Foundling

by Cornish, D. M.

  Rossamünd stared at the Axle in awe.

  High above, musketeers in black and brown stood upon its solid battlements, vigilant wardens who strove to keep the city safe—whether from monsters or wicked men. The scarlet gleam of this eerie morning reflected from bayonets and musket muzzles. Graceful pennants of sable and mole flicked and snapped higher still above them all. Such a mighty and well-defended wall. What Rossamünd found even more spectacular was that there was another Axle—the twin of this one—upstream, guarding Boschenberg’s northern end. He felt a strange swell of pride for his city-state.

  With a deep, near-silent thudding the Hogshead slowed, the screws pushing back against the flow of the old river. One of the many great gates in the Axle loomed. Contrary to Rossamünd’s pessimism the cromster had managed to make it there without sinking. It pulled up alongside the enormous base of one of the great columns that fixed the whole rivergate to the immemorial rock petrified beneath the slime of the riverbed. Part of the column’s base was fashioned into a low, grimy wharf, and by this the Hogshead halted to have its cargo inspected and pay the river toll. A door of pale, corroded green opened out onto the wharf, and from it marched several excise inspectors dressed in the familiar brown and black of Boschenberg.

  With a grin and a wink at Rossamünd, Poundinch stepped off the Hogshead and held a conference with the most official-looking of all the inspectors. Rossamünd sat at the prow of the cromster pretending not to listen, and listened intently indeed to the hushed conversation. Though he did not grasp all the baffling inconsistencies of adult ways, something about their communication suggested conspiracy.

  “Such a pleasure to see ye again, Clerks’ Sergeant Voorwind.” Poundinch touched the edge of his thrice-high. He handed over the manifest of his vessel’s hold and with it a little paper package.

  “And good early morning to you, Rivermaster Poundinch,” the official replied with a cynical grin. “What is your cargo this time?” He took the manifest and the little paper package with it, making as if to read the first while slyly pocketing the second.

  Poundinch inclined his head. “Much th’ same as it always is: seventy barrels of exceptional swine’s lard bound for th’ soap ’ouses and wax factories of th’ Considine, m’lord, and ten bushels of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for th’ perfumeries of Ives and Chassart.”

  “That far south! In this old bucket?” The clerks’ sergeant raised an eyebrow. “I may have to charge you an additional fee. How exceptional are we talking?”

  “Full and putridly ripe. It’s took a great deal of ’ard work to get it delivered and just as much to load.” Poundinch smiled smugly.

  “And the young master by the tiller? He’s not one of your deliveries, is he?”

  Rossamünd’s spine tingled as he realized the clerks’ sergeant was talking about him.

  “Oh, no, no. I’ve taken on a cabin boy, see. Fetch and carry and such. Someone to learn th’ ropes and take up th’ trade, as ye like. ’E’s well appraised of th’ arrangements, never ye mind.”

  A cabin boy? Fetch and carry?

  Rossamünd held his breath. What was all this double-talk? Why did Rivermaster Poundinch not just speak the truth? Does he not know that I can hear him?

  Clerks’ Sergeant Voorwind frowned. “As it should be, Poundinch. We both know what happened last time you took on a cabin lad. This new fellow will most certainly incur another toll.” He lowered his voice so that Rossamünd had difficulty hearing what he said next. “Be warned, the Emperor has issued an edict expanding the bans on the dark trades. We won’t trouble ourselves with it now, but next time you’re through be expecting to pay an even higher fine.”

  Now it was Poundinch’s turn to frown. “As ye like it, Voorwind,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t push us too ’ard, mind, or we might ’ave to push back.”

  “Careful, Poundinch!” the clerks’ sergeant snarled quietly. “’Twould be an easy thing for me to reverse things as they stand. If you force me, I’ll push right back again, with the authority of our beloved city-state.” He took a step backward, his expression changing easily from open hostility to formal approval. “Very good, rivermaster. We’ll complete our inspection, then you may go on your way.”

  Muttering imprecations into his creased neckerchief, Poundinch stepped back onto the Hogshead and waited there by the column’s base for the clerks to finish their duty.

  Rossamünd was certainly ignorant of much of the conversation’s true meaning, but his suspicions still churned. What were the “dark trades” that Voorwind fellow had hinted at? He found it hard to understand how it was that a man like Sebastipole—punctual, officious—had, it seemed, got him a berth upon a vessel of such poor conduct.

  While the rivermaster and clerks’ sergeant had been in conference, sturdy men had been looking the Hogshead over. They had descended the waist ladder into the hold—quickly reappearing with disgusted expressions on their faces—to scrutinize the bargemen’s papers. Eventually a hefty, bespectacled clerk demanded to see Rossamünd’s own traveling certificates. The clerk looked very much as if he knew what to do should any document not meet his precise requirements. Rossamünd stared up at him as he handed over his papers. It was like looking up at a solid brick wall. With a cursory scan the clerk returned his papers without a comment.

  Fees paid and cargo and crew declared fit, the Hogshead was permitted to pass. The grille before them squealed and slowly moved aside. The vessel trod through cautiously. Once clear of the mighty Axle, it gathered speed and proceeded downriver, passing the third curtain wall of Boschenberg, then the outer curtain wall and the suburbs fenced in between. Beyond the city, farmlands, immaculately tilled and primly fenced, stretched away on both sides. Gorgeously white egrets stalked and crimson-legged water hens waddled about the banks among the sodden roots and falling russet leaves of tall sycamores, graceful elms and black, evergreen turpentines.

  Rossamünd stayed at his post right at the tip of the bow, where he read his instructions and his beloved almanac, and tried his best to avoid the crew, none of whom was proving very friendly. The instructions were brief and simple: he was to remain aboard the vessel till he reached High Vesting and, once disembarked, was to meet with a certain Mister Germanicus in the offices of the Chief Harbor Governor. From there Mister Germanicus was to assist the boy to Winstermill, the lamplighters’ manse—or headquarters—where he would receive further instructions. At the bottom was a strange mark, “Seb,” ending in a line with a squiggle, which he assumed was Sebastipole’s mark.

  That was all of it.

  Rossamünd read them over and over to see if he might have missed anything, hoping fervently that this mysterious Mister Germanicus would know how to find him, for he had no idea how he could find Mister Germanicus. Gleaning little, he sat back, leaning on a pile of hessian and hemp rope, fretting. From this position he could keep a close eye on the suspect crew—this Poundinch fellow most of all—and even be on the watch for monsters. Though he did not know what he would do if he found one, he still wanted to know if it was coming.

  Occasionally he consulted his almanac. The maps showed that the Humour wended its way through many miles of apparently featureless regions—places the topographers had not bothered to name. They had marked instead, in the large blank areas on either side of the river, simple descriptions: “broad pastureland” on the east side, and “a great partial wilderness” on the west. They had also marked the Humour with its other names in parenthesis: “Humeur,” “Swartgallig,” “Sentinus”—names given by other races in other times. Only two places were noted along its course ahead of them. The first was Proud Sulking—a city like Boschenberg, of which he had some idea. The other was somewhere called the Spindle, positioned just before the Humour emptied into a large body of water to the south called the Grume. This was the enormous bay upon whose shores were noted many other cities and many other ports. He knew something of the Grume too, but what was the Spindle?

  He
rose and cautiously went to Rivermaster Poundinch to ask him.

  “Been readin’ th’ charts, I see,” Poundinch observed amiably. “Gets th’ feelin’ with all yer gawping at th’ Axle, that ye tain’t been out of th’ city before. Am I right?”

  “Only twice to visit the sister of . . . of a friend. She lives in Blemish, which is a tiny village just outside the walls.” These had been most magical visits to the small cottage of Verline’s younger sister, and Rossamünd could not remember more wonderful times. He sighed. How he was going to miss Verline. He was determined to scratch down a letter to her when he arrived in Winstermill.

  “Sounds quaint, lad. As for th’ Spindle, well, it’s another, further rivergate, just as menacin’ as those Axles there.” The rivermaster poked a thumb over his shoulder at the dark, shadowy line of the rivergate they had left behind. “But it belongs to a different city, that being Brandenbrass—which is moi ’ome, by th’ way. Th’ Spindle is about three days from ’ere, and after that, I will takes us out onto th’ Grume. We then turn left, and travel east to ’igh Vesting. All up ye’ll be with us for a little under a week.”

  He looked sidelong at Rossamünd. “Been on a cromster before, lad? ’Cause, if ye like, when we is well clear of th’ morning’s fog, I can show ye about th’ ’umble dimensions of me own vessel.”

  Despite his strong stink and his original gruffness, Rivermaster Poundinch now seemed a very friendly fellow, as pleasant as Rossamünd could have hoped for.

  “Aye, a few times, sir,” he answered, “though I’ve not actually been on many craft, sir.”

  Of all the fascinating things about watergoing craft, Rossamünd was fascinated by gastrines. These were large boxes in the bowels of ironclads housing great muscles that turned the vessel’s screw—or propeller—and their limbers, which were much smaller versions of a gastrine that were used to warm up the greater. Without limbers the muscles of a gastrine would soon tear and bruise and seize up. “Could I see the gastrines, sir? I’ve been told they have to be mucked out every hour or they get sick.”

  “An’ who told ye that?”

  Rossamünd’s chin lifted as he answered proudly, “Dormitory Master and Ex-Gunner Fransitart, one of the masters of the marine society.” Rossamünd liked to use his dormitory master’s full title, but he almost never had an opportunity.

  “Frans’tart, eh . . . ?” Poundinch frowned long and plucked at some rogue hairs on his patchily shaven chin. “I reckon I remember ’im—a terrerfyin’ fellow, if me memory serves. Knew ’ow to get us to shoot straight, that’s fer sure! Well, ye were told rightly, m’lad, an’ I’d expect no less from Frans’tart.”

  “You knew Master Fransitart?” Rossamünd was agog at this. “What was he like? Did you serve at the Battle of the Mole with him?”

  “Aye, aye.” Poundinch chuckled. “Only briefly, not nearly so long to know ’im well, but long enough to get a feel for ’im—and th’ switch of ’is rod . . .” He muttered this last bit into his neckerchief, but the foundling heard it anyway.

  “Didn’t you like him, sir?”

  “Aye! Oh, aye! Ol’ Poundy likes ever-ry-one. I find it’s mores a matter of who likes ol’ Poundy. Frans’tart was as fine a petty officer as a navy or th’ ladies could ev’r want!”

  Ladies! Rossamünd had sometimes wondered if there had ever been a Goodlady Fransitart. “Was he married, sir?”

  Poundinch guffawed. “Oh ho! No, there was no wife that I knew of. He weren’t like th’ marryin’ kind to me. Now that’s enough on ’im, lad. Let me con-cerntrate on th’ steerin’ for a bit, an’ then we’ll take ye to ’ave a peep at them there gastrines.”

  Remaining by the rivermaster, Rossamünd tried to imagine Fransitart plying his old trade with noble vigor and cavorting with the refined ladies of lofty and fashionable courts. How strange it would have been to see him pacing the decks of some great ram bawling orders stoutly amid the smoke and terror of a sea battle. The kind of sea battle Rossamünd was never to get a chance to see. He had his new trade, far inland. He thought again about Sebastipole’s too-brief instructions.

  “Rivermaster Poundinch?”

  “Aye, lad?” Poundinch looked down at him.

  “Would you know where the”—Rossamünd frowned as he read aloud from the instructions—“the ‘offices of the Chief Harbor Governor’ are?”

  “Er . . . I gather ye’re meaning in ’igh Vesting?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Well, most cert’nly, I do. Need to be shown to ’em, when we get there, do ye? Ol’ Poundy can do that for ye in a trice!”

  Gratified and relieved, Rossamünd doffed his hat and bowed to the rivermaster—as he had seen men in the streets do—and said earnestly, “I am most obliged to you, sir.”

  Poundinch burst with powerful laughter, sweeping off his own hat and returning the formality. “Why, ’tain’t nothin’, me good sir.”

  The Hogshead proved more solid than she had first appeared, pushing sturdily through many of the submerged snags that hindered their progress. Rossamünd was informed that the fifty-odd crew slept on the upper deck—right down the middle of the vessel, between the guns—and, as there was no room in the hold, he would be expected to do the same. He did not mind, for the hold was more cramped than the marine society and stunk horribly of pigs, sweat and other worse unnameable things. There were no cabins upon the flat, flush upper deck except for the hold-way about halfway down the vessel, a low boxlike structure with doors which opened onto the ladder that descended into the hold. There were also the twelve bull-black twelve-pounder cannon in staggered rows down either side and taking up a goodly amount of room. Six cannon were in a line on the steerboard or right side and six down the ladeboard or left side of the vessel. Rossamünd admired them.

  Despite his anxieties, he found that he was actually excited to be on his first real voyage—the movement of the cromster in the water, the bustle of activity and the routine of the watches, the silent throbbing of the gastrines. The Hogshead was no oceangoing ironclad, yet it was much more thrilling than the small craft on which Rossamünd had made day trips in the past.

  In map-reading classes back at the foundlingery, he had been taught about the oceans—the vinegar seas. He had been taught that they were a rainbow of different colors: reds, greens, azures, yellows, and black—shown on the charts as the Pontus Nubia. These lessons made him long to see the sea, and now that he was almost upon such waters, he sorely regretted that an oceangoing life was not to be his.

  By the third bell of the middle watch the fog had lifted sufficiently for Poundinch to trust the course of the Hogshead to Mister Pike and make good on his offer to show Rossamünd the gastrines. The ladder creaked frighteningly as the rivermaster led him down into the hold. It was painfully cramped below deck. Poundinch stooped low and even lower to pass beneath the beams. The stench of the place made Rossamünd’s eyes water. He never thought anything could be so putrid, so foul. He was determined to make a brave showing, however, and pressed on. The rivermaster did not seem to mind, or even notice.

  Poundinch waved vaguely to the forward parts, where the barrels were lashed and obscured with canvas tarpaulins. “No need to be showin’ ye that, just filthy ol’ swine’s lard. It’s aft ye wants to be—follow me, lad, and see all th’ wonder of this beauty’s gastrines.”

  Rossamünd followed and there they were—the gastrines. His sense of disappointment was much the same as when he had spied Sebastipole’s sthenicon box. As that device was just a small ordinary box, so these gastrines were just very large, ordinary wooden boxes bound with copper—but at least these were big. They almost reached the planking of the deck above. Running down either side of them were much smaller boxes of hardwood, two on each side for each gastrine. These were the limbers. From the top of each rose great cranks and several many-jointed shafts that pivoted perpendicularly and entered the side of the gastrines. They were still now, the limbers not being in use. With such a crowd of machinery there was ba
rely enough room to press along the grimy, curving inner walls of the hold to pass. Rossamünd was amazed at the sturdy pulsating of the muscles within the gastrines; he could sense it in the air all about as they squeezed past, feel it powerfully in the planks and beams beneath his feet and at his back. What surprised him most was the warmth that came from the great brass-bound boxes, a sickly heat which made the rotten air of the hold thick and clinging. In a cramped space at the stern they met a wizened man in an apron surrounded by a complicated array of levers, his long, thin white hair dripping in the humidity. He looked up at the rivermaster with a silent, surly question in his eyes. Poundinch introduced him to Rossamünd as Mister Shunt the gastrineer. It was the gastrineer’s task to feed, muck out and care for the gastrines, make sure they were always limbered properly and keep them in good health. He ranked highly in a vessel’s crew.

  “Hello, Mister Shunt, sir,” said the foundling.

  Shunt the gastrineer ignored him.

  “Well, there ye are.” Poundinch patted the nearest box. “These be gastrines. Not much to look at, eh? But a powerful sight more constant than a sailing vessel, and no mistake. I’ll leave ye with dear ol’ Shunty ’ere, so’s he can talk technicalities with ye. Come straight up when ye’re done, mind—no dalliancing about down ’ere.”

  The rivermaster retreated.

  Rossamünd carefully pressed a hand against a gastrine. It was most certainly hot, like the brow of someone in a fever. The mighty throbbing of the muscles working within transmitted up his arm, and he felt his whole body bump-thump, bump-thump in sympathy. He admired the powerful-looking levers, many of which were half as tall as him again, each one governing certain actions of the gastrines and limbers. He looked to the gastrineer with a smile.