D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"Have you just? By which way did you come, child?" The surgeon's voice was pinched and menacing. "Who saw you come here?"

Rossamund tried to hide his fright. "I-ah-I came by-by the f-furtigrade, sir," he said in a small voice, pointing back to the barely distinguishable shadow of the bureau. "I–I don't reckon anyone could have seen me, sir, not at all."

"I see." Swill scratched at his throat. "Wait there," he said quickly, and the door closed, properly this time. Presently it reopened.

"When you see the Snooks again, give her this." Swill presented Rossamund with a sealed fold of paper. "It's my reply." He smiled inscrutably. "She will understand."

Something thumped loudly in the darkened surgery behind. There was a short, stifled yelp and a muffled, maniac gibbering.

"Go on now, quick-quick, get along! Patients need my ministrations." The surgeon gripped Rossamund's upper arm and hustled him back toward the hidden doorway. "Be certain to give that painted crone my reply," he insisted as the prentice clambered quickly back through the hole in the wall, knocking his head.

The prentice needed no further encouragement but rushed down the furtigrade, gasping, taking two or three steps with each stride, daring even to leap whole flights in his panic, the furtigrade shuddering dangerously. Pig's heads. Flayed skins. Clandestine stairs. What is all this?

With douse-lanterns imminent, the kitchens were near empty, only the night staff remaining to stir the pots and bake breads for the morrow's hungry. The Snooks was still at her domestic throne, waiting for him. "Did ye get the surgeon his bag?" she hissed.

"Aye."

"Did ye deliver me message?"

"Aye."

"Well?" The Snooks thrust her grinning, oily face at the prentice. "How did he like our new arrangement?"

"H-He just said 'I see'…"

"Is that all?" She grabbed Rossamund by his sweat-stained smock front. "Just 'I see'?"

The prentice pulled away from her. "And he told me to give you this," he said. The Snooks took the sealed fold of paper slowly and, reading it, went gray, her boudoir cream showing in ugly mealy blotches over her now ashen complexion.

Rossamund shuffled his feet and the Snooks gave him a sharp look.

"Ye may go," she barked.

The prentice hesitated.

"Ye're clear, ye're free! Go! Begone! I'm sick of the sight of ye!" the culinare cried, waving the paper in his face. Rossamund dashed from the kitchen.

"Douse lanterns!" came the call as Rossamund entered his own cell. He quickly shut the door and turned the bright-limn, undressing for bed in the settling gloom. Smock-less, shirtless and shivering, Rossamund sneaked out to the passage between the cells and scrubbed at the sweat and the cook-room stink as best he might with the frigid water of the common washbasin. The cold and a silly fear of something creeping at him from behind made him leave off washing, and he dashed back to his cold cot to shiver the night away, his bed chest dragged out to barricade the cell's door.

Rossamund was woken by a heavy pounding on his cell door and a rough voice crying, "A lamp! A lamp to light your path! Up, you lounging lumps! Up and at 'em-it's a fine day."

It took a few nauseated moments for the prentice to realize he was not in fact being boiled alive in an enormous bottomless cauldron, but lay pinned in tangled blankets on a lumpy horsehair mattress in a freezing cell in the basements of the Imperial outpost of Winstermill. As the rousing groans of the other prentices coughed across the gap between cells, Rossamund dragged the small chest away from the cell door. What was it I saw in Swill's apartment? he fretted. Do people know about his room up there? Those were mighty strange books… and what about that flayed and pinned-out skin? Do I need to tell anybody about it? But who to tell? At that moment a larger problem loomed, driving these unsettling things from his thoughts: the Domesday pageant-of-arms.

The ritual of Domesday for those under Imperial Service at Winstermill was a military formality of unquestionable antiquity. Every Domesday morning, the whole fortress turned out on the Grand Mead, all bearing arms before the main building in a pageant of flags, polish and rich, bright harness. Two-and-a-half hours of marching and speeches, it was a show of strength of which Rossamund had quickly grown weary. He had once dearly wanted to see such spectacles: an array of soldiery gathered as if ready for battle. Watching was one thing but participating quite another. To march in a parade was a ponderous and worrying chore where evolutions must be well performed or impositions were imposed.

Sitting shivering on the edge of his cot, he looked forlornly at his unprepared harness. Metal must be polished with pipe clay and galliskins whitened, boots and belt blacked and brightened. Denied the opportunity last night, Rossamund had to do his best to prepare now, which meant skipping breakfast. With sinking wind he could hear the other prentices stepping singly or in twos up the stairs of the cell row on their way to eat.

Threnody appeared at his open cell door, already washed and fed, immaculate in her perfectly presented mottle. "Well, a good morning to you, lamp boy," she said, with a supercilious grin. "Not ready, I see." She sniffed the night-stale air of the cell and pinched her nose. "Has someone been using you to wipe out the inside of a lard vat?" she exclaimed in an affectedly nasal voice.

Rossamund blushed deep rose.

"You'd better get your pace on or you'll never be ready," Threnody continued unhelpfully. "I have heard how these things go: you'll be censured, brought before a court-martial, and stretched out on a Catherine wheel if you go out looking less than perfect." She shook her head.

Rossamund knew she was just being painful, though certainly more pots-and-pans could be expected for a slovenly showing out.

Threnody huffed and put her hands on her hips as he was struggling to fold his cot corners. "Leave off, lamp boy!" she insisted. "I'll do that!You just set to your clobber."

The girl worked a modest wonder, folding the corners on the bed neater, pulling the sheet and blanket tighter and smoothing the pillow better than Rossamund knew was possible. All extraneous items went into the bed chest, all inspected items arranged in regulation order on the small stool in the corner. Rossamund's cell had never looked so deftly ordered.

"Turn out for inspection!" came Under-Sergeant Benedict's warning cry. There was a boisterous clatter as all the prentices scurried to their cells from the mess hall or wherever they had been.

Threnody quit the room without another word or even a glance back.

Fumbling buckles and buttonholes, Rossamund finished dressing in a flurry, still wrestling with his quabard and his baldric as he took his place at the doorpost. Teeth rubbed with a corner of a bedsheet, hair combed with his fingers, he stood at attention by his door with only moments to spare.

Grindrod ducked his head to enter Rossamund's cell, and looked about, betraying the slightest surprise at its excellent state. He bounced a carlin off the blanket pulled and tucked drum-taut across Rossamund's cot. "All is in order, Prentice Bookchild," he said after he had peered into every cavity of the tiny quarter. "As it should be. Move out to the Rear Walk and make ready for the pageant."