The grey Eastern Spire rose in the distance like a finger admonishing silence. In the dark doorway of a wigmakers’ a young girl in a bent yellow bonnet imitated the gesture, bidding her younger brother be quiet with a finger to her lips, and then pointing across the street at Mosca and whispering.
‘As for myself, I feel a yearning to see the Capital again. It is all very well to be such a notable figure and so sought after, but sometimes it is more relaxing to be just one minnow in a great iridescent school. And when you are well established with Her Ladyship, as I have no doubt you shall be, you must persuade her to take you with her to the Capital to see the Crystalcourt. Every one of its million windows is thinner than your finger, and filled with a shard of glass cut cunningly so as to throw tiaras of rainbow colour upon the floor. Some of the ladies have trains so long that whole legends of days past can be embroidered scene by scene along their lengths. And when your mistress can spare you, I shall show you the Dizzyfeather Club, where one may sit beneath a green-fringed canopy and sip wine as dark as blackberry juice from glasses narrow as thorns. And there is no sight to equal the gilded barges along the Pettygall…’
There was no sight to equal the grim swing of the gibbet as rooks nipped at its links. Or the old watch house, round and battered-brown as a peaked pie, with the high walls of the jail behind it. In front of the watch house the red-headed constable shared his pipe tobacco with a tall man in Watermen’s colours, but when he saw Clent and Mosca his eye darkened, and he muttered a farewell to his smoking companion.
‘You found her then?’ he called out.
‘Fairly found, safe and sound, and filled with a tale which will gladden your heart, I think, sir,’ Clent called back cheerfully. ‘Might we step inside?’
‘You might.’ The constable was clearly somewhat perplexed by Clent’s change of mood.
They followed him in through a heavy oaken door into a poorly lit room where a tousled deerhound lay upon the stone flags, its flanks twitching in sleep. The room smelt of cold suppers and boredom. Mosca had never realized before that boredom smelt so much like egg custard. The constable ruffled the hound’s belly with his booted toe, and leaned back against the wall, his pipe bowl cradled in his palm.
‘Go on, then.’ He looked expectantly at Mosca, and she found she could not speak. Not that it mattered much, for Clent was uncurling the coloured ribbons of his story before she could draw breath.
‘Perhaps you are unaware of it, but a week ago this child was the Undoing of a Wild and Notorious Radical, known as Hopewood Pertellis. It was she who first reported him to the Stationers, having witnessed him presiding over the Infamous Floating School, where he cast Seeds of Evil into minds as pink and innocent as baby clams. It was she who informed them where they might find his Forbidden Books of Infamy. For you see, this man Pertellis-’
‘I know about Pertellis.’ The constable’s face did not look so tired now. He had an alert look as if he had glimpsed something round and white inside his oyster.
‘Very well, then. Overcoming the fluttering frailty and fears which belong to her sex, this intrepid young woman followed the Dissident through the dark and winding dockside alleys. And by the very waterside she saw Pertellis meet in a sly and sleekish manner with the captain of our river barge, and saw him offer him a purse of money, and depart with him. Clearly Partridge had some clandestine dealings with Pertellis… and perhaps he found out too much for the Vile Radical Conspiracy to let him live.’
‘Did she mention none of this before?’ The constable’s tone was sharp, but he seemed excited, not angry.
‘Oh, she did,’ Clent answered quickly. ‘But of course we were all far too interested in the Floating School to pay the rest of her story any mind, and for myself I had entirely forgotten it until she reminded me. She even went back to the captain’s barge herself the next day, so determined was she to uncover all evil doings, but he was not there.’
‘Is all this true?’ The constable looked directly at Mosca, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully, to show that he expected a response from her and not from Clent. Heat washed upwards from the base of Mosca’s spine to the tops of her unconvincing eyebrows.
She nodded just once, and the deed was done.
‘Then that’s a tale to gladden my heart indeed.’ The constable’s battered face relaxed into a smile. ‘You’ll sit and have a tot of Kill-grief? Wait…’ He left the room, returning a moment later with a jug and three pots. ‘The girl will have to identify him now, of course, and again in the trial, but it sounds like she has the right sort of mettle, so I don’t think she’ll faint at the task.’ His eye was far friendlier now when it fell upon her, and his voice was warmer and more confidential. ‘You cannot imagine the trouble we’ve had since we clapped the darbies on Pertellis. So many people seem to see him as some kind of hero, and we get stones thrown at the door of the watch house, or rotten eggs flung at the windows of our homes. And poor folks come by the jail with money they should be using to feed their families, and beg us to use it to make Pertellis a bit more comfortable. It boils me up inside. But once everyone knows he’s a murderer… well, no one will see him as a hero then, will they? No one will care if he lives or dies.’
Mosca took the offered pot, and sipped carefully. The gin stole the feeling from her tongue, and left the inside of her nose feeling stripped and cold.
The door opened and three petty constables in Duke’s colours entered, supporting a fourth man between them.
The blue-lensed spectacles were long gone, and every button had been pulled from his jacket. He was wigless and his brown hair had curled and matted itself into ingenious shapes. A chain linked the manacles around his ankles, and his arms were fastened behind his back. Red-rimmed, sleepless eyes winced at the dim light of the little room as if it were blazing sunlight. His clothes smelt of damp straw and despair.
‘Pertellis, do you know who is speaking to you?’ The constable asked coldly.
‘Yes, I think so.’ Pertellis’s face was dazed and deathly white, and he spoke stumblingly. ‘I’m terribly sorry but I… can’t remember your name. I’m not myself right now.’
‘You’re not likely to be yourself much longer, or anything else for that matter,’ muttered the constable with grim humour, and he walked over to stand before the manacled attorney. ‘We know all about the barge captain now.’ The constable bristled as Pertellis gave a short, mournful breath of a laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I lose track of all the things I’m supposed to have done. Everyone tells me that I’ve been running an illegal printing press, and I’m very much afraid I haven’t. And all week people have told me that I’m the leader of a radical plot against the Twin Queens, and I’m really not, you know. And this morning someone ran in to tell me that I’ve been melting down religious statues to make bullets. Which is quite a clever idea, but I never thought of it.’
‘Pity you didn’t think of a better way of getting rid of poor Partridge than throwing him in the river,’ remarked the constable drily.
Pertellis’s eyebrows drew up as he peered intently at the constable’s middle button. He seemed to listen for a few more seconds, as if the constable’s words were still echoing in his ears.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said at last, ‘but am I supposed to have killed someone?’
‘That won’t wash with me,’ the constable muttered through his teeth. ‘That pious act of yours may fool good and simple people into thinking that you’re some saint acting for the greater good, but you don’t kid me. I’m not some wide-eyed child you can fill with hell-skate ideas about equality and overthrowing rulers… poisoning their innocent minds…’