D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"Tut!" another maid exclaimed. "The finest fields in the Sundergird just north of us, and she's importing poor stuffs from across the Grume! All because of that pinch-a-goose, Odious Podious."

"Larks! Been here but three years and it's like he rules the place!"

"Or like he wants to," came the first scullery maid's shrewd answer.

"Mm-hmm," her colleagues-in-suds agreed.

Rossamund washed for an hour, his puckered hands becoming insensible to the steaming water, and was relieved when Philostrata told him that his job was done and he could leave. Feeling a weight lifted, he hurried up the scullery steps eager for the seclusion of his cell.

His joy was premature.

Finding the happy prentice without a task and ready to leave, the Snooks put a heavy arm about Rossamund and guided him over to an enormous fireplace filled with chains and lumpish levers. The pendulous fat of her limb flowed about either side of his neck. Rossamund strained his head away from the noxious mixing of her posy-perfume and the funk of her armpits. Before him was a great cauldron, removed from its hooks over the hearth.

"Now I want ye to hop into there," the Snooks said, pointing to the enormous pot, "and scrub away till it all gleams."

The young prentice regarded the cauldron with sinking, wide-eyed disgust. With a helping hoist up and over from a soup cook, he was made to climb inside, and to his horror the pot was still warm from its cooking. He was expected to scratch at the crust of ages within with little more than a bent butter knife and an old brush. Squashed on his knees, Rossamund labored in dread of being forgotten and having some boiling, putrid fish-head stew poured atop him. Hacking at the crust with the handle of the brush, he had managed to make a fair pile of burnt smithereens at the bottom of the great pot when he felt it being lifted and saw the stone mantel of the fireplace loom over the rim to eclipse the smoke-stained white ceiling. They were going to boil him!

"Ahoy! Ahoy there! I'm in here!" he hollered. "I'm in here!"

The cauldron was tipped on its side and Rossamund rolled on to the slate-paved floor. Small unidentifiable pieces of char stuck to his face, hands and clothes.

"I'm sure ye're very tasty, me lad," the soup cook grinned, "though I reckon yer boots might make for some prodigious chewing."

Shaking just a little, Rossamund grinned with him. Brushing off the char, he presented himself back at the Snooks' chair. The kitchen was beginning to empty now, staff retiring for the night as their duties finished, and Rossamund was hopeful he would be among them.

Regarding him through light-reflecting lenses, the Snooks pursed and unpursed her lips. "What to do with ye now, eh?" she muttered. "What to do with ye now… I tell ye what, boyo," the old potato sack of a woman offered at last, "I need ye to do a little favor for yer old Mother Snooks.What do ye say?"

"W-What would I have to do, ma'am?"

"Why, just carry a trifling thing up some stairs for me, that is all."

"I… er…," Rossamund started.

"Or shall I tell dear Grind-yer-bones just how contrary ye are? I'd be happy to give ye a more regular place in me kitchen." The Snooks gave him an appraising look.

Rossamund made a strangled noise.

"I'll take that to be a 'yes,' shall I?" The culinaire grinned wickedly. "Good lantern-stick."

With that she took him back through the cookhouse and out into a small quadrangle that he never knew existed. It was sunk right down like a well amid the lofty walls of Winstermill and was lit dimly by the light showing from the kitchen door and slit windows. Stars showed through the high oblong hole above, blue Gethsemene-the brightest-winking at him silently. In the twilight Rossamund could tell the place was both manger and slaughterhouse, the stink of pig's sweat, lanolin, dung and blood mixing with the smoke of a fitfully glowing brazier. By it a man stood, warming his hands, clearly oblivious to the stink. He wore a striped apron and a belt holding wicked-looking carvers-a slaughterman.

The Snooks went to him. "Well, hello there, Slarks," she said in her friendliest voice. "Give my parcel to the lad."

"Right you are, Mother Snooks." Slarks hesitated, looked dubiously at Rossamund from crown to boot-toe and then went to fetch this "parcel."With a grunt he hefted a sack and handed it straight to the young prentice. "Watch out, lad-it might be a mite weighty for you!"

Rossamund grappled with it clumsily, expecting to be toppled by a ponderous weight. It smelled strongly of pigs and made vile squished noises, but it was not heavy.

The slaughterman regarded Rossamund. "You're a wiry little stick, ain't you?" He indicated the sack with a wink. "We won't be havin' the soup this week, eh?"

Rossamund had no notion what he meant.

"Follow me, me darling dumb-muscle, follow me!" The Snooks led the way back through the kitchen, past the mill to the pantry stalls. Into the leftmost of these the culinaire ambled, going to the very back. Behind a stack of wheat and barley bags was a red door, ironbound and locked. With a large key, the Snooks released the door, picked a bright-limn from the wall and took Rossamund beyond into a small cold room. Here were kept all the sweet dainties and rare nourishments set aside for the officers-and especially the Master-of-Clerks. Labels-handwritten, hand-pasted-identified the contents of many sacks, bags, boxes, tins and other containers: pickled peaches, plums, apricots, small black fish and so much more Rossamund could not catch a glimpse of in the swinging light as he was rushed through the store. For a breath they paused before a meat safe and several enormous earthen pots of unknown content.

What now? Rossamund wondered.

Partly concealed behind the pots was another door barely big enough for the old woman to fit through. A second key opened this port, and she encouraged Rossamund through with a firm hand.

At first Rossamund thought he had been shown into some kind of cupboard, but as the Snooks pushed in with her bright-limn he discovered that it was actually a landing. Before him he discerned a tightly winding wooden stair going up and going down. It was a furtigrade-a secret stair-cunningly built in a cavity between the walls, barely lit with ill-kept bright-limns fixed to the banister posts.

"This nasty squeeze'll take ye right up to where ye need to go." The Snooks patted a rail. "For too long I've been jamming me girth between them banisters, and now I hurt right deep in here," she said, patting her right hip tenderly. "I'd rather not climb anymore."

The meager width of the furtigrade was such that Rossamund marveled that the Snooks had been able to make the ascent at all.

"So that's why ye're here and that's where ye're to go with yer bundle. Just take the stairs all the way till ye come to a door and can't go no more. Bang hard low down and go through.To ye left ye'll find the surgeon's door, dark purple and banded in iron. Knock three times, then a pause, then three more, then another pause, then two."

Very unsure, Rossamund shifted his load. "The surgeon, ma'am?" he asked bemusedly. "Do you mean Swill?"

"Aye!" she snapped. "And ye tell him when he asks-and I know he'll ask," the corpulent culinare insisted as sweat-melted boudoir cream congealed on her brow in the cool of the landing, "that Mother Snooks is a-getting too age-ed to be running errands through back ways and is fed up of nasty, dusty, too-steep, too-narrow stairs. That she has seen fit to send me-that's ye, boyo-in her stead."

Rossamund hesitated.

"Up ye go, boyo!" She gave a ghastly grin.

That was enough for the prentice; he climbed. Each stair was just that inch higher than was comfortable to climb, requiring him to lift his feet awkwardly, every step creaking a protest as it bore his weight.