Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  The growl turned voluble.

  “How dare the baskets try such things!”

  “We’ll have our own back at ’em, just you wait!”

  “My brothers!” The Marshal’s steady voice stilled them. “From loftiest officer to lowliest lighters’ boy, we must stand together—and we will. We have fought the long fight for eons beyond the telling of books. Humankind stands and will stand the longer if we stand together. Even now a faithful band seeks the very beast who slew our brother, as we, undaunted, continue to keep the way clear and safe. Lighters! We are the bulwark between our fellow men and the raging monstrous malice: we are the brave band who shall always light the way! Of discipline and limb!” he cried with a burst of steaming breath, jaw jutting proudly and a deadly gleam a-flashing in his eye.

  “Of discipline and limb!” cried the many hundred throats before him, Rossamünd’s own among them.

  Smiling with paternal grimness, the Lamplighter-Marshal took his place at the head of the line of most senior officers as the Sergeant-Major-of-Pediteers stepped forward with a rousing monologue of his own. After him came the bureaucrats, their ornamental wigs drooping curls almost halfway down their backs: the Quartermaster, the Compter-of-Stores, the rotund works-general, each complaining about some unheeded quibble of clerical detail or neglected civil nicety. Last of all was the Master-of-Clerks. With saccharine gentility and that never-shifting ingratiating smile, he droned about some new bit of paperwork required, some new process to record the change of watches. At times he would say things that Rossamünd did not understand but had the vast plethora of clerks chuckling knowingly. As the bee’s buzz went, the clerk-master was the darling of the bureaucrats of Winstermill. They looked up to him—so Rossamünd had learned—not just as their most senior officer, but as a genius of perpetual administrative reinvention. His only joys were the minutiae of governance and refining of systems that already worked.Tending to the clerical quibbles of fortress and highroad Rossamünd had heard Assimus and Bellicos (when he had lived) griping to each other—Podious Whympre was getting a better grasp upon the running of the manse than the overworked Lamplighter-Marshal.

  Near the Master-of-Clerks—as always—was Laudibus Pile, lurking at the back of the podium, looking out over the pageant with narrowed, quizzing eye. For a beat Rossamünd was sure the falseman had fixed him with his lie-seeing eyes. The prentice was held in this distant interrogation till Pile seemed to see what he sought and, satisfied, looked for another to play this game upon.

  Piebald gray clouds stretched over them from horizon to horizon like a roof on the day. Beneath these drifted smaller, knobbled cumulus blown up by southern winds, increasing the impression of a vaporous ceiling. Cold clouds these were, but not rainy ones. With the winds came the faintest scent of the Grume, the great bay to the south. Breathing deeply of this sweet-yet-acrid hint, Rossamünd could have sworn he heard carried with it the faintest wailing of whimbrels—the elegant, scavenging gulls of the southern coasts. The great, hopeless longing to serve at sea sat like cold gruel in his bosom.

  Snap! went the flags in the winds.

  With a cry from the gate-watch that cut through the Master-of-Clerks’ chidings, the bronze gates were swung open and a glossy red and brown coach rushed through with all the self-importance of a post-lentum. It was a dyphr, a small carriage pulled by two horses, its sides raised and roof lowered.

  “Eyes front, you slugs!” barked Grindrod, as several boys turned their heads to see.

  The vehicle dashed past the parade, peppering those standing nearest the drive with fine gravel flicked from its wheels, and pulled up sharply before the great steps of the manse.

  Most of those on the podium made to continue, a bloody-minded show of their disregard for the impetuous arrival. Yet, as the Surveyor-of-the-Works finished his housekeeping plaints and before the Master-of-Clerks could return to reiterate, the Lamplighter-Marshal stepped forward and, to general relief, ended proceedings prematurely. Finally, with a blare of horns and a rattle of toms, the pageant-of-arms was done.

  Grindrod dismissed the prentices with a simple order of “Port arms!”—perhaps keen himself to be on with the vigil-day rest. “Master Lately, be sure to report to the kitchens,” he reminded Rossamünd with no evident satisfaction. With that the lamplighter-sergeant walked abruptly off to join other sergeants milling at the edge of the Grand Mead to watch the small carriage.

  Released from the painfully motionless dumb show of the pageant, the delighted prentices hurried off to get ready for the jaunt to Silvernook, all interest in the dyphr forgotten in their eagerness to be away.

  Rossamünd stayed. He was intensely curious to know of the passengers and in no hurry to start a long day of pots-and-pans.

  Threnody too observed the carriage, her expression strangely intense. She gave a soft groan. “Yes, Mother, I have been a good girl . . .”

  Rossamünd looked askance at her.

  She appeared not to have noticed he was there. He gave a subtle cough.

  Threnody nearly betrayed her surprise, but with a haughty toss of raven tresses recovered. She cocked an eyebrow emphatically at the lentum and said bombastically, “Who is it that has so quickly come in yonder conveyance, you want to ask? Why, it’s my mother, come to chastise her wayward daughter no doubt, and sermon me on the honor of our clave.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Indeed. She cannot leave me be for a moment! I am not a week gone and she is come to crush me back into her shape.”

  The Lamplighter-Marshal now approached the carriage with Inkwill and a quarto of troubardiers. He was followed by the Master-of-Clerks and that man’s attendant crowd. Dolours too had appeared, walking over from the Officers’ Green, her favorite spot it seemed, from where she must have been watching the entire pageant unheeded.Two calendars had already emerged from the dyphr clad in the mottle of the Right of the Pacific Dove, and they acknowledged the bane’s approach with subtle hand-signs. Rossamünd recognized one as Charllette the pistoleer, though the other he did not know. Standing proud upon the manse steps, the marshal-lighter greeted the passenger within the carriage with elegant manners, giving a gallant bow as he handed her out.

  “Well betide you, O Lady Vey. A hale welcome to you, August of the Columbines, and to your attendants, from we simple lighters.” His declaration was gracious without being fawning.

  The last passenger, a woman with hard eyes, hooked nose and a sardonic curl to the corners of her mouth, emerged and responded with equal decorum. “Well betide you, sir,” the Lady Vey enunciated beautifully. She was tall, with black hair the hue of her daughter’s, yet hers was as straight as Threnody’s was curly. Like everyone that morning, she was dressed against the chill in a thick mantle of precious, fur-lined silk with a sumptuous fitch of bristling white dove feathers about her neck and shoulders. Lady Vey stepped away from the dyphr with all the poise and arrogance of a peer. She glared at the lowering sky and pulled her mantle close with a twirling, theatrical flicking of its hems.

  So that was the Lady Vey, the great august of a calendar clave. So that was Threnody’s mother.

  “Ah! There is my laude, the Lady Dolours,” the woman declared with a tight smile.

  “Always her first, isn’t it, Mother?” Threnody muttered. “Never a kind thought or concern for me . . .”

  Dolours bowed low, with apparent deep and genuine respect.

  “She has been abed with fever, gracious August,” the Lamplighter-Marshal declared. “But our locum has seen to her as best he can.”

  SYNTYCHË̈ THE LADY VEY

  “And Pandomë, my handmaiden?” The august looked at the faces about her. “I hear she is badly hurt.”

  “Your handmaiden mends well in the infirmary . . . and your daughter too has been installed safely in her new role. We are glad to have her among us.”

  “Yes, very good.” The Lady Vey looked over her shoulder and gazed around slowly. She saw her daughter immediately, as if she knew where sh
e was all along. Something profound and complex transmitted between mother and daughter, something beyond Rossamünd’s comprehension. For all her tough talk and showing away, Threnody seemed to flinch, and hung her head in uncharacteristic defeat. The Lady Vey swept up the manse steps, unheeding of the bureaucrats and the attendants all deferring a pace to give her room as she slid past.

  Threnody rolled her eyes, bravado quickly returning. “Off to my executioners,” she said with ill-feigned indifference.

  Rossamünd frowned and blinked. “Pardon?”

  “My mother is never happy with me,” she sighed. “And I go to find out just how unhappy she is . . .”

  “Oh.”

  Hardening her face and hiding her dismay, Threnody obeyed some invisible command and left to join the new arrivals.

  Left alone as the day-trippers left for Silvernook, Rossamünd went his reluctant way to the kitchens.

  Mother Snooks did not want to see him. Looking haggard, she dismissed the young prentice from her sight almost as soon as he entered. “Be on ye way! Whatever wicked crimes ye have to serve yer wretched day atonin’ for, it won’t be done here. Go!”

  Knowing full well that Grindrod had just departed on a south-bound lentum, Rossamünd was puzzled as to what to do next. It was tempting to exploit this as a twist of fortune and take an easy day after all. However, if he did not serve one imposition now, he would only have to serve two later. Knocking at the sergeants’ mess door, he asked Under-Sergeant Benedict instead.

  “Well, Master Bookchild,” the under-sergeant said, stroking his chin, “we must find you another task, else our kindly lamplighter-sergeant might set you more. If the Snooks won’t have you, then perhaps Old Numps will.”

  “Who?” Rossamünd asked.

  “He’s a glimner working down in the Low Gutter.You’ll find him in the lantern store, Door 143, cleaning lantern-panes. You can clean them with him—a nice simple task for a vigil-day imposition.”

  Rossamünd felt anxious. He had heard of the mad glimner in the Low Gutter. It was the same fellow Smellgrove had been telling of at Wellnigh.

  “Be on your way, lad,” Benedict instructed, “and work with Numps till middens. I’ll report to Grindrod that your duty—we’ll call it panel detail—was served. Don’t look so dismayed.”

  Rossamünd tried to blank his face of worry.

  Benedict smiled and scratched the back of his cropped head. “The glimner might have the blue ghasts from a tangle with gudgeons, but from what I hear the fellow is harmless.”

  Rossamünd did not share the under-sergeant’s confidence.

  10

  NUMPS

  seltzermen tradesmen responsible for the maintenance of all types of limulights. Their main role is to make and change the seltzer water used in the same. Among lamplighters, seltzermen have the duty of going out in the day to any lamp reported by the lantern-watch (in ledgers set aside for the purpose) as needing attention and performing the necessary repair. This can be anything from adding new seltzer, to adding new bloom, to replacing a broken pane or replacing the whole lamp-bell.

  EXCEPT for targets in the Toxothanon, Rossamünd had never gone down into the Low Gutter. He had often wanted to explore its workings, but he now descended the double flights of the Medial Stair with flat despondency. A Domesday vigil wasted.

  Despite a gathering storm roiling to the south, Rossamünd did not hurry. He took time to stroll through the Low Gutter, fascinated by this hurry-scurry place. There were many here who rarely participated in a vigil-day rest. Great fogs of steam seeped from doorway seals and boiled from the chimneys of the Tub Mill, which stood on the other side of a wide cul-de-sac at the east end of the Toxothanon. It was a-bustle with fullers entering and leaving, burdened with bundles of laundry in varying states of cleanliness. The prentice stood aside for a train of porters hefting loads of clean clothing back to the manse, wondering if any of his own clobber was among them.

  Crossing a wide cul-de-sac, the All-About, and passing by the Mule Row, a neat three-story block of servant housing, Rossamünd could hear the hammering of a smith or a cooper, and with this the sawing of a carpenter. In the narrow lane beyond, muleteers trotted their mules in and out of the ass manger, mucking their stalls, scrubbing the animals, feeding them. Beyond the manger rose the near-monumental mass of the magazine, where much of the manse’s black powder was stored. This structure was said to have ten-foot-thick walls of concrete but a roof of flimsy wood, there only to keep out rain. If there was ever an explosion, it would be contained by the walls and erupt through this frangible top far less harmfully into the air.

  Dodging a mule and its steaming deposit, Rossamünd made his way across the street to where two besomers sat beneath an awning determinedly binding straw with wire, making ready for brooms.

  “Well-a-day to you, young lampsman.What can we do for you?” one of the men called as the prentice approached.

  “Hello, sirs,” said Rossamünd, and touched his forehead in respect. Almost everyone in Winstermill was of superior rank to a prentice-lighter. “I seek the lantern store and Mister Numps.”

  A queer look passed between the two besomers.

  “Do you, then? Well, just keep on your way past us, past the well, and the magazine, through the work-stalls and behind the pitch stand—that large hutch yonder there.You’re looking for the big depository that’s built right against the east-end wall.You want to go through Door 143.”

  Bidding thanks, Rossamünd followed the friendly directions and found himself before a low wooden warehouse built beneath the shadow of the Gutter’s eastern battlements. On the rightmost door he found a metal plate that read:

  Even as the prentice approached the door the rain suddenly arrived, falling quick and hard. Unprotected by any eave or porch, Rossamünd ignored all polite custom, opened “143” without a knock and ducked inside.

  The depot beyond was truly the lantern store, he discovered, as his sight adjusted to the scant light. On either side of him were shelves, ceiling-high and sagging with all the equipment needed to mend and maintain the vialimns or great-lamps. Rows of lamp-bells without their glass stood on their collets in a line or hung on hooks from the roof beams. Whole wrought lantern-posts were laid flat in frames, ready to replace any ruined by time or the action of monsters. There were rolls of chain for mending the winds and with them spools of wire. At the end of this crowded avenue of metal and wood hung a massive rack of tools used for repair work. Chisels and heavy saws, sledgehammers, crowbars, mallets, rivet molds, powerful cutters and clamps and other devices were arranged upon it, all for the singular problems a seltzerman might face.

  Despite the rain hammering on the lead-shingle roof, Rossamünd could make out a small, infrequent tinkling in the gloom, like two people touching glasses at a compliment. He could not fathom why some happy pair might be taking a tipple in the dim lantern store. Curious, he followed the sporadic noise deeper into the store. A low, lonely singing, true in tone, deep yet sweet, came through the dust and tools.

  Will the Coster sat in posture,

  Upon his bed of hay.

  Will the Coster spake,“I’ve lost her!”

  Head sadly hung to sway.

  Such sad posture for Will Coster:

  “She ne’er should gone away.”

  But Will Coster, he has lost her,

  And grieves it ev’ry day.

  Beguiled, Rossamünd stepped out from among the shadows and equipment and into light. An old-fashioned great-lamp lit the space, with seltzer so new it glowed the color of summer-bleached straw. Cluttered about it was a motley collection of damaged and ruined bright-limns, great-lamps, flares, oil lanterns, even a corroded old censer like those that burned at the gate of Wellnigh House. Right in the middle of it all was the singer. He was alone, sitting on a wicker chair and bent over an engrossing task. He hunched strangely in his seat, his face a dark profile against the seltzer light, his legs pulled up oddly in front. His buff-colored hair was in an ad
vanced state of thinning, and what little he possessed grew lank and thin to his jawline. He was winter-wan, and glimpses of his pallid skull gleamed in the clean light.

  There was another “chink,” and the prentice saw the fellow put a small pane of glittering glass upon a stack and then, with the same hand, replace this with another dull piece.This he placed in his lap and, still with the same hand, tipped grit paste from a clay jar on to a cloth laid out on a broad barrel. He did something remarkable then. He put down the jar and, with a deft movement of his leg, picked up the cloth between nimble toes and began to polish. He used his foot—bootless and stockingless even on this inclement day—as easily as another might use a hand.

  “H-Hello,” Rossamünd said softly.

  The fellow hesitated only briefly then kept polishing, round and round with his toe-gripped cloth. “I felt you there a-shuffling,” he said quietly, almost a whisper, so desperately fragile that Rossamünd stepped closer to hear it better. “Have you come to help me or to hurt me?”

  “I—ah . . . to help, I hope.” The prentice smiled nervously to show that he was not a threat.

  “You smell like a helper” was the baffling reply.