D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"Mister Numps!" he called, hoarse and wary, down the hole while he searched. "Mister Numps!" Nothing even vaguely catch or latchlike presented itself to his questing fingers.

"Oh hallo, Mister Rossamund." The soft voice of the glimner echoed strangely from below, giving Rossamund a fright. "I reckoned you were a guardsman fellow come to take my bloom again."

"Mister Numps!" With rushing relief, Rossamund thought he could just spot the pale oval of Numps' upturned face in the dark of the subterranean stair. "Are you safe? Are you hurt again?"

"Oh dear… I don't want to be found by the Master-Clerker…," the glimner quavered. "I didn't want to be found without Mister 'Pole here."

Rossamund smiled sadly. How he wished he could provide the glimner a greater sense of safety. Instead he had things to tell that he knew would be hard for the poor man.

"I have to go too, Mister Numps," he began. "They're sending me away…"

"Oh… oh dear…" Numps sighed, sounding bewildered. He must have climbed higher in his distress, for his pallid face became closer. "Numps' friends all going… "

"The Master-of-Clerks called Billeting Day today," Rossamund confirmed, "and I am leaving to my cothouse-and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Tell Mister 'Pole-he won't let you be sent away. Even poor old limpling-head Numps knows it's too soon for prentices to go a-working. Write Mister 'Pole, he won't let you go-I have his address, see…" Numps rummaged about in pockets.

"I will… I will write him a letter," said Rossamund. "Maybe he can help us, even from the Considine. Things are so bad with his and the Marshal's leaving. You should stay hiding if you can, Mister Numps-the fortress is downside up. Will you be able to eat and all?"

"Ah, Mister Rossamund." Numps tapped his brow. "There are many things Numps knows that people don't think he knows. There is food a-plenty if you go to the right places." The glimner was oddly calm. "Besides, Cinnamon's friends are watching over Numps-a-hiding so you can reckon me as safe."

Rossamund thought of the sparrow he had startled, pecking at the grate, and smiled. He did not know what help these little agents of the Duke of Sparrows might be-if that was indeed what they were.What did that kind of attention mean? He wanted to believe that goodly urchin-lords existed, that Numps was well looked out for, but the old common suspicions persisted.

A distant rataplan of the drums meant that mains was at an end and confinations about to begin.

"I must go, Mister Numps. We will both write to Mister Sebastipole, yes?"

"Yes."

"And you'll stay safe and secret, yes?"

"Yes."

Rossamund wanted to hug the glimner, but shyness and the grate prevented him. Instead he just stared into Numps' melancholy eyes, and the man stared back.

"Good-bye!" The prentice reluctantly turned to leave.

"Good-bye, Mister Rossamund," he heard the glimner call behind him. "Numps won't forget his new old friend-don't you forget him…"

"Never, Mister Numps!"

Heavy with fear for the glimner's fate, Rossamund ran back to the manse. For the rest of confinations he packed, stowed all he had ever possessed and prepared himself for leaving at first light. In the last few moments before douse-lanterns he lay on his cot and with his stylus hastily scratched out a letter on a blank page torn from the back of the peregrinat.

To Mister Sebastipole

Lamplighter's Agent amp; Falseman to the Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill

Epistra Scuthae

The Considine

The Patricine

2nd Heimio HIR 1601

Dear Mister Sebastipole,

I have no certainty this will make its way to you, but I try anyway.

I write to you, Mister Sebastipole, on the last night of my prenticing in Winstermill, for since you left with the Marshal, the Master-of-Clerks has taken all in hand and declared Billeting Day early. Tomorrow I travel to the cothouse of Wormstool. But it is not this that troubles me. It is rather Mister Numps that I am worried for.The Master-of-Clerks (he calls himself the Marshal-Subrogat now) destroyed Mister Numps' bloom (the stuff he was growing down in the deserted undercroft) the very day you departed, and Mister Numps (as I am sure you can well imagine) was sorely troubled. I managed to save a little part of it, but the baths are shattered and most of the bloom is dead. I fear for Mister Numps, that he isn't safe with only the good Doctor Crispus to watch out for him.Would there be any way you can help him, or even get him away from the manse?

He thought of adding:

The last I saw of him he still hid where his bloom was once grown.

… but realized the letter might be intercepted and read by unfriendly eyes and so he left it out. Instead he quickly completed the letter.

I hope you and the Lamplighter-Marshal fare well, and that all unjust things are righted soon. Rossamund Bookchild, Lampsman 3rd Class HIHF Winstermill Conduit Vermis Sulk End

In the clear, bright and oppressively cold morning Rossamund watched Winstermill recede as the post-lentum took him away. Threnody sat opposite him in the cabin, snuggled in a nest of furs.The first he knew of her joining him was her appearance on the Grand Mead that morning, baggage and all, as he waited for the lentum. Originally billeted at Dovecote Bolt, the girl was not supposed to be here in the carriage, the first to take freshly promoted prentices out to their new home. Somehow late the day before, she had succeeded in having her posting changed and was now with him on the road to Wormstool. Perhaps this was what she had been so intent on telling him the evening before. "It's too dangerous just for one" was all she had said in explanation as they had waited on the cold Mead earlier that morning. "I'll keep watch on your flanks, and you'll keep watch on mine."

Rossamund wondered briefly how the besotted Plod would feel about her change of destination. She was surely the most gorgeously accoutred lamplighter along the whole of the Wormway in her scarlet and gold harness and mass of midnight ringlets. Under one arm she clutched a day-bag, while a linen package and a mysterious round box sat on the seat beside. One hand was kept warm in a fuzzy white snuftkin, the other clutched a duodecimo novel, which she was reading with pointed concentration. Despite her infuriating twists of manners and mood, Rossamund was at first glad she had come along. But beyond the initial word she had been ignoring him, for reasons he could not quite comprehend, spoiling the sweetness of her original gallant gesture.

Has she come with me just to have someone to still pick on?

Rossamund had reading matter of his own. Before the lentum-and-four had departed, he had ventured to the Packet File to deliver his letter for Sebastipole and had been given another missive in return. He still clutched it in his hand, forgotten in the haste of his embarkation. With him in the cabin he had also brought his restocked salumanticum, his old traveling satchel with its knife-in-sheath attached holding his peregrinat, and a parcel of wayfood. On the seat next to him was his precious valise crammed with smalls and other necessaries for five days' travel. Anything over that and he would just have to make do. The rest of what he owned-most of it issued by the lamplighters when he first joined-had been stowed in an ox trunk and fixed to the roof of the lentum along with Threnody's sizable collection of luggage, their fodicars and fusils.