D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Threnody's mouth opened then shut, but no sound came out. She looked to Rossamund, dropped her eyes and looked mortified for a merest twinkling. With admirable spirit, she recovered, and, chin jutting proudly, ate the rest of her tasteless meal.

There was a long, unpleasant silence.

Europe ate little more, and soon left the two young lighters, to inquire of a bed for the night and board for an indeterminate duration. Threnody took out a duodecimo and read as if Rossamund was not there. To pass time, he sorted through his salumanticum, resettling vials and jars, salperts and castes, all in their padded boxes or cushion pockets, making the most necessary scripts easy to extract.

Europe returned, her arrangements made. "I'm glad to see you're in a habilistic turn of mind," she said. "How would you take to trying your hand once more at making my treacle, little man? — to keep your practice up?"

"I might as well make you some too, Threnody, if I'm already at it."

"No!" she said frostily. "Stop asking me."

Stung, Rossamund took up Europe's lacquered treaclebox-remembering only too well how uneasy it had made him feel-and allowed himself to be led to the small kitchen. There, while Europe left to arrange her luggage and Goodwife Inchabald hovered nervously to make sure he did not spoil her clean stoves, Rossamund brewed. He discovered the steps of making were vivid in his mind and Sugar of Nnun still filled him with sickly dreads. The disturbing half smell of the finished treacle filled the close space.

"Well done, little man," Europe said quietly, reappearing as if drawn by the reek. With a toss of her head and those unladylike gulps she drained the bowl. "Well, good night, Rossamund," she continued-Rossamund trying not to stare at her stained mouth-"Tomorrow I knave myself in earnest, and you will be on your way to your lonely billet. I shall be about if you have need of me. Remember well my warning at Compostor." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Keep what you know to yourself. It will profit no one just babbled about-and don't go getting yourself maimed or slaughtered." She looked at him until the young lighter felt like a squirming worm on a hook.

"Good-bye, Miss Europe," Rossamund whispered. He felt like he was ever saying this to her.

Without another word the fulgar gathered her treacle-box and departed, leaving the young lighter to make his way back across the lynche to Bleakhall, passing Threnody without acknowledgment.

Halfway across the bridge she caught up with him. "What, no Brambly Rose? How ever will you get on without her?" she said sardonically. "How you can stomach her hoit-a-toit I do not know." Threnody sniffed sourly. "I can see well now why Mother does not like her."

"I would have thought your mother's dislike of her would have recommended Europe to you," he countered.

She fixed him with a withering eye. "Well, I go to make my own treacle, as any good lahzar should.You should come and see how it is really done."

Rossamund declined.

"I shall leave you to your moon dreams of the Lady Europe, then!"

Baffled and tired, Rossamund did not offer a response.

Across in Bleakhall the kindly altern showed him to a long, open hall with benches for meals at one end and a double row of cots at the other, all beneath a lofty ceiling a-crowd with exposed beams. The distinct, dank smell of seldom-washed men mixed with wood-smoke and lock-oil: the telltale odor of a cothouse and something a little more acrid and unpleasant. After three days in the funk of a lentum cab shared with two perfumed women, Rossamund had lost his dullness to the smell of too many men together. He tried not to breathe deeply.

It was the full of night now, and the lantern-watch from Wormstool had already arrived, their lighting done. They were sitting with their Bleakhall brothers about the common table drinking bottles down to the mud, swapping bawdy jokes and playing at checkers.They seemed hard and rough, like the Hogshead bargemen, but altogether much neater and thoroughly clean. For all their coarse language and rough manners, they seemed careful with how they looked, cursing at each other if ever a splash or splatter threatened to soil their harness. Each wore a baldric of Imperial red: they were citizens of the Empire, claiming no particular stately heritage.

Rossamund felt very dull and frowzy. He noticed Threnody, who had soon returned-teeth slightly stained with plaudamentum-self-consciously pull and play at her hems and fringes whenever she thought the lampsmen were not looking.

She barely acknowledged him, however.

The "Stoolers," those lighters-Rossamund quickly learned-from Wormstool, and the "Bleakers" were fascinated by the two young arrivals, but especially by Threnody. She made much of being superior to their attentions, yet from Rossamund's vantage she relished every rough jest or idle tease.

"How come they're sending them out to ye?" a Bleakhall lighter asked. "We need replacements just as much…"

"More's the point: what's the Marshal doin' billetin' such pink li'l morsels out to us?" one extraordinarily hairy Stooler-one Under-Sergeant Poesides-added.

"Aye!" Rossamund heard one lighter whisper theatrically to a brother-in-arms. "What do they takes us for, wet nurses?"

"Doesn't he know we eat 'em alive out here?" Poesides added, raising sinister chuckles from his amused colleagues.

Rossamund grinned sheepishly.

Threnody sniffed superciliously as she said sourly, "You might find us a little hard to chew!" inciting a general "ooooh" and loud laughter.

"I can see thy arrow-spoor, Miss Muddle!" A rather thick-set sergeant sporting raven-hued mustachios and a bulbous nose grinned and pointed to Threnody's brow. Isambard Mulch was his name. "Going to fish our heads from inside our tummies after we've eaten ye, are ye?"

Some small lighter, old enough to surely have earned retirement, aped exaggerated actions of eating then keeled over, clutching dramatically at his head and stomach. The laughter became a roar, Rossamund joining them. Even Threnody broke a smile.

"Ahhh there, lads," Sergeant Mulch cried, pointing to the girl's reluctant grin, "she's human-hearted after all!"

Her smile vanished and the guffaws roared louder still.

Perhaps service at the ignoble end of the road might not be so wretched after all.

Rossamund was turned out into the small yard at the foot of Bleakhall the next morning to discover thick fog smothering the land, deadening sound, diminishing light, dampening spirits. There was no wind, not even a gentle breeze; just the clammy touch of tiny, infrequent eddies. In the unsettling quiet the half quarto of lampsmen who were to be his billet-mates, perhaps forever more, said very little above common greetings and introductions. One old fellow, who presented himself as Furius Lightbody, Lampsman 1st Class, checked the two new lamplighters' harness and their equipage. He paused when he spotted Rossamund's salumanticum.

"Good lad," he said. Lightbody tugged on its strap to test the repair, then patted a satchel of his own, showing a hand missing the third and fourth fingers. "Wise. We've all got one."

Rossamund nodded. "Why are there five of you?" he asked in a hush.

"Them city-scholars say it takes three fit fellows to best a single hob-possum" was the gruff return. "That's all well and good for them and their books, but out here we reckon five of us stands a better chance. In truth there should be more…"