5
THRENODY GOES FORTH
fusil also known as a fusee or carabine or
harquebus; a lighter musket with a shortened barrel that makes for
simpler loading, is less cumbersome to swing about in thickets and
woodland, and saves considerable weight. Its shorter length also
makes it handy as a club when the fight comes to hand strokes. This
makes the fusil a preferred weapon of ambuscadiers and other
skirmishing foot soldiers, and also comes a-handy for the drilling
of smaller folk in the handling and employment of arms.
THE morning did not improve after its
irregular beginning. Rossamünd took Threnody to the Room of
Records, where she gave all her particulars and was paid the
Emperor’s Billion; the master proofener, where she received her two
quabards—one full dress and one for continual day wear; the
library, for her books on matter and drills and regulations; the
armory, for her fusil and fodicar; and every other necessary place.
Throughout, she showed nothing but arrogance and high-handed
rudeness. She near drove the normally good-natured Inkwill to
distraction with each painfully extracted detail for the register.
She wrangled with the proofener’s yeomen over the constitution of
regulation dress. She insulted the librarian over a matter book,
insisting it was arrant drivel, that the books she had
learned from back at Herbroulesse were far superior. She quibbled
with the wool-slippered master armorer over the one-sequin pledge
required to secure her firelock and fodicar. And throughout she
ignored Rossamünd in the manner of someone used to the attendance
of servants.
He had led her from place to place without
complaint and with an ever-sinking feeling and the sharp jabbing of
an overfull bladder. Joyful relief had come only when he finally
showed Threnody to her own newly appointed cell where her luggage
waited for her. While she changed to a lighter’s harness, Rossamünd
made a quick dash for the jakes and returned in time for her to
emerge with a wrinkled nose.
“Ugh! The stench of too many boys, too close
together,” she said.
Rossamünd stayed mum. He had spent his life with
too many boys, and it had made him insensible to any such odor.
“Come along,” he said instead, and guided her up to the dim,
high-ceilinged mess hall in the rear quarters of the manse, where a
roll of drums declared middens was about to be served. There the
other prentices arrived as a mass and, as they lined up, stared in
open wonder at this newly presented lantern-stick before
them.
Threnody went forth now in a rich, elegant
variation of the gear of a lamplighter: silken platoon-coat,
quabard, long-shanks, galliskins and a black tricorn sitting
prettily upon her midnight tresses—all of the finest tailoring, as
sumptuous as that of any of the Master-of-Clerks’ flunkies. The
other prentices, by comparison, looked like drab weeds.
Threnody ignored them all as she had ignored
Rossamünd. In their turn the boys kept unashamedly at their
gawping, some turning puzzled looks on her fortunate
companion.
Rossamünd felt anything but fortunate as he
received their middens meals, served by two short, fat cooks from
the pots hanging in the gigantic fireplace at the farther end of
the room. Steaming with faintly appetizing smells, the larger pot
was, as always, full of skilly, a savory gruel of leftover meat;
the smaller with vummert, a mash of sprouts and peas.
Threnody scowled at the food, at the cooks, at the
boys and at the hall as she sat at one of a pair of long tables
that filled the mess.
“Are . . . are you all right, miss?” Rossamünd
asked cautiously, painfully aware that she had just occupied the
usual seat of a less-than-friendly lad known as
Noorderbreech.
“Yes.” Threnody’s voice cracked a little. “No . . .
What care is it of yours—”
“Look here, miss, I . . . ,” complained
Noorderbreech, leaving his place in the line of unserved boys.
“Look here, normally I sit there.”
Threnody did not move, did not even give a hint she
had even heard.
“And—and that would be my apple,” Noorderbreech
insisted.
A look came into Threnody’s eye that Rossamünd
recognized—a haughty, dangerous look. She glanced at the fruit
mentioned, which sat on the table before her. It appeared to be the
same as all the other apples placed evenly along the benches for
the prentices to take away with them when the main meal was done.
Threnody picked it up with a study of feminine grace. “This
apple, do you mean?” she said, and bit into it deliberately, daring
Noorderbreech to retaliate.
The lad puffed himself up as threateningly as he
might.
Uncowed, Threnody crunched away as happily as if
she were on a vigil-day hamper. Every boy—and the kitchen hands
too—held their breath.
“Give me my apple, girly,” Noorderbreech growled,
“and go take yer place at the far end. This is where we sit.”
“This apple?” She took another bite. “You mean
this apple, don’t you? . . . Have it then!” The apple
flew the full length of the bench in a well-aimed arc. It landed
with a crack and a hiss right in the midst of the
hottest coals of the fire.
Everyone became very, very still. Some even stopped
chewing.
Rossamünd wanted to shrink in on himself.
“I’ll sit where I like and eat what I please, you
loose-jawed bumpkin,” she hissed with such vehemence spittle
flew.
Wide-eyed, Noorderbreech stumbled back, mouth agape
as if he were trying hard to prove Threnody’s insult true, finding
for himself a vacant place at the far end of the other bench.
THRENODY
The prentices sitting near Threnody shifted away,
afraid or glaring. No one other than Rossamünd dared put himself
too near. Angry mutters began to stir. Rossamünd did not know what
to say and fixed his attention on his food, avoiding every other
eye in the room.Yet the filling of stomachs finally took priority
even over so shocking an event as just witnessed. The hubbub of
general chatter and the patter of forks and spoons on plates
swelled once more.
Threnody made to eat as if naught was wrong. “Who
can eat this glue?” she snarled eventually, pushing the slopping
pannikin of skilly away in disgust. “Must everything be against me
today?”
“Against you, miss?” Rossamünd dared after a few
pensive chews.
“I save us from the ambush of those ungotten
baskets,” she suddenly fumed, floodgates inexplicably let free,
“and all Lady Dolours can dwell upon is the possibility of
bad things that never even happened! We were thrown about inside
the drag, tumbled roughly in its wreck, and Dolours so unwell she
was scarce capable of fighting. What else was I supposed to
do?”
Remembering the startling and dangerously
incompetent effect of her wild witting, Rossamünd could not quite
see how Threnody had done any more than make a bad situation worse.
The way he remembered the play of things, it had ultimately been
Dolours who had saved them all, the lamplighters included. Indeed,
given that the prentices had dispatched two of the horn-ed nickers
themselves, Rossamünd figured a little more gratitude might have
been shown. Still, he held his tongue: he would not gainsay a woman
in her distress, especially not one as fiery as this. She had done
her bit, and had not flinched from the fight—and none should fault
her on that. This girl had passion. All she needed was
practice.
“I reckon you did as boldly as you knew to, miss,”
Rossamünd said matter-of-factly.
She gave a little start, as if this was the last
encouragement she expected.
“You saw me take on those wretched bugaboos, then?”
she said.
Felt, more like. “Aye, miss.”
“I’ll not shrink from the fact that I did not
defeat them alone. Oh no,” she declared with a flourishing wave of
her hand, “my sisters and I did it together, mastered and destroyed
the nickers.”
Rossamünd thought on the valiant fight the
calendars had made as a troupe. “It was a genuine, heroical
spectacle, miss,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a thing as
happened last night.”
“So it was, I know.Yet they made me
apologize!” Threnody seethed. “They made me apologize to
that . . . that pompous muck hill.”
By “apologize” Rossamünd could only assume she had
been made to repent of her clumsy, ill-advised witting; and by
“pompous muck hill” she meant Grindrod, the lamplighter-sergeant.
He thought she might consider herself fortunate not to have been
made to apologize to the lampsmen and prentices as well—it was
their lives she had endangered.
“Yet it was we who were refused at
Wellnigh!” She balled her fists.
“Hardly seems fair, miss.”
“Hardly, indeed! Pannette dead! Idesloe dead!” the
girl continued. “And Dolours insists we make amends
like your lot were the worst done by! To think I actually
wanted to join in with you clod-headed blunderers!”
“Don’t count me in too quick with the clodheads or
the blunderers, miss,” he replied.
“Well, since you are but half the size of all the
other boys I suppose it would be hard to do so.”
Rossamünd blinked at the sting of her insult. He
knew he was undersized: his embarrassingly truncated fodicar was
continual evidence. Dumbstruck and mortified that those near might
have heard her, he realized she was no longer even paying him any
mind. Instead she was looking up over his right shoulder. Rossamünd
became aware of the looming of somebody there. He looked up to find
Arimis Arabis at his back.
The oldest, most worldly-wise of the prentices,
Arimis Arabis was top of the manning lists—both by letter fall and
ability. The frankest shot with a fusil, he also considered himself
handsome. Though Rossamünd could not see it, a gaggle of dolly-mops
in Silvernook confirmed Arabis’ self-approval every Domesday,
following him about on his jaunts about town and giggling at
everything he uttered.
“Hullo to thee, Rossamünd,” he drawled, all charm
and swagger. He leaned on Rossamünd’s shoulder and smiled knowingly
at Threnody. He must have been down in the cell row cleaning up for
eating and missed her petulant antics with the apple. “I see it’s
true.We have a fair Damsel of Callistia among us. Would you care to
introduce her?”
“No, he would not,” Threnody answered frostily. “Go
away!”
Arabis’ grin vanished. “Just making friendly,” he
retorted. He took his hand off Rossamünd’s shoulder immediately and
straightened. “But you seem to know as much about being friendly as
you do about witting.” He clapped Rossamünd on the back as he left.
“Fair travels with that one, matey,” he sneered, and made his way
to the other table and immediately began to talk to the prentices
there. Laughter rose, and these boys glanced over at Threnody in
disapproval.
Rossamünd glumly sucked at his food.
Threnody raised her chin a little higher—a telltale
sign, he was beginning to notice, of impatience or anger or
embarrassment.
“Did I hear your name a-right, lamp boy?” She was
staring at him again. It seemed she needed someone to stare at
right now.There was a vindictive gleam growing in her eye. “It
can’t really be so, can it? Rossamünd?”
“Many folk find some fun in my name, though I
don’t,” he replied evenly. “It is what it is and I am who I
am.”
Threnody had enough grace to drop her gaze.
For a while they ate in silence. Rossamünd fretted
vaguely and wished that, just for today, middens was not quite so
long. Threnody poked at her food and screwed up her nose at the
small beer.
“Too small by half,” the girl muttered at the
beverage.
“It certainly is that, miss. Much better down at
the Harefoot Dig,” Rossamünd returned, happy to punctuate the
awkwardness.
“Anything anywhere is better than here.” Her face
was tight and unhappy.
Rossamünd could not be quiet in the face of such
misery. “I don’t understand. If all this makes you so wretched, why
join us?” he asked.
“You’re an impertinent little lamp boy, aren’t
you?” She sniffed loftily. “Since you inquire, I joined because I
wanted to, why else?”
“Why not stay as a calendar?” Rossamünd could not
reckon such a thing. Calendars were mystical, romantic figures who
resisted the powerful and helped the destitute. They confronted
monsters whenever these threatened and offered help wherever folk
floundered. The way of a calendar was a goodly adventurous life if
ever one existed: making life better, not just mindlessly
destroying monsters for pay like Europe or the other
pugnators.
“If you knew my mother . . . ,” she replied
thickly, almost to herself. “If you, too, were pinned in the
never-relaxing clutch of Marchessa Syntychë, the Lady Vey, August
of the Right of the Pacific Dove, then you would understand. No
choices. No schemes of your own.”
“But you did have a choice.” He could not
help himself. “You chose to come to Winstermill and be a
lighter.”
Taken aback, the girl pursed her lips. “That was a
rare lapse of my mother’s. For once she let her grip slip. Mother
and I are always at odds. I go left, she goes right. I say black,
she says white. If I want something one way, she will always have
it the other. If I was ever truly listened to—if what I wanted
counted, if she had ever faltered for a moment and remembered that
underneath that waspy bosom she has a heart and think me her
daughter . . .” Threnody seethed—her haughty mien subsumed by
anger. “And not just a tool to preserve her precious clave, then I
might never have become a blighted lahzar!”
Skilly forgotten, Rossamünd listened,
motionless.
“I wanted to serve the Dove as a spendonette,
blazing away at monsters with my pistols, not . . .” Threnody
pressed her knuckles against her brow, wincing. “Not spend the rest
of my life swallowing down cures to quell revolting organs that do
little more than ache!”
He knew enough about wits to know what she meant.
Cathar’s Treacle, twice a day, else headaches, spasms or worse
would beset her.
“But once transmogrification was forced on me—well,
I chose the path of the lightning-throwing astrapecrith just like
the Branden Rose—”
Rossamünd’s attention pricked at the mention of
Europe by her more famous title, but he did not interrupt the talk
bubbling out of the girl prentice like froth from an over-shaken
beer bung.
“—But oh no! Dear Mother was not having that! I was
ordered to become a wit because the clave needed wits, and a good
calendar always obeys her august. I would never have managed
so long but for Dolours.”
Middens was nearing its end. Other prentices were
rising and depositing their pannikins, mess-kids and tankards on a
broad palette for cleaning.
“Finally I made it all so terrible at home that
Mother could bear me no longer. She’s agreed to this,” she said,
looking about to show the mess hall and all the prentices, “only
because it has made her life simpler, not through any care
for me. And here I can become a pistoleer. Not quite the good
calendar spendonette I wished for, but . . .” She shrugged, all
angst submerged with baffling alacrity. “Well, you have my life’s
tale before you, so return in kind: why have you taken up with the
lampsmen?”
Though it was time to leave, Rossamünd paused in
thought. “Because I had no choice either; because it was this or be
cooped in the foundlingery forever. I’m a book child, and we get
what we’re given and say thank you, like it or no.”
“How little we have in common then.” Threnody
tipped her plate, skilly and all, into the pail just meant for the
slops.
The attack on the calendars’ carriage so close to
Winstermill had caused no small stir among the lighters. It was
universally agreed that the six fusil-bearing lads should all be
marked with a cruorpunxis for their part. It would be a small
drawing of a drip of blood, as was commonly awarded when a prentice
had a hand in the slaying of a monster but the actual killer was
not clear. In the bosom of many a hardened campaigner there rose
too a genuine, almost paternal concern for the batch of young
lantern-sticks. Such was this concern, it prompted the
Lamplighter-Marshal to cancel the prentice-watch and move drills
and tutelage normally conducted in the fields below Winstermill
back within the fortress walls. Consequently, that afternoon,
targets—the handling, firing, cleaning and right use of a fusil—was
to be held in a long foyer of dark, aromatic wood called the
Toxothanon in the westernmost end of the Low Gutter below the
beautiful Hall of Pageants.
“Right, lads! Stand by twos at your lane!”
Benedict, the Under-Sergeant-of-Prentices, stood behind the gaggle
of lantern-sticks. “After two months of this I am expecting good
aim and handy reloading.” To those of Rossamünd’s watch he said,
“As for you lads who prevailed last night, I am expecting to be
dazzled.”
Standing in her own firing lane beside Rossamünd,
Threnody took to the fusil with elegant aplomb, handling her
firelock with an accomplishment equal to all but the frankest shot
among the prentices. Much to Arabis’ wry dismay, almost as many of
Threnody’s shots as his own found the center bull in the targets
fixed to the great bales of straw at the farther end of the lanes.
Benedict twice acknowledged her wicked aim and went as far as to
say, “You might make yourself useful yet, young lady.” Her
self-satisfaction was so clear, Threnody almost glowed.
Unfortunately Rossamünd, who was an indifferent
shot at best, had the worst day at targets yet, missing many of his
shots entirely, one ball lodging itself in a low crossing roof
beam. His woeful aim did not, of course, escape the keen
observation of the under-sergeant.
“Master Bookchild! For shame, not one solitary ball
true, sir. Sergeant Grindrod would say your fusil work is a
clattering, gaffing embarrassment and a wanton waste of powder. One
night’s pots-and-pans for you. Let’s hope some good hours scrubbing
will teach your arms to hold a franker aim.”
With sinking soul Rossamünd kept to the work: make
ready, present, level, fire—over and over, till they were lined up
for Evening Forming and the quiet tolling of mains brought a
merciful end to the training day.
Entering the manse via the Sally—the side door and
only correct entry for the prentices into the manse—and stowing
their fusils in the armory cupboard, the lads made their way back
up to the mess hall and food. While they ate their boiled pork,
boiled cabbage and soggy boiled rice, Mister Fleugh, an under-clerk
to the Postmaster, hustled into the mess hall crying, “Post is
arrived!” An excited hubble-bubble warmed the room as the
under-clerk extracted crushed packages and bent letters from a
mostly empty satchel.
“Clothard . . . Onion Mole . . . Bookchild . .
.”
Rossamünd found a letter slapped before him, its
water-stained and slightly smeared address still clearly stating:
Master Rossamünd Bookchild
Apprenticed Lamplighter
Winstermill Barracks
The Harrowmath
Sulk End
Apprenticed Lamplighter
Winstermill Barracks
The Harrowmath
Sulk End
. . . written in Verline’s unmistakable hand.
Trembling with delight, he prized open the rough seal. Dated
twenty-third of Brumis, it must have taken a week to make its way
down the Humour through High Vesting and back up to Winstermill. It
read:
My dear courageous Rossamünd,
Thank you, for your dear letter of the 13th of
Pulchrys. What gladness we had at the news of your safe arrival—and
my, what adventures you had! That Europa Branden Rose woman sounds
very frightening, but what a thrill to meet someone so famous! You
always wanted adventure, and had I been you I think I might have
had my fill of it after such a journey. Little wonder you were at
Winstermill fortress a week late. Still, far better late than
absent.
My hope for you is that you are safe, that you are
taking to your tasks with ease and that you have found like-minded
souls there to share in further adventures, of which I am sure you
are having many more.
Dear Master Fransitart is still determined to come
to you. Time has done nothing to still his unease, and if, as you
say, you know not of what troubles him, then I must confess to be
at a loss. Craumpalin is no help. He and dear Fransitart worry like
old women about you. In fact they seem to be having second thoughts
about your life with the lamplighters, though since you say you are
settling to the routine there they may be less troubled. I shall
write more on this when I can.
What is joy, though, is that Master Craumpalin’s
restoratives have begun their marvels on your dear Master
Fransitart and he suffers much less from the strains and aches of
his seafaring ways. Your old dispenser sent beyond the Marrow to
his contacts (he called them) for the scripts, and they have
answered wonderfully. I do not fret for dear Fransitart’s fortunes
so much should he travel now.
Master Craumpalin is very happy with your report of
how well his bothersalts performed. He bids me insist that you keep
applying his nullodor, that you wear it at all times no matter
where you are at. This was the first time I ever heard of such
arrangements. I can only assume you know of what he speaks. He was
in serious earnest when he declared this, so I offer to you to take
him at his word and do as he bids.
Time for writing letters has come to its end, as
anything worthy must.
Take great care of yourself. Return when you are at
your liberty to do so. Forever your
P.S. Dear little Petite Fig (I am sure you remember
her—how stoutly you defended her from the older boys). Well, the
dear little one said that last night she saw Gosling moving about
the street out front, spying on us from the lane across the way.
Madam declared it impossible, but sent Master Fransitart and
Barthomæus with him to see. Of course they found nothing, and we
are all perplexed. Even the littlest fret, for he has already
become a frightful legend though gone only a month. I did hear that
the lad had tried to reunite with his family, but that they did not
want him back. (Who could spurn their own child so? It defies
fathoming, as Master Fransitart would say.) So perhaps he has taken
up loitering about here for want of anywhere else to go? I can only
hope naught will come of it. The thought of his presence oppresses
almost as much as when he lived with us. Fransitart will think of
something.
Write back to me soon.
I wager he is hanging about the
foundlingery. It’s the kind of weak prank he would do. I am glad to
be rid of him! Rossamünd shook his head, banished any further
thoughts of his old foundlingery foe and reread the welcome
missive.
Threnody looked at him and then at the paper.
“You have received an amiable letter, I see,” she
said.
“Aye, miss,” he replied, “all the way from my old
home.”
He was well aware that she had received no friendly
communication from home: jealousy was writ clear on her face. With
a slight cough, Rossamünd put the letter away and began to
eat.
While pudding (figgy dowdy filled with raisins and
all poured over with a runny, barely sweet sauce) was being served,
a summons came for Threnody from the Lady Dolours. Still suffering
her fever, the bane had remained as a guest of the
Lamplighter-Marshal, watching over the recovering Pandomë and
convalescing herself. The messenger—a little lighter’s boy, too
young to start his prenticing—delivered his message with many a
faltering “beg yer pardon” and clearing of the throat.
“I must go to take my alembants,” Threnody declared
to Rossamünd and, under the guidance of the small messenger,
departed without another word. As she left, every other set of eyes
but Rossamünd’s followed her and their gaze was not kind. She was
going to take her plaudamentum, and whatever other draughts wits
needed to keep their organs in check. Now that surely is
an imposition! An image of Europe blossomed in Rossamünd’s
memory, of her ailing by a dying fire, teeth blackened by the thick
treacle she had drunk, dead grinnlings lying near. How glad he was
not to be dependent on such foul chemistry.
At the very end of mains was a brief period called
castigations. This was the time when the record of that day’s minor
infringements was reiterated and impositions meted out. Following
centuries-old custom, Grindrod stood at the large double doors of
the mess hall and boomed, “Lamplighter-Sergeant-of-Prentices stands
at the port!” An ancient civility: the prentices’ mess hall was the
refuge of the prentices alone, accessed by those of higher rank
only after the senior-most prentice had granted permission.The boys
ceased whatever they were doing and sat up straight. Arabis stood.
In a clear confident voice he called, “Cross the threshold and bear
up to the hearth; this hall bids thee welcome!”
Courtesies complete, Grindrod entered in a fine
display of regular military step. With him came Witherscrawl,
walking with civilian slouch and bearing a great black ledger—the
Defaulters List, in which each day’s misdemeanors were marked. With
a look of dark satisfaction, Witherscrawl stood before the great
fire, opened the Defaulters List and stared shrewishly at the boys.
“On this Maria Diem, being the sixth of Pulvis, HIR 1601 . . . ,”
he began, and proceeded to call off all those caught for minor
breaches and the appropriate disciplines.
Rossamünd waited for his own name to be called. He
knew what was coming.
“Bookchild, Rossamünd,
prentice-lighter—accused of wasting black powder and of mishandling
his firelock, the penalty being one imposition of scullery duties
to be performed three nights hence on the ninth of this month,
during the appropriate period.”
Pots-and-pans!
The imposition was a guilty weight in Rossamünd’s
innards. He had washed many a dish in his time at the foundlingery,
but not as a punishment. Rossamünd stared straight ahead, not
lowering his eyes or his chin.
The next day, Threnody spoke very little to anyone
but Rossamünd, even then only briefly, as a mere acquaintance and
not someone to whom she had bared her soul. The experiences of
Noorderbreech and Arabis had quickly schooled the other prentices
to leave her alone, and most of the lads began to mutter against
her, darkly declaring that girls should not be allowed to be
lighters. Even so, there were still some secret doe-eyed looks sent
her way, and many sniggering asides when she left the mess hall
morning and night to make her treacles. Chin in air, the calendar
ignored them all, rather setting her attention firmly on learning
her new trade. She proved quickly that she already possessed most
of the skills required, and those few she did not know she was apt
to learn. Despite having never marched in her life, it took no more
than her first afternoon of evolutions to step-regular with as much
facility as the rest. It had taken the other prentices more than a
week and much cursing and bawling from Grindrod and Benedict to do
the same. Rather than being impressed, the boys resented her quick
learning and smug self-awareness.Though there had been no open
discussion, it became a general accord that none of them wanted her
in his prentice-watch.
Moreover, Threnody’s advent posed a disruption to
the symmetry of the manse’s fine lists, and any one of the three
quartos might be lumbered with her.With the suspension of the
nightly prentice-watch, the question as to which Threnody would
join remained unanswered.