The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  The glade was quiet but for this mellifluous purring.The soft caw of a high-passing ibis and the subdued whisper of wind-shifting trees only joined the sympathetic melody.

  Rossamünd found himself swaying in accord with the monster-lord’s throaty music, the very core of him vibrating with ponderous complex regret for the discord between monster and man; with anger confounded by a peculiarly happy melancholy that folded back to anger again; with great longing for an ease and joy once known so well so long ago.With a shock of clarity he realized that he must be feeling what the Lapinduce felt. He smudged away a lonely tear that had squeezed unheeded to tickle down his cheek.

  “Ahh . . . this has been a most excellent deliberation,” the Lapinduce abruptly declared, breaking the chant of its throaty music. “You are most certainly an unwitting yet faithful student of the Sparrowlengis, your watchful sparrow-duke. He too thinks better of men than they deserve and defends them in obedience to the ancient treaties.” It eyed Rossamünd cannily, and he felt his very soul shudder. “Yet for me the blackest of all the blackest things I have seen is an everyman’s evilness to a fellow everyman—”

  “Or everymen—enemies only because they do not know better—flayed and splashed to the eight winds by a nicker’s claws!” was the young factotum’s own reflexive retort.

  “Ahh.” The monster-lord smiled narrowly. “Yet is their thoughtlessness an excuse?” It raised a blunt bony claw. “Who is responsible for one’s thoughtlessness if not a soul itself? Enough evidence there is of our good support to change an everyman’s opinion a score of times over should any care to look better, but they will not. The kingdoms of everymen stand much through the protection of our blithely frair, yet still they course and kill them.”

  “But there are those everymen who have thought better,” Rossamünd countered stoutly. “I have seen monster-slayers show kindness . . .”

  “Little doubt you speak with your mistress in mind—the Brambly Rose, who has taken you into her care.”

  The young factotum’s eyes went round with amazement. “How—”

  “How again, is it?” The Lapinduce’s blank expression held the shadow of a bestial smirk. “How is it I know that you serve Europa of Naimes, Duchess-in-waiting, the Brambly Rose? How is it I know that—as I have done—she saved you from the grasp of selfish souls knitting abominations in their high stone hall on the edge of Master Sparrow’s autumn?” It arched a brow. “Why, Lentigo has told me . . .”

  “Lentigo, sir?”

  “The one you know as Freckle, who goes huc illuc to all points and serves none but Providence.”

  To this Darter Brown puffed himself and gave an affirming kind of chirp.

  “He is here?” Rossamünd looked about rapidly, thinking the plucky glamgorn might emerge from the shadows.

  “Most certainly, quizzing ouranin! Lentigo has been and is now gone. Very anxious he is after your weal in the custody of one so infamous as is this orguline, the Rose of Brandentown. Ahh, a hindrance and blight to all euriphim is she . . . I would like to meet her before she all too soon perishes. She suspects, I think, that I am here. Many times has her square-faced servant-man stood under my trees to sniff me out . . . He failed, of course.”

  Suddenly the young factotum realized he had forgotten . . . Europe’s treacle!

  Anxious now to get back to Cloche Arde and attend his testtelating duties, Rossamünd opened his mouth to ask his leave of this perplexing creature.Yet before he could press his plea, the Lapinduce spoke.

  “An ouranin as manservant to an orguline . . .” the Lapinduce’s bestial eye twinkled with a cold mirth. “Complexity, I see, follows you like flies do a dung cart. Ever it is like this for an ouranin; never fitting, always searching on and on through generations and on into history . . . Come, let me show you a fine trick.”

  Immediately the monster-lord stalked out of the dell, ears back, finding a path that wended deviously among the thickets.

  Keen not to get lost in the hedging woods, Rossamünd had to run to keep pace while Darter Brown dashed low before him. A goodly way into the park, breath rasping in windpipe, he found the Lapinduce had halted atop a sizeable mound. Ears tall, standing alert in the thick shadow of a geriatric pine, the monster-lord peered down with keen intent on something below. Creeping on soft clover to hunker by the creature’s side, Rossamünd could see through crooked branches a figure prowling down in the parkland gloom maybe only a half-a-hundred yards away, a heavyset fellow in a deep green soutaine and a black tricorn pulled over his white wig.

  The young factotum’s innards went still.

  It was one of the Broken Doll’s door wards.

  Rossamünd clenched every muscle, ready to leap into hand strokes.

  “They have trespassed deep indeed in search for their lost chum . . . and for you too, I think,” the rabbit-duke breathed. “They will not seek for long. Watch. . . ”

  The intruding fellow was scowling at the darksome nooks and threatening crannies, patently uneasy at his task. Calls came through the trees—other searchers on the prowl. Shouting his own reply over his shoulder, the door ward approached the base of the hillock where the Lapinduce and Rossamünd were hid.

  The Lapinduce closed its eyes and let out a slow hissing breath.

  All around the threwd thickened, a settling dismal chill.

  The young factotum shivered.

  The door ward hesitated and stared anxiously about. There came another cry to the left, its unintelligible words possessing a warning. The intruder began to withdraw, the calls retreating with him until the woodland hush relaxed and the threwd eased to its usual gentle watchfulness.

  “Come, ouranin,” said the Lapinduce, “let us return to my court.”

  “So what of you, oh ill-named one!” Stepping to its spinet stool and sitting, the Lapinduce peered at Rossamünd keenly. “I did not save you to pass you back to bloodthirsting everymen.” For a moment it sounded angry. “You ought depart from here to live in proper seclusion with the sparrow-duke and Cinnamon, so interested in your progress; let this generation and all its selfish single-mindedness pass into matter. I can grant you easy passage to your sparrow-lord to dwell in peace till all things are restored.Yet it is for you alone to choose your progress.”

  Rossamünd breathed long and deep. How simple it might be to take up the Lapinduce’s offer, to retreat and live safe, and make forays out into the cities to overturn every rousing-pit or massacar he could find. For just a moment Rossamünd’s soul soared with the idea.Yet, as quickly as it swelled, this hope sank again. “Europe has risked too much for me to desert her now,” he breathed, swallowing back on the knot griping in his throat. “Fransitart and Craumpalin too . . .”

  A melancholy shadow passed through the Lapinduce’s ancient gaze. “An answer at last to my original question . . . ,” it murmured heavily. “Brutish and short are the lives of every men; do not expect your own with them to be different.”

  Rossamünd looked to his hands—a man’s hands, a monster’s hands.

  Born out of the mud from some other soul’s parts . . .

  “It is time for you to return to your chosen mistress,” the rabbit-duke commanded abruptly. It coughed to summon Ogh and Urgh. “Follow them close and do not mind their bold divagations; they shall show you by their own route to familiar paths that will take you home again.”

  Rossamünd hesitated. He glanced anxiously to the sliver of forenoon sun peeking over the towering eastern wall—so much higher from this sunken vantage. How did it get so high? Surely they had talked only for some moments.

  Flicking its coat hems to sit properly on its stool, the Lapinduce lifted long hands to play. “I will likely not see you again, ouranin,” it said without looking to him. Flourishing a blunt-clawed hand, it gave the spinet voice once more, a wild tune that had the urchin-lord’s arms and deft fingers running along every octave. It closed its eyes and was lost in the music.

  Reeling, Rossamünd slowly heeded a gentle tugging a
t his right shin. Ogh—or was it Urgh—was pulling at his stocking with its teeth, while its twin was slowly hopping to the farthest of the three arches and out of the court. With a final, heavy-hearted glance at the furious playing of the Lapinduce, the young factotum followed, leaving the glorious monster-lord in its hidden musical court.

  10

  A BAD EXCUSE IS BETTER THAN NONE

  crimp(s) privately operating impress contractor, that is, a group or individual licensed to press people into naval or military service. They are usually given a quota by a ram’s captain or a regimental colonel and with this authority trawl the streets of less well-heeled districts, seizing anyone appearing at that moment not to be engaged in gainful activity, regardless of the poor soul’s true employment status.

  IN dour fungal light the twin rabbits Ogh and Urgh took Rossamünd down the bending root-walled course, loping at an easy pace yet keeping out of his reach. He tried once to stride forward and pat one, and in an instant they shot ahead into the twilight of the tunnel that led away from the Lapinduce.

  “Wait! Wait!” he called, finding them sitting in gloom in the middle of the passage floor, eyes glittering, noses twitching rapidly.

  Guided by the flash of their bobbing sallow tails, he was shown through many dim intersections and lighted burrows, the flanks of the warren becoming coarser, more uneven. Tessellated floor gave over to cool earth and cold puddles, the walls to rough earth, then quickly to the brick and stone of the city’s deep-sunk foundations. Finally even radiant fungus ceased, the threwd shrinking to little more than a sleepy suggestion, the merest hint for those who might care to notice.

  Moldy twilight gave over to a strengthening warmer glow. Just about a bend he discovered Ogh and Urgh stopped, sitting silhouettes before a ragged window of umber and blue; the end of the hole.

  “Thank you, good sirs,” he said to the rabbits, bowing to each in turn, wishing they might respond with words of their own and divulge primeval secrets.

  Mute, they regarded him blankly, noses ever twitch twitch twitch.

  With a sigh, the young factotum pushed through the shrouding fringe of unchecked vegetation, and, blinking near-blinded in the bright afternoon sun, almost slid down the steeply slanted side of the brick-paved drain. Gripping the edge of the hole, he saw that he had emerged into the usual world from between the weedy roots of an old turpentine growing far beyond the bounds of the Moldwood in some tiny neglected common.

  By its green trickle and orange carp he easily identified this channel. The Midwetter!—the very one flowing by Cloche Arde.

  Darter Brown appeared over the top of the high roofs—somehow reckoning Rossamünd’s path despite his hidden progress. With a tweet! the little fellow alighted on a spear-pointed post of the fence that lined the height of the drain.

  Rossamünd straightened, set his thrice-high firmly on his head and went on by way of the channel, back to service and contradictions.Walking carefully along the slope, he had the disorienting sensation of rousing from a deep and convincing dream—some mystic abyss—to finally gasp mundane and sensible air. By the time he clambered up the side of the bridge to Footling Inch, his time with the Lapinduce was a small disquieting memory and his thoughts were more concerned with how he might explain his absence to his mistress.

  Kitchen greeted him in the cold black vestibule. “Glad to see you have elected to return to us, Master Bookchild,” the steward began, a little dryly. “You are expected in our gracious lady’s file.”

  With a quiet knock at the carven door, Rossamünd waited for the usual “In.” When it did not occur, he rapped a little louder, at which the portal opened, revealing not Europe in some splendid gown but Fransitart, his worn, worried-looking eyes going wide with sharp relief.

  “Rossamünd!” he barked, grasping him by the shoulder as if never to let him go.

  “Master Frans?” Rossamünd said. “Where is Miss Europe?” Part stepping, part pulled into the file, he found Craumpalin there too, rising quickly from an easy chair before the fire, looking at him like one returned from the grave.

  “Pullets and cockerels! We thought ye pinched by the crimps, lad, and forced to serve upon a cargo!” Fransitart chided sharply, guiding him to the comfortable chairs.

  “Oh, no, not the crimps, Master Frans.”The young factotum frowned abstractedly as he took a seat by Craumpalin.

  “Aye, or carried off by some ill-informed mercator!” the old dispensurist added gruffly.

  “Where were ye at, Rossamünd?” Fransitart demanded, staring him hard in the eye. A penetrating, almost suspicious concern dawned in his eyes. “What troubles ye? What did ye see?”

  At that point Europe chose to enter, looking flushed and puffing as if she had been running many miles. She was wearing a long-hemmed seclude of diagonal pink, red and dark magenta stripes clinched about her waist with broad black satin, its hems, collar and turned-up cuffs white embroidered with thread-of-gold.

  “Is this to be your mode from here on, little man?” she asked with cool irony by way of salutation. “Are you thinking, now that I have released you from the straits of military life, to begin a career of adolescent revelry?”

  “No . . . no, Miss Europe,” he answered, a little surprised by his own directness. “Not intentionally, anyway.”

  “Well, out with it! A bad excuse is better than none. Where have you been?” Her gaze narrowed as she dabbed with a plush towel at the damp glow upon her forehead.

  Rossamünd had no notion of how to proceed.

  “I—”

  He had assumed he would tell them everything. Now it had come to it, he was powerfully disinclined to reveal much at all of the Lapinduce.The monster-lord had demanded no such fidelity, yet it was surely a betrayal to reveal its presence. Regardless, a man had died in pursuit of him. Surely Europe needed to know of this!

  “They—uh . . .” He gathered himself. “After the play, Rookwood and his obsequine friends took me to a chancery that was connected to a rousing-pit, where I—”

  Fransitart sucked in sharply. “Avast ye, lad! What point o’ compass did ye find such a place?”

  “By tunnels under the Broken Doll . . .”

  His old masters shifted unhappily in their places.

  “There’s an ill-hearted den.” Craumpalin whistled in consternation.

  Europe showed no such dismay. “And you did what there?” she pursued, shrewd suspicion dawning in her gaze.

  “I-I botched a dog. One of the nickers got free, so I . . . I threw glister in the face of a swordist trying to slay it.”

  There was a beat of stunned silence.

  “Why di’n’t ye simply weigh and depart at th’ outset, lad, when ye first knew what manner of people ye was with and what place ye was at?” Fransitart questioned.

  “They had locked us in. Besides, I could not leave”—my frair, Rossamünd almost said—“the little fellow undefended in that foul hole!”

  Europe closed her eyes long-sufferingly. “You do not always have to heed your conscience, Rossamünd. I find it is a troublesome guide to action, bringing all breeds of inconvenience. Was your intervention seen?”

  Rossamünd felt his cheeks flush guiltily. “A spurn of one of the pit’s patrons saw me. A wit . . .” His words caught in his throat. “He chased me from there.”

  “And my point is proven,” the fulgar said bitterly. She sat carefully upon a tandem before the fire. “So tell me, little man, how did you manage to escape a wit?”

  “I took a takeny from the Broken Doll, but once the driver realized a wit was on us, he put me out near the Moldwood and I ran into it. I hid far inside the park and stayed hidden all night. Th-then at day I came by the drain to get home.”

  Though he kept his words grave and even, a great wrench of compunction gripped his innards, the manifest tearing of loyalties. Firm, however, in his conviction to keep the Lapinduce hid, he held to his tale, fixing his gaze upon the fire lest they all see the evasion in his eyes.

 
Fransitart scrutinized him sharply, disappointment clear in his face.

  Pulling at his beard, Craumpalin stared at the fine Turkic hearth rug.

  Yet, astonishingly, they said nothing.

  Europe regarded Rossamünd narrowly. “I wonder,” she queried with subtle scorn, “if the patrons of the pit know they have hired the services of so unskilled a strivener as a fellow who loses another soul so easily in the limitations of a well-fenced park.”

  Resisting the urge to duck his head, Rossamünd kept his attention upon the consuming flames and said nothing.

  An unpleasant quiet ruled.

  Rossamünd’s humours pounded like an accusation at his temples.

  Europe flicked at some smidgen upon her thigh. “I see you preserved your hat at least, little man. Bravo.”

  “Aye, Miss Europe.”

  “Since you have been awake hiding the entire night,” his mistress went on, “perhaps you ought to go and rest now?”

  His soul burned. “I . . . I am well enough, ma’am.”

  She stared at him searchingly. “It is good then that we are shortly to go on the knave,” she said flatly.

  “How might that aid us, m’lady?” Fransitart pressed. “Trouble keeps for safe returns.”

  Europe bent her spoored brow. “To go out and come back with my bag full of prizes and new-pricked marks upon my arm shall amply prove all bad wind and ill rumor unfounded.” Closing her eyes, the fulgar smoothed her thin eyebrows with thumb and forefinger. “This has all been very diverting, but we have our own course to prepare. Banish fruitless recollections, Rossamünd; you have much to do to make ready. As for you, Masters Vinegar and Salt,” she added to the old vinegaroons, “seek out Latissimus in the coach-house across the road for your duties. I was to have us away today but . . .”

  “Delays change ways,” Craumpalin muttered.