by D M Cornish
The hall clock tocked ponderously.
The house breathed.
Peeping through a torrid gap in the heavenly fume, the moon lit the glistening, dripping turnabout beneath for a merest breath, long enough for Rossamund to see sly activity: little lumps nosing about at the base of the cypress, one venturing toward the front door of the house itself.
A rabbit!
The tramp of Nectarius on his periodic round and the nimbus of his bright-limn coming about the corner of the lane running the side of Cloche Arde sent the furtive movement scattering. Holding his breath, Rossamund watched the nightlocksman, lantern up, peer skeptically at the yard. Something fluttered obviously in the cypress. Nectarius gave a start and shook a fist at the little fellow, growling calumnies about "that unwholesome bird and its unwholesome master!" as he turned inside.
A flurry of air passed over his head, and a little thing swooped about him around and around.
"Darter!" he whispered. "Where is Miss Europe? Is she well?"
Darter Brown, faithful bird, chirruped loudly as he hovered agitatedly in front of him, giving a series of sporadic tweets as he alighted for a beat on the windowsill to catch a breath before dashing back into the night.
Rossamund's heart missed a beat.
The little sparrow knew where she was!
Listening for the three telltale lots of thumps and clunks of the nightlocksman's retreat through the front, obverse doors and servants' port, Rossamund hurried on his best proofed coat over the fanices he still wore. Taking up his digitals and stoups, his rod of keys and moss-light from the bedside dresser, he eased discreetly out onto the landing. Pallette was there, looking shot through, a pail of steaming water in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other.
"I must be going out a moment," Rossamund said quickly.
The alice-'bout-house blinked muzzily at him and his harness and said with a clumsy half curtsy, "As you like, sir."
"And go to bed, all of you," he added. "I reckon cleaning will be done just as properly in the morning. Tell Mister Kitchen I said so."
"Yes, sir…"
Stepping down to the rain-washed yard, Rossamund was immediately met by Darter, who fluttered in agitation a few paces ahead, looping steadily toward the gate. Alert to the faintest tingle of threwd and moss-light thrust before him, Rossamund trod lightly in the huskily grinding gravel, peering about with straining, searching eyes. There among the glory vine runners in the wan effulgence of limulight and gate-post lamp, tiny black pearls glinted beadily back at him from a dark soft-furred face. Long ears folded back over a downy rump.This was not just some ordinary rabbit, Rossamund realized suddenly-certainly not the dreary one-eyed creature he had seen on his walk the other day; it was Ogh, one of the Lapinduce's own servants!
There was a soft press at his calves. It was Urgh, the twin of Ogh, urging him on.
Ogh took a long step toward the gate.
Darter Brown hopped about the ground between them in twittering agitation, patently keen to be on his way. Chirrup! cried the sparrow emphatically. Chirrup! Chirrup!
Humours beating loudly in his ears, Rossamund unfastened the lock of the gate and stepped out onto the Harrow Road to find three more rabbits, meaner, mangier-looking beasts surviving in the city itself, noses patiently twitching. Have they actually done as I have asked? he marveled. Securing the lock, he properly belted his digitals and stoups about his waist as Darter Brown took a perch upon his shoulder.
At the lead, this little drove of rabbits immediately set off, taking him south over the Footling Inch Bridge and toward Brandentown proper. On puddled moon-shone streets, Rossamund followed the pallid flash of the rabbits' cotton-tails as the blithely beasts bounded steadily from shadow to shadow. Often they would spring well ahead to wait on the edge of lantern light. When Rossamund drew near, on they would hop to the next bend or corner to wait once more. Whenever some night-active person crossed their path-a night-soil-man with stinking cart or a desperate takeny seeking a late fare-the rabbits would scurry into the murk and obstacles of the street, to emerge once more when the way was clear.
Going left off the Harrow Road it was a long jog before they finally approached the circuit before the Moldwood. Rossamund wondered for a moment as they passed its ironbound entrance what the Lapinduce might think of his little charges heeding Rossamund's bidding. He must surely know… Here they were met by another rabbit, as large as Ogh and Urgh yet with velvet fur of distinguished and near-invisible black, who took the lead and without hesitation continued onward down the Dove.
The blockhouse of the Cripplegate loomed, guarded even at this waning hour by a trio of flagging gate wards drooping on their muskets by a burning brazier in the shadow of the gate's great arch. Senses taut, Rossamund watched as first Ogh and Urgh passed through unremarked in the shadows of the deep slate gutters between road and walk, barely daring to breathe as he went along himself.
"A little late for the little lord, ain't it?Yer mistress got ye baiting lovers, 'ey, boy-o?" was the sole comment, which set the three gate wards to lewd chuckling. Mercifully, however, they did not press further with awkward questions.
Just beyond the Cripplegate the rabbits halted.
Grateful for the pause and wishing he had thought to bring a skin or biggin of water, Rossamund cautiously drew closer and saw them in silent communion with another of their tribe, a small and shabby beast.Their conference complete, the growing trace of coneys sprang off as one, made an abrupt left off the Dove and went down a street, running in the shadow of the curtain wall and its hem of half-houses. Rossamund glimpsed a sign calling it Cannon Street, and it proved a long curving way, the rabbits keeping to it as Phoebe reached her acme and began her descent of the murky, partly spangled sky. Finally at a fork they were met with another shabby city-living lapin-beast who assumed the role of pilot and took them right. On a lesser perpendicular junction yet another coney met them and took charge, keeping to the way they were on.
OGH AND DARTER BROWN
Abruptly a bedraggled hungry-eyed dog sprang bawling from some narrow alley and bore down on the coneys, intent on making one its late supper.The mangy rabbits disappeared in a trice, haring back past Rossamund, while Ogh and Urgh and their larger brother remained frozen in lantern light. Rossamund leaped forward to intervene, his sudden action flinging a sleepy Darter Brown from his shoulder roost. He need not have worried, for as soon as the cur closed, all three rabbits jumped high about it and kicked the dog savagely in its snout and neck, avoiding snapping jaws and kicking again and again.
The dog howled and stumbled. Utterly confounded, it scrabbled back.
Ogh and Urgh chased it down, still trying to kick it, sending the dog yowling to vanish down the lane whence it had sprung.
From a window high above, some surly soul half hollered for quiet.
Grown to a crowd of well over a dozen, the rough-rabbits reappeared and the weird band continued, new coneys materializing from obscure nooks at each significant change in course to take the lead. On streets empty and strangely still, Rossamund jogged stumblingly on, the rabbit-drove ever before and about him. Spotting a grand fountain bubbling on his left, set at the end of a very short alley in a tall alcove made into the side of some windowless wall, he called quietly for his guides to halt. Slaking his thirst with rapid slurping handfuls of the musty waters and joined by many of the rabbits too, he stared at the sculpted faucet. Made of black marble, its eyes a glaring gleaming white, it was a full-proportioned figure of the heldin Tascifarnias wrastling the great sea-wretchin Lampedusa, gripping the nadderer in a mortal stranglehold even as the beast pierced him through with its spines.Though he was certain the sculptor had not intended it, the image seemed to him apt: that the more everymen fought the monsters, the more they did themselves in…
Wetting a handkerchief broidered elaborately at the corners with red and magenta, he went to dab at his forehead and found that the sparrow mask was still there, pushed up on his crown and forgott
en.
A boom like the detonation of a cannon seemed to roll up from the harbor.
Europe's assault was proceeding more violently than he had imagined.
With one last noisy mouthful of water, Rossamund was quickly on the way again, a whole herd of rabbits stretched before him across the ancient paving.Though he could not be certain, their number seemed to have increased to near three dozen even as they had paused, becoming a tide of downy fur flowing through the streets and the small-hour hush of the city.Yet, such a crowd as they were, loping before or beside or behind him and even through his legs, Rossamund neither trod on one nor was tripped.
On the other side of an elegant four-arched bridge crossing a broad, hissing stream, Rossamund realized he was being escorted into the seedy side of the city: the dockland suburbs, where shadows were long, streets crooked and terrible affairs easily hidden. They moved in a patter of paws like muted rain down ancient stinking laneways whose cloacal reek even the approaching pungence of the Grume could not cover, passing rickety tenements whose foundations were laid before the Tutelarchs first arrived.
Somewhere near in this brooding den a fiddle and fife trilled a merry jig and voices called and jeered in desperate, almost angry pleasure.
Fastening his frock coat higher as if to ward himself, Rossamund pulled his sparrow mask over his face, hoping his own bizarre appearance might give folks given to violence cause to think again.
Grown to more than two score and ten, the drove of rabbits proved strangely and surprisingly certain in this menacing place, keeping confidently to their path despite the many blind lanes and bad-ending ambulatories. They surged by the few folk milling in self-absorbed groups or stumbling, soused, along the threatening row. Amazingly, the rabbits went largely ignored, and if acknowledged, they were greeted with either flabbergasted stupefaction or a kind of fumbling, familiar horror, even sending some poor soul blubbering and hastening some other way.
"Away with thee, Rabbit-o'-Blighty! Ex munster vackery!"
The sweetly acrid stink of the vinegar sea was doubled by an undeniably fishy odor as the streets gained a clutter of lobster pots and smudgy upside-down jolly boats.
Another powerful boom ahead set windows rattling.
Heads poked from windows and doors, all looking in the same direction.
"Been goin' on fer an hour now," he heard called above him by a crotchety onlooker.
"Full-blowed war right in the Alcoves," complained another. "Good gracious, what's that below us?"
"Blight me white, it's the Sparrownucker-man!"
Hurrying, panting, shuffling on, Rossamund thought he smelled powder smoke as he left the distressed natives to their alarm. Some way ahead came the echoing clatter of musketry, far off yet unmistakable. Gasping in air, he pushed against the waxing pangs in limb and lung.
The drove swollen surely beyond count, Rossamund was led on to broader streets, empty again, lined with sheers and loading stages: the stowage roads between storehouses, weighhalls and shipping clericies that went down to the harbor proper and the muffled tolling of buoys. At first lost, he still had a sense of heading south and east as he was guided far into this dockland, until as they came to a road of identically commonplace half-houses, he had notion he had seen such streets before…
On the way to the Broken Doll with Rookwood…
Brazen plaques fixed to the twin ranks of their front steps spoke universally of tolling offices, shipping clerks and maritime lawyers.Yet here on this dull street the great horde of coneys finally stopped. As a single creature they gathered on road and pavement to stare at one particular building some way down on the left and as unremarkable as every other grubby edifice on the entire row: same false arched windows, engaged columns and mass-produced entablatures, same rearing stone grindewhals projecting from curling pediments and clutching meaningless street numbers, same gray slate steps going up to glossy black doors.
Perplexed, Rossamund stood before the place, lifting his mask clear to suck in great lungfuls of sweet, healing air. There was no fight here, no battling roughs or debris of fallen bodies, just an empty street and these indistinguishable buildings.
Upon the homogenous post at the foot of the steps, a stained and corroded plaque read:
The structure did not look any different from the half-houses either side but for a lone rabbit sitting at its threshold at the summit of the steps.
With a chill of astonishment, Rossamund beheld that it was the very half-blind, broken-eared creature he had greeted in the yard of Cloche Arde.
"Oh, faithful beast!" Rossamund breathed. "All of you!" he wheezed to the mass of rabbits and Darter Brown too.
The coneys simply stared at him, snouts ever twitching.
Behind the sole-eyed rabbit the door to the house stood ajar.
Rossamund took it to mean only one thing: it was here that Europe had begun her assault on Pater Maupin and all those with him, and that somewhere within, his mistress was to be found.
There came another muted concussion, somewhere ahead and to the left.
The sole-eyed rabbit turned and pushed through the mere gap between door and jamb to disappear within.
With Phoebe well descended from her apex and Darter Brown flapping ahead, Rossamund flicked a caste of Frazzard's powder into hand, took out his moss-light, climbed the stone steps and went inside.
27
CONTESTS DARK AND VENOMOUS
Peltisade hiding place of significant size, large enough for a person to live in permanently, with space for staff and entertainments, often functioning as the dens of the ne'er-do-well set of folk with enough money and influence to create such havens. Such structures are more common in cities than authorities would care to ponder upon, yet as universal as they might be, they are little reckoned to exist by most folk, which is precisely the point.
Illuminated feebly by a single yellowing bright-limn, the small front hall of the office of Messrs. Gabritas amp; Thring was dominated by a narrow stair. Europe was not here; nor, it seemed, was anyone else. Pausing, ear cocked, Rossamund listened. The building's emptiness was almost a presence in itself, an oppressive absence of activity, yet a memory of violence hovered in the untenanted space.
Sole-eye was nowhere to be seen.
To the left of the stairwell, light was faintly showing, as from a door ajar to a lit room. Boldly, Darter Brown disappeared into the dimness of the hall beside the stair, the sparrow's thin tweeting coming back to Rossamund as if to say, "All is well!"
Moss-light in one hand, caste of Frazzard's in other, the young factotum crept forward, regretting every groan or thump of the boards amplified in the surrounding silence. At the far end of the passage he could see a narrow lozenge-shaped bar of light-a door ajar indeed-and in its glow sat the sole-eyed rabbit waiting for him, Darter Brown standing between its ears.
Drawing toward them, Rossamund perceived a whiff of arcing in the sterile atmosphere. He felt a thrill of fear as he spied through the gap into the room beyond, the body of a well-armored fellow lying face to the ceiling, body bent in the telltale rictus contortion of an arcing demise. Not far into the room another sturdy rough was stretched, his countenance frozen in surprise, a neat bullet hole in the unfortunate man's brow.
To wing again, Darter flitted over these new-made corpses and in through the lit doorway, his peremptory chirp ringing from within, calling Rossamund on.
Sole-eye, however, remained in the hall.
Rossamund gave the dogged, scrawny creature a brief parting beck. "Thank you," he said, stepping cautiously over the dead warden into the room.
Here in the wan illumination of a single light he found some manner of clerical file. Its walls, of a particularly sickly hue of green, were hung with certificates of charter and lists of fares and tolls, its space cluttered with chairs, desks and cabinets arranged about a shoddy imitation Dhaghi carpet. Thrown down on this rug was a man in dark and innocuously ordinary clothes, laid upon his side, his face shockingly marred
by some recipe of mordant script, tumblerpicks splayed from his lifeless hands on the bare boards.
A lockscarfe! A professional break-and-enter man.
By the body stood a posticum-a secret door made to look part of the wall-released and exposed. Disguised as a bracket for a dependent bright-limn, its lock was freshly scarred, partly melted too by the very trap that surprised and ended the days of the scarfe, partly scorched by some small but powerful blast.
Beyond the forced posticum-into what was most likely the building next to Messrs. Gabritas amp; Thring-the young factotum found a strong room. Still secured, metal-barred cabinets along the walls held a selection of firelocks and other implements devised for harm. At the far end a desk of hard and heavy wood had been hastily thrown over and now squatted like a bastion, straight-back chairs tipped and scattered about it; Darter Brown perched upon its uppermost edge. From behind this barricade protruded a pair of black-booted legs.
Europe!
Yet hurrying up he quickly discovered that-too large and too blunt-toed-the boots belonged instead to a flourishingly harnessed pistoleer slain by implacable eclatics, his many pistolas useless in their many holsters. With the shootist was another pair of fallen sturdies, their final stand overcome.
The levin-scent of a fulgar's labors lingered in the close space.
Beyond the table another innocuous slab of wall was slid aside to reveal a doorway-Pater Maupin was nothing if not determined to hide this back door into his realm. Through this was a thin passage, a slype running into darkness. Here Darter Brown did not go on alone, but with a small tweet! took his place on his master's shoulder. Edging forward, Rossamund shone his limulight into the chute and, determined to find his mistress come what may, entered. Mercifully short, the slype deposited him in a space that appeared limitlessly dark in the weak glow of his effulgent moss, thick beams above hardly high enough for a man to walk fully straightened. Rossamund listened. Nothing shifted in this sepulchral hush but the rush of his own inward parts in his ears. Some several yards ahead he gradually perceived an insipid light, picking out a veritable forest of thick supporting posts all about him, as if the floor above was expected to bear immense weight.The bright stink of eclatics was stronger in here, sharp against the flat damp of dust and old sacks.
