Mosca had been so busy working the oars of her little plan that she had failed to see the iceberg upon which it was doomed to founder. And now here it was in front of her, a towering glacial mountain of selfishness, and she could not understand how she could have missed it. How vast was it? How far beneath the surface did it go?
‘No. Nothing ever touches you, does it?’ Mosca whispered. ‘Look at you – not a scratch, not a bruise. Not even marks on your wrists where they were tied.’ She rubbed at the bruise-lines round her own wrists. ‘If you struggled – the way I struggled when they tied me – there would have been some. Why weren’t your wrists marked when we rescued you?’
Some instinct stilled Mosca’s tongue, but her last sentences hung in the air like smoke, curling and forming misty shapes.
Beamabeth’s hands had been tied behind her back when Skellow had held her hostage to cover his escape. As the image danced before Mosca’s eye again, she recalled what Clent had said about Skellow.
… killed while on the brink of shooting Miss Beamabeth… Stabbing, shooting, it is all the same.
But stabbing and shooting were not the same. Skellow had been holding Beamabeth at pistol point, but then when surprised in the hidden passage he had been holding a knife. For some reason, mid-flight, he had tucked his pistol away and pulled out a blade, despite knowing that his pursuers were armed with pistols. A knife was certainly quieter if he had murder in mind… but why had he decided to kill Beamabeth right there and then?
Mosca shook her head slowly. ‘Makes no sense,’ she whispered. ‘Skellow was a viperous, flint-hearted old villain, but he weren’t stupid. You were the only thing keepin’ him alive! Why would he try to kill you before he got to safety?’
Two pairs of eyes remained locked in a stare, one pair black as gunpowder, the other as blue as a summer morning. And yet it was in the black eyes that there came a dawn of realization and fear.
We got it all wrong, thought Mosca. We got it all topsy-turvy.
‘No marks on your wrists,’ Mosca said slowly, ‘because… before we got there to rescue you… your hands weren’t tied.’
Nothing. Not a flinch, nor a flutter of lashes. Just wide, blue eyes, as warm and pitiless as a drought.
‘But Skellow heard a cry from downstairs in the cooper shop, so quick as stitch he must have slipped a rope round your wrists and given it a quick knot. Then we burst in, so he held you hostage and pulled you through a secret door. And then he got his knife out.’ Mosca swallowed. ‘But not to kill you. To cut through your ropes. So the pair of you could run faster.
‘But you didn’t run. You waited till he had a knife in his hand, then you dropped to your knees and screamed – so we’d come burstin’ in through the wall and find him like that, looking like he was about to cut your throat. So that we’d shoot him down like a dog before he could get a word out. So that he’d never have the chance to tell any of us the truth. “Little witch” – that’s what he said as he died. And maybe he said it to me. But he wasn’t talkin’ about me, was he?’
Mosca was breathing quickly now. Her anger was returning, filling her ears with a furnace roar. She could not hold back the rush of words.
‘Money. Everything’s all about money in Toll, ain’t it? Everyone thinks about it all the time – most of them because they want to get out of the town, or pay their tithes, or eat this week. But maybe some people decide they need more money because they’re runnin’ out of chocolate and tea and silk handkerchiefs, and they can’t imagine the world without them, and getting things like that on the black market costs a lot.
‘And you could have just married in the first place and gone off to be Lady Feldroll, but in Waymakem you might not be everybody’s golden girl, everybody’s special angel. No, why would you do that when you could stay here, with Sir Feldroll and everyone else courtin’ you and lettin’ you string ’em along? You wanted to keep your cake and eat it… and eat everybody else’s too.
‘And I bet it was easy, setting up your own kidnap, what with Brand Appleton being half mad in love with you. I bet he was pleased as a pig in slurry when you told him you wanted to elope with him using the money from the ransom. Bringing Skellow into the plan must have been your idea too – Appleton never liked him, never trusted him. Who was Skellow, then? Your black-market man? You must have been thick as thieves with him all along, plottin’ to double-cross Appleton when he’d served your turn and take the ransom for yourselves, so you’d be rich for the rest of your lives. But they were both nightside, weren’t they? You needed somebody dayside to make the kidnap happen. So you gave Skellow some money for tolls, and sent him out to hire the Romantic Facilitator at the Pawnbrokers’ Auction. Only… what you got instead was us.
‘But you put us to good use, didn’t you?’ Mosca could feel all the parts of the truth tumbling into place one after another like dominoes. ‘We got your father out of the way for you, and afterwards, that night, you went off to pray in the chapel – I remember. So when Skellow crept into the salvation hole to report in to you, you was kneeling ready to talk to him. It was you who told him we were imposters, you who told him about the trap we were laying.
‘You threw your trinkets and pins around your room, so it looked like there had been a struggle. Then you just climbed out your window and down Skellow’s ladder and away. And when we found your window open and you gone that morning, we all guessed there must have been a traitor in the mix… but none of us thought it might be you.’
All was quiet, but for the tutting of the clock and a scattering of bird notes like china splinters. One of the two of us, thought Mosca, is in a lot of trouble right now. I wonder which of us it is? She isn’t turning pale or plucking at her handkerchief. Oh draggles, I think it’s me.
‘Some people get a mad sickness from reading,’ Beamabeth said at last, her voice still calm. ‘If I say that your reading has driven you mad, everybody will believe me. If I say that you were in league with my kidnappers all along, everybody will believe me. If I say you came and threatened me just now, everybody will believe me.’ It was true. Mosca could feel it in her bones. Everyone would succumb to Beamabeth’s charm like beetles drowning in marmalade. At long last Beamabeth lowered her eyes and returned her gaze to her sewing. ‘Now I want you out of my sight. And by dusk I want you out of my town.’
‘You’re nothing but a name!’ Mosca clenched her fists. She knew everything, and it was unbearable to know that her knowledge was useless. ‘Without it, you would be nothing! All they love is your name!’
‘Oh?’ Up went the dark gold eyebrows. Out came the dimples and dainty little teeth. ‘And do you imagine that if you had my name you could ever be like me?’
‘No,’ snarled Mosca, tingling from toe to crown. ‘Not in a hundred thousand years.’ The cups on the breakfast table rattled as Mosca stamped out of the room and slammed the door.
‘Mr Clent! We been hoodwinked! By a shuffling, wheedle-cutting, shurk of a-’
‘Child, child!’ Clent raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Four nights in Toll-by-Night, and thus she returns to me,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Mosca, I wish sometimes that you did not pick up words quite so swiftly.’
However, as Clent listened to Mosca’s high-volume explanation she saw his expression pass through indulgence, incredulity, astonishment and outrage, making its final stop at a greyish shade of mauve.