The Foundling's Tale: Factotum Part 6

"That it is, sir," the transmogrifer conceded, "though a discreet exam of an existing mimetic construction is not."

"You must forbear with my factotum, Mister Oberon," the fulgar said almost indulgently. "He is diligently after my welfare."

MISTER OBERON.

Rossamund did not know whether she sought to mock him or encourage him.

"As all good employees should be, I am sure," the transmogrifer said flatly, with a nodding bow.

Midafternoon saw the advent of a thin, superciliously smiling gentleman in dark and deeply fas.h.i.+onable gold-striped purple, with volumes of white ruffles gathered at neck and cuff. After many ingratiating bows he introduced himself. "Brugel, Master Gaulder and Armouriere, presenting himself for your eminentical service, sir."

He soon had Rossamund pinned in rough cuts of sumptuous cloth intended for his new harness. For well beyond an hour the young factotum stood arms in, arms out, legs apart, legs together, in constant worry of being p.r.i.c.ked by pin or needle. All the while Master Brugel paced about him, squinting, tapping his lips with his forefinger and calling numbers and obscure instructions to his dogged gray-haired a.s.sistant.

"I shall make you the most splendorous man of your trade," the armouriere enthused melodiously.

Trying to keep his neck twisted away from tickling threads, Rossamund was not sure such promised splendor was worth it.

Evening came, Brugel left in his fancy-carriage and, the examination of Europe complete, Oberon departed too. Having delivered up her nightly dosing and taken his seat at the farther end of the solar, Rossamund asked after her health.

"Most excellent," she declared, her eyes twinkling with self-contained triumph. "My repairers in Sinster exceeded themselves. Mister Oberon p.r.o.nounced me better knit than I have ever been: I am in my fighting prime, it would seem. A happy reversal of my . . . distress in the Brindleshaws, would you not say, little man? Your valiant rescue was not in vain."

Rossamund smiled, ducked his head and nodded.

Indeed, the fulgar was in such high spirits that she allowed him to remain with her in her file that evening, sitting by the fire in the crackling, ticking quiet under the defiant gaze of Europe's childhood portrait. While the Branden Rose perused the pages of ma.s.sive garlands-half a person's size and delivered to her that very afternoon by Master Brugel-Rossamund sat at a low table to organize the castes and salperts purchased the day before. There was the Frazzard's powder from his days with the lighters, and the less flammable beedlebane too. Loathly lady and botch powder were prescribed to frighten a foe and knock a soul unconscious. In place of evander, Pauper Chives had provided levenseep, claiming it to be the superior restorative. By these Rossamund laid out cylindrical wooden thennelevers of glister-dust to stun and daze-and beside them he placed with utmost care what looked very much like large geese eggs dyed a glaring red with waxen crowns of emerald green at both ends. A lepsis, so Pauper Chives had named it, holding a powerful script known as greenflash, ". . . Bursts with a mighty flash of levin-fire like some thermistoring fulgar," the script-grinder had explained. "Handle it with grace," was the added warning. "You must throw it at least ten yards, else suffer its fury."

Safe and snug in a padded silt-cad were three dozen castes of hard glossy black gla.s.s, each holding a dose of what the saumiere called asper,and which Craumpalin held in awe as being "one of the nastiest repellents thy can use this side of scourging."

The young factotum stared in wonder at these and yet more all laid before him.

"So this is where my money went," Europe said, looking up from her perusing. "One would think you a true skold. But who will you hunt, I wonder . . ."

Rossamund gave a bemused grin and then carefully found a place for each script in the digitals, a.s.sembling the more healing and helpful potives in his stoups. When all was arranged, then rearranged according to what he reckoned he would need most or least, he set himself to write letters on paper borrowed straight from the fulgar's great desk.

The first was a brief missive to Sebastipole, the lamplighters' agent, serving the Lamplighter-Marshal against wrongful accusation down in the Cousidine.

After this he scribbled three simple lines to Doctor Crispus languis.h.i.+ng still in Winstermill, leaving off any distinguis.h.i.+ng detail but his name for fear of the prying suspicions of the Master-of-Clerks and his mindless staff of loyal cogs.

His thoughts turned to Threnody, cornered by cunning questioning into betraying him at the inquest. She had looked in great distress when her betrayal was fully played, and he wanted to tell her that he understood, that he bore her no grudge, that he was in a far better situation now. However, Rossamund well knew that Threnody was fractious and changeable, and he could not be certain she truly cared to receive such a communication.They had fought together, shed blood together, survived together, but still he did not know if his words would be welcome.

Ahh!

After a long time simply staring at the blank letter sheaf in a spin of indecision, he gave up on the notion and instead set about penning something to Verline. Yet even here he could not think of what to say. It was impossible for him to write to the beloved parlor maid and keep the full truth of events from her, yet how could he compose the unspeakable? He tried one line on a fresh sheaf: We are all waiting for the monster-blood tattoo made of my own blood in Master Fransitart's arm to show and prove that I am in truth a monster . . .

but with a low, frustrated growl that caused Europe to look up in mild and short-lived curiosity, he crushed the paper with its d.a.m.ning confession and threw it into the fire. He wanted to tell everything and so could not tell anything. Oh! How he wished most desperately that the terrible troublesome truth of those words might be consumed as easily as the paper by the flames and leave him free to live a quiet, simple life. In the end all he wrote was this: Dear, dear Miss Verline, I am no longer working for the lamplighters but have entered the employ of the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting of Naimes as her factotum. I am safe with her, well fed and well paid.

I hope your nephew is doing well.

Forever your.

6.

A DAY AT THE SEASIDE.

weed-bunts small flat-bowed, sharp-prowed wooden sailers used by kelpmen to cut through and gather kelp, matted algaes and other seaweeds for either disposal or use, keeping common lanes clear of screw-fouling growths. A ubiquitous sight in any harbor, their operators labor in the hope that they might find some chance treasure churned up from the deeps by storms or the t.i.tanic struggles between the great beasts that dwell in the crus.h.i.+ng dark.

THE entirety of the next day was spent making preparations for the knave. In the morning Rossamund worked in the rear parts of Cloche Arde guided by the ever-humorless Mister Kitchen and hindered by the territorial Mistress Clossette, directing the staff bustling to collect all the necessaries.

In the afternoon he went out to the stalls across the Harrow Road, and there, with Latissimus, the gentleman-of-the-stables, attached a laborium-one of the marvels bought from Pauper Chives, a cooking-box that abolished the need to make fires for testing-to the back step of the landaulet. Spent but satisfied after a day of such busyness, at mains he ate hungrily.

"So, what are your plans for your Domesday vigil?" Europe asked over her gla.s.s of claret. "Will you lie abed all day? Have a jaunt to the seaside?"

"Maybe a jaunt to the seaside," Rossamund declared cheerfully. "I might ask Fransitart and Craumpalin to join me."

The fulgar beheld him with twinkling eyes. "Perhaps you could take Master Right's letter of refund to his agents and redeem our crossing fee," she posited. "A small errand.You may keep the proceeds as payment for your effort."

Rossamund finished his meal with the hunger of the diligent and the rapidity of the excited and retired early.

After a profound sleep, he woke excitedly to a brilliant Domesday morning that glowed with the promise of a day of leisure ahead. Rising with a loud, stretching yawn, Rossamund stared through open windows out over the mysterious roofs to the pink dawning sky.

Nine days until Fransitart's mark will show.The dark thought intruded, and he frowned at its unwelcome gloominess.

Peering down into the long spa.r.s.e yard below, he could see a modest flock of sparrows sitting atop the yard wall, scooting and diving and playing chase-a-tail in threes and fours among the runners of a glory vine that spread across its face. Others were darting and disappearing in the compact branches of the cypress, and there Rossamund discovered one all-too-familiar brother of their kind sitting on his own upon a high branch, attention fixed on him.

Good morning, little spy.

Chattering excitedly, a pair of female sparrows swooped up to land on either side of this lone watcher. In turn the bird puffed his feathers with a distinct air of grave self-importance and made a show of ignoring them utterly. Clearly expecting a different reaction, the female birds flapped about their brother for a moment and made to squabble and fret as sparrows normally do, yet the little fellow would have none of it. He gave a single loud and a rather angry Chirrup! that stopped the girl-sparrows still. They seemed to give each other a quick look that-to Rossamund-appeared to say, Well, if that is how you want to be! and darted away, leaving this pompous sparrow-spy to his lonely spying.

Rossamund smiled at their antics and drew in a deep, bracing breath. Just for one day he refused to be troubled by the insoluble complexities of his life and rumor's wicked work. He washed, applied what Craumpalin now called his Abstinker-an improvement on Exstinker reformulated by the old dispensurist in a letter sent from the Dogget & Block-hurried on his old longshanks, weskit and blue frock coat, tested Europe's treacle, ate breakfast promptly with little more than a "Good morning, Miss Europe!" took Master Right's letter of refund and set forth in the landaulet.

It was the strangest sensation to be at such liberty, largely unhindered to pursue his own plans, driven about by Latissimus like some young lord on important business. A feeling of expansion, of being capable of besting all useless doubts and hindering fears spread like dawning warmth through him, and it seemed almost that his soul might stretch out to fill every circuit of the wind. His first port was his old masters' hostelry to ask if they cared to join him while he secured the refund, and after that he would let the day do as it would.

The gentleman-of-the-stables took him slowly by roads he had not yet been, joining all the Domesday strollers and suns.h.i.+ne soakers in their vigil ease.Yet even now under the fancy dress, the parasols, the smiles and friendly greetings, the city hummed with irrepressible haste and industry.

As he stared and marveled, he found that the sparrow-spy was following, the bird making darting, stop-start loops from branch to wall-top, roof-spout to red-painted lantern, keeping pace with the landaulet, trailing them all the way to the Dogget & Block. Glowering his disapproval at this more penurious end of town and the lane just broad enough to admit the carriage, Latissimus let Rossamund alight at the very front of the alehouse.

"Hold tightly to hat and wallet here, m'boy," the gentleman-of-the-stables warned, and, with a dour look up at the beetling salt-stained tenements, set back for Cloche Arde.

Barely avoiding a trip over a pole festooned with dead rats and mice tied on by their tails and rabbits tied by their ears, Rossamund entered the pleasing world of timber pillars, hammer beams, high wattle-and-daub walls, eonsmudged wood benches and a crackling fire for a cool spring day. He nodded good morning to a sweet-smelling, remarkably clean scarper sat taking a tipple near the door, a rest between patrons-it must have been his rat-pole leaning against the door outside.

Rossamund's inquiry of the horribly scarred and one-eyed Casimir Fauchs after his masters was met with the information that Fransitart and Craumpalin were not in-rather they had gone out to find a former-time sweetheart of one of them or some such thing, that it was unknown where they had gone to or when they might be back.

a.s.siduously avoiding the eye of the collection of musty-looking patrons, Rossamund sat in a dim corner stall facing the door and, with a jug of pale duke to sip and a crust of bread to gnaw, waited for his onetime masters to come in. Toward the rear of the establishment was a gang of ticket-of-leave men-sh.o.r.e-going vinegaroons living large. These merrymakers, already sodden by the day's middle, banged out a gusty chant: Twofold, threefold, fourfold, five,

Once I caught a nick alive!

When I tried to wring its hide,

It knocked me down upon me side.

As I went to stand up straight,

It put its jaws about me pate.

Happy then to quit the scene,

I tore the basket tooth from spleen.

Now its head hangs on the high,

Its mark a-puncted on me thigh . . .

Clas.h.i.+ng mugs and whole demijohns together, they looked for all the here and vere just how Rossamund thought landed limey Jack tar sea-dogs should.

An old, rudimentary horologue mounted sideways on the wall above the small tapery to prove the excellence of its workings quietly tapped away the count of life.Through the magnifying dome of the gla.s.s face of the clock he watched the hands wind off half an hour . . . yet no show from his masters. I'll wait five minutes more, he told himself several times until forty-five minutes were gone, still without the advent of either aged vinegaroon. After yet another false hope-some shuffling white-haired street seller stepping in for a tot still wearing his c.u.mbersome tray-Rossamund paid for his beer and walked to the rush and commerce of Tight Penny Circle. There, among the strange red-bricked, blue-roofed market halls, he found several scarlet-doored takenys.Their drivers, sitting high at the rear of the conveyances and dressed in weskits of horizontal red-and-white stripes under coats of blue or bottle green, were simple to mark in the flurry.

"Phlynders & Pugh Commutation Agents, please, mister takenyman," he declared firmly, reading the address given on the master of the Widgeon's recommendation. "It's on the Mill Strand, Subtle Bench-"

"I fully reckon where it is, Master Squidgereen!" the takenyman scolded, and whipped off with a tumbling lurch.

Through all fas.h.i.+ons and repair of architecture Rossamund was taken southeast, pa.s.sing under no fewer than three bastion gates on the way. By one stood the famed Old Gate Sanguinarium with its axiomatic pensioners, the destination of most over-prime vinegaroons. Stiff as an Old Gate pensioner went the expression, even north in Boschenberg. Peering up through the takeny's window at the moldering stonework and blank windows, he did not like the idea one mite of Fransitart or Craumpalin ending up here to wait out their last days shut away.

Emerging from between the high b.u.t.tresses of the mill works and imposing cartel buildings, the takeny found the sea, turning right down the crowded waterside way of Mill Strand. Instead of being protected by a sea wall, the entire district was raised well over twenty feet from the lapping harbor on a great man-made tableland of masonry. Rossamund stared in wonder at edifice upon edifice of enormous smoke-belching mills and famous mercantile concerns. Plain-gulls and mollyhawks spun and circled in vast flocks above it all, riding on the updrafts of vented steams, adding their squawking discord to the clanging thunder and human bustle of modern industry. Rossamund thought he could almost feel the great hammering of the gastrine-driven hammers pounding out all manner of metal and stone. He wrinkled his nose at the piquant confusion of stenches: the vinegar sea, foundry fumes, creosote, animal sweat and animal dung, and traces of a more chemical nature straight from a skold's testtle.

"Phlynders & Pugh, Mill Strand!" the takenyman cried, and abruptly halted, letting Rossamund alight after a fare of a quarter and two cobs-nine guise-before a row of tall and rather similar mercantile clericies.

Alone in the chaos of load-bearing laborers, ponderous ox wagons and mule teams, clerk-carrying dyphrs or flash private lentums, and ubiquitous hurrying scopps, it took Rossamund a moment to properly figure his destination from among the constellation of small signs arranged on every door up and down the street. His quest was not aided by the presence of many large bills pinned or pasted to the broad door posts, the newest declaring: Finally finding his goal, he climbed the steps and entered a crowded and poorly lit file of pale green where, after a fair wait in line with folk buying tickets to all points of the compa.s.s, he was met with a latticed screen of wood similar to those in the Letter and Coursing House. Despite the affable "Good morning, sir," of the clerk behind it, Rossamund handed across the letter in reluctant expectation of the more common clerical surliness. To his great grat.i.tude he found that the commutation clerk had indeed already heard of the exploits of the Branden Rose and her excellent retainers aboard the Widgeon and was delighted to render a return of the crossing fee.

"I hear that you spared us much greater losses, sir," the clerk declared, his yellowed toothy grin obvious through the lattice as he beamed at Rossamund.

The young factotum dipped his head under such approbation. "Well . . .We had little choice but to fight," he mumbled awkwardly.The refund made-two sous eight-Rossamund inquired after the location of Hullghast Articled Ordnance.

"You think to attend the launching of the Warspite?" the cheerful commutation clerk replied. "Capital notion, sir! It is a good stiff walk south just down the way from here a little. You will make it out easily as you get near."

Taking the fellow's directions down the drab clerical street and out onto the fortified rim of the high seaside suburb, Rossamund heard his destination well before he arrived: a profound throbbing as if of mighty gastrines rumbled in his innards, and with it a mute yet growing discord of clas.h.i.+ng mill hammers and rattling traffic, the din of heavy industry never ceasing, not even for a Domesday. With every stride closer was slowly added a merrier note of happy voices, and soon enough Rossamund found a ma.s.s of people gathering on the seaward side of a great heap of domed and turreted works. Most were squeezed against a tall iron fence that stood on the high seaward edge of the great foundation, kept from spilling onto the road by a platoon of implacable duffers stalking the fringe of the crowd. Cordoned in their midst, safe behind links of velvet rope, many quality folk were stood upon a temporary podium that gave them better view over the hefty railings: the silkened men in periwigs and wide satin-edged tricorns standing gravely as they waited, the fine ladies wrestling with the mild ocean winds that threatened to ruffle their dainty parasols and their dignity.

"Is this the launching of the Warspite?" he asked a portly chap in cheap finery.

The man just scowled at him-his expression clear, What else would it be!-and pulled away suspiciously as if Rossamund were some kind of grabcleat pulling a trick.

Dodging the severe gaze of an approaching duffer, Rossamund squeezed among the a.s.sembled to stare down through the bars of the fence. Tall as houses, great gates in the foundation wall had been slid aside, and from them protruded a slipway-a heavy frame of wooden rails slanting well out into the milky brey of the harborage of Mill Pond. Festooned with flags and ribbons and other bunting, it held the mastless hulk of a near-completed ram, leaning down to the water in a suspense of cables and balks, ready to slip into its native element. From the size and shape of her ram, Rossamund could well see that it was a drag-mauler. By her dimensions he reckoned her likely to be one of the largest of her rating afloat. From fo'c'sle to p.o.o.p, carpenters, iron-working sheeters and vinegaroons made busy upon its uniformly flat main ap.r.o.n; posts, chasers and all the standard deck furniture were yet to be added.

Below this was the dark sand of the actual sh.o.r.e. Here was the genuine fringe of the Grume, the natural beach-or what was left of it. A myriad of pipes poked from the wall face, dribbling all manner of effluents down the foundation's bleached slabs. Piles of dun green kelp were washed up in rotting thickets right along the sand, making dams of the seeping city filth. Flies of several tribes swarmed about the decaying matter while combers picked through the putrescent sea-mat for flotsam, discarded treasure and rare biological matter, perhaps to sell to parts-sellers or other more ambiguous buyers. Catching a whiff of the rot, Rossamund marveled at the olfactory resilience of the weed-picking combers.

Immediately below, other humbler people in white smocks labored to pretty the sand about the slipway's footings, employing wide rakes to push and pull the kelp into great piles that the combers happily foraged.

In this cleared s.p.a.ce many of the lectry folk-the middle cla.s.ses-unable to fit on the walk above were descending a narrow stair cut in the stone of the sea wall and daring to collect on the scant beach below, enduring the stink to get a better view of the launching. Seeing some of the younger folk cackling and squealing as they let themselves be chased by the corrosive ripples that lapped at the black sand, Rossamund decided to join them. Pus.h.i.+ng as politely as he could, he managed to find the heavy gate of the stair, and with an inward leap of delight hastened down the steep steps, amazed that he might be able to actually walk on sand, on a real beach! Now cheerfully ignoring the weedy stink, he was at once struck by the novel sensation of his boot soles sinking into the soft silt as he twisted through the thinner gathering on the sh.o.r.e and drew near the towering slipway.

Above them all sat the long, mastless bulk of the nascent ram, silent, waiting, fat-bellied, its tumblehome lines p.r.o.nounced, where they hung high and fully exposed out of water.

Warspite!-Rossamund mouthed the name, awed by the enormous screw of bright polished silverine alloy taller than two tall men. He started to count the bent heads of the pins that held the iron to the hull but, still on the first strake, lost his place somewhere just past two hundred.

With a great commotion of cheers, of fife and drum, the solemn, wonderful spectacle made of the launching of yet another ram began. One by one, the balks were removed by enterprising men with great hammers and lifted away by sheers, until the pristine, glossy rust brown vessel was held back from its final release by only a single ma.s.sive cable.