D Cornish - Factotum

Europe's file was to be prohibited to all comers on the night, her staff included.

There was a boggling list of tasks, and the young factotum was at his utmost to keep it all properly ordered in his thoughts. Along with the marshaling and sending of invites-which Europe had written by a professional pen on silken, rose-colored paper-was the arrival of provender and with it the hiring of extra cooking and serving staff. With this was the springtime cleaning of the entire house, ready to then be festooned with fathom upon fathom of red or magenta taffeta and hanging lanterns. Every runner and rug, drape and coverlet was hung from windows sprung wide to be beaten within an inch; floors were swabbed till they gleamed… then swabbed again; windows washed inside and out, poor Wenzel and Nectarius hung out on rickety ladders to get at the upper stories. In apprehension of his little "parcels" left about the house, Housekeeper Clossette shooed Darter Brown outside, declaring tartly that he was "not allowed back in until he can school his bowels the better!"

Sickly indigent chimney sweeps were summoned from the workers' fair in Steepling Oak to scramble precariously up flues. I thought teratology was dangerous, Rossamund pondered, watching in vague horror one gaunt boy half his own age clamber up the chimney of the file fire, encouraged by an older lad with a jointed pole. The thump and bang of the labors sounded about Cloche Arde the entire day, and all the while the maids were polishing, polishing, polishing.

Charged with control of the Duchess-in-waiting's purse, Mister Carp was summoned into the madness.Yet the man's parsimonious reluctance was little needed, for Rossamund was admirably troubled over the outflowing of his mistress' wealth.

"Miss Europe missed most of her prize-money on the knave," he said in a low voice, making careful inquiry of Mister Carp as the fellow looked over a bill of expense for the decoration of the lower floors. "I do not think she can afford all this after such losses."

"Ahh, what a happy fellow!" The man-of-business smiled with sudden and uncommonly genuine kindness. "May your credits always be greater than your debts! Calm your care, Master Bookchild; our mistress can compass the cost-she is worth ten thousand a year if she is worth a scruple!" His chest inflated a little.

"Ten thousand?" Rossamund goggled. Ten thousand sous!

"Indeed! Each year."

Rossamund almost choked.

Mister Carp veritably glowed with satisfaction. "Unlike many silk-purse peers, she is a shrewd patron and financier: holds interest in many prosperous endeavors. She shall make a formidable duchess should she ever consent to it."

After this, Rossamund ceased fretting.

As for the Branden Rose, she spent much of her time in her file in close counsel with a continuous flow of kapelmasters and stepmasters, orators and amphigorers, psaltists and panto troupes. Interspersed among them were drabber souls who seemed unduly stern for such a festal occasion. First that Rossamund saw among these was the colonel of a lesquin company dressed in a dark clerical suit. Arms laden with various folios, the colonel was accompanied by a strikingly harnessed captain, complete with caudial honor at waist, whose haunted eyes seemed to hold something occult and severe. Arrived early Domesday morning, they did not leave until Rossamund delivered his mistress' treacle that evening, the colonel departing with the earnest pledge, "We are ready to put our hand to whatever the lady directs."

Europe said nothing on it and Rossamund knew better than to ask.

The next morning, as he was again dispensing the fulgar's plaudamentum, a gentleman in drab proofing and blue-tinted spectacles obscuring laggard-colored eyes was shown into the file. Introducing himself in clipped tones as a Mister Rakestraw, speculator privite, he went immediately into a report. "We are near to weaseling out that dastard's bolt-hole."

At this point the fulgar stopped the fellow and bid her young factotum to depart to his needful gala preparations. Lingering at the file door as he closed it, he still managed to catch, "The fall of that lighters' fortress spooked him greatly and has driven him more deeply into cover.Yet I believe by tomorrow morn I shall be able to inform you of his exact locale."

Swill? Rossamund pondered. Not for the first time he wondered upon his mistress' real intent. Whatever it might be, her determination to leave him out of the scheme was abundantly clear.

In the afternoon, he sat in the file with Europe and her hired pen-a certain Mister Chudleigh.Together they were sorting the next dispensing of seemingly endless invitations to be handed to the platoon of scopps waiting in the vestibule, when Wenzel, red-faced and panting, bustled in to announce, "Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike!"

In a gray dress of flashing satin with sash of black tied in a great bow at the small of her back, the Lady Madigan's most striking feature was her sky blue eyes. Sad and penetrating, they lingered intelligently wherever she fixed her attention. Of similar generation to Europe, she bore a small, solid diamond etched under her lower lip like a deep blue dimple in her chin. She too was an aristocratic fulgar. A man perhaps in his thirties, dark-eyed and dark-haired with a long almost horselike face, followed her closely. Introduced as Mister Threedice, he was her factotum, a laggard of taciturn manners and blunt address. He stared at Rossamund with a callous yet melancholy intensity. Rossamund returned this untoward attention with a polite incline of his head, to which the other factotum simply looked away.

"Here is an innovation," said Lady Madigan coolly, speaking with a peculiar familiarity. "The Branden Rose turned hostess!"

Europe regarded her evenly but said nothing.

"You wish it be known to the world that all is fit and fine with you, sister," the Marchess of the Pike said as she sat on the edge of a turkoman and folded her daintily gloved hands in her lap.

"I do."

"I hear, dear one," Lady Madigan continued, "that you returned to Brandentown after an especially rugged outing."

"It is about the street, then?" Europe replied.

"Assuredly so, sister; certain streets, at least," Lady Madigan added wryly. "Is there a responsible party for this especial ruggedness?"

"Yes."

"Are you to do anything about them?"

Europe's eye gleamed as she quickly glanced to Rossamund. "I may yet, my dear," she said.

"Am I invited?"

"Perhaps I shall tell you more at my little rout," the Duchess-in-waiting returned.

"Until then, sister."

"Indeed."

The Marchess of Pike stood, bowed and left.

Absorbed in his penmanship, Mister Chudleigh seemed not at all exercised by this odd conversation of lofty women, nor did he notice the Lady Madigan's departure, and Rossamund kept his increasingly bemused ponderings to himself.

Into this contemplative silence there came a muted yet clear stentorian clatter and with it a loud "Whoop!" sounding very much as if it originated in the floors above. Sent upstairs to investigate, Rossamund soon discovered Fransitart laid out on the ludion floor, cradling his arm, a scale toppled beside him and with it the embellishment he had clearly been attempting to fix to the wall.

"Broke it, lad," the ex-dormitory master, lying on the boards as the young factotum skidded to stop beside him, explained with wry grimace. "Tumbled like some self-for-gettin' Old Gate pensioner an' put out me wings to catch meself an' SNAP!.. twice."

Rossamund went round-eyed at the mangle of oddly shaped sleeve his old master gripped.

Crispus arrived in a puff, physic's bag in hand, calling orders for hot water, towels and directing immediately for a tandem to be brought up.