D Cornish - Factotum

"So that's the short of it," Fransitart went on. "Ye were hauled off to the cribs an' me to watch o'er ye and all the others with ye as a master. I kept the matter to meself, dwelt on it, stored it up in me soul until some time on, Master Pin fetched up to work at the Madam's-under me sage advice. Soon as he arrived an' I had th' chance, I found the bit of card an' took it into him an' told him just what this sparrow-fellow had spake: 'His name is what he is…' Never one to be spooked by oddities, ye thought an' ye thought on it, di'n't ye, Pin? Sent away to his soup-makin', tome-thumbin' friends on it…"

Head bowed, Craumpalin gave a single nod.

"An' he found such as we never hoped he would-probably in the same line of cryptic book as that dastard butcher claims to have investigated," Fransitart growled. "It said much as Swill claimed, that rossamunderlings were an ancient monster's name for bogles that look like everymen. We knew of such too, though by other names, that blighted Biarge lass being th' most famous among vinegars-"

"Such is the trouble that comes of talking to bogles," Craumpalin muttered, speaking for the first time.

"Why not call me something else?" Rossamund insisted.

"Because Madam O wrote thee up right quick." Craumpalin looked squarely at Rossamund. "Once thy name were in the Madam's book, it was a matter of ineffaceable public record. There was no renaming thee after that, and no fuss could be made without lookin' mightily suspicious. So we had to luff up and let the matter be. I comforted Frans and meself it was such an obscure word, I reckoned on none that thee might meet ever knowing of it… other than the name of a lass mistakenly given to a lad, that is."

"Unfortunate in itself, I would have thought," Europe added quietly.

Fransitart gave her an unhappy look. "We never reckoned on such dangersome waters as ye finding yerself thrust into service with a book-eatin' massacar like Swill," he said bitterly.

"They do seem to be everywhere," the Duchess-in-waiting returned dryly.

The ex-dormitory master scowled again. "Once it came time to take yer place in the world, lad, Pin an' I were at full stretch to know what to do with ye. Let ye go an' risk some kind of discovery…"

"Which was what I was vouching for," Craumpalin inserted. "Holding that risk to be small-"

"Aye, or go my way of it an' keep ye back where we could know ye were safest-"

"Aye," Craumpalin interrupted again. "Inviting suspicions and dooming the lad to some half-lived life."

Old troubles flashed in Fransitart's dark eyes. "So ye said then, Pin, an' I followed yer lead an' 'ere we are now-"

"We would be in this or some other strait by either heading, Frans." The aging dispensurist looked wounded. "It has always been a matter of time's passing.The stone and the sty if ever a siteeation was…"

The ex-dormitory master looked instantly regretful. "Aye, Pin, aye…"

"That is why you had me wrapped in nullodour," Rossamund interjected. Critchitichiello the hedgeman had said Master Craumpalin's Exstinker would never foil a monster's senses. "The noses you were keeping me safe from weren't monsters but dogs and-and men." This it had most certainly done. If it had not been for the Exstinker, Rossamund knew full well that in his native monster's stink he would have been slain out-of-hand by Licurius while he still hid in the boxthorn growing in the pastures of Sulk End or set dogs howling after his blood well before he was near them.

"Aye," Craumpalin answered softly. "We wanted to give thee every chance at success."

"Perchance locking him in a chest and hiding it in the buttery might have served better," Europe murmured.

"But why did you not tell me before, Master Fransitart?" Rossamund persisted, heedless of his mistress' ironies. "Surely I could have avoided dangers better if I had known who-what-who I really am."

"Hear, hear," murmured Europe, attending them in perfect stillness. "Why not indeed…"

For a beat there was a painful silence.

Fransitart beheld his former charge, regret clear in his eyes. "We…," he croaked. "What would we tell ye, my boy? How do we tell ye? Of what dare we say? 'Why, Rossamund, did ye know ye was handed up to us by a bogle who claimed ye to be monstrous-born?' Would ye believe me? Who would?The less spoke on it, the less folks to know, and the less heavy going we make of it."

"You-," Rossamund started, but what could he say? Who would believe such outrageous stuff? He looked at his hand, to see that it was still real, that he was still he, and found that it was shaking uncontrollably.

"Thee has to fathom, Rossamund," Craumpalin said, coming to his old mate's aid, "that if we ever spoke on it, such a calumn'ous revelation would only have thee ever worrying to thy back to see who might discover thy terrible secret."

Swill's witness he could discount: that his arrival in this world had never put a woman abed, that instead he had emerged fully knit from the boggy sump of some threwdish haunt, the mud-born replica of a poor bewildered and long-fallen child… This he could dismiss, but not the evidence of his dear masters. Suddenly Freckle's words, spoken so long ago in the putrid hold of the listing Hogshead, rose unbidden… The time might come for knowing things, the glamgorn had said, and when the need of knowing's nigh, you'll know then what I do now… "I fathom it, Master Pin," Rossamund murmured. "I fathom it…"

Europe's penetrating hazel gaze lingered on Rossamund. "It seems remarkable to me that some diminutive bogle made it right into the heart of your city," she said at last, "managing such a feat of utter invisibility to get over walls and elude every dog and gate ward."

"Size ain't no reckoning of potency, ma'am." It was Craumpalin who answered. "The antiquarians have it that such feats are not beyond the mighty ones and that some of the leastly baskets in stature can be mightiest of them all."

"You run it close to a sedorner's prating, Master Salt," the fulgar said warningly. "I can see from where you inherited your dangerous notions, little man." She peered now at Rossamund, her expression guarded, her thoughts opaque.

He held her gaze, wanting to say something about truth and knowing and doing right, yet nothing sensible formulated rapidly enough to speak.

The fulgar let out a long tired breath. "It might be said that worm-riddled texts with notions as crumbling as their spines and superstitious navy-men long past their prime do not make for trusty sources any more than a book-learned butcher with a grudge to grind. Let me, however, for Rossamund's sake, presume this is possible," she said with a sidelong look to the ex-dormitory master. "I would think such fantastic claims required tangible proofs."

"If that is how ye will have it," Fransitart countered with sailorly bluntness, his jaw jutting and firm-set, looking first to Europe, then to Rossamund, "there will be proof a-plenty in nigh on a seven-night paired. This mark here will show itself as cruorpunxis or braggart's scab and end all argumentations!" He gripped at where the bandaged puncting had been made: that terrible experiment he and Rossamund had submitted to at the hands of the surgeon Swill.

"A seven-night paired, indeed, man," Europe said, raising a brow. "Such delightful argot: I gather you mean a fortnight?"

"Aye, madam. In a twin o' weeks all wranglings will end."

Rossamund slouched in his seat as grim certainty established itself.

Europe might require such tangible proofs, yet he already fathomed which way the mark-made from his very own blood-would turn: that in two weeks less two days the puncting made with his own blood on Fransitart's arm would show as a cruorpunxis, a monster-blood tattoo.