Skulking in the darkness of the overturned bath, Mosca felt a weightlessness in the pit of her stomach. This conversation was unlikely to go well.
‘I think we still have some… yes, here we are.’ Step, step, the rustle of Mistress Leap’s skirts settling as she sat next to the bath. ‘Here we are – look! Nettle and blackberry cake.’
A damp, sweet foody smell reached Mosca’s pointed nose, and although she knew she was being tempted and tamed with food like a feral puppy, still she could not resist tipping up the edge of the bath until she could see Mistress Leap’s thin, worn hand waving what looked like a hunk of ancient mould. It smelt like food however, and once she had snatched it and pushed it into her mouth it tasted like food.
‘That’s better.’ There was another rustle, and Mosca could just see the edge of Mistress Leap’s face as the midwife laid her cheek against the floorboards and tried to peer under the bath. To judge by her frown, she could not see much. ‘You’re the girl who helped us deliver Blethemy’s boy, aren’t you?’
Cake was clinging to the roof of Mosca’s mouth, so she could only nod. Then, remembering that her head was invisible, she wobbled the bath in a nodding motion.
‘So. Do you have it?’ There was an undeniable edge of desperation in the midwife’s voice.
Have what? Oh. The reward money. The money we promised them.
Mosca drily swallowed her cake, then took the bath’s weight on her hands and very slowly waggled it to and fro in a head-shaking motion. The midwife’s face disappeared from her crack of vision, and there were more clothy noises as if she had sat back. A long moment of morgue-like silence followed.
Mosca’s stomach squirmed sideways. The Leaps clearly still had no other money to pay the Locksmiths’ tithe on the night of Saint Yacobray.
‘I believe I said she would be back without the money,’ murmured the midwife’s husband with a relentless and dolorous complacency. ‘Back with no money but wanting our help again. She will burst into our house, I said, and her goose will eat our furniture.’ There was a faint grinding sound as of a determined, roughened beak gnawing on a stool leg.
‘Well, that was very clever of you, wasn’t it, Welter?’ His wife’s tone was brisk, with no sarcasm and only the slightest tremble. Another long silence. ‘Well… it changes nothing. Come on out now, lass. Nobody is going to throw you on to the street.’
Gingerly Mosca tipped back the bath.
‘That’s better. Not so terrible out here, is it?’ Mosca bit her lip as she saw the midwife’s thin, pained resolute smile. ‘Not much in the way of hobs and cut-throats, is there? Nothing to worry about.’
‘Ahhm.’ After this rather cryptic pronouncement, Welter Leap returned from the door, his movements slow, his head bowed over an object he held in his hand. ‘Leveretia?’
He held it out, and the struggling rushlights gilded a blade edge, a leather-bound hilt. ‘On the doorstep,’ he explained.
‘That man in your doorway!’ exclaimed Mosca. ‘I think he dropped it when I run into him, same time as the lantern. I heard something metal go ping off the cobbles.’
‘So did I.’ The midwife reached up a trembling hand and took the dagger out of her husband’s hand. ‘He… He kept one hand tucked in his armpit all the time, as if his fingers were cold,’ she added numbly. ‘Oh, it’s one thing to carry a knife in your belt so you can defend yourself. But carrying one hidden in your hand means… something else. It means… that there was no waiting wife. No baby. Just an ambush in an alley so he could sell everything in my bundle.’ She gave an unsteady, wondering little laugh.
‘It should not surprise me. But it does. Every time.’ Mistress Leap shook herself. ‘I think we all require a little gin, would you not say?’
The beautiful sound of bolts being drawn and shutting out the night streets. The click of cups, and a bottle telling out a scale in glugs as it poured. And then, finally, the dreaded question.
‘So – what happened?’
Well, it’s like this, Mistress Leap. We had this brilliant plan to stop a gang of would-be kidnappers from snatching Beamabeth Marlebourne by catching them in the attempt, so that we could claim a reward from her father. Only our brilliant trap didn’t work. In fact it got her kidnapped. So now we have no money and everybody in the day town hates us and Beamabeth is trapped in Toll-by-Night somewhere and so am I…
There are no good ways to tell a story like that, and Mosca’s tremors and stammering did not make it any better.
The midwife listened with admirable self-restraint, sipping her gin with the composure of a queen and the aplomb of a veteran. She had blinked herself brisk again, and lost the bewildered, exhausted look that had afflicted her after the discovery of the dagger. Her replacement smile was a bit too brisk, and made her look a little mad.
And in answer to her questions Mosca found herself recounting the whole haggard tale of her encounters with the would-be kidnappers, the mysterious notes exchanged at the Pawnbrokers’ Auction, the journey to Toll, the twilit interview with Skellow, the failed trap laid by Eponymous Clent, and her own adventures in the night town. She skimmed over those times when she or Clent had broken or twisted the laws, of course – and she could not bring herself to speak of the discovery of Havoc’s body. The back of her neck still tingled with the memory of the calm voice that told her never to speak of it. She did, however, tell the Leaps of the gem ransom, and Sir Feldroll’s fears that Beamabeth would not be returned if it was paid.
‘Oh dear,’ Mistress Leap said at last when the tale was done. ‘Beloved above, poor Miss Marlebourne!’ The midwife raised her hands to her mouth and looked first pensive then resolute. ‘That cannot be allowed. Oh dear. Oh dear – there is no help for it. We must report this to… to them. Once they have hunted down these kidnappers-’
‘No!’ It was exactly the response Mosca had feared. ‘No, please… please, Mistress Leap, we cannot go to the Locksmiths!’
The midwife’s calm, generous face underwent something of a transformation. Suddenly she looked wan and evasive.
‘You have to understand,’ she said, her tone rather weary, ‘that the Locksmiths really are the best people to deal with this kind of mischief… and they do not take kindly to people hiding things from them. If it ever came out that we had held back something like this-’
‘Mistress Leap, if any of this comes out any which way, we’re done up like partridges for a pie! For all we know, the Locksmiths are part of this whole plot! That Skellow showed up to the Pawnbrokers’ Auction with a fat old purse – fatter than the likes of ’im should’ve had. Maybe the money came from Brand Appleton, but it don’t seem likely. And Skellow left Toll without it showing in the records. Maybe it’s like you said and they jus’ leave out names sometimes and pocket the toll – or maybe the Locksmiths covered up for him.’
‘Perhaps…’ The midwife looked uncertain, but Mosca’s words had clearly penetrated.
‘An’ supposing this kidnap isn’t a Locksmith lay?’ continued Mosca. ‘Then we’d be telling ’em where to find a gem worth more than a wagonful of pearls, and the most precious heiress in Toll to boot. Which means that there will be a ransom paid, right enough, and a reward too, I’ll bet, but they won’t come nowhere near us. And like as not the Locksmiths would have to shut us up permanent so nobody knows it was them that grabbed the ransom. Mistress Leap… we can’t tell the Locksmiths. Or we’re supper for the Langfeather, whatever happens.’