Foundling (28 page)

Then his gaze fixed upon an enormous, dark vessel out in the Mullhaven.

These were the largest of all the rams and this one was absolutely gigantic, dwarfing all the vessels about. Its bow-ram did not jut nearly so far as the frigate’s, for it was thought too big and too slow to successfully charge other vessels. It relied instead on its thick strakes—the iron plates that armored the hull—and the two decks of 120 great-guns that armed either broadside. Rossamünd had always thought this an excellent number of cannon: it meant that for a main-sovereign to fight effectively, she needed a crew of at least fourteen hundred men . . .

“Hello, Rosy Posy!” The cry intruded upon his technical romance.

He knew that voice.

Looking about, quickly he found a face he recognized aboard the
Surprise
. It was a fellow foundling two years his senior who had shipped off to serve in the navy eighteen months ago. His name was Snarl. He was taller, broader, looked stronger—but it was still Snarl. While at Madam Opera’s, he had been, after Gosling, one of those most active in tormenting Rossamünd.

He looked up at his fellow foundling of old, squinting into the glare of sunlit clouds. “Oh . . . hello, Snarl,” he returned coolly. It should have been an occasion of pride to learn that one of his old bunk-mates was now serving aboard so renowned a ram, but the character of Snarl undid any feelings of such camaraderie.

“Well, well, by and by, it’s ol’ Missy-boots himself, come to see me sitting high on me mighty boat!” Snarl swaggered along the gangway to stand directly above Rossamünd. He called to his fellow crewmen. “Look ’ere, lads, here’s a fellow I grew up with.”

Some of the younger members of the crew looked down upon the foundling standing upon the pier. Some even gave him a genuine grin.

Rossamünd smiled back cautiously.

“As fine a grummet as ever there was, this one, all manners and kindness,” Snarl continued in his high-handed voice. “Got a girl’s name to go with it, haven’t you,
Rossamünd
?” Snarl had not changed.

Rossamünd turned and walked back up the pier. “Good-bye, Snarl,” he muttered.

He stepped onto a wharf with the brash laughter of the fellow society boy ringing after him. Though he had only been away from his old way of life for less than a fortnight, it already felt like a long time ago. To meet another child from there, rather than bringing it all back, only made this feeling of dislocation stronger. He wondered if Snarl had leaped from the decks of a moving cromster, watched a lahzar in a fight, thrown bothersalts in the face of some grinnlings or dragged an ailing fulgar to a wayhouse. Rossamünd marveled that he had seen and done more in the last two weeks on his own than in two years in the foundlingery.

For a while he wandered about the many smaller craft berthed along either side, taking turns carelessly, trying hard not to brood upon this encounter. He had somehow thought that his fellow foundlings would all grow up once they had left the little world of Madam Opera’s and become a little more sober, a little kinder.

He approached the end of yet another wharf. The clock over the square was still visible through all the masts. Rossamünd checked again as he had several times so far: it was time to return. He went to turn back when a powerful smell briefly overpowered the perfume of the Grume. He knew that stink . . .

A firm hand cunningly pinched the back of his neck. “Well, what’s this ’ere then, an’ ol’ chum returned to the fold?” It was Poundinch. The oily rivermaster loomed over the boy. “Miss us, did ye, Rosey-me-lad?”

Rossamünd went slack and pale with terror, a deep, sinking terror that made him want to vomit.

“Ah, look—’e’s gone all emotion’l at such an ’appy reunion,” purred Poundinch.

Somehow Rossamünd found his tongue. “Ah—ah—hello, Rivermaster P-Poundinch.”

“Hello, Rosey-ol’-boy. I’m called Cap’n Poundinch when I’m in these parts, tho’, so ye’ll need to reschool yer tongue.”

The pressure upon Rossamünd’s neck increased subtly but so skillfully that he was compelled to step forward toward a gangplank before him. There she was, the
Hogshead
, listing slightly to the aft ladeboard quarter but still very much intact. That was where the oh-so-familiar smell had come from. It would always be the smell of dread for Rossamünd.

“Huh—how did you escape the monitors?” he somehow managed.

“Ah, Rosey-me-lad,” Poundinch purred, tapping his greasy nose with the scarred and grubby forefinger of his free hand, “that’s ol’ Poundy’s way—slipperier than swine’s lard, me . . . Aren’t ye ’appy for me?”

“. . . Um . . .” was all the foundling could offer.

Poundinch pushed him up the gangplank and followed closely behind. Rossamünd thought briefly of leaping into the water, but he had been instructed, over and over, that the caustic waters of the Grume were no place for a person to find himself bobbing about. With that escape route unavailable, he found himself where he thought he would never be again—upon the deck of the
Hogshead
. Only Gibbon was here, no other crew. He was chewing his black fingernails as he stood by the splintered stump of the tiller.

“Look ’ere, Gibbon, th’ lad couldn’t stay away, ’e missed us so!” Poundinch kept shoving the foundling all the way to the hatchway. Rossamünd pushed against each shove stubbornly.

Gibbon peered dumbly at the foundling for a moment, then his gaze sharpened. “Oh aye, oi rememb’r. ’Ello, boi’o.”

Rossamünd kept his head down. He was too far away, he knew, for Fouracres or Europe to spy him. He reckoned also that at this less-than-salubrious end of the docks other sailors would pay little heed to the subtle struggle taking place aboard the
Hogshead
.

The hatchway was open, as it usually was, and with that cunning neck-pinch, Poundinch forced the boy to start his way down the ladder. “Just goin’ to finish up an ol’ con-vosation with this’un ’ere,” he called to Gibbon as he himself started down.

Rossamünd descended slowly, his senses reacquainting themselves with the profound lack of light and the overwhelming stench. He could just make out that the hold had been cleared of all its barrels, yet the powerful odor of the swine’s lard had remained, soaked into the very wood of the cromster’s frames and decking—and with it the hint of some far worse fetor. Yet these smells were not all that had been left. A bright-limn hung from a central beam about halfway between the ladder and the bow. It helped little but was enough to show, to Rossamünd’s horror, that the three gruesome crates bound with strong iron smuggled aboard about a week ago were still there. Two of them were side by side near the ladder and one on its own several feet away. This lonely one suddenly shook violently.

Rossamünd gave a tight yelp. He tried to scamper back up, but Poundinch blocked his ascent. The captain shouted at the lonely crate and, after a few shudders more, it became still. The hold was otherwise empty but for acerbic seawater leaking in from the stern end of the hold. Rossamünd saw that it was already about an inch deep at the bottom of the steps.

“Ye knows what’s in these ’ere crates, don’t ye, lad?” Poundinch had stopped about halfway down and cast his hefty shadow over the foundling.

“Uh—I—n-no . . .” Rossamünd spluttered and backed away from both Poundinch and the crates. The bilgewater came up to his ankles now.

“Aw, come now, ye were snoopin’ about, listenin’ and pryin’ after we took ’em aboard. Tryin’ to get somethin’ over ol’ Poundy, were ye? A li’l morsel to sell to ’is enemies, ’ey? A li’l bit o’ lev’rage to make some deals?”

The nature of this rogue’s suspicions revealed, Rossamünd looked at him in disbelief.

Poundinch descended all the way to the bottom. “Those innocent rabbit eyes ye make don’t work on me, mucky little mouse. I think I’ll leave ye down ’ere to think again upon th’ falsities of yer stubborn, lyin’ tongue. We’ll be back to collect them crates in a couple of ’ours, so ye’ll ’ave a bit o’ time to change th’ tune of yer whistle.” He grabbed Rossamünd by the wrist, twisting it cruelly.

Tears started in the foundling’s eyes as he was compelled to squirm and bend in order to lessen the pain, movement which brought him right by two crates. “But I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I just want to work as a lamplighter!” Rossamünd howled, over and over.

Captain Poundinch ignored him and instead, quicker than a cat, gathered up Rossamünd’s hands and wound cord roughly all about them, fixing it to a loop of rope that held one of the crates together in such a way that it forced him to sit.

The boy’s heart froze. He had been tied right up against a crate! His mind went a white blank of panic. “But! . . . But! . . .” was all he could manage.

“Aye, ‘but, but.’ Ye’re babblin’ now, bain’t ye? Got to make more sense if ye wants yer freedom, tho’.” Poundinch put his greasy face next to Rossamünd’s. “Ye were sooo keen to know what were in me cargo! Well now ye can ’ave a good ol’ gander, as close as ye could want for,” he growled. “Ye’ve got about three ’ours till I return—plenty of time for ye to mull, and if ye’re still whole enough to speak after such a time with me prettee pieces ’ere, we’ll see what we might do with ye. Ye never know, lad, if ye’re lucky, ye might get to live it large on th’ vinegar waves, with ol’ Poundy as yer ev’r faithful, ev’r vigilant cap’n!”

With that and nothing more Poundinch left, his boots thumping heavily, back up the way he had come. The hatch closed with a clang.

“I just want to be a lamplighter . . . ” the boy sobbed. The seat of his longshanks already soaked in half an inch of water, he sat with his arms on his knees and his face buried in his sleeves. Overwhelmed with bitter hopelessness, Rossamünd wept as he never had in his whole life.

Eventually calm came. He stopped crying and instead he listened. The
Hogshead
creaked in the tidal movements, the brine in the hold slopped ever so quietly and Rossamünd’s heart thumped, but that was all. He lifted his head and squinted about, his face puffy, stinging. It was very dim, but because of the bright-limn not so dark that the crates could not be distinguished clearly. Though he was overshadowed by the box he was bound to, his eyes adjusted to the weak light that also came from cracks about the hatchway. There was not even the slightest hint of movement from any of the three crates, not even the one that shook so determinedly before. Rossamünd had been making all the noise he liked but still the things they contained had remained still. They must have been empty after all. Eyeing the gaps in the crate next to him, his mind whirled.

He would be missed, surely? Not by Europe, perhaps, but certainly by Fouracres.
He’d
come to the rescue, Rossamünd was sure of it—
Wouldn’t he?
. . . Yet doubt took hold, and he could not be certain of anything anymore. He was lost. How would they know where to find him? If Master Fransitart was aware of what had happened to him, he knew his old dormitory master would be furious and shift all obstacles to rescue him. But Master Fransitart did not know—and he was too far away to help. Rossamünd rolled his eyes in his grief and his gaze caught a glimpse of something between the slats of the crate to which he was tied.

Two eyes stared back at him, yellow and inhumanly round.

Rossamünd shrieked like a person touched with madness, and tugged and writhed wildly in his bonds. The crate jerked violently too, and the eyes disappeared. In blind panic he wrestled for his very life to get free!

It was all in vain. The knot he was bound with was a bailiff’s shank, a cunning tangle that took two hands to tie but three to undo. He barely had a whole hand of fingers available between the two of them. Surrendering to whatever grisly fate he was now to suffer—“some ’orrible, gashing end,” as Master Fransitart would say—Rossamünd bowed his head and began once more to weep, waiting for some flash of pain or other rending violence.

Instead a sound came. It was a voice, small, soft and bubbling like a happy little runnel. “Look at you,” it said. “Look at you, strange little one who can cry. No need for crying now, no, no, no. Freckle is here and here he is. Lowly he might be, but not the least. A friend he is, and friendly too. So no crying now, no no, nor screaming nor throwing nor bumping of poor Freckle and his head about this little gaol.”

Despite himself Rossamünd felt calmed, and reluctantly turned his head. The round yellow eyes had returned and were looking at him again, earnestly kind.

The foundling held his breath.

The eyes seemed to hesitate too. Then the voice that belonged to those eyes—that small, soft, babbling voice—said, “
He
is watching too, and knows you, oh yes, hm hm. Fret not. There is always a plan. Providence provides.You’ll see, you’ll see.”

“Who . . . who are y-you?” Rossamünd managed at last. He could see little else but those big eyes—maybe a small nose . . . he could not be sure.

“Why, I thought I said, or did I say I thought?” The eyes blinked a long, almost lazy blink. “Why, I am Freckle! Freckle who has been speaking all his thinking just now. I was afraid before, and I thought before that I would just think all my speaking and see what manner of strange little one you were. But I know now by your crying what you are and now I have no fear!” Though he could not see, Rossamünd could well imagine this creature smiling a rather self-satisfied smile. “Tell, little cryer, what is your name?”

“Um . . . it’s Rossamünd.”

There was a strange, gaggling noise, and Rossamünd had the impression that this was Freckle’s laugh. “I see and see I do. An obvious name. Here is a tree. I’ll call it ‘Tree.’ Here is a dog. I’ll call it ‘Dog’! Very clever! What a witty fellow who gave it to you! They must be a funny fellow indeed!” There was more of the gaggling laugh.

Rossamünd frowned. Witty and funny were not words he would have associated with Madam Opera, who had fixed his name by writing it in the ledger. “Why—why is my name so obvious?” the foundling pressed.