The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  “We were reckonin’ ye’d think it better to leave the lad behind or some such.” The old dormitory master breached the impasse. “Them cunning poltroons may ’ave other surprises in wait to get at him . . . Have ye thought he might be better off living in some wild place than the shoaly dangers of that there city?”

  “Yes, I have.” The fulgar closed her eyes and touched fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Many times . . .”

  “Better to forgo the bait than struggle in the snare.” Fransitart peered at Rossamünd, a haunted expression deep in the ex-dormitory master’s weary eyes.

  Europe bridled even as Rossamünd opened his mouth to speak. “This is not open to the ballot of some vulgar Hamlin parliament, sir. If my service is unpleasant to you, you may quit it. Perhaps living by Maupin’s leave is more to your liking?”

  Fransitart scowled but kept his counsel.

  “I would have thought, Master Vinegar,” the fulgar said mordantly, “that a vinegaroon of your length and quality of service would be better used to following commands.”

  “Aye,” the old vinegar growled. “Well, per’aps this old vinegar is getting weary of living by another’s leave!”

  Staring glumly at the bland sunny scene of dashing hovels, high-houses and ancient manors, Rossamünd felt as miserable as he ever had, the cheerful light to him dismal and ominous. He watched a vast flock of starlings surging distantly over the elevated pastures, a harmoniously writhing mass so dense it looked like some roiling fast-moving mist, skimming the hilltops—a whole city of birds dancing in the sky.

  Oh, that I could swoop with them.

  As the day drew on, they crested the escarpment above the Milchfold and beheld Brandenbrass the Great, a many-spired crown sprawled along the coast and bejeweled with a hundred thousand lights—the glittering den of their foes. Rossamünd smiled wryly. He had once, in a straightforward and carefree time not too far gone, thought cities a place of simplicity and safety.Yet as they drew down to the plain of the Milchfold, he regarded this great seat of civilization much as he was sure all monsters did, as a dark fastness of bloodthirstiness and brutality, the brink of all woes.

  On the flat of the Fold they went rapidly, and in the encroaching gloom of early evening passed into the brutal city, entering under the Moon Gate into the elevated northern suburbs about the fortress of Grimbasalt. Come away so quickly from the freedom of Orchard Harriet to these narrow beetling streets, Rossamünd was daunted by the sad, crowding business, the relentless pursuit of . . . of . . . whatever this ceaseless chasing served. Every face seemed turned to them, every eye watching for their return, every mouth ready to bring report of them to Swill and Maupin and their coterie of bloodthirsting allies. Muffling his nose with his still-torn vent against the stink of sluggish drains and close lanes and all ambition’s decay, he glimpsed again a bill blazoned “Winstermill!” but now was too tired and too downhearted to care.

  The lentum-and-six took them slowly into the yard of Cloche Arde, the high-house’s solid grandeur bringing him some measure of comfort. There they discovered another coach arrived ahead of them. Rossamünd was certain he could see an oddly familiar figure stepping from it—a tall, skinny man wearing his own snow-white hair slicked and jutting like a plume from the back of his head and small bottle-brown spectacles.

  “Doctor Crispus!” he cried, leaning dangerously over the sash.

  The physician’s face was drawn, his expression deeply anxious and not a little bewildered. Under his smudged, yet still sartorially splendid pinstripe gray coat, his arm was wrapped against his trunk, bandaged against a break. “Well betide you, Lampsman Bookchild! Well betide you all!” he called. “Happy advents! This is your dwelling; my reconnaissance is proven true!” His face grew suddenly grave. “I have just come today from Vesting High . . .”

  “And we from the hills,” Europe answered a little more cautiously as he handed her out from the coach cabin. “You are an unlooked-for arrival, sir . . . Has the clerk-master given you some long-deserved leave?”

  A strange, unreadable expression clouded the physician’s face. “No, madam, no.” He bowed low. “I bring the most pressing and astonishing news . . . Winstermill has fallen. The lighters of the manse are no more.”

  22

  JUSTICE DELIVERED, VENGEANCE DELAYED

  speculator private most commonly called sleuths, also speculators, sneaksmen, snugsmen or deductors; fellows offering their cunning, contacts and guile for a fee, to be employed in the discovery or repression of whatever or whomever is desired. Existing almost exclusively in cities, they operate under official license and are often engaged by the more proper authorities as thieftakers. A good sleuth will employ several undersleuths and have a wide association of informants and seeds, even possessing connections in other cities.

  STILL in their frowsty travel clothes, the five sat in the hiatus while Clossette and her various maids bustled about them to turn bright-limns and bring a hasty supper. So settled, Europe, Rossamünd and his two masters listened to Doctor Crispus’ remarkable tale of panic and collapse in attentive silence.

  The assault on Winstermill had come in the night. By devious means the nickers had foiled the portcullis guarding the roads that passed under the fortress and found their way in through the very clandestine passages and furtigrades where Rossamünd once vanquished the pig-eared gudgeon and Swill and the Master-of-Clerks conducted their wretched business.

  “Such cruel speed, such mortal efficiency!” Crispus pressed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “They seemed to pounce from every subterranean orifice, every door and closet.”

  Though the defenders roused quickly, they could do little to halt the inward attack.

  “I could hear the frightful clamor of conflict through the walls of the infirmary,” The Doctor recalled sadly. “The bells of the Specular ringing ceaselessly, cannon on the wall tops booming, muskets loosed by quarto in the very halls of the manse joined by the ranting cacophony of a bestial host. I am ashamed to admit that my first thoughts were to flight. This would not do, of course; what of the hurt in my own care? Who would seek out poor Mister Numps?”

  Rossamünd wrestled the urge to interrupt and demand of Numps’ fate.

  “With only a lone epimelain to do the work with me—a dear girl who had stayed faithful through all the Master-of-Clerks’ depredations—I sorted those who could walk out and those who needed carrying. Swill, the dog, would not help. Absent for the whole of last month, he had returned only a day or so before, come back from some dark errand, little doubt . . .”

  Europe stirred on her tandem. “Little doubt, indeed . . . ,” she said.

  “Coming from some hidden nook, he was clutching a wad of books and documentation. ‘They’re in the kitchen!’ he was crying. ‘In the slypes!’ and kept uttering like a man in fever, ‘He sent them! I do not know how, but that blighted child is having his revenge!’ Who this child might be, I can only conjecture . . .”

  Rossamünd could not be sure, but he thought he saw the physician’s harried regard flick to him ever so quickly.

  “Swill useless, I sent the poor epimelain to get some other, sturdier help, but, alas!” The anguish on Crispus’ face was distressingly candid. “She did not return . . .” He closed his eyes against foul memory. “If I had waited but a minute more, she would still be with us, for somehow in all the woe, our most wondrous Lady Dolours appeared, to pluck us all from the very clutches of doom. She and her columbines and that young Threnody lass you were chums with, Rossamünd, had lurked a veritable army of nickers only days before: a great hoard come out from the east and north, bent on Winstermill, plundering cot and field as they drew closer.” He took a deep breath and his aspect grew tight. “With the very advent of these doughty damsels a great frenzy of bogles spilled from the Kitchen Ends into the infirmary; swarthy, hirsute toadlike things right in the heart of impregnable Winstermill. Hard were the calendars pressed to keep us safe and lead us out, trying to bring that rascal S
will with them. But afraid of the calendars as much as he was of the bogles, he ran from the infirmary, raving like a mad man, ‘I’m not the one you want! I’m not the one you want!’”

  A knock and Kitchen arrived with glasses of refreshingly dilute claret complete with pulped pear for them all.

  “The brave calendars defended the sick even as they carried them from the manse proper,” Crispus continued after a lengthy sip. “Out in the Broad Hall by the infirmary I caught my last glimpse of the clerk-master. Sans wig, he was among his troubardiers—and Laudibus Pile with him—all defending a stack of furniture and books set across the doors from the Broad Hall to the Ad Lineam, shooting pistols and fusils and jabbing their spittendes at the squabbling rabble of hobnickers beyond. Where the black-eyed witting fellow that Podius brought in was at, I do not know; I felt his work twice or thrice but never caught sight of him.” He took another drink. “Winning out onto the Grand Mead, we found the Feuterers’ Cottage and the gatehouse blazing torches. By this wicked light I saw the once-impassable gates thrown open and stormed by obscure beslimed things surging from the dense grasses of the Harrowmath. A great battle was unfolding on the grounds where we had paraded so often and boasted of our impregnability. Yet in the violence I could plainly see that it was no simple massacre; I witnessed monster at fight with monster!”

  “Frogs and toads!” Craumpalin exclaimed quietly.

  “Indeed, sir. As some sought to destroy men, so others strove to defend us. I have never known the like—I always thought the nicker universally black-hearted—as I know you shall agree, Madam Fulgar.”

  Rossamünd looked to the floor to hide a frown.

  The Duchess-in-waiting simply nodded.

  “Fighting a path through the hoots and howls and caterwauling harassments,” Crispus pressed on, “the calendars seemed well learned in the distinction between friend and foe. The Lady Dolours was a wild thing, dashing here and there and laying all blighted beasts flat before her with equal measure of smokes and striving. Young Threnody too did her part, supporting the hurt, throwing back nickers when she had need—she seemed better at her witting than her poor reputation led me to believe.” He gave a quick, sad look to Rossamünd. “All about I could feel what I believe some call threwd, a great swaying contest of it. If I did not know any better, I might have said it was as if two wills of clear and contrary intent were contending against each other: malice coming from north and east, benevolence from the south.

  “I watched a vasty brute—born of logs and barks and sticks and wider than it was tall—flail against a band of grinning things. On the Forming Square an umbergog with the head of some malformed ram stood in a deadly bout against an absurdly enormous, bloated pillboy, all hunched and heavy in its swollen insect shell; who fought for whom I could not discern. The lighters who could united with us in our exodus, picking up the infirm that dying calendars dropped. Ahh, what unhappiness, Rossamünd, to run from calls of pain, not to them. Before us scourge Josclin fell beneath an ettin’s stomp even as his chemistry burned the thing to its death. Brave Josclin—he performed marvels that night . . . Songs should be made of him . . . We found Swill too . . . Or, rather, what remained of him.”The physician drew a hand across his brow. “Though his head remained whole, his members were torn asunder with such careless savagery that I believe not even the most skilled massacar could put him back together again.”

  Uncertain of what he felt, Rossamünd closed his eyes. The end of a foe—especially such a terrible and pitiless end—was not necessarily the great victory he had supposed it might be. It was instead a melancholy kind of relief; a threat was lifted but its consequences remained.

  “The overweaning massacar missteps at last,” Europe murmured with evident satisfaction.

  “It’s a pity the nickers di’n’t get to ’im before ’e got to spreadin’ ’is conjecturings over ’ere,” Fransitart added darkly.

  “They tried, Master Frans,” said Rossamünd quietly, thinking bitterly of the poor doomed Herdebog Trought trying to rend its way into Winstermill, and the destruction of Wormstool. “They tried . . .”

  A dull thump of luggage fumbled by Wenzel the footman out in the vestibule hall gave the physician a cruel start.

  “I reckon thee might do well to unbrace thyself with a nice calmer,” Craumpalin offered quietly, leg raised on a tandem. “I could test thee bestill liquor if thee likes.”

  “Indeed, sir; or perhaps Dew of Imnot might do me better, if you know how it goes—kinder upon my stomach,” Crispus concurred solemnly. “I’ll have out with my recounting, then take a draught after.”

  Rossamünd could stand it no longer. “But what of Numps?”

  “Yes, yes, my boy.” The physician adjusted his spectacles. “I was just coming to that. He is well, that I will say.” He took a breath. “Where was I? Ah! Such a wild hooting and bellowing was pressing at every hand, and the very air assaulted us with dark and dreadful thoughts. As mighty as the Lady Dolours undoubtedly is, she and Threnody and their surviving sister columbines appeared to falter. A dark and awful form stood at the gate, head ducked under the arch, a horned and thorny beast of wicked antiquity. Gathephär, one of the calendars called it in her dread.”

  Those other monsters that Grammaticus fellow in Pour Clair wrote of must have called it away to join the assault! Doubly glad they had not found this dread monster themselves, Rossamünd glanced to Europe, who remained attentive to the doctor’s telling.

  “Slavering, it reached for us, swatting Dolours aside. Smaller wretchers dashed among us. I was thrown to the ground—which is where I suspect this”—the doctor wagged his bandaged arm, his voice rising in the passion of his recounting—“occurred. We were in danger of being eliminated where we stood! Quite suddenly, all oppressions and griefs were lifted as if by some mighty though kindly hand. Something small burst through us from behind, clad in fine coat, processing greatly distended sparrow’s head upon his shoulders. I thought us finally undone.”

  “Cinnamon!” Rossamünd breathed excitedly. How fast and far must the nuglung prince have traveled to be present for the assault? How did he ever know it was going to happen?

  “Indeed it was, my friend!” Crispus exclaimed in his very own amazement. “As I later learned. Such a diminutive creature, yet it sprang readily at this Gathephär, leaping so very high to strike at the monstrous thing with a long spittende, driving the Gathephär back after many fierce blows, to send it howling through the gate and away. For a moment the tide of baskets fell away. Delivered, we hurried out from that perishing fortress, this Cinnamon aiding Dolours, who still lived despite her buffeting.To our enduring delight we were joined by an assembly of survivors, women and children and various staff fleeing from the Low Gutter—and who do you think should be at their lead?” He paused as if seeking an answer.

  THE GATHEPHÄR

  His listeners just blinked at him expectantly.

  “Mister Numps! Unhurt, coming willingly through the butchery. Hand in hand with a wee wizened thing by the name of Freckle, our glimner friend was wearing the most rapt expression I have ever known him to show; he could have been on a summerscale picnic for all he cared of the desperate melee about. Defended by many wizened bogles—glamgorns is their designation, I believe—this second party had won through to us, and together we fled down the Approach and on to the Harrowmath. Even with these kindly creatures’ aid, it was only a sorry remnant of calendars, clerks and lighters that got free.”

  “Master Sparrow and his tiny friend are busy fellows,” Europe observed.

  Doctor Crispus went on. “By the stars I could see that we were being taken southeast across the Harrowmath, reaching the marshes of Old Man’s Itch at dawn. Past this Cinnamon took us, even to the wooded foothills of the northern extents of the Sparrowdowns, where only commerce men and fools will go.” Crispus wagged his head, clearly still astonished at the journey. “Our way was necessarily slow, four days carrying hurt souls by boggy paths. Threnody, through all h
er sharp looks and squalls of temper, proved herself an august’s daughter, seeking all our welfare, making sure stragglers did not fall too far behind.We fed on bulbs pulled from the ground and washed with trickling marsh water, and the bogles tended all hurts with skill—I say to my shame— beyond my learning. As for Numps, I have never seen him appear in such ecstasy, such transports of delight; while we sagged in our weariness, he capered with glee, hugging and holding hands with Cinnamon and the one called Freckle.”

  Rossamünd grinned broadly, easily conceiving the happy babble that the simple glimner would have chortled: My old old friends! Come to get me at last!

  “Some folk were not so easy with such ünterly company.” Crispus let out a puff of air. “The calendars were perfectly at ease with monsters about them, yet several refugees lagged deliberately or slipped away at night to find their own way, ungrateful souls. Cinnamon did not prevent them, and I suppose I do not blame them—it is an altogether peculiar experience to be at a bogle’s mercy. I certainly do not know what became of any of them.” He paused a little ominously. “Finally, amid a great joyful flocking of sparrows and other small woodland birds swarming about us, we were met by the Duke of Sparrows—or so Dolours named him with surprising reverence—a lord of monsters, no less, direct from some spurious tome of legendry, as if monsters fighting monsters for the cause of men was not bamboozling enough!”

  “You saw the sparrow-king!” Rossamünd was astounded.

  Fransitart and Craumpalin murmured in wonder.

  Europe arched her diamond-spoored brow.

  “Only from afar, my boy, only from afar,” the physician answered. “He is, it seems, loath to be plainly viewed, but I could feel him, Rossamünd, a profound and all-encompassing peace such as I have never known.” A faint smile hovering on his lips, he closed his eyes. “Dolours was admitted to go farther but soon returned in much better weal than when she went in. Only Numps was let right up to the strange creature, and it soon became patent that he was to remain within its realm.” Crispus looked to Rossamünd. “Ahh, Rossamünd, I do believe we can finally count him at peace. Our dear Mister Numps wished for me to tell you in coram—face-to-face—that he is as well as he could ever wish to be, safe now with his old, old friends, as he seemed inclined to name the Duke of Sparrows and Cinnamon. Safe now and forevermore, he made sure to have me tell you as his new old friend that he is home at last!”