Fly By Night

U is for Undefended

So this is what living honesty is like, Mosca thought as she waded through bristling, rustling plants. The thick green seedpods that patted the skin of her arms were as cool and rough as the pads of cats’ paws. The riverside paths had been easy enough to follow in daylight, but now the light was starting to dim. Her only hope of finding the ragman’s raft again was to follow the river, so she struggled along within sight of the water even when the bank became overgrown.

Ugly Mr Toke had told her that the high tide would cause wild water. The ragman’s raft was tethered by just one mooring pin in the soft bank. She needed to moor it more safely so that the river would not drag it loose and chew it to pieces, the way he had described. And she needed to find a better hiding place for it so that the Stationers did not find it.

No, she did not want the Stationers to find it; she knew that now. She had realized that while she was staring into Toke’s clever little eyes. The Stationers would cage the press like a wild animal, and break its spirit. Suddenly she had known that the printing press should be hers and hers alone.

There was a terrible excitement in the thought of the press lurking in its darkened lair with its iron grin and ink-stained teeth, ready to whisper forbidden secrets to her. If there is paper, there may be books, whispered a voice in her head. Dangerous books, gunpowder books, books that could burn away the castles of the mind and change the colour of the sky.

Of course it was madness to be out alone in the woods, let alone at such an hour. Mosca had read of Wry Petchers, the Manhandler of Scumpy Bank, not to mention countless other footpads, cut-throats and gangs preying through the waysides and wild places. Even an ordinary pedlar might snatch the chance of robbing a small and solitary girl. But somehow these thoughts and the tingling scratches left by the briars only made her more determined. Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.

On two occasions Mosca noticed a convoy of Watermen boats sail by, kites high. The first convoy was a flotilla of small, fleet boats. The second was a glide of larger tideboats and barges, flanked by wherries. Each time, she hid in the undergrowth until they had passed. By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

The river’s voice changed, and Mosca realized that it was struggling with a foaming tangle of boughs which chafed in the drag of the current. Her heart somersaulted as she recognized the dead tree where she had narrowly escaped the Birdcatcher ragmen. But surely it was foolish to imagine that they would still be waiting here in such a desolate place?

Using the ripple of roots as rungs, she climbed up on to the trunk of the fallen tree, and kicked her heels against the bark to knock off the mud. She pulled a few blackberries from the nearest bush, but they were still hard and bitter to chew, and she could feel their tiny hairs tickle her tongue and throat as she swallowed them. She was just thinking of climbing further up the fan of roots to reach a dark spray of elderberries when a firm hand was placed over her mouth and she was pulled backwards off the trunk. Despite her shock, Mosca made hearty use of her elbows until her attacker set her on her feet and released her. She turned, fear hammering in her chest.

‘Mr Kohlrabi!’ Mosca was flooded with relief. ‘I looked for you an’ couldn’t find you an’ lots of things ’ve ’appened an’ you weren’t at your coffeehouse where you said to look an’ Mrs Nokes couldn’t say…’ Mosca’s voice dropped to a whisper as Kohlrabi shook his head and raised a finger to his lips.

‘Hush… Mosca, you are being followed. You have been followed all the way from Mandelion. And I do not think you wish to lead them to the printing press, do you?’

Mosca shook her head silently.

‘Let’s see if we can lose them, then, shall we?’

Kohlrabi seemed to know the paths of the wood where moss would silence their steps. He appeared much taller in the dark, or perhaps, Mosca’s tired brain wondered, perhaps he wore daylight in a way that made him seem shorter and more ordinary.

‘Who are they?’ whispered Mosca when they had been creeping in this way for some time.

‘Stationers.’ Kohlrabi’s whisper was a little louder than hers, as if he thought Mosca’s pursuers had probably been left behind. ‘Little god, you have been crashing through the undergrowth like a wounded boar, and they have been following the sound. I in turn have been following them. They were quite worried when you stopped walking, and they started arguing about which one of them should creep forward and get a sight of you. I thought I would try and reach you first.’

‘An’ how did you know I was goin’ after the printing press?’

‘A little guesswork, based on an apron in a herring-barrel. The Stationers must have suspected as much to trail you like that, and I trust them to know their job. So – where is the press?’

‘In the hold of a ragman’s raft. I hid it in the rushes an’ made sure I’d know the place again. I can take you there.’ Mosca paused and swallowed mournfully. ‘Are you going to take it away?’

‘Mosca -’ Kohlrabi’s voice was kind and patient – ‘look at all the hubbub this one printing press has caused in Mandelion. You must see that it is far too important a thing to have it falling into the wrong hands. Now, the Stationers would break it apart, or use it to print dull essays, and I think that would be a waste, don’t you? And other people might use it to print all kinds of stupid things and get themselves in trouble. Someone has to make sure it is used properly and fulfils its destiny.’

‘If there are books there with the press… can I read them?’

Kohlrabi mulled this over for a few moments, his face invisible in the darkness.

‘Perhaps,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. I think, when we take the raft downstream, it would be best if you came with us.’

‘We can’t go downstream, Mr Kohlrabi! That’s what I wanted to tell you about! There’s people comin’ from the coast, an’ they mustn’t catch us. And listen, listen, Mr Kohlrabi, I got to warn you about Lady Tamarind…’

As Mosca’s voice rose in pitch, Kohlrabi turned to stare back through the trees behind him, hushing her. One of his hands slid to his belt, and she remembered his pistol. He held up a hand for silence and spent a few seconds quite motionless, before beckoning to her sharply, and creeping on stealthily as they had at first.

Almost stifling with unspoken words, she followed him as the woods thinned and gave way to fields. She followed him at a crouch along ditches and through hedge shadow, across streams and over drystone walls. By the time they reached the darkness of the woods again, she had taken her new pipe from her pocket and was chewing at the stem while she fended the briars from her face.

‘I think that pipe is twice as loud as our steps,’ Kohlrabi whispered at long last.

His only answer was the sound of wood clicking against the teeth of his companion.

‘You must be hungry, if you are willing to devour wood.’

Mosca said nothing, but continued her champ, champ, champ in the darkness.

‘At this rate you will chew your way right through the stem. I would probably not have given you the pipe if I had known that you would think so hard with it.’

‘I can believe that,’ Mosca muttered.

An opening in the trees allowed the moon to fall upon Kohlrabi’s face. He strode in silence for a few moments, then turned a puzzled smile upon his companion. At least, he would have done so if that companion had still been at his side.

‘Mosca?’ Kohlrabi’s expression see-sawed between a smile and a frown as he looked about him. Then both expressions faded like smoke and he wore only the wide-eyed look of one who is listening very intently.

Hidden behind a fringe of ferns, Mosca lay flat, her cheek against the clammy softness of the dead leaves.

‘Mosca?’

In a Mandelion street, Mosca would have been at the mercy of its flurry and flow, the hurried weaving of stride and barrow. But this was the freckled woodland, where you needed a different set of tricks. Be still where you can, be as silent as you can, let other small sounds drown your steps. If you cannot fool the eye, then fool the brain – stand where you are not expected and you will not be seen. Keep to the highs, keep to the lows, and avoid eye level if the terrain lets you. These were tricks that Mosca knew.

She had abandoned her gleaming white bonnet and cap on the path as she slipped away. Her dark hair was now pulled forward to mask the pale skin of her face. She waited for Kohlrabi to take a few steps in the wrong direction before rising to a crouch. While he turned his back, a light figure beam-balanced its way along the trunk of a felled tree, arms spread for balance, stockinged feet silent on the dank green velvet covering the bark. By the time he looked back, the figure had dropped out of sight with a faint sound like a chestnut falling.

These were tricks that Mosca knew better than Kohlrabi.

Her skirts scooped over one arm, the pipe clamped silently in her mouth, Mosca slipped to the thicket’s edge, and found a feathered sea of reeds before her, shivering moonlight like shot silk. Where was the ragman’s raft? Mosca found a gash in the mud where she had anchored the mooring peg, and she knew that the raft must have pulled loose and floated away. But no – there was a strange, squarish clearing among the reeds. The raft had floated, but not far.

Wading through the reeds, Mosca found the ground growing treacherously moist and cloying, the mud welcoming her feet eagerly and giving an annoyed cluck of its tongue each time she drew them out for another step. At last the unseen ground surpassed itself by suddenly becoming river. Mosca found herself up to her hips in icy water, her descent slowed only by her skirts, which spread about her, the muslin seething with bubbles like egg white in a poaching pan.

Mosca grabbed fistfuls of the reeds and used them to drag herself towards the raft. She reached it just before her skirts became sodden enough to drag her down, and she heaved her torso on to its planks. Using her legs to kick, she pulled at the reeds to drag the raft out towards the river. Only when she reached the very edge of the reed-forest and pulled herself up on to the timbers did Mosca realize why the raft had not floated away. The mooring rope had pulled taut. Somewhere among the reeds the trailing end with the mooring peg had caught on something.

Almost in tears with desperation and cold, Mosca gave the rope several violent tugs, but it held. The mooring rope was fastened to a metal ring on the raft with a knot that made no sense to her, and her fingers were so numb the bristling rope was painful to twist. She was still struggling with it when she looked up and saw that Kohlrabi was standing on the bank.

He was out of breath, as if he had reached the bank at a run. The moon was full on his face, and he still wore an expression of slight puzzlement. He took a step towards Mosca, before looking down at his feet, up at the raft, and then searchingly at the reeds separating him from the raft. Perhaps he had worked out that he was near the brink. Mosca was fairly sure he did not know how near.

In his left hand he carried his hat, as if he had snatched it off in order to run without losing it. He held it casually, but in such a way that it hid his right hand.

‘Little Mosca,’ he called out at last, ‘do you really want to keep the press so much?’

‘I don’t think I want the future we was talkin’ about.’ Mosca did not move a muscle, but stayed crouching with her hands around the knotted rope. ‘I don’t want to work for Lady Tamarind.’

‘To tell the truth, I never intended that you should.’ Kohlrabi smiled, and looked rather relieved. ‘She is a very clever woman, but her aims are rather tawdry.’ A touch of embarrassment crept into his smile, as if he had been caught buying Mosca a nameday present ahead of time. ‘I’m afraid I was always planning to steal you away from her. It’s probably time I explained things properly but, Pale Fates, can you bring the raft in first? If we keep shouting like this we will have the Stationers or worse to deal with.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Kohlrabi, but I got all these bits and pieces of thoughts. An’ most of ’em are just little, an’ none of ’em proves anything, but they stick into my mind like pine needles in my socks. An’ there’s only one way of lookin’ at ’em all that makes sense.’

Looking at his carefully hovering hat, Mosca knew exactly what Kohlrabi was holding in his hidden right hand.

‘It all makes sense if you’re a Birdcatcher, Mr Kohlrabi.’

Kohlrabi still wore a look of slightly concerned attentiveness. It seemed to Mosca that he was staring at her hands. He could not know if the mooring rope was still fastened, or if Mosca had already loosed it and was simply holding the rope. For all he knew, if she let go, the raft and the printing press would float away down the river and be lost to him.

‘You never swear by the Beloved, never. I mean, I seen you in the cathedral… but in the bit which is still the old church really, with its Heart of the Consequence still there under the shines an’ shimmers.’ Mosca paused, but the figure on the bank remained silent and motionless. ‘An’ you work for Lady Tamarind, an’ Lady Tamarind is working with the Birdcatchers. An’ then there’s you followin’ Mr Clent all around the country, an’ sayin’ it’s cos he’s dangerous an’ got blood on his hands, when all the time he’s a fat, skittered old tomcat with long claws an’ no teeth. That only makes sense if it was you what stole the letter Mr Toke sent to Mr Clent – the second one, asking him to come to Mandelion. You found out the Stationers had sent for a special agent to find the printing press, and went out to stop him ’fore he even got here. They just brung him in cos they didn’t want to risk one of their own, and didn’t care if the Locksmiths killed him, but you thought they must be sendin’ for someone really special and clever and dangerous. An’ when you…’ Mosca paused, wondering if she was going too far. ‘When you told me that story ’bout the night your father died, when that church got blasted to smithereens by a Birdcatcher spy… the spy was your father, wasn’t he?’

‘The bravest man I have ever known,’ Kohlrabi said simply.

Mosca’s waterlogged petticoats clung to her legs, and her teeth were starting to chatter. She realized suddenly that she had wanted Kohlrabi to laugh at her, and deny everything, and show her where she had been stupid. Instead, he continued to smile as if everything was still a game, and a game that Mosca was playing rather well.

‘You’re a Birdcatcher,’ she said in a small, stifled voice.

‘Birdcatcher is a word,’ said Kohlrabi. ‘The whole country is frightened of a word. Mosca, the word has no poisoned bite. It has never smothered a baby. You cannot fire it out of a cannon. And yet, say “Birdcatcher” to a company, and they will scatter like rabbits at the scent of a fox. You are better than that, Mosca. You are not a rabbit.’

Mosca sniffed, and wrinkled her nostrils, very much like a rabbit. An icy tickle plagued her nose, but she dared not move her hands to scratch it.

‘Will you let me tell you what the name Birdcatcher means? A Birdcatcher knows that there is something higher and better in this world than the dirt and darkness which surrounds us. Not the Beloved, sitting in their little shrines like wooden shopkeepers, with everyone trying to buy their favours with gold and flowers and turnips. No, something else, something pure, something so bright that its light could enchant everything else, like sunlight through a stained-glass window. Now, are you going to shun someone just because they believe the world has meaning?’

Mosca shook her head slowly.

‘Then can we please bring in the raft?’ Kohlrabi still wore an expression of tender good humour.

Mosca shook her head again, and snuffled out a single word.

‘I didn’t hear that.’

‘Partridge,’ she repeated, with muffled fierceness. ‘The barge captain. He was a crotchet an’ a bully an’ he left bruises on my shoulders, an’ he was stealing the Beloved out of their shrines, but… then someone stuck a knife in him ’fore I’d decided what I thought of him. An’ maybe there was a story to the way his wrist was broken, and the way his smile looked like he was suckin’ crab apples, an’ nobody will ever care enough to find out. But leastways, someone ought to care ’bout the last bit of his story, the bit where he died.

‘It’s funny, I mean, everyone thought he got killed cos he was a Waterman spy, or cos he was blackmailing radicals, or cos he went after Mr Clent wantin’ money. But it wasn’t really ’bout any of that stuff. He died cos of a goose. And… cos of me.

‘All he wanted was his barge back, the one my goose Saracen sort of stole by mistake. An’ so when he saw me, he chased me cos he needed me and Mr Clent to take Saracen away. An’ then, right in front of a coffeehouse, I disappeared an’ he couldn’t find me. So I ’spect he searched up and down, an’ then someone took his penny and said, “Yeah, we seen the ferrety-looking girl. Popped under a gentleman’s cloak, she did.” So he got a description of the gent with the cloak, an’ started asking to find out where he’d gone.

‘Sooner or later he tracked him to a ragman’s raft. Maybe he even spied the gent comin’ up out of the hatch. Then… I think I see how it went. He pushed his way past the gent and climbed down through the trap-door, thinkin’ I was hidin’ below. But I wasn’t. An’ suddenly there Partridge was in the dark, and in front of him was the printing press an’ lots of pages of Madness and Mayhem drying on racks… and behind him there was you, Mr Kohlrabi.’

Kohlrabi’s face had no expression at all, and suddenly Mosca could barely recognize him. His face had always seemed so honest, like an unshuttered window through which emotions shone without disguise. Perhaps his expressions had always been a magic-lantern display, a conjurer’s trick.

‘You had to get rid of the body, an’ you wanted to scotch Mr Clent, so when we was out you dressed Partridge up in women’s togs, and brought him to the marriage house. I can just imagine the marriage, Partridge lollin’ and saggin’, you sayin’ he’s drunk and dippin’ your ear to his mouth so you can pretend he’s talkin’ to you, Mr Bockerby nippin’ through all the ver-sadiddle cos a pot of porter is waitin’ for him by the hearth, an’ the Cakes throwin’ honesty pods over you, with her eyes too tear-fogged to take a good, hard look at the bride… an’ you carry the bride off to the private chambers with your pockets full of wedding cakes, strip off the bonnet and gown, an’ leave the body sitting up straight an’ smart on Mr Clent’s bed…’

‘Halk Partridge was a pillager and thief of the lowest sort,’ Kohlrabi said quietly. ‘He had an ugly temper, and would have ended up bleeding his thoughts into a tavern’s floorboards sooner or later. The river runs more cleanly without him riding its back.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t know all that when he had his back to you, did you?’ Perhaps Kohlrabi’s face had worn just this mask-like look when Partridge had turned in bewilderment from the printing press, his lips ready with a question that was never asked.

‘What if it had been me, Mr Kohlrabi? Would Mr Clent have rolled in from the tavern an’ found me sitting up on his bed, periwinkle-blue an’ cold as a lawyer’s heart?’

‘Do you really believe that?’ Kohlrabi tilted his head a little, and his eyes were bright with something that might have been hurt, and might have been moon. ‘Little god, you see the world through such black eyes.’

‘Got no choice. My father give ’em to me.’

‘I think he gave you more than that, Mosca.’ Kohlrabi’s tone set something jangling in the depths of Mosca’s soul like a bucket in a well. ‘I told you how I worshipped Quillam Mye when I was growing up. My own father was dead, and your father became my hero. He spoke out against the Stationers when they were trying to burn all books touched with our philosophy. It inspired me. I became certain that he must secretly be a member of our faith. The Stationers destroyed nearly all his books, but I found a few copies and read them. Mosca… down in the hold is a copy of one of his works. It is called On the Popular Superstition and Delusion Commonly Called the Beloved.’

‘No! I don’t believe you!’ He wasn’t a Birdcatcher he wasn’t he wasn’t he wasn’t…

‘The hatch is right there. Take a look below for yourself. Or if you are afraid that I might leap on to the raft in a single bound, cast your mind back. Did it never seem to you that your father’s views were… uncommon?’

For the hundredth time in her short life Mosca conjured up a remembered image of her father. In her mind’s eye she set his desk halfway between herself and Kohlrabi and saw him writing there busily, despite the reeds tickling against his calves and the feeble light offered by the moon. A moth blundered through his head, but he did not even look up in annoyance. I know you’re busy but this is really really important an’ I need to ask somink…

‘Mosca, your father wrote that the Beloved were no more real than the dolls that children give names and squeaky voices. Do you know what he said of them? He said, “They are best used as poppets and toys for green young minds while they are learning to understand the world, and it is the most miserable thing that our grown men cannot bring themselves to lock away the Beloved with their hoops and wooden soldiers.”’

The imagined Quillam Mye dipped his pen, and wrote eagerly, silently mouthing the very words the Birdcatcher was speaking. Mosca’s eyes misted. The manner of speaking was all too familiar.

You should have told me, she shouted silently to the heedless figure of her father, and I should have broke your pince-nez, and hid your pipe from your blind, old, black-pebble eyes…

‘He was right, Mosca, can you not see that? The Beloved, with all their nursery-rhyme names, just distract everyone from the Greater Truth, the Brighter Light. Mosca, I believe that in your deepest heart you hunger for that kind of brightness. You looked at Lady Tamarind and thought you saw it: something shining, beautiful, pure, raised above the rest of the world. Of course she disappointed you, for she is only a human woman. She believes in nothing really – except power, in the same way that a pike believes in feeding. You need something sacred.’

‘I don’t think I like sacred very much,’ Mosca called back. ‘’Cept maybe Palpitattle… an’ he’s not very sacred.’

‘If nothing is sacred, then we are all left to crawl through the mud, and there is no meaning to anything. Since the Heart of Consequence was ripped out of the churches, even the stars shine crooked in the skies. Everyone goes to church to gossip and envy each other’s hats, but the heart has gone out of it. This country is like an old mother dying, and nobody cares enough to save her because they are too busy going through her purse. Every city is a snake’s nest of pillagers, pickpockets, anglers, cheats, cardsharps, harlots, forgers, smugglers, charlatans, footpads, highwaymen, blackmailers, pettifoggers, hedge-robbers and drunkards – you have seen all this for yourself. How can their soul survive when they have ripped out their Heart?’

The phantom Quillam Mye had paused, pen poised, but she could not tell whether he was re-reading his own words or waiting for hers. The wind shifted, and carried Mosca a whiff of remembered pipesmoke.

‘And yes, amid this poison smog of the soul that is trying to choke out the light of sun, moon and stars, we are trying to rekindle a light. It is a harsh light that will dazzle some and burn others, but it will take the world out of this terrible darkness of Disbelief.’ So this was Kohlrabi’s true face, pale and strange, older than his years, as if his father and countless others were speaking through him. ‘I am content to be hated, and bloody, and outnumbered. For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing.’

Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.

‘No, it isn’t!’ shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye’s daughter. ‘Not if what you’re believin’ isn’t blinkin’ well True! You shouldn’t just go believin’ things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you’re not meant to think about properly, an’ you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it’s still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to believe in it, but not till then. An’ if all we’re left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we’d better face it and get used to it because it’s better than a lie. Which is what you are, Mr Kohlrabi.’

Mosca’s voice had become fierce and loud, and the low hills passed her words to and fro, marvelling at them. Kohlrabi’s face softened and took on the gentle, rueful smile with which he had always wished her farewell. The tricorn dropped from his left hand, and Mosca threw herself forward, bruising her chest against the iron mooring ring. Kohlrabi’s smile vanished behind a wreath of smoke. She felt a wind stroke her cheek, as if an invisible dog had licked her face with a long, cold tongue.

The pistol shot shocked Mosca’s ears into white, whistling deafness. Her trembling fingers forced the rough cords of the mooring rope to loosen. On the shore Kohlrabi would be advancing, testing his ground with a careful foot…

But there were other figures on the bank now, sprinting along the paths with swords drawn, calling words that made no sound. Kohlrabi drew his rapier and stepped forward. The foremost of his opponents slithered to a stop too slowly, and took a wicked kick to the kneecap. He staggered and fell to one knee, and the Birdcatcher aimed a vicious cut down towards his face. The stricken man flung up a parry too late, and fell back with a scream.

As Kohlrabi turned and ran, one of his attackers raised and levelled a pistol. Smoke gasped silently out of the gun, and then wind sucked it up greedily and swallowed it. Kohlrabi spun as if to face his pursuers, but somehow the motion did not end, and he kept on spinning right around, toppling sideways at the same time. Mosca saw him break the moon-gilded mirror of the river without making a sound, and then the current took pity on her and drew the ragman’s raft away.

Mosca was sure that the men on the bank would be calling to her, but she huddled herself in a nest of rags, and shivered in silence. It was only after she had drifted for an hour that the ringing faded from her ears. A low, soft booming seemed to sound from the hills like gunfire, but she could not be sure if it existed inside her head or out. At last she raised her head to look at the imagined figure of her father, whose desk was now perched up on the rag-mountain.

‘You weren’t much help,’ she murmured bitterly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me anything about all this?’

‘If you want someone to tell you what to think,’ the phantom answered briskly, without looking up, ‘you will never be short of people willing to do so.’ There. She had it at long last, his voice and manner exactly. Quillam Mye paused to polish his pince-nez, and then squinted at his daughter through them for a long while, as if mildly surprised that she had grown up so much while his attention was elsewhere. ‘Come now,’ he said at last, ‘you can hardly claim that I have left you ignorant. I taught you to read, did I not?’