‘Yes…’ For days the Duke’s thoughts had been circling giddily like tea leaves in a cup. Now at last they were settling, and soon they would form a pattern which would spell out destiny for Mandelion and everyone in it.
L is for Lock-pick
To Mosca’s delight she was granted the next morning off without even having to ask.
She left the marriage house and immediately turned her steps towards the Plumery. Perhaps there would be a chance to take her own letter back. Perhaps there would be a response from Lady Tamarind. In truth she was not sure where her hopes lay.
Again she walked between the desolate feather lawns, again she knelt before Goodman Claspkin. She pulled up the message feather, and could instantly see the dark roll of her letter through the translucent yellow horn. She was safe, she was in time, she was bitterly disappointed. She pulled it out… and discovered that it was not her letter.
‘You have done well,’ it read. ‘Keep me informed of your employer’s doings and let me know when you have found a place in a Stationer school.’ A tiny object rolled out of the letter into Mosca’s palm. It was a seed pearl.
With the pearl wrapped in her handkerchief and hidden deep in her skirt pocket, Mosca sleepwalked back through the streets. She would never sell the pearl. She would keep it forever. She had a piece of Lady Tamarind in her pocket.
She was roused from her trance by the cries of the ‘chapmen’, pedlars who carried cheap books for sale. It was hard to part with the little money she had slyly won, but she could not resist the sight of a stack of chap-books, with their rough-cut pages and bright cloth covers.
‘You got anything ’bout what happened to the Ragged School?’ Mosca asked one chapman, who stooped to search his pack.
‘You want something on the Book Riots, do you? Who you buying it for?’
‘Me.’
The chapman did not look as if he believed her. ‘Bit bloody for a lass – wouldn’t you like a nice ballad about Captain Blythe like the other girls?’
‘I don’t mind blood. I like books with gizzard and gunpowder in ’em.’
‘Right you are, then, here’s “A Report on the Tumultuous Disorders of the Year of the Dead Letter”.’ A yellowed, well-travelled chapbook was placed in Mosca’s hand.
Soon Mosca was squatting on the grass of a pleasure garden and chewing her way through a penny loaf, eager to devour her new chapbook on the Book Riots.
… In Mandelion the Year of the Dead Letter will be forever remembered for the so-called Book Riots, where murders and mischief were committed by a deluded mob, spurred on by the words of one Quillam Mye…
Mosca felt as if someone had filled her head with gunpowder and then blown sparks into her ear.
… After the fall of the Birdcatchers the Stationers decreed that all books should be hunted out and brought to them. All those that bore no Stationer seal or that smacked of Birdcatchery were piled high in the marketplace and burned while children danced around the pyres with much merriment…
… a celebrated Stationer named Quillam Mye condemned the Book-burnings. He wrote Pamphlets commanding all free men to defend their books, and made Speeches from atop the Unlit Pyres. Inflamed and deceived by his words, a vast Mob took to the streets, offering outrage to the Duke’s men, breaking Windows without number, and bloodily striking down all who would not join them in shouting Mye’s name…
… it is said that Quillam Mye used witchcraft to escape Mandelion before justice could befall him, so that he might spread Birdcatchery and trouble in other cities…
‘You’re all pixelated!’ Mosca gasped aloud. ‘Witchcraft my socks! If he was a witch he’d have witched us out of Chough in three winks! And as for Birdcatchery…’
Her father had hated the Birdcatchers. Of course he had. Hadn’t he? It suddenly seemed to her that when talking of the Birdcatchers her father had nearly always given her facts, not opinions.
She desperately tried to remember him ranting against the Birdcatchers the way everybody else did. Instead she recalled that once she had asked him who had started the rebellion against the Birdcatchers.
‘Unwise people,’ had been his only answer, though he had looked at her with unusual warmth. Unwise people. What did that mean? Her eyes dropped to the page again.
… Panople Twine, Headmaster of the Ragged School, had sided with Mye, and after Mye’s disappearance the Duke in his wisdom had the walls of the Ragged School battered down. Twine’s tears fell as fast as the bricks, and he died soon after of a broken heart…
‘You broke the school,’ she whispered aloud. Somehow this was the only part of the tale that she could feel and understand. Her father had broken the school.
But how could it be the same Quillam Mye? Mosca could not accept it. Try as she might, Mosca still could not imagine her father frothing at the head of a deluded mob. Then again, looking around at the green lawns, the marble fountains, the gentry having their likenesses painted in the Playing-card Makers’ pagodas, it was hard to imagine Mandelion the scene of shrieks and blood and discharged muskets. But clearly the city was not as calm and sane as it seemed.
Mosca received a further hint that something was amiss when she got back to find Eponymous Clent making hats for Saracen.
Sensibly enough, he had chosen to keep his distance while doing this. While Saracen gobbled barley from a chipped china bowl, Clent crouched by the door, watching him critically with one eye shut, like an artist judging an angle for a portrait. At arm’s length he held up a scrap of yellow damask, as if trying to judge how it would look against Saracen’s bulging brow. A few moments later he dropped the scrap, and held up a blue rag.
‘Mr Clent…’ Mosca was for a moment afraid to ask what he was doing, in case his answer revealed that he had gone mad during the day. Perhaps this was what happened when you stole berries from shrines.
‘Ah, you’re back. Tell me, do you think your friend Saracen would permit a ribbon or lace to be tied below his, as it were, chin?’
‘Probably bite your ears off,’ Mosca replied curtly. ‘What d’you want to tie ribbons on him for?’
‘Mosca, sit down.’ Clent’s tone was that of a kindly uncle who must break the news of the death of a beloved kitten. Mosca sat, wincing as the broadsheets in her petticoat pocket crackled loudly. ‘As you doubtless recall, we agreed that Saracen should pay his way in the service of the Stationers’ Company.’
Mosca twisted her mouth to one side to show that she was listening and did not like what she was hearing.
‘Now, as you know, tonight we bless the Grey Mastiff with our custom.We are under orders to investigate the tavern, find out where the Locksmiths meet, and make sure Pertellis is there. Unfortunately, the part of the tavern containing the private rooms is barred to everyone but the staff, the Locksmiths and, ah, the trainers for the beast fights…’
‘No!’ Mosca shouted when her breath returned to her. ‘You’re not puttin’ Saracen into the beast fights! I’ll set ’im on you an’ have ’im give you extra knees where there shouldn’t be-’
‘Child, child!’ A kindly laugh wove through Clent’s words like a golden thread. ‘I thought we had reached some sort of understanding and were past such demonstrations. Mosca, you must, must trust me a little.’ He smoothed his hair back with the air of one who is amused but perhaps a little hurt. ‘The beast fights are not extravaganzas on the same scale as those in the Capital. Oh, I grant you that the Grey Mastiff’s posters boast of “Clashes Between All the Heraldry Beasts of the Many Monarchs” but I understand that the reality is a rather pitiful affair. Newts painted red to resemble salamanders, tabby cats standing in for tigers, calves passing for bulls.’ Clent waved the daisy-shaped rag of cloth in his hand. ‘How else could we expect to enter Saracen as King Prael’s Star-crested Eagle?’