Twilight Robbery (21 page)

Waiting for Clent to return might have been tolerable if Beamabeth had not resolved to be
kind
to Mosca.

‘You will want to come to the party too, won’t you?’ Beamabeth’s eye wandered doubtfully over Mosca’s tattered and mud-stained dress. ‘Come! I am sure we can fit you into one of my old gowns.’

And so Mosca found herself in Beamabeth’s room, where dried rose petals crinkled in pots, lambs frolicked across tapestries and a red plush cushion bristled with gilded hatpins like the queen of hedgehogs. Dress after undersized dress was pulled out of an oak chest and held up to Mosca’s neckline so that her hostess could scrutinize the effect.

‘You are better in lemon yellow, or tansy pink, or cream. Pale is best for your age – try this one!’

Mosca found herself with an armful of cream-coloured muslin, and a matching lace day cap embroidered with strawberries. She was just holding the gown up to her chin to check its length when she noticed a faint scent rising from the fabric. The smell was piquant, heady and familiar.

‘Miss Marlebourne –’ she lowered her head and took a deep sniff – ‘this dress smells of chocolate!’

Beamabeth Marlebourne’s eyes crept to the oak chest. Peering into its depths, Mosca could now see a few small boxes and bundles that had been all but concealed by the folded gowns. One of them was a tiny, straw-work tea caddy. Another looked a great deal like one of the chocolate bundles the clawed girl had been throwing through windows.

Beamabeth gave Mosca a small, slightly abashed smile. ‘You will not tell Father, will you?’ She pulled the loose fabric across to conceal them once more. ‘The mayor’s household cannot be seen to have bought anything that might have come in through Mandelion. I just. . . I just like to have a
little
of these things. Now and then. Quietly, so that it will hurt and upset nobody. It is my secret treasure chest.’

She gave Mosca a sudden, dazzling, confidential smile. ‘Come, put on the gown, then I shall order hot water, and you and I shall have
secret tea
!’

In spite of herself, Mosca could not help being a little touched by the offer, not least because Beamabeth seemed so delighted by the idea. As she was moving to remove her skirt, she heard a rustle in the petticoat pocket and suddenly remembered the letter that the midwife had entrusted them with.

‘Here.’ Gruffly she pulled it out of her pocket and presented it, somewhat creased and spiky with yew needles. ‘Mistress Leap asked me to give you this.’

Beamabeth regarded it in evident perplexity, then took it and carefully levered off the seal with an opener. Her soft blue eyes drifted down the page, and Mosca saw her colour slowly seep away, leaving a look of pain and confusion.

In a moment Mosca knew why, and the real significance of what she had already been told struck home.

Leveretia Leap the midwife had told them that
she
had delivered Beamabeth, and Leveretia Leap lived by night. This golden girl had had her beginnings in some darkened hovel in Toll-by-Night, and only her name, her radiant, peerless name, had lifted her out of the shadows and made her worthy to be adopted by the mayor. Perhaps there had even been one of those ‘exchanges’ Mistress Leap had mentioned. Perhaps the mayor had handed over a real blood daughter for a fair-named one, and never given the former another thought. Once again Mosca was confronted by the maddening fact that all that really separated Beamabeth’s destiny from her own was half an hour – and their names.

Beamabeth looked up suddenly, as if Mosca’s glare had burned her skin. The older girl’s gaze flickered with surprise at the intensity of the black eyes watching her, then faltered and dropped.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Mosca could not keep the question in. ‘Didn’t you know you was born to nightowls?’

‘It is not something I like to think about,’ Beamabeth answered very faintly. Her hands shaking slightly, she laid out a pair of small lace gloves next to the dress she had chosen for Mosca. ‘The Night – it is like a shadow at the back of my mind, cold and bleak and big . . . and I suppose . . . I suppose I am afraid that if I turn to look at it, it will come for me and steal me back . . .’

By the time the first guests turned up for the party, Mosca’s mind had reached a state of turmoil. On the one hand, the bile in her blood told her, Beamabeth was by rights a
nobody.
On the other hand, Mosca had the distinct feeling that if the older girl were snatched to Toll-by-Night she would last about as long as a pansy in the path of a cartwheel.

Her mood was not improved by the fact that the only strategy Beamabeth had found for preventing Mosca attracting unwanted attention was to place her against the wall like a servant, with a tray of carrot cakes held up so as to hide her infamous badge. If she had not seen more than one person collared by a mob for lacking a badge, she might have been tempted to throw her own into the fire. Mosca bit her lips and tried to think demure thoughts that would keep a sneer from her face. At least her position allowed her to view the party at leisure.

The Marlebournes had done their best to swaddle the stone walls and floor of the long thin reception room into some semblance of warmth and elegance, but there were still low granite-cold draughts that rubbed against your ankles like cats and teased the corners of the wall hangings. The gold-and-green paper lanterns that lit the scene stirred restlessly, and shuddered against the stone.

The far end of the room was the family chapel, its ceiling a half-dome painted with stars, the stone flags covered with a wooden dais for more comfortable kneeling. This dais was currently acting as a stage for two violinists, a harpist, a flautist and a spinet-player performing for the gathering. It was only when Mosca had been standing watching for some time that she realized that there was something peculiar about these musicians.

Halfway through a particularly touching little ditty, one of the violinists gave vent to a muffled sneeze, fumbled for his handkerchief and mopped his nose. However, while he was doing so, Mosca was certain that she could still hear two violins playing, not one. And even now that his bow was busy again, it seemed to be busy in a vague kind of way that even she could tell had very little to do with the music.

Under cover of circulating to serve cakes, Mosca took a quiet saunter across the room and took up a post nearer the musicians. Yes, she was sure of it – the sneezing violinist’s bow was not even touching the strings of his instrument as he ‘played’. The flautist was bobbing along to the music without blowing into his flute. The harpist was miming, his fingers plucking at missing strings. Only the spinet-player and second violinist were really playing. Nonetheless, she could definitely hear five instruments.

Nobody else appeared to notice or care. Perhaps they all knew the trick of it, or regarded such fairy-like occurrences as something to be expected in Beamabeth’s presence. Perhaps Tollfolk were used to that kind of thing.

Not
real
gentry
, Mosca thought with a certain snobbish relish, as she watched Beamabeth’s guests recline and sip and confide.
Just ‘pretty names’ rising to the top like bubbles in a soup. At least Mandelion had real nobility. Well, at least they did till we toppled ’em.

And yet there were a few who were not just local pretty names. Mosca soon gathered that there were several guests from outside Toll, and that one, an eager-faced, dark-haired young man with a faltering lower lip, was Beamabeth’s lordly suitor, Sir Feldroll of Millepoyse, the young governor of Waymakem.

As a matter of fact, he looked a little harassed. Again and again the general conversation returned to Mandelion, and everybody wanted to know the same thing – whether Waymakem, Chanderind and the other big cities to the east would take up arms against the rebel city.

‘You have left it too late to attack before spring,’ one of the local pretty-names remarked. ‘It would take you a good month or two to march your troops upriver to a crossing point and then back down to Mandelion. You would never reach her before winter set in.’

‘An army from Chanderind or Waymakem might reach Mandelion before winter, but only if troops were allowed to pass west through Toll without fee. But that is a matter for the mayor, and I should not really discuss it.’ Beyond this he refused to be drawn.

Grudgingly, Mosca had to admit that Beamabeth was a gifted hostess. She noticed the way in which the older girl glided from one group to another, occasionally diverting someone to talk to Eponymous Clent. All such were gently herded into a corner to converse with each other.

There was one parlour game which was a good deal like Blind Man’s Buff except that all the company wore blindfolds barring one person, who was unblinkered but covered in bells and had to move stealthily while the others tried to catch them. Beamabeth was particularly deft as the bell-wearer, and Mosca watched with fascination as the older girl slipped between grasping hands in her satin shoes, occasionally using the opportunity to slip notes into this person’s pocket or that person’s hand.

The clocks had been set back to their rightful time before the arrival of the guests, and Mosca’s eye kept creeping to the grandfather clock by the wall. By four o’clock she could have drawn a chalk line down the middle of the reception room, and been confident that those on one side of it were still blithely talking of quoits and the silk shortage, and that the other side was discussing the dawn plan with furtive intensity.

A little after four the party closed as easily and naturally as a daisy drawing in its petals. The musicans stopped playing, and a moment or two later the music ceased. Beamabeth made her farewells to each guest in exactly the same manner, except for one tiny detail.

‘Thank you so much for coming!’ Beamabeth told those guests who had enjoyed a pleasant but unremarkable evening. ‘Havers will see you out.’

‘I am so glad you could be here this evening,’ Beamabeth told those who had been brought into the secret, a meaningful look in her eye. ‘Mosca will look after you and show you where to find your hat.’

And Mosca did not show these guests to their hat or to the door. She led them to the second parlour, where they all waited in silence until the more oblivious guests had gone. Then they all returned to the reception room.

The conspiracy was a curious mix. Clent, looking a little grey around the gills. Sir Feldroll, who seemed inclined to stand behind Beamabeth’s chair, gripping the back of it in a fashion that was half protective, half possessive. A few trusted servants. A number of young men, whom Mosca noticed eyeing the proprietorial Sir Feldroll in a less than friendly manner.
That’s all we need, a bunch of lovelorn suitors duelling in the middle of our ambush . . .

And last of all Mosca, setting her pewter tray down with a louder clang than she intended and wandering to squat on the hearthrug with her fists full of cake.

‘First things first. There must be no prospect – no prospect at all – of Miss Marlebourne being endangered.’ Sir Feldroll’s adamant tones were echoed in the murmurs of the company.

‘Nor shall there be,’ Clent assured him quickly. ‘She is far too precious to be placed in the firing line. We are all agreed on that.

‘I propose the following. I inform Mr Skellow’s happy little coterie of cut-throats that I have successfully persuaded the young lady to appear outside her house at dawn to pay one last farewell to her erstwhile fiancé. The figure that emerges to keep this appointment will not, of course, be Miss Marlebourne, but a decoy of the same build.’

Mosca raised an eyebrow as several gazes crept her way and was suddenly very glad that she was a head shorter than Beamabeth.

‘Now, as you all know, there are two morning bugles. The first warns the nightfolk that they have fifteen minutes to leave the streets, after which the Jinglers sweep through the town, locking away the night and unlocking the day. The second bugle sounds when they have finished this task. But of course the Jinglers cannot manage all this keywork in an instant. Some parts of the town inevitably receive their attentions before others. Perhaps you will tell the company when you usually hear your doors being unlocked, Miss Marlebourne?’

‘About halfway between the two bugles, Mr Clent.’

‘Thank you, Miss Beamabeth. This house is one of the first to be unsealed from without, which given that the, ah, Jinglers make their headquarters in the castle is no surprise. That gives us a window, gentlemen. About fifteen minutes between the Jinglers unsealing our doors and windows, and the second morning bugle. The rendezvous between the counterfeit Miss Marlebourne and Brand Appleton must be set to take place within that time, when the Jinglers have swept on into the rest of the town and the coast is clear. That way Appleton and his accomplices will fancy that they still have time to flee back to the town after the abduction.’

‘But . . .’ One young lawyer seemed to be having some trouble with the concept. ‘But if the second bugle has not blown, how can we go out?’

‘Turning the front-door handle and pushing might be a good start,’ suggested Sir Feldroll.