accepted with a sigh its share of the different allegiances, and every barkeep carefully laid out a jug of water and a bowl of little loaves on each table so that his customers might toast any monarch they chose.
A captain from a lighter joined their table, and was soon deep in conversation with Partridge.
‘So – what news in Mandelion?’ Partridge asked, stooping to light his pipe at the candle.
‘Well, the Duke’s worse each day. Did you hear about the new Spires of Prosperity?’
Partridge crooked an eyebrow.
‘Twin spires, would they happen to be?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Still pairs with him, then?’ Partridge sighed, and shook his head.
Amid the stream of strange names, Mosca sometimes lost the thread of the conversation. There was a lot said about a group called ‘the Locksmiths’, which sounded like the name of a guild, but one she had never heard before. The lighter captain said they were growing stronger in Mandelion, which was something he had hoped never to see. Partridge said it was all right, the Duke’s sister would never let them take over Mandelion the way they had taken Scurrey. If the Locksmiths were just a guild of lock-makers, Mosca could not imagine why people looked so grim and frightened when they talked about them.
The beer in Mosca’s cup seemed as weak as river water, and tasted much as if a hundred ducks had been washing their feet in it. But after a while Mosca started to feel a warm and empty buzzing space near the back of her head. When she tried to understand the conversation, it was like trying to pick up a thread with Saracen’s webbed foot instead of her own fingers.
‘Your niece is looking a little dusky around the eyes. Better put her to bed before she falls off her chair and into the fire.’
‘Bed’ proved to be one of the straw mattresses by the far wall, set somewhat aside from the others. Mosca dared not undress, and she lay down fully clothed, with her bonnet tipped forward to shade her face. From under the brim, she watched Clent brush down his own mattress with fastidious care, remove his coat for use as a blanket, and lay himself down. To her disappointment, he tucked the package under the mattress first.
For the next five hours Mosca stared into darkness, listening to the crunch and rip of Saracen tearing her mattress apart. She had no intention of letting Clent slip off without her again, and she dug straw stems into her palms to keep herself awake. But, exhausted as she was, it was impossible not to doze off, and she was shaken awake at dawn.
‘Shake a leg, there.’ Partridge grinned down at her, not unkindly.
She followed him out to the boat, her stomach raw and green from lack of sleep. Clent was sitting not far from the stern, peeling a boiled egg with his fingers. There was no sign of his parcel.
As Mosca sat down beside him, she became aware that he was observing her narrowly. He took a bite out of his egg, stared thoughtfully at the deck for a moment, then looked back at Mosca.
‘My dear, I hope you have slept well?’ Clent’s tone was courteous, but as cold and crisp as the morning. He paused for a moment to pick at his teeth with his little fingernail. Only when Partridge had moved out of earshot did he continue. ‘Has it struck you that the river is rather… higher this morning?’
‘Didn’t hear any rain.’ Mosca stared out at the river, which seemed as languid as ever.
‘I do not mean further up the banks, child, I mean further up the sides of the boat. We are lower in the water than we were yesterday, and I think we cannot put all of that down to the beer and bread in our bellies.’
‘You mean… they got us off the boat so we wouldn’t see ’em loading up with something else?’ Mosca squinted about the boat. ‘Is it hid among the bales?’
‘No,’ answered Clent, a little too quickly. ‘No, I think not. Cast your eyes upon the deck. The planks beneath us keep the cargo from bruising the barge’s belly, but in this case I fancy they are fulfilling another purpose.’ Like most barges of its type, the Mettlesome Maid had no hold, and the hay bales were piled up on the deck. The deck was a flat layer of planks some little way above the barge’s elmwood bottom.
Mosca noticed for the first time that some strands of straw were clamped between the deck planks, as if the planks themselves had been removed and then replaced. She looked up at Clent, her eyes wide with a question.
‘Now, under that canvas awning is the place where the crew sleeps. There will be no one there now, and if you were to say you wished to rest there for a while, no one would object. Then you need only lever up one of the planks, slip into the belly of the boat, and we shall have our questions answered.’
‘But-’
‘Come now. The powers that be have saddled me with a ferrety-looking child, and as far as I know ferrets have only two uses – poor-quality fur trim, or sending down holes after rabbits. Pray be a good ferret, and be quick about it.’
Mosca mimed a yawn, and picked her way along the deck towards the stern. At the gunwale Partridge rested a lazy hand on the great tiller, his eyes on the river ahead. He paid little attention as Mosca pulled up the awning, and slipped into the darkness beneath.
Prising up the planks was no mean feat. Mosca’s fingernails were short, and the planks were solid oak and a foot wide. She eventually found that she could slide one of the scraps of metal from Clent’s pouch between the planks, and after some painful minutes one rose out of its groove.