D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Rossamund did not feel so confident. "I am so sorry for the leakvane bursting too quick, sir. It was-"

"Not another thought, young sir!" Sebastipole insisted. "It was well intended and did its trick in the end.Tarbinaires like those leakvanes of yours are contrary contraptions even in the wisest hands."

Dolours came down to them as they walked up the Approach, full of concern for her mistress's daughter. She went to wrap an arm about Threnody, but the girl bristled and with an angry sound refused the bane's comfort. Dolours looked to the heavens for a moment and followed.

Within the manse's fortified bosom, they found Grindrod and the prentice-watch gathered safe at last, formed up on Evolution Square as if they had just returned from a typical lantern-dousing. Every boy looked exhausted, harrowed; most bore tear stains on their cheeks. Crofton Wheede still wept even as he tried to hide it.

The lamplighter-sergeant was doing his best to console the traumatized boys. "Well, ye lads have surely had a violent passage through yer prenticing…" It was with almost obvious relief that he turned his attention to Rossamund. "As for ye, Master Come-lately, ye're a fool of fools, boy! I'll have yer gizzards for gaiter straps for putting yer vile puffings in our way! I thought it was the end of me! Of all the sponge-headed bedizened… Were you trying to kill us all?"

"That will be enough, sergeant-lighter," Sebastipole warned, becoming very grave. "You know very well the placing of the leakvane was intended only to deter the nicker and give us a screen to retreat behind."

"I'll remind ye, Sebastipole," Grindrod said, leaning into the leer's face, "that the prentices are my charge-"

"And I'll remind you, Grindrod, that both you and they are mine," returned the lamplighter's agent, stepping to a grateful Rossamund's side.

Grindrod stared at Sebastipole and then changed his tack. "Fine bit of marksmanship, leer," he said. "Almost as good as the girl."

Sebastipole simply blew his nose and turned his attention to Rossamund. He gave the prentice an owlish look. "It has been a pleasure to serve with you, young master Rossamund." He smiled politely. "I go to join the inevitable coursing party. We will trap it and so bring its end. Thank you again for your assistance, sir." He looked over at Threnody, who stood silent on the edge of the group, unsure how to join in. "And you, young woman. I would happily have either of you at my side on any future outing."

Rossamund was even more confounded. This was high praise, but it left him terribly troubled. What part had he played in what was to be the Trought's ineluctable end? The killing of the horn-ed nickers had seemed right, necessary, but the Trought's destruction brought only baffled dismay. Indeed, Rossamund felt most angry at the butchers, for baiting the beast. Was it really swine's lard I smelled?

Threnody did not answer either, but stood with arms folded and chin raised.

Mister Sebastipole was quickly away, clearly intent on joining the group that was forming by the gate, eager to hunt the nicker that had just slain one of their own. The clamor of the tykehounds could still be heard coming distantly from the Harrowmath.

Grindrod bent right down into Rossamund's face. "Ye, sir, will never make it to lampsman if ye get in the way of yer fellow lighters and near cause their deaths."

Rossamund fumed silently. He had done all he could to protect and defend his fellows. Mister Sebastipole had said he had done rightly; he would not back down. Nevertheless, he was wise enough to not speak. He knew what little good it would do him.

"Ye can forget yer Domesday vigil tomorrow, lantern-stick!" the lamplighter-sergeant hissed. "Pots-and-pans for ye all day.Think yerself well off, for I would cheerfully make it worse!"

.

The coursing party that finally left by the middle of that very same day was constituted of the scourge Josclin and another skold Rossamund had never met before, Clement, Sebastipole, a quarto of lurksmen, a platoon of ambuscadiers and musketeers, the tractors of the dogs, and two mules with their muleteers to bear comestibles. No one thought the coursers would be gone long, and everyone expected them to return victorious.

Dolours had not joined in the course, which Rossamund thought strange given her venturing out to help fight the Trought. "Not well enough to travel," he overheard the bane say in a brief word with Threnody.

Bellicos' death was a heavy blow to everyone at Winstermill. He might have been a world-weary veteran pensioned off, so to speak, along the safest stretch of the way, but he was one of their own. Reports of lighters from other parts of the highroad coming to their end were common enough, but this was the first lighter from the manse to be killed in a long while. Ol' Barny was flown at half-mast, and the lighters, pediteers, servants and even the clerks wore long faces and did their duty perfunctorily.

At limes, and more so at middens, the other prentices-those who had been safely in Winstermill washing and breakfasting and marching while their fellows were fleeing the umbergog-nagged those of Q Hesiod Gaeta to recount every particular of their flight. Their own deaths so nearly realized that morning, those of Rossamund's quarto were unwilling to endlessly repeat their small parts in the rampaging of the Trought. Deeply shocked, they had no heart for the usual showing away and idle brags, but sat together in the mess hall in a melancholy huddle.Threnody would not sit with them, but stayed very near, cleaning her fusil ostentatiously. Unsatisfied, their fellows diverted themselves, wondering what the coursing party might do to the creature, wandering off to ignorant conjectures about whether Clement or Sebastipole or Laudibus Pile was the best leer.

"Did you see how the basket tried to get into the Bowels?" Crofton Wheede wondered quietly, his haunted gaze looking at nothing. "I thought he was after us, but he was set fast on that meat cart."

"Maybe they were baiting it," Smellgrove offered in a whisper.

"They looked too a-frighted for that," countered Pillow.

"Exactly," said Threnody from outside the circle. "Besides, who'd be simple-headed enough to bait an umbergog?"

"Me dead dad," Wrangle muttered, flashing a look of suppressed fury at the girl.

"Maybe they were delivering parts for the dark trades." Rossamund spoke up, thinking of the hint of swine's lard he had detected.

That struck the others dumb.

"Carry for the dark trades right under our noses?" Smellgrove snorted.

Rossamund shrugged. "I've seen some bad fellows try to get a rever-man through the Spindle. It's not impossible."

His fellow prentices looked at him oddly and lapsed into ruminative silence.

Soon the mood of the Hesiod Gaeta prentices affected the whole platoon, and a heavy glumness settled on them all.

For Rossamund, the sorrow of the lampsman's passing and the Trought's imminent destruction was far bleaker than he had reckoned upon. In a few months he had seen so much death-violent and stark and shocking quick-nothing like the glorious end that his pamphlets described for its heroes. The life of adventure was a life of violence. He had been seeking this, but now found he did not want it; men died, monsters died, and only grief and self-doubt remained. Barely eating his skilly and ignoring all about him, the young prentice felt a light touch on his shoulder. It was Threnody, looking at him with guarded and unexpected sympathy, perhaps to show that she understood. Rossamund was not sure anyone could.Who else was able to comprehend sadness for the slaughter of a monster?