The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  Immediately below, other humbler people in white smocks labored to pretty the sand about the slipway’s footings, employing wide rakes to push and pull the kelp into great piles that the combers happily foraged.

  In this cleared space many of the lectry folk—the middle classes—unable to fit on the walk above were descending a narrow stair cut in the stone of the sea wall and daring to collect on the scant beach below, enduring the stink to get a better view of the launching. Seeing some of the younger folk cackling and squealing as they let themselves be chased by the corrosive ripples that lapped at the black sand, Rossamünd decided to join them. Pushing as politely as he could, he managed to find the heavy gate of the stair, and with an inward leap of delight hastened down the steep steps, amazed that he might be able to actually walk on sand, on a real beach! Now cheerfully ignoring the weedy stink, he was at once struck by the novel sensation of his boot soles sinking into the soft silt as he twisted through the thinner gathering on the shore and drew near the towering slipway.

  Above them all sat the long, mastless bulk of the nascent ram, silent, waiting, fat-bellied, its tumblehome lines pronounced, where they hung high and fully exposed out of water.

  Warspite!—Rossamünd mouthed the name, awed by the enormous screw of bright polished silverine alloy taller than two tall men. He started to count the bent heads of the pins that held the iron to the hull but, still on the first strake, lost his place somewhere just past two hundred.

  With a great commotion of cheers, of fife and drum, the solemn, wonderful spectacle made of the launching of yet another ram began. One by one, the balks were removed by enterprising men with great hammers and lifted away by sheers, until the pristine, glossy rust brown vessel was held back from its final release by only a single massive cable.

  Two-thirds of the way up the dribble-stained foundation by the slipway jutted a balcony of blackened iron beribboned in black and white and emerald green. Upon this three enormous men now appeared: elephantines, the presumed owners of Hullghast Articled Ordnance. Each took his turn to speak, bellowing through wide copper trumpets held up for them by lesser men, addressing the people both above and below with jowly movements of their flabby jaws. Crowded in the scant space behind them, their staff—a gaggle of the usual bureaucrats and secretaries—listened and nodded their approbation in fixed and glassy-eyed rapture. Among them Rossamünd identified three lean spurns—one a wit, and two fascin-wrapped scourges—standing taut and ready, and with them two falsemen reviewing the crowd critically. Automatically, the young factotum shrank from their gaze.

  With a final flourish of music, and a “Hurrah!” from the throng and a splash of sour wine on its sharp ram, the iron-clad man-of-war slid stern first with surprisingly little noise into the Grume, the workers on its deck riding the motion with practiced ease. A great swirl of milky green waves and the half-done vessel was free, all the pent potential of its gastrines in their element at last, the shackled beast set free. Soon they would be turning, taking the weight of the screw and the vast bulk of wood and iron for the first time.

  The former longing to serve a’sea beat a weak memorial in Rossamünd’s bosom, making time with the drumming. Yet his enthusiasm for a life in the Senior Service was surprisingly diminished, a memory of hope. Bidding mute farewell to this old dream, he watched sheer-drudges come to tow the new-launched ram to a watery berth where masts, cannon and all the appurtenances of a fighting vessel would be added.

  The elephantines were wheeled away through doors in the stone at the back of the balcony, the band packed instruments in carriages and trundled away, and the multitude dispersed until Rossamünd was one of the few still watching on the sand.Wishing to hear the soft lapping of the vinegar removed from the pounding of industry, he decided to take an amble south, away from the slipways and the piers and the sheer mill-side walls. With great expectation he took off his boots and, for the first time ever, walked unshod upon an ocean shore. He squeezed the swarthy sand with his toes in delight, grinning unselfconsciously at the cool air puffing against his cheeks. Insensible in his glee to the filth and kelp-rot, he walked about the many slight curves and bays in the seaside and through the high leg-frames holding aloft the cable housings of tidal millwheels. He jumped over the faucetlike openings of creeks and drains, stopping to examine the ooze and the rippling filament algae in their effluent while swallows darted overhead, dashing to and from modest nests poked into rotten stonework cavities and under eaves, soft clicks in the sky as they snapped at near-invisible bugs.

  Farther yet he went until the throb of gastrine enginry became muted to something almost tuneful. In quiet joy he watched the stocky red crabs that diddled jaunty sideways dances, waving cheerfully at him with their singular large claws. With a twist of iron he found half entombed in the silt he prodded at the kelp, washed from the coastal deeps where great forests of the weed grew and made the inshore waters less caustic. A hiss of flight caused him to look up and see a blue heron, neck bent back on itself, swoop in to harry a crab. With a mighty whoop, Rossamünd danced down the strand, waving his hat and driving the bird off before it could make a meal of the pitiable critter. He laughed for pure delight as the heron flapped a quick retreat, winging past him with a single croak and a glare of wounded dignity. This, he decided, would have to be the best Domesday vigil of his brief span in the world.

  With a hungry lurch in his innards, Rossamünd chewed an insubstantial morsel—a crust end from the Dogget & Block—and pressed on south. Enjoying the lack of urgency beyond his own empty innards, he watched a row of weed-bunts and their diligent kelp-gathering crews draw about the sagging frame of a disused cofferdam and pass a wallowing prison hulk, ugly, black and rusting. He could not help but imagine the poor souls—deser ving and undeserving together—mouldering in its dark holds: souls like those miserable shackled people he had seen in the spokes.

  A mute fluttering dart and a Tweet! above him drew Rossamünd’s attention. He looked up to find his little sparrow-spy hopping along the stone arch of the gateway to another flight of steps. It peered down at him in turn, beadily unafraid. In a kindly, thoughtless gesture, the young factotum offered his last morsel of crust to nibble. To his amazement the diminutive bird landed boldly in a bluster of nervous wings on the knuckle of his thumb and pecked with remarkable strength at the morsel, black defiant eyes regarding him closely.

  Marveling at this plucky bird, Rossamünd suddenly declared, “You need a name!”

  The sparrow blinked at him.

  Nothing clever came to mind.

  He is brown, I suppose . . . , the young factotum observed rather obviously. And he dashes and darts about, he pondered a little lamely, sooo . . . Darter . . . Brown?

  “Darter Brown.” He spoke it out.

  It was an odd name, yet the self-important little creature chirruped brightly as if in approval.With something akin to excitement it leaped up to perch on Rossamünd’s hat brim, causing the thrice-high to list over his eyes.

  Rossamünd drew his coat collar about his neck and continued his little seaside adventure. Back on the sand he walked farther south, following the meager convex strand, Darter Brown flitting along before him, chasing fat, lazy maritime flies. Going about an outward kink in the shore, they came across a boneyard of vessels left rib-exposed in the tidal muds, stripped of iron, masts and cordage. Their chines protruded corpselike from the silt, skeleton wrecks wallowing unwanted to rot in the shallows, sheltering wading flocks of dappled sandpipers and red-legged stilts.

  Maybe a hundred yards away on the inward bend of the kink, a group of well-dressed gentlemen were loitering on the sand, looking powerfully out of place in their urban finery. Something oddly furtive in their manner gave the young factotum pause, and one striking fellow caught his particular attention. Standing maybe forty yards apart from the main group, this gent was resplendent in a long frock coat of slick carmine with black longshanks and high bright-blacked boots; his hair—tied in a whip-stock—was of the m
ost surprising milk-white. Though he knew of white-blond hair, Rossamünd had never seen such a thing, and its singularity was magnified by the peculiar location in which it was discovered. Words he did not catch were traded between this white-tressed gallant and the group. A second individual stepped from their midst, his baton-tailed hair a more ordinary brown but his attire of iridescent forest green no less splendid. There was a shout and the group stood away, scaling the begrimed sea wall by a long, jointed ladder that they must have brought themselves, leaving White-hair and Brown alone on the black strip. Another call and the two were suddenly flourishing pistols, one in each hand, brought out quick like true pistoleroes testing their speed. The quadruple hiss-CRACK! of their discharge came as a single stuttering report, their flashes of smoke whipped away by the rising winds.

  At the sound Rossamünd naturally ducked as if a mere bundle of drying kelp could protect him, hands fumbling for his potives in their unfamiliarly new digitals.

  Darter Brown took wing and vanished over the wall.

  Both had shot, yet only White-hair went down, folding in on himself like the closing of a well-made test-barrow. With a kick of sand in his foe’s direction, Brown-hair sprang laughing up the ladder, his chums peering down from above sharing the joke. Once he was safely at the top, the ladder was hauled away and the white-haired duelist left writhing on the shore alone.

  The cold, tingling touch of the encroaching tide on his toes brought Rossamünd to sense. Running as quickly as only partly firm sand will permit, the young factotum approached the man, calling as he got close, “Ahoy, sir! Are you well? Ahoy!” Skidding as he stopped a few cautious feet from the double-bent fellow, Rossamünd bent down himself. “Are you badly done in, sir? Where are you shot?”

  “I’m not shot,” came the muffled reply, filled as much with impatience as pain.

  “Pardon?” The young factotum craned further, trying to see the fellow’s face, still buried in the huddle of his arms.

  White-hair suddenly sat back and in a fright Rossamünd did the same.

  “I am not shot!” the fellow insisted in tetchy embarrassment, lean face frightfully wan, hazel eyes streaming. “It was sack.”

  “Sack?”

  “Yes, we load our irons with sack.”

  “Irons?”

  “Yes! Irons! Dags! These!” The white-haired fellow lifted a beautiful black and silver pistola and waggled it irritably. “Firing-irons . . . Pistols . . .”

  What kind of person is this? Rossamünd nodded his comprehension. “Do you need help, sir?”

  Wincing, White-hair sucked deep, deep breaths before answering. “No . . . no, I shall . . . shall soon . . . soon walk again . . .” Another even deeper and ruttling gasp. “That pursemouse simply hit me in . . . in the bullet-bag—a lucky shot he won’t ever repeat . . . but it will teach me for not wearing a likesome . . . Always wear a likesome,” he said again, in the tone of repeating an instruction.

  Likesome? This was a proofed covered frame of stiffed leather some in the fighterly line liked to wear over their groin. Suddenly the nature of the man’s discomfort became clear to the young factotum, and, clearing his throat awkwardly, he reached into his stoup. “Might I at least offer you this,” he said, producing a vial of levenseep from his skolding collection, “and help you to a stairway?”

  White-hair peered at the bottle and then looked a little doubtfully to Rossamünd. “Leven-water, is it? I’ve not had that since Aunty saw me through the consumptive palsies of eighty-five. Well, thank you, my man.” He took the vial and a healthy swig—more than necessary for a single dose—and smacked his lips as he gave the draught back. “There’s the business!” he declared more cheerfully, with a couple of rapid, revivified blinks.

  Peering about, Rossamünd helped him to his feet, taking the weight as White-hair pressed heftily on him to rise.

  “My word, you’re a stout fellow,” the young man declared in open surprise, shaking sandy grains from his sumptuous coat hems. Picking up his pistols, he examined them intensely for a moment with a deeply unhappy expression. “Sand in the workings,” he muttered glumly, shaking his head.

  “They look like fine pieces, sir,” Rossamünd observed conversationally.

  “And well they are, sir!” the white-haired fellow exclaimed. “If you value your life over your purse, you will not spare even double money to buy a good dag: better an empty pocket than a cooling corpse, I say . . .” He blew hard over the locks and flints, cheeks bulging with the effort. With a quick glance to the sea, he returned them to the bright-black holsters hanging at either hip. “I believe it’s time to depart. I suggest we go that way.” He nodded back north, from where Rossamünd had already come. “The closest grece is there.”

  The young factotum readily submitted to what he presumed was the man’s superior local reckoning. He had felt the sting of the acrid Grume before and had no wish to soak in it again. The fellow shook off his discomfort, and his pace, though at first slow, soon picked up. They walked in silence, the young factotum pondering black beach and white sea, until the white-haired fellow piped, “What do they call you?”

  “Uh . . . Rossamünd . . . Rossamünd Bookchild.”

  “Is that so?”

  Rossamünd could not tell whether the catch in his companion’s voice was hesitation or the simple taking of a breath.

  “How do ye do, Rossamünd Bookchild. I am Rookwood—Rookwood Saakrahenemus Fyfe.”

  For all his mature airs, this Rookwood fellow was actually rather young—certainly a lot younger than, say, Fouracres or Mister Sebastipole. In light of the fellow’s recent humiliation, there was something smilingly winsome and altogether pleasant in his expression, and Rossamünd decided he liked him.

  “Who was that other gentleman?” he asked.

  “Oh.” Rookwood became sheepish. “Uh—a friend . . . with a pretty wife . . . a strange turn of humor . . . and an overly fortuitous aim. Come! Let us be off before we are drowned.”

  ROOKWOOD

  With only a foot of treadable sand left between water and wall, they found a stairway off the beach.

  “Here we are, still dry in cheery Pebble Knife,” Rookwood said with a wry look to the lowering afternoon sky, the neglected seaside façades and the dour expressions and faded apparel of the few passing people. “This is no place to strut alone . . . Perhaps we can walk each other out of here as we look for a takeny each and then go upon our ways?” he finished, with a look left and right.

  They walked north along the shorefront for a time, going by blunt bastion-towers on the right and once-bright paint and once-gaudy awnings now moldy and frayed on the left. Down alleys and blindways Rossamünd caught sight of twinkling pebbly eyes and tall twitching ears, quickly followed—when he tried to look closer—by the hasty bobbing flash of retreating cotton tails.

  Rabbits!

  In their own progress, Rookwood drew some dark looks himself from lowlier souls. He did not seem to mind them. Rather, walking with less of a limp now, he chatted merrily enough about airy things, and mostly about himself. “Being a Bookchild would make you orphaned, yes? As am I, sir, as am I. My mother perished of the fevers . . .” He paused, reflective, for a breath. “And my father was sunk at sea at the Battle of Maundersea.”

  “Your father is Rear Admiral Fyfe?” Rossamünd asked in astonishment, easily connecting this celebrated name from pamphlet tales and oft-taught lessons of naval matter; his admiration and wonder at this fellow were increasing with every moment.

  “Indeed he was!” Rookwood frowned. “The great man himself, who died even as he won himself immortal fame defeating the Lombardy picaroons and so leaving me to the capricious generosity of my aunt Saakrahenemus—my mother’s sister and of the main branch of family line,” he added in rapid parenthesis. “Under her stringent care I have had a scant living paid at the start of each month that is—Ah-hah!” he exclaimed abruptly, interrupting himself. “The Lots grin on us! A moll potny!” He pointed to a lamppost corner where
an olive-skinned girl in maid’s smock and bonnet stood by a deep black pot sat atop a portable cast-iron stove. “Are you hungry, Master Bookchild?”

  Rossamünd most certainly was, and eagerly admitted it.

  This moll potny was selling the reputedly famous bunny daube, the dish proving to be a surprisingly meaty stew livened up with scringings and “extras”—as she called them. For a gosling—a half-guise piece—she dished the dark brown mass from the pot into simple wooden pannikins bought for another gosling. Indeed, even rudimentary turnery was for sale.

  “With enough money a fellow might never need to own his own kitchen!” Rookwood grinned.

  Eating as they walked—Rossamünd working hard to keep the sloppy daube from slipping down his coat front—they found a better quality of street that took them inland.

  “If I may, how did you come by your hair?” Rossamünd asked.

  “Oh . . .” The fellow made a wry face. “I am told it is evidence of a Turkeman skeleton in our esteemed familial closet, some shameful connection—upon my father’s side, of course—with one of our Empire’s northern rivals hidden in the shades of antiquity. My aunt will not suffer it to be spoken on, yet here I am as a constant reminder of her shame.” He grinned.

  “I think too many folk are far too troubled by others’ wherefores,” Rossamünd said seriously despite his own answering smile.

  Rookwood peered at him wonderingly. “Just as I say, sir, just as I say . . . Isn’t it always the way of it!” he complained suddenly. “When you are in need of a takeny, they are never there, and when you don’t, they are all about you pestering for a fare! There should be a stand of them about that next corner.”

  Indeed there was, five in a row on Tomwither Walk, a thin curving street of limners and upholsterers and low-fashion perruquiers.