Blythe looked distracted and waved a finger.
‘That bit was not so bad.
‘But word got out. Black-cap was a beadle, it turned out, with a turn for bullying extra tax, and by morning the new songs had it that I was defending the poor and helpless against the Duke’s men. I was a hero standing between little lowly folk and their oppressors. And the little lowly folk believed it, and so did the oppressors, right up to the Duke himself, His Grace of the Cloven Brain.’ Blythe ran a distracted hand over his hair. ‘The Duke’s men searched every garret and barn for us. But the villagers hid us in cellars, they fed us and lent us their best boots when ours were run to rags, then turned hopeful eyes on us because they knew we had come to help them. So somehow I found myself stopping families being thrown out of their cottages, and beating off taxmen so that villagers could eat that night.
‘I was taken sick with an ague after hiding in the heather for three nights, and a family of farmers smuggled me into Mandelion in their market cart to find a physician. I have lain low in this coffeehouse ever since, and cannot show my face for fear of the constables.
‘Your damnable way with words has brought me to this pass. I am leader of a valiant resistance, whether I will or nay, and trapped beyond my wits to remedy. Any suggestions?’
Clent cleared his throat. He took some time about it, and Mosca guessed that his feverish mind was searching for words.
‘My dear good sir, your story is extraordinary, indeed one that I would be proud to have written, but I cannot see why your anger has turned upon me. You wished to become the stuff of ballads, and that you are. Perhaps you are a little more legendary than you hoped, but you have no one to blame for that but yourself. I fulfilled my part of the bargain, and you needed only to keep a cool head and revel in your glory until some other brisk blade with a good seat on a horse came along to steal your thunder.’
‘A cool head? A week ago the Duke’s men arrested a young farmer because he would not betray me. His wife rode through dark and storm in nothing but her gown to tell me of it, so that I should rescue her husband before he could be taken to Mandelion to stand trial. What was I to do? Say no?’
‘Yes,’ Clent replied promptly. ‘I would have done, and so would countless other men. If you have weakened to the siren songs of valour and virtue, I hardly see how you can blame me.’
The door behind Mosca opened again, and Miss Kitely put her head around it.
‘The boy we sent for Mr Trifish the barber-surgeon is back, Clam. He found a kerchief dropped on the step – the signal Mr Trifish said he’d leave if the Duke’s men had taken him.’
‘Cast off, then. Trifish is a milk-and-mallow cove, and will squeak if they prick him. The constables will be here any minute.’
Miss Kitely withdrew, closing the door behind her, and Blythe gave Clent a blazing look.
‘You see? They rely on me. Even she…’ He waved a despairing hand at the door. ‘… she relies on me.’
‘A-a-ah… I think I understand. There is a charming complication in the matter, a delicate dilemma, a sweet distraction…’ Clent halted as Mosca elbowed him sharply in the ribs. ‘My dear fellow,’ he continued more soberly, ‘if you have managed to complicate things by forming a sentimental attachment in less than a week, then I doubt there is anything I can do for you. You, sir, are a romantic, and I suspect your condition is incurable.’
There were feet moving on the roof above, and ropes ticked as they were played out. Paintings rattled against the wall as the room lurched, then accepted the river as a dancing partner. Suddenly there was the crash of a crockery catastrophe, raised voices in the next room, and feet thundering above.
Blythe threw the door open, and Mosca and Clent followed him through it.
‘What’s happening?’
A grimy boy Mosca recognized from the Floating School was recovering his breath.
‘The Duke’s men, sir – they’re searchin’ all the coffeehouses at moorings, sir.’
‘Cast off quickly! Cut the ropes if you have to! Have we men still ashore?’
‘Only Hamby and Foddle loosing the lines. Here they come!’
The street outside was sliding to the right and a dark mouth of a gap slowly opening between the waterfront and the doorstep. First one man and then a second leaped for the doorway, and each was caught by a forest of waiting arms and pulled to safety. When the doorway cleared, two coffeemaidens knelt on the threshold, bracing a broom and a warming pan against the street’s edge to push it away.
‘Miss Kitely! We’re like to catch our doorscraper in the figurehead of the Spry Squirrelhawk!’ squeaked the shorter and plumper of the two coffeemaidens, sidling up against the jamb to brace herself.
Miss Kitely snatched up a long mop and beat the handle-end against a trapdoor in the roof until it cracked open.
‘Mr Stallwrath, hard-a-chimneyside, if you would.’ A harassed-looking sailor above gave a hurried salute.
Mosca pushed her eye against a knothole. She could see a group of Duke’s men pushing through the crowd carrying cudgels, and two of them seemed to be shouldering muskets. Their leader was calling something aloft, hailing the sailors up on the deck of the Bower. He pointed at the jetty, as if ordering them back to their moorings. As the coffeehouse drifted further away, his mouth shrank to an angry crack across his face. He started to drive his way through the crowd with a new fierceness and resolution.
‘Up kites, Mr Stallwrath!’
‘But Miss Kitely, we ain’t ten paddle-lengths clear of the bank…’
‘We shall worry about the fine later, Mr Stallwrath.’
There was a squeal of consternation from the coffeemaidens as the first Duke’s man reached the jetty side.
‘Grab their lines! Stop that coffeehouse!’ someone was shouting. ‘There are fugitives and cell-breakers aboard!’
‘Sussuratch smile!’ murmured Miss Kitely. ‘She’s gathering away – we are finding our pace at last.’
Perhaps they were. Perhaps this was fast for a coffeehouse. Mosca could not help noticing that they were still being overtaken by ducks.
A shout of triumph. One of the Duke’s men lifted a dripping boathook with a trailing line looped across the end. Four deputies seized hold and braced their weight against it, the drift of the Laurel Bower dragging them towards the brink in stuttering steps. Drawing his sword, Blythe pushed his way to the doorway and swung himself out and to one side. Mosca recollected the rungs set in the outside wall.
A blade flashed downwards once, twice, and the cluster of deputies fell backwards, the severed rope-end flicking back into their faces like a cow’s tail swatting flies. Blythe swung back into the room and turned to stand in the doorway, daring anyone on the jetty to leap for the boat. No one seemed ready to take up the challenge.
‘We’re clearing the Squirrelhawk… we’ll clear the Donkey Dancer… our stern’s three paddle-lengths from the shore, Skipp’am!’ The final word, to judge by the confused salute that accompanied it, was a compromise between ‘skipper’ and ‘madam’.
‘Gentlemen, we are on the river, and out of the Duke’s jurisdiction!’ Miss Kitely’s declaration was met by a brief burst of cheering on all sides. One radical even slapped Blythe heartily on the back, almost toppling him forward into the water, and earning himself a glare.
There was a violent crack, like a tree bough snapping, and suddenly there was a new knothole in the northern wall, and another in the southern wall.
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Pertellis in consternation, gazing down at Blythe, who was now lying at full length upon his face. ‘Are you all right, sir?’