D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Rossamund turned to go back down. He did not want to return to the benighted maze beneath but was eager to prove what he had been through. It was then he realized he did not know how to return to the scene of violence, so keen had he been on getting out. Some of his lefts had become rights in the end, and there was no telling precisely which and when. He hesitated.

Surgeon Swill arrived in the enormous room and all notions of going below were subordinated as, with an intently professional expression, he examined Rossamund's hurts. "This is a nasty blow," he declared after a silent observation of the young prentice's head. "The boy must surely be in a daze. How did you get the wound? Knock your cranium on a doorpost or the like, yes?"

"No, sir, the basket did this to me!" he said, watching nervously as the surgeon reached into a sinister-looking case.

"He persists with this daft notion of a monster in the cellars," the Master-of-Clerks said with strange, affected sympathy. "Poor, foolish child."

"Indeed. Clearly dazed," Swill insisted, producing a bandage. "Such an injury can make one believe he sees all kinds of phantasms. Bed rest and a callic draught are the best for you, young lantern-stick. Let this be a lesson to you not to be dashing about after douse-lanterns!"

Callic draughts were for drowsing the mentally infirm-Rossamund knew his potives too well. He did not want an addled, forgetful sleep. He wanted to tell the horrible news that the unthinkable had happened: that a monster had been found inside Winstermill. As he submitted to the bandage being wrapped about his crown, Rossamund was keenly aware of the unsympathetic gazes upon him. "I have to tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!" he insisted.

"And so you shall," said Whympre, "and illuminate him and me both as to your illegal surveyings and nocturnal invasions. I warn you though, child, your chatter about buried bogles will not wash with him either. The only event for which we have proof unavoidable is your trespass in my rooms."

"Mister Sebastipole will confirm I tell the truth, sir," Rossamund said obstinately with an angry glance at Pile.

The falseman gave Rossamund a cold, almost venomous look.

The Master-of-Clerks and the falseman and the surgeon exchanged the merest hint of a pointed glance.

Whympre declared firmly, "Well then, it's off to the Marshal we go, prentice. He will not be pleased, for he is always busy with his papers. Batterstyx!" he called to the air. "Batterstyx! My perruque!" An aged private man appeared from some other door bearing the clerk-master's lustrous black wig. Once it was fitted to the great man's satisfaction, the Master-of-Clerks strode forth. "Come along!"

Rossamund was marched through the perpendicular geometry of the manse. Accompanied by the three men, he was taken from the far back corner to somewhere near the front, where the Lamplighter-Marshal's duty room was found. Pile knocked for them and they waited.

Presently this port sprang open and Inkwill emerged, looking overworked. "Master-of-Clerks," the registry clerk said, managing a wry smile. "What troublesome punctilio troubles you now, sir?"

Whympre sniffed as if to indicate Inkwill was beneath his notice. "We have a disturbing breach of security to relay to the Marshal. Go tell this to him."

Why not just tell him of the rever-man? Rossamund thought angrily. He knew there were forms to follow, but in a circumstance such as this, surely they could be put aside?

"Aye, sir." The registry clerk nodded, his eyes going a little wide at the bandage about Rossamund's head.

The door closed, there was a wait; it opened again and Inkwill reappeared to gesture the four through.The anteclave was empty of its usual crowd of the Marshal's secretaries and assisting clerks, yet many piles of paper remained. Even to Rossamund-for whom these countless documents had no relevance-such a mass of paper gave the room a feeling of nagging, insurmountable and never-ending labor. Inkwill guided him through the thin lane between desks.

"Stay here, prentice," the Master-of-Clerks ordered.

Rossamund obeyed, his head starting to throb uncomfortably, while Whympre, Swill and Pile went on into the Lamplighter-Marshal's duty room.Very quickly Inkwill was back, dashing through the anteclave without a word.

More waiting, and the throb in Rossamund's pate grew into an ache.

Inkwill returned now with Sebastipole in tow, the leer giving Rossamund one look and saying, "That is a fine bump you have got yourself, my boy. Follow me, if you will," before going directly in to the Marshal.

In the shadow of Sebastipole, the young prentice inched his way into the very soul of Winstermill's existence, hands habitually gripped before him at a now absent thrice-high. To Rossamund's left, the Master-of-Clerks had stationed himself on a richly cushioned tandem chair. Swill was on his right, poised stiffly on the edge of a hall chair, alert, waiting. On the clerk-master's left stood Laudibus Pile, leaning against a false architrave, head down. But right before him, behind a desk piled with documents, sat the Lamplighter-Marshal, the eighth Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian. He appeared drawn, and sharply aware of the entire substance of his manifold burdens, and was staring keenly at Rossamund. "Good evening, Prentice-Lighter Bookchild," he said, his warm voice crackling slightly with weariness. The Marshal's quick gaze, penetrating and wily, seemed to sum up Rossamund, standing as stiff as an Old Gate Pensioner, in one acute look. He cleared his throat and gestured to the hall chair. "Please, take your ease." Despite dark sags of sleeplessness, the man's amiable, fatherly appearance remained. Indeed, with his sweeping white mustachios, a noble lift to his chin and a white-blond forelock curling almost boyishly upon his brow, the effect this close was magnified.

Sebastipole stood at the corner of the massive table while Inkwill showed Rossamund to his seat, positioned squarely before the great man.

"I am told by the clerk-master," the Marshal continued, "that ye believe yerself to have fought with a homunculid in the ancient tunnels below us. Is this so, prentice?"

"Aye, sir." Rossamund swallowed hard. He was about to let the whole tale burble out, when, with a cold stab in his innards, he realized he might betray Numps by telling of the undercroft. With a flicker of a look to the two leers, Rossamund faltered and went silent.

With this, Laudibus Pile raised his face and, with a dark glance at Sebastipole, fixed Rossamund with his own see-all stare. It was profoundly daunting to have a twin of falsemen's eyes-red orb, blue iris-staring cannily from left and right. Rossamund shifted on the hard seat in his discomfort.

"Are ye well, son? I hope that wound does not overly trouble ye," the Lamplighter-Marshal said, nodding to the thick bandage about the prentice's head.

"A little, sir."

"I did my best to mend him, Lamplighter-Marshal," Swill put in. "It is a nasty cut underneath all that cloth and I am sure, however it was sustained, it is enough to knock the sense out of the boy."

"So ye said before, surgeon," the Marshal said gravely. "Tell me, Rossamund, do ye feel knocked about in yer intellectuals?"

"Somewhat, sir, but I was fully aware before and I am fully aware now."

The Marshal smiled genially. "Good man." He shuffled some papers before him. "The good clerk-master has told me his take on yer tale, prentice, and is skeptical. I would like to hear yer own recollection and we shall go on from that. Proceed, young fellow."

Rossamund cleared his throat, took a rattling, timorous breath, cleared his throat a second time and finally began. "I had missed douse-lanterns, sir, and found a way under the manse and it took me through all kinds of furtigrades and passages…" And so he told of the terrific events, passing very quickly over the how of his presence, avoiding any mention of the bloom baths or Numps, concentrating most on the battle with the prefabricated horror.