‘Hold hard – are those the words of a man with an itchy back?’ Mistress Bessel’s brow darkened. ‘I knew it! You want something from me!’
‘A trifle, a morsel, a mere nothing.’ Clent’s hands danced before him, pinching the air into minuscule gobbets. ‘But, ah, an important nothing. You, my dear, are currently a light in the mayor’s darkness, the warm hearth to which he gratefully creeps after the cruelties of life. And if he values you as he seems to, doubtless he takes you into his confidence and gives you the run of the house…’ He trailed off and gave a small shrug. ‘He trusts you, you trust me and the world is richer for the benison of trust.’
‘Ha!’ Mistress Bessel gave a scornful laugh, though her gaze was less barbed than her tone as she pinned the flower to her dress. “Richer”, is it? So is that your pretty way of asking where the mayor keeps his silver? You are a scheming black-hearted dog, Eponymous.’
‘No, dear Jen, not this time.’ Clent’s tone was unusually serious. ‘Believe it or not, I have good reasons for asking this of you. There is a spy in the mayor’s household, and you are better placed to track them down than I. But for the Beloved’s sake be wary – we are playing a game of secrets against very dangerous opponents…’
The sun sank in blood, and all over Toll shadows stretched like waking cats. A bugle sounded. Night swept through the town on chimes of silver. A second bugle sounded. The last true daylight departed the sky, leaving only a bruise of luminosity over the west. The doors of Toll-by-Night opened.
Since an hour before dusk Mosca had been awake. In fact, ‘awake’ was too weak a term. She felt as if she was full of ingrowing spikes of apprehension, like an inside-out hedgehog.
It made her restless, and restless was a very bad idea in a corridor-room as narrow and cluttered as that in which the Leaps lived. Mistress Leap had told her to stay still and touch nothing, and she thought she was staying still and touching nothing, but somehow she managed to fidget a warming pan off a wall-hook, and a stack of fire irons on to the floor. She even elicited a small hiss from Saracen, who had contrarily chosen this time to settle down to sleep.
The sound of the bugle filled her with terror and relief.
‘Mistress Leap! We got to go – the men I told you of, they’ll be waiting by the Twilight Gate! And if we don’t find ’em, then five to one somebody else will.’ Unable to bear inactivity any more, Mosca was on her feet, pulling on her basket-hat and clogs.
‘One moment. Just let me make sure the coast is clear.’ Mistress Leap opened the door a crack, peered out, then gave Mosca a smile over her shoulder. ‘It all looks safe enough,’ she whispered. And with that she stepped out through the door on to the step, stiffened and toppled sideways out of sight.
When Mosca scampered out to join her, she found the midwife slumped against the door jamb nursing her temple, her bonnet knocked askew. The culprit was clearly visible, a chunk of masonry that lay shattered on the step. Mosca glanced upwards in case more of the house threatened to fall on their heads, but the midwife shook her head.
‘No, it was thrown from down there.’ She pointed down the street.
Mosca peered into the darkness, but could see no sign of any lurking assailants. Feeling exposed, she quickly helped the wobbly midwife indoors. A bleary, half asleep Walter blundered over just in time to help his stunned wife into her chair, and then set about rummaging through boxes for some ointment to smear on the injury. Mosca peered suspiciously at the older woman’s head and found a rosy swelling bump, but thankfully nothing worse.
‘Did you see who it was?’
‘No, just a blur at the street corner. Probably some lads throwing rocks for sport, without realizing that I was about to open the door.’The midwife glanced up at Mosca’s doubtful face and patted her hand reassuringly. ‘My dear, do not worry, I will be all right. Go! Find those friends of yours at the Twilight Gate! After all, if you do not, then we will have no tithe for Saint Yacobray, and we will all be lost.’
Mosca hesitated, concerned at the prospect of leaving Mistress Leap so soon after her injury. However, the midwife had her husband to attend to her, and time was running out.
‘All right, but keep Saracen here to guard you. And… you better lock the door behind me.’
Rocks thrown for sport? Mosca was not a great believer in innocent explanations, and that went double in Toll-by-Night. But why would anybody hurl rocks at a kindly midwife and then run away? Just for a moment, Mosca wondered if perhaps the mysterious attacker had not seen his victim’s face, but just a bonneted head peering around a particular door. Was it possible that the missile had been meant for the skull of Mosca Mye?
There was no such thing as a safe street in Toll-by-Night, but at least after walking with Mistress Leap Mosca could hazard a guess at some of the safer streets. The day map in her skirt pocket was now criss-crossed with her own additions – names scribbled out and others added, new walls or highways drawn in. However, it was still early in the evening, and early meant danger.
After her sojourn in non-existence the fading twilight seemed curiously bright, and she wondered if the bugles might have been mistimed, until she realized that the wheeling shapes she could see against the sky were not birds but bats.
By now she knew what sort of person would be lurking by the Twilight Gate, like cats around a mousehole. Cut-throats, looking for some plump victim loaded down with all his earthly possessions, eyes still dazzled with the darkness of his new world. ‘Landlords’ with crocodile smiles, who would welcome strangers in for the night and then smother them or sell them to the toil-gangs. Pickpockets. Scissorwomen, waiting to steal the hair of children and young girls. She would need to weave her way past them, like a perch past pikes.
I’ll take the route along the town wall, she decided. And then, with a leap of the heart, Yes, that way I can look in at the letter chink first. See if Mr Clent has left a message for me.
The moon was low enough to be sallow, and everything cast shadows that might have been made for the Mosca Myes of the world.
There were patrols along the top of the wall, of course, making sure that nobody tried to scale it, but it was their task to look for rash souls rearing up in silhouette on the wall’s crest. They did not notice the slight figure that ran from one patch of shadow to the next, a pint-sized attic-creature hastily fashioned from jumble and rags.
Even in the dim light Mosca could make out the stone faces of the Beloved carved into the wall. At last she glimpsed the curmudgeonly features of Goodman Belubble, He Who Snuffs the Last Candle Before Sleep. There. Goodman Belubble’s surly slit of a mouth. That’s where the letter will be. She crouched, scanned the wall for patrols, and counted the seconds till her moment by instinct, like a housecat watching blackbirds.
Two seconds. One second. Now.
And then the darkness reached out a hand and gave her a polite prod between the shoulder blades.
‘I really would not do that if I were you.’
Meanwhile, unbeknown to Mosca, another darkling meeting was taking place.
The little door that led to the Twilight Gate creaked open, and six men emerged into the night town, breathing steam and staying close to one another.
Their leader cast a glance up and down the street, and felt not disappointment but a grim resignation. If the girl that Sir Feldroll had told them to expect was there to meet them, she was doing an excellent impression of a cobblestone.
‘Blades take it, the little mort’s probably already been caught,’ he muttered. ‘All right, everyone, we’ll wait for her a while, but not here in the bold of the moon. This is wolf country. If we huddle and bleat where everyone can see us, we deserve to be mutton.’