‘Where do we take her? The Pyepowder Court? Isn’t that where they take visitors when they catch them breaking the law?’
Mosca wondered for a moment if daylight Toll even had a court to try its own citizens, or whether everyone just assumed that day crimes were only ever committed by night-folk passing through.
‘The Pyepowder Court? Are you mad?’ The voice of the mayor, a little behind Mosca. ‘This isn’t some dusty-foot vagrant, or a gypsy selling a cat as a piglet. Take her straight to the Clock Tower.’
The peculiar procession continued through the twisting streets, followed by curious gazes and a gustful of autumn leaves.
As she was carried to the Clock Tower, Mosca stopped struggling and let her feet droop limply. She was in a trap within a trap within a trap. There was nowhere to run. She let her head fall back and stared up at the china-blue autumn sky, speckled with birds, girded with the lean of buildings, striped by strands of her own loose hair. She filled her lungs with as much cold, searing air as she could, like a diver preparing, then she was pulled in through the heavy oak doors and the sky was taken away from her. This time, however, they did not take her through the side door into the Committee of the Hours building, but up a few stairs to a darkened antechamber.
‘What’s this?’ A man with a red leather patch over his eye looked up from oiling a set of branding irons. A bunch of heavy iron keys clustered at his belt. ‘One for the clink?’ His single grey eye took in Mosca in one guillotine flash.
‘Yes – for a conspiracy of the darkest dye.’ The mayor strode to the front, and the one-eyed man dropped a hasty bow. ‘The treacherous kidnapping of a young woman of birth and means. The kindest and most sweet-tempered girl in the whole…’ The mayor’s voice trembled and trailed off.
‘You don’t mean…?’ The single slate-coloured eye flashed back to Mosca’s face, and the seamed face in which it was set puckered with disbelief and outrage. ‘Not Miss Beamabeth?’ Skin tingling, Mosca realized that she was about to become the most hated person in Toll.
The mayor nodded, his face ashen. ‘I want this girl girded about with iron and stone,’ he said grimly. ‘And watch her – she’s a housefly, with a housefly’s swift and sneaking ways.’
The Keeper nodded, giving Mosca a thunderous look. ‘I’ll have her shackled and tossed in the Grovels, sir.’
‘My lord mayor!’ Terror restored Mosca’s powers of speech. ‘I’m no enemy to you or your daughter! Let me go, an’ I’ll find her for you, I swear it on Palpitattle’s wings!’ It was the worst oath she could have made; she sensed it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Everyone looked at her and shuddered, as though she had sprouted antennae, or cleaned her hands with a long, insectile tongue.
The Keeper whistled, and a pair of turnkeys came running. The vice-like hands on Mosca’s shoulders were traded in for other vice-like hands, and she was dragged to a nearby spiral stairway. As she had feared, she was led not up but down the darkened steps, her legs shaking with fear and the seeping chill of the old stones. She smelt her prison before she reached it, a reek of sickness and rotten straw and chamber-pot perfumes and a gagging aroma of broken meat. At the bottom of the stairs the Keeper opened a low arched door, and the smell became overwhelming.
There were several figures in the low-ceilinged cell beyond, but as the door opened they retreated from the light to the shadows of the walls in a way that reminded Mosca of rats, except that rats do not usually give off a metallic jangle as they move.
‘Since you’re new, I’ll run through the charges. There’s a fee for rent o’ course, but the Grovels down here is easy on the purse – you don’t pay till you leave. And as a newcomer you pay a “garnish” – that’s a bit of courtesy to the other guests.’ The Keeper nodded towards the other figures in the cell. ‘Just enough to buy ’em each a tipple so they can drink your health. You’ll be wanting to pay that. If you don’t, the worst of ’em will take what they’re owed out of your hide. And o’ course, all luxuries is extra.’
‘Luxuries?’ Mosca stared at him. ‘I don’t want any luxuries!’
‘Yes, you do. Luxuries being, you see, things like food. And drink. And blankets. And not being clapped in irons.’
‘But… I ’aven’t got any money!’
The Keeper stared at her, and something changed in his face, making his jaw heavier and his single eye hot and dull. Mosca noticed muscle meat in his arms, the cudgel at his belt, the scars around his hairline. Suddenly she felt like a doll of sticks.
‘Missy, I hear that every day.’ The Keeper grimaced and shook his head with long-suffering disgust. ‘And yet somehow people find they can come by the coin when their backs are up against the wall – and yours is against the wall, make no mistake. They beg, or borrow, or call on help from friends, or find things for me to sell. And those that can’t have no place coming here and trying to take advantage of a poor businessman.’
The other ‘guests’ were not slow to claim their ‘garnish’. They closed on Mosca almost as soon as the door shut behind the Keeper, turned her upside down and shook her to see what fell out. One grimy hand snatched at Mistress Bessel’s handkerchief, another slyly snatched the Little Goodkin bracelet from her wrist.
The woman who tried to grab at Mosca’s pipe, however, found herself with a fight on her hands. Another prisoner was sitting on Mosca’s legs so that she could not kick, but she scratched and bit and wrestled until the would-be thief gave up. The others retreated to survey their finds, leaving Mosca curled in a ball around the pipe, her ribs and ears bruised from blows.
Only when she was sure that her fellow ‘guests’ had lost interest in her did she dare to uncurl a little from her hedgehog pose. It was too dark for her to make out faces, but she could hear the murmur of thieves’ cant, the slang of the world’s underbelly. Nightowls, probably. As they talked, it became clear that most of them had once been visitors with ‘night names’, who had been arrested for one crime or another and had been languishing in the Grovels ever since.
Prisons swallowed men like cherry pips, she knew that much. They were arrested for this or that, and then somebody lost the papers and it never came to trial and meanwhile they starved or sickened from rotten meat or had their heads stove in by their jailers. Prison was a pit, and once you’d fallen in you had a devil of a time climbing out again, unless you had money, a good name or powerful friends. Mosca had none of these.
There’s Mr Clent.
Hah. He’s too fond of his own neck to stick it out for me.
For a while she buried her face in her apron and shook, until the muslin was damp and her breaths were ragged.
Oh, stop snivelling, she told herself at last. Saracen would come for you, if he was a man – he’d come with three brace of pistols at his belt. But he’s a goose, and that’s all there is to that. You’re on your own.
Mosca felt as if she was sharing a cave with a pack of wolves, all snarling at each other in the darkness. As runt of the pack, she guessed that her best chance of survival was to attract as little attention as possible. This, however, did not turn out to be easy.
‘Oi.’ Somebody poked her with a shackled foot. ‘You don’t want to lie there. You’re in Magpackin’s spot.’
Mosca rolled away, and pulled herself up into a tight little bundle with her back to a wall.
‘All right, all-bleedin’-right! Take your spot!’ she shrilled.
There was a roar of laughter.
‘Magpackin won’t be taking it back just yet,’ said the largest of the men. ‘He’s wormfood. But that was his lying-spot three good weeks before the Keeper took him away. No release fee paid for him, you see.’