Foundling

by Cornish, D. M.

  “Look ’ere, Gibbon, th’ lad couldn’t stay away, ’e missed us so!” Poundinch kept shoving the foundling all the way to the hatchway. Rossamünd pushed against each shove stubbornly.

  Gibbon peered dumbly at the foundling for a moment, then his gaze sharpened. “Oh aye, oi rememb’r. ’Ello, boi’o.”

  Rossamünd kept his head down. He was too far away, he knew, for Fouracres or Europe to spy him. He reckoned also that at this less-than-salubrious end of the docks other sailors would pay little heed to the subtle struggle taking place aboard the Hogshead.

  The hatchway was open, as it usually was, and with that cunning neck-pinch, Poundinch forced the boy to start his way down the ladder. “Just goin’ to finish up an ol’ con-vosation with this’un ’ere,” he called to Gibbon as he himself started down.

  Rossamünd descended slowly, his senses reacquainting themselves with the profound lack of light and the overwhelming stench. He could just make out that the hold had been cleared of all its barrels, yet the powerful odor of the swine’s lard had remained, soaked into the very wood of the cromster’s frames and decking—and with it the hint of some far worse fetor. Yet these smells were not all that had been left. A bright-limn hung from a central beam about halfway between the ladder and the bow. It helped little but was enough to show, to Rossamünd’s horror, that the three gruesome crates bound with strong iron smuggled aboard about a week ago were still there. Two of them were side by side near the ladder and one on its own several feet away. This lonely one suddenly shook violently.

  Rossamünd gave a tight yelp. He tried to scamper back up, but Poundinch blocked his ascent. The captain shouted at the lonely crate and, after a few shudders more, it became still. The hold was otherwise empty but for acerbic seawater leaking in from the stern end of the hold. Rossamünd saw that it was already about an inch deep at the bottom of the steps.

  “Ye knows what’s in these ’ere crates, don’t ye, lad?” Poundinch had stopped about halfway down and cast his hefty shadow over the foundling.

  “Uh—I—n-no . . .” Rossamünd spluttered and backed away from both Poundinch and the crates. The bilgewater came up to his ankles now.

  “Aw, come now, ye were snoopin’ about, listenin’ and pryin’ after we took ’em aboard. Tryin’ to get somethin’ over ol’ Poundy, were ye? A li’l morsel to sell to ’is enemies, ’ey? A li’l bit o’ lev’rage to make some deals?”

  The nature of this rogue’s suspicions revealed, Rossamünd looked at him in disbelief.

  Poundinch descended all the way to the bottom. “Those innocent rabbit eyes ye make don’t work on me, mucky little mouse. I think I’ll leave ye down ’ere to think again upon th’ falsities of yer stubborn, lyin’ tongue. We’ll be back to collect them crates in a couple of ’ours, so ye’ll ’ave a bit o’ time to change th’ tune of yer whistle.” He grabbed Rossamünd by the wrist, twisting it cruelly.

  Tears started in the foundling’s eyes as he was compelled to squirm and bend in order to lessen the pain, movement which brought him right by two crates. “But I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I just want to work as a lamplighter!” Rossamünd howled, over and over.

  Captain Poundinch ignored him and instead, quicker than a cat, gathered up Rossamünd’s hands and wound cord roughly all about them, fixing it to a loop of rope that held one of the crates together in such a way that it forced him to sit.

  The boy’s heart froze. He had been tied right up against a crate! His mind went a white blank of panic. “But! . . . But! . . .” was all he could manage.

  “Aye, ‘but, but.’ Ye’re babblin’ now, bain’t ye? Got to make more sense if ye wants yer freedom, tho’.” Poundinch put his greasy face next to Rossamünd’s. “Ye were sooo keen to know what were in me cargo! Well now ye can ’ave a good ol’ gander, as close as ye could want for,” he growled. “Ye’ve got about three ’ours till I return—plenty of time for ye to mull, and if ye’re still whole enough to speak after such a time with me prettee pieces ’ere, we’ll see what we might do with ye. Ye never know, lad, if ye’re lucky, ye might get to live it large on th’ vinegar waves, with ol’ Poundy as yer ev’r faithful, ev’r vigilant cap’n!”

  With that and nothing more Poundinch left, his boots thumping heavily, back up the way he had come. The hatch closed with a clang.

  “I just want to be a lamplighter . . . ” the boy sobbed. The seat of his longshanks already soaked in half an inch of water, he sat with his arms on his knees and his face buried in his sleeves. Overwhelmed with bitter hopelessness, Rossamünd wept as he never had in his whole life.

  Eventually calm came. He stopped crying and instead he listened. The Hogshead creaked in the tidal movements, the brine in the hold slopped ever so quietly and Rossamünd’s heart thumped, but that was all. He lifted his head and squinted about, his face puffy, stinging. It was very dim, but because of the bright-limn not so dark that the crates could not be distinguished clearly. Though he was overshadowed by the box he was bound to, his eyes adjusted to the weak light that also came from cracks about the hatchway. There was not even the slightest hint of movement from any of the three crates, not even the one that shook so determinedly before. Rossamünd had been making all the noise he liked but still the things they contained had remained still. They must have been empty after all. Eyeing the gaps in the crate next to him, his mind whirled.

  He would be missed, surely? Not by Europe, perhaps, but certainly by Fouracres. He’d come to the rescue, Rossamünd was sure of it—Wouldn’t he? . . . Yet doubt took hold, and he could not be certain of anything anymore. He was lost. How would they know where to find him? If Master Fransitart was aware of what had happened to him, he knew his old dormitory master would be furious and shift all obstacles to rescue him. But Master Fransitart did not know—and he was too far away to help. Rossamünd rolled his eyes in his grief and his gaze caught a glimpse of something between the slats of the crate to which he was tied.

  Two eyes stared back at him, yellow and inhumanly round.

  Rossamünd shrieked like a person touched with madness, and tugged and writhed wildly in his bonds. The crate jerked violently too, and the eyes disappeared. In blind panic he wrestled for his very life to get free!

  It was all in vain. The knot he was bound with was a bailiff’s shank, a cunning tangle that took two hands to tie but three to undo. He barely had a whole hand of fingers available between the two of them. Surrendering to whatever grisly fate he was now to suffer—“some ’orrible, gashing end,” as Master Fransitart would say—Rossamünd bowed his head and began once more to weep, waiting for some flash of pain or other rending violence.

  Instead a sound came. It was a voice, small, soft and bubbling like a happy little runnel. “Look at you,” it said. “Look at you, strange little one who can cry. No need for crying now, no, no, no. Freckle is here and here he is. Lowly he might be, but not the least. A friend he is, and friendly too. So no crying now, no no, nor screaming nor throwing nor bumping of poor Freckle and his head about this little gaol.”

  Despite himself Rossamünd felt calmed, and reluctantly turned his head. The round yellow eyes had returned and were looking at him again, earnestly kind.

  The foundling held his breath.

  The eyes seemed to hesitate too. Then the voice that belonged to those eyes—that small, soft, babbling voice—said, “He is watching too, and knows you, oh yes, hm hm. Fret not. There is always a plan. Providence provides.You’ll see, you’ll see.”

  “Who . . . who are y-you?” Rossamünd managed at last. He could see little else but those big eyes—maybe a small nose . . . he could not be sure.

  “Why, I thought I said, or did I say I thought?” The eyes blinked a long, almost lazy blink. “Why, I am Freckle! Freckle who has been speaking all his thinking just now. I was afraid before, and I thought before that I would just think all my speaking and see what manner of strange little one you were. But I know now by your crying what you are and now I have no fea
r!” Though he could not see, Rossamünd could well imagine this creature smiling a rather self-satisfied smile. “Tell, little cryer, what is your name?”

  “Um . . . it’s Rossamünd.”

  There was a strange, gaggling noise, and Rossamünd had the impression that this was Freckle’s laugh. “I see and see I do. An obvious name. Here is a tree. I’ll call it ‘Tree.’ Here is a dog. I’ll call it ‘Dog’! Very clever! What a witty fellow who gave it to you! They must be a funny fellow indeed!” There was more of the gaggling laugh.

  Rossamünd frowned. Witty and funny were not words he would have associated with Madam Opera, who had fixed his name by writing it in the ledger. “Why—why is my name so obvious?” the foundling pressed.

  “Ah, your name is obvious by your weepy, weepy tears, little Rossamünd, that is all, nothing more.” This little fellow was very hard to understand. “And now we’re done our meetings,” it concluded. “I expect you’ve learned it that hands are shook together, to show a meeting met?”

  A hand came out from a lower gap in the wood. This hand was about the same size as Rossamünd’s, though the fingers were longer, the wrist much thinner and the skin far rougher. Rossamünd gawped at it: this was most definitely not a person’s hand. He remembered himself, took it in his own grasp and politely shook. It felt warm and very much like the bark of a tree. Its grip was strong but gentle.

  Looking into those bizarre yellow eyes, Rossamünd tried to show trustworthiness and friendship in his own. If he had to suffer imprisonment and oppression, then getting a chance to make friends with a kindly bogle was an odd yet amazing consolation. “Very pleased to meet you, Mister Freckle,” he said solemnly. Abuzz with curiosity, he could not help but go on and ask. “Excuse me, Mister Freckle . . . but are you a nuglung?”

  Freckle laughed again. “They’ve taught you to divide and conquer too, I see—rule by division, divide by rules—the everyman creed. Ah, ’tis only fair. I named you first.” The eyes blinked again. “As it is, you make me much bigger than my boots. No-no-no, a nuglung princeling am I not. I am just what I am, what the everyman might go calling a glammergorn—though really, I am just one lonely Freckle. There is no other Freckle, just this one Freckle, until he is no more.” The eyes look skyward.

  Rossamünd had seen a nuglung earlier that day, the sparrowling in the olive bush, and now he was actually talking with a glamgorn—which is what he understood Freckle to mean by “glammergorn.” These were even smaller than a nuglung, less powerful. Again he remembered the almanac’s warning, that it was best not to get too close to one.

  Well, he wondered, what would the writers of Master Matthius’ Wandering Almanac say if they were watching me now?

  “Give it to meeee,” hissed a new and broken voice.

  Rossamünd started. The yellow eyes of Freckle blinked several times rapidly.

  This new voice had come from the lonely crate on the steerboard side of the hold.

  “Quiet, you!” Freckle warned.

  “Give it to mee toooo.” The broken voice came again, full of creepy, lugubrious longings. “And to meee—we want to suck out its marrow . . . ooh yes, and squish its eyeballs a’tween our rotted teeth.” The crate from which it spoke rattled vigorously.

  Rossamünd peered at it. A hunched darkness thrashed about spasmodically within. Fortunately its cage was chained fast to a thick oak beam. Nevertheless he shuddered and began to pry at the lashings that gripped his wrists.

  Freckle’s voice became commanding and hard, contrary to his normal soft singsong. “His marrow is too well needed inside his bones, and his eyes are too busy at looking and weeping to need your gnawings!” The glamgorn’s golden eyes disappeared. “Now to quiet with you!” His voice spoke from the other side of its box.

  There was a thwip! and a curse and an extraordinarily loud hiss from the lonely crate. “That struck us in the eye! Now we must have an eye, an eye for an eye, an eye . . . lov-er-ly eye . . .” Rotten lips smacked together.

  “I know it did, and this I know, for it was sent on its mission so,” Freckle said proudly. “And even less eyes will you have if you don’t be leaving us be!”

  There was another loud hiss. “You’d not be so brave if we weren’t bound so hard, scrumptious morsel. We plan to chew on your twiggy bones too . . . oh my, and me too . . .”

  It became quiet.

  Freckle’s yellow eyes reappeared.

  “What is that?” Rossamünd whispered, still picking uselessly at the rope.

  “That is an ill-made rever-man, all bits and bobs and falling apart. Those wicked ones who made him do not know their wicked business. He’s not knit too well at all, and none too sharp in the knitted noggin neither. Oh how he hates, full of grieving over half memories and wild hungers! They hate we natural ones most of all, ’cause we are made all right and they are made the everyman’s way—all wrong . . .”

  A rever-man! A revenant! Rossamünd knew of these things. They were put together by wicked people taking bits of dead bodies to make new creatures from them, all rotting limbs and ravenous. So that was Poundinch’s secret trade, the reason for his suspicious conversations and the crazed flight from the Spindle. At last Rossamünd had discovered the truth. Rivermaster—or Captain, if that was how it was to be now—Poundinch was a smuggler for the dark trades, a trafficker of corpses and half-made undead. That was why he pretended to haul such odoriferous cargoes as swine’s lard and pungent herbs, to hide the stink of the contraband.

  The foundling shuddered once more. He had to get away!

  The hold of the Hogshead had now taken on a greater aspect of foul wickedness. Had it not, it still held a rever-man. Rossamünd did not care how poorly made it might have been. He did not like the idea of being confined so closely with one. Its rotten reek was beginning to overpower the other rancid airs in the hold—even that of the swine’s lard.

  “Cut me loose!” he hissed to Freckle. “I have a knife still, hanging on my baldric. See?”

  “Yes, I most definitely do see and see I do.” There was a tug on Rossamünd’s scabbard. “Yet my own hands are enough to do a knife’s work. Hemp and wood are one thing, Rossamünd, but iron just another. I can loose your bonds but mine I cannot, unless you have learned your strength as well?”

  The foundling frowned. He was not strong enough. What was the glamgorn talking about? His hopes dimmed, and he sat for a time in a gloom. Gradually he became aware that his bottom was beginning to sting, as if he were being bitten by a thousand little ants.

  “Ow! Ow!” Rossamünd realized he was experiencing the caustic nature of seawater for the first time. He had been sitting in the bilgewater long enough for it to start to eat at his skin. He stood as best he could, the rope bindings preventing him from achieving more than an awkward stoop. His backside stung.

  A wicked, strangled giggle came from the lone crate.

  “Not good for clothes nor delicate pink skin either,” observed Freckle, ignoring the rever-man’s malicious glee. “That’s why I like my barky hide. It hides me better from sneaky eyes and stops the stinging of the water.”

  “Aye, I wish I had your skin,” Rossamünd agreed with a sagacious nod, “but just on my rear end.” Wanting to pick up a previous thought, he continued. “Mister Freckle? Which nuglung do you serve?”

  Freckle sniffed in a breath. “My, my—there’s an everyman question if ever a question was one. No prying in private things! I’ve not asked you your private things and you shouldn’t go asking upon my private things. They’ve taught you far too well, I can well see, too well.”

  Rossamünd hung his head in shame. Somehow it made sense that this glamgorn would not want to be telling an everyman child—even one as friendly and open as Rossamünd hoped he was being—much of secret bogle ways. The foundling was certain that if he were a bogle, he would not want to say a great deal to a person either—not unless he knew without a doubt that the person could be trusted. He apologized with a mutter, but pressed on to another mystery.
“Please, at least, tell why my crying means you know my name?”

  The glamgorn laughed his strange laugh. “Knowing, knowing—sometimes there has to be trusting too . . .” Freckle’s golden eyes frowned, then became kindly once again. “I can see you ain’t ready and I know there is a time and a place, a place and a time. I might be lowly, but even I know what to say and when not to say it. Yet the time might come for knowing things, and when the need of knowing’s nigh, you’ll know then what I do now.”

  This was no help at all. Rossamünd wanted to push for more when there came the familiar thumping of boot steps on the deck above.

  What now? Rossamünd quickly became quiet and the glamgorn’s eyes retreated into the obscurity of his prison.

  Rossamünd followed the steps as they thudded overhead and trod toward the hatch. It opened and Captain Poundinch peered down, his attention darting to each crate before stopping upon the foundling. “Well, Rosey-me-lad, I see ye’re still in whole pieces.” He grinned leeringly. “I’ve come back sooner than I said, I know, but I figured ye’ll do yer thinkin’ just as well upon me other tub, th’ frigate Cockeril, as ’ere. Ye’ll like ’er, she’s a mite more spacious than th’ poor ol’ ’ogshead.”

  He waggled a short-barreled pistola hidden beneath his coattails. Eyeing the firelock in fright, Rossamünd saw that its barrel was wider than usual—a weapon designed to knock a person down, to bludgeon him to death despite any type of proofing. “And I reckon this might serve as th’ best gag for our little stint to the Cockeril. No ’ollerin’s or screechin’s from ye, an’ there’ll be no shootin’s from me.”

  Poundinch released the knot that held Rossamünd’s wrists to Freckle’s crate and jerked the foundling after him and back up the ladder. “So follow me lead and a simple jaunt from ’ere to there is all for ye and me to enjoy.”