Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  “Aren’t you the obedient little munkler, then?” Threnody looked narrowly at him. She turned and left him to recover alone.

  Later in the day, when goods were safely stowed and the dray left, returning to Bleakhall and then home, presumably to Hurdling Migh, Rossamünd was called to House-Major Grystle’s desk.

  “What is this that I have ear of: you snatching falling loads as if they were light parcels?” the house-major queried.

  “I couldn’t well have let it fall to crash, sir.” Rossamünd was a little baffled by the fuss made of his fortunate grab.

  Grystle gave a baffled blink of his own. “No, I suppose you couldn’t have at that.” He dusted a fleck off his pristine sleeve. “A powerful fine catch either way, Lampsman. I did not know they raised you so strong in Boschenberg—the lords at the Mill would be well advised to prentice more of your countrymen.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Maybe we should make you our fellow to challenge those stuffy Limpers to a wrench-of-arms?” The house-major gave a kindly smile.

  Rossamünd did not really know what his superior was talking about. “Maybe, sir” was all he could think to say.

  After a clumsy pause that grew into an uncomfortable silence, Rossamünd was dismissed.

  Quizzical eyes were on him all that night at mains, the story growing some in its retelling. Aubergene asked him how he was feeling after catching half the load of the dray.

  “It was really just one butt, nothing more,” Rossamünd explained.

  “Aye, but I heard it was a very full one.”

  Rossamünd shrugged.

  Fortunately the incident quickly receded into the routine. Not more than two days later he was able to enter a room without there being that strange, deliberate silence. It was not completely forgotten, however, for it earned Rossamünd a new name: “The Great Harold” they began to call him, or “Master Haroldus,” after the hero of the Battle of the Gates. Not even in the face of the awe of the prentices when he killed the gudgeon had Rossamünd ever felt so complimented. He had been given a new name—a proper military nickname—and the quiet, hidden joy of it had him smiling himself to sleep for the rest of the week.

  “I thought Harold was a skold,” was all Threnody said in quibble one breakfast.

  “Aye, he was,” Aubergene answered her, from across the bench, “but he was a dead-mighty one.”

  Thankfully, she did not say any more to spoil Rossamünd’s delight, nor did she venture another word about the barrel or his Exstinker bandage.

  Proving to have suffered no permanent discomfort from his catching feat, Rossamünd was soon employed in his very first excursion away from the cothouse. On the opening day of the second week he was sent with Poesides, Aubergene and Lightbody to carry stores to a poor old eeker-woman—an exile who had fled across the Ichormeer from somewhere east. Rossamünd was astounded that lighters would seek to aid one of the under class, a reject of her own society and unwanted in the Empire as well.

  “Ah! Master Haroldus has come to lend us his mighty hands!” Poesides said in kindly jest as they readied to leave.

  The other lighters smiled warmly in response as Rossamünd ducked his head to hide his delight.

  The necessary stores—foodstuffs, clothing, repellents, a small quantity of black powder and balls—were lifted onto their backs and they departed,Whelpmoon observing them blearily as they filed out the heavy front door and down the narrow steps. Cold was the morning, its soft breath stinging cheeks, the eastern horizon orange-pink with the sun’s rising.

  “Where are we going to?” Rossamünd asked Aubergene quietly as they crossed the road and stood on its northern verge.

  The lighter adjusted his grip on the long-rifle he bore. “There’s a small seigh out north near the banks of the Frugal where an old dame lives. Mama Lieger is her name. The bee’s buzz is that she likes to talk to the bogles and that’s why she lives far out here—fled from Wörms to escape accusing tongues.”

  “Aye, and now we’re the sorry sods who ’ave to do ’er deliveries,” interjected Lightbody. “I’ve ’eard it she was some wild strig-woman when she was younger, coming from one of them irritable troupes of wild folk from the Geikélund out back of Wörms.”

  “Didn’t the folks where she’s from try to hang her?” Rossamünd had a vision of a terrible destructress with flashing blades and flying hair having monsters around for supper.

  “I reckon she must have got away afore they could.” Aubergene smiled.

  Rossamünd shifted the uncomfortable load and stared a little suspiciously at the uneasy threwd that brooded out beyond the road-edge. “Why doesn’t she have Squarmis the costerman do the delivering?”

  “ ’Cause that filthy salt-horse won’t take things to the likes of her,” answered Poesides, “and she could ne’er afford him to if ever he did. No, lad, it is our honor to take these supplies to her. She bain’t the only eeker to get our help: it’s the lighters’ way out here, to succor all kinds in need without fault-findin’.” He gave an acerbic sideways look at Lightbody.

  “But isn’t she a sedorner?” Rossamünd pressed, feeling a glimmer of hope. “I thought lighters would have said all sedorners were bad folk and done them in somehow.”

  “A lamp’s worth is proved by its color, lad.” The under-sergeant gave him a curious look. “Mama Lieger has done good for us, so we do for her benefit as she has done for ours . . . and maybe—if she does hold conversationals with the local hobs—she might put in a good word for us with them. But just have yer intellectuals about ye, else she’ll have ye believing that some monsters are not so bad after all.”

  “Aye . . . ” Aubergene muttered, “though some might agree with her on that one.”

  Almost stumbling down the side of the highroad, Rossamünd looked in surprise at the lampsman, a dawning of respect rising in his bosom.

  “Stopper that talk, Lampsman!” Poesides barked. “Her saying such things is one bend of a crook, but ye spratting on so is a whole other. I don’t want to have to leave ye with the old gel when we get to her house.”

  Aubergene ducked his head. “Aye, Under-Sergeant,” he murmured.

  Poesides fixed Rossamünd with a commanding eye. “We’re all about quiet when walking off the road, so silence them questions for now.”

  The youngest lighter obeyed and said naught as the under-sergeant traveled an unmarked path through the thick lanes and thickets of thistle and cold-stunted olive and tea trees. In single file the three followed after, walking as carefully they could without going too slow. The shaley soil clinked softly as their boots broke the damp, fog-dampened surface, to reveal the earth beneath still dry and dusty. This was indeed a parched place, yet life still flourished, making the most of what little moisture it gleaned from the damp southern airs.

  Always searching left and right, all four kept eyes and ears sharp for signs of monsters. Tiny birds chased on either side of them, flitting rapidly through the thick twine of thorny, twiggy branches, rarely showing themselves but for a flash of bright sky blue or fiery, black-speckled red. Rossamünd wanted to stop, to be still for a time and breathe in the woody smells and quietly observe the nervous flutterers, but on they marched, pausing only for a brief breather and a suck of small beer.

  Two miles out from the Wormway the difficult country opened out a little and began to gently decline, a broad view of the Frugal vale before them, gray, thorny, patched with dark spinneys of squat, parched trees. Aubergene and Lightbody moved to walk on either side of Poesides. Keen to prove himself a worthy, savvy lighter Rossamünd did the same, stepping straight into a spider’s web strung between two man-high thistles and still glistening with dew in the advancing morning.

  “Ack!” he spluttered and scrabbled at the stickiness on his face, terrified some little crawler might be about to sink fangs into his nose or crawl and nest in his hair.

  “Hold your crook in front of your face,” Aubergene offered in a hush, clasping his long-rifle vertically
in front of him in example. “Catches the webs and keeps your dial safe of them.”

  There was not a glimpse or hint of a single monster the whole way, yet the land still heeded them and knew they walked where men seldom did or should. Choughs scooted away with a flash of their white tail feathers at the lighters’ advance through the cold land, looping low through the stunted swamp oaks, letting out their clear calls: a single note bright yet mournful, ringing across the flats. As the day-orb reached the height of its meridian Rossamünd spied a high-house—a seigh—very much as its those eeker-houses he saw from the Gainway down to High Vesting. This one looked older, though—very much as if it belonged here, grown somehow rather than built by human action; a sagging pile hidden behind a patch of crooked, fragrant swamp oaks. Its too-tall chimneys looked near ready to topple; its roof was entirely submerged in yellow lichens; weedy straw grew from every crevice in the lower footings. In this place the threwd was different somehow, so gentle and insinuating that Rossamünd hardly perceived it; the watchfulness was not so hostile—indeed, it was almost welcoming. Rossamünd might have liked to stay here. He looked pensively up at the high-house.

  There was no stair to the gray-weathered door nearly twenty feet above.

  Poesides took Rossamünd’s fodicar from him. “We really must get ye a right lengthened crook,” he muttered. Hefting it up, the under-sergeant deftly hooked a cloth-covered chain hanging well above their heads from the wall by the door. He gave it a series of deliberate tugs and waited.

  Aubergene and Lightbody kept watch at their backs.

  There was only a brief wait before the lofty door opened with a clunk and a small head peeped without.

  “Ah-hah, das güt aufheitermen!” Rossamünd seemed to hear, a soft woman’s voice speaking incomprehensibly in what he could only presume—from his prenticing with Lampsman Puttinger—was Gott. “Guten Tag, happy fellows!” the voice called a little louder in Brandenard.

  “Mother Lieger!” Poesides gave a hoarse cry, trying to be heard without making noise. “We have yer stores.”

  “Güt, güt,” and the head disappeared.What had appeared like a small, moldering eave over the door shuddered and, with a click, began to drop smoothly to the ground, lowered on thick cord.

  It was an elevator.They were rare in Boschenberg and, no matter how simple this device was, out in the wilds was the last place Rossamünd expected to find one.

  Each lighter was raised up on this small, worn platform. Poesides went first, and as the smallest Rossamünd was sent up next, finding the elevator more stable than it first appeared. He had no notion how Mama Lieger might operate this device if ever she left the house, but this pondering did not occupy his mind long. At the top he found a tiny front room—the obverse—with loopholes in the back wall and another solid door too, which was currently open. The woman was not there, though domestic bustle was coming from some rearward room. Rossamünd waited as the under-sergeant worked the mechanism that raised the platform. All present, Poesides led them through the second door to carefully deposit their burdens in a small closet at the end of a short, white hall.

  “Ahh,” came that soft female voice, getting louder as the speaker appeared from a side door. “I must be thanking you once again for keeping a poor old einsiedlerin’s pantry full.”

  Bearing a tray of opaque white glasses, Mama Lieger turned out to be a neat, rather dumpy old lady, silvery tresses arranged in a precise bun, neither too tight nor too relaxed. Her homely clothes of shawl, stomacher-dress and apron were sensibly simple as was the interior of her humble dwelling. Run-down as it was, the parlor into which the men were invited was clean and tidy, any drafty holes plugged with unused flour-bags neatly rolled and wedged into the gaps. Yet for all this orderly homeliness there remained in her puddingy features evidence of the sharp, hawklike face she would have once possessed and a disquieting keen and untamed twinkle in her penetrating gaze—something deeply aware and utterly irrepressible. Serving them the piping, sharply spiced saloop the old eeker-woman looked Rossamünd over hat-brim to boot-toe. “Who is this new one, then?” she smiled, her expression most definitely hawkish. “Do they make lighters in half sizes now, yes? To take up less room in your festung—your fortress—yes?”

  MAMA LIEGER

  Poesides and the lampsmen gave a hearty chuckle.

  “I—” Rossamünd fumbled for a proper response.

  As she passed a drink to him, the young lighter noticed the hint of a dark brown swirl sinuating out from under the eeker-woman’s long sleeve, its style and color looking so very like a monster-blood tattoo. Rossamünd nearly missed his grip on the cup of saloop.

  Mama Lieger noticed him noticing her marks and peered at him closely. “What a one you have brought me, Poesides.” The neat old lady’s wild, black eyes gleamed disconcertingly. “It is so very clear this one has seen his tale of ungerhaur; have you not, my little enkle, yes? Poor young fellow, I see the touch on him—I see he bears the burden of seeing like Mama Lieger sees, of thinking like she thinks, yes?”

  Is she calling me a sedorner too? Rossamünd looked nervously from her to his billet-mates: he did not relish being ostracized so early in his posting.

  “Aye, aye, Mama.” The under-sergeant came to his rescue. “Ye’d have everyone lost in the outramour if ye could,” he said tightly.

  “That I would and the better for the world if you all were. Not to matter, you stay out here for a long time and the land will quietly speak to you—mutter mutter—the schrecken— the threwd—changing your mind: is that not right, my little enkle?” She peered at Rossamünd once more.

  “I—ah—” How can she talk such dangerous words so freely? He wondered at the mild expressions of his fellow lampsmen, sipping tentatively at their piquant saloop and trying not to show how unpleasant they found it. Why doesn’t Poesides damn her as a vile traitor and have her hanged from the nearest tree? These fellows weren’t mindless invidists—monsterhaters—not at all. Rossamünd did not know what to think of them.

  Apparently heedless, Mama Lieger sat in a soft high-backed chair and engaged the older fellows in simple chatter for a time, yet her shrewd attention constantly flickered over to Rossamünd.

  Uncomfortable, Rossamünd looked at the mantel above the cheerily crackling fire. There he spied a strange-looking doll, a grinning little mannish-shaped thing with a big head and small body made entirely of bark and tufts of old grass. Even as he looked at it the smile seemed to expand more cheekily and, for a sinking beat, Rossamünd was sure he saw an eye open—a deep yellow eye that reminded him ever so much of Freckle.

  The eye gave him a wink.

  Rossamünd jerked in fright, spilling a little of his saloop.

  All other eyes turned on him.

  “Ye got the horrors, Lampsman?” Poesides asked in his most authoritative voice, a hint of disapproval in his eyes, as if Rossamünd’s behavior was a shame to the lighters.

  “I—” was all Rossamünd could say for a moment. He gripped his startled thoughts and chose better words. “I have not, Under-Sergeant, I—I was startled by that ugly little doll,” he finished weakly.

  “An ugly doll.” Poesides looked less than pleased.

  Mama Lieger stood spryly. “He is never ugly!” she insisted, rising to stand by the wizened little thing. “My little holly-hop man. He is just sleeping his little sleeping-head.” She patted the rugged thing with a motherly “coo,” and turned a knowing look on Rossamünd.

  He could not believe she was being so bold, nor that his fellows did not seem overly perturbed. Rossamünd looked fixedly into his glass of too-spicy, barely-drunk saloop and did not look up again till they were shuffling out of the room to leave. It was a relief to be going, despite the friendly threwd.The four made a hasty journey in the needling cold, Rossamünd as eager as the others to be home, back to the familiarity of the cothouse, their path easier for the lightening of their backs. He was glad too for the enforced silence to stopper his questioning mouth and for t
he distraction of the threwd growing less friendly again to occupy his troubled thoughts. With Wormstool clearly in sight, a dark, stumpy stone finger protruding high upon the flatland, Aubergene dared a quiet question.

  “What were you getting all spooked at with that unlighterly display in front of the Mama, Rossamünd?”

  Rossamünd flushed with shame. “That—that holly-hop doll moved, Aubergene,” he hissed. “It winked and grinned at me!” he added at the other lighter’s incredulous look.

  “You’re a dead-strange one, Lampsman Bookchild.” Aubergene gave a grin of his own. “Maybe Mama Lieger is right and you can see like she sees?” He scratched his cheek with an open palm. “I’ve sure seen the dead-strangest occurrences since being out here; changes the way you think, it does. Perhaps you can put in a good word to the monsters for us too, ’ey?”

  Rossamünd’s guts griped. Was the man being serious? Yet Aubergene’s grin was wry and teasing and Rossamünd grinned foolishly in return.

  “Hush it the brace of ye!” Poesides growled. “Ye knows better . . .”

  Of one thing Rossamünd was becoming more certain: he was quickly growing to like these proud, hardworking, simple-living lighters. He could begin to imagine a lamplighter’s life out here with them.

  During their third week and an endless round of chores, Europe stopped by Wormstool, accompanied by a lampsman from Bleakhall as her hired lurksman. She had managed to persuade his superiors to release him to aid in her vital task of keeping the Paucitine safe—that was how she told it at least. Thoroughly impressed to be meeting the Branden Rose, the Stoolers joked with their Bleaker chum, declaring him the most fortunate naught-good box-sniffer in all the Idlewild.

  “Aye, and I’m earnin’ more a day than ye all do in a month,” he bragged.

  Europe ignored them as she spoke briefly with Rossamünd.

  “Did you catch the rever-man?” was almost the first thing he said to her. “Was that your lightning we saw last week?”