Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  The prentice was too intent on poor Numps’ story to notice this small joke.

  “Though not normally enough to stop the work of a lantern-watch,” Sebastipole continued with a cough, “what they found sent them quickly back to Tumblesloe, half the lanterns still unlit. By East Sloe 10 West Dove 13 the seltzermen’s tools lay scattered, their cart shattered, its mule torn and mostly eaten, and too close for comfort, they could hear a horrible inhuman calling from the hills.”

  Rossamünd let his breath out slowly. “Were you with the lamp-watch, Mister Sebastipole?”

  “No, Rossamünd, I arrived the next day. Myself and Mister Clement and Scourge Josclin and a dragging party of pediteers, lighters and dogs. We did not have to go far to find poor Numps, though. He was sitting up against the same lamppost where the previous night only signs of attack had been present. His arm was gone, torn from his body at the shoulder. His face and jaw were badly gouged, yet somehow he managed to live, even to crawl back to the road. The cold must have kept him alive, freezing the flow of his terrible wounds. Before or since I’ve never known a man to survive such mortal harm.”

  “Frogs and toads!” Rossamünd whispered in awe.

  “Indeed.” Sebastipole stood. “But it gets more remarkable still. For not only had a man so mortally mangled and comatose somehow pulled himself along for who knows how long, he had also bound his own wounds and stuffed the socket of his shoulder too, using grasses and leaves with an expertise not even a two-armed man might achieve. How he did this is a puzzle that still beggars solving . . . We bundled him back to Winstermill. He woke on the way, yammering from the horrors and saying such things as you heard him cry today, especially about that little sparrow-man. From what I know of it, Crispus fought to revive the man while Swill thought it more a mercy to let him languish and die.”

  “What a merciless sod-botherer,” Rossamünd growled. “Little wonder Mister Numps refused to go to the infirmary with only the surgeon about.”

  “Indeed.” Sebastipole stroked his chin. “Fortunately for Numps, Doctor Crispus is the senior man and a brilliant physician. Though I wonder if it would not have been the greater mercy to let poor Numption pass.”

  Rossamünd shuddered, glad never to have faced such an impossible choice. “What of the other seltzermen?” he could not help but ask. “Did you ever find them?”

  “We searched as much as we dared.” The leer rubbed at his neck like a man exhausted. “Josclin followed me as I followed the smell of the slot and sight of the drag far up into Hallow Sill. It was not like any monster’s trail I had pursued before: foreign and much fouler. It was a trace I had only smelled once before, but knew only too well. It was gudgeons. For a week we searched but found only torn clothing and discarded equipage. The calendars of Herbroulesse joined us for a time, speaking of a mighty combat heard in the woods beyond their walls, and of driving off some terrible fear two nights before; but still there was no trace of the other men. I am sure they had been eaten, for the drag I spied through my sthenicon showed little hint of human traffic, and the slot smelled only of death and that evil revenant stink. We traced it back in hope of finding where the revers had come from. Yet the trail ended nowhere, out in the wilds of the southern marches of the Tumblesloes. We returned to Winstermill with nothing more than tatters and conjecture, though Lady Dolours searched on. A tenacious woman, she followed the foul, foreign trail far into marshy lands along the northern marches of the Idlewild, but she too returned with nothing.”

  Rossamünd’s attention pricked at the sound of Dolours’ name. “The calendars helped you?” he asked.

  “Indeed. I have worked with them from time to time, and they with me—especially the Lady Dolours—snaring corsers and commerce men, foiling the dark trades where we can, beating off the bogles and the nickers. It’s inevitable; in a ditchland everyone must cooperate or perish in their isolation.The Idlewild prevails because of their work as well as ours.” Sebastipole peered at Rossamünd.

  “How did a gudgeon find a way out here?” asked Rossamünd. “Did it come from a hob-rousing pit?”

  A cold and dangerous look set in Sebastipole’s weird eyes. “Not very likely. Such criminal and vile practices do not last long about here, my boy.”

  “But I thought a dead monster was good whichever way it’s done?” Rossamünd spouted the usual dogma.

  The leer regarded Rossamünd closely for a moment. “Some folk might say it’s so,” he said carefully, “but I don’t care for the justifications they offer on rousing a bogle against a gudgeon. Coursing monsters as we have done is a needful thing, but making sport of them, especially with something as abominable as a revenant, is useless and cruel. More so, it ties up the monies of men who can ill afford it and is ruinous to the lives of the wagerers who lose.” He stopped, took a breath. “We came down very hard on the lurchers after Numps’ theroscade.”

  “Why the lurchers?”

  “Because these are the beginning of the whole rotten chain of the dark trades. You can only get live bogles from the lurchers or human remains from the corsers. If you stop them, then you stop the therlanes, who then can’t supply the commerce men, who have nothing to give to the ashmongers, leaving them without stock to sell to the massacars or the rouse-masters.Try as we might, there have yet been other gudgeons marauding, though never again an assault on a lighter. Enough now! Let us tend again to the needs of Numps. I can hear him shuffling about. We have muttered overlong on his past and now should labor for his present, after which I must leave you to your duties as I attend to mine.”

  Rossamünd returned with the leer, back to the clutter of lamps and lanterns. There Numps, against instruction, had moved to sit again in his wicker chair and, patiently humming, was polishing another lantern-window.

  11

  HITHER AND THITHER

  course (verb) to hunt, particularly to hunt monsters; (noun) the hunt itself, usually referred to as a coursing party, or in such phrases as “to go on a course.” A course is, obviously, a dangerous affair. One undertaken lightly will always result in the doom of some, if not all, of those involved. A prospective courser is always advised to take at least one skold and one leer—or, if they are unavailable, a quarto of lurksmen, even a navigator or wayfarer, and a hefty weight of potives and skold-shot. Not to be confused with “corse,” meaning a dead body, a corpse.

  THOUGH Rossamünd was wanting to ask Sebastipole of the coursing of the Trought, the leer soon left him and Numps, saying that he was well overdue for an interview with the Lamplighter-Marshal.

  Numps, wide-eyed, watched the leer leave and then bent to his labors once more, humming as he cleaned. Rossamünd did not know how to talk to Numps. He was afraid to frighten the nervous glimner again and so he moved slowly, looking for work to do. He found a rag, sat on an empty chest on the other side of the bright great-lamp and silently began to polish lantern-windows.

  Wrapped in the canvas sacks for warmth, Numps did not complain. He did not even acknowledge Rossamünd. Instead he took every pane the prentice cleaned and polished each one again just as fastidiously as if it had never been worked, adding it to the stack of other lustrous panes. Frustrating as this was, Rossamünd did not grumble but kept at the task. Every so often he would lean down and check Numps’ feet, to make certain no blood showed through the bandages, or chide the glimner carefully if, from habit, he should try to use his foot to grip or hold. They kept at this for an hour or more till he accidentally grasped at the same dirty pane the glimner grasped from the top of the diminishing stack.

  “Oh” was all Numps said, letting the pane go and humbly placing his hand in his lap.

  “Sorry, Mister Numps . . . and I’m sorry about before. For scaring you and making you drop the glass and cut your feet.”

  Numps must have rarely received an apology, for with each contrite word that Rossamünd uttered, the glimner interjected with a blink and an odd, hesitant “Oh.”

  “That’s just silly poor Numps forgettin
g his-self. All a-flipperty-gibberty since Mister ’Pole found me swimming in red.” He hung his head. “I’ve never been as I was.” He sat like this for several minutes, Rossamünd not daring to move or interrupt. “Time to make seltzer!” Numps suddenly straightened, ready to get to his feet.

  “No! Mister Numps!” Rossamünd lurched to his feet, forgetting his caution in his concern for the man’s wounded sole. For an instant he feared he might have spooked the man again, but Numps just looked at him, puzzled, holding himself between sitting and standing. “You must have a care to stay off your bad foot. Hop on your good foot like Mister Sebastipole said, till Doctor Crispus has declared you whole.”

  Offering himself as a small crutch, the prentice helped Numps out of his seat and guided the limping glimner over to where he pointed: a collection of barrels and chests gathered in a corner between the wooden wall of the store and one of the tool-cluttered shelves.

  “They say I’m struck with horrors,” the glimner said, pressing down heavily on Rossamünd with each hop, “and I know I’m not the old Numps, just poor Numps now; but I still remember how to mix the seltzer—they still come to me to make it ’cause no one makes it as well. I might be rummaged all about up here,” he said, patting himself on the side of his head, “them pale runny monsters saw to that, but that don’t mean I have forgotten.”

  Numps prized off the lid of one barrel, releasing a distinct tang into the stuffy lantern store, and Rossamünd immediately recognized the sealike odor of sweet brine—the beginning of seltzer water. Humming tunefully, the glimner began to take all manner of chemicals from chests and boxes close to hand.With precise care he dripped, scooped, tapped and tipped each part into the barrel of brine. At each addition he stirred with slow, fine movements; first one turn of the clock then the other for set counts that he spoke under his breath. “Once clockingwise, fours contrawise . . .”

  Rossamünd knew the basic constitution of seltzer water: spirit-of-cadmia, bluesalts, chordic vinegar and wine-dilute penthil-salts. He had been shown this by Seltzterman Humbert, and at first Numps followed the recipe properly but then he put in only half the chordic vinegar, left out the penthil altogether and began to add other things—unusuallooking things. Of what Rossamünd saw, he recognized a dash of ethulate and pinches of soursugar, plus a fine sandy powder that smelled like the vinegar sea and sludge that looked ever so much like the muckings of a gastrine.

  “What are these for, Mister Numps?” the prentice inquired of the extra parts. “I have seen seltzer made—Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert has shown us, but he never added these.”

  “Oh . . . ah . . . Mister Humble-burt is good at the simple seltzer, but this is our own seltzer. Better seltzer for Numps’ friends. Numps and his clever old friend, we figured this, figured it out before poor Numps’ poor clever old friend went swimming in his red too. No one else knows how to do it right and his clever old friend is gone now but Numps still remembers; makes the bloom bloom it does, good for Numps’ friends.”

  “What friends, Mister Numps?” Rossamünd was finding it hard to follow the thread of wandering talk. “Do you look after all the bloom?”

  The glimner became silent at this, and would say no more on the subject of bloom or seltzer or friends new or old. Rather he kept pointedly at his mixing until he had made three kegs full of seltzer—smelling far more rich and full than seltzer usually did.

  As the day waned someone came a-calling. At first they simply heard her. “Numps! Numps!” was the demand. “Hullo there, my darling muddle-head! Help me git this glass through yer door!”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” fretted Numps, up to his bicep in seltzer. “The barrow woman is here. The barrow woman.”

  “I’ll go.You stay here.”

  Rossamünd answered the shout in the glimner’s stead, stepping down the avenue of shelves to discover a woman wrestling a heavy load through Door 143. She wore a buff-leather apron over her maid’s clothes and was towing a barrow stacked high with panes and lantern-windows. When this laboring lady saw a well-presented prentice-lighter she pulled up short and smiled. “Oh, hello, my lovely.”

  “Hello,” Rossamünd replied. “May I take that?” He had gripped the barrow by the handles before she could reply.

  “What a precious little mite you are!” she exclaimed. “Doing my job for me? And grateful I am too.” She leaned toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “That seltzerman is a bit too gone in the intellectuals for my liking. I don’t much enjoy having to come down here. Folks avoid him, you know.”

  “No need then for you to see him today, mother labor,” Rossamünd replied peevishly.

  The woman gave Rossamünd a sharp, appraising look. “Ye must have done summat right bad to be sent here, lad.” She peered closely, seeking the fatal flaw. “Ye’ve got to take him in hand, pet, if ye’re going to get anything done with him,” she said. “He’s naught but a limpling-head,” she finished loudly, for Numps to hear.

  Rossamünd felt a surge of anger. He almost forgot his manners as she bid good day, scowling after the woman as she left.

  With her departure Rossamünd and Numps set to stacking then polishing these new deliveries and kept at this for what remained of the day. Neither spoke, and there came no other noise but the chink of picking up and putting down till mains was rung and Rossamünd realized he had missed middens, entirely forgotten.With a bow he went to hurry off. “Good evening to you, Mister Numps,” he said as he left. “I hope your foot heals right quick. Don’t walk on it nor use it for any work, please. Wait for Doctor Crispus to see you.”

  Numps blinked at him, nodded—with a small, cryptic smile lighting his face—and said, “Will you come back tomorrow and check poor Numps’ poor foot?”

  “I will, Mister Numps.”

  Rossamünd returned to the manse, wishing he had met this fascinating fellow well before today.

  The other prentice-lighters were not due back from Silvernook till after mains—part of the vigil-day privilege. Rossamünd took himself to the mess hall to eat alone. There he found Threnody back from interviews with her mother and by the fire, sitting on a tandem chair reading a book—a novel no less, that most frivolous of frivolous things. Two small pots, one of delicious muttony-greasy and one with gray pease, bubbled over the fire for any who had stayed. On the table there was also some hard-tack and apples still untouched from middens, and piping Domesday pudding. As he was serving mutton into a shallow square pannikin, Threnody walked wearily over and did the same. She sat before Rossamünd, full of mystery and reticence.

  Rossamünd broached the hush. “I thought you’d eat with your mother.”

  “So did she.” Threnody smiled sourly, then added, “I told her I was a lighter now and was duty bound to mess with my fellows-in-arms.”

  “She came a fair way to see you. Did she not insist?”

  Bent over her food, the girl looked at him sharply through her brows. “She ranted and railed, as always.”

  “What did she say?” Rossamünd knew he had asked too much as soon as he said the words.

  Threnody stared at him owlishly. “Insufficient to detain me . . . clearly.”

  Muteness descended and stretched out into a heavy awkwardness. The cooking fire crackled in the hearth. Merry fife music, distant, rhythmic stomping and timely claps drifted through the mess-hall door. This was the ruckus of soused lampsmen and pediteers cozy in their own mess-room making happy on their vigil-day rest.

  Rossamünd sighed. Threnody was hard work. “And Pandomë—is she healing?”

  Threnody bowed her head.

  Have I said too much again? Rossamünd wondered.

  “She . . . recovers,” the girl replied eventually. “She will return with Mother though both physic and surgeon agree that she is unlikely to fight again.” For a breath she looked truly, openly sad. “Do you think I’m to blame, Rossamünd Bookchild?”

  Rossamünd hesitated. “Blame?”

  “For Pandomë’s hurts!” Threnody stared hard at
him. “For—for Idesloe’s death . . .”

  He was unsure of how to soothe her sorrow.

  “I returned from Sinster’s sanguinariums little more than eight months ago,” she continued, her whispered words spilling, wide eyes imploring. “I have only been allowed to begin using my new ‘skills’ in the last month.Yet, I am a wit: what else could I do? I had no pistols. We were attacked. I did my part, defended my clave, did duty to them firstmost! The others were all too battered by the crash. I had to act! If I had been made a fulgar I would have done better, and better yet as a pistoleer—you saw how frank my shots were against that umbergog thing. It was not some self-centered display of valor. Was it? Did I set us all to risk like Mother insists I must have?”

  This was more than Rossamünd wanted to answer.

  “Practice makes it, miss,” he tried, feeling very inadequate. “It’s as my dormitory master used to say: learn it as rote and it’ll work freely like hearth-softened butter, if you get my meaning.”

  Impatience flickered across Threnody’s face. “I’m not sure that I do.” Her earnest openness vanished like the snap of a closing lid.

  “Well—I was—” Rossamünd started and did not know where to go—trying not to be rude, he concluded to himself.