‘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?’