‘I got all my limbs,’ Mosca answered quickly. ‘I been knocked and scraped and chased about but my heart’s still beating inside my hide. And I’m hungry, Mr Clent, I’m hungry as a winter fox…’
Clent’s face vanished. Steps retreating. Steps returning. A crumb fell in Mosca’s eye, and then a crust was pushed down through the peephole, doused in honey, followed by another and another. She took them and crammed them into her mouth.
‘If only I could pull up this floor,’ muttered Clent, ‘but it seems we are divided by six good inches of timber and stone. What has happened to you, child?’
‘E’ryfing wen’ wrog,’ Mosca explained through a mouthful of crusts, then swallowed. ‘There was folks waitin’ to ambush Sir Feldroll’s men outside the Twilight Gate, Locksmiths like as not, but the kidnappers ain’t working with the Locksmiths, and I think Skellow betrayed Brand Appleton and stuck him with a knife so he could grab the ransom, and the radish bounced off halfway cross the town with everyone chasing it and strike me blind if I know who’s got it now. Brand Appleton ain’t got it, and he ain’t got Beamabeth neither; all he got is a fever and a hole in his side the size of your pocket. But I did it, Mr Clent! I found out where the mayor’s daughter is being held! I did it!’
‘You found her? How? No – tell me later. Where is she?’
‘Top floor of a cooper’s shop in the Chutes, right near the holes where they drop the coffins into the Langfeather. Jus’ opposite a broken-down old stew called the Owl’s Head. But there’s no windows to Beamabeth’s room, and no way in but through the front door and five bravos. Sir Feldroll needs to send more men, because this is fist-and-cudgel work if I know it. So I come here to tell you.’ As Clent listened, Mosca poured out the tale of the many Clatterhorses and her last strange interview with Brand Appleton.
Clent exhaled slowly as he absorbed the news, eyes closed. ‘But… but how did you get here? Are you daylight side, child?’
‘No – I don’t exist! The musicians – they told me where to find the secret way in. I’m in some kind of cellar, with rugs, an’ little Beloved figures all set up like a shrine-’
‘A salvation hole!’ interrupted Clent. ‘I knew it! I had heard of such things – many rich houses had them built during the Civil War, to hide relatives or servants in danger of arrest. Under the chapel, no doubt, so that the unfortunates concealed could listen in on services and prayer. That answers the mystery of the orchestra! Two dayside musicians playing on the stage, and the rest making up the melody down in the salvation hole. Quite ingenious…’ Clent faltered and blinked hard. ‘Songs of the celestial, child, are you saying that you came into that hole unhindered? That there is a nightside entrance to this very house, and there is nothing to stop anyone simply wandering in?’
‘Nothing, unless they’re uncommon portly or fond of the skin of their knees,’ growled Mosca. ‘Any nightling who knows where to find the door could wander right in.’
‘So…’ Clent released his words carefully and slowly, as if they were pebbles to be dropped without rippling his thoughts. ‘All the while we were engaged in our secret conference in this room, plotting the manner in which we would lay an ambush for our kidnappers…’
‘… one of ’em could have been skulking down here, hearing every word!’ It gave Mosca a chill to think of it. ‘So they never needed a spy in the household after all!’
‘No wonder our ambush failed so abysmally,’ rejoined Clent, ‘if they knew all our plans, and had a hiding place ready so close at hand. I suppose they were hidden in the passage before dawn, emerged to abduct the young lady and then retreated back underground.’
Mosca felt a reluctant sting of compassion as she imagined Beamabeth, bound and gagged in the salvation hole for a whole day, able to hear her desperate would-be rescuers searching for her but unable to call out to them…
‘Well,’ murmured Clent, ‘I think now we know why secrets leak out of this house with such ease.’
Mosca frowned. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘That ain’t it – not all of it, anyways. Maybe this creep-hole tells us how Skellow’s boys dodged our ambush and whisked away Beamabeth Marlebourne, but it don’t explain how the Locksmiths found our letter drop, or were ready and waiting for Sir Feldroll’s men. We did not plan everything in this room, Mr Clent! Weave it how you will, there’s a Locksmith spy in among us.’
‘I fear you are right. In fact, I fear the mayor has trusted too many people with our secrets already. His steward, the Chief Clerk of the Committee of the Hours and the High Constable are all in his confidence. Worse still, I am not. I would be quite in the dark if I had not persuaded Mistress Bessel to look into it. She might show an unladylike ferocity of temper at times,’ Clent continued, in tones of quiet admiration, ‘but when it comes to finding things out, that woman is sharper than lemon. And, thank the Beloved, she has managed to win the mayor’s trust where I have failed. Just yesterday evening he remarked that she was the finest-’
But Mosca was not to learn what Mistress Bessel was the finest example of, for at this moment the front door crashed open. Through her tiny scope Mosca saw Clent scramble on to his knees, so that he seemed to kneel in prayer in the little chapel. However, it soon became clear that the new arrivals had no attention to spare for Eponymous Clent.
‘Help him – help him!’ Sir Feldroll was shouting. ‘And close the doors behind us, man – we do not want the whole world agog! My lord mayor, will you sit? Fetch him a chair!’
Confusion ensued, with a lot of people running around to show that they were eager and concerned.
‘Send for a physician!’ shouted Sir Feldroll. ‘Tell him his lordship has received a great shock and is suffering palsies of the limbs. Mistress Bessel – call for laudanum!’
‘A shock?’ Clent had risen to his feet again. ‘Simpering stars, has there been ill news of Miss Marlebourne?’
A terrible croak of a voice interrupted. It was hardly recognizable as that of the mayor. ‘No – worse! Worse!’
‘Worse?’ Sir Feldroll sounded outraged. ‘How can anything be worse?’
There was a sound of coughing and ragged breaths before the mayor spoke again.
‘The Luck… the Luck! The Luck of Toll has been stolen!’
Goodlady Blatchett, Lifter of the Stone from the Toad
After this announcement, nobody was any use for about five minutes. A young maidservant running in with the requested laudanum had by chance overheard the mayor’s words, and promptly went into such violent hysterics that she had to be dosed with it herself. She seemed convinced that Toll was about to pitch off the cliff into the Langfeather, like a tilted hat with its crucial pin removed. Worse still, the mayor seemed much of the same opinion.
Maddeningly, everybody wanted to rush about so that Mosca could not keep track of them, and nobody wanted to stand where she could see them through her little peepholes.
‘Send that girl to bed, and close that door!’ shouted Sir Feldroll at last. ‘Nobody leaves this house! If the common people find out that the Luck is stolen, half the town will be thrown into fits!’
‘Oh, probably a good deal more than half,’ Clent opined helpfully, and was ignored. Sir Feldroll however was not, and after a while things got a lot quieter.
‘Steady yourself, my lord mayor,’ came Mistress Bessel’s warm, motherly tones. Evidently she had entered with the rest. ‘How in the world did somebody come to steal the Luck?’ Remembering that Mistress Bessel had had her own ill-fated plans for stealing the Luck, Mosca suspected that she