Factotum ft-3

by D M Cornish

  Such grim turns of mind did not last long against the compelling melodies of the half orchestrato on loan from the Earl of Holly. Turned out in pristine white wigs and gorgeous golden livery, the musicians played almost ceaselessly from an elevated gallery. Beneath them sat a great covered trestle spread with food, its centerpiece a disturbing replica of the sap fashioned in blackberry flummery. Peering at this remote feast hungrily-though keeping his gaze from the flummery-Rossamund became aware of a giggle of young girls assembled among the tall white and blue urns that stood between the windows of the left-hand wall. They were staring at him and bending toward each other to whisper behind pretty hands. He did not know what to do with such attention but redden about the ears and try to keep his show of solemn concentration resolutely on the dizzying sway of merry dancers strutting a saraband so finely across the wide space before him, or on the many glimmeralls bright overhead.

  At a lull in the music, a tall girl in a gown of shimmering silvery white, with wood-dark eyes and hair the hue of rare honeycomb, detached herself from her corner of friends and approached, quiet defiance in her mien. Cheeks aflame, Rossamund made to be suddenly and very seriously fixated on somewhere else. Yet his play was foiled, for she stood right beside him and, to his mortal embarrassment, said with many blushes of her own, "I–I would like it very much, s-sir, if-if you would ask me to-to dance…"

  Had it been Threnody before him, she would have made the whole operation simpler by demanding, but he was being asked to ask. In a panic as terrible as one caused by a ravening nicker, Rossamund looked to Europe for help, but she was occupied with the fuss being made of her by some septuagenarian dame in an enormous silver-pink wig. Swallowing hard, Rossamund fumbled and, heart skipping uncomfortably, managed, "W-would y-you care to dance, miss?"

  The girl in shimmering silvery white agreed, of course-though for a moment he madly feared she would not-and they danced a pavane, just once and not very well, treading on each other in equal measure. Near dumb with awe, he thought her the most splendid being he had ever encountered and kept blinking at her rosy face and sparkling auburn eyes. All through their turn they spoke little beyond soft apologies, and at the conclusion separated with only awkward thank-yous, Rossamund never discovering her name. Harnesses laundered and properly dried, prizes paid-including treasures of gratitude for Fransitart and Craumpalin from the Monsiere's much-vaunted cellars, and for Rossamund the silvery suit he had worn the night before-the four left the Patredike the next morning.

  Just south of Broom Holm, Fransitart was directed to take a lesser yet straighter way to Luthian Glee, "The quicker to Pour Clair and our next prize," Europe explained.

  Too soon the quality of road failed, the ruts made by overladen wagons and drays often so deep that the landaulet's axles near scraped the ground. In the rain-shadow of the low ranges, the land was stony and dry, covered more and more by olive groves and apple orchards tended by cheerful, singing bough dressers as it rolled up gradually to the gloomy hills ahead.

  "Folks are said to disappear all too often in them there mounds," Craumpalin said, low and serious.

  "We shall have to make certain we are not among them, sha'n't we?" the fulgar returned lightly, chewing on a whortleberry. "We have actually crossed into the merry parishes of Fayelillian," she explained. "I believe, Rossamund, your once marshal-lighter comes from this land."

  Rossamund took in the scene with greater curiosity, wondering bitterly if the Lamplighter-Marshal, the Earl of Fayelillian, might win free of the damning political games played in the Considine and return to this, his home.

  At day's closing the four travelers found the walled town of Luthian Glee, built over a stream among spires of lichen-scabbed stone and a thin woodland of young myrtles. In the loom of the hills, the town looked very old, the stones of its walls worn and black with mildew, the whole settlement possessing an air of dogged persistence. Yet the heavy-proofed gaters standing warden at a minor gate conducted themselves graciously enough when reviewing nativity patents, and the townsfolk were equally affable, tipping hats to Fransitart and Craumpalin, the old salts doing so in return.

  The proprietor of the crowded hostelry, the Alabaster Brow, proved friendliest of all when shown the tint and weight of Europe's coin.

  "Our senior suite is reserved particularly for such eminence as your own, good madam." The boniface smiled with only the merest hesitation at the small diamond spoor above her left brow. Leading them up the many-flighted stairs, the fellow made much of the hostelry's upper room vistas, boasting that it was one of the tallest structures in their humble municipality.

  Standing alone upon the modest balcony while the proprietor continued to show away the room's few comforts, Rossamund could not but agree that it did afford an excellent view of the entire eastern sweep of dirty lichened roofs and puffing chimneys and the darksome bluffs rising beyond. The threwd about was all but absent, the place being long settled by everymen. Yet as he continued to watch in the evening hush, Rossamund had the tenuous sensation of the stony hills brooding with watchful unwelcome, an oppressiveness not entirely threwdish. Looking back inside as the proprietor bid them good eve, Rossamund was certain the fellow had given the rise a melancholy look as he left.

  "The Witherfells," Europe declared, joining Rossamund on the undersized perch. "Our road will take us into them tomorrow. Our next prize, the Gathephar, lairs itself somewhere in their folds. We may need more than peltrymen to pry it out."

  "It might find us," Rossamund answered, eyeing the hills uncertainly.

  "That would certainly make our task simpler." Marked the Pendlewick on Craumpalin's chart, the way into the Witherfells was empty of even the usual infrequent country traffic as it cut a serpentine path up the blunt heights of corroded stone, their dark flanks streaked with rust, their summits crowned with anciently gaunt myrtle and pine. A feat of historied engineering, the road entered the hills through a great channel carved by hands long dead and disappeared from human record. Flattening as it wound about spurs and gullies, their way crossed the troughs between crags upon narrow stone dykes, the yawning dells thick with trees where unseen birds belled mournfully, their slow cries reverberating in the closeness. A heaviness dwelt in these heights, a nameless dread souring the soul and turning thoughts unhappily inward.

  On a lofty pinnacle obscured by rock and tree, Rossamund glimpsed the evidence of a fortification. It seemed to him that there was a remnant path leading to it from the road, and he was possessed with a strong desire to go up and explore.

  "It is likely a Burgundian fastness." Europe answered his inquiry with a mildly didactic tone, chewing on a cold spatchcock greme clumsy supplied from the Monsiere's own larder. "Built during the subjugation of the monster-worshipping Piltdowners who were said to crowd these hills. This is how my schooldames taught it to me… though it has been some time now since my instruction at Fontrevault."

  "Fontrevault?"

  "The sequestury and aplombery of the Right of the Open Hand. My mother boarded me there, little doubt believing that training in the five graces would calm me. She did not, however, account for the bastinado and sagaris also taught there, nor my facility in them… Happy times." Europe's smile was ironic.

  "Ye were lettered with calendars?" Fransitart asked over his shoulder.

  "Indeed… and was expelled by them too." Europe sipped at her wine with an arch and sardonic air. "It was not much later that I left Naimes for good."

  They moved up into the next crag and the sight of the ruin was lost.

  As sour winds blew up from the distant Grume and the day grew gloomy and gray, they came to a ravine crossed by a viaduct known as the Cold Beam Bridge. Two likely fellows in heavy linen smocks were sitting on a large gray rock by the stony post of the bridge, fishing with long poles and even longer twine into the gorge below. There seemed to Rossamund something slightly repellent about them, though he could not say what it was, and neither Europe nor his old masters seemed to heed it.
/>   "Ahoy, mates!" Fransitart slowed the landaulet and hailed them. "Don't ye know there is a fierce-some bugaboo about?"

  "Ahoy ye back, ye salty scoundrel! Ye are far from the treacherous sea!" the older one returned, squinting skeptically at them all from under his wide floppy hat, one eye going only a little wide when he caught a sight of Europe. "Ye speak of the Gutterfear, little doubt."

  Fransitart glanced quizzically back to Europe, who nodded.

  The old fisher blinked at her. "I hear-ed this flaysome bugaboo were a nightly beast and no threat to daytime strollers… Besiden which," he added pointedly to Fransitart in forced whisper, "I figure with yer pugnacious lady arrived there, that the beastie will soon cease to be a problem at all." He nodded sagely and tapped his nose with the switch of grass he had been chewing.

  "Aye," his younger compatriot agreed, patting a simple digital hanging from his sable and leuc baldric. On the back of the man's left hand Rossamund discerned an odd smudge over the second knuckle: a small spoor made in a variation on a lesser-case "e."

  He had never seen such a thing.

  "Besiden which," the young man was continuing, "we has our stinks and fitter trinkets to see it off with, so we'll fish till then, unbothered."

  The other fellow nodded resolutely and, bowing to Europe, said, "In point of fact, m'lady, I have heard it that the Gutterfear is scunnered-"

  "Scunnered, sir?" Europe leaned forward in her seat, causing the landaulet to rock slightly.

  "Aye." The old fisher blanched, and bobbed another bow. "Left us, miss, gone north or east or somesuch, spotted with a batch of other seltlings all a-traveling in the same direction, leaving man and beast a'be, such was their determination."

  "Well, I thank you for your intelligence." Europe sat back. "We shall continue on our course until I know this for myself. Go on, if you please, Master Vinegar."

  "By the looks, the weather'll turn dirty afore the day is out, me hearties," Fransitart warned them as he set the horses to walk and the landaulet began to go on. "Best make yer way under roofs afore long."

  They waved but did not show themselves the least inclined to heed him. The blustering night was spent in a collection of squalid high-houses called Scough Fell, gray hovels made of gray wood and gray thatch built into the gray stony banks either side of the road, guarded by thick gates hung with great conical thurifers-brass censers of night-burnt repellents. Louse-bitten and sleep deprived at the outset of the new day, Craumpalin and Rossamund sought to freshen the sisterfoot on Rufous and Candle's shabraques, but Europe stopped them.

  "This is not a pleasant vigil amble," she insisted tartly. "Our objective is to attract a nicker, not hide from it, and horse meat is a compelling enticement."

  The four went on their way out soon after, watched keenly by the cheerless, ill-humored denizens peering suspiciously from shuttered gaps or muttering together in hostile assemblies. Muffling themselves against the surprising cold, they broke their fast on the road. An hour on and the Pendlewick forked; the wider divergence to the right quickly became a channel cut into the rusted stone, its sides stained by black dribbles. The left way ascended steeply through knotted pines and cracking boulders, climbing a hill to a stoutly walled town of tall fortified high-houses rising out of the trees. A heavy sorrow seemed to emanate from this hilltop fastness. The forbidding hush in this empty land vibrated silently with unwelcoming vigilant malice, stifling conversation.

  A moldering wooden post had been fixed on the prow of rock that split the two roads. Near its top was nailed a flayed skin, blackened with parch and rot, its origin obscure, yet most certainly not human. Rossamund thought he could make out a wide grinning mouth and pointed ears. Scrawled in white and some other dark substance upon the rock about it were the very same "e" signs they had seen on the young fisher's knuckle the day before.

  "Pendle Hill," Europe declared grimly, her gaze narrowed on the far-off glimpse of shingles and chimneys. "The very hub of all the fantaisists and the cross-eyed folk."

  "What are all those marks?" Rossamund asked. "That fisher had one such as this."

  "Allegories," Craumpalin offered. "Find them often enough on vinegars…"

  Fransitart ruttled disapprovingly. "They think it'll protect 'em against kraulswimmers."

  Rossamund was none the wiser. "Allegories?"

  "Cult signs," Europe finally said, pouring herself some claret. "The little signals the fantaisists in their various septs like to leave each other to say which false-god they fancy."

  "Those fishers were for Sucoth," Craumpalin added soberly. "Who is spoke of as the worst of 'em all…"

  Ashen-faced, the young factotum scrutinized every threatening vacancy between tree and rock.

  "Take us right, Master Vinegar, if you please."

  Past the mile-long channel and deeper into the Witherfells the hilltops grew rounder, the valleys less steep. Turpentine and pine grew thickly on the slopes, their roots tangled with spreading thorny blackberry, the ceaseless rushing of the wind in their upper stories drowning the clop of hoof and jink of horse harness. With the day's decline, Rossamund's inkling of hostile scrutiny grew until Fransitart warned of someone ahead, a single watcher standing at a major divergence of ways on the right-hand margin of the road. It was an arrogant figure wrapped in a heavy coachman's cloak of the deepest purple, face masked with a white oval striped with four level bars, head crowned with a high-fronted hevenhull stuck with five large white feathers tipped with red.

  "Blighted fictler!" the ex-dormitory master hissed.

  Craumpalin cocked the hammer of the musketoon resting in all appearance of ease in his lap.

  "Just keep us steady ahead, Master Vinegar," Europe instructed, sitting erect in queenly composure. "Not too swift, not too leisurely either."

  Head down, Rossamund kept his eyes on the bizarrely dressed fictler. An abysmal foulness issued from the figure, filling the young factotum with an appalling terror of black and suffocating deeps. Pulling a thennelever of glister dust from his right-hand stoup, Rossamund wrestled against the near-whelming urgency to hurry the landaulet along.

  The disquietingly blank face regarded them boldly as they passed, the clatter and hiss of the wind-tossed treetops, the clop of hoof and the squeak of axle and harness the only sounds. Fransitart tipped his hat saucily to the figure, but it did not speak, or gesture, or shift its feet; it simply watched.

  FEATHERHEAD

  Rossamund peered into the shadowy pine wood fully expecting an ambuscade, yet it seemed empty, untenanted but for the single doleful caw of a crow.

  The four wayfarers went by unmolested.

  "Hmm, very peculiar," Europe said once they were past.

  Looking behind as they rounded a bend and the road cut again into rock, Rossamund found the feather-headed figure still there, still looking after them, unmoved.

  Not far on they came to a fortified bridgehead and a high gray tower, gated and well guarded. Its Branden-mottled gate wards proved unfriendly and taciturn, allowing Europe and her staff to pass only after punctilious inspection of the appropriate documents. Through the arching tunnel of the fortalice they came to a deep ravine and on the other side, upon a massive wedge of rock, stood a small grim city. Behind its high wall rank upon rank of tall white buildings rose up from the sheer rock, their roofs lead-gray or grimy clay-red. Many lofty stacks fumed from amid the usual bristle of slender chimneys, guttering dirty smokes into the wind. Great murders of crows and pied daws circled among them or gathered on rooftops to call to each other with strangely melodious songs.

  "Pour Clair," Europe said matter-of-factly.

  They traversed the gap upon a thin curving bridge of stone spiked with a line of great-lamps that terminated at a whitewashed double-turreted gatehouse.The steady rumble of a rushing, spouting torrent rose from the giddying rift beneath, its growling an ever-present undertone in all the township's bustle.

  By Europe's direction Fransitart took them along precipitous ramps and awkward l
anes to the civic hall. Named the Fallenthaw, it was tall and narrow like every other structure in this cramped, perilously situated place; its foundations were bare stones, its upper walls whitewashed, its dark roof lead shingles. It began to rain as they were admitted by stern wardens to proceed easily into the tight courtyard of white daub and dark wood pillars. Here, under a long portico drumming with the downpour, a trio of silk-wigged and silk-suited representatives of the district lords promptly met with the Branden Rose. After anxious, becking greetings, they confirmed the suppositions of the bumpkin fishermen: the dread oppressor, Gathephar, had vanished, not seen nor heard for nigh on a fortnight, where once it was troubling people twice or thrice a week.

  "I am sorry, m'lady, but the job is no more and its prizes withdrawn," the senior envoy explained with clerical immovability. "We did send to Brandenbrass knavery to cancel the singular as soon as it was apparent a knave was not needed," he continued more nervously, passing to the highly unamused fulgar the proper reply from the coursing house.

  The fulgar regarded the chief of the uncomfortable representatives narrowly. "Your civic masters are a mite premature in their cancellation, sir. Have their best eyes confirmed its evaporation?"

  "They have, m'lady," the fellow replied with a half bow, passing her the lurksman's account.

  Europe read this account then gave it to Rossamund. Written five days earlier, it was simple enough: The creature known by most as the Gutterfear or by the books as the Gathephaar is as big as houses and wrapped in dread so thick you could pickle it. I could never get close to the nucker.The snares and poisons I laid did nought to hinder it. Six nights gone I heard a loud hallooing of many throats in Timbrelle Vale where it likes to den. Upon a search at first dawn I found slot and drag that told of other nickers come in from the north to meet with our own-for I do not know how else to describe it. These same traces followed back out again-the treads of the Gutterfear with them-all scunnered to the north, the whole brood quitting the hills together. I have lurked the hills ever since, but there is nought of the beast to be found.