Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  An eye had stared back at him.

  Rossamünd recoiled, but the eye did not blink or twitch or twinkle with life. A little shaken, the prentice returned to his investigations. He pulled at the sack’s mouth, carefully, cautiously, and there was the eye again—a dark, sightless eye and an anemic forehead a-bristle with short, white hairs . . . and a blunt, broad-nostriled snout. The smell of swine was strong now.

  Looking closer he found it was indeed a pig—or the head of one, at least—sitting atop a gelatinous knot of gizzards. He grimaced. What could a surgeon possibly want with a pig’s head? He closed the sack and tied the cord about with the best version of the previous knot he could manage. He had read that physicians and surgeons like to practice stitching wounds on pig bits. Or maybe he just wants to cut it up and see what’s inside? Rossamünd carried the sack for several flights more, uneasy with his package now he was aware of its gruesome contents, holding it away from his body as best he could.

  At last the flights stopped at a square portal.

  With a low, whistling puff of relief, Rossamünd caught a breath.

  There was no handle on the door before him, no grip or lock, just two solid panels of wood, big enough, he figured, for the Snooks to squeeze through. He thumped it hard and low and with a thunk, a click and a whir that made Rossamünd flinch and shy in fright, the portal opened. The gap revealed the other side was better lit.The prentice gladly snatched up his package and crouched through and saw that the panels which had slid clear of the portal were really the back of a heavy bureau. On the farther side of the square opening he was amazed to find himself in a tight whitewashed corridor. There was a purple door at its farther end, just as the Snooks had described. What business did Swill have with such a secluded venue? Through the smudgy mullions of a small window set almost three feet into the wall Rossamünd could see the frigid night, clear and starlit above the gray mass of Winstermill’s roofs, and beyond this the dark line of the low hills of the Brindleshaws.

  He rapped at the door just as he had been told: three knocks, three knocks, two. He could not hear any sound beyond, and was beginning to hope he could just leave the sack there and go back down to the kitchen. Douse-lanterns must be soon? Surely his imposition would be done by now?

  The port slowly opened.

  Rossamünd came to attention.

  Holding a bright-limn high, the owner of a flat round face regarded him shrewdly. “Aye?” Her thin lips contorted. This certainly was not Grotius Swill. It was the epimelain from the infirmary.

  He declared more boldly than he felt, “Mother Snooks sent me up,” and held up the sack. “I have a delivery for Mister Swill.”

  “Surgeon Swill to you, young man!”

  “Surgeon Swill,” Rossamünd mouthed obediently.

  The woman looked suspiciously down the long, narrow passage. “Stay,” she insisted, and with a crisp rustle turned and swung the purple door closed. Yet it did not shut, and Rossamünd was left with a sliver of a view into the room beyond. Her bright-limn made ghastly shadows as the epimelain shuffled across the room. He heard the creak and latching of some other door, then stillness. Trying not to make a sound, the young prentice peered through the gap between door and jamb. In the barely lit apartment was a long, low table with shallow gutters carved down each side that bent to a stoppered drain at its end. On the floor next to this sat a wooden pail of sawdust. Between this table and thin, shuttered windows in the right-hand wall stood a life-size armature of a human body made of wood and porcelain complete with removable parts, which Rossamünd at first thought with a start was a sickly person retired into the corner. When he realized what it was, he stared for a moment in horror. Worse yet, what he could see of the back wall was neatly arranged with several tall screens showing oddly proportioned people in various states of flaying, dismemberment or decay. In such grisly surroundings, Rossamünd wondered how a person could possibly remain in his right mind.

  He pushed at the door just a little, his compulsion to see more overcoming his terror of being caught.

  Near the door on a stand was a tray a-clutter with tools designed to prize flesh apart, or clamp flesh together; things to gouge and maim—all of them laid tidily inside velvet-lined boxes. Next to these were clumps of frayed cloth he recognized as pledgets and yards of tow, which must have been for tying off free-flowing wounds. Clustered above were many lamps shuttered with mirror-backed hoods that would reflect and intensify their light when lit.

  He took half a step inside the door. Between the windows was a gaunt bookshelf carefully stacked with papery piles weighted with jars and pots of desiccated bits and parts: wizened embryos of unguessable genus, distorted eyeballs, withered organs, all decaying slowly, slowly, one tiny bubble at a time in preserving alcohols. Stacked with them was a small library of books. Rossamünd struggled to make out their titles with such little light: Phantasmagoria one read perhaps; the thickest of all maybe showing Ex Monsteria. He had learned enough from Craumpalin to realize that these were rare books on forbidden subjects not normally required for a surgeon to read—and Rossamünd longed to look into them.

  Swill’s voice, angry and loud, came from some other room deeper within. Rossamünd pulled away from the fascinating slivered view and as he did, glimpsed a terrible sight: the flayed skin of a person, glistening as if fresh, pinned out on a frame that stood right by the door. He stoppered a cry of fright and took a clumsy rearward step.

  Better light flooded the apartment and determined steps tramped toward the young prentice from behind the purple door. It flung wide and Grotius Swill stood there wearing a brown leather apron besmeared with darker brown stains, his own bright-limn up by his face. He looked furious.

  “I . . . I have this for you, sir,” Rossamünd quailed, lifting the foul sack. “From Mother Snooks.”

  Swill took it, looking over his shoulder—gaze catching for but an instant on the flayed skin—and back to Rossamünd. “Where is the Snooks? Why has she sent you?”

  “She is down in the kitchens, I reckon, sir. She says her hip hurts too much to climb the stairs tonight.” He delivered the message exactly as the culinare had told him.

  Swill’s lips pursed tight as he listened. His eyes became cold slits.

  “I see,” he said after a long pause. “And you are her porter, are you?”

  “I . . . I’ve j-just done what I’ve b-been told, sir,” the prentice stammered.

  “Have you just? By which way did you come, child?” The surgeon’s voice was pinched and menacing. “Who saw you come here?”

  Rossamünd tried to hide his fright. “I—ah—I came by—by the f-furtigrade, sir,” he said in a small voice, pointing back to the barely distinguishable shadow of the bureau. “I—I don’t reckon anyone could have seen me, sir, not at all.”

  “I see.” Swill scratched at his throat. “Wait there,” he said quickly, and the door closed, properly this time. Presently it reopened.

  “When you see the Snooks again, give her this.” Swill presented Rossamünd with a sealed fold of paper. “It’s my reply.” He smiled inscrutably. “She will understand.”

  Something thumped loudly in the darkened surgery behind. There was a short, stifled yelp and a muffled, maniac gibbering.

  “Go on now, quick-quick, get along! Patients need my ministrations.” The surgeon gripped Rossamünd’s upper arm and hustled him back toward the hidden doorway. “Be certain to give that painted crone my reply,” he insisted as the prentice clambered quickly back through the hole in the wall, knocking his head.

  The prentice needed no further encouragement but rushed down the furtigrade, gasping, taking two or three steps with each stride, daring even to leap whole flights in his panic, the furtigrade shuddering dangerously. Pig’s heads. Flayed skins. Clandestine stairs. What is all this?

  With douse-lanterns imminent, the kitchens were near empty, only the night staff remaining to stir the pots and bake breads for the morrow’s hungry. The Snooks was still at her do
mestic throne, waiting for him. “Did ye get the surgeon his bag?” she hissed.

  “Aye.”

  “Did ye deliver me message?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well?” The Snooks thrust her grinning, oily face at the prentice. “How did he like our new arrangement?”

  “H-He just said ‘I see’ . . .”

  “Is that all?” She grabbed Rossamünd by his sweat-stained smock front. “Just ‘I see’?”

  The prentice pulled away from her. “And he told me to give you this,” he said. The Snooks took the sealed fold of paper slowly and, reading it, went gray, her boudoir cream showing in ugly mealy blotches over her now ashen complexion.

  Rossamünd shuffled his feet and the Snooks gave him a sharp look.

  “Ye may go,” she barked.

  The prentice hesitated.

  “Ye’re clear, ye’re free! Go! Begone! I’m sick of the sight of ye!” the culinare cried, waving the paper in his face. Rossamünd dashed from the kitchen.

  “Douse lanterns!” came the call as Rossamünd entered his own cell. He quickly shut the door and turned the bright-limn, undressing for bed in the settling gloom. Smock-less, shirtless and shivering, Rossamünd sneaked out to the passage between the cells and scrubbed at the sweat and the cook-room stink as best he might with the frigid water of the common washbasin. The cold and a silly fear of something creeping at him from behind made him leave off washing, and he dashed back to his cold cot to shiver the night away, his bed chest dragged out to barricade the cell’s door.

  9

  PAGEANT-OF-ARMS

  august ruler of a single calendar clave; typically a woman of some social stature, perhaps a peer, or noble, with a social conscience. To have any chance of affecting their surrounds, calendars need money and political clout, and those with high standing socially possess with these attributes natively. A clave that does not have ranking gentry or nobility at its head and core, or at least as a sponsor, will most certainly be marginalized. Augusts are seconded by their laudes, who are their mouthpieces and their long reach. With a well-organized and talented clave with her, an august can be a daunting and influential figure in Imperial politics and society.

  ROSSAMÜND was woken by a heavy pounding on his cell door and a rough voice crying, “A lamp! A lamp to light your path! Up, you lounging lumps! Up and at ’em—it’s a fine day.”

  It took a few nauseated moments for the prentice to realize he was not in fact being boiled alive in an enormous bottomless cauldron, but lay pinned in tangled blankets on a lumpy horsehair mattress in a freezing cell in the basements of the Imperial outpost of Winstermill. As the rousing groans of the other prentices coughed across the gap between cells, Rossamünd dragged the small chest away from the cell door. What was it I saw in Swill’s apartment? he fretted. Do people know about his room up there? Those were mighty strange books ... and what about that flayed and pinned-out skin? Do I need to tell anybody about it? But who to tell? At that moment a larger problem loomed, driving these unsettling things from his thoughts: the Domesday pageant-of-arms.

  The ritual of Domesday for those under Imperial Service at Winstermill was a military formality of unquestionable antiquity. Every Domesday morning, the whole fortress turned out on the Grand Mead, all bearing arms before the main building in a pageant of flags, polish and rich, bright harness. Two-and-a-half hours of marching and speeches, it was a show of strength of which Rossamünd had quickly grown weary. He had once dearly wanted to see such spectacles: an array of soldiery gathered as if ready for battle. Watching was one thing but participating quite another. To march in a parade was a ponderous and worrying chore where evolutions must be well performed or impositions were imposed.

  Sitting shivering on the edge of his cot, he looked forlornly at his unprepared harness. Metal must be polished with pipe clay and galliskins whitened, boots and belt blacked and brightened. Denied the opportunity last night, Rossamünd had to do his best to prepare now, which meant skipping breakfast. With sinking wind he could hear the other prentices stepping singly or in twos up the stairs of the cell row on their way to eat.

  Threnody appeared at his open cell door, already washed and fed, immaculate in her perfectly presented mottle. “Well, a good morning to you, lamp boy,” she said, with a supercilious grin. “Not ready, I see.” She sniffed the night-stale air of the cell and pinched her nose. “Has someone been using you to wipe out the inside of a lard vat?” she exclaimed in an affectedly nasal voice.

  Rossamünd blushed deep rose.

  “You’d better get your pace on or you’ll never be ready,” Threnody continued unhelpfully. “I have heard how these things go: you’ll be censured, brought before a court-martial, and stretched out on a Catherine wheel if you go out looking less than perfect.” She shook her head.

  Rossamünd knew she was just being painful, though certainly more pots-and-pans could be expected for a slovenly showing out.

  Threnody huffed and put her hands on her hips as he was struggling to fold his cot corners. “Leave off, lamp boy!” she insisted. “I’ll do that!You just set to your clobber.”

  The girl worked a modest wonder, folding the corners on the bed neater, pulling the sheet and blanket tighter and smoothing the pillow better than Rossamünd knew was possible. All extraneous items went into the bed chest, all inspected items arranged in regulation order on the small stool in the corner. Rossamünd’s cell had never looked so deftly ordered.

  “Turn out for inspection!” came Under-Sergeant Benedict’s warning cry. There was a boisterous clatter as all the prentices scurried to their cells from the mess hall or wherever they had been.

  Threnody quit the room without another word or even a glance back.

  Fumbling buckles and buttonholes, Rossamünd finished dressing in a flurry, still wrestling with his quabard and his baldric as he took his place at the doorpost. Teeth rubbed with a corner of a bedsheet, hair combed with his fingers, he stood at attention by his door with only moments to spare.

  Grindrod ducked his head to enter Rossamünd’s cell, and looked about, betraying the slightest surprise at its excellent state. He bounced a carlin off the blanket pulled and tucked drum-taut across Rossamünd’s cot. “All is in order, Prentice Bookchild,” he said after he had peered into every cavity of the tiny quarter. “As it should be. Move out to the Rear Walk and make ready for the pageant.”

  Assembling with the rest along the tree-lined pathway of the Cypress Walk on the southern side of the manse, Rossamünd mouthed an earnest “thank you” to Threnody. To this she responded with the slightest suggestion of a curtsy, then snapped on a serious face as Grindrod stalked past to check the prentices’ dressing. With a cry the sergeant-lighter took his twenty-two charges out to form upon the Grand Mead, to take their place at the rear of the pageant. Before them a crowd of much of Winstermill’s inhabitants were also gathering in fine martial order, rugged against the cold.

  Marching and standing with the companies of pediteers, peoneers, artillerists and thaumateers there were very few lampsmen—not even a platoon, seltzermen included. Most able-bodied lighters had been sent east, needed out on the road proper to replace the steady—and increasing—losses from the various cothouses.Yet that small, aged group stood in their place bearing their fodicars proudly, resplendent in the rouge and or and leuc—red and gold and white—of the Haacobin Empire, and glossy black thrice-highs. Only Assimus and Puttinger looked a little worse for wear, their evolutions poorly handled.

  Formed on the soldiers’ left was a veritable army of bureaucratical staff: clerks, under-clerks, registers, bookers, secretaries, amanuenses, file boys. Each pageant made Rossamünd more aware of the diminishing ranks of lighters and the swelling number of clerks.

  Rooks cawed from the pines by the Officers’ Green, spry sparrows and noisy miner birds hopped and flitted about the battlements, watching on shrewdly. The thin flags borne by color-parties at the front of each collection whipped and cracked in sympathy with th
e winds that rushed spasmodically across the Mead, joining the great ponderous snapping of the enormous Imperial Spandarion billowing above the gatehouse.

  At his very first pageant, Rossamünd had trembled at the sheer number of folk gathered, at the steady pounding din of feet marching on the quartz gravel and at the stentorian hooting arrogance of flügelhorn, fife and snare.Yet now he was inured to the martial spectacle. It surprised him how quickly he could reconcile such astounding wonders and think them a workaday commonplace.

  All the soldiers and their commanding officers were now gathered on the Grand Mead, decked in their finest.

  “Stand fast!” came the cry from Sergeant-Master Tacpharnias.

  With a rattling shuffle, the lighters, soldiers and staff came to attention as the seniormost officers strutted peacock-proud up on to a temporary podium—erected every Domesday for just this purpose—and stood before the assiduously ordered soldiery. It was the task of the highest ranked to take turns addressing the parade, and first always was the Lamplighter-Marshal. Although he was a peer of some high degree, in his soldierly simplicity the Marshal was unlike many of those standing with him.They were stiff and starched, their rich, finicky, bragging uniforms boasting of more in themselves than they really possessed.

  His volume modulating with the breezes, his words punctuated by the calling of the birds, the Lamplighter-Marshal spoke loudly and confidently about the details of the routines of Winstermill, on subjects almost everyone had heard before. He reminded them of duties botched and the need for vigilance, for care, for the particular regard of one another. The pageant listened dutifully, for most loved their dear Marshal and knew these things needed to be said. However, their attention became genuine when the marshal-lighter turned to the disconcerting excesses of bogle and nicker.

  “These theroscades have now become an ever-increasing problem,” he said gravely. “Almost each day reports come to me and I am applied to for aid.Yesterday I learned that the whole 2nd Lantern-Watch of Ashenstall was slain without quarter, not six nights gone, and also lamps pushed over on the Patrishalt stretch. Today already I have been informed of the taking of a family in the broad of day by the walls of Makepeace.”There was a chorused murmur of angry dismay among the lighters and pediteers, while the clerks remained quiet. “Aye, and no doubt ye are all informed of the assault witnessed five nights ago by our own barely breeched prentices.” The murmur grew to a growl, a rumble of solidarity and resentment. “And yesterday morning were yourselves witness—as was I—to the end of one of our doughty veterans on the claws of a blighted beast!”