The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum Read online

  “I’d rather ’e fought with me, if ye don’t mind, matey,” Fransitart offered with the knowing look of a fellow seafarer.

  At first the mate seemed fit to argue, but knowing Fransitart to have once been a gunner—the seniormost gunnery officer aboard proper naval rams—he agreed and promptly gave the ex-dormitory master charge over number three gun, Leaping Ladie scrawled by some eager crew member on its truck.

  Fransitart easily took on the role as gun captain, organizing the brave yet clearly ignorant passengers whom need had pressed into service with an eagerness Rossamünd had never seen in him before. “Cast loose yer gun!” the old salt cried, the command echoed by other gun captains up and down the deck. “Take out yer tampion—aye, the plug at the front. Now, grasp them handspikes, gents—aye, them long posts there—and lift the breech—aye, the barrel; we need to get it depressed so’s to have good shot at the slug . . .”

  Joined by two rather refined-looking gentleman passengers, cheeks flushed with excitement, and three crew members, Rossamünd did all that was asked, careful not to put too much weight into his actions and therefore reveal himself as an aberration.

  “Shot and wad ’er!”

  A cloth cartridge of powder, a heavy iron shot and finally a wad of junk—old cut-up rope—were rammed home.

  “Run ’em out! Heave on the rope there, ye happy gents, heave!”

  In all it was clumsy work, yet there were enough seasoned seamen among them to get the task done.

  “Steady, now,” Fransitart warned when Leaping Ladie was loaded, run out and fixed with a couple of turns of the breeching rope about the cascable of the twelve-pounder, “an’ wait fer the word to fire.”

  “Look at ’er!” someone farther down the vessel cried in fright. “The whole sea is alive with the terrors!”

  Bending to peer through the open port, Rossamünd caught tossing glimpses of the beleaguered fishing vessel coming closer and closer. Smaller creatures were assailing it, leaping from the water, trying to snatch fishermen down into the caustic brey.

  “It’s pro’bly blighted wee lagimopes,” one of Rossamünd’s own gun crew muttered. “They like ta follow and feed at any sheddin’ o’ blood.”

  “Steady . . . ,” Fransitart growled with grim authority, immediately calming not only his gun crew but those on either side.

  Another muffled command from above decks and the Widgeon shuddered again, a deep noiseless quake, gaining yet greater speed like a colt let free from its winter stall at last, sending spray even past the midship gun ports.

  “Brace yeself tight, gents!” barked Fransitart, planting his feet wide and grasping an overhead deck beam. “We’re goin’ to strike hard!”

  There was a yawning moment of horrid, expectant silence, then the crash! of a great shock that rang like thunder in the closeness of the deck, flinging Rossamünd forward then quickly back again, sending his senses spinning. Several men fell, yet the young factotum kept his feet. Something massive and glistening black heaved and thrashed in the milky waters directly ahead, and Rossamünd was shocked to feel the recoiling shudder of living flesh scraping under the blade of the ram, quaking along the entire length of the Widgeon. Rossamünd could see, running out abeam from the vessel, a great coil of scaled back heaving out of the water. By the power of ancient muscles of incomprehensible pith, the front of the vessel was lifted, toppling many crew.

  “Fend off!” was the master’s anxious shout between the loud metallic twang! of lambasts above loosing their venom-tipped barbs. “Back pull to the screw!”

  With a great trembling like a groan, the packet ram changed screws and began to wind its way ponderously backward, its bow dropping sharply into the vinegar with an astounding thump. A fellow by number two gun began to scream all murder; something slick and greenish gray was reaching in from the gun port to drag the man a-sea. Number four gun detonated with a mighty sound, right into the sallow face of a bold pout-faced sea-monster seeking to clamber aboard.

  Abruptly, Rossamünd was seized on the thigh by a cold, merciless clutching, something slithering and gray. Completely surprised, he was already half out the port before he could catch a better grasp on the breech rope. In a flash, something took hold of his coat and Rossamünd was hauled backward, head over end, left hand still clenching the rope. Upside down and hanging against the iron-plated side of the Widgeon, he had the briefest glimpse of the water boiling all about the packet ram as the smaller sea-nickers sought now to take out their rage on this new foe. Immediately below, cold black eyes beheld him hungrily, and wide pouting mouths slavered as the nadderers twisted in frustration at the unwilling strength resisting them. Powerful were the grips that had him, yet glaring down at the vile sea-nickers Rossamünd held fast to the cable and would not let go. In a moment of shocked recognition the beasts yielded a little, as if they realized something peculiar in the nature of their prey. In that hesitation, Rossamünd heaved against them, even as Europe thrust through the port, face distorted with fury, striking down savagely with a metal worm and a flash of arcing into the dial of one of the beasts. The ravenous clenching slackened, and Rossamünd drew himself inward with a prodigious jerk, to land face-first and panting in fright on the deck.

  “Watch your step, little man,” the fulgar insisted mildly. “I do not want you knocked on the head before we have properly begun.”

  “Almost lost ye,” Fransitart murmured. The ex-dormitory master helped Rossamünd to stand.

  The thumping of guns could be heard now, getting closer, coming from some other vessel. Through the ports Rossamünd saw a larger ram, a drag-mauler perhaps, cutting across the retreating bow of the Widgeon, the blade of the newcomer’s overlarge rostrum forcing a deadly course through the waters teeming with sea-monsters. Beyond, he caught sight of the bastler freed from the sea-monsters’ attentions and beating a limping retreat.

  A confused din of frenetic footsteps thudded overhead, as if the crew there were dancing a wild jig. From fore to aft of the gun deck, crew and passengers alike contended with a great invasion of lagimopes—slippery creatures, small yet powerful, their backs vaned with tall fishlike fins. By the puffs of bothersalts farther back on the gun deck, Rossamünd could spy Craumpalin proving his place in the fight, appearing to be creating a barrier of foul stinging fume to keep the sea-nickers away from weaker passengers. Caught in the thick, Fransitart lay about himself with a handspike like a younger man while Europe struck left and right almost perfunctorily with the bottom of her balled fist, bright arcs blinking, dropping a lagimope dead with every blow.

  Rossamünd took up the closest weapon to hand—a rope-handled pail—and swinging it in sweeping loops sought to drive any lagis before him from the deck and back out the gun ports whence they had come. At first the creatures proved unwilling to confront Rossamünd directly, as if unsure upon whose side the young factotum fought. Yet, as he smote one after another, the remaining lagimopes soon settled him as an adversary and began to pay him especial attention. The more madly he swiped with the pail, the more madly did his foes beset him. Finally, the pail was stripped from his grasp and Rossamünd fought with hands alone, wrestling back and forth across the deck, punching with fist and elbow, picking one little sea-nicker up bodily, grasping it hard through its slime to hurl it from a port. Strong, oddly jointed hands pawed and tore at him, tried to pin him down and pull away his sturdy proofing, but every time the young factotum found a way free.

  In it all Europe was an indomitable force of scarlet and sparks. The lagimopes tried to drag her down from behind, but she would have none of this, and, twisting sharply, snatched the offending nadderers by their heads and filled them with death-dealing levin. Faced with the wrath of a fulgar at the height of her powers and a crew determined to resist, the shrunken swarm of fishy monsters quickly gave up and slithered back into the sea to disappear to wherever such creatures skulked.

  Sooty with the dust of expelled potives, Craumpalin pushed through the passengers and crew silent in th
e shock of victory, the aging dispenser grinning to see his companions alive and well enough. “How good it does me to see thee lay about thyself so manful,” he declared, grasping Rossamünd enthusiastically by the shoulder.

  Europe dusted a smudge from her sleeve. “Well, I cannot say I see why the navy prefers wits over we fulgars in such straits,” she observed. “As my first sea-fight, that was not too troublesome at all.”

  “Aye, I suppose not,” Fransitart grudgingly concurred, throwing the fulgar a dark look. “As thalasmachës can go . . .”

  A LAGIMOPE

  Stained and smeared in lagi oil, feeling badly bruised and half strangled, Rossamünd gathered his hat—amazingly not cast a-sea in the fight—from the deck and simply leaned against the truck of a gun to catch his breath.

  More rams arrived, chase guns thudding as they hounded the nadderers away south into deeper waters.The butcher’s bill at nine wounded—the fellow seized overboard already retrieved, only slightly sizzled from the caustic waters—Master Right declared Europe the heldin of the hour. In a fit of gratitude he wrote up a recommendation promising to have his agents refund her the crossing fee for herself and her three worthy servants.

  “Not all forces of the Empire are against us, it seems,” Europe murmured to Rossamünd as they stood at the helm watching the heavy drag-maulers speeding to the south as they chased the kraulschwimmen off.

  A little shaky as she resumed her original course, the aged packet ram Widgeon trod her way to Brandenbrass.

  2

  THE HOUSE OF THE BRANDEN ROSE

  cabinet pictures among those of disposable means and dark tastes there is a fashion for depictions of the foulest violence and horror, showing the spoiling of monsters by despicable acts. There is a vigorous clandestine trade in such images, and those who produce them are greatly esteemed by graphnolagnian connoisseurs and make good money from the trade. Many struggling fabulists have been forced by poverty to try their hand at such depravity, and though never signing such pieces, some who have gone on to more legitimate fame have an anonymous catalog of cabinet pictures ready to bring them to ruin.

  THE residence of Europe, the Branden Rose, fulgar teratologist and the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes, was situated in the very midst of the great city of Brandenbrass. Cloche Arde it was called, its address—as Rossamünd heard given to the takeny driver—Footling Inch, the Harrow Road, in the suburb of Ilex Mile. A pilot boat had brought the four travelers to the pier at the Fine Lady’s Steps, where they had disembarked and passed, as they must by law, through the crowded files of the Arrivals and Admissions House. Europe’s fame and station affording them a smoother passage among the long lines of newcomers and the frenzy of clerical rigor, they were soon in a hired takeny-coach progressing down long streets alive with a bustling mass Rossamünd could scarce comprehend. It was a fair trot before they entered quiet, opulent suburbs where, set in their parklike gardens, each residence seemed like a thin vertical palace.

  “Home once more . . . ,” Europe declared softly, peering from the carriage’s window as they crossed carefully now over a steep bridge that leaped the gap of a broad drain known as the Midwetter to a small artificial island.

  Craning to see, leaning out from the glassless carriage window, Rossamünd beheld the grandest house yet towering from behind an iron-spined wall of darkened stone. Founded on the very rock of an island, it stood isolated amid the graceful terraces and their well-groomed gardens, rising as high as all the noble roofs about. Six lofty stories of grim, dusken granite and stately staring windows; a solitary spire set against the flat, late-morning gray. However grand a structure it might be, Rossamünd thought it somehow strange to consider the great adventuring Branden Rose as possessing something so domestic as a home.

  The lentum turned abruptly through high wrought gates already opened in answer to the message Europe had sent ahead by scopp—a fast-running messenger child—of her arrival. In the gaunt space beyond lined with scant trees, the carriageway of white gravel quickly terminated in a large oval turnabout with a single thin cypress in its midst, a pivot about which carriages could circle. Arranged in near-martial order upon the front steps of the house like lighters and auxiliaries at a pageant-of-arms, a small quarto of senior staff was already waiting, turned out in black frock coats and stomacher-skirts with flashes or facings of red and magenta. One slender person was conspicuous among them in kitchen-white. Rossamünd sat back bashfully, suddenly nervous.

  CLOCHE ARDE THE HOUSE OF THE BRANDEN ROSE

  The door to the carriage was opened by a wan-looking man with iron-gray hair who handed Europe stiffly from the cabin. “Welcome, gracious lady,” he said with a solemn smile, his voice a sour-humored rasp.

  “Hello, Mister Kitchen,” Europe declared to her hander, continuing with a wry turn in her mouth. “Raise the flag—your mistress has returned.”

  Mister Kitchen responded with the ghost of a smirk, as if some small jest had been exchanged.

  Senses reeling from the crossing upon the Widgeon, clothes still bearing the stains of the thalasmachë, Rossamünd clambered clumsily from his seat, rocking the takeny-coach as he dismounted.

  “This young fellow”—the fulgar’s slight smile became a little more sincere as she gestured fluently to him—“is now my factotum. His name is Rossamünd Bookchild. Lodge him in the factotum’s set and accord him all the usual privileges. Rossamünd, this is Mister Kitchen, my steward—the rest of my staff you shall discover later.” She took in her humbly waiting servants in a glance.

  In their turn, the senior staff eyed Rossamünd evenly while footmen and the takeny driver tackled luggage.

  Rossamünd gave them all a short and awkward bow.

  If any had thoughts upon his unfortunate name, his youth or the grime of battle on his clothes, these serving folk did not betray them.

  “Mistress Clossette,” Europe continued as Fransitart and Craumpalin alighted, speaking to a black-haired servant woman with a severe face. “We shall have a late meal in the solar, and these old salts—Messrs Fransitart and Craumpalin—shall be eating with us.”

  Barely exited from the takeny, Rossamünd’s old masters nodded first to Europe and then her servants.

  “Thank ye, miss,” Fransitart muttered.

  Mister Kitchen, Mistress Clossette and the knot of staff eyed them somberly in return. Some strange new boy as a factotum was one thing, but tired, scabrous and aged vinegaroons was clearly another.

  “As you wish it, gracious lady,” responded Clossette flatly.

  Guiding Rossamünd before her, the Branden Rose strode into the house, staff in tow, Fransitart and Craumpalin following after.

  Through a narrow black door was a cold obverse of marble in a green so dark it was almost black, whorled with pallid coils, the night’s fumes made solid. Complete with stoppered loopholes, it existed more by tradition than need, a lingering feature from isolated high-houses built out in threwdish wilds.Through this Europe led them into a grand vestibule hall of equally somber marble, where in a line on either side, the junior staff awaited their mistress.

  The heels of Europe’s sturdy equiteer boots clapped clear upon the slick floor of checkered black basalt and green serpentine as she strode to the stair.

  “This, Rossamünd,” she said, pivoting arms out, palms up, “will be your home whenever we are in this infamous city.”

  Framed by white fluted pilasters and broad lintels, white doors stood stark in the dark walls on either hand. High above, the ceiling was a blatant sanguineous red, its wide moldings and cornice-works of glistening gold. There was no furniture here, just this empty, ponderous space. Dominating the opposite end of the hall was a broad stair of the same swarthy stone with a carpet intricately woven in reds and fawns and golds running up its center.

  Astounded, Rossamünd thought himself inside the great hall of one of the historied Attic queens and their fabled black palaces where moments of history played. He drew in a breath, filling his senses with
the faint yet distinct savor of Europe’s perfume, her essence lingering like some watchful presence.

  Sending her staff scurrying to draw baths for her and for Fransitart and Craumpalin too—“to soak out the sea-stink before eating”—Europe summoned Rossamünd to follow.

  Exchanging parting glances with his old masters, wide-eyed at this gauntly palatial setting, Rossamünd let himself be hustled upstairs, his mistress ahead, Kitchen coming after. The next floor was little more than a landing before a rather heavy door set back in an alcove painted a rich mossy green and figured with golden flowers. The panels of this door were intricate with snarling, leering bogles gamboling amid leaves and budding blossoms.

  “Through here is my file,” Europe declared, standing before this astonishing portal, “and beyond, my boudoir. You may not enter here unless I have summoned you or you come bearing my treacle. However, the front rooms of the next floor are for you,” she declared, nodding to the next flight of stairs. “They are your quarters, the factotum’s set. No other servant may enter unless on established routine or at your bidding. As for you, Rossamünd, you answer to me only; not even Mister Kitchen has say over your affairs.”

  Uncomfortable in the authority of such a position, Rossamünd nevertheless nodded gravely. He looked sidelong at Mister Kitchen but could discern nothing in the solemn steward’s blank face.

  Her hand on the green-copper handle of the door, Europe fixed Rossamünd with an appraising eye. “You will reconcile yourself to your new lot quickly enough, little man,” she offered with smooth irony. “Now up you go and organize yourself, then you and your masters may join me for a proper meal to make up for the thin fare they called food aboard the Widgeon.” With that she retreated through the carven door.

  Kitchen gestured to him to climb once more.