The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  “Harkee, I thank you, young Rossamünd, for your assistance,” the white-haired fellow declared with all the manner of one set on departing. “I have places to be this evening and must be away.”

  “As have I, sir,” the young factotum concurred. “And treacle to brew when I get there,” he added with an anxious glance to the glow of the latening sun, hiding now behind steep roofs and making cryptic shadows of chimneys and spouts.

  “Treacle, is it?” Rookwood seemed suddenly more attentive. “As in plaudamentum?”

  “The same, sir.”

  “I take it then that you are a factotum?”The young man’s interest was definitely piqued.

  “That I am, sir.” Rossamünd doffed his thrice-high and gave a slight yet gentlemanly bow. “Factotum to the Branden Rose,” he said proudly, then immediately regretted it as needless showing away. With another bow to cover his error he made to leave.

  However, the effect of this revelation on his companion was marked.

  “Come, come, fine fellow,” Rookwood declared with a new animation, halting Rossamünd with a light touch on his upper arm. “I was so eager to honor my appointments I have done you discredit! You have helped me at my lowest and not left me in my embarrassment.The least I can return is some quisquillian deed as thank-you.”

  “Oh—uh—really, it is not—,” Rossamünd tried to say, wondering just what a quisquillian deed might be.

  “Please, please! I insist you join me this evening—my appointment can become yours as well; I am diaried to join good friends at a rather well-acclaimed panto-show, The Munkler’s Court—hilariously cackleworthy, or so I am told. Have you seen it?”

  “Ah . . . no, sir, I have not.” Rossamünd did not know how to proceed. He had barely met the fellow, yet . . . what a grand finish it would be to step out with this flash son of the celebrated Rear Admiral Fyfe—a hero of both the pamphlets and real matter. On either hand, he had to get back to test the treacle, and said as much to Rookwood.

  For a moment the young gent pressed a knuckle to musingly pursed lips. “I propose a plan that shall have you doing both,” and even as he said this, he hailed a takeny-coach with an economic wave and a streetwise wink to the driver. “I shall accompany you to wherever you need to be to make your plaudamentum and, that done, you can don your gladdest threads and we shall make directly for the Hobby Horse, where the panto is playing.”

  Rossamünd hesitated in an agony of indecision. Curious and cautious in one, he agreed, and in the very next breath was aboard the takeny. “I’ve never seen a panto before,” he admitted as they rattled along the darkening lanes back to Cloche Arde.

  “Ah, Mister Factotum, then you will be in for a spectacle,” Rookwood enthused. “Memories of my first show are still my most vivid. They are like an ever-giving gift; I have to but recall it and I return to bliss. I hope it turns the same for you, sir!”

  In the waxing gloom Rossamünd could see scruffy black-coated streetlimners in stovepipe hats emerging to wind the shorter, distinctive red-posted seltzer lamps with their flimsy hooks—slight devices, nothing like the heavy martial fodicars employed by the Imperial Lighters of the Emperor’s Highroads.

  Keen to have Europe’s plaudamentum made and be swiftly away again, the young factotum sprang enthusiastically from the takeny as it drew to a halt in the yard of Cloche Arde, leaving the young white-haired gent to keep the hired lentum waiting. “I might be some time,” Rossamünd called behind him, before dashing through the front door of his new home.

  “Take all the revolutions of the clock you require, sir!” Rookwood proclaimed munificently through the carriage window, ogling Cloche Arde with untoward fascination. “We have the time, and my friends will happily accept my excuses when they find who it is I have brought with me.”

  At mains on her own in the solar, Europe cocked Rossamünd a quizzical look as he bustled in to her with her late-made treacle and breathy apologies.

  “And here was I, worried you’d chosen naval life after all . . . ,” she said mildly, a droll glimmer in her eye. “Ugh! Step away, little man,” she said curtly with a flick of her hand. “You stink of the Grume! Clearly your day was spent at the seaside . . .” Her draught drunk, she had no objections to his request to go out again. “I am not your mother, little man, to tell you how best to spend your free hours. I myself shall be elsewhere this evening, visiting with the Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike—one of the few folk in this city worth the time—and would have invited you with me . . . But no matter. Go, see, enjoy.”

  Now that he knew of this option, Rossamünd was mightily curious to accompany Europe and see the manner of person she might call friend. Yet having first accepted Rookwood’s gesture, he stayed to his original course.

  “Incidentally,” the fulgar continued as Rossamünd turned to go, “your masters passed through this afternoon, rather keen to see you. Evidently you did not meet with them today, so I informed them that I have decided they will drive for me. They shall return tomorrow for a proper interview.” About to turn back to her meal, she added, “Oh, and there is something waiting for you in your chamber.”

  Hurrying to his set, Rossamünd found a harness case open on the chest at the end of his bed. Inside was laid the most costly and truly splendorous set of fresh-gaulded proofing—evidently Brugelle labored on a Domesday. Foremost was a broad-frocked coat in the richest midnight soe curling with bracken-frond brocade, stitched in cloth-of-silver along its hems and cuffs and pockets. With it came a quabard half rouge, half viole—scarlet and pale magenta—and a sash checkered with the same colors. The mottle of Naimes. With the help of Pallette it took the long side of a quarter-hour to have it all properly adjusted. Next, he hung the two digitals—already charged with repellents and fulminants—from beneath his sash at either hip. When all was finally fitted, Rossamünd admired the delicate shimmer of the swarthy silk, the gleam of the silver fancywork, the sheen of the black enamel, feeling like the fine-dressed prince of some sumptuous court. After a quick redistribution of valuables from old coat to magnificently new, he returned, all breathless thanks, downstairs.

  Shooing aside his gratitude, Europe had him turn about thrice to show the fine cut, inquiring as he slowly spun, “Tell me, Rossamünd, what play will you see?”

  “Oh, The Munkler’s Court, I believe,” he answered with rapid gusto, peering from the front hall through the door into the solar. “At the Hobby Horse.”

  “Truly?” The fulgar raised a knowing brow. “An interesting choice . . . ,” she said slowly and gave Rossamünd a pointed glance he did not understand. “Have a care, little man” was all she said in parting.

  “I shall,” he said eagerly as he turned to go, yet as he stepped out to the waiting takeny, her warning repeated inwardly like a twist in his conscience.

  7

  A NIGHT IN THE TOWN

  Droid second-brightest star in the Signal of Lots, the constellation presiding over choices and chances; it is the superlative (Signal Star) most sought when testing fate and taking knowing risks, its position in the heavens relative to other lights telling on your future, should you care to heed such stuff—though such scrying is said to be the province of scoundrels, mendicants, and the weak-headed.

  SLOTTED on Paneglot Street in the playwrights’ suburb of Pantomime Lane between drab three-story tenements, the Hobby Horse was a brilliant, blatant red, with a domed roof of stark cobalt blue. The apex of the crimson façade was topped with a curling escutcheon in white bearing the head and legs of a laughing horse.

  Beneath it, set in hollows, were two pallid statues, the ancient patrons of the stage: the immortal blank-masked clown Ratio in comic pose on the right, and on the left the ageless tragedian Stillicho, wrapped in heavy drapes and reaching down imploringly to high-minded theatasts and common vigil-night revelers alike.

  Scarcely missing some limnlass lighting the way of a grog-swaying couple along the street, the takenyman deposited the two passengers on the very edge of the pant
o-going night steppers. Censured by other takeny-drivers for daring to halt in their way, and in his own hurry to be off again with another fare, the takenyman demanded his fee with a snarl.

  “If you get this’un, Mister Bookchild,” Rookwood said as he reached for his wallet, “I’ll go in for the entry.”

  The wait at Cloche Arde made the price steep, yet Rossamünd had sufficient change from the original twenty sous folding money and the refund of the crossing fee and was happy to cover his share of the night. Intent on some destination well within the blue-and-yellow foyer of the Hobby Horse, Rookwood took him by the cuff and wheedled them through the squeeze. Close with a confusion of perfumes, rumspice and the breath of a hundred souls, the panto house bubbled with every variety of accent: familiar Bosch, Brandenard with its flatter vowels, near-incomprehensible Gott, the Patricine lilt, the rolling passion of Sedian voices—these and more, all raised in animated and amiable clamor. Beggarly gleedupes moved through it all, deep trays full of folios and overripe vegetable matter hanging from their shoulders, boasting the low, low price of their articles. “Songs for the singing and fruit for the throwing!”

  Amid the crush and the magnificence Rookwood finally found his friends: a trio of young women in peculiar costume standing by a sky blue pilaster. They made an aloof group, maintaining space about themselves with long looks aimed at anyone insensible enough to come too near. At Rossamünd’s approach they turned this disapproval on him.

  “Hale night, young damasels,” Rookwood cried to them. “What’s to do with you?”

  “We are a-puzzle, Mister Fyfe, wondering what manner of creature you have brought us?” the middle of the trio demanded. She was dressed mannishly—a little like Europe—in shimmering black frock coat with high collar and long cuffs, the top of her tall boots edged with white fur. “Is this the reason you are so late?”

  “Mister Bookchild,” Rookwood said, smiling reassuringly, “my chums.” With open palm he gestured to the leftmost, a short girl, poorly pale and wrapped neck-to-toe warm in a cloak of peacock blue with a collar of fur in a similar hue. “First may I name Frangipanni of Wörms, come to study skolding at the Saumachutra, dear confidante and rent-sharer.”

  About her head and neck Frangipanni wore a blue wimple topped by a shaggy hispinster of the same cerulean pelt; across her mouth was a deep prüs spoor—a thick band reaching from ear to ear and darkening her top lip, the mark of a skold . . . With the narrow, tilted eyes of her race she regarded Rossamünd stonily, yet acknowledged him with a curtailed bow.

  Rossamünd lifted his hat politely.

  “Here, with her excellent questions,” Rookwood continued, indicating the middle girl, her face spoored with thin black spikes coming down from either eye to her jaw and wearing a small thrice-high fixed to her black hair with tines, “is Eustacia Brick—”

  Glowering at Rossamünd as if to shrivel the very contents of his soul, the girl cleared her throat very loudly and pointedly.

  “I mean,” Rookwood corrected, “Miss Avarïce—raised on the Brandentown high streets just as I.”

  Composing herself, the one who named herself Avarïce blinked at him languidly. “Good evening,” she murmured.

  With a name like Eustacia Brick, Rossamünd could hardly blame her for the change. He doffed his thrice-high to her as well.

  “Lastly—yet equally”—Rookwood directed attention to the final girl, most notable in that she wore a high crown of mauve wax-paper—“is Madamielle Trudgette, sent up from the south by her parents much exercised by her frolics at home and saving coin for Sinster.”

  Madamielle Trudgette loured at her presenter, her pale eyes made fierce by the curling black spoors figured completely about them. Wrapped tight in winds of fine, almost gossamer cloth of richly delicate pink, she clutched a thin staff to her side, much like a fuse in dimensions but with a five-pointed star at the top.

  Saving coin for Sinster . . . Rossamünd had a sudden flash of Europe as she was in the portrait in her file—youthful, hopeful, resolute on becoming an astrapecrith. Feeling a strange connection with this Trudgette, Rossamünd graced the pink-swathed yearnling-girl with a slightly deeper beck.

  Attention fixed on her friend, Trudgette ignored him completely. “I am only doing as Epitomë Bile or ze Casque Rogine or Violette Lune or even ze Branden Rose ’ave done,” she said defensively. “Free from Mama and Papa, I am set for ze life of adventure.”

  “Well, happy day for you, m’dear.” Rookwood beamed. “For my new friend,” he said, patting Rossamünd warmly on the back, “is none other than the factotum of the very same Branden Rose you so enthusiastically emulate! Is that not so, sir?”

  “It is—” The young factotum was stopped in the face of their flowering amazement as each girl stared at him as if he were the Emperor himself.

  “Truly!” Avarïce breathed, suddenly sociable.

  “ ’Ow did ze come by such an admirable appointment?” Trudgette asked, wide-eyed and now not looking nearly as fierce.

  Unbalanced by such rare and open admiration, Rossamünd could not help but boast, “I—I make the best treacle she has ever had.”

  “I thought her script-fellow was supposed to be an authentic full-formed man who came with a box on his face.” Avarïce’s delight was soured with a slight yet sudden skepticism. “What is his name . . .”

  FRANGIPANNI

  “Licurius,” Trudgette answered quickly, her accent giving the foul fellow’s name a lyrical lift it did not deserve. “But ’e was nicker-killed zis six months passing.”

  “How did you know?” Rossamünd was a little thrown that utter strangers might have tell of this.

  “Because . . . ,” Rookwood answered, pulling a folded bundle of paper from his pocket, “we like to know all the doings of the lahzarines and other orgulars.” He tapped the top sheet.

  TheWasp, it read in gaudy print. It was a scandal.

  A small knot clutching in his innards, Rossamünd hoped that the Defamière was on this fellow’s reading list. Clearly, these four excited young souls were obsequines, ardent devotees of monster-hunters and especially lahzars. Rossamünd peered at them guardedly.

  “There, we are all met!” Rookwood declared happily. At the shimmering hoom of a gong he added, “Shall we go in?” He grasped Rossamünd’s arm. “Come along, the show is about to begin!”

  Letting himself be carried along in this bluster of jovial enthusiasm, the young factotum, with his new companions, was shown by a footman through a door to a balcony stall. These were very good seats—close to the small stage and looking right over the boards.

  Though dim, ready for the imminent performance, the heaven-blue theater was far taller and deeper than it appeared possible from its small front upon the street. Every edge and skirting and corner was gilt-rimmed, the long ceiling painted to look like a bank of fluffy moon-shone clouds warm-lit beneath as if illuminated by the radiance of the stage itself. Every balcony stall was filling with periwigs, gleaming silk, feathery frills and peering lorgnettes, the benches all but taken by scratch-bobs, straw bonnets and tricorns.

  Rookwood waved to some associate down in the inferior benches. Rossamünd saw the briefest glimpse of a thin fellow with round spectacles beckoning in return before all useful light was extinguished.

  Only the soft glow from the musicians’ pit to the left of the open stage remained.

  The young factotum’s chest thumped in anticipation.

  To the swell of reedy nasal piping and clashing tambourine, the stage light flared and the panto began. Before a backdrop of wide idealized wildlands, tableau pines and elegant poplars dotting low and aesthetically pleasing hills, a man emerged from the side shadows. Dressed in an elaborate silver frock coat and silver-gray wig, the fancy’s face was paste-white, his cheeks garishly rouged. For all his finery he held an ax that he flourished like some overly eager woodsman. “Lards, ladles and gentlespoons!” he cried with high-speaking elocution and many a rrrrolling “r” that reminded Ross
amünd of poor Master Pinsum, burned up in the fire of the marine society. “Our opening offerrring we brrring before you is sure to titivate your humours with its happy hijinkerrry. Here now the Buffoon Courteous Players playing the Thrrree Brrrothers Hob!”

  The auditorium near burst with boisterous, hallooing applause.

  Flushed with enchantment and glad to have been invited, Rossamünd chortled and clapped with the rest as the players pranced a-stage. They wore grotesque wide-mouthed masks with crooked horns and protuberant ears—the classic lampoon of a nicker. Pronking about the boards, they waggled their back-ends at the cackling crowd and cried out with extreme and comic gravity. One farce steadily gave way to the next, and the entire panto unfolded as a bitter invective against monsters, the age-old anger submerged in cheap laughter and rowdy and hissing fun. Rossamünd’s delight diminished with each shoddy insult until he was sitting hunched in his seat.Yet beside him Rookwood laughed with such unabashed glee—rocking and hooting his approval at each new and authentically comical novelty—that the young factotum could not help smiles of his own.

  Finally the show was run, and in an acme of relief, Rossamünd was bustled by Rookwood and friends onto the cool street at last. Barreling aboard a takeny and on to the next venue without a pause, they were joined by the bespectacled friend seen waving from the benches: Eusebus Something . . . Rossamünd did not catch his family name.Tall and thin, with strangely cropped hair, Eusebus was an initiate at the city’s sole athenaeum and proved only mildly impressed at the young factotum’s credentials.

  “How-now, Mister Bookchild.” Rookwood grinned as the driver slowly extracted them from the near-riotous profusion of carriages and carelessly cheerful pedestrians. “You did not seem to smile much as the show went on. I trust it was a tickle to your fancybone?”

  “Not planning on becoming a ridiculous eeker, are you?” Eusebus offered wryly.