Belowdecks, stealthy move and countermove had disintegrated into a stifled tug-of-war. A faint rattle told Mosca that Clent had lost his grip on Goodlady Agragap, and was scrabbling for a new celestial ally. She lashed out, too slowly to prevent him snatching up St. Whillmop of the Peaceful Dream. As St. Whillmop’s bland and loving features struck Mosca painfully above the eyebrow, she could not help uttering a stifled mewl.

The conversation on the deck hushed, and feet stirred above, quietly, carefully. The two fugitives froze in the darkness.

“Just the goose puttin’ in his farthing’s worth,” Partridge declared coolly. Saracen’s flabby steps were just audible above.

There were a few more affable murmurs, the slap of palm in palm, and then a cry to the haulers to take up their ropes. The Mettlesome Maid swung back into the current.

Ten minutes later there was a whisper of foliage against the barge side and a protest of ropes. Two deck planks were levered hastily, revealing a banner of blue sky and two scarlet faces.

“Out,” said Partridge.

The hidden passengers clambered onto the deck, Clent triumphantly clutching his mangled papers to his chest, Mosca gingerly feeling the tender place on her forehead.

“Off,” said Partridge.

There was a duet of protest. The land around was a featureless moor of gorse, without even a dirt track to be seen.

“The route’s swarming with Watermen. Ye’ll pay what ye owe now.” Partridge watched as Clent grudgingly placed a few coins in his hand. “And some more for this trouble, now.”

Clent looked around him at the unsmiling haulers, and he seemed to be reckoning the odds. His mouth grew as small and round as an unripe plum.

Before Mosca could react, he had seized her around the middle, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Keep the goose,” he called over his shoulder, and he bodily dragged his young secretary from the barge, ignoring her kicks and spirited attempts to break his fingers.

Mosca had time to see Saracen lifting his head quizzically to observe her unceremonious departure, before her bonnet fell over her face again.

It was five minutes before her weight wearied Clent’s arms, and his ankles tired of her accurate kicks, and he dropped her in a heap amid the bracken. When she found her feet, the wincing sunlight, the ragged gorse, and the slow-blinking wings of the moths were witness to an epic Trade in Exotic Terms.

Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard peddlers use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a moldering strip of bacon.

Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women, culled from ballad and classic myth.

Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyhole-stooping spy.