D Cornish - Factotum

Through the doorway behind him was a dark blank like the throat of some ravenous sea-nicker. A tingle of sorrow shivered down Rossamund's backbone-an almost threwdish kind of distress. Here?

A tiny bell made its tiny silvery tinkle, and they were let onward down a closely spiraling stair of stone, its walls covered with black leather dimpled and glistening. Smelling strongly of subterranean chalkiness and animal hide, the air here grew decidedly colder with every curve down. Rossamund could hear the bubble of water through the leather and rock, and he imagined the immemorial currents pressing against eroded brickwork without.Were they under the harbor itself?

"Have you been dogging before, Rossamund?" Rookwood asked chattily.

"Ah, no, sir, I have not…," he answered, beginning to feel out of place. "What is it?"

"Ahh, you shall see. The night ends on a high note for you, sir!"

Achieving the bottom, they passed along a long brick passage lit with oil-burning cressets whose heat made the lime-painted walls sweat. Heavy-proofed men regarded them searchingly as the tunnel took them toward cheering: angry, almost hungry and unwontedly wild.With every yard the threwdish grief waxed, becoming a great weight of confusion and distress and frustrated rage. What manner of event could produce such a terrible cacophony of soul and sound?

"Come along, Mister Bookchild." Rookwood grinned. "By that ovation the first fight must be ending.This is a spectacle one of your caliber and trade will surely relish."

The other end stepped onto a wooden boardwalk that made a circuit behind a whole edifice of stall-boxes, very similar to those at the Hobby Horse. A great array of people were sitting in them: high and low, rich and poor, teratologist and naivine, thrust rudely together, all hollering at whatever was occurring below them with singular fascination. As Rossamund observed, the whole mass erupted into a great whooping cheer, hands flung up, little tabs of paper flying and falling like the rare snows of deep Hergott winters.

"The cubes bet in a frenzy and the pigeons watch in high spirits!" Eusebus cried, looking happily to the celebrating crowd of said cubes-the true gamblers-and pigeons-the mere spectators. "Excellent evidence for an excellent night!"

A woman in thick face paint and a too-tight stomacher-dress greeted the older two with a saucy curtsy as if she knew them well and passed small white-daubed paddles to them. Rookwood shouted something in her ear, and she thrust a paddle into Rossamund's grasp, crying, "Goodly evening, little lordling. Wave your pug to pose your stake! Chance your gooses wisely!"

Bemused, the young factotum took the pug and inched forward in the wake of Rookwood's and Eusebus' passage through the throng until they came to a high balustrade.

"The dogs!" Rookwood held out a presenting hand, eyes twinkling with excitement, while Eusebus pushed along the front row of the stalls to find seats.

Full of bawling, exuberant souls, some clapping each other on the back and others with face in hands, the stalls ran about the entire circumference of a large quadrangle, going up and down for several more stories. Below them all was a square pit cleft in halves by what appeared to be a brown iron gutter; new blood was soaking into the hard-packed floor. A proud-looking fellow strutted about its circumference, heavy chain gripped in fist, leading an enormous brindle tykehound, its gagged muzzle dripping gore, its still heaving flanks rucked and bleeding. Flowers and coins and paper rained on the brute stupid beast-half dead from whatever ordeal it had just faced-and its beaming owner. A servant came out to grovel for the spoils, and the man and his dog exited through a heavy iron door in the far corner to the farewell of one final hurrah.

The noise of the audience settled to a pent hubble-bubble.

With a sinking feeling, Rossamund beheld the remains of what must have been a grisly desperate clash. He had little love for dogs, but to watch them tear each other apart was not his notion of entertainment. Steeling himself for an unpleasant spectacle ahead, he looked glumly about the crowd.

Far across on the opposite side were a set of canopied boxes hung with leaf-hued taffeta. In them sat a congregation clad almost uniformly in dark green and black. Mostly secretaries and spurns, they were gathered about a fellow proud in peacock silks and curly periwig of spotless white.

"Pater Pontiflex Maupin," Rookwood said in Rossamund's ear. "He is the owner of the Broken Doll and has major interest in this place," he said, rolling his eyes at the pit, the stalls and all the ruckus with them.

Sitting on the right of this man was a young dandidawdler in a vibrant harness of blue-green stripe with pink, his throat thickly enfolded in a tortue, a high neckerchief of white cotton. Most remarkable was his silver wig, its fringe twisted up into a pair of horns, its tail long and thick like that of a horse and held by greasy black ribbon. The wig twinkled under the cosmos of bright-limns hanging by hook or chain from the convoluted scaffold of heavy beams that held up the weight of the city far above.

Upon the other side sat a singular woman swathed in black with a flaring collar of black feathers making an unhallowed aura about her pale bald head. Her face was cold, her gaze unkind; a great spoor of a diamond and an arrow combined jutted above her right eye. She was a dexter-a wit and fulgar in one. Instinctively, Rossamund began making a tally of the costly regimen of chemistry she would need to keep her collection of foreign and contrary organs from rebelling within and destroying her.

"Ah, that is Anaesthesia Myrrh," Rookwood explained. "She prefers spurning work to teratology. As much as I admire the lahzarine set, she truly frightens me…" Some distraction away to his left took his attention. "Euse has achieved only one other seat," he said after a moment's cryptic waving of fingers. "Do you want it, young sir, or…"

The dexter looked sharply at Rossamund looking at her.

A hot flush in his cheeks and cold thrill of fright in his innards, the young factotum hastily turned his attention to his companion's question. "No, no…," he said quickly, not relishing being pinned in among all these fervid spectators.

"Well, how about you remain here," Rookwood advised. "We shall sit out the first half." He shrugged. "Then we shall meet here again to call it even, yes?"

Left to stand at the balcony, Rossamund crouched on his haunches and stared uneasily down through the posts at the blood-puddle becoming just one of the many stains in the swept earth of the pit, a rising apprehension pressing on his soul. The grieving threwd was so strong in that awful pit, it was almost audible. Can the people not feel it?

A clang of metal and a heavy man in a thick buff apron of bright blue stepped through the iron portal, raising a hand to the audience's renewed raptures. With him came two tractors leading a Greater Derehund of exceptional size. Its watery eyes full of death and hopelessness, the mighty dog snarled at the folk of the lowest stalls. The man in blue stopped before the canopied boxes and did honor to his patrons. At this Pater Maupin stood and, beholding the crowd, twirled a lace handkerchief in acknowledgment of their applause. He sat, and a fellow behind him in clerical black called down to the tractor, "Scion of the Geiterwand; which champion do you bring before us to do goodly battle?"

"I bring befer ye Skarfithin, the Blackheart of Dere!" the thickset handler cried in his best in-public voice. "Scion of the Geiterwand; winner o' thirteen full stouches and sixteen halves and as sure a wager as ever prowled the pit!"

More cheers.

"As you say, sir!" the clerical gent returned; then, twisting his attention to the stalls, he cried, "Who dares bid unseen against this mighty friend of men? Do I have any takers? You, sir!" He pointed to some invisible soul well above Rossamund's vantage. "You appear the all-a'glory kind; will you dare a posit against this fearsome specimen?" He swept his hand down to indicate the panting Derehund, Skarfithin.