D Cornish - Foundling

Something about the way the lamplighter's agent said all this sounded very final.

Rossamund's head was spinning once more. A lamplighter? They wanted him to become a lamplighter? What happened to the navy? Now he would never see the sea…

"Um…" Rossamund tried his best to look grateful. "I… ah…" This was not the plan at all! Stuck on the same stretch of road day after day, night after night, lighting the lamps, dousing them again, lighting them again. No chance for prize money. No chance for glory. Could it get worse? He had no choice. It was either become a lamplighter or stay at the foundlingery. A glance at Madam Opera showed her genial expression becoming stiff with impatience. He was stuck between two very unpleasant choices-the stone and the sty, as Master Fransitart might say.

"Thank you, Mister Sebastipole," he managed, giving another awkward bow.

"As you should!" Madam Opera beamed and clapped once and loudly. Nothing about Mister Sebastipole's face altered at all. He clearly had not anticipated the slightest resistance to his suggestion. Madam Opera stood and shepherded Rossamund toward the door. "Go and ready yourself. Fransitart will know what to do… Now, Mister Sebastipole," he heard her murmur as she closed the door behind him, "you will stay for a sip of tea?"

And that was that.

The necessary arrangements were made. Rossamund was to meet Mister Sebastipole in two days' time, at the Padderbeck, one of Boschenberg's smaller piers upon the mighty Humour River. His luggage was to be limited to no more than one ox trunk and a satchel. He was to be dressed in hardwearing clothes for a long journey, and a sturdy hat too. Unfortunately, he did not have any. Nor did he possess a suitably sturdy hat. As for the rest of his belongings, the collection of his entire life-they fitted neatly into two old hat boxes. For the rest of the day and all through the next, interested staff of Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls, the Vlinderstrat, Boschenberg, were a-bustle as Rossamund was prepared for his great going forth. Even the madam herself joined in, drawing up a list of what he needed, entitling it Rossamund's Necessaries.

Masters Fransitart and Craumpalin took Rossamund to see Gauldsman Five, the gaulder. His was the best place in this part of the city to get clothing sturdy enough for Rossamund's journey, for Gauldsman Five made the best proofing. All proofing could turn sword strokes, and could even stop a ball fired from a musket or pistol. The simplest piece of proofing was costly, but the better the quality of protection the higher a garment's price. Proofing was, however, also absolutely necessary for folk looking to venture beyond the city walls, where monsters and brigands and other horrors waited. It was made from cloth-anything from hemp to silk-treated with a chemical potion known as gauld, which made it very hard to tear or puncture. Broad straps of gauld-hardened leather and thin padding of soft, spongy pockweed were then sewn into the lining as the unproofed cloth was turned into garments. After this the whole array was soaked in gauld, and then cooked and soaked again and so on. Each gaulder had his own methods and process, and his own secret recipes. Rossamund thought it almost too wonderful to believe that he might be getting such amazing clothing for his very own. He was speechless with glee as he left the marine society.

Gauldsman Five's shop and fitting rooms were a whole suburb away, in the Mortar, on Tin Drum Lane, and the visit there would be a little adventure in itself. Indeed, any excursion from the foundlingery was a significant event. Rossamund had been out from Madam Opera's only a dozen times in his whole life, usually to go down to the Humour with the other foundlings to practice rowing and swimming. In fact, before today, his most thrilling excursion had been a trip to the house of Verline's sister Praeline in the shadows of Boschenberg's outermost curtain wall.

Fransitart, Craumpalin and Rossamund went north along the Vlinderstrat, turned right onto the Weegbrug and then left onto the crazily curving Pantomime Lane. They strolled past alehouses, dance halls and puppet stalls, veered right once more onto the Hurlingstrat, dodging ox wagons and omnibuses, went through the Werkersgate and there, on the left hand, was Tin Drum Lane. Gauldsman Five's establishment was about a third of the way along, tall and narrow like almost every other building in Boschenberg. Only those of quality were allowed in the front of the shop, where there were plush closets in which the wealthy and powerful could try on and admire their new proofing. Such ordinary folk as two marine society masters and a foundling had to use the poor man's closets by the great gaulding vats at the rear of the shop. As they entered this filthy place, Rossamund watched greenishorangey-yellow steam hiss angrily from one of the vats as an aproned man poured in a thick black liquid. A foul miasma churned in the dank air.

Fransitart spoke quietly but urgently with some grimy fellow, who spoke to another grimy fellow, who spoke to another, and before long a finely dressed man in a powdered wig appeared from a door leading to the front of the shop. Though his simply cut clothes were made of expensive materials, he had a splotched and haggard look about his face-the mark of a vinegaroon. He was one of Gauldsman Five's tailors. Fransitart must have known him and, from his look of consternation, the tailor must have known the dormitory master too.

"'Ello, Meesius," said Fransitart, a terrible light in his eye.

"Coxswain Frans?" Meesius the tailor went pale. "Is that you? And… and with Craump'lin too?"

Coxswain? Rossamund had always thought Fransitart had been the gunner-in charge of all the cannon and their right firing.

"Aye"-Fransitart nodded gravely-"I've come to claim me debt."

Tugging on the bristles beneath his lower lip, Craumpalin gave the tailor a knowing wink and flashed an almost threatening grin. "Lookee, Frans," he said softly, "he still knows us!"

Meesius the tailor went even paler. "A-after all these years…?"

"Aye." Master Fransitart was as quietly menacing as Rossamund had ever known him to be. "But I wants it in harness. Bring us yer best travelin' wear for this 'ere lad."

There was an awkward pause.

Rossamund was bemused that his two masters could be such overbearing rogues.

With nervous sweat on his brow, the tailor hesitated.

Craumpalin folded his arms and glowered. Fransitart remained perfectly still.

Meesius cleared his throat. "W-well." He gestured to Rossamund impatiently. "Come over here so I can get thy measurements."

Rossamund looked at his masters, and Fransitart gave the subtlest nod. The boy went over to the tailor, leaving Fransitart and Craumpalin by the vats.

"Lift thy arm!" Meesius growled under his breath. With a leather tape he measured Rossamund's neck and arms and even the girth of his chest with many rough proddings.

"… I daren't keep him back any longer." Master Fransitart's voice carried softly across the vat-room floor.

"Ye dare not. And anyway, the lad is desperate to get on."

"Aye, Pin, aye." The dormitory master sounded resigned and strangely sad. "Well at least 'e'll be stoutly protected."

At this both of the old men went quiet.

Meesius disappeared for a time, then returned with a sour look, bearing two pieces of high-quality proofing. The first was a fine proofed vest with fancy silk facings and linings called a weskit. The second piece was a sturdy, well-gaulded coat-called a jackcoat-made of subtle silken threads of shifting blues. It came in at the waist and flared out to the knees. Rossamund was stunned at its beauty.

The dormitory master told him to put on both the weskit and the jackcoat. "Ye might as well start getting accustomed to their weight," he said.