Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  Threnody said little for the whole meal, sitting straight and taut, her eyes never leaving her food, and anyone who attempted to speak with her soon gave up in the face of her monosyllabic reluctance.

  “What do we call you, girly?” one friendly young fellow of the day-watch tried. “Lamp-lass 3rd Class?” He chuckled in a cheerful way, as did those about him.

  Threnody looked at the man sidelong, her fork hovering before her mouth. “Probably anything but girly might be a good start,” she said quietly.

  “Watch out, Theudas!” Sergeant Mulch guffawed. “She’s got the tongue of a whip, has our new lady lighter!” which everyone thought a great joke.

  The young fellow called Theudas, red-faced, went back to his eating, while Threnody looked rather pleased with herself.

  After the morning meal, dishes were collected and washed by the men of the day-watch themselves. Rossamünd tried thanking Sequecious the Sebastian cook for a brilliant meal, to which the man, in a thick accent simply repeated, “Tank yee! Tank yee!” with that unceasing grin.

  Dishes done, Rossamünd and Threnody were directed back to their bunks, joining the lantern-watch for their prescribed rest. Threnody’s screens were brought and erected with much better grace than at Tumblesloe Cot. They were put about the farthest bed from the others and, once up, the girl-lighter disappeared behind them, not to be seen again till much later.

  Rossamünd organized himself, sorting satchels and bags. He pulled out a bag of boschenbread and offered a piece to Aubergene, who was sitting on his own cot, already in a long nightshirt.

  “Why, thankee, Ros—ah—Rossamünd, isn’t it?” he said to Rossamünd’s offer.

  “Aye,” the young lighter replied, “Rossamünd—Rossamünd Bookchild of Boschenberg.”

  “Ahh, hence the bread and your baldric, aye?” Aubergene made a little salute with his tasty morsel, pointing at Rossamünd’s black and brown baldric, now hanging from an iron bedpost. “So why did they billet you here, truthfully? Everyone is here because of something . . .”

  Because the Master-of-Clerks is a conniving, wicked blackguard! went across Rossamünd’s thoughts, but he said, “I’m not sure, it’s just where they sent us.” Taking Europe’s warning, he was not about to leap into some long-winded, barely believable story of events real and suspected. “What about you?” he quickly added.

  “Me? Oh, I’ve got a dead-frank aim, and—uh—I calfed after the wrong girl” was all he said, leaving Rossamünd with more questions. Yet before he could ask them Aubergene himself quickly added, with a slightly gormless smile, “Well, welcome to the Stool.”

  Rossamünd grinned in return.

  The cots proved just as uncomfortable as Winstermill’s—some things in military service always stayed the same, it seemed.Windows were shuttered, blocking the diffuse, surprisingly bright light coming through the fog without. He peeked through a shutter. The fume was slowly dissolving, clearing the eastern view. The young lighter stared at the hazy horizon and could not quite believe that maybe only a day’s lentum-ride farther began one of the most feared places in all the Half-Continent, maybe even the world. “Have you seen the Ichormeer, Aubergene?”

  “Aye,” the lampsman replied soberly. “It’s all foul bottomless bogs and stinking pools the color of your heart’s blood; half-dead thickets of red-leafed thornbushes and floating islands of red weed. Every path you take is treacherous and the rot of it all stays in the back of your throat long after you’ve escaped the place. I don’t know how they managed to build the Wormway across it, must have cost a whole trunk of lives.” Aubergene shook his head. “What the more, it’s where the nickers are said to be born or somesuch—however that happens. You don’t want to be going there, Rossamünd. I surely never want to return.”

  Rossamünd listened with rapt attention. Despite—or perhaps because of—the lampsman’s lurid description, he was more keen to see the infamous place. Lying down to sleep, he found his imagination ran for the longest time with thoughts of a corrupted, bloodred swampland where loathsome things slithered and groveled in the noisome muds.

  They were woken after middens by the arrival of costerman Squarmis, surprisingly delivering their heavy luggage intact and unmolested. Ox trunks properly stowed at the feet of their cots,Threnody’s extra packages crammed underneath, the two new lighters were set to task. It was with profound and sinking horror that Rossamünd discovered the very first duty set aside for them: feed and muck the dogs.

  Oh no!

  “Ye’ve done this before, aye?” said Lamplighter-Sergeant Mulch. “And if ye haven’t, well . . . I suggest ye learn quickly. It’s an easy job and a good way to start, so hop to it now.” There was a familiarly gruff manner in this lamplighter-sergeant, very much like the one they had left behind at Winstermill and perhaps all the sergeants the Half-Continent over.

  “Dogs don’t like me so much, Lamplighter-Sergeant,” Rossamünd tried forlornly.

  “They’ll get used to ye,” the man insisted, “especially if ye hold them out a little bit o’ food.”

  “We will do splendidly, Sergeant,” Threnody said flatly, and taking Rossamünd under his arm, pulled him with her down to the kennels.

  But they did not do splendidly.

  As at Wellnigh House, so it was here. No matter how tasty a morsel Rossamünd held out to them, the dogs went wild. Threnody’s solution of sending him down to close off and muck out the other end of the cage failed miserably; the dogs bayed and yammered and made such a ruckus at him that all of Wormstool came running with cries of “Nicker on the doorstep!”

  They soon realized what was what. There was no nicker anywhere, not even after a full quarto of the Stoolers searched the perimeters of the cothouse with Crescens Hugh the lurksman at their lead.

  “I dun’t know, mates, it’s all cry and no nickers,” Hugh declared when the searchers returned and the front door was secured once more. Everyone professed themselves mystified and the incident was dismissed.

  Lamplighter-Sergeant Mulch just shook his head when all was done and declared, “The dogs truly don’t like ye, do they, lad?”

  24

  A LAMPLIGHTER’S LIFE

  combinades hand arms that are a clever combination of melee weapon and firelock.The firing mechanism on most combinades is an improved wheel lock, being more sturdy than a flintlock, and able to take the jars that come when the weapon is used to strike a foe. Added to this, the lock mechanism, trigger and hammer are usually protected by gathered bands of metal, a basket much like those protecting the hilts of many foreign swords. When edges and bullets are treated with gringollsis, combinades become very effective therimoirs (monster-killing tools).

  ON the second day Rossamünd’s life as a lamplighter started in full. Now he was properly arrived in this wild place, he was careful to replenish his bandage with the recent-made Exstinker, dawdling with his preparations until the other lighters had gone to breakfast. Obeying instructions, he ventured out fully harnessed, a necessary precaution this close to the monsters’ realm. He quickly discovered the day-watch consisted of little more than rounds of chores, beginning—navylike—with the scrubbing of all the floors, soap-stoning and swabbing and flogging every story of the tower as if they were the decks of a ram.

  Nothing more was said about the incident with the dogs, though the young lighter was not required to muck and feed them anymore. Instead he and Threnody helped in the kitchens or in the Works—as the third floor from the entrance was named, carrying and fetching for Onesimus Grumely, the house-tinker and sometime proofener, or tending the fortlet’s bright-limns and lanterns with Mister Splinteazle, Seltzerman 2nd Class.Yet Rossamünd soon discovered his favorite task was to join sentries, watching through the loopholes in the walls or from the observation benches upon the roof. Dubbed the Fighting Top, it was a place he quickly decided was the best in the whole cothouse. From there, high and safe, he could marvel at the whole flatland of the Frugelle with little interruption and still be consi
dered working.

  Threnody did not share his enthusiasm for the view. “This is an ugly place,” she declaimed darkly as they watched with Theudas after middens. “All I can see is a hundred nooks for bugaboos to flourish.”

  Even as she spoke there came a single flash of lightning far away north, leaping from the flat cover of cloud straight to the earth. A second distant bolt had Theudas ducking.

  “What, by my aching bowels, was that?” the lampsman exclaimed.

  The peal of thunder took a long time to reach them, and by then it was only a sullen grumble.

  “Maybe Europe has found her rever-man!” Rossamünd stared in the direction of the strike, heart thumping with fright.

  “Maybe,” replied Threnody, her tone saying, Who cares!

  Threnody’s sour misgivings and the regularity of lamplighting life soon dulled the novelty of a new location. A day’s beginning was marked by the usual rattle of drums and its end by the cry “A lamp! A lamp to light your path!” declaring the arrival of the Haltmire lighters—stern, stiff fellows that the Stoolers called “Limpers.” Then, as at Winstermill, was a little time for each day-watchman to do as he pleased before douse-lanterns. However, Rossamünd found the sameness of each day—as at Winstermill—a real and surprising comfort; for all their overfamiliarity, the routines were powerfully settling.

  Different from the manse, however, were Domesdays. Out here they were not free of labor; indeed the lantern-watch had no rest at all. It was a day of reduced work, but House-Major Grystle was of the opinion that idle hands make waste, and the vigil was a make-and-mend day where clothes were patched and proofing was mended.

  Yet in between light Domesday duties and any spare moment of an evening, the Stoolers enjoyed what Rossamünd soon considered his favorite pastime: sitting in the mess to play at checkers and the card games of lesquin and pirouette. They conducted themselves with far better grace and mirth than the prentices and, though the stakes were high, there was no bickering on the shuffle or squabbling over who could bet what or when. At pirouette—where the winning hand had the losing hand do a silly dance—they went easy on Rossamünd, letting him learn; but Threnody they needed to give no such grace. She quickly showed herself a match for all, even Mister Harlock, the sergeant-master, who proved shrewdly adept at outwitting most of his billet-mates. Young Theudas, however, was far too sharp and beat all with great whoops! of victory as he mercilessly had everyone—even Rossamünd—hopping one dance or another as they lost the round.

  “Kindly Ladies Watch the Happy Aurangs again!” he declared triumphantly, throwing down both queens, both duchesses and both aurangs.

  Half the success of the game was knowing precisely what made for a winning hand; there was a long list of combinations, just like the Hundred Rules of Harundo, and Rossamünd was slow to remember them all. Once again his own hand was pathetically meager, the worst of the round and now—for the fifth time that night—he was made to gambol about, curling his arms in and out calling, “I’m a monkey! I’m a monkey!” his face attaining the hue of the red side of his quabard.

  “Go easy on the new babbies,” Lamplighter-Sergeant Mulch chuckled while the other Stoolers guffawed at Rossamünd’s antics. Threnody looked on with an expression of almost feline satisfaction. Mysteriously, Theudas never seemed to trump her, and she had not yet been made to dance a single turn.

  Mulch’s well-intentioned interjection only made Theudas more gleefully determined to win, and Rossamünd was made to turn a jig many more times before he won his first hand. Of all his billet-mates, Aubergene or Lightbody were perhaps the most unfortunate at cards.

  “Ye’d have to be the most losingest two I ever clapped eyes on!” Under-Sergeant Poesides would laugh almost every night as he watched either unfortunate lighter lope about foolishly as the winning cards directed. He and all the others—whether Stooler, Bleaker or Limper—would refuse to play them at the more serious hands of lesquin. Here the spoils of victory were grog rations and favors; the lowest-valued favor was to stand in for kitchen duties or firelock cleaning, the value quickly escalating to the ultimate prize: having another take your place to muck the jakes. Out here sewer-workings were not nearly as sophisticated as at Winstermill, and the water closets needed frequent flushing with buckets of old dishwater and cleaning with broad, blunt shovels on long handles—an odious job, the most unpleasant task for the day-watch.

  The house-major would play no game of chance against his men—especially not lesquin—declaring solemnly that “an officer should never take from those under his command nor be seen to be overborne by them either.”

  Near the end of their first week new stores arrived on the back of a long dray that had lumbered the dangerous Wettin Lowroad up from Hurdling Migh. Rossamünd knew only vaguely of this city: an isolated settlement—so his peregrinat told him—semi-independent in its remoteness and filled with a stern yet hospitable people. The driver of the dray and his grim-looking side-armsman were both pale-looking fellows. They had apparently made the northward journey often, but the threatening rumor of bogle and nicker had forced them to hire a scourge for protection.

  This hireling was called the Scarlet Tarquin. He—she—it—sat stiffly now at the front of the truck swathed entirely in red fascins, bandaged crown to toe in protective cloth with only two round lenses protruding at the eyes. Laden with salumanticums, stoups, powder-costers and all the appurtenances of skolding, the scourge simply watched but did not offer help. Passing the red-wrapped teratologist as he and Threnody tumbled down the steps to help unload, the young lighter was affronted by a faint, yet powerfully unpleasant whiff of potent chemistry. He stayed well clear of this scarlet scourge as he worked.

  On the dray were piled crates of musket balls, wayfoods and script parts; butts of rum, wine and black powder; sacks of flour, cornmeal and dried pease; even three bolts of undyed drill for making-and-mending day.While two lighters stood at guard on the road, every item was hauled up by a limber-run sheer on the fourth floor, its winch arm swung out from broad double doors—the store-port high in Wormstool’s wall. Climbing onto the dray, Rossamünd helped Theudas and Poesides shift and tie each load to the sheer cord.

  Standing below by the flat truck, the tired and humorless driver was arguing vociferously with Semple the day-clerk about the excessive charge for service this time.

  “Thy wants thy goods timely and whole, do thee not?” the driver was saying. “Safe passage for cargo dern’t come cheap nowadays.” He glared at the Scarlet Tarquin for emphasis.

  Rossamünd did not hear the reply, for Poesides moved away with sudden violence, giving a great shout: “Watch it, lad! The knot’s come loose! Load’s goin’ to fall!” The under-sergeant tried to grab at him but did not get a grip as he stumbled away.

  “Clear out below!” came a sharp cry from the store-port above.

  Rossamünd looked up and there hurtling down to crush him was a butt, set free by a poorly tied knot—a knot he had wound himself.The young lighter hesitated in his fright, stupidly heedless of his own danger and more concerned with the possible harm to the stores.

  “Rossamünd!” Threnody yelped.

  Yet he stood transfixed as the heavy barrel dropped on him; instead of leaping aside he caught the entire weight in his arms with little more than a slight huff!—just as you might catch an inflated ball. The weight of the load drove him to the truck-top, pinning him on his back. He held the butt on his chest for several astounded beats before lifting it and setting it carefully back on the tray, keenly aware of the equally astounded faces all turned to him, even peering in amazement from the fourth floor.

  “Did ye see that?” he heard drift down from above. “Fifty pound of musket shot and he catched it without a trouble!”

  “How’d you do that?” Theudas exclaimed. “That was a full butt of balls! It would have smashed even Sequecious flat!”

  Threnody rushed to the side of the dray-truck and looked up at him. “Rossamünd! Are you whole?”
>
  “I—I believe so . . .” was all the young lighter could get out. He tugged at the white solitaire about his throat, seeking better breath.

  “That’s enough heavy loading for ye, lad,” Poesides declared. “Ye can’t depend on freakish catches all the time in this job. Take a spell inside. Have Mister Tynche or Splinteazle take a look at ye if ye reckon it necessary. I’ll leave ye in the hands of the lass.”

  Rossamünd obeyed, Threnody helping him up each stairway.

  “You should have been pounded to pea-mash by that bullet-barrel,” she insisted.

  “My chest does hurt, if that’s more satisfying,” Rossamünd answered wryly.

  “Oh, ha-ha.” Threnody did not look amused. “You should hardly make a jest of such a horrid thing. I thought you were done in! Poesides has it right: most certainly a freakish catch.”

  Talk of his feat buzzed about the cothouse in an instant, and other Stoolers popped their heads out from nooks to send funny looks his way.

  Safely deposited on his bunk, Rossamünd took off his proofed-silk sash and his quabard to relieve the bruised tenderness in his ribs.

  “What is that about your chest?” Threnody asked, crouching by him and looking at the loose collar of his shirt.

  Rossamünd’s innards almost burst open with fright. Oh no, my Exstinker bandage! “It’s—it’s—it’s . . . it’s for putting on nullodor,” he tried.

  “What, the one that Critchety-crotchety ledgermain fellow made you?” the girl lighter questioned.

  Frowning, Rossamünd nodded.

  “You don’t use it, do you?” Threnody snorted.

  His frown deepening, he nodded once more.

  “When? Even out unloading carts?”

  “Aye!” Rossamünd hissed in exasperation. “All the time! It was a command of my old masters back at the foundlingery.”