Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  “Good-bye, Miss Europe,” Rossamünd called to her.

  With a brash hoot of its horn the post-lentum was whipped on and took the Branden Rose—still without a factotum—out of Winstermill. As suddenly as she had arrived, so she left.

  Watching her depart, Rossamünd was caught in a collision of many emotions, but above them all he felt as if he had been left behind.

  14

  THE UNDERCROFT

  The Skillions the southeastern corner of the Low Gutter in the fortress of Winstermill. It gains its somewhat derogatory name from the many small, wood-built single-story sheds, warehouses and work-stalls found there. These are a recent addition to this part of the Gutter, it previously being the site of a stately old building designated for multiple uses, including the growing of bloom and the making and storing of lanterns. This reputedly burned down in mysterious circumstances two generations ago, outside of any current occupant’s memory.

  THOUGH the menagerie of teratologists had begun to move into the Idlewild, disturbing reports continued to arrive at Winstermill. One told of the cothouse of Dovecote Bolt east of the Tumblesloe Heap that had lost three lamp-watchmen to an unseen ünterman. Another told of a small band of nickers having the audacity to attack Cripplebolt near the farthest end of the Wormway, destroying lamps in the process. For three days—the report said—they maintained a kind of siege before relief arrived from the fortress of Haltmire.

  The weather grew foul, either storming or foggy. Roads became nigh impassable. With the continued monstrous threat to the Wormway, the regular merchants from the south became reluctant to deliver. Only paying triple or quadruple the fair price for the essentials seemed to make them willing to come up from Silvernook and High Vesting. Informed by the Master-of-Clerks that the coffers could ill afford such prices, the Lamplighter-Marshal was forced to introduce restrictions to the diet and habits of the manse. Starting with the prentices, the fortress had been on short commons for the whole week. Rumors abounded of the clerks getting better fare than the lighters, of certain well-to-do officers using private resources to purchase delicacies for themselves but not share them about.

  Worse yet, the lighters discovered during a wet and dismal pageant-of-arms that their customary vigil-trip was canceled.The prentices were in foul spirits by the time they were dismissed to loiter about the manse with little to occupy themselves. “Who does the Marshal think he is, making us miss our stingos!” some of them grumbled. Small arguments broke out between boys harboring worthless grudges. Other prentices bickered over their high-stakes card games of lesquin and punt-royale, and cell row and mess hall became unbearable. Rossamünd sat on an easy chair in the corner of the mess hall, regretting he had not gone with Europe. He had been reading and rereading the same line in an already well-read pamphlet while beside him a semantic spat between Smellgrove and a stocky prentice by the name of Hapfauf revolved endlessly. To Rossamünd’s surprise Threnody sought him out and suggested they take a walk outside despite the inclement weather. He took only a little convincing to go. He rugged his neck with the scarf that Europe had given him and followed, Arabis giving him a sly wink as he exited.

  Out into the biting squall they bravely ventured, clutching their regular-issue oiled pallmains tightly about, heads bowed against the sleet, ducking involuntarily at the mighty cracks of thunder that snapped above the Harrowmath. Having never owned a hat till he had left the foundlingery, Rossamünd found them an absolute boon for keeping rain off the face. He could endure the foulest weather if his dial was not being splashed and pelted with water.

  “Who was that woman yesterday?” Threnody had found a small garden lean-to by the vegetable patch and they were at least now out of the rain. “Was it truly the Branden Rose? It certainly looked like it was. How do you know her?”

  “Aye, it was. She and I met on my way here.” It seemed a too-simple explanation. He wriggled uneasily, trying to get comfortable atop a rather smelly sack that was digging into his buttocks and dampening the seat of his longshanks.

  “But how did someone like you meet someone like her?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, aware of how foolish he might sound, “the truth is that she found me hiding in a boxthorn on the side of the Vestiweg.”

  “What in the Sundergird were you doing there? Hardly anyone travels that way—at least not anyone in their right minds. It’s just a supply road for the Spindle.”

  He told Threnody the story of his journey, beginning with the day Sebastipole had come to select him.As he told it he was struck by the extraordinary nature of that adventure—had he really done all those things and survived those dangers?

  She leaned in close as he told his story, never interrupting, and when he had finished, she stretched and let out a sigh. “Who’d have thought it, lamp boy? A stick like you fighting pirate captains and, what did you call them? Grinnlings? And all the while that amazing woman is feeding you whortleberries and letting you make her treacle?” Threnody’s face was alight with a deep, previously hidden enthusiasm. “I always have to make my own treacle. Mother has drummed into me that you should always make your own—that way you know what is in it and that it will work. But, oh! Tell me, what does a whortleberry taste like?”

  Rossamünd opened his mouth to answer but the girl plowed on.

  “I tell you, if I hadn’t seen the Branden Rose talking to you I wouldn’t believe a jot of your impossible story.” She hesitated. “Is this all really the truth?”

  “Of course it’s the truth. She wants me to become her factotum!”

  “You!” Threnody barked an incredulous laugh.

  He scowled, wanting to say several things at once but saying nothing at all.

  For a few moments they sat in silence together.

  Threnody took out a vial of sticky red liquid. About to take a draught from it, she noticed Rossamünd’s scrutiny and said testily, “What do you goggle at, lamp boy? It’s just Friscan’s wead. Have you never seen a girl drink her alembants before?”

  ROSSAMÜND

  Rossamünd gave a wordless splutter and quickly looked out to the sodden view.

  “I should have been a fulgar.” Threnody spoke softly after she had secreted the vial. “They only need two treacles; did you know that? I have cartloads of potives to take. Wits need so many different treacles and alembants at so many different times it’s a wonder we do anything else at all. If anyone needs a factotum, it’s a wit.” She glowered at the wintry garden patch, and Rossamünd wondered what he was meant to say in reply. He had only rarely seen her take a sip of her many draughts: a far greater variety of red and blue and black liquors, taken far more frequently than Europe’s.

  “It does seem somewhat unfair . . . ,” he offered into her angry silence.

  “And she gets to keep her hair.”

  “Well, you have kept your hair,” Rossamünd remarked cautiously.

  Threnody looked at him acidly, as if he had made a foul and tactless jest, then out at the saturated roofs of the Low Gutter. Her expression was unfathomable. “Well, yes.” She fiddled absently with a raven curl. “I have . . .”

  Rossamünd was beginning to regret coming out with her. He decided to try a different tack. “I’ve met a man called Mister Numps—”

  Threnody cut him off before he could finish his sentence. “Of course, Mother does not think the Branden Rose is much good at all. In fact, she very much dislikes her.”

  It was best to remain silent.

  “But really, she and my mother have a lot in common.”

  Rossamünd waited. He could not fathom what these two women might share.

  “They were at the sequestury in Fontrevault together when they were my age. The Branden Rose was set to be a calendar, you know, except that she was expelled. I grew up hearing all about her: about the scores of men that pursued her; about how she loves herself most of all. Mother says she is an embarrassment to her state, her mother and her entire lineage, that if Mother had such a proud heritage she w
ould never carry on so.” Threnody paused. “The Branden Rose was the reason I so wanted to be a fulgar,” she murmured, looking sadly at her elegantly shod feet.

  Between these revelations of Europe’s mysterious past and Threnody’s twists of mood, Rossamünd could think of nothing to say. He looked dumbly out the open front of the lean-to to the dripping garden. A damp sparrow, all puffed and ruffled, was sitting atop a bare stake sunk deep in the moldy loam. It regarded him with definite, unsettling wisdom, as if it knew only too well the trials of being a boy making sense of a girl.

  “So this Mister Numps is a glimner living in the Low Gutter,” Rossamünd tried again. “I’m going there this afternoon. You could come if you want.” He immediately regretted the invitation.

  Fortunately Threnody did not take him up on it, but stood and strode quickly to the doorway, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Have you even been listening to me at all?” she demanded. “You would have to be the rudest, most ignorant boy I know!” And with that she left him.

  Rossamünd blinked hard, frowned, took a deep breath. Verline had been much easier and a thousand times more pleasant to be with than these bizarre, belligerent women. Rossamünd might live till he was a thousand and still come no closer to understanding them. The sparrow chirped cheekily and left with a whir of wings. The young prentice could have sworn it winked at him before it vanished.

  Middens was a desultory affair. No one seemed to know why or when, but the Snooks had mysteriously departed Winstermill, and the new culinare—hired particularly by the Master-of-Clerks—did not possess the talent to make strict rations appetizing.The food was plain, the smells were unsavory and the company was decidedly unhappy. While Threnody and Rossamünd had been outside, Smellgrove and Hapfauf’s disagreement had ended in blows, and with other boys taking sides, half the prentices had earned themselves pots-and-pans. Now one side of the hall was not speaking to the other side.

  Threnody ignored Rossamünd utterly.

  As soon as he could, Rossamünd took up his salumanticum and made his way down to the Low Gutter to see Numps. After watching the man make his special seltzer he was hoping he might learn a chemical trick or two from the glimner today. He was cold and damp when he arrived but, once safe within the lantern store, he shook off his pallmain and left it and his thrice-high on a hook by the door to drip themselves dry. He was thankful to have his new scarf. One of the detractions of seltzer light was that it gave no heat, and consequently the store was often too cold.

  “Hello, Mister Rossamünd,” the glimner chuckled. “Chill’s biting my feet today.” He lifted his legs to show spatterdashes buckled about his shins, his bare soles poking a little from the bottom. Numps waggled his toes on his healing foot. “Numps’ frosty feet are bitten with the cold, but Mister Doctor Crispus says I can use them again.”

  Rossamünd grinned. “Afternoon, Mister Numps. Another day for furbishing the lantern-lights?”

  “Ahhh.” Numps touched his handsome nose and chuckled again. He cupped his hand about his mouth and whispered loudly to no one particular, “I’ve got one on Mister Rossamünd. He doesn’t know it’s not to be light-cleaning today, does he?”

  For a moment Rossamünd thought the glimner was actually talking to some third person. “What will we do today if we don’t clean?” he asked.

  The glimner just gave that merry little chortle in answer and stood.Wrapping himself in old oiled canvas and secreting a bright-limn and a small, plump satchel beneath it, Numps made to exit.

  “Come along, Mister Rossamünd,” he said softly and stepped outside, rain swirling in from without. Putting his own dripping pallmain and hat back on, Rossamünd followed, thoughts alight with puzzled wonder.

  Producing the bright-limn to guide them, Numps took a left turn by the lantern store down through a riddle of narrow alleys, another left, then a right and along an ill-cobbled lane with a trickling drain that sneaked between the fortress wall and the black planking of a great storehouse. Beneath the high eaves of the store, it was more like a tunnel, and so cramped they were forced to walk sideways. Hammering rain found its way through splits and cracks to dribble from above. Rats and other nervous skitterers stared from time-gathered detritus or scurried before them, disappearing down unexpected gaps and grilles in the stonework on either side. While they went, Numps gave sweet voice to brief nonsense songs about fish and frogs at a tea party, men wooing milkmaids with whortleberry jam and some old general with a wooden leg and no army.

  Creeping carefully, taking heed not to trip on the litter of planks, broken lamps, musket stocks, various tins and pots half-filled with stagnant water or worse, wire spools, wire knots, broken bottles and even a pile of unidentifiable bones, Rossamünd stayed behind the glimner. Where is this place? he marveled, stepping over the remains of an older foundation, some agglomeration of brick and stone and cement. They were clearly in a forgotten precinct of Winstermill.

  The tunnel-like lane ended abruptly, depositing them in a small, remote square where two other cramped lanes and their drains joined and gurgled down a large, sunken grate. As clear of debris as the lane was full, the square was surrounded on three sides by stone foundations and wooden walls and on the fourth by the works of Winstermill’s battlements. Weakly illuminated through a drizzling opening between roof and wall, it felt as removed from the bustle of the fortress as any haunted, lonely spot out in the wilds. Wind and rain wailed on high, lightning crashed, but down here it was still; the bubbling waters and Numps’ lilt the only tunes.

  Pausing, Numps put a finger to his mouth, indicating quiet. They could have talked at volume for all anyone would have heard. Bemused, Rossamünd nevertheless nodded, and clamped his lips together for emphasis. Giving him the lantern, Numps crouched by the sunken grate and reached down between its squared bars, grabbing at something on their underside. There was a slight clank and the grate sprang up slightly, splitting in two like a gate. It was an entrance. Stone stairs led down an arched tunnel into damp warmth and darkness. The water of the drains did not pour directly into the hole revealed, but was caught in a gutter about the rim and channeled into a pipe at one corner. The dark below smelled faintly familiar; the sweet salt of seltzer blended with that almost-but-not-quite neutral odor of high humidity.

  Without hesitation, Numps went down, encouraging Rossamünd to follow, pointing downward. Rossamünd squeezed past and Numps closed the grate again and came after. “Down, down, down we go,” the glimner enthused, giving Rossamund a gentle nudge.

  As they went the din of wild weather above was dulled almost to silence. The prentice could hear drops dripping steadily below, and occasional soft mechanical squeaks as well echoing up the stone stairway. This stair went deeper than Rossamünd expected, down into what must have been part of the structures of old Winstreslewe, the ancient bastion founded in Dido’s time upon whose ruined piles Winstermill had been raised.

  The stair ended in a low undercroft of indeterminate size, its slate floor crowded with square columns and arches of brick. Packed between each pillar were large, squat, square vats of blackened wood. Some vats shone clean light to the low ceiling, others a verdant grassy green and yet others showed little light at all. Together they lit the vast subfoundational space with soft effulgence like an early, misty morning. The warmth here was peculiar: the close air tepid and clinging. A tinkling music sounded in the dimness, made by the sporadic drizzle that formed in the humidity and dripped from the rough ceiling into the vats.

  “What is this place?” Rossamünd breathed, swinging the bright-limn about to shine on Numps’ face.

  The glimner grinned in lopsided delight. “This is where the bloom is made,” he whispered. “Oh, where it used to be made long, long before old Numps became poor Numps. This old Numps and his old friend found these baths and we put some little bit of bloom from a broken lamp in and we kept it alive till it grew to fill one bath and then the other bath and then the other and then more baths still! I have kept them alive, all t
hese times.” Numps’ smile became sentimental, even paternal. “They’re my special friends—like you and Mister Sebastipole and Cinnamon. Look, go on—look inside.” By the kindest pressure on Rossamünd’s upper arm, the glimner encouraged the prentice to peer inside a vat. “But be careful not to let the light shine in too long, and stay quiet, ’cause they like it still and dark and peaceful.”

  The black wooden vats had a girth of roughly twice the width of Rossamünd’s cot and, straining on his toes, the prentice could see that within was water or something akin to it, perhaps a little greener. In this water was row on row of trailing plant-like growths, long horizontal strands of a kind of submerged grass waving in its rippling bath.

  Bloom! Rossamünd realized. Native, unsprung, unprismed bloom!

  To most they would have been simply a plant; just some kind of dull, underwater weed; boring old bloom: but to the prentice it was wonderful to see it growing freely, long and wild, bushy and eagerly verdant. Puncheons of the stuff were sitting in most domiciles the land over, stumpy, pruned sprigs ready to put into a bright-limn when the old had died. Here it was closer to how it might be in its native dwelling, the littoral waters of southern mares.

  Rossamünd stared for a long time, enjoying the deep echo of the drops, the faint trickling of the rippling water set in motion by some unseen agent, watching the elongated tendrils swaying, swaying, swaying in the green. It was a place of near-complete peace—a model of subterranean calm.

  “This is wonderful . . . ,” he breathed.

  Numps beamed even as he took the bright-limn from Rossamünd’s hand.

  “Too much light,” he explained, and sat down on a nest of hessian and hemp. “I come here and the bloom trickle-trickle-trickles to me and gives me sleep and kind noises.”

  They sat for a time, both silent in this hidden undercroft of bloom baths.