D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Before putting on his quabard-the vest of rigid proofing all lighters wore over their coats-he stared at the embroidered figure upon it. Stitched in thread-of-gold was an owl displayed wings out, talons reaching, sewn over panels of rouge and leuc-red and white. Sagix Glauxes Rex-the Sagacious Imperial Owl-the sign of an Emperor's man. For the Glory of Ol' Barny indeed!

The prentice-watch messed on the usual farrats and small beer (never as good as that served at the Harefoot Dig-always far too watery). Tomorrow's breakfast at the manse would be no better-dark pong bread swilled down with saloop, a drink of sassafras and sugar boiled in milk. The morning after that it would be farrats once more, then pong the next, then farrats, over and over.

Breakfast wolfed down, they paraded out in the yard of the northern keep before the sun had even peeped. Now they must douse all the lanterns back to Winstermill and be in time for limes, the morning interval between first morning instructions and second. This was where the prentices still at Winstermill were formed up to await the return of the lantern-watch, each given lime-laced pints of small beer to fend off ill-health. Ready for this returning and looking forward to limes, the boys stood shivering in the glow of bright seltzer lamps, the morning showing as a cold halo in a low and murky sky.This was the time of day figured safest, when night monsters had found their beds once more and daytime prowlers were still waking.

Surly and overtired, Assimus, Bellicos and Puttinger poked the boys into correct dressing with rough tugs and prods of their fodicars. Grindrod called them to attention and marched them out the gates. Back to Winstermill they went, to a little rest before resuming the solemn routines of their prenticing.

Back to Winstermill, that is, except for Rossamund. He had been left behind as a courtesy from the lamplighter-sergeant to rouse the calendars and accompany them to the manse. Returning from the foreyard, he passed Mister Bolt, the night-clerk and uhrsprechman, sitting in the north keep guardroom behind a small dirty stool that served as his table, and asked him the time of day.

Groggy, smelling of claret and squinting with lack of sleep, Mister Bolt peered at Rossamund. "Quota hora est, he asks!" the night-clerk said, taking out his heavy fob. "What time is it indeed?" He glared at its cryptic face beadily. "Why, lantern-stick, it's a little before the half hour of five-o'the-clock on this cruel chill's morning, and the bad half of a good hour till the drummer wakes the rest and I get to me fleabag" (by which he meant his bed).

By their own instruction the calendars were not to be troubled for another hour. At last Rossamund had a moment of his own, without press or crowd or the impel of orders-a precious-rare commodity, he had learned, in a lamplighter's life. Secreting himself in a dim corner beneath the stairs that went up to the gallery, he hoped to remain inconspicuous, perhaps to read a little of his new pamphlet and avoid being discovered and set to some odious task.

He failed.

As the drums rataplanned again to wake the rest of the cothouse for another day, the house-major, on his way down to breakfast, spied Rossamund. "You there! Lantern-stick! The one I spoke with last night," the officer barked. "Feed the dogs. Their meat is in the kitchen."

"Aye, sir," the young prentice said with sinking wind. It was properly the duty of the house-watch to feed the dogs. The house-major must have known that though Rossamund had been left behind, he was still part of the lantern-watch. He had rarely ever met a dog of any sort-they were not allowed in Madam Opera's-and any time he had, the meeting had not been comfortable. Shaken, the young prentice nevertheless obeyed without demur, asking directions of a kitchen hand.

"They're in the yard of the south keep," a rough-shaven kitchen hand explained, handing Rossamund a rotund pot of dog vittles. "Mind the weight!"

Wrapping his arms about the pot's wide girth, Rossamund did not find the burden a trouble and, arms full of reeking offcuts, made his way to the southern keep of Wellnigh. He wrestled the great pot past the house-watchmen, a half quarto of haubardiers pacing about the edges of the road who jostled him as he tried to get around them.

"Move your ashes, scrub!"

Tottering across the Pettiwiggin, he thumped with his elbow at the small sally port in the wall of the south keep yard. No one answered, and he kept thumping until one of the haubardiers came over and, with a sardonic grin, unlocked and opened the port to let him through. In the small, high-walled space beyond were the great kennels, built up against the keep's base, barred with stout iron founded in stone. This was the cage for the dogs, five Greater Derehunds-enormous creatures with spotted flanks and slobbering jowls-that waited hungrily. Such dogs were kept at many cothouses and at Winstermill too, there to howl and yammer with great commotion if a nicker was ever near.

The Derehunds began an awful growling as soon as they saw Rossamund, all five hunched and threatening, a terrible gurgling rattle in their throats, pointed ears flat along their pied necks.

"Hallo there," Rossamund tried, and waggled some stinking offal.

With a jerk one hound gave a savage bawling bark that sent the rest mad, leaping over each other, back and forth, crashing against the bars, baying like all wretchedness was loose.

Rossamund leaped backward, scrambling and slipping on grimed cobbles.

Officers, lighters and haubardiers rushed from all points, some shouting, some soothing the dogs in vain, many demanding, "What did ye do?"

Some minor officer-a lieutenant-grabbed Rossamund hard under the arm and pulled him away. "What are you practicing at?"

"Nothing, sir!" the young prentice quailed. "I… I just tried to feed them, as ordered."

"He's all right, sir," offered a lighter from the day-watch. "He was a part of that confustication last night."

"Ah, cunning beasts," said a haubardier in obvious admiration of the hounds, "they can still tell the stink of the monsters on ye from yester eve."

"Well, get him out of here," demanded the lieutenant. "Find him another task."

"You had best get back to them harum-scarum ladies, lad," the lighter said quietly. "Quick now, before the dogs get wilder."

Rossamund gratefully left the pot and went back to the northern keep, up the stairs, over the gallery to the temporary lodgings of the calendars.

Threnody greeted his polite good morning with little more than a cold stare and silence. Dolours looked as poorly as she had on the night previous.

"May I offer you a draught mixed with bellpomash, m'lady?" Rossamund inquired.

"You most certainly may," she returned gratefully.

Rossamund went quickly to the kitchen and asked permission of the cook to prepare the restorative. The best he could do was to mix it with saloop and add some lordia too, but Dolours did not fuss. She drank it down and returned the bowl to him with a smile.

"My thanks to you. We will be ready presently."

He waited a goodly while by the door as the calendars prepared to leave.

Charllette the pistoleer was to stay behind and take a post-lentum back east by way of the Roughmarch, the threwdish gap through the Tumblesloe Heap. She would return to the Lady Vey and the stronghold of the calendars, bearing with her dispatches and the bodies of the two dead. Dolours,Threnody and the wounded dancer Pandome, who lay unconscious on a bier with her face and head entirely bandaged, were to go west to Winstermill. Despite the bellpomash brew, the bane still showed the strain of her malady and Rossamund asked after her health once more.

"Why, I thank you, young lighter," Dolours replied. "Truly I would not have set out so ill had not the need been pressing. You understand the life of service, I am sure."