Fly by Night (43 page)

Its belly scales rasped against the mosaic floor as it slithered from its basking place.

Linden Kohlrabi had been surprised to see four men in Stationers’ uniforms hurrying up the stairs with a look of furrowed purpose, but not enough to halt his step. There was no point in following them. You were likely to learn more from finding out where they had just come from. At the entrance to the Honeycomb Courtyard the guards were showing their nervousness by questioning everyone sharply before opening the gates. Kohlrabi, however, slid through easily on the grease of remembered tips, and learned in a few quiet words the direction from which the Stationers had arrived. With swift strides he headed towards the river.

On the jetty he paused to put on his gloves, and he drew deep breaths. Here the air braced him with its chill, the dry scent of a distant storm, and the rousing smell of gunpowder.

In one part of the street the crowd was hushed and huddled. An emergency of some sort had taken place. He strode to the centre with quiet confidence and the crowd parted, assuming that he had come to solve the problem. Kohlrabi had delved his cane into the barrel of brine and hooked out part of the sodden apron when the red-headed constable laid a hand on his arm.

‘Printed matter, sir,’ he whispered urgently. ‘No Stationers’ seal.’

‘I can see that. This is a child’s garment – I hope she is not still in it?’

‘No . . . she threw it down and ran.’

‘Did you get a good look at her?’

‘Good enough,’ muttered the constable. ‘Ferrety-looking girl with pink hair and unconvincing eyebrows. She boarded the
Telling Word
.’

To the constable’s consternation, Kohlrabi bent to peer at the wet folds of the apron more closely.

‘Oh, Mosca Mye, what dangerous games you play. I had better find you before anyone else does,’ he murmured under his breath.

The constable’s attention was quickly diverted from he young man with the unassuming smile who had vanished back into the crowd. People were pushing forward so keenly to watch the river battle that those in front were in danger of being pitched into the water.

‘Sir . . .’ A petty constable tugged at his sleeve.

The constable turned to find the crowd parting in awe and consternation before a sedan chair decorated in whorls of gold and blue. There was no mistaking the heraldic device emblazoned on the side.

Oh Beloved Above
,
not now
. . . The constable had often daydreamed of meeting the Duke, perhaps by catching a thief with one of His Grace’s rose-silk gloves, or by besting a burly footpad within sight of the ducal coach. But here and now the constable wished only that the Duke was away in his spire, having his teeth powdered, or his eyebrows scented, or some equally aristocratic activity.

He used his sleeve to clean the sweat from his face, and hurried to the side of the sedan. He was not sure when to bow, so he started bowing halfway to the chair, and trotted the rest of the way stooped, as if passing through an invisible tunnel.

At first glance the chair appeared to be entirely full of an enormous wig, powdered pale lilac and cunningly shaped to resemble a sultan’s turban. On second glance the constable discovered a long, handsome face beneath it, with beauty spots carefully painted in the same place on either cheek. The face was smiling, but the smile looked out of place, as if the Duke were holding it for someone else.

‘Why,’ asked the madly smiling, richly rouged mouth, ‘are none of your men on the river?’ The Duke’s voice was pitched higher than the constable had expected. ‘I am told that the highwayman Blythe and the seditious rabble responsible for every ill in Mandelion are mocking you from the waters with impunity.’

‘Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but no boat will take us.’ The constable could not prevent desperation and frustration creeping into his voice. ‘All the skippers say that it’s against the Watermen’s rules – only the Watermen’s wherries can take passengers . . . I swear it, Your Grace, I all but clapped a pistol to their heads, but they wouldn’t say different.’

‘Then call a wherry!’

‘Your Grace . . . there aren’t any. They’ve all vanished upstream . . . searching for the highwayman, some say . . .’ The constable licked his lips. ‘There’s the coffeehouses, of course, but you have to hand in your weapons when you enter them . . .’

‘They will not ask me to disarm,’ the Duke declared. ‘Feldspar! My hat and my walking wig.’ He ducked out of the enormous, turban-like wig, which remained exactly where it was, hanging from great pins that jutted out of the walls of the sedan. The Duke’s valet slipped a silky, flowing wig in the ‘natural’ style on his master’s head, and perched a triangular hat trimmed with peacock feathers on the top.

The crowd on the waterfront hushed as the Duke stepped out of the chair, resplendent in sapphire and kingfisher-blue, his silk waistcoat shimmering beneath his full-skirted velvet coat. The raised heels of his crimson shoes turned him from a tall man into a gleaming giant out of a court painting. Staring across the water, he treated his people to the sight of the famous, handsome profile of the Dukes of Mandelion.

‘See!’ He suddenly pointed upwards. High above hovered a great kite, decorated with two female heads that faced one another and seemed to smile a secret. ‘The owners of that kite honour Their Majesties, and so in turn they shall be honoured with our custom.’

The kite belonged to a coffeehouse known as the
Queens
’
Heads
. The balding proprietor was clearly taken aback when he opened the door to find the glittering figure of the Duke bearing down on him, heralded by a constable, flanked by armed deputies, and followed by a middle-aged valet laden with boxes, muffs and spare wigs.

‘We are honoured . . . beyond honour . . . Your most gracious Graceness . . .’ This coffeehouse was a favourite haunt of persons who were fiercely loyal both to the Avourlace family and to the Twin Queens, and as the Duke strode in through the door the customers showed this by choking on their coffee and throwing themselves into a series of elaborate and possibly dangerous bows.

‘You may all be of the greatest service to Their Majesties,’ the Duke declared to the room at large. His long hand seized a curtain and tugged it down with one motion. He pointed a trembling finger out through the window towards the
Laurel Bower
. ‘Follow that coffeehouse!’

‘The
Queens
’
Heads
is casting off again,’ remarked Miss Kitely. ‘Curious – she should be at her address on Mettlemonger Street for two more bells.’

‘Another for our convoy?’ Pertellis tried to focus on the distant coffeehouse through his borrowed monocle, but quickly gave up.

‘I doubt it somehow, Mr Pertellis. Most of her customers are Royalists of the old school, who will take a birch to a serving girl if she spills their tea, and will ride over a poor child rather than risk their carriage wheels in the kennel ditch.’

A rope ladder had been lowered from the trapdoor in the roof, and Blythe stood on the upper rungs, high enough to peer across the deck towards the other coffeehouse.

‘There are men taking positions at her windows,’ he called down. ‘Duke’s men – I see their colours.’

‘That is what I feared,’ murmured Miss Kitely. ‘It will take some time for her to gather away while she’s beam-reaching, but even if she cannot head us off, she will fall in behind us and try to take the wind out of our sails. She will press us hard – her master-kite is much bigger than ours, and she has eight dog-kites to our six. Take her a little to port, Mr Stallwrath.’

The pursuing coffeehouse was painted spring-green. It was lower and faster than the
Laurel Bower
, and at its stern was a little veranda for riverside supping. On this veranda two deputies now crouched, using an overturned table for cover. They disappeared behind a flower of smoke, and a sharp crack echoed across the water.

‘What was that, a shot across our bows to ask for surrender?’

‘No! Look at the
Catnip
!’ The helmsman of the lighter had slumped across his rudder, a dark patch spreading over his coat near the hip. As his fellow crewmen dragged him below, the prow of the
Catnip
began to wander. ‘Her mainsail’s taken the wind – she’s pulling away despite herself.’

‘I hope they’ve seen that aboard the
Dry Spell
and the
Peck o
’
Clams
,’ whispered Miss Kitely, ‘or they’ll ram her as she turns.’

From within the
Laurel Bower
it was impossible to see past the struggling lighter, but from astern came a grinding crack that set everyone’s teeth on edge.

‘The
Dry Spell
has steered clear,’ Stallwrath called down, ‘but they’re standing a-luff now. The
Peck o
’
Clams
has ploughed into the
Catnip
, and I think she’ll be tangled there for a time. The
Queens
’
Heads
is going about, and her crew is whisker-poling the jib. Skipp’am, she’s goose-winged and bearing down on us.’

The pursuit was all the more tense owing to the fact that both coffeehouses were going rather more slowly than the average oyster barrow. A race run through treacle is very hard on the nerves.

‘We could go faster straddling a cat,’ Captain Blythe was heard to mutter.

Another shot was fired, and one of the little bumboats rowed away for the shore, water spewing in from a hole beneath its waterline. When those on the
Laurel Bower
could make out the pattern on the curtains of the pursuing coffeehouse, the pistols came into their own, and soon the main coffeeroom of the
Bower
was lost in a fog of gunsmoke. Still the
Queens
’
Heads
gained, and as the Bower’s sails sagged the remaining gap closed all the more quickly.

‘What was that?’ A loud rattle above, from the neighbourhood of the chimney.

‘Boarders! It’s a grappling iron!’ Blythe’s legs disappeared as he scrambled up the ladder to the deck. ‘I think it’s meant to be, anyway,’ his voice continued more faintly. ‘It looks like part of someone’s grate . . .’

‘Girls! To the galley!’ Miss Kitely looked around her for the nearest set of ready arms. ‘You too, Mr Clent.’ Clent was not to be trusted with a pistol, but Miss Kitely was willing to place a ladle in his hands.

In the galley, Miss Kitely swung open the hatch to reveal the startled face of a petty constable, clinging to a rope with one hand and holding a pistol in the other. Concerted blows from three fiercely wielded ladles convinced him to release the pistol, and a faceful of boiling coffee persuaded him to relinquish the rope. He disappeared downwards with a shriek.

Destiny is overtaking us upon wings of canvas
, thought Eponymous Clent as he sagged back against the wooden wall, mopping his brow,
and it seems I am to die armed with nothing but a spoon
. Until now he had remained quiet and cowed, hoping only to escape the wrath of everyone else on the
Bower
, but his mind had noticed everything as it scurried to and fro like a rat looking to escape a burning room. As he wandered back from a room full of blinding steam to a room full of blinding smoke, his foot struck a rounded something. It answered the blow with a sound like the flutter of wings.
Wings of destiny
.
Wings of destiny
. . .

‘Tell me, young sir, how well can you throw?’

Carmine looked up from loading Copperback’s pistol. ‘Well enough to knock chestnuts from a tree.’ His expression was a question.

‘Could you throw this,’ Clent lifted the wig box into his hands, ‘through one of the windows in the coffeehouse yonder?’

There was a long and prickly pause.

‘I would need to be outside.’

‘I know.’

‘Would it help?’

‘In truth, I cannot say. It might.’

‘Give me the box, sir.’

With the wig box slung over his shoulder, Carmine paused at the bottom of the rope ladder. It did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice. Almost everyone – the Cakes had seen him and was staring up at him in surprise. On impulse he stooped and kissed her on the cheek, clumsily, so that her forehead knocked against his eyebrow.

When he reached the top of the rope ladder the wind blew his collar into his mouth and his short pigtail beat at the base of his neck. Brave Captain Blythe was crouching behind the chimney, cleaning out his pistol. The crew of the
Bower
ducked low to the deck or ran at a crouch from point to point when the lines needed trimming.

Carmine lay flat on his stomach near the edge of the deck and let his arm dangle over the side, the wig box hanging from his fist by its leather straps. As he began to swing it back and forth, Carmine kept his eye on a window below on the other boat, where a man in a plum-coloured surcoat was beating a playful curtain out of his face and levelling his pistol at Captain Blythe’s hiding place.
A swing
,
and a one
,
and a two
,
and a
. . .

The man at the window took the wig box full in the face and staggered backwards. The box bounced against the sill, then tumbled down inside rather than out. The men at the other windows of the
Queens
’
Heads
pulled back, as if eager to find out what had landed in their midst.