Lamplighter (35 page)

Numps lay curled about himself, making strange gulping noises, whispering “Oh, my friend . . . oh, my friend” to himself between sobbing gasps, his eyes red and swollen, his cheeks gray and drawn. Oblivious to the sharp pebbles of the drive, Rossamünd knelt and embraced the glimner as best he could, an awkward, inadequate reach across the man’s convulsing back.

Doctor Crispus was unwilling to provoke Numps further by taking him into the manse. Calling for two porters and a stretcher, he had the glimner taken to the lantern store. Rossamünd and Threnody accompanied them as, whimpering and unresponsive, Numps was set gingerly on his pallet in a small, nestlike domestic nook of the store.

“I shall return presently with a soothing draught for the poor fellow,” Crispus instructed Rossamünd. “There is no circumstance under which this would have happened if the Marshal was still present,” he concluded heatedly.

“My, how kitten does play with father cat away,” Threnody concurred. “The clerk-master behaves a little differently without someone to check him.”

“Indeed, my dear. The worm has turned, I think.” With a bow, the physician left.

Speechless with shame and regret, Rossamünd could think of no comfort as Numps lay curled about himself, rocking on his cot by the clean, cold light of the well-kept great-lamp. When he did finally find voice, all he could say for a time was, “Sorry . . . I’m so sorry.”

But all he got in reply from Numps was, over and over, “My friend . . . you’re killed again . . .”

“If I had known the Master-of-Clerks would treat your baths so, there is nothing that would have made me tell of them!” Rossamünd said bitterly, tears threatening.

“There’s no way you could have guessed ahead to that fellow’s wretchedness, Rossamünd,” Threnody murmured, touching him on the arm and actually managing to bring some comfort. “I’m sure Dolours would say something much the same were she here,” the girl added as a qualification for her soothing.

When Crispus returned, it was a bitter fortune that the glimner, so insensible with shock, went quickly to sleep under the influence of the physician’s soother. Crispus, Threnody and Rossamünd sat for a while by Numps’ side, watching over him.

“What is going to happen to him, Doctor?” whispered Rossamünd.

“He will recover, my boy.” The physician smiled kindly. “I have seen him through worse and will see him through again.”

Rossamünd was in doubt. “He should have gone with Mister Sebastipole.”

“I do not think the Considine is a good place for him either,” Crispus replied. “In fact, you would have a hard time getting him out of Winstermill. It was remarkable that he even ventured up on to the Mead today.”

Rossamünd sat in silent thought. “Doctor Crispus, what will happen to Winstermill—to us all—without the Marshal here?”

The physician sighed, deep and sad. “I have not one notion, my boy, though if today’s travesty is an indicator of our new leader’s method, then it just might be an unhappy end for us all.”

“Here I was beginning to enjoy the life.” Threnody’s muttered words were heavy with irony. “I was telling Rossamünd before, good Doctor, that events have fallen very
well
for our dastardly clerk-master.”

“Why, child, I suppose they have.” Crispus stroked his chin. “Yet I can hardly conceive of him orchestrating all the manifold trials that have beset us and the brave Marshal most of all.”

“I have been a pupil of Mother’s long enough to know only a prod here and a coaxing there is enough to bring another down,” Threnody waxed sagaciously. “Their troubles do the rest for you.”

The physician looked at her for a moment. “Is that so, child? I wonder at the rather bleak nature of the lessons your good mother holds.”

Rossamünd marveled at this glimpse of the bizarre life the girl must have led before she joined the lighters.

Inevitably Crispus’ duties called him away, and middens’ call coaxed Threnody back to the manse.

Rossamünd was left to continue the observance alone. Sitting there in the quiet of the store, he began to arrange a plan in his grieving thoughts: a scheme to offer some small consolation to the harrowed man. It was quite simple, and required only a clear occasion to be done. He would go to the Scaffold and rescue what bloom he could. The best time was mains, when the manse was a little stupid with the filling of its myriad stomachs, and the vigilance of its watch directed more outward to the Harrowmath. Prentices were allowed a relative freedom of movement during meals, and he was going to make full use of the privilege. Rossamünd would take a smock and a barrow—of which there was a conspicuously ample supply all about this part of the Gutter—and, like a gardener, steal on to the Mead and take back the bloom. The plan fixed so firmly in his mind as the only way he might make any kind of amends, he determined to go through with it that very evening.

He stood to put the plan into motion. The smock would be from his own trunk. Of all its intended uses, he reflected, impersonating a groundsman was probably not among them. The wooden barrow—found in the lantern store itself—he hid in a gap between the Principal Stair and front boarded wall of the store, wedging it behind a rain barrel, and with it a rusty fodicar to aid him in hooking the bloom down.

Preparations done, the prentice looked in on the insensible glimner one last time and returned to the manse.

 

The evening was as blustery a one as Rossamünd could recall. Clouds blossomed and expanded, unraveling from horizon to horizon over the whole Harrowmath: low, mountainous-dark, and turned an oddly luminescent, muddy hue by the westering sun they hid. Southerly, loam-perfumed winds blustered over the shorter walls of the Low Gutter; wild, freezing vortices spun across the Mead and down the Cypress Walk, prodding Rossamünd with every gust, bringing to his cold aching ears the angry hiss of the tempest-tossed grasses on the plain.

Gripping the thin linen smock and its meager extra warmth about him, the prentice skipped down the postern stair and scurried along the poorly lit lanes of the Gutter. His healing crown aching under the bandages, he wished he still had his hat to protect his head from the blustery buffeting. This was a bad night to be in the open, but it was a good night for clandestine or nefarious deeds. He reckoned upon less chance of discovery or questions by this route, and his reckoning proved right. Not one other soul crossed his way but a gray grimalkin, one of the tribe of mousing-cats allowed free roam of the whole fortress.Wise enough to leave the vermin to themselves on such an ugly eve, it blinked knowingly at him from its shelter beneath a stack of unused hogsheads, puncheons and barrels.

Past the bill-posting trees, across the All-About, by the Magazine and between the warehouses and work-stalls he went, arriving at the lantern store in a state of thrumming anxiety. He hastily pulled the barrow from behind its rain-barrel nook. Rossamünd pushed it up the long cartage-ramp—the Axial—to the edge of the Grand Mead, the axle creaking quietly and the wheel making a pleasant, continuous crunch on the gravel.The Mead proved as empty of people as it had been that very first evening the coach had deposited him at Winstermill. Back then he had thought the manse huge and vacant, but now he knew the Mead’s current state of inoccupation made a lie of the fortress’s hectic daytime activity. Honey-hued window-lights flickered invitingly—glimmering like watching eyes in the gatehouses, the Cursory, the Feuterers’ Cottage and the Yardsman’s Row. Snatches of ribald songs reached him modulated on the wind’s frenetic breath, but the great, walled valley before him was deserted.

Rossamünd paused. He knew that it was possible hidden eyes were looking from cavities in the structures where the most faithful house-watchmen kept a diligent eye.There was very little he could do about these unseen observers but hope his thin ruse of a groundsman on a late errand would fool them.

Rossamünd took a steadying breath.

Lit behind by one of the few lamps on the grounds, the Scaffold was unmistakable: a stark shadow of limbs so unnaturally perpendicular that Rossamünd could well see how it earned its name. The dying bloom still thickly furbished every branch as high as the peoneers’ ladders had reached, warping and writhing violently in stormy gusts. Touched with a ghastly yellow hue, the plants were clearly drying, their vigor failing. Steeling himself, Rossamünd pushed the barrow steadily along the left-hand edge of the drive, walking with a show of purpose directly to the dead tree, hurrying only when he crossed the brightly lit ground before the manse’s front doors. Under the tree, the hanging bloom was far too high for him to get with his diminutive reach. Even the corroding fodicar was little help, the single hook requiring impossible precision to snag the wildly wind-dancing tendrils. Over and over Rossamünd swung and poked at these elusive targets till he was near to sobbing with the futility of the task. Too often when he did achieve a hooking, the failing plant would tear and shower him with its wilting leaflets.

It had been his great Plan with a capital
P
to fill the barrow with great armfuls of the stuff, but now he was hard-pressed to gather a handful. He threw the fodicar down in disgust and it bounced butt-end first off the iron-hard roots of the Scaffold, flipped over several times and skidded clatteringly to a stop against the wall of the manse.

With a clinch of dread at such a din, Rossamünd froze—he had never meant to hurl the fodicar so hard or so far—and instantly realized he need not have toiled so fruitlessly. For there, all about the fodicar’s final rest were intact fragments of bloom, ripped from the tree by the gale, scattered now like summer-fallen blossoms on the Scaffold’s leeward side.The prentice’s entire soul leaped for the joy of it, but quickly squeezed to fright again as the noise of watchmen stirring in one of the many structures on the Mead’s edge reached him. With terror’s thrill, Rossamünd dashed the barrow over to the fodicar.Voices were becoming more distinct, sounding nearer, coming from the coach yard around the corner. He grabbed at all the bloom he could reach, dumping it rapidly in the barrow. The crunch of a footfall on gravel was all too clear.The prentice snatched up the fallen lantern-crook, took grip of the barrow’s handles and hurried off across the Mead, dark excitement broiling in his innards. At any moment he expected to be hailed. He forced himself not to run.With every step nearer the Axial, he dared to hope he might escape unseen, and hope and dread seesawed desperately till—at last!—he was trundling down the ramp descending to the Low Gutter. Only when he was back by the gap between the Principal Stair and the lantern store did Rossamünd finally begin again to breathe.

Not waiting to discover if he had been seen or followed, the prentice fumbled off his smock, tipped all the bloom from the barrow on to it, put the barrow back behind the rain barrel, and the fodicar with it. Rolling up the smock and hefting this bundle over his shoulder, he scampered back through the comparative calm of the Low Gutter, up the Postern Stair and into his own cell just as mains was ending.

Never had he prized the privacy of his cell as much as then. In the quiet of the tiny room, with the door shut, Rossamünd spread the smock out, and heart a-thump with hope, sorted through all the scraps of bloom. He was quickly and bitterly dismayed to find much of the stuff terribly yellowed. Yet among all the dying bloom-shreds he found six still-healthy tendrils, limp but not beyond restoring. He could have whooped for joy.

His messmates began moving and stomping about outside, shifting about the cell row as they readied for bed. Rossamünd got into his own nightclothes and, with a quick check out the cell door, made three rapid forays. Some of the other prentices gave him odd looks but none stopped him. Bare feet slapping on the cold slate, he carried water from the cistern, via his biggin, to pour into the chamber pot. Thus the aquatic environment the bloom required was in some way restored. Rossamünd took his time tenderly arranging the survivors so that each was properly submerged.

His nerves were so tightly strung, a soft bang at the door spooked him mightily.

“It’s douse-lanterns, Bookchild,” came a hard, warning voice.

Intent on tending his haul, Rossamünd had missed the day’s-end cry. All clatter and flurry, the prentice tried to hurry the last two precious sprigs into the chamber pot.

The cell door opened and in thrust the lamplighter-sergeant’s head. “Did ye not hear the—” he began, then saw the bloom. Grindrod’s eyes went wide, but sharp anger was quickly replaced with understanding. “Where did ye get those, prentice?”

“I—ah—from the—the—” Rossamünd floundered: it was theft either way—a flogging offense, twelve of the best under the lictor’s hand.

“From the Scaffold?”

“Aye, Lamplighter-Sergeant.”

“Good man, Master Lately. As ye were.” The merest hint of an untypical smile showed on Grindrod’s face. “Douse yer lantern, the day’s deeds are done, lad . . . and keep
those
well out of sight. What our new Marshal doesn’t fathom won’t turn into trouble.”

Confused, relieved, Rossamünd pushed the chamber pot under his cot, tumbled all the dead bloom together with his smock, stuffed it into the bed chest and turned his bright-limn. In the fading light he readied for sleep. His heart still pattered fast and he lay awake for a long time, astounded at his own audacity and wondering why Grindrod had just abetted him in his crime.

 

Immediately after the sunup call
“A lamp! A lamp to light your path!”
rang through the cell row, Rossamünd was out of his cot and pulling the chamber pot with its leafy guests out from under his bunk. He had continued to use the pot for its intended purpose during the night, having learned from Numps that one’s night waters were good for the bloom. Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert had reluctantly said the same when, amid much snickering and guffawing from his fellows, Rossamünd had sought to confirm the fact during readings. Nevertheless, one of the bloom sprigs had not survived the night, and he was down to five.