D Cornish - Factotum

"Is-was this Licurius' room before?" He frowned at the memory of Europe's former factotum, his cruel grip, his hissing voice muffled by the sthenicon he never took off.

"Yes… it was," Kitchen replied evenly.Though the steward's voice was flat, Rossamund sensed deeper meaning: What is this to you? "And now, sir, it is yours."

Rossamund frowned, uncomfortable at occupying the chamber of a dead man, of sleeping in the place of someone who had actually tried to kill him. It was then that he realized there was no bed. "Mister Kitchen, where do I sleep?" he asked, hoping very much that his bunk might be in another room.

"In here, sir-I shall have a cot moved in for you before the day does come to its end."

"Ah, aye…" Rossamund's soul sank a little. "Thank you."

The steward left him to establish himself with the aid of the young, weasel-faced servant girl who had followed-the alice-'bout-house, Pallette, a young lass not more than two, maybe three, years his senior. Dressed in typical maid's garments-very much like those that dear Verline wore-this girl stood in dutiful stillness by the door and stared straight ahead as Rossamund sat on the silk-upholstered tandem. Laying his hat aside, he heaved a heavy sigh, seeking to exhale the unhappy knot that had set itself like a splinter in the very pit of his chest. One moment he was a lowly lamplighter and nigh a prisoner of the Master-of-Clerks in Winstermill's unwelcome stalls, the next he was a peer's companion established in a grand, tomblike boudoir of his own.

"M-Master Licurius used to sit right where you do now, sir, and… and take his nod sat upright," a meek voice said uneasily, interrupting his reverie. It was Pallette. There was fear in her tone and a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes.

"I beg your pardon, miss?"

"That tandem were once dear Master Licurius' bed," the alice-'bout-house repeated. "He would sit to sleep in the end. His box made it hard for him to lay his head like other folk do. He was a great help to our lady, sir," she added quickly, as if in doubt of Rossamund's own capacity.

Rossamund promptly stood, uneasy at being in contact with the spot where that blighted laggard had reclined. "I don't reckon I'll be needing it," he said, unsure how to react to someone who described Europe's old murderous, malevolent leer as dear. Indeed, it struck him that all these folk serving busily in Cloche Arde knew Licurius, maybe intimately. What kind of home is this that looks kindly on such a fellow? "Maybe we can have it taken out."

There was only the merest hesitation before Pallette said, "Yes, sir… If you have any other needs, you call for assistance by a pull of this handle," she added, gently touching a brass lever in the shape of a claw sticking from the wall by the door, "and me or another will come."

It was perplexing to have a stranger offer her obedience to him so readily.

"But if our lady wants you, sir," Pallette continued, "this bell just by it will sound, and then you are to go to her right away-you know the way?"

"Aye, thank you."

"Certainly, sir."

"My name is Rossamund."

"Yes, sir."

His meager count of dunnage-most of his belongings lost in the destruction of Wormstool-arrived and was deposited on waiting stands by a pair of huffing, puffing footmen. With only the slightest reticence these fellows obeyed as Pallette repeated Rossamund's instruction to remove Licurius' tandem.

"Maybe a simpler chair will do," Rossamund added awkwardly. "Or maybe just a stool."

"As you would have it, sir."

With the footmen lifting out the furniture, Pallette began sorting his belongings. Shirts and drawers and trews and all were carefully laid, each in its appropriate spot within cupboards and drawers. Who are you, her action seemed to be saying, to try to replace our dear dead Licurius? Look how small you are!

Rossamund took closer inspection of the small, broad-framed pictures hanging upon the walls. They were little more than a thumb-length high and the same wide. Admiring the profound skill that must have been required to paint so lifelike a finish at such a scale, he realized with an involuntary jolt what he was looking at. Each image was of some kind of wicked and depraved violence twixt men and monsters-foul tortures and cruel injuries. He caught only a glimpse, but that was all he needed.

Cabinet pictures!

Such an innocent name for such vile objects. Rossamund knew ever so vaguely of them; that among those of disposable means and dark tastes there was a barely legal fashion for depictions of the foulest violence and horror. This was the art of monster-haters, high fashion for coarse-minded invidists so twisted, it looked to Rossamund-even with the brief eyeful he received-to be almost a distorted kind of outramour. This was the heart of Licurius laid bare.

The young factotum backed away from the images. "And you… you may take these down from the walls too," he said to the departing footmen with a shaky voice and a sterner tone than he intended.

They and Pallette swapped quick, uneasy looks.

"Y-yes, sir," the alice-'bout-house answered very softly, blinking at him in discomfort. "As you would wish."

And to his astonishment, the servants said nothing and began lifting the pictures from the wall.

For luncheon-although so soon departed from the lamplighters he could not help but still think of it as middens-Rossamund was shown to a modest-sized chamber. The solar, Europe had called it. The room was not grimly dark; rather it was a soft, deep red, its high ceiling entirely gold. In its midst, before many tall windows, was an oval table of glistening scarlet, thinly etched with strangely formed flowers in golden filigree. About it were arranged high-backed chairs upholstered in the softest silk woven with curling golden stems and dyed with the shapes of petals in shades of ruby and crimson.

Sitting upon two of these at the far end waited Fransitart and Craumpalin, looking ill at ease but refreshed, like drab stains in the clean, gleaming ruddiness.

"Well, hullo, me boy," Craumpalin declared, making an easy showing but possessing a distinct air of a man interrupted. "What does thee make of thy new berth? Not much in the way of a cheerfully homey place, is it?" He lifted his eyes archly to include the room and the entire house with it. "She has treated thee with such expense and magnificence we cannot help but be grateful…"

Rossamund gave a halfhearted smile.

"Aye," Fransitart concurred. "Her generosity is as deep as her pockets."

"Aye to that, Frans," Craumpalin continued, looking up. "She can afford to keep her sconces a-glowin' all day."

Above, on golden rope, was suspended a great light, a cluster of thin red crystalline flutes bent at their bases like lips, sleek bright-limns luminous even in the day with a subtle rose glow.

In the far corner stood a screen of very similar style to the one in Rossamund's new billet. On it some bizarre heldin flourished a hammerlike weapon over a beaten nicker that looked much like a round-faced, round-eyed dog, while two more hound-monsters ran off with a strangely demure maiden. Stepping close to get a better view of each panel, he frowned at the image, not certain who to feel for the most: the fallen monster, the maiden or the heldin-man. Am I one of those? he fretted, peering at the goggle-eyed bogles abducting the woman to a presumably foul end. Am I some half-done monster born from the muds, as Swill has said?

On the journey away from Winstermill, Rossamund had held his questions, his pressing self-doubts. Now, safely harbored in the high-walled bosom of Cloche Arde, the time had come for all troubles to be answered, all long-kept secrets to be revealed.

"Whatever are you at, little man?" Europe demanded mildly, her voice attended by the thump of an opening door.