Foundling ft-1 Page 5

  Just like that, Rossamund was on his own. Uneasy, he took up his valise and took the stairs down to the river. The fog was still too thick for him to see his destination. He passed a great post thickly painted white-a berth marker-appearing suddenly out of the gloom, then two more.

  As the fourth emerged from the soupy morning vapors, he spied a vessel moored there-or the shadow of one at least. As he approached, the outlines of the craft became clearer. It was indeed a cromster, though one in very poor repair, sitting dangerously low in the water. It did not look at all steady or sound to Rossamund, rather it looked ready to founder even in the calm of the Humour. He frowned. The foundling had not lived so closeted a life that he had not seen dozens-even hundreds-of cromsters plying the mighty river. None of them came close to luxury, but all of them were in far better repair than this tub of rivets.

  Cromsters, like most other ironclad river craft, sat low in the water, with a hull and keel that did not descend too deeply into the murky wash. This was necessary since rivers, even as large a stream as this, were much shallower than any sea, but Rossamund was sure that this one sat just a little too low. If the water lapped this near to the gunwale in the calm of a river, surely it would be spilling over it in great washes when the craft encountered even the smallest swells of the most sheltered ocean bays.

  As he came closer, Rossamund could see that mean, sickly-looking men were wrestling great barrels aboard the craft.

  "Ahoy!" came a call, and a hefty shadow of a man rolled down the sagging gangplank to the pier. "Who might ye be, lubberin' about on th' pier in th' shadowy morning mists?"

  Rossamund did not much like being told he was "lubberin'"-it was an unfriendly term seafaring folks used of those who were not. "I'm looking for Rivermaster Vigilus and the cromster Rupunzil!" he declared briskly.

  The hefty shadow came closer and clarified itself as an unsavory-looking fellow, tall and thickly built, with broad, round shoulders and matted eyebrows knotting over a darting, conspiratorial squint. His clothes were shabby, though they looked as if they had once been of good quality. His dark blue frock coat, probably proofed, with overly wide sleeves, was edged with even darker blue silk and lined with buff. This garment came down to his knees and covered everything but a pair of hard-worn shin-collar boots. The man emitted a powerfully foul odor, and altogether gave Rossamund a distinctly uneasy feeling.

  "And where might ye be from, young master," this fellow asked, almost sweetly, his breath proving even fouler than his general stench, "to need to see such a fellow and such a vessel?"

  "I be Rossamund Bookchild from Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls." Rossamund gave a nervous half a bow. "Rivermaster Vigilus is meant to take me to High Vesting." This stranger might have been smelly, but that did not mean Rossamund had to be rude.

  The unsavory fellow seemed to hesitate at this, then gathered himself. "So ye're me lively cargo, lad?" he purred, giving a saucy wink. "Bit unfortunate about yer name, but there ye 'ave it. Still! Grateful to 'ave met ye all th' same." He bowed, removing his tricorn to show gray, greasy hair pulled back in a stubby baton. Patting his own chest, the captain continued. "I be Rivermaster Vigilus, yer ever so 'umble servant."

  This comment on his name was certainly among the more blunt Rossamund had yet heard. Already low in his estimation, this fellow-this Rivermaster Vigilus-sunk lower still.

  Obviously unconcerned, the rivermaster plowed on. "I'll get ye safe to yer next 'arbor. I've plied this awful river for many a long year and I knows 'er bumps and lumps like th' warts on me own rear!" He declared this so loudly that many of the crew chuckled or sneered. "Thank 'e, lads." He gave a swaggering half bow in the direction of the crew. "This is me crew-sons of a madwoman all!" With a vague wave of his voluminously sleeved arm, he introduced the several dozen bargemen busy loading awkwardly large barrels marked Swine's Lard into the hold. These fellows looked as rough and gruesome as their captain. Rossamund frowned at them and at the rusting vessel they worked.

  What was Mister Sebastipole thinking? This lot would barely make it to the Axles, let alone all the way to High Vesting!

  The rivermaster must have sensed his concerns, for he cleared his throat and said, "Aye, not th' lithest tub ye've seen, nor th' 'andsomest crew, I'll grant, but there ye 'ave it. She be me other vessel, ye see-me standby as I've 'eard it said. The poor ol' 'Punzil is laid up in ordinary with a great 'ole in 'er ladeboard side. Distressin' I tells ye, and costly too. But there ye 'ave it again." The rivermaster gave a sad sigh and Rossamund felt a certain sympathy for him. When a vessel was laid up in ordinary-that is, deliberately stranded out of the water for repairs-it was often a troublesome business. "Instead, this be the six-gun cromster 'ogshead," he continued. "She'll be our carriage to 'igh Vesting and our quarters till we get there. She's steadier than she looks and sound and able to go into all waters-fit enough to 'ave made th' voyage to 'igh Vesting and back ag'in many times, as sure as I'm standin' 'ere!"

  Despite all these claims they did little to allay Rossamund's fears. He knew too much about how a vessel should be-a benefit of being raised in a marine society. He looked the Hogshead up and down and spied the figurehead for the first time, protruded from the bow. It was of a snarling pig, so corroded and neglected that it looked as if it was rotting. He thought the name Hogshead-which he knew was also the name for a large, cumbersome barrel-profoundly fitting. A laborer rolled by them such a barrel, which emitted an odor so powerful and foul it made Rossamund gag.

  Pullets and cockerels! I hope I don't have to spend my trip next to them-whatever they are…

  "I was told my fare was already paid?"

  The rivermaster seemed to do a quick calculation, then said, slowly, "Aye, young master, that it 'as." He gave Rossamund a quick grin. "Welcome aboard!" He steered Rossamund up the gangplank and onto the befouled deck of the vessel. "I'll 'ave to be about me business now. We make off shortly. Settle yerself out o' th' way. May your cruise be as pleasant as th' Spring Caravan of th' Gightland Queen."

  The cromster shuddered. Its gastrines, the engines of living muscles that would quietly propel her through the water, were being limbered-stretched and warmed ready for the hard work of turning the screw that pushed the Hogshead along.

  Rossamund stood by the helm and waited with apprehension. He surely wished Mister Sebastipole had accompanied him. Things seemed a little too odd.

  "Ready to go, Poundinch!" a sour-looking man called to the rivermaster.

  "Poundinch?" Rossamund could not help but exclaim his thoughts. "Aren't you Rivermaster Vigilus?"

  "Ah, aye… well… I am one and th' same!" The unsavory fellow rolled his eyes a little. He sucked in a breath. Then he said, "Poundinch is just another way of saying Vigilus, ye see. Different language, ye see, Tutin-like th' Emp'rer hisself speaks: 'vigil' is th' same as 'pound'; 'ilus' is th' same as 'inch.' Ye see? Me lads prefer the more comfortable sound o' Poundinch, is all. They says it so much I gets in th' 'abit of callin' meself th' same too… and ye can calls me it as well: Rivermaster Poundinch. How'd that be?"

  Rossamund squinted. He knew almost nothing of the Imperial language-Tutin, it was called-but something sounded a little off beam.

  The musty rivermaster raised an apparently conciliatory hand and gave a mildly wounded look. "It's all right, I won't be offended. I often gets people axing-'tis almost a habit for me to 'ave to explain."

  Rossamund knew what it was to have a difficult name-to be misunderstood by it. He pressed the confusion no further.

  "So, now we're all properly acquainted, let's 'eave to." Rivermaster Poundinch or Vigilus-whoever he might be-smiled, then called, "Cast 'er off, Mister Pike!" to his boatswain, who relayed the order with another yell. The rivermaster took up a speaking tube and hollered within, "We'll 'ave 'er at two knots, Mister Shunt!"

  The pier men threw ropes, the bargemen pushed off and with further shuddering the Hogshead moved slowly out and steadily down the narrow channel. Ro
ssamund quailed faintly with confusion, holding off an embarrassing, blubbering panic. Away from the bank wall of sandstone they went, away from the granite pier. Just like that, Rossamund was on his way-uncertain, and unhappily alone with this frightful crew.

  The Hogshead slowly trod past the shadow of another cromster on its right. That it was in much better repair was obvious even in the murk. Rossamund squinted and took a step forward to see if he might read the other vessel's nameplate, but was prevented by fog and the bustling of the bargemen. Yet, just before the other cromster disappeared into the obscurity, he thought he saw someone pacing beside it, on the pier, as if waiting for something or someone. He could not, however, be sure.

  The Hogshead moved on.

  The channel was one of the many man-made tributaries that had been dug from the main flow of the Humour many centuries ago-running into and out of the city, flowing down valleys of brickwork. Buildings often went right up to the channel's edge, making the banks an almost continuous wall of drab bricks and dark stone in which streets and sludgy drains made deeply vertical gaps. Rossamund watched it all pass by in a silence of profound agitation. The Padderbeck Stair and its pier disappeared into the gloom.

  "Now, me lad!" the rivermaster's voice boomed, offending the morning quiet, and startling Rossamund from his unhappy funk. "Do as I tells ye, and we'll be th' best of mates, matey. So find yerself a spot on th' prow and stay outta me way."

  The foundling obeyed, sitting right at the front of the Hogshead. The crew left him alone, free to fret on his future, as they made their way out of Boschenberg. The cromster passed beneath a heavy arch of black stone, its portcullis raised and dripping with condensed fog, and went from the dim gloom of the city-channel into the pale murk of the open waters of the Humour. In the dark sepia waters before them was a lane marked with squat quartz pillars that glowed wanly in the vaporous morning. Rossamund had heard that these were made using an ancient and half-forgotten art, followed step-by-complex-step but little understood. The shadows of other vessels passed them by with faint thrumming hisses; ships' bells clung their warnings in the turgid damp.

  In the middle of the river the Hogshead came about and went southward, going downstream. The fog began to thin, showing the sun low in the east, a bulging, bloodred disk. The cromster continued south, moving past mountainous onyx palaces, past grand villas and dark stately homes, past the wooden houses and low hovels, past even the Vlinderstrat and his old abode. Before them, athwart the Hogshead's path, was a massive rivergate that spanned the entire width of the Humour. The Axle. Tall it was, with pale granite turrets and many high arches held up by great columns and guarded by ponderous iron grilles that descended right to the muddy bottom. Heavily fortified bastions towered by either side of each arch and strong points filled with soldiers and forty-eight pounder long guns at every midpoint between. Over five hundred years ago the Axle had been built out from the city's second curtain wall to guard it from unwanted things on and in the river. All the traffic of the Humour had to pass through it, and to pass through meant you paid a toll. Rossamund had seen the rivergate several times before-though he had never passed through it-and it still amazed and daunted him. He knew very well that doing so for the first time was a deeply significant thing for a Boschenberger. It meant you were leaving the lulling, familiar security of your city, your home. It meant you were entering the broad wild places, where monsters harried and mishaps threatened. It meant your life changing forever.

  Rossamund stared at the Axle in awe.

  High above, musketeers in black and brown stood upon its solid battlements, vigilant wardens who strove to keep the city safe-whether from monsters or wicked men. The scarlet gleam of this eerie morning reflected from bayonets and musket muzzles. Graceful pennants of sable and mole flicked and snapped higher still above them all. Such a mighty and well-defended wall. What Rossamund found even more spectacular was that there was another Axle-the twin of this one-upstream, guarding Boschenberg's northern end. He felt a strange swell of pride for his city-state.

  With a deep, near-silent thudding the Hogshead slowed, the screws pushing back against the flow of the old river. One of the many great gates in the Axle loomed. Contrary to Rossamund's pessimism the cromster had managed to make it there without sinking. It pulled up alongside the enormous base of one of the great columns that fixed the whole rivergate to the immemorial rock petrified beneath the slime of the riverbed. Part of the column's base was fashioned into a low, grimy wharf, and by this the Hogshead halted to have its cargo inspected and pay the river toll. A door of pale, corroded green opened out onto the wharf, and from it marched several excise inspectors dressed in the familiar brown and black of Boschenberg.

  With a grin and a wink at Rossamund, Poundinch stepped off the Hogshead and held a conference with the most official-looking of all the inspectors. Rossamund sat at the prow of the cromster pretending not to listen, and listened intently indeed to the hushed conversation. Though he did not grasp all the baffling inconsistencies of adult ways, something about their communication suggested conspiracy.

  "Such a pleasure to see ye again, Clerks' Sergeant Voorwind." Poundinch touched the edge of his thrice-high. He handed over the manifest of his vessel's hold and with it a little paper package.

  "And good early morning to you, Rivermaster Poundinch," the official replied with a cynical grin. "What is your cargo this time?" He took the manifest and the little paper package with it, making as if to read the first while slyly pocketing the second.

  Poundinch inclined his head. "Much th' same as it always is: seventy barrels of exceptional swine's lard bound for th' soap 'ouses and wax factories of th' Considine, m'lord, and ten bushels of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for th' perfumeries of Ives and Chassart."

  "That far south! In this old bucket?" The clerks' sergeant raised an eyebrow. "I may have to charge you an additional fee. How exceptional are we talking?"

  "Full and putridly ripe. It's took a great deal of 'ard work to get it delivered and just as much to load." Poundinch smiled smugly.

  "And the young master by the tiller? He's not one of your deliveries, is he?"

  Rossamund's spine tingled as he realized the clerks' sergeant was talking about him.

  "Oh, no, no. I've taken on a cabin boy, see. Fetch and carry and such. Someone to learn th' ropes and take up th' trade, as ye like. 'E's well appraised of th' arrangements, never ye mind."

  A cabin boy? Fetch and carry?

  Rossamund held his breath. What was all this double-talk? Why did Rivermaster Poundinch not just speak the truth? Does he not know that I can hear him?

  Clerks' Sergeant Voorwind frowned. "As it should be, Poundinch. We both know what happened last time you took on a cabin lad. This new fellow will most certainly incur another toll." He lowered his voice so that Rossamund had difficulty hearing what he said next. "Be warned, the Emperor has issued an edict expanding the bans on the dark trades. We won't trouble ourselves with it now, but next time you're through be expecting to pay an even higher fine."

  Now it was Poundinch's turn to frown. "As ye like it, Voorwind," he said through gritted teeth. "Don't push us too 'ard, mind, or we might 'ave to push back."

  "Careful, Poundinch!" the clerks' sergeant snarled quietly. "'Twould be an easy thing for me to reverse things as they stand. If you force me, I'll push right back again, with the authority of our beloved city-state." He took a step backward, his expression changing easily from open hostility to formal approval. "Very good, rivermaster. We'll complete our inspection, then you may go on your way."

  Muttering imprecations into his creased neckerchief, Poundinch stepped back onto the Hogshead and waited there by the column's base for the clerks to finish their duty.

  Rossamund was certainly ignorant of much of the conversation's true meaning, but his suspicions still churned. What were the "dark trades" that Voorwind fellow had hinted at? He found it hard to understand how it was that a man like Sebastipole-punctual, officious
-had, it seemed, got him a berth upon a vessel of such poor conduct.

  While the rivermaster and clerks' sergeant had been in conference, sturdy men had been looking the Hogshead over. They had descended the waist ladder into the hold-quickly reappearing with disgusted expressions on their faces-to scrutinize the bargemen's papers. Eventually a hefty, bespectacled clerk demanded to see Rossamund's own traveling certificates. The clerk looked very much as if he knew what to do should any document not meet his precise requirements. Rossamund stared up at him as he handed over his papers. It was like looking up at a solid brick wall. With a cursory scan the clerk returned his papers without a comment.

  Fees paid and cargo and crew declared fit, the Hogshead was permitted to pass. The grille before them squealed and slowly moved aside. The vessel trod through cautiously. Once clear of the mighty Axle, it gathered speed and proceeded downriver, passing the third curtain wall of Boschenberg, then the outer curtain wall and the suburbs fenced in between. Beyond the city, farmlands, immaculately tilled and primly fenced, stretched away on both sides. Gorgeously white egrets stalked and crimson-legged water hens waddled about the banks among the sodden roots and falling russet leaves of tall sycamores, graceful elms and black, evergreen turpentines.

  Rossamund stayed at his post right at the tip of the bow, where he read his instructions and his beloved almanac, and tried his best to avoid the crew, none of whom was proving very friendly. The instructions were brief and simple: he was to remain aboard the vessel till he reached High Vesting and, once disembarked, was to meet with a certain Mister Germanicus in the offices of the Chief Harbor Governor. From there Mister Germanicus was to assist the boy to Winstermill, the lamplighters' manse-or headquarters-where he would receive further instructions. At the bottom was a strange mark, "Seb," ending in a line with a squiggle, which he assumed was Sebastipole's mark.