17
HASTY DEPARTURES
sis edisserum Tutin term, loosely meaning
“please explain”, this is an order from a superior (usually the
Emperor) to appear before him and a panel of peers forthwith to
offer reasons, excuses, evidence, testimony and whatever else might
be required to elucidate upon whatever demands clarity. A sis
edisserum is usually seen as a portent of Imperial ire, a sign that
the person or people so summoned are in it deep and must work hard
to restore Clementine’s confidence. A sis edisserum is a “black
mark” against your name, and very troublesome to remove.
ROSSAMÜND awoke with the worst ache of head
and body that he had ever known and his bladder fit to burst. He
hurt like the aftermath of the most severe concussion he had ever
received in harundo practice. For a time he could not remember much
of yesterday, though a lurking apprehension warned him the memory
would be unwelcome. With the sight of his salumanticum discarded on
the floor and the bed chest blocking the door recollection struck.
A gudgeon . . . a gudgeon in the forgotten cellars of the manse,
right in the marrow of the headquarters of the lamplighters! A
monster loose in Winstermill!
He dragged back the chest and opened the door to
find Threnody there, leaning on the wall as if she had been
waiting.
“You missed the most extraordinary pudding at mains
last night,” she said dryly. Evidently she had elected to speak to
him again.
“Aye . . .” Rossamünd knew by “extraordinary” she
did not mean “good.” Threnody had always hated the food served to
the prentices, and the new culinaire was achieving new acmes of
inedibility.
“You might be a poor conversationalist,” she
continued as they went to morning forming, completely heedless of
the thick bandage about his head, “but at least you’re interesting.
Between Arabis having the others ignore me, and Plod mooning and
staring all through the awful meal, it was a very long evening.”
She peered at him. “Where’s your hat?” But by then Grindrod was
shouting attention and all talk ceased.
In files out on the Cypress Walk it was obvious the
manse was in a state of agitation, with the house-watch marching
regular patrols about the Mead and the feuterers letting the dogs
out on leads to sniff at every crevice and cranny. Under a louring
sky the atmosphere of the fortress was tense and watchful.
“Do not be distracted by all this hustle ye
see today, lads,” Grindrod advised tersely. “There was an unwelcome
guest in our cellars last night, but the rotted clenchpoop is done
in now.” He looked meaningfully at Rossamünd. “Just attend to yer
duties with yer regular vigor.”
At breakfast the other prentices stared openly at
Rossamünd’s bandaged head.
“How’s it, Lately?” asked Smellgrove as Rossamünd
sat down with his fellows of Q Hesiod Gæta. “Is the bee’s buzz
true?”
“What buzz?”
“That you came to hand strokes with a gudgeon last
night,” said Wheede, pointing to Rossamünd’s bound noggin.
“Ah, aye, it nearly ruined itself trying to destroy
me.”
“Pullets and cockerels!” said several boys on
either side.
Insisting others shift to make room, Threnody sat
next to him. “Have any of you others fought one before?” she asked
knowingly.
Universal shakes of the head.
“Because I can tell you,” she boasted, “that a
full-formed lamplighter would struggle to win against one, let
alone a half-done lamp boy.”
“I have heard it that wits can’t do much to them
either.” This was Arabis, listening at the far end of the
bench.
Threnody lifted her chin and pretended she had not
heard him.
“Tell us, Rosey,” asked Pillow, “how did you do the
thing in?”
“I burned the basket’s head out with loomblaze!”
Rossamünd said, with more passion than he intended. “It went
smashing down through the stair into the pits deep
underneath.”
There was an approving mutter of amazement.The
looks of awe turned Rossamünd’s way were simultaneously
intoxicating and hard to bear. He ducked his head to hide his
confused delight, but one incredulous snort from Threnody and his
small, uncommon joy was obliterated in an instant.
After breakfast Grindrod did not say any more about
Rossamünd’s yesternight excursions. However, he did seem to address
Rossamünd with a touch more dignity as he sent him to Doctor
Crispus for further examination. “Ye may take yer time, Prentice
Bookchild: well-earned wounds need proper treating.”
“Cuts and sutures, my boy, you certainly have a
bump and a gash upon your scalp to show for some kind of scuffle,”
the physician declared as he cleaned the nasty contusion on
Rossamünd’s hairline and rebandaged it.
“Swill tried to recommend callic for me last
night,” Rossamünd said pointedly.
Crispus wagged his head in disapproval. “Fumbling
butchering novice,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Even a
first-year tyro would know callic is not for concussions. By your
current alertness I can assume he did not succeed in his
fuddle-brained prescription?”
“No he did not, Doctor. I know enough of the
chemistry to have not taken any even if he had.”
“My apologies, Rossamünd. He certainly is not who I
would have here,” Crispus complained. “But the young quackeen is
only nominally under my authority; rather he answers to the
Master-of-Clerks himself. Very unsatisfactory, and a clear nuisance
when he comes a-quacking in my trim infirmary.” He clucked his
tongue again. “A mere articled man strutting about as if he is a
senior surgeon.”
“He certainly reads some strange books for a
surgeon,” said Rossamünd.
“Does he, indeed?” Crispus blinked owlishly.
“Aye, sir.” Rossamünd squinted at the ceiling in
recollection. “Dark books, from what my old Master Craumpalin told
me.”
“Where did you see these, child?” the physician
pressed.
“In Swill’s apartment, way up in the manse’s
attics. Mother Snooks sent me up the kitchen furtigrade, delivering
a pig’s head to him.”
“The kitchen furtigrade?” Crispus looked utterly
amazed. “I did not know one existed, though Winstermill is old
enough to have a thousand such obscure places. You certainly have
had a tour of the slypes, haven’t you?”
“And the attic apartment?”
“Oh, that place is just his personal library, a
place of private reflection. ‘Do not disturb’ and all that. I’ve
never begrudged him this: a professional man must have his
sanctuary for study—I have one of my own. In our profession there
are some strange tomes—some better had we never read them, of
course. And as for the pig’s head—well, a surgeon must practice his
sutures, I suppose.”
Rossamünd was unconvinced.
Sebastipole entered the infirmary and, after asking
of Rossamünd’s health, went on to request a personal word.
WINSTERMILL
The dressing of the wound complete, Crispus left them and attended
to other patients.“Did you find anything in the tunnels, Mister
Sebastipole?” Rossamünd asked eagerly but in a low voice.
“There was no gudgeon corpse,” the leer
answered.
Rossamünd’s soul sank.
“And all that was left of the stair was splinters
and wood-dust,” Sebastipole went on.
Rossamünd’s dismay deepened. His desperate struggle
must have wrenched the ancient furtigrade too much.
“I have heard of gudgeons so cunningly made they
dissolve into a puddle after they expire,” Sebastipole expounded
further. “Do not worry, Rossamünd, you are believed,” he added,
seeing the young prentice’s dismay. “But I must tell you it was
touch and go to even find your path; we found our way more by your
instructions than your trail.Were you using a nullodor last night
at all?”
Rossamünd felt a caustic flush of guilt, as if he
had been caught out. “You can smell a nullodor?” He had no reason
to feel this, yet he did.
“Actually, no: they do their job just as they
should—all smells gone where applied. It is rather that absence of
scent that is the telltale signifer. Think of it like reading a
letter where a clumsy author has cut out his errors with a blade
and as you read there are great holes in the sentences.You know
something was there but you’d be hard-pressed to say what it was.”
Sebastipole sniffed, then blew his nose. “Such a ruse will work
against a brute beast but not against the pragmatical senses of a
well-learned leer.” He looked at Rossamünd searchingly.
“Oh,” the young prentice said in a small voice,
“and there were no smells down there?”
“Exactly so.” The leer’s expression was
impenetrable. “The whole area was a great blank, with only the
merest suggestion of many obliterated smells. If you pressed me I
might say that more than one nullodor was employed, but it is too
hard to prove so now.”
“Oh . . . I am sorry, Mister Sebastipole,”
Rossamünd murmured. “My . . . my old masters have me wearing a
little each day . . . to keep me safe, they said, from sniffing
noses.” He could not see the sense in hiding it now.
“Indeed?” The leer looked astutely at him, held him
with a silent, penetrating regard. “I detected a nullodor on you
the night we went out lighting together.”
Rossamünd ducked his head and blushed. “My old
masters are very protective of me.”
“And you are very obedient to them, it would
appear.”
Rossamünd nodded sheepishly.
Sebastipole smiled. “Yet, Rossamünd, I did
manage to detect the merest smell of your foe. It was exactly like
the foreign, foul slot of Numption’s attackers.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
“I have not encountered enough gudgeons to know
beyond doubt, but the similarity seems suspicious to me. It may
well mean the creature that beset Numption and that which you slew
last night—though separated by three years or more—have come from
the same benighted test, made by the same black habilist. If that
is so, the wretch has grown arrogant enough to try his
constructions on us again!” The anger in Sebastipole’s eyes was
made more terrible by their unnatural hue. “More galling still, we
did not find how the homunculid found its way in. Others could
come.”
Rossamünd’s imagination fired with the abhorrent
scene of the fortress overrun with rever-men.
“Hmm.” The leer became ruminative. “I can say that
it certainly did not come from the region of Numption’s bloom
baths.”
“I did not want to tell about them,” Rossamünd
confessed forlornly.
“I know you did not, Rossamünd.” The leer spoke up
quickly. “You are an honest fellow and your honesty last night made
proceedings easier. Fret not for dear Mister Numps: he is
protected, and his ‘friends’ with him. I asked him to let us in and
only took those with me who would treat him kindly.”
Rossamünd felt a little relief at this.
Sebastipole put an encouraging hand on the young
prentice’s shoulder. “No more nighttime wanderings for you, my boy.
Play the man, Rossamünd, be not afraid but be on your guard and
carry your salumanticum with you always: strange and suspicious
things turn in the manse now.” With this warning the leer left him,
and Rossamünd went out of the infirmary and rejoined the slightly
awed prentices stepping regular out on Evolution Green.
At middens Rossamünd rushed down to the lantern
store, the guilty conviction that he had failed Numps a heavy
weight right in the pit of his gizzards.Yet what else could he have
done? Oh! If only I hadn’t slept past douse-lanterns!
His compunction was not eased either when Numps
looked at him only very briefly with big, timid eyes and said
nothing for a long time. “I heard it that you were set upon by a
pale, runny man yesternight, Mister Rossamünd,” the glimner
eventually muttered softly, not looking up from his working. “Just
like old Numps was.”
“Aye, Mister Numps, I was,” Rossamünd
answered.
“Oh dear, oh dear—I’m sorry, Mister Rossamünd, I’m
sorry!You wanted my help and I showed you into trouble—poor,
limpling-headed Numps!”
This made Rossamünd feel more miserable than ever.
“I—I could have turned back, I suppose. Besides, I beat the
rever-man and got out.”
Numps stopped polishing the lamp-pane gripped by
the nimble toes of his left foot.
“It is me who must say his sorries, Mister Numps,
for telling them about the bloom baths,” Rossamünd blurted out. “I
did not want to say . . . but I had to be honest—I . . . I . . .”
Rossamünd’s words felt very thin and meaningless.
For a while Numps sat, staring at his lap. Finally
he looked up. “Fair is fair. One ‘sorry’ each. You had to fight the
runny man because of Numps’ limpling head and then some people want
to talk and talk about it and ask things, the same things over and
over till you’re all done with it. I remember it, just the same on
the day of all my red.”
“Aye, I suppose.” Rossamünd was not soothed by all
this sorrying.
The hollow sensation of friendship part-fractured
persisted, and the two cleaned panes in reflective silence.
“Mister Sebastipole reckons my gudgeon and the one
you fought might come from the same maker,” Rossamünd finally
tried. “He said they could not find where my rever-man got in,
though. Do you have any notion, Mister Numps?”
Numps shook his head. “No one can get from out
there into here.” He smiled. “Even I know that. Only the sparrows
of the Sparrowling make it here . . . oh, and you. But I reckon
they let you in ’cause you look right, but it is still clever to
cover the smell.” He tapped his handsome nose and his smile grew
cryptic.
With the chime from a bell, Rossamünd realized with
a sault of fright in his chest that middens was ended. Having
learned his lesson for lateness only too well, he scrambled his
tangibles together, and with a quick bow and a short “good
afternoon,” took hasty leave of the startled glimner.
Though the discovery of a gudgeon within was
disconcerting news, Rossamünd’s victory over it was powerfully
encouraging, and the lighters particularly held him a mite-sized
example of true lampsman valor. Among the greater share of the
clerks, however, the rumor prevailed that he had made the whole
tale up to cover his disobedience. From what Rossamünd had heard,
the Master-of-Clerks was furious that no disciplinary action was to
be taken for either Rossamünd’s lateness or his unauthorized
presence in Whympre’s chambers.
“I think that bump on yer brain-box serves ye a
better reminder to do yer duty than any reprimand I can give ye,”
the Lamplighter-Marshal had declared during a brief interview the
next morning.
Coursing for rever-men beneath the manse continued,
Sebastipole finding alternative routes into the foundations other
than Numps’ undercroft. The progress was slow and incomplete, the
searchers hampered by the strange terrain and, as rumor would have
it, by the Master-of-Clerks’ insistence that underneath was the
sole property of the Emperor and not somewhere for lighters to be
roaming about carelessly or without proper permissions or reports
in triplicate.
Meanwhile the prentices went on with their
routines, and the awe of the other lads toward Rossamünd waned. Out
on Evolution Green each day, Rossamünd noticed Laudibus Pile
sometimes lurking, watching them at their marching and training
where he had never lurked nor watched before. It was not constant,
but enough to be annoying.
“See, it’s him again,” he pointed out to
Threnody as the prentices were between drills.
“Perhaps he finds our movements appealing,” she
offered lightly. “Though what interminable stepping-regular and
fodicar movements have to do with lighting lamps I do not know. I’m
glad there is only a month left of it.”
Scowling at the leer, Rossamünd was glad too that
the last month of prenticing was approaching. He would be able to
serve on the road at last and do his part.
On the last day of Pulvis, with only one month and
four pageants-of-arms left till Billeting Day, Rossamünd was with
Numps again at middens. Door 143 gave a rattling bang, and
Sebastipole quickly appeared from the avenue of shelves and parts.
He was disturbingly, uncharacteristically agitated, the blue of his
eyes too pale, their red like new-spilled blood.
Rossamünd stood, frowning with dismay. “Mister
Sebastipole?”
“Young Master Rossamünd. Good, I am spared the time
to find you too.” The leer’s brow glistened with
perspiration.
Rossamünd had never seen Sebastipole so
agitated—not even when he was facing the Trought. “Are . . . are
you distressed, sir?”
“Hello, Mister ’Pole.” Numps was clearly delighted
to see the leer. “Come to see my friends again?”
“Not today, Numption,” the leer answered, returning
the glimner’s smile with one of his own, brotherly and warm despite
his mysterious urgency. “I am glad you have Rossamünd for a friend
now too, for today I will be leaving.”
The prentice’s innards gave a lurch. Sebastipole
leaving? Rossamünd did not care for such a notion: the manse
felt safer with the leer somewhere at hand.
Attention now fixed on a particularly grimy
lantern-window, Numps nodded. “All right, Mister ’Pole, Numps will
see you again soon, then.”
“You’re going, Mister Sebastipole?” Rossamünd
asked.
“Indeed,” the leer returned, “I will most probably
be gone for a goodly while.”
The glimner finally looked up from his rubbing.
“More days than Numps has fingers or toes?”
“Yes, Numption, more even than that.” Sebastipole
gave him a sad, affectionate look. “I do not know for how long I
will be absent.”
Numps’ joy collapsed. “But why?”
The leer crouched down and looked up at the
glimner.
“The short of it is, my old friend, the
Lamplighter-Marshal has been served a sis edisserum. Do you know
what this is?”
Though Sebastipole was talking to Numps, Rossamünd
nodded. This Imperial summons had played infrequent but significant
parts in the more exciting stories in his old pamphlets.
Numps just blinked slowly, his look of distress
mixing with increasing confusion.
“It means that the Marshal must appear before the
Emperor’s representatives posthaste,” Sebastipole explained, “and
as his falseman—his telltale—I am to go with him.”
“But why does the Marshal have to go?” Numps
persisted.
The leer hesitated. “Because . . . because the
Emperor’s ministers have ordered him to meet with them all the way
down in the Considine.”
The Considine? Rossamünd was amazed: he had
hoped to see the subcapital as a vinegaroon visiting as part of a
ram’s crew, to tread slowly into harbor and admire its grand
buildings and massive walls. “Why have they done that?” he piped,
with questions of his own. “What has the Lamplighter-Marshal
done?”
Sebastipole looked at him squarely. “He has
done nothing,” the leer said with contained anger. “But
somehow they have already heard of the gudgeon in our bowels and he
is required to explain both this and what they consider our failure
to check the great many theroscades and depredations along the
highroad.”
“It’s not the Lamplighter-Marshal’s fault that
bogles and nickers attack!” Rossamünd could not believe the folly
of such a notion. “Nor that the rever-man was found in here! How
can he explain something he couldn’t know? It was those butchers
who brought the poor Trought down on us, not the Marshal!”
“I suspect there is more behind this sis edisserum
than a simple ‘please explain.’ Someone plots the Marshal’s
embarrassment, perhaps, or his removal.”
“Who would want such a terrible thing?” Rossamünd
asked indignantly.
“Maybe those who covet his popularity with the
lamplighters and the people of the Idlewild, and his position as a
peer,” answered the leer. “Those who will happily destroy any good
just so they can have it their way, without any thought to wisdom
or right.”
How could anyone be black-hearted enough to wish
ill on such a great man? Rossamünd reflected bitterly.
“But why do you have to go?” Numps interjected,
frowning with intense, puzzled concentration.
“I go because the Marshal needs me.” Sebastipole
became kinder. “I must see through all the lies and traps of
cunning men for him. While I am gone you must be careful, do you
follow me, Numption?” The leer bent his neck sideways to look Numps
in the eye. “If you are scared, hide with your hidden
friends.Yes?”
The glimner nodded, his head dropping dejectedly.
“Yes Mister ’Pole, if I’m scared I will hide, yes.”
Standing, Sebastipole turned to Rossamünd. “Watch
out for my friend, Rossamünd. Only you and Crispus show him any
abiding kindness, and the doctor is a man daily beleaguered with
too many tasks.” Sebastipole gripped Rossamünd firmly by his
shoulder, startling him. “Will you do this?” the leer asked,
uncommon anxiety clear in his queer-colored gaze.
“Aye, Mister Sebastipole,” Rossamünd said
seriously. “Aye, I most certainly will.”
“Bravo! Good man! Now I must go. We have been given
little time to satisfy the summons.”
“You come back again, Mister ’Pole,” Numps
insisted.
“You know I have to go away at times. But I always
return, do I not?” He fixed Numps with a firm look. “Do I
not?”
Sniffing, Numps eventually, grudgingly,
nodded.
“And I will write to you as I have before,” the
leer pressed, “and Doctor Crispus will still be here . . . and so
will Rossamünd.”
At that Numps looked at the prentice and gave a
pathetic smile.
Nodding, Rossamünd grinned awkwardly in
return.
Sebastipole sat with Numps for a little longer,
then said, “And now, friend Numption, I must must go and
you must trust me and Rossamünd as your friend.” Sebastipole
stood.
“Yes, Mister ’Pole,” Numps relented. “You
are my for-always friend, and Rossamünd is my new old
friend. I will see you back here soon again, yes?”
“Yes, you shall—as soon as is possible. May well
betide both of you,” he said with feeling. “We shall meet again—I
will make certain of it! Until then I will write if able, though
there will be much work to do, great labors perhaps, but I will
still attempt a letter. Good-bye!” With that, he turned quickly
with a flick of his coachman’s cloak and exited the lantern
store.
Numps began to sing and mutter.
Rossamünd could feel—almost see—the glimner
withdraw into himself, no longer heeding the prentice sitting by
him. Rossamünd quietly returned to the manse and left the glimner
to his introspections.