by D M Cornish
The manse's outer walls were angled inward to help deflect the blow of a cannon shot; its lower windows narrow slits barely wide enough to admit light. The great gate was made of thick, weather-greened bronze. Lamps blazed above this threatening portal and an enormous flag, the spandarion of the Empire, a golden owl over a field of red and white, barely showing in the dark, curled and whipped above it all. This was a place made to stand against all threats, and Rossamund admired its grim defenses.
Most significantly of all, for one about to become a lamplighter, was the long line of brightly flaring lanterns that marched away from Winstermill, threading eastward like a great, glittering necklace, disappearing into the distant dark of the gorge. It was such as these, raised high on tall posts of black iron, that he was surely expected to tend.
The coach turned off the main way, which disappeared into a tunnel made through the very foundations of the manse, and rattled up a steep drive to Winstermill's bronze gates. These were already opening, and the coach was admitted without having to halt. Within the curtain of the manse's outer fortifications, Rossamund had expected to find a bustle of diligent folk marching about on serious business. Instead it was empty of any bustle, or even hustle, and no serious business seemed to be going on anywhere nearby.
A single yardsman came out to them, touching his hat as greeting. "Winstermill!" a coachman cried. "Change ve-hickles if ye wish to travel further!"
Rossamund alighted and looked about the well-lit yard. It was wide and flat and bare but for one stunted, leafless tree growing by a farther wall. His valise was quickly retrieved for him, and the coach clattered away, together with the yardsman, retreating somewhere beyond the side of the structure. Rossamund presumed the horses would be stabled, and the drivers rested for the return leg the following day.
The boy was left all alone now, and stood before these august headquarters uncertain of what to do next. As he waited, he wrestled out the bundle of dispatches, ready to hand them to whoever should ask for them. Still no one sallied forth to greet him. In the end, if only to avoid the bitter cold, he walked to the most important-looking set of doors and, finding them unbarred, pushed his way within.
Inside was a large, blank room, square and empty. There was another door at the farther end and Rossamund walked over to this and went through. Now he found himself at one end of a long wide hall with walls painted green like a lime in season and a single narrow rug patterned in carnelian and black running the whole length of the stone floor. A person in uniform stood about halfway down. Rossamund strode along this lime hallway and offered up the dispatches promptly to this uniformed person-a tough-looking fellow with oddly cut hair.
As he did, Rossamund addressed the man just as he had been trained to do, for serving upon a ram. "Rossamund Bookchild, sir, recently arrived and ready to serve aboard-uh-to serve… you… here."
The rough-looking fellow looked at him, and then at the wad of paper the foundling held, without curiosity. "Not for me, son. Hand it to one of those pushers-of-pencils inside there," he said, with gruff authority, pointing to a pair of flimsy-looking, finely carved doors at the end of the lime hall.
"Oh…" said Rossamund.
His initial flush of courage now spent, the foundling entered those ornamented doors nervously. Beyond was an enormous, square space with a ceiling high above, and the clatter of the opening door rang and echoed within. Along the distant farther wall was a massive wooden structure of drawers, cabinets and rolling stepladders-what he would learn later was the immense and complex document catalog, in which all the correspondence and paperwork of the lamplighters eventually found its final burial place. To the foundling's left, and to his right, facing out from either wall, were two dark wood desks. A studious-looking man worked behind each, the one on the left looking up at him briefly as he entered, and the one on the right keeping his head down and his hand scribbling.
Between the two desks was a great blank area of cold slate, and Rossamund, with each footstep clip-clopping too loudly, moved to stand right in the middle of this barren space. He looked to his right, then to his left. Both clerks continued their close attention to their work and offered nothing to the new arrival. With no idea of which way to go, Rossamund repeated a little rhyme in his head to solve this puzzle, thinking either left or right with each subsequent word. The rhyme itself was a short list of faraway, semi-mythical and notoriously threwdish places, and it always fired Rossamund's imagination: Ichor, Liquor, Loquor, Fiel My decision now reveal.
He finished on his right. Right it is! He went clip-clop, clip-clop and stood before that desk. Holding out the letters, he repeated himself, "Rossamund Bookchild, sir, recently arrived and ready to serve as a lamplighter."
This clerk looked up with a scowl upon his sharp, bespectacled face. He continued to write, even though his attention was no longer on the task.
"Not me, child!" he snarled. "Him!" He put his nose back to his scribbling.
He could only have meant the other clerk, way across on the opposite side.
Right it isn't, then. Rossamund held back a sigh.
He turned on his heel and clip-clopped-clip-clopped to the left-hand desk and its equally diligent clerk. He spoke his introduction for a third time, and this clerk stopped writing, put down his pencil and stood.
"Welcome, Rossamund Bookchild. My name is Inkwill. I am the registry clerk. You have been expected." He took the dispatch bundle from the foundling and they shook hands. "It's a good thing you have arrived now. After today we were going to give up on you. If you had got here tomorrow, we would have turned you away, I'm afraid. In the nick of time, as they say."
As Inkwill the registry clerk sorted through the dispatches, he held up a tightly folded oblong of fine linen paper.
"This is yours, I reckon," he said, waving the article at Rossamund.
Puzzled, Rossamund took it slowly. It was a letter made out to him in the script of someone he knew well and loved dearly: Verline. He had been carrying it the whole length of his travel from High Vesting, and could have read and reread it at his leisure aboard the coach. He was desperate to open it, but had to wait.
Inkwill put the dispatches down and sat again. He organized a wad of papers, took up his pencil and began to quiz Rossamund with all manner of question: age, eye color, height, weight, origin, race; on and on they went. Often they were incomprehensible: political affinities, species bias. Whichever answer Rossamund gave, no matter how incoherent, was filled in on the relevant forms. When each form was completed, Inkwill rewrote it twice more. Having completed this task, he then looked over the foundling's newly redrafted documents and papers and read the covering letter with fixed attention.
Rossamund's eyes nearly bugged from their sockets as he waited, breath held, to see how these temporary certificates would be received.
"I see," Inkwill said at last. "Witherscrawl won't like these; neither will the Marshal… 'tis no matter. These are perfectly legal." He gave a slight smile as his attention shifted to the boy before him. "Been through some… interesting times getting here, have we?"
Rossamund nodded emphatically. "Aye, sir, an adventure of them."
Inkwill's smile broadened. "You'll have to tell me sometime." With that he took out yet more documents and began copying pertinent details from Rossamund's papers. When the registry clerk was done, and all the forms properly blotted and indexed, he politely told Rossamund that he was to now make his way over to the other clerk.
"He is our indexer, and he is called Witherscrawl. He will enter you into our manning list, so that from now on you will be called on the roll, and be reckoned a lamplighter." Inkwill stood and shook Rossamund's hand once more. "Welcome to the Emperor's Service."
"Thank you, Mister Inkwill," Rossamund returned, somewhat bewildered. "I will try and do my very best, just as I was taught to, sir."
"Good for you. Now take this receipt and this excuse-card to Witherscrawl. I will see you tomorrow."
With that, Ink
will went on with whatever it was he went on with, and ceased paying any attention to the foundling.
Clutching a wallet of new papers and certificates, Rossamund stepped cautiously across the gap back to the sharp-faced, sharp-mannered clerk Witherscrawl.
"Um… Mister Witherscrawl, I…" he began.
With a sour look, the clerk snatched the receipt and excuse-card from Rossamund's hand.
"I, ah…" the boy tried.
"Shut it! I know my business!" The indexer looked down at the excuse-card with sinister deliberation and a cruel turn to his mouth. A hoarse growl wheezed in his throat. "Little weevil couldn't do a simple thing like keep his most important papers safe…!" His beady eyes shot Rossamund an evil glare. "Makes me wonder why we are even bothering to take him in. Sit down!"
With a start, and, as there were no chairs about, Rossamund obediently sat on the cold stone floor.
Taking a pencil in both hands, Witherscrawl proceeded to write furiously into several books and ledgers, and onto several lists. When each entry was done, he would thump it violently with a wooden handle attached to a large, flat sponge. Rossamund winced at every blow.
Witherscrawl eventually leaned over his desk and looked down upon the foundling, his eyes squinting meanly behind his spectacles. "You have certainly taken your time to get here," he spat. "Gave Germanicus an awful messing around, you did. Too good for us, are you, to make your way promptly?" He poked a finger at Rossamund's face. "A lamplighter's life is punctuality, boy! You had better get your habits about this, or your time with us will be brief-troubled and brief."
Those were familiar words.
"Ah-aye, Mister Witherscrawl."
The clerk leaned across the desk and sneered. "Do not address me, boy, as anything other than 'sir.' Have you got that? You don't need to know my name, and you certainly have not earned the privilege to use it!"
Rossamund felt his neck contract like a turtle's. "A-aye… sir…"
Finally, and with half-uttered protestations about the inconvenience, Witherscrawl led Rossamund through a small side door and down the narrowest corridors to a small, drab cell with flaking walls. This room, furnished with only a metal stretcher (not unlike the one he had slept on for most of his time at the foundlingery), was to be his bunk for the night.
"Tomorrow," Witherscrawl informed him, "you will be woken at five of the morning, if you are not already up by then, and must move immediately to the parade yard, for the calling of the roll. Then you'll meet the Lamplighter Marshal, our officer commanding. Then you will receive your routine and begin your instruction. Do you understand?"
"Aye, sir." Rossamund was beginning to feel, all over again, the familiar doubts about the desirability of this occupation. Without a bath or even a wash to clean off the grime of travel, he was told that he was to have his bright-limn extinguished in no more than fifteen minutes.
Extracting another "Aye, sir!" from the new arrival, Witherscrawl left Rossamund to prepare for sleep. The only thing on the foundling's mind, though, was the letter he held in his hand: the precious letter with dearest Verline's unmistakable writing upon it, the letter addressed to him personally. It was like a sweet song to his tired soul, an encouragement from those far off-he was still thought of, he was remembered.
He sat down on the cot, causing it to creak loudly even under his slight weight. Hands shaking a little with excitement, he pried open the seal and many securing folds to reveal the message within. The date-twenty-third day of Lirium-was scrawled at the top. It had been written five days ago, the day Rossamund had been discovered hiding in that boxthorn by Europe. Eagerly, he read on: My dear and most missed Rossamund, How I wish I could right now see you here in front of me. I would hold you till you squirmed out of my grasp and stood there looking at me bashfully, like you used to do. As this cannot be, simple correspondence is all I have (I thank Madam Opera for teaching me my letters!).
Yet I hug you even now, in my heart, and pray constantly too that you might be safe and thriving. It's silly of me I know but I miss you-see! My tears have smeared the ink! One day, find your way back to me, even just for a visit, so I might see you grown and well, and be filled with pride at what a fine man you are undoubtedly becoming. We could take a rest-cure to my sister, so I might show you off to her as well.
I have to tell you too that dear Master Fransitart is determined to come to you at Winstermill, or wherever you will be stationed on the Wormway. Though he does not show it, nor say what the cause is, I can tell that he is greatly distressed. All he will say is that there is something he should have told you long ago-though he will not speak what that is. He says that he must tell you only, in your company alone, and does not want to risk such things in letters. Oh Rossamund, what can it be? Do you know?
Regardless, what he has to say is not so much of my worry, but rather that he is getting old, as vinegaroons go, and his pith is beginning to fail him. I don't want to worry you, Rossamund, heart-of-my-heart, but I think you need to know, so that you might be ready to care and comfort him, who has done as much for you for so long, when he finally arrives to you. I am frightened that this journey will be his last, my heart, so look out for him-he says he intends to leave for Winstermill as soon as winter is past its worst and the season is fit for traveling once more for one of his poor health (he listened to my pleas in this at least). Expect him within the last week of Herse, or the first week of Orio at the latest. Look out for him then, won't you?
I must end, for Madam is demanding her bath, but reply to this the instant you get it, for I-we-ache to know that you are well.
Master Fransitart sends you his blessings, or he would if he knew I was writing you. If he did know, I am sure he would tell you to stay at your task till he comes, no matter how anxious I might get.
I send you my love-filled blessings too, and over again.
Most assuredly your Verline
PS: By the way-though this is not so important-you will not be surprised, I am sure, to learn that the day before yesterday, Gosling ran away from us, and cannot be found. I am ashamed to be so uncharitable, but the mood here has lightened considerably. Write me as soon as you can, please! Also, Master Craumpalin wishes to know if you have had any use for his potives.
While Rossamund read the letter, he was first moved with joy, but then to increasing alarm. Had Master Fransitart, ill as he was, finally repented of letting him go and now planned to fetch him back to the oppression of the foundlingery? Was this the big secret? It's the first week of Pulchrys now… He counted the months on his knuckles: Pulchrys, Brumis, Pulvis, Heimio, Herse, Orio: that means he'll be here in four, maybe five months!
As to the news about Gosling: well, Verline was right-Rossamund was not surprised. Indeed, he was glad for Verline and the masters' sakes, and for the littlest children too, that his old foe had run off.
There came a heavy hammering at the door of his cell. A discouragingly serious voice bellowed, "Douse lanterns!"
Rossamund scrambled to unfold the blankets and pillow supplied, and wrestled them over the unsavory-looking mattress.
His bright-limn still glowing, the hammering soon came again. "You don't want to start your career with us like this, son. Get your lantern out and get to bed!" That voice held promise of all manner of things terrible, unguessable.
Quickly turning the bright-limn over, so that its light would dim and gradually expire, Rossamund completed making his bed in the faint twilight of its dying glow, undressing in pitch blackness. Finally, as he lay, restlessly shifting, with many creakings and groans of the metal frame, against all the uncomfortable lumps of the mattress, his fading thoughts swam. They dwelt for a moment on Verline, and her worries, but it was Master Fransitart, his failing health and his intended visit that troubled him most. Rossamund did not know how to feel about his old dormitory master now. He wished the old vinegaroon would just stay in Boschenberg and leave him to his new path. With a flash of guilt it occurred to Rossamund that Fransitart might not s
urvive the journey; though he was already regretting the intended visit, he would hate any harm to come to his old dormitory master even more.
In the orbit of his sleepy musings, he wondered too if Europe, the duchess lahzar, would indeed return as she had said and ask him once more to be her factotum. Worry for poor Freckle stirred him for a moment, and this became concern for where Fouracres might be that night. So spun his tired thoughts.
As sleep slowly overtook him, he marveled that, through the many twists of what should have been a straightforward journey, he had managed to bumble, still intact, still healthy, to his destination. At last, for better or for worse, he was where he was originally destined, to finally become a lamplighter.
Tomorrow he would wake to the beginning of a whole new life.
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