‘But . . . we will not exist yet . . .’ The goldsmith was not the only person whose face showed signs of internal confusion. Most of the Toll-dwellers seemed to have been hit in the midriff by a mental hurdle.
‘What?’ Sir Feldroll stared at them with exasperation and bewilderment. His eyebrows tended to leap and cavort when he was upset. ‘Are we phantoms at night? Do we lack breath or limbs? Of course we can go out! We shall simply be in large amounts of danger – go on, Mr Clent.’
‘Here is the plan I intend to present to the villains.’ Clent unrolled a map. ‘I shall tell them that Miss Marlebourne has agreed to meet Appleton
here
, in this little walled courtyard, not twenty yards from her own front door. As you can see, there is a well in the courtyard – I shall suggest that they hide three or four men down within it long before dawn, so as to avoid detection by the Jinglers. The well is close to the entrance arch, so once the young lady has entered the courtyard they can spring from their hiding place and cut off her retreat. As you can see, I have marked in charcoal an escape route for them to use in order to return to the seething bowels of the town before they are locked into daylight.’
‘You’ve thought out
their
side well enough,’ remarked a young goldsmith, scanning the smudged page.
‘I must,’ declared Clent. ‘If the plan does not seem watertight, they will not put from port in it.’
‘So how do we hole it below the waterline?’
‘Ah.’ Clent held up a finger. ‘I shall neglect to mention to the brotherhood of blackguards that the archway is not the
only
entrance to the walled courtyard. There is a keep in the opposite corner, once used to house castle guards – a keep in poor repair. You cannot tell from within the courtyard, but there is a hole in the outer wall some fifteen feet above the ground – an easy climb for agile young limbs. I think the scoundrels will be a little surprised to see armed men boiling out of a keep they believe to be empty. At the same time we can have some other likely fellows creep out at the back of the house so that they are ready to make a rush and cut off escape through the arch.’
From her vantage on the rug, Mosca watched a radiance of excitement spread from face to face as Clent distributed imaginary troops like a general. After the house had been unsealed and the Jinglers had continued into the town, nearly all the guests and the servants would leave the house by the back windows of the mayor’s house, out of sight of the walled courtyard, and head towards the prearranged ambush points. Beamabeth herself would stay safely indoors and survey everything from her first-floor window, taking care not to be seen. A couple of servants would be left within to guard the windows and door of the house, while Saracen would protect the landing. Mosca herself would accompany those climbing the wall at the back of the keep, since she was nimble enough to clamber up with a rope for others to climb after her.
‘My friends,’ Clent finished, ‘if you can lay your hands on arms and weapons, pray do so before dusk. But remember – our plan depends upon being out of doors at a time when none but the Jinglers should be abroad. So, I entreat you, discharge no firearms except in the greatest need. Our enemies will be wary of letting loose with pistols, and so should we.’
The company dispersed with alacrity, and half an hour later the conspirators had returned with a peculiar collection of weapons. A few gentlemanly short swords, then a smattering of hangers, daggers, croquet mallets, fire irons and rolling pins. In spite of Clent’s warnings, Sir Feldroll had brought a brace of pistols with engraved ivory handles. One of the servants was sent to conceal Clent’s letter to Skellow inside the courtyard well.
There was a general air of tension as the afternoon dragged its way towards dusk, but Mosca, Clent and Beamabeth had their own secret reason for anxiety. There was still a chance that the mayor had noticed that his watch had been reset and might yet burst into the gathering red-faced, demanding to know why so many people were sitting in his house brandishing weapons. The hall clock, perhaps in revenge for the way it had been interfered with earlier in the day, decreed that the next half an hour would crawl past at a miserably slow pace.
Mosca felt herself tense as she heard the dusk bugle sound. Mouth dry, she watched the clock edge through the minutes.
Finally she heard the Jinglers fly in as though they rode the wind bell-bridled, and then there came the now familiar sound of grinding and slams, clinks and clatters. The frail chinks of light that crept in between shutters and doors were extinguished. Sound deadened, and Mosca suddenly felt a choking sense of claustrophobia.
The house was sealed, and the mayor had not returned. There was a general hush until at last the second bugle sounded.
‘Night-time, gentlemen,’ Clent announced. ‘Our plan is in motion. Our hook is baited and trailing for our wicked fish. Dawn shall see us reel him in.’
The servants were not happy. Most of the guests appeared to be blind to this fact, but Mosca was not. Their master was unexpectedly absent, there were unplanned guests, their routine had been broken, the clocks had been behaving erratically that day and their adored young mistress seemed to be taking instructions from a stranger with a nightling accomplice.
Beamabeth was determined to pray for the success of their enterprise, so everybody was gently but firmly cleared out of the reception room and sent off to sleep in spare rooms and parlours on chairs or chaises longues. As they departed Beamabeth could be seen kneeling on a velvet cushion, hands clasped under her chin like a much younger girl. To judge by the array of fruit and scented herbs around her, she intended to appeal to a large number of Beloved.
Mosca found Saracen in the little pantry where he had been sequestered, then curled herself around him and wrapped the hearthrug about them.
Children were told stories of the invisible winter spiders that scuttled in under doors in tides of cold and left their frost webs on the windowpanes. It was said that they would pinch and nip at the tips of fingers and toes and noses to turn them blue, and there was sickness in their bite. Goodman Rankmabbley was their enemy, and a toast to his name with a good hot posset was said to help keep them at bay. But now every time Mosca’s tired mind drooped towards sleep, she seemed to see Skellow as the King of the Winter Spiders, his profile sharp as a guillotine, sharpening the knives held in his many hands . . .
Remembering his threat Mosca tucked her thumbs inside her fists to protect them and hugged her anger for warmth.
I’m the spider this time,
not
Skellow. This is my trap
, my
web. This is danger for
him,
not me.
And the soft thud of her heart battled the cold creak of the shutters second by second, for ownership of the night, until the wind yawned and began its restive predawn murmur, and a few birdsong notes scattered the unseen dark like chalk chips.
At last there were sounds of movement in the house, so Mosca gave up on sleep and quietly levered her feet back into her clogs, wincing at the cold of the flagstones. The embers of the hearth were now squirrel-fur grey.
Out in the hallway she found the conspiracy gathering dull-eyed, exchanging scant whispers and rubbing at stub-bled chins. Dawn was close, and they all knew it. All ears were strained for the bugle. Sir Feldroll was particularly jumpy.
And then at last it came, one long stifled note, and the conspiracy scampered to their stations, Beamabeth fleeing upstairs to her room. Mosca took a moment to lead Saracen to the stairway, where she tethered him to a banister.
‘We’ll protect the silly hen, won’t we?’ Mosca murmured as she smoothed his shoulder feathers and felt his cool beak slide against her cheek. ‘It’s revenge on Skellow we’re after, that’s why we’re doing this. That and the reward money to pay the toll. So I’ll do my bit, and you’ll stand guard – but if you got to bite her on the shin while you’re guardin’ her, I won’t cry.’
From outside came a dull thunder of running feet on turf, and the jingle of keys. Clack. Slam. Tinkle. Crack-crick-creak. Bang. Lost chinks of light reappeared, and draughts pierced the smoky closeness of the house. The jingling departed and was swallowed by a bellow of wind.
Clent held up a hand and frowned at the clock, face puckering as he counted out each second. Then he gave a rapid nod.
Remembering her role, Mosca scooped up a coil of rope and headed to a back pantry, where she levered open a little window. She was just about to loosen the shutters when there was a jarring jangle of metal on metal just beyond the wall. One of her fellows started so violently that he upset a stack of pans, which set the rest of her companions jumping and flinching like cat-watched starlings. Mosca’s hand shook on the shutter bar. If she had pulled it back a second or two sooner, she might have found herself staring into the faces of the Jinglers . . .
The merry sleighbell sounds seemed to make a circuit of the house and dawdle around the side amid creaks and thuds before racing away again. It was half a minute before Mosca clenched her teeth, fists and will, opened the shutters and poked out her head.
No Jinglers lurked grinning in the grey light. She clambered out and waited, hopping from one leg to another, while her five companions climbed out after her, Sir Feldroll first.
Running at a stoop, Mosca led them round the side of the house and then nimbly across the small space of the open ground to the cover of a low ruined wall. Her coterie followed her lead, but tended to run into each other’s backs whenever she stopped to look for danger, and then swear at each other until she hissed at them.
‘Bad as a string o’ ducklings,’ she muttered under her breath, and was almost certain that nobody but Sir Feldroll heard her.
Like a parade of hunchbacks they scuttled until their circuitous route brought them to the outer wall of the well courtyard and the shattered back of the keep. Mosca looped her coil of rope over her own head, hitched her skirts and started to climb, the cold of the stone making it almost too painful to grip. She reached the jagged place where the wall was breached, tethered her rope to the remains of a beam and tossed the loose end down to her fellows, who started to climb in their turn.
If Skellow, Brand Appleton and the rest were following Clent’s plan, they would be hiding down the well already, waiting to spring out when Beamabeth entered the courtyard. They would not wait forever, of course. They were probably counting out the seconds even now, braced to clamber out and run if their prey took too long to arrive . . . or if they heard strange and suspicious sounds from the direction of the keep.
The ambush posse in the keep took up position, ready to roar down the uneven steps at a moment’s notice. They heard the front door of the mayor’s house open and shut. A short pause, and then those waiting in the keep could see a solitary figure in a pale blue dress and grey winter cloak stumbling carefully into view, face drowned in a kerchief and hidden by a bonnet. They all knew that this was a serving lad who had made the mistake of resembling Beamabeth in height and build.
The figure came to a halt in the middle of the courtyard, where it visibly shook in a fashion that suggested fear as much as cold. Occasionally it rubbed one foot against the opposite calf in a less than ladylike way. Beyond sight, the rest of the conspirators would be moving into position, waiting to close the trap and pounce on the kidnappers . . .
The wind through the wall breach was bitterly cold, and Mosca saw her cohorts grimacing as their limbs cramped. At last one of them exploded a sudden sneeze of such violence that another conspirator nearly fell backwards out of the keep in shock, and Sir Feldroll came within a hair of shooting himself in the jaw. Rooks erupted from the trees and then took a circular saunter across the lightening sky, but no hordes of would-be kidnappers broke cover in affright. Mosca felt a throb of disappointment.
You’re not down there at all, are you, Mr Skellow? How did your long nose sniff out our trick?
Silence. The raw black complaints of the rooks. Then the sound of a bugle. Clent’s ‘window’ had closed.
‘Can . . . can I take these off now?’ asked ‘Beamabeth’ in a quavering tone.
‘Well, there is little point keeping them on now that you’ve wailed out in your own voice,’ snapped Sir Feldroll. ‘Come – we should at least search the well. There’s a chance we might find a rat or two trapped in there.’
The well did indeed seem to have a few rats, but only of the furred and whiskered sort. There were no kidnappers to be found skulking in the ruin of the round temple or in the remains of the castle buttery. When the nearby trees were shaken, night-dwellers singularly failed to tumble to the turf.
‘Let us report our fortunes to the lady,’ Sir Feldroll sighed, disarming his pistol with blue fingers, ‘and see if her people can rustle up a bowl of something hot.’
They entered to find a cluster of servants and overnight guests huddled at the base of the stairs with weapons gripped in their trembling fists. They were evidently planning an assault upon the stairway, where Saracen strutted with lordly confidence, head bobbing and ducking. To judge by the fresh bandages around several hands and one crown, this was not the first time they had tried.
‘Stop!’ Mosca pushed past them, thudded up the stairs and curled her arms around Saracen. ‘He’s just doin’ the job I left him to do, that’s all. I’ll find him a bite of something and he’ll be right as royalty.’
Sir Feldroll was the first to muster enough courage to edge past her, followed by a long train of young men who seemed determined to pretend that they had not all been held at bay by a walking roast dinner.
Loosing Saracen’s tether from the banister and prising a pair of pince-nez from the grip of his beak, Mosca could hear Sir Feldroll knocking quietly at an upstairs door and calling out in polite and gentle tones. There was a pause, and then some more knocking. Then louder and more sustained knocking.
There was a clatter of steps, and Sir Feldroll appeared at the head of the stairs. His features, which had never seemed particularly happy with each other, now seemed to have fallen out completely and were leaping and jerking in the most disturbing fashion.