D Cornish - Factotum

Momentarily lost, Rossamund revolved slowly, hands on hips, trying to get a bearing in this dim test. He discovered four more cabinet pictures hanging two-a-side on the angling back walls of the saumery and, stuffing them promptly into a recess of the test cupboard, spent the next hour learning the place of everything, rearranging as he saw fit, wondering at this command he had over an entire and well-stocked room. With the stove plate already hot and all pots, gradients and parts ready handy, when it came time to brew, the making was easy and the task quickly completed.

"You take it to her by your own hand, young sir," was Kitchen's firm instruction once Rossamund was done. " 'Tis the only fashion she will have it. I shall show you there."

Standing on the first floor before Europe's file door, Rossamund hesitated in unconscious fascination at the forms of tiny figures in the panels of the door, showing all attitudes of arching, dancing, sneering bogles of tribes he did not know existed.

Behind him, Kitchen made a small, polite cough.

Rossamund rapped at an elliptical plate of worn brass high in the midst of the graven revelry.

The door opened.

There was little light within-curtains must have been drawn and no bright-limns turned. Out of the murk the Branden Rose loomed, giving Rossamund a shock. "A timely testing, little man. Perhaps I'll not regret you after all."

Rossamund's heart fumbled a beat. Regret my service?

"Thank you, Kitchen, for your bony wing," Europe continued. "I am sure you guided him with your usual warm and fatherly care. That will be all."

The steward gave a bland smile and departed obediently.

Rossamund lingered, looking back to be certain that Kitchen had truly gone. "Miss Europe?" he said just as her file door was closing.

The blank gap between door and jamb hovered, a mere sliver, a test of patience.

A long-suffering sigh.

The gap widened.

"Uh… Thank you for rescuing me."

"Tish tosh," the fulgar dismissed from ill-lit space. "That wretch Whympre and his lapdog Swill were acting up a show for their secretarial friend and I could no longer let them mishandle you, so here you are." She leaned into the light and beheld Rossamund closely. "Know, Rossamund, that some will think me puzzle-headed for taking on a child as my second.You bore your duty with the lamplighters admirably, but my load is heavier still. Yet under my hand I believe you will quickly learn to acquit yourself as a man. So watch your way; a factotum does more than make treacle and cover my back in a stouche.You are my chief representative; what you say I have said, what you do I have done. You are chief of this household, and though Kitchen and Clossette will tend to its running quite happily, you may intervene on any of their transactions as you see fit."

"No-ah, yes, Miss Europe." Swallowing, Rossamund tried to let what he supposed was a manly calm spread through his members.

"Welcome to a life of violence, little man," she said portentously in parting and slowly closed the file door.

Returning to his new room-his set-Rossamund found that a bed had been delivered in his absence. A great four-poster now butted against the wall. Covered with an enormous scarf of immaculate black silk run through with dyed flowers of red and blue and warm yellow, its white linen was stark in the inky room and it looked about as comfortable as a bed could look.

After six months with the lighters he was well used to having every point of his time organized for him, and was now at a bit of a loss. He fossicked through cupboards and drawers Pallette had dutifully organized to locate the meager count of his worldly goods. How he regretted the loss of his peregrinat in the conflagration of Wormstool; it would have been a comfort to read.

Fed a light supper of nine-cheese melted on sour bread in his room, Rossamund lay upon the bed at last, almost swallowed by its downy coverlets. Through the lofty third-story windows he could easily see the eastern sky behind the silhouette of treetops and ridge-caps, a sea of sloping homogenous slate and chimney pots. The heaven-haze was a delicate pink of staggering beauty, darkening into a deep violet as it rose. Picked out low against this were tiny, tightly fluffy clouds of glowing russet and pallid carnation. In awe, Rossamund just looked, silent, barely breathing till the view darkened and then vanished in encroaching night, and day-sounds gave over to sparse cricket song.

To the thin tune of early spring insects, he stared at the dark ceiling, fingers pressing absently into the stiff facings of his quabard. He half expected to hear the muffled cry, "Douse lanterns!" that rang every night to proclaim bedtime in the prentices' cell row at Winstermill. He wanted sleep, yet anxious, tumbling contemplations kept him in tossing-and-turning wakefulness until the dead of night-Who am I? What am I? — and it was only exhaustion and the lingering rocking of the Grume crossing that finally pressed him to sleep.

The new day was clear and cool. Still clothed, Rossamund was woken by Pallette bearing a great jug of water for washing, accompanied by a young step-servant called Pardolot, arms full of wood and kindle to light a new fire. "You had not risen timely, sir, so I thought it best to wake you before the morning got on too much," she explained nervously.

"Thank you, thank you…," Rossamund repeated blearily.

He hurried through the kitchen, blinking unsteadily in the stark morning light made brighter by the flawless pallor of the walls, the servants assiduously avoiding his eye.

"In!" Europe declared when Rossamund arrived at the file door with her steaming treacle. She was dressed today in the wonderful scarlet coat he knew so well, though her hair was still down in a plait.

Obediently he stepped across the threshold and into the fulgar's sanctum.

It was long and large, the long venal red wall opposite perforated by many thin windows hung with velvet drapes pulled aside now to let in the bright daybreak. There were silk paintings of vile-looking nickers and a floor-to-ceiling mirror in between. An enormous exotic carpet occupied a large part of the dark wood floors, and at the center of this sat a desk of mahogany, its uncluttered top inlaid with a vast blotter of the black hide of some unnameable creature.

Telling Rossamund to remain, Europe took her morning dose, and-as he dutifully stood by and waited-continued to look through a great book spread over a large portion of her desk. It was a garland, filled with tinted plates of mild-faced people wearing coats and weskits and cloaks, similar to volumes Rossamund had once seen in Madam Opera's boudoir.

A light thunk of an opening door and Claudine, the tiring maid, appeared from behind a bom e'do screen in the corner of the file, coming from what presumably was Europe's own bedchamber. At Europe's instruction she began to take Rossamund's dimensions for what the fulgar called more appropriate attire. "Your other quabard is entirely the wrong hue," his mistress explained, speaking of his lamplighter's harness with its Imperial mottle of rouge and or-red and cadmium.

Gently prompted to turn about with such slow and nervous care that he hardly felt a prod or poke, the young factotum could see an enormous obsidian fireplace at the far end of the room, the warm, energetic firelight catching the glint of fine white flecks in the dark green stone. Above the dark mantel was a vast painting of a young girl, maybe four or five years older than him, with a trefoiled heart figured in white above her left shoulder. In the shadows at the girl's feet lay some slain, fearsome nicker while other deformed shades lurked and cowered behind. The girl's daubed expression was one Rossamund knew all too well: sardonic self-satisfaction. At first, for the briefest instant, and rather stupidly, he thought it was a rendering of Threnody: the same taut insolence and a deeper sorrow too. With a small shock he realized he was gaping at a portrait of a young Europe. Dumbfounded, he looked from the image to the real woman and back. The former was radiant with the blooming beauty of youth; plumper, she was dressed like a boy in a skirted coat of magenta with a high dramatic collar, her face pristine of spoors or the thinness of the lahzarine ravage.The whole manner of her pose was defiant, full of energy, even of hope. The latter sat in living flesh, intent on her medicinal drink and her fashion book, her beauty stretched, almost gaunt, yet undiminished.