D Cornish - Factotum

Still in their frowsty travel clothes, the five sat in the hiatus while Clossette and her various maids bustled about them to turn bright-limns and bring a hasty supper. So settled, Europe, Rossamund and his two masters listened to Doctor Crispus' remarkable tale of panic and collapse in attentive silence.

The assault on Winstermill had come in the night. By devious means the nickers had foiled the portcullis guarding the roads that passed under the fortress and found their way in through the very clandestine passages and furtigrades where Rossamund once vanquished the pig-eared gudgeon and Swill and the Master-of-Clerks conducted their wretched business.

"Such cruel speed, such mortal efficiency!" Crispus pressed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "They seemed to pounce from every subterranean orifice, every door and closet."

Though the defenders roused quickly, they could do little to halt the inward attack.

"I could hear the frightful clamor of conflict through the walls of the infirmary," The Doctor recalled sadly. "The bells of the Specular ringing ceaselessly, cannon on the wall tops booming, muskets loosed by quarto in the very halls of the manse joined by the ranting cacophony of a bestial host. I am ashamed to admit that my first thoughts were to flight. This would not do, of course; what of the hurt in my own care? Who would seek out poor Mister Numps?"

Rossamund wrestled the urge to interrupt and demand of Numps' fate.

"With only a lone epimelain to do the work with me-a dear girl who had stayed faithful through all the Master-of-Clerks' depredations-I sorted those who could walk out and those who needed carrying. Swill, the dog, would not help. Absent for the whole of last month, he had returned only a day or so before, come back from some dark errand, little doubt…"

Europe stirred on her tandem. "Little doubt, indeed…," she said.

"Coming from some hidden nook, he was clutching a wad of books and documentation. 'They're in the kitchen!' he was crying. 'In the slypes!' and kept uttering like a man in fever, 'He sent them! I do not know how, but that blighted child is having his revenge!' Who this child might be, I can only conjecture…"

Rossamund could not be sure, but he thought he saw the physician's harried regard flick to him ever so quickly.

"Swill useless, I sent the poor epimelain to get some other, sturdier help, but, alas!" The anguish on Crispus' face was distressingly candid. "She did not return…" He closed his eyes against foul memory. "If I had waited but a minute more, she would still be with us, for somehow in all the woe, our most wondrous Lady Dolours appeared, to pluck us all from the very clutches of doom. She and her columbines and that young Threnody lass you were chums with, Rossamund, had lurked a veritable army of nickers only days before: a great hoard come out from the east and north, bent on Winstermill, plundering cot and field as they drew closer." He took a deep breath and his aspect grew tight. "With the very advent of these doughty damsels a great frenzy of bogles spilled from the Kitchen Ends into the infirmary; swarthy, hirsute toadlike things right in the heart of impregnable Winstermill. Hard were the calendars pressed to keep us safe and lead us out, trying to bring that rascal Swill with them. But afraid of the calendars as much as he was of the bogles, he ran from the infirmary, raving like a mad man, 'I'm not the one you want! I'm not the one you want!'"

A knock and Kitchen arrived with glasses of refreshingly dilute claret complete with pulped pear for them all.

"The brave calendars defended the sick even as they carried them from the manse proper," Crispus continued after a lengthy sip. "Out in the Broad Hall by the infirmary I caught my last glimpse of the clerk-master. Sans wig, he was among his troubardiers-and Laudibus Pile with him-all defending a stack of furniture and books set across the doors from the Broad Hall to the Ad Lineam, shooting pistols and fusils and jabbing their spittendes at the squabbling rabble of hobnickers beyond. Where the black-eyed witting fellow that Podius brought in was at, I do not know; I felt his work twice or thrice but never caught sight of him." He took another drink. "Winning out onto the Grand Mead, we found the Feuterers' Cottage and the gatehouse blazing torches. By this wicked light I saw the once-impassable gates thrown open and stormed by obscure beslimed things surging from the dense grasses of the Harrowmath. A great battle was unfolding on the grounds where we had paraded so often and boasted of our impregnability. Yet in the violence I could plainly see that it was no simple massacre; I witnessed monster at fight with monster!"

"Frogs and toads!" Craumpalin exclaimed quietly.

"Indeed, sir. As some sought to destroy men, so others strove to defend us. I have never known the like-I always thought the nicker universally black-hearted-as I know you shall agree, Madam Fulgar."

Rossamund looked to the floor to hide a frown.

The Duchess-in-waiting simply nodded.

"Fighting a path through the hoots and howls and caterwauling harassments," Crispus pressed on, "the calendars seemed well learned in the distinction between friend and foe. The Lady Dolours was a wild thing, dashing here and there and laying all blighted beasts flat before her with equal measure of smokes and striving. Young Threnody too did her part, supporting the hurt, throwing back nickers when she had need-she seemed better at her witting than her poor reputation led me to believe." He gave a quick, sad look to Rossamund. "All about I could feel what I believe some call threwd, a great swaying contest of it. If I did not know any better, I might have said it was as if two wills of clear and contrary intent were contending against each other: malice coming from north and east, benevolence from the south.

"I watched a vasty brute-born of logs and barks and sticks and wider than it was tall-flail against a band of grinning things. On the Forming Square an umbergog with the head of some malformed ram stood in a deadly bout against an absurdly enormous, bloated pillboy, all hunched and heavy in its swollen insect shell; who fought for whom I could not discern. The lighters who could united with us in our exodus, picking up the infirm that dying calendars dropped. Ahh, what unhappiness, Rossamund, to run from calls of pain, not to them. Before us scourge Josclin fell beneath an ettin's stomp even as his chemistry burned the thing to its death. Brave Josclin-he performed marvels that night… Songs should be made of him… We found Swill too… Or, rather, what remained of him."The physician drew a hand across his brow. "Though his head remained whole, his members were torn asunder with such careless savagery that I believe not even the most skilled massacar could put him back together again."

Uncertain of what he felt, Rossamund closed his eyes. The end of a foe-especially such a terrible and pitiless end-was not necessarily the great victory he had supposed it might be. It was instead a melancholy kind of relief; a threat was lifted but its consequences remained.

"The overweaning massacar missteps at last," Europe murmured with evident satisfaction.

"It's a pity the nickers di'n't get to 'im before 'e got to spreadin' 'is conjecturings over 'ere," Fransitart added darkly.

"They tried, Master Frans," said Rossamund quietly, thinking bitterly of the poor doomed Herdebog Trought trying to rend its way into Winstermill, and the destruction of Wormstool. "They tried…"

A dull thump of luggage fumbled by Wenzel the footman out in the vestibule hall gave the physician a cruel start.

"I reckon thee might do well to unbrace thyself with a nice calmer," Craumpalin offered quietly, leg raised on a tandem. "I could test thee bestill liquor if thee likes."