by D M Cornish
On the next floor he was shown right down a moss green passage almost as long as the house was wide. At its end Rossamünd was ushered into a vast room with ceilings easily as high as those in the Master-of-Clerks’ file at Winstermill.
“The factotum’s set, sir,” Kitchen intoned.
The set was as pristine as every other part of Cloche Arde Rossamünd had so far seen, yet there was a gloom here, something ineffably oppressive. Its walls were wood panels so stained they appeared black, hung with tiny thick-framed images too small to read from where he stood. Three tall windows dominated the opposite wall, admitting a panorama of a field of roofs hunkered beneath the gray day, yet their generous light did little to dispel the murkiness of the room.
For furniture there was a cupboard, sideboard, side table, writing desk, tandem and coat stand. Each piece was lacquered in glistening black just like the fulgar’s treacle box, some finished with gilt edges and fine swirling patterns of a foreign design.Yet all this profusion of furnishings seemed little more than minor detail in the inky expanse of the room. The one relief of color was a broad yet delicate screen erected in the farthest corner. Made of five panels, it was painted with some elaborate scene in a disturbing yet refined, imported style. Rossamünd could not make it out clearly; the general impression was of a woman about to be beset by some kind of slavering nicker.
“Is—was this Licurius’ room before?” He frowned at the memory of Europe’s former factotum, his cruel grip, his hissing voice muffled by the sthenicon he never took off.
“Yes . . . it was,” Kitchen replied evenly.Though the steward’s voice was flat, Rossamünd sensed deeper meaning: What is this to you? “And now, sir, it is yours.”
Rossamünd frowned, uncomfortable at occupying the chamber of a dead man, of sleeping in the place of someone who had actually tried to kill him. It was then that he realized there was no bed. “Mister Kitchen, where do I sleep?” he asked, hoping very much that his bunk might be in another room.
“In here, sir—I shall have a cot moved in for you before the day does come to its end.”
“Ah, aye . . .” Rossamünd’s soul sank a little. “Thank you.”
The steward left him to establish himself with the aid of the young, weasel-faced servant girl who had followed—the alice-’bout-house, Pallette, a young lass not more than two, maybe three, years his senior. Dressed in typical maid’s garments—very much like those that dear Verline wore—this girl stood in dutiful stillness by the door and stared straight ahead as Rossamünd sat on the silk-upholstered tandem. Laying his hat aside, he heaved a heavy sigh, seeking to exhale the unhappy knot that had set itself like a splinter in the very pit of his chest. One moment he was a lowly lamplighter and nigh a prisoner of the Master-of-Clerks in Winstermill’s unwelcome stalls, the next he was a peer’s companion established in a grand, tomblike boudoir of his own.
“M-Master Licurius used to sit right where you do now, sir, and . . . and take his nod sat upright,” a meek voice said uneasily, interrupting his reverie. It was Pallette. There was fear in her tone and a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes.
“I beg your pardon, miss?”
“That tandem were once dear Master Licurius’ bed,” the alice-’bout-house repeated. “He would sit to sleep in the end. His box made it hard for him to lay his head like other folk do. He was a great help to our lady, sir,” she added quickly, as if in doubt of Rossamünd’s own capacity.
Rossamünd promptly stood, uneasy at being in contact with the spot where that blighted laggard had reclined. “I don’t reckon I’ll be needing it,” he said, unsure how to react to someone who described Europe’s old murderous, malevolent leer as dear. Indeed, it struck him that all these folk serving busily in Cloche Arde knew Licurius, maybe intimately. What kind of home is this that looks kindly on such a fellow? “Maybe we can have it taken out.”
There was only the merest hesitation before Pallette said, “Yes, sir . . . If you have any other needs, you call for assistance by a pull of this handle,” she added, gently touching a brass lever in the shape of a claw sticking from the wall by the door, “and me or another will come.”
It was perplexing to have a stranger offer her obedience to him so readily.
“But if our lady wants you, sir,” Pallette continued, “this bell just by it will sound, and then you are to go to her right away—you know the way?”
“Aye, thank you.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“My name is Rossamünd.”
“Yes, sir.”
His meager count of dunnage—most of his belongings lost in the destruction of Wormstool—arrived and was deposited on waiting stands by a pair of huffing, puffing footmen. With only the slightest reticence these fellows obeyed as Pallette repeated Rossamünd’s instruction to remove Licurius’ tandem.
“Maybe a simpler chair will do,” Rossamünd added awkwardly. “Or maybe just a stool.”
“As you would have it, sir.”
With the footmen lifting out the furniture, Pallette began sorting his belongings. Shirts and drawers and trews and all were carefully laid, each in its appropriate spot within cupboards and drawers. Who are you, her action seemed to be saying, to try to replace our dear dead Licurius? Look how small you are!
Rossamünd took closer inspection of the small, broad-framed pictures hanging upon the walls. They were little more than a thumb-length high and the same wide. Admiring the profound skill that must have been required to paint so lifelike a finish at such a scale, he realized with an involuntary jolt what he was looking at. Each image was of some kind of wicked and depraved violence twixt men and monsters—foul tortures and cruel injuries. He caught only a glimpse, but that was all he needed.
Cabinet pictures!
Such an innocent name for such vile objects. Rossamünd knew ever so vaguely of them; that among those of disposable means and dark tastes there was a barely legal fashion for depictions of the foulest violence and horror. This was the art of monster-haters, high fashion for coarse-minded invidists so twisted, it looked to Rossamünd—even with the brief eyeful he received—to be almost a distorted kind of outramour. This was the heart of Licurius laid bare.
The young factotum backed away from the images. “And you . . . you may take these down from the walls too,” he said to the departing footmen with a shaky voice and a sterner tone than he intended.
They and Pallette swapped quick, uneasy looks.
“Y-yes, sir,” the alice-’bout-house answered very softly, blinking at him in discomfort. “As you would wish.”
And to his astonishment, the servants said nothing and began lifting the pictures from the wall.
For luncheon—although so soon departed from the lamplighters he could not help but still think of it as middens—Rossamünd was shown to a modest-sized chamber. The solar, Europe had called it. The room was not grimly dark; rather it was a soft, deep red, its high ceiling entirely gold. In its midst, before many tall windows, was an oval table of glistening scarlet, thinly etched with strangely formed flowers in golden filigree. About it were arranged high-backed chairs upholstered in the softest silk woven with curling golden stems and dyed with the shapes of petals in shades of ruby and crimson.
Sitting upon two of these at the far end waited Fransitart and Craumpalin, looking ill at ease but refreshed, like drab stains in the clean, gleaming ruddiness.
“Well, hullo, me boy,” Craumpalin declared, making an easy showing but possessing a distinct air of a man interrupted. “What does thee make of thy new berth? Not much in the way of a cheerfully homey place, is it?” He lifted his eyes archly to include the room and the entire house with it. “She has treated thee with such expense and magnificence we cannot help but be grateful . . .”
Rossamünd gave a halfhearted smile.
“Aye,” Fransitart concurred. “Her generosity is as deep as her pockets.”
“Aye to that, Frans,” Craumpalin continued, looking up. “She can afford to keep her sconc
es a-glowin’ all day.”
Above, on golden rope, was suspended a great light, a cluster of thin red crystalline flutes bent at their bases like lips, sleek bright-limns luminous even in the day with a subtle rose glow.
In the far corner stood a screen of very similar style to the one in Rossamünd’s new billet. On it some bizarre heldin flourished a hammerlike weapon over a beaten nicker that looked much like a round-faced, round-eyed dog, while two more hound-monsters ran off with a strangely demure maiden. Stepping close to get a better view of each panel, he frowned at the image, not certain who to feel for the most: the fallen monster, the maiden or the heldin-man. Am I one of those? he fretted, peering at the goggle-eyed bogles abducting the woman to a presumably foul end. Am I some half-done monster born from the muds, as Swill has said?
On the journey away from Winstermill, Rossamünd had held his questions, his pressing self-doubts. Now, safely harbored in the high-walled bosom of Cloche Arde, the time had come for all troubles to be answered, all long-kept secrets to be revealed.
“Whatever are you at, little man?” Europe demanded mildly, her voice attended by the thump of an opening door.
Rossamünd turned about quickly.
Standing in the entrance, the Branden Rose was out of her fighting harness and now wrapped in a flowing house-cloak of stiff satin of such dusky red that it seemed in its folds to be black. Her chestnut hair was down in a left-hand plait hung over her shoulder, reaching to her waist.
“I—I was just wondering at all your remarkable things, Miss Europe . . . especially this screen here.”
“Yes, yes, very pretty.” The fulgar took a place at the end of the table. “I am told they are called a bom e’do or some such. This and the one in your room are part of a whole set given to me by some besotted Occidental princeling from Sippon. He thought they might buy my affections.” She paused. “They did not. . . Apparently one alone costs more than an average man is worth a year.”
“Thirty sous each?” Rossamünd exclaimed after some brief internal arithmetic as he took the seat shown him at the opposite end of the table.
“Oh, no, little man, not quite that average,” Europe replied with a slight smile.
Shrinking within, the young factotum was spared his blushes with the arrival of food.
Dished at Kitchen’s direction on to fine Gomroon, with genuine shimmering silverware arranged beside, was food such as Rossamünd had never known: tepid pyet ponce—or magpie stew—and seethed eagle wings accompanied by pickled winkles in butter-boiled cabbage on the side.
“Look thee at this fancy fare, Frans.” Rossamünd heard Craumpalin’s faint mutter across the table to Fransitart. “Smells as if it’ll go down hearty.”
“Why, thank you, Mister Craumpalin,” Europe said with an amused look to the old dispensurist.
“Thank’ee in ye turn, miss,” Fransitart replied evenly. “Ye keep a handsome table.”
The cook snorted reproachfully as she served a healthy spooning of cabbage onto the ex-dormitory master’s fine white plate. “Of course it is . . . ,” Rossamünd heard her mutter. “Handsome table, indeed!”
With slow grace, Kitchen poured tots of fine claret into the biggest, most delicate-looking glasses Rossamünd had ever beheld—half water for him. When all was served and the other servants disappeared again to their manifold labors in other parts of the stately home, the steward went to stand faithfully in the corner near Europe’s right hand.
She, however, half raised a hand and said, “You may leave us to talk, man.”
After a pause, the steward obeyed.
“I will brook no disturbance,” his mistress added as Kitchen quietly closed the servants’ port at the back of the room, leaving them alone with their meal and the great quandary of Rossamünd’s true nature.
Yet, now it had come to it, Rossamünd did not know how to broach the questions he had held back for the last two days, and poked at his fancy meal in a dilemma of possible starts. From the edge of his sight he could sense Europe observing her guests silently, watching over the rim of her ample claret glass while the old vinegaroons did indeed eat hearty. Knotting his courage, Rossamünd tried to speak again the question still unanswered at their exit from the lamplighters’ mighty fortress. Who am I? What am I?
“Sirs,” Europe said suddenly, “I might not have a falseman’s knack, but it was obvious that you, Master Vinegar,” she said to Fransitart, “and you, Master Salt,” to Craumpalin, “were heartily discomfited by things said during that farcical inquiry. From such a show I would dare to say there is truth in the pratings of that surgeon. If you have a deeper inkling into Rossamünd’s history, now is the time to be out with it.”
The ex-dormitory master became still, fork poised between plate and mouth, its load slipping sloppily back to the dish. He looked wearily to Craumpalin. It was the merest glance, yet laden with deep, long-lived understandings.
The expression on Craumpalin’s face in reply was clear. “I reckon the lad’s ears are ready to hear, Frans.”
Slowly, gravely, Rossamünd drew in a breath and held it.
Folding his hands against the edge of the glossy red tabletop, Fransitart looked at them for a moment. “This is something we . . . I might ’ave told ye a long stretch of years ago,” he began with cracking voice. “I have pondered long an’ often about how to steer me words—a truth half spoke is worse than none—but I’ll not let that quill-licking basket Swill have th’ last say on th’ matter.” He took a toss of claret and a breath. “Th’ tale of it starts when I first took to me station at th’ foundlingery . . .Whether th’ deed were intended as a mercy or a mischief I can’t rightly say, but . . . but th’ very day I bore up at Madam Opera’s”—he lifted his glass to the late marine society proprietress burned up in the foundlingery fire—“I spied a little bogle fumblin’ with a parcel on th’ Madam’s very doorstep. An odd boggler it was, with the head of an oversized sparrow and all dressed in fine clothes like some midget Domesday struttin’ fluff. I hailed th’ mite with some angry remonstration, makin’ to scare it off. Th’ basket just looked at me cool as sit-on-yer-tail an’ did not budge.”
Cinnamon! Rossamünd could hardly credit it. “I have seen such a fellow myself!” he exclaimed. “Freckle said he has been watching out for me . . .”
“Freckle?” Europe arched her diamond-spoored brow. “The bogle I saw skulking about Bleak Lynche after Wormstool fell . . .The bogle you had me free from the Hogshead …” Her voice trailed off in displeasure.
“Ah—aye . . .”
Fransitart looked at them a moment before he went on. “Well, that Freckle bogle sounds blithely enough—ye ought not to judge a bugaboo too quick, as I knew well enough even then.”
Europe shifted in her seat yet said nothing.
“Be that as it is,” the ex-dormitory master pressed on, “I was determined to fright it away; a city is no place for a nicker, nor a nicker—blithely or otherwise—th’ right one for a city. So I lay alongside this sparrowling, me cudgel in hand to make me point more clear”—the old dormitory master raised his hands in demonstration—“an’ I hailed it, ‘Avast, Master Sparrow! What’s yer mischief with that bundle? Clear off if ye value yer crown. Worse folks than me p’rambulate these streets!’—or some such I said. Yet far from affrighted, th’ basket stood an’ faced me though it was not more than half a fathom tall. Looking me a-loft an’ a-low with its big blinking peepers, it spoke an’ tells me, ‘Ye take good care of this ’un’—I can’t do its voice right, Rossamünd, all twittery and tuneful and wi’out me salty glot—but ‘Take care of this ’un’, it says. ‘This one’ll be eaten by worse than me if I let ’im stay out in th’ good-lands, so to th’ world o’ wicked men an’ kind he must come.’ That’s when I realized just what manner of parcel it was in its clutches.”
Rossamünd’s throat constricted and tasted unpleasantly sharp. Somehow, he already knew what his old master was going to reveal.
“That parcel, Rossamünd�
�,” said Fransitart, looking to him. “That parcel were ye, lad . . .”
Rossamünd’s mouth went dry. He forced down a mouthful of watery claret.
“This sparrow-thing puts ye all tiny an’ quiet in me arms,” Fransitart continued, “an’ it says, ‘His name is what he is.’ An’ it points to that hatbox bit with th’ scrawl of yer forename on it, Rossamünd.Yet afore I can ask any more, open springs the foundlingery door an’ there is th’ Madam—rest her—arms akimbo an’ glarin’ like she did. Afore she could fathom its true nature, Master Sparrow harefoots it down th’ Vlinderstrat an’ was gone. But th’ Madam? She only had eyes for ye, lad, an’ takes ye, name-card an’ all, an’ writes ye up in her book, Rossamünd Bookchild. She weren’t nothin’ if not efficient.” He respectfully raised a glass again, Craumpalin doing so with him.
Blinking, Rossamünd stared at the old men, astounded at the long years Fransitart had lived enduring such a secret.
Europe leaned back in her seat, owlish gaze calculating.
Such a frank confession left them utterly vulnerable to her mercurial mercies.
“So that’s the short of it,” Fransitart went on. “Ye were hauled off to the cribs an’ me to watch o’er ye and all the others with ye as a master. I kept the matter to meself, dwelt on it, stored it up in me soul until some time on, Master Pin fetched up to work at the Madam’s—under me sage advice. Soon as he arrived an’ I had th’ chance, I found the bit of card an’ took it into him an’ told him just what this sparrow-fellow had spake: ‘His name is what he is . . .’ Never one to be spooked by oddities, ye thought an’ ye thought on it, di’n’t ye, Pin? Sent away to his soup-makin’, tome-thumbin’ friends on it . . .”
Head bowed, Craumpalin gave a single nod.
“An’ he found such as we never hoped he would—probably in the same line of cryptic book as that dastard butcher claims to have investigated,” Fransitart growled. “It said much as Swill claimed, that rossamünderlings were an ancient monster’s name for bogles that look like everymen. We knew of such too, though by other names, that blighted Biargë lass being th’ most famous among vinegars—”