Clent raised his eyebrows slightly, and gave the tiniest nod of approval.
At the carriage window the breeze set a curtain of fine lace quivering as if in alarm. The movement caught Mosca’s attention. A single muddy droplet hung from the top of the window. The wind rolled it gently to and fro, then it became too self-important, and fell. It sank greedily into a sleeve like snow, leaving a spot the colour of coffee. A white handkerchief appeared in a slender, white-gloved hand and smoothed at the stain, smoothed and smoothed until it was no more. Mosca’s gaze followed the glove as it withdrew into the shadow of the carriage, and she looked in on a world of white.
Until this moment Mosca had thought she understood white. White was old, white was ugly, white was something that had been left in the water too long.
Until this moment Mosca had thought that she understood riches. Riches was the smell of goose fat, riches was a red roll of fat on belly and jowl that kept out the chill.
This strange new world held a multitude of clinging raindrops, but each drop was a pearl.
Mosca had never seen pearls before. And there were so many of them, playing ring-a-lilies across fields of spotless silk, hanging in long strings from the wrist and throat of the carriage’s single occupant.
A face hung in the darkness, porcelain-pale and perfect. Above it rose an intricate mound of whorls and curls, pinned in place and powdered until the whole might have been carved out of marble. If there had ever been any warmth or expression in the face, it had long since been smoothed away and stifled with powder. And Mosca suddenly understood that real riches was not a roaring fire or a red woollen cloak. Real riches was snow.
‘Heatherson, what is wrong?’
The words were cool, soft, feathery, and Mosca suddenly realized that the woman behind the marble face was young.
‘Heatherson, what is happening?’
The woman leaned forward a little to give herself a better view of the road, and Mosca saw that on the gleaming surface of the lady’s cheek lay a faint lacework of an even more brilliant white. It was a scar, splaying like a snowflake across the lady’s right cheekbone.
‘My lady, I think that we might have to…’ The driver’s voice trailed away in a sick little hiccup. ‘… I think we might… I think…’
The discussion around Mosca had stilled. The pedlar no longer chirruped, the footmen no longer grumbled, Clent’s delighted tones no longer painted pictures in the air. The driver above her had raised his hands above his ears. His face was as white as the lace curtain.
Some four or five men had risen from their hiding places among the gorse. Each held a pistol, carefully trained upon the group around the carriage.
E is for Extortion
Mosca had never seen a pistol before, but she had jealously bartered for Hangman’s Histories and Desperate Tales, and had seen woodcuts of highwaymen and murderers. She was a little surprised at how small their pistols were. They had always been drawn large in the pictures to make it clear what they were.
How strange it was to look down the barrel of a pistol! It was not exactly fear, more a soft shock, like being hit in the stomach with a snowball. She seemed to be able to think quite clearly, but at the same time her thoughts seemed to move so slowly that she could watch them trundle past with a feeling of disinterest.
Most of the men were young, she noticed with a frosted calm. One of them kept swallowing, as if he was nervous, and adjusting his grip on the pistol. His head kept twitching, as if he was trying to avoid peering over his shoulder, and a moment later she heard what the robber had already heard, the sound of horses’ hoofs. None of the armed men seemed alarmed by the noise. They seemed to expect it.
A raindrop fell unexpectedly into her eye, and she instinctively reached up to brush it away before she had time to consider how the robbers might react to such a sudden gesture. She froze, her fingers still on her cheek, pins and needles running through her chest in preparation for a hail of bullets. The robbers did not seem to consider the twelve-year-old girl a mortal threat, however. Half of their attention was trained on the coach’s attendants and half upon the man whose head and shoulders now became visible above the bracken, beyond the road’s bend.
A few moments more, and a sturdy-looking grey turned the corner, dappled like slush. To judge by its panting, it had come some way.
The rider of the grey was neither tall nor of Fine Athletic Build. Mosca looked in vain for any sign that he was carrying a flageolet or wearing a claret-coloured cape. But no, he was not even wearing a periwig.
A round-brimmed hat was pulled low on his brow, keeping the wind from his ears. Beneath this, a faint attempt had been made to tie back his ragged hair into a pigtail, but many strands had mutinied. A rough cloak of hessian was flung around him, over his greatcoat.
His face was a fearful sight. It was a good few moments before Mosca understood the meaning behind his reddened eyes, his drawn-back upper lip and the occasional puckering of his face, and she realized that the highwayman was suffering from a streaming cold.
‘Black Captain Blythe,’ Clent muttered wearily under his breath.
‘Take those men off the coach,’ Blythe ordered his men, ‘and turn out their coats.’
He did not sweep off his hat in greeting.
‘Get the passengers out of the coach where we can see them.’
He did not pass elegant comment on their predicament.
‘Take their purses. And their boots. And their wigs.’
His eye did not twinkle. Mosca started to wonder if he was a real highwayman at all.
As the coach driver and footmen clambered down to be searched, Blythe’s eye passed questingly over his other prisoners. The quivering trap-seller received a glance of contempt, and Blythe’s gaze slid off Mosca, to rest on Clent.
‘You. Open the carriage door and hand the passengers out.’
Hesitantly, Clent laid his hand upon the carriage door.
‘My lady,’ he murmured softly through the window, ‘I fear your presence is required.’
There was a pause. The moon-like face bloomed into view behind the curtain.
‘Do they mean to search us?’ There was no hint of outrage in the woman’s tone. It was simply a question.
‘I… think so. The captain has many men to pay, and seems too desperate to be nice.’
‘Unacceptable.’ The voice was soft, almost childish, but chill with resolution.
‘Unavoidable.’
‘Anything is avoidable. I have a pocket watch crafted in the shape of a pistol. If I give it to you along with my purse, you might take my money to the brigands’ leader, and then hold the watch against his head until my men are given back their pistols. You would be well rewarded.’
Clent opened his mouth until it would have taken in a potato, then closed it again.
‘My lady, when a man takes a bullet, all the gold thread in the world will not sew him whole again.’
‘I am carrying an object of personal value with which I do not intend to part.’ Her face was now so close to the curtain that the lace left a fretwork of shadow across her cheeks. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Clent gave a nod. Mosca saw that he was looking at a signet ring on the lady’s hand, and she was astonished to hear his next words, low and hurried.
‘My lady… if I can persuade the man not to have you searched, will you be willing to find employment for myself and my…’ he glanced at Mosca and visibly relented – ‘my secretary? We are poets and wordsmiths of no mean standing.’