by D M Cornish
Content to accept the simple honest refuge of Fransitart’s wisdom, Rossamünd let his head sag under the sway of the claret.What was left of the night was of jabs and tweaks and swirling dreams of monsters rushing at him: horn-ed things, slavering corpse-things, great ettin-beasts coming at him over and over.
To the lowing of distant cattle, the four adventurers got under way early. Before going on, Craumpalin had bound Rossamünd’s still aching chest in a bitter-smelling brew. “This will seep into bone and gristle and give thee ease,” the dispenser insisted, wrapping him so firmly the young factotum had difficulty bending. Aboard the landaulet he was unable to slouch or slump or sag but was forced to sit as straight as the Branden Rose herself; he felt sorely used and most definitely shot through.
Upon hearing of yesternight’s stouche, Europe’s first response was open displeasure. “You were content then, Rossamünd,” she had said with forcibly leveled tone, “to let this beast be free to spoil these good people’s graves and eat their long-loved dead like nothing more than scringings from a licensed victualer.”
“Of course not, Miss Europe!” the young factotum protested, stung more than all by the realization that he had not properly considered this last night. “I—I had to stay to my watch!”
“Aye, better a safe camp than personal glory,” Fransitart added stoutly, frowning in support.
The fulgar regarded the old marine society master as if looks alone might flatten him. “The next time you go to play the teratologist, Rossamünd, know your place and seek me for the work!” she reproached him, pressing fingertips to forehead in exasperation. “My capacity to protect you will be greatly diminished if you warn off every prize and make me the poorer for it!”
“Aye ...” Rossamünd had kept his voice firm.
On the move again, and with treacle in her humours, Europe had found calm. “It occurs to me a touch peculiar, Rossamünd,” she declared almost absently, sucking daintily on some common rock salt, “that you were not aware of your bogle-slaying strength earlier in your life.”
Rossamünd had no answer for this. “I—,” he tried, but did not know how to put into words that only under great threat had he discovered more vigor in him than expectation led him to reasonably employ; that this bogle-slaying strength was more like a well within him than a constant state of being; it was something, he was learning, that he could draw from by choice rather than just continuously and thoughtlessly available thew.
The fulgar’s eyes glittered with mild mischief. “What of your younger days playing at slaps or parleys with the other bookchildren? Did you terrorize your fellows with great feats of might, little man?”
“I did not know I had such strength to use,” the young factotum replied with a shrug. Freckle had once said a long time gone some obscure clue about Rossamünd having to yet learn this strength. He grimaced. I guess I am learning it now.
“Aye,” Craumpalin said in support. “Thou cannot spend money thee doesn’t know thee has.”
“Perhaps,” Europe replied musingly.
Although from the view atop the hawthorn hill it seemed only a few mounded fields over from their night camp, Spelter Innings proved to be well more than an hour distant by the circuitous wendings of the Athy Road. The day-orb peeped above the folded greening and warmed the travelers as they traversed a small arch over a reedy creek. At its end, they were confronted by a stone wall spiked with what appeared to be newly cut thorn-withies. In this was a heavy, cast-iron gate as tall as three tall men, the portal into the town at last.
“Who comes hence!” the heavy-harnessed gaters challenged peevishly, appearing from small sallies hidden by the dense runners. For simple gate wardens they were as impressively dressed as their courtly counterparts back in the halls of the Archduke. Looking terribly harassed, they showed themselves willing, with muskets cocked and fends lowered, to vent their troubles on any awkward foreigner.
“You recognize me full well, you uppity gregorine!” Europe bit in turn, causing every single gate ward to blanch. “Next you will be asking me for patents of my degree and proofs of my station! Know your place! Open up and let us through!”
In contrast to the sour welcome, Spelter Innings was a gorgeous town, nestled in the shallow folds between the meadows. Bustling with morning activity, every street and lane was a flourishing avenue of spring blossoming almond, lime, cherry and plum, filling the morning with perfumed glory, sweetening the fragrant wood-smoke. Local geriatrics sat on the small balustraded porticoes of their simple high-houses built right up against the main way, watching the passing of all below, with a friendly “halloo” to their neighbors and a mistrustful stare for strangers.
Curiously, as they passed from the town by its farther gates, Rossamünd spied a reddleman among the traffic, the dye-seller walking in the same direction. Is that the same fellow we found under the Catharine wheels? Yet this was not possible; how could a foot-going vendor overtake them?
Catching his shrewd inspection, the bedraggled hawker called, “One sparkle gets a fine bit of madder for the rich gent!” and held up a pot in hands tainted bright scarlet. There was something slightly off-beam in the fellow’s eyes, something frantic and overexercised.
The young factotum ducked his head and pretended not to hear.
Leaving the red-stained dye-seller far behind, they continued deeper into the wide, fertile peace of the Page, traveling under a dome of near infinite blue, clean white clouds plumping on the horizon ahead. Trees here were far and few, lonely, wind-bent pines and myrtles pruned by hungry herds into elegant parasol shapes. It was only when they were well into the day that Rossamünd realized that Darter Brown had not shown himself. The young factotum began to half consciously search the skies for his miniature friend, scrutinizing every bush or spray of weeds, but not a glimpse could he find.
They went through several hams not properly marked on Craumpalin’s map, homey sheltered nooks built in shallow dingles fenced with guarding pines and turpentines and the rubble of ancient stones, each settlement bearing a peculiar name like Windle Comb, Plummet Fulster or the Larch.The folks of these places reckoned themselves so unfailingly safe they went about in only day-clothes, with at best a single garment of proofing. It was a stark contrast to the vigilant rural settings Rossamünd had encountered in the Idlewild. The night was spent in the major civil center of Spokane, a bustling place of high slate houses approaching the gravity of a small city.
In the cheerful clarity of a fresh day, Rufous and Candle took them faithfully north out from Spokane along a busy road called Iron Street that cut high muddy-sided channels through steep wood-fenced meadows of fallow loam or rippling green. Stunted self-sown blossom trees prettied the verges of their path with their pink plum blossoms or sprouted from the lee crest of a hill. Here and there were prominences clearly artificially enlarged into broad oblong mounds of ancient stone, some topped by stocky tumbledown towers, the relics of another people’s departed glory decaying beneath teeming weeds.
Rossamünd spent much of his time distractedly looking out for Darter Brown, but could find no hint of him, and of the many little birds he saw, none flew up to greet him.
In twinkling twilight they found a village called the Broom Holm, a timber and mutton town built near the northwestern tip of what Craumpalin’s chart named the great forest of thornwood and protected with the more usual high stone curtain. The most remarkable feature of this modest settlement was the grand copper-domed tower of a tocsin that rose well above its other humbly proportioned structures, a self-important display of the success and circumstance of this parish.
Tail-sore and bleary, the four found their rest at the White Hare, a three-story wayhouse established to service the vigil jaunts of wealthy city folk, providing all the luxuries they expected.
“I could grow right partial to such traveling comforts,” Craumpalin observed, smiling a little dreamily as he surveyed the plush room, all creams and whites and subtle greens. “Never in me life have
I known such a run of cozying beds.”
“Aye,” said Fransitart, clearly at ease. “It ne’er stops amazin’ me to think souls live all their days like this.”
“The reverse never stops amazing me,” Europe returned.
The fourth day of the knave was gray and threatening, spring yearning for winter’s return. Europe’s mood—already mildly amiable—lifted that little more. Out the other side of the Broom Holm, the pastured meadows gave over to wide spreading vineyards, roll upon roll of land striped with dark parallel lines of grapevines. Sighted briefly between cedar hedgerows and the folding land stood the ancestral homes of the landed peers. Some were blocky, fortified greathouses standing watch over anciently righted holdings; others were grandly modern palaces of the new rich whose only concession to the rumored assault of monsters was to have their lowest windows set higher than a tall man could reach.
The Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes inhaled deeply and looked about complacently. “How I much prefer this open-seat travel to going cooped in a stuffy cabin, to feel the wind’s breath on my brow and the taste of the land on my lips.”
“Can’t say I smell more than dirt,” Fransitart offered, scowling over his shoulder at the dark billows that were blowing up from the southwest and bringing with them a sweet sea tang. “We salts bain’t much use for snufflin’ things—the sea encourages us ter forget that sense as soon as is naturally possible.”
Europe arched a brow and sniffed.
Fixing his sabine scarf about his throat a little more warmly, Rossamünd grinned. Come weather fair or foul, he too could travel all his days like this, floating somewhere between destinations, the cares of before left behind, the cares ahead yet to come. Smiling at the flattening vales of ordered green, one eye still out for a glimpse of Darter Brown, he became steadily alive to a hidden and unfamiliar disquiet. “The land is not as restful as the rich builders with their low windows reckon on,” he said, gaining only puzzled glances from both his old masters and new mistress.
The Branden Rose peered at her diminutive employee with shrewd calculation. “You speak evidently of the subtleties of the threwd, little man.”
“Aye, Miss Europe.” He looked at her earnestly. “It is only slight, but it is not kindly.”
“Hence our need to come here, yes?”
“Aye,” he returned inaudibly.
Attending to the directions given by Craumpalin from the written pilot provided to Rossamünd when he accepted the singular, Fransitart turned them off Iron Street and took a tributary drive marked by a thin white stone. In excellent repair—probably through private funds—this path made for good speed, and the landaulet fairly clipped by flat pastures interspersed with vines and orchard groves in full and glorious flower.Watching their flocks in sheep-mown fields, heavily armed and harnessed shepherds peered at the rapidly passing newcomers and did not return Craumpalin’s curt wave.
As the gray day dimmed toward its conclusion, they came into view of a large handmade hill, its broad, level summit ringed thickly with cedars, from behind which rose the chimneys, ridge-caps and gables of an enormous manor.
“Our destination, I am thinking,” Europe observed.
Finding a somewhat precipitous ramp rising along the northern flank of the hill, Fransitart encouraged the weary horses to climb this last obstacle. Through open gates at its summit they entered unchallenged into a broad, partially paved square with service buildings on every side and a neat garden copse of large ornamental pear trees and a spreading cedar in the middle. Veering left and scattering chickens, Fransitart brought them to a halt before the outspread steps of a stately façade of pink stone and a great many windows.
Striding down to them from the doubly high front doors, the anonymous pastoralist of the second singular, splendidly attired in a wide frock coat of expensive indigo, met them. “Welcome! Welcome well to the Dike!” he cried, his arms gratifyingly wide. Introducing himself with a long bow as Monsiere Decius Trottinott, Companion Imperial of the Gate and heir of the Patredike, their host handed Europe from the landaulet as his yardsmen took Rufous and Candle, the carriage and the luggage too into their charge. Without even a glance at any documentation, Monsiere Trottinott welcomed the Duchess-in-waiting and her faithful staff openly to his bastionlike home and holdings.
“You can well imagine how hopeful I was when the communication arrived from the coursing house that it was the great Branden Rose who consented to effect my solution,” he declared with gusto. “How gratified I was when I received communication from your own gracious hand confirming the same!”
Europe received his enthusiasm with queenly equanimity, neither falling into aloof superiority nor letting herself be caught up in the tide of his candid delight.
Despite his southern name, Monsiere Trottinott spoke with a refined and common Grumid accent, spontaneously showing away his wide barns sheltering all manner of rural equipages, his buried cellars smelling of musty grapes and full to their low groin-vaulted ceilings with innumerable wine presses and pipes of properly aging vin, and the gala hall with its family crypt beneath, entombing generations of his line back to the founding of Patredike in HIR 1401.
“Ahh, but pity us, your graciousness,” Monsiere Trottinott went on as he showed them at last through the domed entry hall of the main manor to a grand hiatus, “that in our two hundredth year we are beset by some secreted evil that steals my sheep, tears up my precious vines and—foulest of all—wounds and attempts to carry off my loyal sheepmen!”
“The pity, Monsiere, is that I could not come to you sooner,” Europe replied with practiced grace.
Trottinott nodded and gave a gratified bow, offering Europe a plush seat and simpler benches for her three fellows. “Your graciousness is most gracious.”
The day’s early threatening gray finally brewed into a storm, rattling windows, gusting down chimneys, setting sumptuously liveried servants in silken blues to hurry closing shutters and drawing drapes.
A jut-jawed steward entered bringing a tray of fine Heil glasses of delicate powdery blue and a refreshment the Monsiere called agrapine.
“You must try,” he insisted. “It is from the gleanings of my own pressings, would you believe! It tastes full, though it is not at all strong—perfect for just before a meal.”
Taking his portion, Rossamünd surreptitiously eyed the wonderful luxurious clutter of the many-windowed hiatus. Between bookshelves swollen with books and red marble columns, every panel and wall was hung with paintings, large and small, mostly of people in portrait or action, and making the room seem filled with a veritable crowd of souls. Even the lofty coffered ceiling was alive with many prospects, in-cluding—directly above him—a glorious campaign scene of a man in the mottle of the Empire standing prominent in a mass of wrestling warriors in Imperial and Turkic harness.
MONSIERE TROTTINOTT
“That is the moment when my grandsire earned his honor and his title, and his ever-grateful heirs their elevation,” the Monsiere offered smilingly, breaking into Rossamünd’s craning fixation.
“Aye, sir, at the Battle of the Gates, just when—late in the day—the Turkoman flank was collapsing,” Rossamünd returned in uninhibited enthusiasm, “just before Haroldus met and slew the Slothog!”
“One and the same!” Trottinott clapped once in delight. “Hark, here is a proper student of matter to show my boys how it is done! I must praise you, Duchess Rose, for your young servant’s fine address; how excellent it must be to be served by such learned fellows.”
Europe gave a single, slow blink. “Indeed it is, Monsiere . . . very excellent.”
The young factotum blushed as Craumpalin gave him a subtle nudge. Vaguely conscious of his mistress’ gaze upon him, Rossamünd fixed his attention on his delicate glass of sweet yet sour agrapine.
Settled, they were joined by a handsome woman in a flaring dress of rich satin, grass-hued with thin peach pink stripes, her entrance marked with the comforting swish-swish of her skirts. Trotting d
utifully beside this gracious woman came two children, both boys, turned out in neat suits of deep warm blue like their father: one little, the other nearer to Rossamünd’s own age.
“Allow me to name my wife—Lillette, the Madamine Trottinott . . .”
The auburn-haired beauty curtsied low with well-practiced ease and a slight creak of stays, her elaborate curls falling about her face and neck. “Gracious lady,” she said with great gravity, the doubt in her eyes at this martial peeress discreetly contained.
“And two of my triple joys, Autos ...”
The older boy bowed, saying with already breaking voice, “I am delighted, graciousness.”
“. . . and Pathos.”
The younger boy grinned. “Hullo, my lady!” he said with a slight rustic burr.
“And hullo to you, small fellow,” Europe returned with the perfect model of an amiable smile.
“He loves to spend his days with my moilers,” the father offered by way of explanation. “Their older sister, Muse, is boarded at the aplombery in Lo, applying herself to finishing her womanly graces.”
Europe sniffed bitterly as if to say exactly what she thought of aplomberies, yet when she spoke, she was civil and smooth. “So tell me more, Monsiere, of this creature that besets you. Have you seen it?”
Trottinott’s face fell. “Ah. That I have not, gracious lady, though several of my tenants and servants have. All that is sure is the evidence of their ravages: my kennels empty.” He looked nervously to his sons, clearly uneasy about saying too much in front of them. “Vines in ruins, flocks . . . decimated, their herdsmen hurt and demanding exorbitant incentive to stay to the watch of their folds. It would be best to speak with them. I shall call them out tomorrow. They have had closest dealings with the . . . troublers . . . Apart, that is, from the fugelman we sought from Dough Hill to hunt it—but alas, he never returned, precipitating the very writ you have so fitly answered . . . Ah! But listen to me! It is a long road from the bright city to here.” The Monsiere spread his hands before them. “You should take a day to recover yourselves.”
