Foundling ft-1

by D M Cornish

  As the day progressed they met many vessels going upriver, and were even overtaken by a faster-moving cromster with a smartly dressed crew. These fine fellows hailed the bargemen of the Hogshead, who only sneered and returned the brisk greeting with sullen looks.

  A bargeman coiling rope near Rossamund told him off for waving vigorously as his own reply. "Fancy-lad good-fer-nothin's," the crewman growled. "Reckons they're better than us…"

  Rossamund could not help but wish Sebastipole had found him passage aboard the other vessel.

  In the afternoon, clouds black and blue blew up from the southeast-a hint of the bitter winter to come-making the day dark and the evening even darker. Downriver a city built on the east bank of the Humour came into view, its many lights already shining in the untimely gloom. Rossamund consulted the almanac. Proud Sulking it was called, the major river port of the vast farming region known as the Sulk and a bitter rival of Boschenberg. It had become rich from the many merchants who wished to avoid the stiff tolls of the Axles, and chose instead to pay the lesser port fees that Proud Sulking demanded. There they would unload their cargoes instead and transport them by ox-trains along the highroads and, through much danger, to their customers further upstream. In doing this, Proud Sulking made a jealous and bitter enemy of Boschenberg.

  Proud Sulking was not nearly as large as Boschenberg, although its bastions and keeps and curtain walls along the riverbank were just as high and threatening. Its many wharves and piers were clogged and bustling with the vigorous activity of river craft, their crews and the laborers working ashore. Eager to avoid this foreign enemy city, Rossamund was afraid that the Hogshead would go about and enter the river port. Instead Poundinch steered her as far over to the opposite bank as was possible, and held his course there, with many a nervous glance over at the forbidding city. Relieved, Rossamund watched solemnly as the Hogshead passed Proud Sulking by.

  With night closing in, the wind diminished but the clouds remained. The Hogshead was now many miles south of Proud Sulking and the land on both sides of the river became boggy and threatening: holm oak grew in squat, clotted thickets; bristling swamp oaks and sickly turpentines rose tall and stick-gaunt. This must be a monster-infested place. Here, surely, were the wilds that Fransitart and Craumpalin had spoken of with such awe and warning. Rossamund was convinced he could feel bogles and nickers prowling and spying.

  When dark finally ruled, the Hogshead's stern and mast lanterns were inexplicably doused so that the cromster moved in pitch-black. Even the binnacle lamp that lit the compass by the tiller was hooded to show as little glow as possible. Rossamund knew that the lights on a vessel should never be put out: on a river or at sea, a ship without its lanterns lit in the night or a deep fog was a danger to all other rivergoing craft. Why would Poundinch do such a thing? Somehow Rossamund knew better than to ask. He certainly would not consult any of the crew. In the blind night he fought against sleep.

  Despite his determination, he eventually succumbed and lapsed into a troubled slumber.

  Sometime later he was woken by the sound of an anchor dropping. There was some quiet cursing, and Rivermaster Poundinch's voice scolded huskily, "Keep it steady, ye slop buckets! No noise!"

  The cromster had halted near the western bank at a place neither remarkable nor distinct from any other part of the river's haunted edge. All hands were pressed to duty as smaller hand lanterns were lit and the Hogshead's only boat, a large jolly boat normally towed behind, was brought about to the steerboard side. The crew were nervous. They lugged up several foul-smelling kegs from below and lowered them by rope into the little craft. Bewildered, Rossamund listened to the thumps and quiet exclamations. He sat up slowly, hoping to avoid attention, and peered over the edge of deck.

  Ponderously laden with barrels, the jolly boat was being rowed slowly to the bank. Poundinch was in the bow holding high a lantern with another fellow-Sloughscab, the Hogshead's own dispensurist; there were eight crew to row and two sturdy fellows sitting in the boat's stern holding primed muskets and looking alert. As it moved to shore the large rowboat became no more than the wan glow of the lantern and a silhouette of the activity within. Soon it disappeared altogether among the hanging branches and crooked, buttressed roots that knotted the riverbank. Rossamund saw, or at least thought he saw, the flicker of another lantern somewhere further in the trees. He could hear still the creaking of oars and fancied too the echoes of hulloos coming back across the water. For a time everything was still, waiting-even the frogs. There were no lights aboard and the limbers were even stilled. Little could be seen but a faint orange smudge striped with the indigo shadows of intervening trunks. Rossamund imagined that he was floating in the midst of nothing, drifting in an empty universe with just his thoughts and his breath.

  A flicker from the bank interrupted his wandering notions.

  Then another.

  A bright flash, half-hidden by the black shadows of tree trunks, was closely followed by the muffled but unmistakable popping of musket fire. The crew at once became agitated, and even more so when a loud crack snapped and echoed across the water. Quickly a dim lantern hove into view, indistinctly showing the jolly boat being rowed as rapidly as possible back to the Hogshead. There was a fizzing spurt and a brilliant flash, stark against the dark-another telltale eruption of a musket, fired by one of the sturdy fellows kneeling stiffly in the aft of the jolly boat.

  The other sturdy fellow was missing. So was Sloughscab the dispensurist.

  Rivermaster Poundinch was in the jolly boat's bow, bellowing, "Pull! Pull, ye cankerous pigs!"

  Behind them whole trees shuddered and sagged. Cries rang out on board the Hogshead. The stern lantern flared into light and by its green glow bargemen hurried and panicked.

  Rossamund stood, transfixed by the spectacle. Through parted trunks something enormous was moving. Rossamund could barely make out what it was: long of limb it seemed, yet hunched, pushing at the trees as if they were mere shrubs. It turned its head and Rossamund felt he caught a glimpse of tiny, angry eyes.

  "Pullets and cockerels!" Rossamund exclaimed in a horrified whisper.

  There was a loud yell.

  Simultaneously, one of the cromster's cannon fired, the smoke of its discharge belching obscuring blankness over the scene. The small thunder reverberated, flat and hollow, all about the land, and as its fumes cleared, the giant thing was gone. Poundinch was now scrabbling back aboard his vessel spluttering foul language, crying for the anchor to be weighed and limbers turned. Poundinch said nothing about the affair. No reasons were given for the absence of Sloughscab or the sturdy musket-wielding chap, no explanation of what the giant on the shore might have been. The contents of the jolly boat-three box-crates emitting odd and disturbing sounds-were simply hurried into the hold. Normal duties were resumed. Those on watch rapidly got the cromster moving once more. Those off watch muttered grimly for a time and went to sleep.

  Rossamund tried to sleep himself. He tossed the rest of that night over it, his head full of fear and pondering and repeating images of the nicker's angry eyes and the startling flash of cannon fire. Rising at the fourth bell of the morning watch, the foundling determined that all through the next day he would listen, as far as he possibly could, to every word spoken on board the Hogshead.

  With the rising of the sun and the changing of watch, the crew exchanged meaningful glances with each other.

  "Oi don't moind cartin' abowt bits o' bodies in them there barrels of pigs' muck," one filthy bargeman offered to another quietly at breakfast. "We're shorely paid noice for doin' it. But thowse things down thar now just bain't natural."

  To this the second growled wordless agreement, then waggled his finger to ward off evil. "Right you are, right you are. Ablatum malum ex nobis," he said, "Rid evil from among us."

  Later that day, Rossamund overheard one of the crewmen who had helped row the party ashore the previous night say to another, "We'd made the trade fine, but that thing must have been watchin
g for a long time, 'cause we heard nowt of it till it come out all a-quick with a roar. Scatters the corsers with a big sweep o' its terrible arm-like this." He swung his own arm wildly, thoughtlessly letting his voice become louder. "And those that it hasn't smashed are off into the trees and ol' Poundy is pushing us back onto the barge while Cloud and Blunting have a crack at it with their firelocks and poor Sloughscab hurls his potions-you know how 'e's always wantin' to give 'em a good testing-well he got 'is chance, 'cause…"

  "Gibbon!" It was the rivermaster. One eye was open as he lounged at the tiller and this single orb glared horribly at the loquacious crewman. "Don't give me a reason to remember yer name any further, me darlin' chiffer-chaffer."

  At this Gibbon went pale and lapsed to silence, as did the rest of the crew. One thing that he had said kept spinning in Rossamund's head. "… Scatters the corsers." He had heard of these before. Corsers were folk who robbed graves and stole from tombs to make their living. The dark trades!

  What did such wretched people as these have to do with the crew of the Hogshead? Why would Poundinch stop in the middle of nowhere in the deep of night just to meet them? Was he a part of the dark trades too? After the suspicious doings with Clerks' Sergeant Voorwind at the Axle, it was becoming disconcertingly clear that this was most probably the case. And what was that gangling giant he had glimpsed? Rossamund heard little else that day but the occasional inaudible griping, and as time went on, his anxieties increased. Surely he had to get off this unhappy vessel.

  By the middle of the next day Rossamund, huddled and unmoving at the prow in an agony of fear, spied the low wall of the Spindle as it finally appeared from around a river bend. Not nearly as tall or as grand as the Axle, the Spindle was a long, low dyke of black slate, stretching the river's mile-wide waters. Along its thick middle sections it was perforated by seven great arches and several lesser tunnels toward either bank. Each arch and tunnel was blocked by a massive portcullis of blackened iron. Great taffeta flags-one side black, the other glossy white, the colors of the city-state of Brandenbrass-were flown from the four central bastions in the middle of the river and flapped wildly in the windy morning. Rossamund could see many great-cannon poking from hatches and strong points all along the walls and bastions. The ends of the Spindle terminated on either bank in a strong fortress of sharply sloping walls, high, steep roofs and tall chimneys and were protected by stout curtain walls of the same black slate as the gate itself. Rossamund could even see that the ground at the foot of the curtain walls was densely prickled with a vicious-looking thicket of thorny stakes. About the eastern fortress a small wood of swamp oak and olive grew, while along both banks leafless willows wept into the black run of the Humour. The Spindle instead was squat, imposing, daunting. To Rossamund, however, it was also the chance of escape. Hope fluttered within his rib cage and he stared at it longingly.

  When Poundinch sighted the rivergate, he became agitated and positively alive. He leaped to his feet and paced his station as he had done at gunnery practice, muttering and gesticulating vaguely.

  "Stay easy, lads. They've not caught ol' Poundy yet," he said over and over. He called down the speaking tube to the gastrineer, as softly as he could-for sound travels too well over water. "Ease 'er down, Mister Shunt, and when she's at th' gates keep the limbers limber, ye hear. We may need to make it away right quick!" Then he growled low to the boatswain, always on hand. "Secure below. No glimpses, no clues, just barrels o' fat-same ol' rigmarole… and make sure the newest acquisitions keep quiet too."

  The archway they were to enter was low, forcing the crew of the Hogshead to lower the mast so that it lay flat on the deck. As this was done the boatswain reappeared from below, and the rivermaster ordered him to pipe all hands on deck. Responding to such a call was instinct to Rossamund, and he joined the end of the ragged line of crew, standing straight and as smartly as he could.

  Poundinch stalked in front of them all and muttered just loud enough to be heard, "I wants us to be just likes we was an 'appy ol' crew, no secrets, no gripes, just on an 'appy jaunt down th' ol' 'umour-ye gets me?"

  "Aye, Poundinch," was the common assent.

  The rivermaster waggled his conspiratorial eyebrows. "No grumblin'." He glared at Gibbon. "No snarlin'." He squinted at some other bargeman Rossamund could not see. "Now back to it!" he barked, raising his arms.

  As everyone returned to his labors, so Rossamund returned to the bow. A neat trim cromster trod proudly into the tunnel before them, its crew standing smartly in ranks on the deck. It was the same vessel that had passed the Hogshead two days before. Once again Rossamund wished he was aboard her instead. As it moved away, he looked longingly at the shiny nameplate on the stern. His heart froze.

  The plate read Rupunzil.

  "Rosey-me-lad! Over 'ere!" Poundinch called.

  The foundling stepped over cautiously, head low, eyes wide. He could see the rivermaster staring at the other cromster's stern.

  "Worked it out at last, 'ave ye?" Poundinch sneered.

  Rossamund went pale.

  "Took ye a bit, didn't it?" Faster than Rossamund could react, the rivermaster's hand shot out and grabbed him in a painful pinch by the back of the neck. "You stay right by me, lad." Poundinch bent himself and leered into Rossamund's face. "Just remember-ye're me cabin boy, got it?"

  "I–I-I-uh… nuh… no, sir, I mean, aye-aye, sir," was all that would come out of the foundling's mouth. He could only stand there while Poundinch's fingers pressed painfully on the tendons of his neck, and marvel at the rivermaster's sudden cruelty.

  Poundinch glared up at the Spindle.

  "Made by a fierce, diligent folk, this," he said in a conversational tone at odds with the grip he had on the boy's scruff. "A cause of much consternation to th' lords of yer city when it were built." He turned his glare to the boy. "Whatever 'appens from 'ere on, ye're goin' to stay right 'ere by th' tiller and ol' Uncle Poundy's side, got me?"

  The Hogshead was passing slowly under the high, broad tunnel of a boarding pier upon which stood several stern-looking officials, each uniformed crown to boot-toe in black proofing. Bargemen at the fo'c'sle and poop fended the Hogshead away from the slimy walls of the arch with long, strong poles.

  "Ahh… Ahoy, clerklings!" Poundinch called in a simulation of generous affability. "Ready to pay me taxes, same as always. Where's ol' Excise Master Dogwater?" Not once, during this cheerful display, did the rivermaster let up his wicked grip on Rossamund's scruff.

  A serious-looking fellow-Rossamund thought him even more serious than the officials serving the Axle back in Boschenberg-gave the rivermaster a long, odd look. "Excise Sergeant Dogwater has been reposted to tasks more suitable," he stated flatly.

  Poundinch seemed momentarily put out by this revelation, and he released his grip on Rossamund. His face contorted frighteningly but reverted marvelously to the previous false grin. He kept his hand upon the foundling's shoulder. It must have looked friendly enough from the pier, but the rivermaster's fingers were like cunning, hidden claws.

  "Very good, very good-pass on me well wishes. 'E were as fine an excise man that ever served on this river." Poundinch rocked on his heels and, after a pause in which Rossamund swore he could see the rivermaster's thoughts turn like winch gears, added, "Present comp'ny excepted, of course…"

  "Of course." Unimpressed, the excise clerk held out an expectant hand. "Now, present your documents and your tallies, and scrutineers will be aboard presently."

  Poundinch did as he was bid. The papers were taken through an iron door in the arch's hefty footing. Poundinch perspired, continually pursing his lips and flexing his free hand behind his back. Under the Axle, the Hogshead's master had been as cool as the cold side of the pillow. Here, however, with no secretive conversations or cynical winkings with one of the clerks, he was visibly agitated.

  The original excise clerk reappeared, as expressionless as before, followed by three gentlemen heftier of build and bearing heavy, long-handled cudgels-
the scrutineers. With them came a quarto of musketeers, all uniformed in black with trimmings of white. In two ranks they lined up-five at the front, five at the back-on the stone pier.

  The excise clerk held up his right hand and took a breath. "By the declaration of His Grace, the Archduke and Regent of Brandenbrass, and through the ratification and execution thereby of his Cabinet of the Charters set upon the sanctity of our borders, and its Ordinances concerning the same, you are presently ordered to allow to board, and then to be boarded by and searched by, Officers of the Sovereign State of Brandenbrass, and to declare upon a solemn 'aye' that you bear no contraband or other illicit articles upon or within this vessel, whether by hold or other conveyance, and that you regard inviolate the law and assertions of the State of Brandenbrass and that State's authority. How say you?"

  Rossamund had no idea what had just been said, although it sounded extremely important and gravely impressive.

  It seemed that Rivermaster Poundinch had not understood either. His squint grew more furrowed. "I… uh… aye, if it's comin' aboard ye wants, then"-he bowed low with a glance to his boatswain-"by all means."

  The scrutineers and the excise clerk stepped across from the pier and tapped about the upper deck for a good long while. Poundinch hovered nearby, answering the curt quizzing of the clerk with affected politeness. Rossamund stayed by the tiller as instructed, heart knotting and unknotting alarmingly. It was a gloomy afternoon made gloomier under the shadow of this arch.

  Eventually the search moved to the hatch. "What a horrendous stench coming from below, sir!" called the clerk.

  "Why aye, sir." Poundinch made to look chastened. "I intend to 'ave 'er in ordinary this winter, to give 'er a thorough swillin' in and out. 'Tis th' pig fat ye see-good for th' purse but 'ard on th' nose."

  The clerk put a foot on the top step and the scrutineers moved to follow. He paused and half turned. "Are your limbers still turning, sir?"