Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  Grindrod did nothing to quell them, simply folding his arms. In fact, he showed open pride in the prentices’ muttering rebellion.

  “I said, quiet!” Witherscrawl shouted, and a foot-guard rapped the floor with the shaft end of his poleax, its cracking report startling the whole room to dumbness.

  With a foul sneer, the indexer raised a tall, thin ledger close to his face and from it began to read out names in letter-fall order: Arabis to go to Cothallow, Childebert to Sparrowstall, Egadis to Tumblesloe Cot just beyond the Roughmarch, and so on.

  Attention focused.

  “Mole to Ashenstall . . .”

  Onion Mole went white with dismay.The other prentices winced, Rossamünd with them. A long way east, Ashenstall was one of the harder billets on the road, isolated and with few vigil-day rests.

  Apprehension grew. They could not assume only the kinder billets would be given.

  “Wheede to Mirthalt . . . ,” droned the indexer, “Wrangle to . . . Bitterbolt . . .”

  With a chill, Rossamünd knew his name was next, languishing at the end of the lists along with Threnody’s . . .

  “Bookchild to Wormstool . . .”

  . . . and this chill became a frigid blank.

  Some of the other prentices gasped.

  Wormstool!

  This was the last—the very last—cothouse on the Wormway, well east of Ashenstall, with only the grim Imperial bastion of Haltmire between it and the Ichormeer. Built at the “ignoble end of the road,” Wormstool was no place for newly promoted prentice-lampsmen. Situated too near the sodden fringe of the dread swamp, it was held as one of the toughest billets of all. Only those who volunteered ever went there, yet here he was, a mere prentice, being sent. The Ichormeer had once been just a frightful fable to him. Now Rossamünd was going to live and work as a neighbor to its very borders, where all the bogles and the vilest hugger-muggers that ever dragged themselves from putrid mud haunted and harried. Absorbed in his shocked thoughts at this revelation, he did not hear where Threnody had been sent.

  Witherscrawl finished his recitation.

  The Master-of-Clerks presented himself again. “I will be wanting you all to your billets as soon as can be done. With time to travel in consideration, those farther out will leave sooner. Therefore those prentices stationed farthest away will be leaving on the first post of tomorrow morn. Well done to you all, my fine fellows—you are now all full lampsmen!”

  Confused and silent, the prentices were dismissed and that was that: Billeting Day—such as it had been—was over, an insulting sham.

  The Master-of-Clerks left without any further acknowledgment, taking his “tail” with him. Grindrod followed, and an angry, muttered conference could be heard out in the hallway, terminating suddenly with the Master-of-Clerks’ high clear voice saying, “Cease your querulous bickerings, Sergeant-lighter! It will be as I have decided it. They have been sent where needed. If you are so concerned for the children, then get back to them and make certain they are ready for their great adventure. Good day!”

  At first Rossamünd’s fellows were bemused. As the day progressed most were reconciled with their early promotions and many proved pleased with their billets, however untimely and however tawdrily they had been portioned. At lale—held indoors owing to inclement weather—they buzzed and boasted excitedly to each other about the various merits of their new posts, those billeted at the same cothouse gathering together in excited twos or threes. Every lad congratulated the others for their good fortune and the 7q extra they would all receive each month now that they were lampsmen 3rd class. For Onion Mole and even more so for Rossamünd there was baffled commiseration: he was the only prentice to be billeted at the ignoble end of the road.

  “Why are they sending you so far, Rosey boy?” asked Arabis, still smiling about his prime posting at Cothallow, one of the smartest cothouses on the road.

  Hands raised, Rossamünd shrugged.

  “I reckon you’ll be going tomorrow morning, then?” Pillow wondered aloud.

  “It’s a handy thing ye’ve had practice with yer potives.” Smellgrove patted him on the back.

  “Aye.” Wheede grinned. “The baskets will have to watch they don’t get a pud full of bothersalts.”

  Rossamünd ducked his head, grateful for their fumbling encouragements.

  Threnody had guzzled her saloop and was rising to leave.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her quickly.

  “Out from here,” she answered flatly.

  “Where are you billeted?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” she asked tartly. “I’m going to Dovecote Bolt. That Odious Podious thinks he is such a funny fellow—told me my mother would appreciate me being so close.”

  “We’ll be billet-mates!” cried Plod happily.

  “Oh, hazzah,” Threnody replied with a wry twist of her mouth, and departed.

  For the rest of the day, as Benedict strove, in Grindrod’s absence, to keep the animated prentices in line, Rossamünd’s mind was a hasty turning of half thoughts and unhappy conclusions. He was leaving—packed off posthaste to the worst billet in the land. Most likely he was leaving for good, to die at the hands of some ravenous nicker fresh plucked from the ooze. He had to tell Numps—just as Mister Sebastipole had done—that he might not see the glimner for a long time. Once again, mains became the prentice’s chance to venture out. When the meal came around he took only a hard loaf of pong to chew “on the foot” and hastened to the lantern store.

  As he went to leave the mess hall, he passed Threnody, back from making her treacle in the kitchens. She snatched at his arm. “I must talk with you,” she hissed.

  Rossamünd wrenched free. “Not now, Threnody. I must visit Numps to tell him I’m going,” he insisted in return.

  She glowered at him. “What do you have to do that is more important than me? I have things to tell you—a surprise.”

  “Truly, Threnody, it must wait,” he declared, pulling his arm free of her and dashing off, leaving her stunned and scowling.

  In the early night he ran down to the Low Gutter. The sweet smell of rain-washed air—the promise of showers—was blowing up from the southeast. Passing through Door 143 just as water began to fall, Rossamünd emerged from the shelves as his ready, if somewhat forced, smile of friendliness became a puzzled grimace. Numps was not in his usual seat by the glow of the postless great-lamp and the never diminishing pile of panes. Nor was he down the next aisle of shelves getting mineral fluids or other such things for cleaning stubborn crust.

  “Mister Numps?” he called.

  The rain a-hammered on the roof.

  Ringing ears.

  Nothing.

  “Mister Numps?” He turned slowly by the glimner’s empty seat, hoping the fellow might just shuffle out from behind a barrel or stack of lantern-windows. Horrid thoughts of some frightful crisis began to intrude into Rossamünd’s imagination, yet there was no evidence of trouble. Rossamünd searched down every aisle and behind any pile he could see: no Numps. Destroying his bloom is one thing, but surely he is too unimportant to be hurt or carried off? Rossamünd’s mind cogged. No one could be bothered, even if they did remember him. He thought of the undercroft and the old bloom baths. Surely not there? It’s been boarded up and blocked . . . This was the only alternative he knew.

  Careful not to attract attention with any untoward huff or hustle, the prentice slipped through the mazelike interstices between the work buildings, trying to find the path Numps had taken him that one wet day.Twice he thought he had got himself irrevocably lost, yet, though seen only once, the particular features of the twisting route were quickly familiar again and Rossamünd was soon dashing down the tunnel-like alley. He skidded into the discarded square and its gurgling drains, startling a sparrow that had been bobbing by the sunken grate.The entrance to the undercroft had indeed been sealed with boards, but these had been pulled away and collected in a tidy stack by the grate. Next to this stack sat an equally orderly co
llection of the bolts used to pin the boards in place, partly piled on top of a soiled official ordinance bill stringently demanding everyone to go away in painfully formal terms. Kneeling in the wet, the prentice leaned over the grate and tried to reach under as he had observed Numps do, to feel about for some kind of catch or spring or other lever.

  “Mister Numps!” he called, hoarse and wary, down the hole while he searched. “Mister Numps!” Nothing even vaguely catch or latchlike presented itself to his questing fingers.

  “Oh hallo, Mister Rossamünd.” The soft voice of the glimner echoed strangely from below, giving Rossamünd a fright. “I reckoned you were a guardsman fellow come to take my bloom again.”

  “Mister Numps!” With rushing relief, Rossamünd thought he could just spot the pale oval of Numps’ upturned face in the dark of the subterranean stair. “Are you safe? Are you hurt again?”

  “Oh dear . . . I don’t want to be found by the Master-Clerker . . . ,” the glimner quavered. “I didn’t want to be found without Mister ’Pole here.”

  Rossamünd smiled sadly. How he wished he could provide the glimner a greater sense of safety. Instead he had things to tell that he knew would be hard for the poor man.

  “I have to go too, Mister Numps,” he began. “They’re sending me away . . .”

  “Oh . . . oh dear . . .” Numps sighed, sounding bewildered. He must have climbed higher in his distress, for his pallid face became closer. “Numps’ friends all going . . . ”

  “The Master-of-Clerks called Billeting Day today,” Rossamünd confirmed, “and I am leaving to my cothouse—and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Tell Mister ’Pole—he won’t let you be sent away. Even poor old limpling-head Numps knows it’s too soon for prentices to go a-working. Write Mister ’Pole, he won’t let you go—I have his address, see . . .” Numps rummaged about in pockets.

  “I will . . . I will write him a letter,” said Rossamünd. “Maybe he can help us, even from the Considine. Things are so bad with his and the Marshal’s leaving. You should stay hiding if you can, Mister Numps—the fortress is downside up. Will you be able to eat and all?”

  “Ah, Mister Rossamünd.” Numps tapped his brow. “There are many things Numps knows that people don’t think he knows. There is food a-plenty if you go to the right places.” The glimner was oddly calm. “Besides, Cinnamon’s friends are watching over Numps-a-hiding so you can reckon me as safe.”

  Rossamünd thought of the sparrow he had startled, pecking at the grate, and smiled. He did not know what help these little agents of the Duke of Sparrows might be—if that was indeed what they were.What did that kind of attention mean? He wanted to believe that goodly urchin-lords existed, that Numps was well looked out for, but the old common suspicions persisted.

  A distant rataplan of the drums meant that mains was at an end and confinations about to begin.

  “I must go, Mister Numps. We will both write to Mister Sebastipole, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll stay safe and secret, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Rossamünd wanted to hug the glimner, but shyness and the grate prevented him. Instead he just stared into Numps’ melancholy eyes, and the man stared back.

  “Good-bye!” The prentice reluctantly turned to leave.

  “Good-bye, Mister Rossamünd,” he heard the glimner call behind him. “Numps won’t forget his new old friend—don’t you forget him . . .”

  “Never, Mister Numps!”

  Heavy with fear for the glimner’s fate, Rossamünd ran back to the manse. For the rest of confinations he packed, stowed all he had ever possessed and prepared himself for leaving at first light. In the last few moments before douse-lanterns he lay on his cot and with his stylus hastily scratched out a letter on a blank page torn from the back of the peregrinat.

  To Mister Sebastipole

  Lamplighter’s Agent & Falseman to the Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill

  Epistra Scuthae

  The Considine

  The Patricine

  2nd Heimio HIR 1601

  Dear Mister Sebastipole,

  I have no certainty this will make its way to you, but I try anyway.

  I write to you, Mister Sebastipole, on the last night of my prenticing in Winstermill, for since you left with the Marshal, the Master-of-Clerks has taken all in hand and declared Billeting Day early. Tomorrow I travel to the cothouse of Wormstool. But it is not this that troubles me. It is rather Mister Numps that I am worried for.The Master-of-Clerks (he calls himself the Marshal-Subrogat now) destroyed Mister Numps’ bloom (the stuff he was growing down in the deserted undercroft) the very day you departed, and Mister Numps (as I am sure you can well imagine) was sorely troubled. I managed to save a little part of it, but the baths are shattered and most of the bloom is dead. I fear for Mister Numps, that he isn’t safe with only the good Doctor Crispus to watch out for him.Would there be any way you can help him, or even get him away from the manse?

  He thought of adding:

  The last I saw of him he still hid where his bloom was once grown.

  . . . but realized the letter might be intercepted and read by unfriendly eyes and so he left it out. Instead he quickly completed the letter.

  I hope you and the Lamplighter-Marshal fare well, and that all unjust things are righted soon.

  Rossamünd Bookchild,

  Lampsman 3rd Class

  HIHF Winstermill

  Conduit Vermis

  Sulk End

  20

  ON LEAVING WINSTERMILL

  Idlewild, the ~ officially known as the Placidia Solitus, a gathering of client-cities (colonies) along the Imperial Highroad of the Conduit Vermis. Each town, village or fortress is sponsored by a different state of the Empire—Brandenbrass, Hergoatenbosch, Quimperpund, Maubergonne,Termagaunt, even Catalain. Established in the late 15th century HIR, it is the latest great project of what is grandly termed cicuration—taming by farming; purgation—taming by force; and bossesation—taming by landscaping, originally proposed by Clementine itself. The Inner Idlewild or Placidine, from Tumblesloe Cot to the Wight, was declared “regio scutis”—a fenceland—over a decade ago. This heralded a brilliant success of the great labor of pushing back the monsters and the threwd. The marches from the Wight to Haltmire—otherwise known as the Paucitine (also the Frugelle)—are still considered ditchland.

  IN the clear, bright and oppressively cold morning Rossamünd watched Winstermill recede as the post-lentum took him away. Threnody sat opposite him in the cabin, snuggled in a nest of furs.The first he knew of her joining him was her appearance on the Grand Mead that morning, baggage and all, as he waited for the lentum. Originally billeted at Dovecote Bolt, the girl was not supposed to be here in the carriage, the first to take freshly promoted prentices out to their new home. Somehow late the day before, she had succeeded in having her posting changed and was now with him on the road to Wormstool. Perhaps this was what she had been so intent on telling him the evening before. “It’s too dangerous just for one” was all she had said in explanation as they had waited on the cold Mead earlier that morning. “I’ll keep watch on your flanks, and you’ll keep watch on mine.”

  Rossamünd wondered briefly how the besotted Plod would feel about her change of destination. She was surely the most gorgeously accoutred lamplighter along the whole of the Wormway in her scarlet and gold harness and mass of midnight ringlets. Under one arm she clutched a day-bag, while a linen package and a mysterious round box sat on the seat beside. One hand was kept warm in a fuzzy white snuftkin, the other clutched a duodecimo novel, which she was reading with pointed concentration. Despite her infuriating twists of manners and mood, Rossamünd was at first glad she had come along. But beyond the initial word she had been ignoring him, for reasons he could not quite comprehend, spoiling the sweetness of her original gallant gesture.

  Has she come with me just to have someone to still pick on?

  Rossamünd had rea
ding matter of his own. Before the lentum-and-four had departed, he had ventured to the Packet File to deliver his letter for Sebastipole and had been given another missive in return. He still clutched it in his hand, forgotten in the haste of his embarkation. With him in the cabin he had also brought his restocked salumanticum, his old traveling satchel with its knife-in-sheath attached holding his peregrinat, and a parcel of wayfood. On the seat next to him was his precious valise crammed with smalls and other necessaries for five days’ travel. Anything over that and he would just have to make do. The rest of what he owned—most of it issued by the lamplighters when he first joined—had been stowed in an ox trunk and fixed to the roof of the lentum along with Threnody’s sizable collection of luggage, their fodicars and fusils.

  In his pocket his buff-leather wallet was bulging full with traveling papers, reissued after the ruin his old ones had become on his way to Winstermill. There was also a work docket already bearing its first remarks: the period of his service as a prentice and the tasks undertaken, by which was a “CS” for “Completed to Satisfaction”; under “Conduct” was the comment “Late for prenticing period” and two small “i’s” for his impositions—pots-and-pans with the now-vanished Mother Snooks. It was all signed off by the Master-of-Clerks himself, now the Marshal-Subrogat.

  With these papers was a fair wad of folding notes and coin—his three months’ wages as a prentice and a large portion of the money Europe had given to him in High Vesting. As for a hat, there had been no time to replace it, and so here he was venturing out with little more than the bandage about his head.

  The east wind whistled low on the Harrowmath, the usual odor of the long grass rank with the rot of sodden vegetation. Mixing with the flat nonodor of his newly applied Exstinker, it became an unpleasant half stink in Rossamünd’s nostrils. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and sighed his melancholy. An untimely departure, an uncertain way ahead, and Numps left in the rough care of the lighters, yet Rossamünd was glad to be out of Winstermill and on the road once more. He even entertained the hope he might see Europe on the way through.