‘Do you really believe that?’ Kohlrabi tilted his head a little, and his eyes were bright with something that might have been hurt, and might have been moon. ‘Little god, you see the world through such black eyes.’
‘Got no choice. My father give ’em to me.’
‘I think he gave you more than that, Mosca.’ Kohlrabi’s tone set something jangling in the depths of Mosca’s soul like a bucket in a well. ‘I told you how I worshipped Quillam Mye when I was growing up. My own father was dead, and your father became my hero. He spoke out against the Stationers when they were trying to burn all books touched with our philosophy. It inspired me. I became certain that he must secretly be a member of our faith. The Stationers destroyed nearly all his books, but I found a few copies and read them. Mosca… down in the hold is a copy of one of his works. It is called On the Popular Superstition and Delusion Commonly Called the Beloved.’
‘No! I don’t believe you!’ He wasn’t a Birdcatcher he wasn’t he wasn’t he wasn’t…
‘The hatch is right there. Take a look below for yourself. Or if you are afraid that I might leap on to the raft in a single bound, cast your mind back. Did it never seem to you that your father’s views were… uncommon?’
For the hundredth time in her short life Mosca conjured up a remembered image of her father. In her mind’s eye she set his desk halfway between herself and Kohlrabi and saw him writing there busily, despite the reeds tickling against his calves and the feeble light offered by the moon. A moth blundered through his head, but he did not even look up in annoyance. I know you’re busy but this is really really important an’ I need to ask somink…
‘Mosca, your father wrote that the Beloved were no more real than the dolls that children give names and squeaky voices. Do you know what he said of them? He said, “They are best used as poppets and toys for green young minds while they are learning to understand the world, and it is the most miserable thing that our grown men cannot bring themselves to lock away the Beloved with their hoops and wooden soldiers.”’
The imagined Quillam Mye dipped his pen, and wrote eagerly, silently mouthing the very words the Birdcatcher was speaking. Mosca’s eyes misted. The manner of speaking was all too familiar.
You should have told me, she shouted silently to the heedless figure of her father, and I should have broke your pince-nez, and hid your pipe from your blind, old, black-pebble eyes…
‘He was right, Mosca, can you not see that? The Beloved, with all their nursery-rhyme names, just distract everyone from the Greater Truth, the Brighter Light. Mosca, I believe that in your deepest heart you hunger for that kind of brightness. You looked at Lady Tamarind and thought you saw it: something shining, beautiful, pure, raised above the rest of the world. Of course she disappointed you, for she is only a human woman. She believes in nothing really – except power, in the same way that a pike believes in feeding. You need something sacred.’
‘I don’t think I like sacred very much,’ Mosca called back. ‘’Cept maybe Palpitattle… an’ he’s not very sacred.’
‘If nothing is sacred, then we are all left to crawl through the mud, and there is no meaning to anything. Since the Heart of Consequence was ripped out of the churches, even the stars shine crooked in the skies. Everyone goes to church to gossip and envy each other’s hats, but the heart has gone out of it. This country is like an old mother dying, and nobody cares enough to save her because they are too busy going through her purse. Every city is a snake’s nest of pillagers, pickpockets, anglers, cheats, cardsharps, harlots, forgers, smugglers, charlatans, footpads, highwaymen, blackmailers, pettifoggers, hedge-robbers and drunkards – you have seen all this for yourself. How can their soul survive when they have ripped out their Heart?’
The phantom Quillam Mye had paused, pen poised, but she could not tell whether he was re-reading his own words or waiting for hers. The wind shifted, and carried Mosca a whiff of remembered pipesmoke.
‘And yes, amid this poison smog of the soul that is trying to choke out the light of sun, moon and stars, we are trying to rekindle a light. It is a harsh light that will dazzle some and burn others, but it will take the world out of this terrible darkness of Disbelief.’ So this was Kohlrabi’s true face, pale and strange, older than his years, as if his father and countless others were speaking through him. ‘I am content to be hated, and bloody, and outnumbered. For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing.’
Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.
‘No, it isn’t!’ shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye’s daughter. ‘Not if what you’re believin’ isn’t blinkin’ well True! You shouldn’t just go believin’ things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you’re not meant to think about properly, an’ you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it’s still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to believe in it, but not till then. An’ if all we’re left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we’d better face it and get used to it because it’s better than a lie. Which is what you are, Mr Kohlrabi.’
Mosca’s voice had become fierce and loud, and the low hills passed her words to and fro, marvelling at them. Kohlrabi’s face softened and took on the gentle, rueful smile with which he had always wished her farewell. The tricorn dropped from his left hand, and Mosca threw herself forward, bruising her chest against the iron mooring ring. Kohlrabi’s smile vanished behind a wreath of smoke. She felt a wind stroke her cheek, as if an invisible dog had licked her face with a long, cold tongue.
The pistol shot shocked Mosca’s ears into white, whistling deafness. Her trembling fingers forced the rough cords of the mooring rope to loosen. On the shore Kohlrabi would be advancing, testing his ground with a careful foot…
But there were other figures on the bank now, sprinting along the paths with swords drawn, calling words that made no sound. Kohlrabi drew his rapier and stepped forward. The foremost of his opponents slithered to a stop too slowly, and took a wicked kick to the kneecap. He staggered and fell to one knee, and the Birdcatcher aimed a vicious cut down towards his face. The stricken man flung up a parry too late, and fell back with a scream.
As Kohlrabi turned and ran, one of his attackers raised and levelled a pistol. Smoke gasped silently out of the gun, and then wind sucked it up greedily and swallowed it. Kohlrabi spun as if to face his pursuers, but somehow the motion did not end, and he kept on spinning right around, toppling sideways at the same time. Mosca saw him break the moon-gilded mirror of the river without making a sound, and then the current took pity on her and drew the ragman’s raft away.
Mosca was sure that the men on the bank would be calling to her, but she huddled herself in a nest of rags, and shivered in silence. It was only after she had drifted for an hour that the ringing faded from her ears. A low, soft booming seemed to sound from the hills like gunfire, but she could not be sure if it existed inside her head or out. At last she raised her head to look at the imagined figure of her father, whose desk was now perched up on the rag-mountain.