D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Threnody just frowned and, with a huff of spleen, lay on her ill-made cot.

His thoughts all for bed, Rossamund went to his own lodgings, shuffling among the sleeping prentices, and threw himself down clothes, boots and all.

Rossamund woke, having slept very little, to the drum roll of "Stand While You Can," a merry martial tune rattled out every morning at five-o'-the-clock to rouse the lantern-watch.

Stand while you can, lads,

Stand while you can:

For the Glory of Ol' Barny,

Stand while you can.

He gave a gentle groan. The common-quarter night at Wellnigh had been full of snores and night shouts and a paucity of proper rest. He should have been used to this: it was how he had spent all his sleeps at Madam Opera's. Two months' prenticing at Winstermill, however, with a cell of his own, had given him something he had never truly known, privacy. Cold and small though his cell might have been, with a cot lumpy like tepid slogg-porridge, he had come to prize its seclusion.

Rousing himself, Rossamund rubbed grit-itchy eyes and sat, his head still swimming with nightmares of gnashing shadows and carriages attacked. Fouracres, the ambling Imperial postman he had met on his journey to Winstermill, had told him a lamplighter's life was dangerous, and now the prentice well understood why.

A life of adventure. A life of violence.

Bright-limns were turned and their cool light slowly revealed the long, low quarters. Waking and rising, the other prentice-lighters hubbubbed with restrained excitement, retelling last night's theroscade.

"What about that young calendar!" Hanging by his arms from one of the low, steeply angled rafters, Punthill Plod gave a saucy whoop that set the sleepier ones complaining. Mornings always were his better part of the day.

"Aye! She was a bit of a fine dig," Tremendus Tworp leered, "though she couldn't wit for a goose."

"Did ye hear old Grind-yer-bones last night?" Plod enthused. "We might get marked.Ye heard him: said prentices ain't been puncted in a precious long time!"

"I'm not getting one," Rossamund declared, with more gladness than he meant to show.

"Why not, Rosey?" Plod stopped his rafter swinging.

"Lampsman Puttinger said I did not have a hand in killing anything."

"Oh" was all Plod said.

"Ye don't sound too troubled, Rosey. Don't ye want one?" Tworp added. "Perhaps there should 'ave been more so you could've got yerself a kill." He gave a sardonic grin.

"That was more than enough for me," Crofton Wheede put in, wide-eyed. "I thought we were done in and no mistaking! It was like how me poor mammy ended all over again…"

"Don't start on yer poor mammy, Wheede!" Eugus Smellgrove called testily, still lying abed.

"Aye," Giddian Pillow offered, "just be grateful they weren't one of them gudgeon-baskets I heard tell of-them ones running wild out Gathercoal way."

"They reckon a wit can't stop a rever-man," Wheede shuddered, clearly glad it had not been a brace of these vile creatures on the road last night.

Gudgeons! Rever-men? Rossamund sat up. "Where did you hear about that?" he called.

"When we were in Silvernook the other day," Pillow answered. "Some fellow at the skittle-alley on the Hackstone Row says he'd come from Makepeace and that it was all abuzz about the quarry being haunted by some handmade beastie."

Rossamund nodded, aghast. "But how did it get there? They have to be put somewhere, don't they? Rever-men don't just wander about on their own-do they? Someone has to make them. Someone has to place them."

"It probably got loose from a hob-rousing pit," Pillow offered with a grim and knowing look.

Hob-rousing was the illegal practice of setting monsters against gudgeons and betting on the winner. Rossamund thought of Freckle and the rever-man once locked in the hold of the Hogshead. Maybe that was where they were headed? He was doubly glad now he had set Freckle free. "But that's wrong!" he exclaimed without thinking.

The others looked at him blankly.

"Well, I've heard it that the fluffs use the baskets for guards to protect all their jools and secrets," Plod said finally, rolling his eyes weirdly. He wiggled his fingers as if a great shower of coins were pouring through them, causing a chuckle among his fellows.

"I heard it said there's some poor fellow back at Winstermill who's all agog from what they reckon was a gudgeon fight," Smellgrove joined in, fully awake at last. "Was once a fine lighter but has never been right in his intellectuals since."

"Clap it shut, little frogs!" Assimus snorted, startling them all, stomping into the room to rouse them out to the sip-pots to wash. "Who talks on rever-men at this fresh hour of day? Git ye up and git ye at 'em! Out for yer scrubbing! Move yer carcasses!"

A line of tubs ran along a wall in a small yard adjacent to the foreyard of the northern keep. While the shivering boys scrubbed themselves in the freezing twilight, the topic of talk soon shifted to more friendly adventures. First it was the mischief done on the last Domesday visit to Silvernook and mischief planned for the next-for Domesday was the common, weekly vigil-day and their one occasion of rest. Much to the other boys' bemused disapproval, Rossamund had never joined them on these half-drunken jaunts, preferring to spend his money on pamphlets and remain behind at the manse reading. In the time since he started at Winstermill he had ventured down to Silvernook only twice to get more pamphlets and to see if he might meet again with Fouracres, who had helped him so much on his way to prenticing. The restless postman had not had an opportunity to come to Winstermill. Silvernook and the dwellings of the Brindleshaws were his range, and he was so devoted to his "custom"-as he called the people he delivered to, he rarely had a common vigil himself. Their reunions had therefore been necessarily and unsatisfactorily brief, and Rossamund was still hoping for a day where they might sit and talk in earnest.

The boys' chatter changed again to the most common topic-in what cothouse each prentice thought he would like to serve once prenticing was done and they had all become lampsmen 3rd class.

"I want to go to Makepeace Stile," Plod said eagerly. "They work close with them obstaculars to catch bandits and dark traders and such."

"What about Haltmire?" pondered Tworp, leering at Wheede. "Ye get to see plenty of nickers there."

"They don't send lampsmen 3rd class out there, Tworp!" Wheede rose to the goad. "It's too unfriendly for new lighters."

"Aye," said Smellgrove, "the way ye was whimpering last night I can see why."

Rossamund did not particularly care: where he was sent was where he was sent. Surely it would all be the same: light the lamp, douse the lamp, light the lamp, douse the lamp, light the lamp, douse the lamp, always waiting for some monster to spring and deliver a horrible end…

Rossamund contrived to wash only his face and not remove his shirt before being herded back to the gallery to dress in full. Today was the day when he was due to change his nullodor: the Exstinker he had promised both Fransitart and Craumpalin to wear, splashed on the cambric sash wound about his chest, under his clothes. But his precious Exstinker was back at Winstermill, wrapped up in an oilcloth at the bottom of his bed chest at the base of the lumpy cot.