Mosca waited for Clent and Bockerby to glance at her and drop into vagueness, but to her surprise neither of them did. Somehow, without noticing, Mosca had become old enough to hear about such things.

“First thing they did was ban the whelkmaids’ dances on St. Squeakle’s Day. Any they caught ‘devilish frolicking,’ as they put it, had their toes tied together so tightly they could hardly walk. Then came the purges. I remember seeing whole family pews empty, and no one telling me why.” Bockerby laughed, and Mosca wondered why so many people laughed at memories, even the ones that weren’t funny. “Right little clinger I was when it came to questions then. Real little crab.” He made stubborn pincer motions with his thumb and forefinger. “What I remember clearest is stealing off to fish downriver by the Leaps, and coming home in the dark. No moon, all pitch.

“The windmills along the bank all tick and creak different as their sails turn, so I always used the sound to tell my way, but this one night I could hear not so much as a click to guide me. I was just starting to think I was witched and would never find my way home when I saw two little lights a-bobbing, and I realized it was the lantern of a linkboy crossing the Ashbridge over his reflection. I was so blanched by the dark and the silence, I stayed on the bridge till morning, and when the dawn came I saw why the windmills were silent.

“From the sails of every mill wooden birdcages were hanging, each the size of a puncheon, but full of people instead of ale. Men, women, children, all dressed for the festival of St. Jarry. The Birdcatchers had surprised them during the midnight candle walk, wrung their necks, and winged them.”

“Winged them?” Clent asked cautiously.

“Perhaps they never did that outside Mandelion. See, they put long pins in the quills of feathers, and then they stuck the sharp ends of the pins into . . .” At last Bockerby seemed to remember Mosca, glanced at her, and gave a small gesture as if pushing away a memory. “You can imagine how glad everyone was when the present Duke came back from Jottland with his sister.”

“How is the Duke?” Clent asked carefully, as if asking after an illness of a delicate nature.

“He’s . . . not what he was.” Bockerby seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “When he first come back from exile, seventeen years past, just after we’d kicked out the Birdcatchers, we was all flags and smiles and thrown hats. Then a couple of years later there was that rumpus during the Year of the Dead Letter, when the Stationers were fighting among ’emselves. The Duke put those riots down hard, an’ nobody saw him the same way after.