D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"We are not at war, sir!" Whympre contradicted.

"I think you shall find that the Accord differs with you, sir." Crispus was not to be so easily beaten. "As would the brave lighters out there on the road."

The Master-of-Clerks considered, eyes narrowing, lips pursing. "This is most decidedly irregular, Doctor. I would advise you to go back to your infirmary and keep your opinions within its four walls."

"The clerking of our Emperor's manse is for you to determine, sir-the healing of its limbs is mine." Crispus stood tall, looking down on the clerk-master with the peremptory authority of the learned. "Inside the infirmary's four walls and out!"

Tear-diluted spittle was running freely from Numps' nose and mouth as he began to sag in the cruel grip of his restrainers.

With a cold glare the Master-of-Clerks eventually nodded. "I can see the wretch is ridiculously distressed. Please! Take him and set him to ease if he needs it. He will see the wisdom of today as time brings clarity. Guard-Sergeant!You may let that Numplings fellow go."

The troubardiers obeyed and Numps collapsed. Rossamund was at his side in an instant.

"Lady Threnody." The Master-of-Clerks gave a slight, barely respectful bow to the girl lighter. "If I see you attempt to strive again I shall call your mother here and have her take you away."While the peoneers worked callously on, he strode into the manse, Witherscrawl, the works-general and foot-guards scuttering after.

"Look at them leave to heel, like the curs they are!" Threnody hissed.

Numps lay curled about himself, making strange gulping noises, whispering "Oh, my friend… oh, my friend" to himself between sobbing gasps, his eyes red and swollen, his cheeks gray and drawn. Oblivious to the sharp pebbles of the drive, Rossamund knelt and embraced the glimner as best he could, an awkward, inadequate reach across the man's convulsing back.

Doctor Crispus was unwilling to provoke Numps further by taking him into the manse. Calling for two porters and a stretcher, he had the glimner taken to the lantern store. Rossamund and Threnody accompanied them as, whimpering and unresponsive, Numps was set gingerly on his pallet in a small, nestlike domestic nook of the store.

"I shall return presently with a soothing draught for the poor fellow," Crispus instructed Rossamund. "There is no circumstance under which this would have happened if the Marshal was still present," he concluded heatedly.

"My, how kitten does play with father cat away," Threnody concurred. "The clerk-master behaves a little differently without someone to check him."

"Indeed, my dear. The worm has turned, I think." With a bow, the physician left.

Speechless with shame and regret, Rossamund could think of no comfort as Numps lay curled about himself, rocking on his cot by the clean, cold light of the well-kept great-lamp. When he did finally find voice, all he could say for a time was, "Sorry… I'm so sorry."

But all he got in reply from Numps was, over and over, "My friend… you're killed again…"

"If I had known the Master-of-Clerks would treat your baths so, there is nothing that would have made me tell of them!" Rossamund said bitterly, tears threatening.

"There's no way you could have guessed ahead to that fellow's wretchedness, Rossamund," Threnody murmured, touching him on the arm and actually managing to bring some comfort. "I'm sure Dolours would say something much the same were she here," the girl added as a qualification for her soothing.

When Crispus returned, it was a bitter fortune that the glimner, so insensible with shock, went quickly to sleep under the influence of the physician's soother. Crispus, Threnody and Rossamund sat for a while by Numps' side, watching over him.

"What is going to happen to him, Doctor?" whispered Rossamund.

"He will recover, my boy." The physician smiled kindly. "I have seen him through worse and will see him through again."

Rossamund was in doubt. "He should have gone with Mister Sebastipole."

"I do not think the Considine is a good place for him either," Crispus replied. "In fact, you would have a hard time getting him out of Winstermill. It was remarkable that he even ventured up on to the Mead today."

Rossamund sat in silent thought. "Doctor Crispus, what will happen to Winstermill-to us all-without the Marshal here?"

The physician sighed, deep and sad. "I have not one notion, my boy, though if today's travesty is an indicator of our new leader's method, then it just might be an unhappy end for us all."

"Here I was beginning to enjoy the life." Threnody's muttered words were heavy with irony. "I was telling Rossamund before, good Doctor, that events have fallen very well for our dastardly clerk-master."

"Why, child, I suppose they have." Crispus stroked his chin. "Yet I can hardly conceive of him orchestrating all the manifold trials that have beset us and the brave Marshal most of all."

"I have been a pupil of Mother's long enough to know only a prod here and a coaxing there is enough to bring another down," Threnody waxed sagaciously. "Their troubles do the rest for you."

The physician looked at her for a moment. "Is that so, child? I wonder at the rather bleak nature of the lessons your good mother holds."

Rossamund marveled at this glimpse of the bizarre life the girl must have led before she joined the lighters.

Inevitably Crispus' duties called him away, and middens' call coaxed Threnody back to the manse.

Rossamund was left to continue the observance alone. Sitting there in the quiet of the store, he began to arrange a plan in his grieving thoughts: a scheme to offer some small consolation to the harrowed man. It was quite simple, and required only a clear occasion to be done. He would go to the Scaffold and rescue what bloom he could. The best time was mains, when the manse was a little stupid with the filling of its myriad stomachs, and the vigilance of its watch directed more outward to the Harrowmath. Prentices were allowed a relative freedom of movement during meals, and he was going to make full use of the privilege. Rossamund would take a smock and a barrow-of which there was a conspicuously ample supply all about this part of the Gutter-and, like a gardener, steal on to the Mead and take back the bloom. The plan fixed so firmly in his mind as the only way he might make any kind of amends, he determined to go through with it that very evening.

He stood to put the plan into motion. The smock would be from his own trunk. Of all its intended uses, he reflected, impersonating a groundsman was probably not among them. The wooden barrow-found in the lantern store itself-he hid in a gap between the Principal Stair and front boarded wall of the store, wedging it behind a rain barrel, and with it a rusty fodicar to aid him in hooking the bloom down.

Preparations done, the prentice looked in on the insensible glimner one last time and returned to the manse. The evening was as blustery a one as Rossamund could recall. Clouds blossomed and expanded, unraveling from horizon to horizon over the whole Harrowmath: low, mountainous-dark, and turned an oddly luminescent, muddy hue by the westering sun they hid. Southerly, loam-perfumed winds blustered over the shorter walls of the Low Gutter; wild, freezing vortices spun across the Mead and down the Cypress Walk, prodding Rossamund with every gust, bringing to his cold aching ears the angry hiss of the tempest-tossed grasses on the plain.

Gripping the thin linen smock and its meager extra warmth about him, the prentice skipped down the postern stair and scurried along the poorly lit lanes of the Gutter. His healing crown aching under the bandages, he wished he still had his hat to protect his head from the blustery buffeting. This was a bad night to be in the open, but it was a good night for clandestine or nefarious deeds. He reckoned upon less chance of discovery or questions by this route, and his reckoning proved right. Not one other soul crossed his way but a gray grimalkin, one of the tribe of mousing-cats allowed free roam of the whole fortress.Wise enough to leave the vermin to themselves on such an ugly eve, it blinked knowingly at him from its shelter beneath a stack of unused hogsheads, puncheons and barrels.