Factotum ft-3

by D M Cornish

  The young factotum backed away from the images. "And you… you may take these down from the walls too," he said to the departing footmen with a shaky voice and a sterner tone than he intended.

  They and Pallette swapped quick, uneasy looks.

  "Y-yes, sir," the alice-'bout-house answered very softly, blinking at him in discomfort. "As you would wish."

  And to his astonishment, the servants said nothing and began lifting the pictures from the wall.

  For luncheon-although so soon departed from the lamplighters he could not help but still think of it as middens-Rossamund was shown to a modest-sized chamber. The solar, Europe had called it. The room was not grimly dark; rather it was a soft, deep red, its high ceiling entirely gold. In its midst, before many tall windows, was an oval table of glistening scarlet, thinly etched with strangely formed flowers in golden filigree. About it were arranged high-backed chairs upholstered in the softest silk woven with curling golden stems and dyed with the shapes of petals in shades of ruby and crimson.

  Sitting upon two of these at the far end waited Fransitart and Craumpalin, looking ill at ease but refreshed, like drab stains in the clean, gleaming ruddiness.

  "Well, hullo, me boy," Craumpalin declared, making an easy showing but possessing a distinct air of a man interrupted. "What does thee make of thy new berth? Not much in the way of a cheerfully homey place, is it?" He lifted his eyes archly to include the room and the entire house with it. "She has treated thee with such expense and magnificence we cannot help but be grateful…"

  Rossamund gave a halfhearted smile.

  "Aye," Fransitart concurred. "Her generosity is as deep as her pockets."

  "Aye to that, Frans," Craumpalin continued, looking up. "She can afford to keep her sconces a-glowin' all day."

  Above, on golden rope, was suspended a great light, a cluster of thin red crystalline flutes bent at their bases like lips, sleek bright-limns luminous even in the day with a subtle rose glow.

  In the far corner stood a screen of very similar style to the one in Rossamund's new billet. On it some bizarre heldin flourished a hammerlike weapon over a beaten nicker that looked much like a round-faced, round-eyed dog, while two more hound-monsters ran off with a strangely demure maiden. Stepping close to get a better view of each panel, he frowned at the image, not certain who to feel for the most: the fallen monster, the maiden or the heldin-man. Am I one of those? he fretted, peering at the goggle-eyed bogles abducting the woman to a presumably foul end. Am I some half-done monster born from the muds, as Swill has said?

  On the journey away from Winstermill, Rossamund had held his questions, his pressing self-doubts. Now, safely harbored in the high-walled bosom of Cloche Arde, the time had come for all troubles to be answered, all long-kept secrets to be revealed.

  "Whatever are you at, little man?" Europe demanded mildly, her voice attended by the thump of an opening door.

  Rossamund turned about quickly.

  Standing in the entrance, the Branden Rose was out of her fighting harness and now wrapped in a flowing house-cloak of stiff satin of such dusky red that it seemed in its folds to be black. Her chestnut hair was down in a left-hand plait hung over her shoulder, reaching to her waist.

  "I–I was just wondering at all your remarkable things, Miss Europe… especially this screen here."

  "Yes, yes, very pretty." The fulgar took a place at the end of the table. "I am told they are called a bom e'do or some such. This and the one in your room are part of a whole set given to me by some besotted Occidental princeling from Sippon. He thought they might buy my affections." She paused. "They did not… Apparently one alone costs more than an average man is worth a year."

  "Thirty sous each?" Rossamund exclaimed after some brief internal arithmetic as he took the seat shown him at the opposite end of the table.

  "Oh, no, little man, not quite that average," Europe replied with a slight smile.

  Shrinking within, the young factotum was spared his blushes with the arrival of food.

  Dished at Kitchen's direction on to fine Gomroon, with genuine shimmering silverware arranged beside, was food such as Rossamund had never known: tepid pyet ponce-or magpie stew-and seethed eagle wings accompanied by pickled winkles in butter-boiled cabbage on the side.

  "Look thee at this fancy fare, Frans." Rossamund heard Craumpalin's faint mutter across the table to Fransitart. "Smells as if it'll go down hearty."

  "Why, thank you, Mister Craumpalin," Europe said with an amused look to the old dispensurist.

  "Thank'ee in ye turn, miss," Fransitart replied evenly. "Ye keep a handsome table."

  The cook snorted reproachfully as she served a healthy spooning of cabbage onto the ex-dormitory master's fine white plate. "Of course it is…," Rossamund heard her mutter. "Handsome table, indeed!"

  With slow grace, Kitchen poured tots of fine claret into the biggest, most delicate-looking glasses Rossamund had ever beheld-half water for him. When all was served and the other servants disappeared again to their manifold labors in other parts of the stately home, the steward went to stand faithfully in the corner near Europe's right hand.

  She, however, half raised a hand and said, "You may leave us to talk, man."

  After a pause, the steward obeyed.

  "I will brook no disturbance," his mistress added as Kitchen quietly closed the servants' port at the back of the room, leaving them alone with their meal and the great quandary of Rossamund's true nature.

  Yet, now it had come to it, Rossamund did not know how to broach the questions he had held back for the last two days, and poked at his fancy meal in a dilemma of possible starts. From the edge of his sight he could sense Europe observing her guests silently, watching over the rim of her ample claret glass while the old vinegaroons did indeed eat hearty. Knotting his courage, Rossamund tried to speak again the question still unanswered at their exit from the lamplighters' mighty fortress. Who am I? What am I?

  "Sirs," Europe said suddenly, "I might not have a falseman's knack, but it was obvious that you, Master Vinegar," she said to Fransitart, "and you, Master Salt," to Craumpalin, "were heartily discomfited by things said during that farcical inquiry. From such a show I would dare to say there is truth in the pratings of that surgeon. If you have a deeper inkling into Rossamund's history, now is the time to be out with it."

  The ex-dormitory master became still, fork poised between plate and mouth, its load slipping sloppily back to the dish. He looked wearily to Craumpalin. It was the merest glance, yet laden with deep, long-lived understandings.

  The expression on Craumpalin's face in reply was clear. "I reckon the lad's ears are ready to hear, Frans."

  Slowly, gravely, Rossamund drew in a breath and held it.

  Folding his hands against the edge of the glossy red tabletop, Fransitart looked at them for a moment. "This is something we… I might 'ave told ye a long stretch of years ago," he began with cracking voice. "I have pondered long an' often about how to steer me words-a truth half spoke is worse than none-but I'll not let that quill-licking basket Swill have th' last say on th' matter." He took a toss of claret and a breath. "Th' tale of it starts when I first took to me station at th' foundlingery…Whether th' deed were intended as a mercy or a mischief I can't rightly say, but… but th' very day I bore up at Madam Opera's"-he lifted his glass to the late marine society proprietress burned up in the foundlingery fire-"I spied a little bogle fumblin' with a parcel on th' Madam's very doorstep. An odd boggler it was, with the head of an oversized sparrow and all dressed in fine clothes like some midget Domesday struttin' fluff. I hailed th' mite with some angry remonstration, makin' to scare it off. Th' basket just looked at me cool as sit-on-yer-tail an' did not budge."

  Cinnamon! Rossamund could hardly credit it. "I have seen such a fellow myself!" he exclaimed. "Freckle said he has been watching out for me…"

  "Freckle?" Europe arched her diamond-spoored brow. "The bogle I saw skulking about Bleak Lynche after Wormstool fell…The bogle you
had me free from the Hogshead…" Her voice trailed off in displeasure.

  "Ah-aye…"

  Fransitart looked at them a moment before he went on. "Well, that Freckle bogle sounds blithely enough-ye ought not to judge a bugaboo too quick, as I knew well enough even then."

  Europe shifted in her seat yet said nothing.

  "Be that as it is," the ex-dormitory master pressed on, "I was determined to fright it away; a city is no place for a nicker, nor a nicker-blithely or otherwise-th' right one for a city. So I lay alongside this sparrowling, me cudgel in hand to make me point more clear"-the old dormitory master raised his hands in demonstration-"an' I hailed it, 'Avast, Master Sparrow! What's yer mischief with that bundle? Clear off if ye value yer crown. Worse folks than me p'rambulate these streets!'-or some such I said. Yet far from affrighted, th' basket stood an' faced me though it was not more than half a fathom tall. Looking me a-loft an' a-low with its big blinking peepers, it spoke an' tells me, 'Ye take good care of this 'un'-I can't do its voice right, Rossamund, all twittery and tuneful and wi'out me salty glot-but 'Take care of this 'un', it says. 'This one'll be eaten by worse than me if I let 'im stay out in th' good-lands, so to th' world o' wicked men an' kind he must come.' That's when I realized just what manner of parcel it was in its clutches."

  Rossamund's throat constricted and tasted unpleasantly sharp. Somehow, he already knew what his old master was going to reveal.

  "That parcel, Rossamund-," said Fransitart, looking to him. "That parcel were ye, lad…"

  Rossamund's mouth went dry. He forced down a mouthful of watery claret.

  "This sparrow-thing puts ye all tiny an' quiet in me arms," Fransitart continued, "an' it says, 'His name is what he is.' An' it points to that hatbox bit with th' scrawl of yer forename on it, Rossamund.Yet afore I can ask any more, open springs the foundlingery door an' there is th' Madam-rest her-arms akimbo an' glarin' like she did. Afore she could fathom its true nature, Master Sparrow harefoots it down th' Vlinderstrat an' was gone. But th' Madam? She only had eyes for ye, lad, an' takes ye, name-card an' all, an' writes ye up in her book, Rossamund Bookchild. She weren't nothin' if not efficient." He respectfully raised a glass again, Craumpalin doing so with him.

  Blinking, Rossamund stared at the old men, astounded at the long years Fransitart had lived enduring such a secret.

  Europe leaned back in her seat, owlish gaze calculating.

  Such a frank confession left them utterly vulnerable to her mercurial mercies.

  "So that's the short of it," Fransitart went on. "Ye were hauled off to the cribs an' me to watch o'er ye and all the others with ye as a master. I kept the matter to meself, dwelt on it, stored it up in me soul until some time on, Master Pin fetched up to work at the Madam's-under me sage advice. Soon as he arrived an' I had th' chance, I found the bit of card an' took it into him an' told him just what this sparrow-fellow had spake: 'His name is what he is…' Never one to be spooked by oddities, ye thought an' ye thought on it, di'n't ye, Pin? Sent away to his soup-makin', tome-thumbin' friends on it…"

  Head bowed, Craumpalin gave a single nod.

  "An' he found such as we never hoped he would-probably in the same line of cryptic book as that dastard butcher claims to have investigated," Fransitart growled. "It said much as Swill claimed, that rossamunderlings were an ancient monster's name for bogles that look like everymen. We knew of such too, though by other names, that blighted Biarge lass being th' most famous among vinegars-"

  "Such is the trouble that comes of talking to bogles," Craumpalin muttered, speaking for the first time.

  "Why not call me something else?" Rossamund insisted.

  "Because Madam O wrote thee up right quick." Craumpalin looked squarely at Rossamund. "Once thy name were in the Madam's book, it was a matter of ineffaceable public record. There was no renaming thee after that, and no fuss could be made without lookin' mightily suspicious. So we had to luff up and let the matter be. I comforted Frans and meself it was such an obscure word, I reckoned on none that thee might meet ever knowing of it… other than the name of a lass mistakenly given to a lad, that is."

  "Unfortunate in itself, I would have thought," Europe added quietly.

  Fransitart gave her an unhappy look. "We never reckoned on such dangersome waters as ye finding yerself thrust into service with a book-eatin' massacar like Swill," he said bitterly.

  "They do seem to be everywhere," the Duchess-in-waiting returned dryly.

  The ex-dormitory master scowled again. "Once it came time to take yer place in the world, lad, Pin an' I were at full stretch to know what to do with ye. Let ye go an' risk some kind of discovery…"

  "Which was what I was vouching for," Craumpalin inserted. "Holding that risk to be small-"

  "Aye, or go my way of it an' keep ye back where we could know ye were safest-"

  "Aye," Craumpalin interrupted again. "Inviting suspicions and dooming the lad to some half-lived life."

  Old troubles flashed in Fransitart's dark eyes. "So ye said then, Pin, an' I followed yer lead an' 'ere we are now-"

  "We would be in this or some other strait by either heading, Frans." The aging dispensurist looked wounded. "It has always been a matter of time's passing.The stone and the sty if ever a siteeation was…"

  The ex-dormitory master looked instantly regretful. "Aye, Pin, aye…"

  "That is why you had me wrapped in nullodour," Rossamund interjected. Critchitichiello the hedgeman had said Master Craumpalin's Exstinker would never foil a monster's senses. "The noses you were keeping me safe from weren't monsters but dogs and-and men." This it had most certainly done. If it had not been for the Exstinker, Rossamund knew full well that in his native monster's stink he would have been slain out-of-hand by Licurius while he still hid in the boxthorn growing in the pastures of Sulk End or set dogs howling after his blood well before he was near them.

  "Aye," Craumpalin answered softly. "We wanted to give thee every chance at success."

  "Perchance locking him in a chest and hiding it in the buttery might have served better," Europe murmured.

  "But why did you not tell me before, Master Fransitart?" Rossamund persisted, heedless of his mistress' ironies. "Surely I could have avoided dangers better if I had known who-what-who I really am."

  "Hear, hear," murmured Europe, attending them in perfect stillness. "Why not indeed…"

  For a beat there was a painful silence.

  Fransitart beheld his former charge, regret clear in his eyes. "We…," he croaked. "What would we tell ye, my boy? How do we tell ye? Of what dare we say? 'Why, Rossamund, did ye know ye was handed up to us by a bogle who claimed ye to be monstrous-born?' Would ye believe me? Who would?The less spoke on it, the less folks to know, and the less heavy going we make of it."

  "You-," Rossamund started, but what could he say? Who would believe such outrageous stuff? He looked at his hand, to see that it was still real, that he was still he, and found that it was shaking uncontrollably.

  "Thee has to fathom, Rossamund," Craumpalin said, coming to his old mate's aid, "that if we ever spoke on it, such a calumn'ous revelation would only have thee ever worrying to thy back to see who might discover thy terrible secret."

  Swill's witness he could discount: that his arrival in this world had never put a woman abed, that instead he had emerged fully knit from the boggy sump of some threwdish haunt, the mud-born replica of a poor bewildered and long-fallen child… This he could dismiss, but not the evidence of his dear masters. Suddenly Freckle's words, spoken so long ago in the putrid hold of the listing Hogshead, rose unbidden… The time might come for knowing things, the glamgorn had said, and when the need of knowing's nigh, you'll know then what I do now… "I fathom it, Master Pin," Rossamund murmured. "I fathom it…"

  Europe's penetrating hazel gaze lingered on Rossamund. "It seems remarkable to me that some diminutive bogle made it right into the heart of your city," she said at last, "managing such a feat of utter invisibility to get over walls and elude eve
ry dog and gate ward."

  "Size ain't no reckoning of potency, ma'am." It was Craumpalin who answered. "The antiquarians have it that such feats are not beyond the mighty ones and that some of the leastly baskets in stature can be mightiest of them all."

  "You run it close to a sedorner's prating, Master Salt," the fulgar said warningly. "I can see from where you inherited your dangerous notions, little man." She peered now at Rossamund, her expression guarded, her thoughts opaque.

  He held her gaze, wanting to say something about truth and knowing and doing right, yet nothing sensible formulated rapidly enough to speak.

  The fulgar let out a long tired breath. "It might be said that worm-riddled texts with notions as crumbling as their spines and superstitious navy-men long past their prime do not make for trusty sources any more than a book-learned butcher with a grudge to grind. Let me, however, for Rossamund's sake, presume this is possible," she said with a sidelong look to the ex-dormitory master. "I would think such fantastic claims required tangible proofs."

  "If that is how ye will have it," Fransitart countered with sailorly bluntness, his jaw jutting and firm-set, looking first to Europe, then to Rossamund, "there will be proof a-plenty in nigh on a seven-night paired. This mark here will show itself as cruorpunxis or braggart's scab and end all argumentations!" He gripped at where the bandaged puncting had been made: that terrible experiment he and Rossamund had submitted to at the hands of the surgeon Swill.

  "A seven-night paired, indeed, man," Europe said, raising a brow. "Such delightful argot: I gather you mean a fortnight?"

  "Aye, madam. In a twin o' weeks all wranglings will end."

  Rossamund slouched in his seat as grim certainty established itself.

  Europe might require such tangible proofs, yet he already fathomed which way the mark-made from his very own blood-would turn: that in two weeks less two days the puncting made with his own blood on Fransitart's arm would show as a cruorpunxis, a monster-blood tattoo.