Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  He looked down at the letter and opened it, his hands slightly trembling.

  It was dated the nineteenth of Pulvis, Solemnday—almost a week ago.

  Rossamünd,

  I have to tell ye of the profound and sorrowful news that on the night of the 5th of this month, the marine society was burnt down and that Madam Opera did perish in the fire along with, to my ever-living grief and shame, many children and Master Pinsum too, with valuables and papers burnt or maybe stolen.

  Verline and we other masters all survived. Perhaps we should not have lived with so many young kilt. But survive we have and are seeking now to find berths for all the poor younkers made wastrel once more.

  That wretched utterworst Gosling set the spark, or so it appears. Barthomaeus and I chased at rumors of him a’watching the building many times afore the fire, but obviously turned up naught.The splints say he has fled the city. He always was a yellow-gutted dastard and I should have ended him long ago but for the restraint of conscience—and Verline, bless her.

  With all that has got to be done for the tots it appears that Craumpalin and I shall be arriving to ye later than expected, but can’t be knowing when. Expect us maybe in two months.

  With great respect and sorrow etc.

  Frans, Mstr, Ex-Gnr.

  I am sorry about being so long in scratching this down and sending it on to ye, but our labors have not let me do so sooner.Thanks to ye for yer own letter dated 13th of Pulchrys, it survived the fire and we esteem it like treasure. Hold yer course, my boy, hold yer course—I know it is hard. Remember I said once that paths need never stay fixed.

  Also Craumpalin sends greeting: he says that he is most proud and very happy with the usefulness of his bothersalts and tells ye (as do I) to keep wearing his Exstinker, if ye do not already.

  Miss Verline is safe with her sister and her new niece and would send ye her best—as ye well know—if she knew of this letter.

  Well-fare-ye!

  Rossamünd could not believe what was written. He read again. “. . . the night of the 5th of this month . . .” That was the very night the horn-ed nickers had attacked Threnody and her sisters in their carriage.Yet it was not until his third time through, slowly and painfully, that the full impact of his old dormitory master’s terrible news struck home. He turned his face away from Threnody, hiding in the collar of his pallmain, and wept as he had not wept in the longest time, letting all the bleakness sob out. He wept for the dear dead children, for Master Pinsum, and even for Madam Opera, who may not have been the kindest, but was by no means the worst; for the grief caused to his beloved carers; for fury at Gosling’s malice. The fury passed but the grief remained, and Rossamünd lost himself in sad, wordless reveries, only vaguely heedful of the progress of the carriage as it followed the Pettiwiggin along the Harrowmath.

  They were passing through the Briarywood when he roused at last with thoughts of Fransitart’s arrival—and dear Craumpalin coming too. I must write to let them know I will not be at Winstermill.

  “What’s wrong with you, lamp boy?” Threnody said, her voice raised only a little over the dull rumble of the lentum.“Why do you cry?” She looked at Fransitart’s letter. “Who is the correspondence from?”

  Rossamünd became suddenly very aware of the girl: aware of her proximity; of his unwanted tears. He wiped at them quickly, sniffing impatiently. “My old dormitory master back in Boschenberg . . . ,” he answered reluctantly. “He . . . he sends sad news.”

  “Sad news?” Threnody folded the duodecimo in her lap.

  “My old home was burned down by an old foe,” Rossamünd managed. “Madam Opera died in the fire. She was the owner . . . and a . . . a mother, I suppose—in a strange way. She named me—marked it in the book . . . ”

  “You’re a better soul than me, Rossamünd.”

  “How?”

  “You weep over the death of some wastrel proprietress, yet I can only wish my very own mother might perish in a fire.”

  With a frown, Rossamünd returned to the window and broodily observed the passing scene. He knew she was just trying to be kind. It did not help that she was not very good at it.

  The post-lentum clopped between the twin keeps of Wellnigh House without hesitation, under the Omphalon, and on through to the Roughmarch. With a feeling very much like going through the Axles of Boschenberg, Rossamünd realized with equal parts dread and expectancy that he had never been farther east than this point, that he was hurtling into what were, for him, unknown lands.

  A great-lamp at every bend, the Roughmarch Road twisted serpentlike through a valley clotted with thorny plants of many kinds—sloe, briar, boxthorn and blackberry, its spiny runners thickly stickling the verge. As with the wild grasses of the Harrowmath, fatigue parties were regularly sent out from Wellnigh House and Tumblesloe Cot to pull and prune these plants, to resist the threwd and deny monsters a hide from which to ambush.Yet either side of the way was only partially hacked and cleared, and Rossamünd could still feel the haunting watchfulness here, strong but strangely restrained. He stared at the high bald hills, dark and silent, and pulled up the door sash to keep the threat outside, glad he did not have to work the lamps on this stretch.

  If Threnody noticed the threwd, she did not show it. Indeed, she started to hum as she read her book and paid Rossamünd and the rest of the world little heed.

  They drove down out of the hills where a creek bubbled alongside the Wormway, spilling over lichen-covered rocks, beneath twisted roots of writhen, leafless trees and south under the road to make a bog at the foot of a short cliff. In as much time as it took to walk to Wellnigh House from Winstermill, they were passing the walls of Tumblesloe Cot, not pausing there either. The cothouse was built away from the highroad, right up against the cliffs that marched upon the eastern flanks of the hills. Nothing could be seen of it but the stonework curtain wall and the tops of a handful of high chimneys. They were in foreign lands now—the great divide between the Idlewild and the rest of the Empire had been crossed.

  “Welcome to the Placidine,” said Threnody. “Dovecote Bolt is next, at the junction with another road; if you left the highroad and took this other pathway north it would lead you to my old home, Herbroulesse.”

  Rossamünd looked at his peregrinat maps and saw the path she was talking of and her home too, both important enough to be mentioned. He did not want to be, but he was actually impressed.While it had stood, Madam Opera’s marine society had never featured on any map he knew. “What will your mother think of what you’re doing,” he asked, “going off to dangerous cothouses?”

  “She would lecture at me and I would disagree and we would start screaming and I would be sent away somewhere with Dolours till Mother could bear to see me again.”

  “But what about the Emperor’s Billion?” Rossamünd pressed.

  “What about it?” Threnody snapped. “My mother has a larger mandate than that! Our clave’s Imperial Prerogative takes precedence over simple tokens.”

  “Imperial Prerogative?”

  She gave him the by-now-familiar are-you-really-that-stupid? look and said after a sigh, “It allows us to do and be without the states troubling us. It is granted by the Emperor himself, and not every clave has one.” She finished with a proud sniff.

  Before them the Conduit Vermis descended into a broad, shallow valley of scruffy pastures hemmed to the north by a spur of bald hills and to the south by the rolling, pastured fells of the Sparrow Downs. It was an unremarkable land. Rossamünd stared at the distant downs, wondering if an urchin-lord truly was there watching and sending out its little sparrow-agents from its leafy courts.

  As the day grew longer, traffic began to pass going the other way. There were other post-lentums with returning dispatches; barouques and landaulets, perhaps taking the well-to-do to High Vesting or Brandenbrass; dyphrs dashing on errands; crofters commuting in curricles between land and town.They also began to overtake slow-moving higglers with their trays of fripperies, stooklings w
ith their enormous bundles of sticks, laborers with their barrows, vendors with their donkey carts; and always, whether in their direction or against, the ox drays and mule crates of the merchants.

  Another lamppost flicked past.

  It was going to be a long stretch to Wormstool.

  “Ah,” Threnody exclaimed, of a sudden, stirring Rossamünd from his sorrows, “I am sharp-set—it must be time for middens.”

  The prentice craned a look out the window at the gun-metal sky. The sun hid behind the even cover of clouds. He could not tell what hour it was—surely well past midday, yet his stomach told the time more truly with a noisy poppling gurgle.

  Threnody gave out a peculiar laughing bark. “Your gizzards think so too, it appears!” She extracted a ditty bag from among her cushions and wraps, and shared her pong with dried-and-salted pork and a handful of millet, all washed down with a brown bottle of small beer.

  Sick of the little varying diet of the Emperor’s Service, Rossamünd took some food and ate perfunctorily. Dull grief would not let him eat. However, once started, he found his appetite returned and he supped heartily enough.

  At the meal’s end, Threnody took out a vial of sticky red Friscan’s wead.

  Rossamünd stared fixedly out of the window as she drank, not wanting to invite some petulant overreaction.

  With shadows growing long as the bulk of Tumblesloe Heap brought an early sunset, and their rumps sore from too much sitting, they passed the lantern-watch of Dovecote Bolt wending west, fodicars on shoulder, winding out the lonely lamps. The lampsmen hailed the lenterman, but paid no heed to the passengers.

  Gloaming finally gave up to darkness as they followed the glittering chain of new-lit lamps and arrived at the cothouse itself. Dovecote Bolt was a high-house: whitewashed walls upon exposed stone foundations, with a fortified stairway to the only door at the very top of the structure, a high wall extending behind it and a crowd of glowing lanterns at its front. It was built close by a sludgy ford over the beginnings of a little stream known as the Mirthlbrook. Just before the ford the post-lentum turned, went through a heavy gate and halted in the modest coach yard at the rear of the cothouse.

  The splasher boy opened the door, unfolded the step and said with a parched croak, “First stop. And an overnight stay till tomorrow’s post.”

  As luggage was retrieved, lampsmen appeared from within bearing bright-limns to light their way and dour expressions to greet them. The seven-strong garrison of this modest cothouse seemed very tight, veterans with a long record of service together. However, they had little cheer for new-promoted lampsmen, looking especially hard at Threnody as she mounted the stair and entered the guardroom. It occupied the entirety of that floor, and with benches and trestles, doubled as a common room for meals. The two young lamplighters were directed to the cramped office of Dovecote Bolt’s house-major, found in an attic-space loft of the steep roof.

  Introducing himself as Major-of-House Wombwell, he spoke to them in a stiff yet welcoming manner.

  “Good evening to you, young . . . er—prentices!” he said, eyeing Threnody with a confounded expression. His eyes became wider as he saw the small spoor upon her face. “Why have you come to us from our glorious manse? Wellnigh is the usual range of your watch, is it not?”

  “Ah,” said Rossamünd, “we are on the way to our billet, sir.”

  “To your billet?” The house-major bridled. “Preposterous! Billeting Day is not for another month.”

  “It has been called early by our dear new Marshal-Subrogat,” Threnody explained with affected amusement.

  “Marshal-Subrogat?” the man quizzed her.

  “Aye, sir,” Rossamünd answered, getting a word in before Threnody for fear of some rash statement from her. “The Master-of-Clerks has filled the place of the Lamplighter-Marshal.”

  “So it is true, then: the Lamplighter-Marshal is called away and that old fox Podious is top of the heap. They even let lasses serve as lighters now, I see—troublesome times are here . . .”

  The house-major asked them some further questions on minor details of Winstermill’s running and then they were dismissed.Threnody, much to the bemusement of the lighters, was granted access to the kitchens to make her plaudamentum.

  “Blighted Cathar’s baskets as lighters—by my knotted bowels, who’d reckon it?” Rossamünd could hear the house-major mutter as they left him.

  “Would you need help with your treacle, Threnody?” Rossamünd offered as they were shown down to their cots by the cot-warden: a surly, scabby-faced lighter—one of the permanent house-watch, too old now to walk the highroad.

  The girl paused, contriving to look bemused, amazed and annoyed all at once. “No thank you, I will boil my own,” she huffed, and left him to find the kitchen.

  When she returned, they were served mains by the same surly cot-warden now acting as kitchen hand. Incongruously the meal of boiled beef, onions and rice from the tiny kitchen tasted better than anything made by Winstermill’s vast cookery.

  Left well alone on their cots by the lampsmen,Threnody read as Rossamünd contended with a bout of the blackest sorrow.

  When the lamp-watch arrived from Sallowstall, their thumping and calling reverberating through the boards above, Threnody made trouble by asking for a privacy screen. Churlishly, the old cot-warden and two of the lighters answered her demand, setting a dusty old screen for her with much ungracious puffing and banging and stomping. Finished, the cot-warden left them, muttering grumpily, “Anything else yer highness wants doing . . .” Behind the screen, by golden lantern-light, Threnody did those mysterious things girls did before going abed. When she was done, she pushed the screen away and got into her rough cot. She was in a voluminous white nightdress, her hair gathered and hidden beneath a sacklike, ribbon-tied crinickle. Rossamünd had never seen her in this way. She had been careful never to show herself after douse-lanterns back at Winstermill. The nightclothes and hat made her look curiously vulnerable. He prepared for sleep more publicly, his wounded head throbbing as it had not done for some days.

  Sleep was hard-won that night. Rossamünd wrestled with his troubles as he lay in the cold listening to Threnody’s easy breathing.

  Fed a hasty breakfast the next morning, they were allowed barely enough time for brewing Threnody’s treacle. A slap of reins and a shout, and the lentum went on, the weird song of unseen birds echoing across the foggy valley their only farewell. Feeling empty and exhausted, Rossamünd bid the Bolt a silent good-bye. Threnody slid over to Rossamünd’s side of the carriage and, pulling back the drape, stared at the low northward hills where Herbroulesse was hidden, still dark despite the morning glow. “Till anon, Mother,” she murmured, and kept her vigil till they were well past the cothouse and the lesser road too.

  The day’s journey took them past dousing lampsmen returning to Sallowstall and on to that place itself, the quality of the road improving from hard-packed clay and soil to flagstones. With a blare of the horn, the post-lentum stopped at Sallowstall, a well-tended cot-rent with broad grounds and thick walls.

  The mail was passed over and horses changed. Over the ford, scattering half-tame ducks, and out of the thicket of trees, the lentum resumed the journey.

  As the afternoon wore on, the pastures on either side of the Wormway became neater, their boundaries clearer, their furrows straighter, less weedy. Much of the land was a dark, fertile brown. This was a very different land from the grayer soils of the crofts Rossamünd had known about Boschenberg. Nearing Cothallow they saw peoneers levering at the road with iron-crows while a grim-looking guard of haubardiers stood watch.

  “Thrice-blighted baskets have taken to tearing up the highroad,” Rossamünd heard someone call to their driver as the post-lentum cautiously passed along. Flagstones had been torn up and thrown aside, and a great-lamp bent over like a wind-broken sapling, its glass smashed, the precious bloom torn into shreds and yellowing.

  Nestled in a wooded valley, Cothallow was long and low, its
thick granite façade perforated with solid arches from the midst of which slit windows stared, closely barred and ready to be employed as loopholes.Their stay was not much more than a shouted “Hallo!,” an exchange of mail and a hurried change of horses. The lenterman was clearly keen, with the advance of day, to be at the next destination.

  A sparrow alighted suddenly on the lowered door sash and, ruffling its wings, inspected first Threnody then Rossamünd with keen deliberation. Threnody peered at the impertinent little bird over the top of her duodecimo. It trilled at Rossamünd once and loudly, and then shot off with a hum of speedy wings as the post-lentum jerked forward to resume its travels.

  “I’ve never known such birds to be so persistent,” Threnody exclaimed. “He looks just the same as that one watching while we talked in the greens-garden by the manse.”

  Rossamünd leaned forward. “Perhaps the Duke of Sparrows is watching us?” he whispered.

  “I can’t think why he would watch after us particularly,” the girl answered with a frown.

  “Maybe he’s making sure you don’t go witting the wrong bogle,” Rossamünd muttered with a weak grin, feeling anything but funny.

  “Is there such a thing?” Threnody said seriously, looking at him sharply.