At the sound Rossamund naturally ducked as if a mere bundle of drying kelp could protect him, hands fumbling for his potives in their unfamiliarly new digitals.
Darter Brown took wing and vanished over the wall.
Both had shot, yet only White-hair went down, folding in on himself like the closing of a well-made test-barrow. With a kick of sand in his foe's direction, Brown-hair sprang laughing up the ladder, his chums peering down from above sharing the joke. Once he was safely at the top, the ladder was hauled away and the white-haired duelist left writhing on the shore alone.
The cold, tingling touch of the encroaching tide on his toes brought Rossamund to sense. Running as quickly as only partly firm sand will permit, the young factotum approached the man, calling as he got close, "Ahoy, sir! Are you well? Ahoy!" Skidding as he stopped a few cautious feet from the double-bent fellow, Rossamund bent down himself. "Are you badly done in, sir? Where are you shot?"
"I'm not shot," came the muffled reply, filled as much with impatience as pain.
"Pardon?" The young factotum craned further, trying to see the fellow's face, still buried in the huddle of his arms.
White-hair suddenly sat back and in a fright Rossamund did the same.
"I am not shot!" the fellow insisted in tetchy embarrassment, lean face frightfully wan, hazel eyes streaming. "It was sack."
"Sack?"
"Yes, we load our irons with sack."
"Irons?"
"Yes! Irons! Dags! These!" The white-haired fellow lifted a beautiful black and silver pistola and waggled it irritably. "Firing-irons… Pistols…"
What kind of person is this? Rossamund nodded his comprehension. "Do you need help, sir?"
Wincing, White-hair sucked deep, deep breaths before answering. "No… no, I shall… shall soon… soon walk again…" Another even deeper and ruttling gasp. "That pursemouse simply hit me in… in the bullet-bag-a lucky shot he won't ever repeat… but it will teach me for not wearing a likesome… Always wear a likesome," he said again, in the tone of repeating an instruction.
Likesome? This was a proofed covered frame of stiffed leather some in the fighterly line liked to wear over their groin. Suddenly the nature of the man's discomfort became clear to the young factotum, and, clearing his throat awkwardly, he reached into his stoup. "Might I at least offer you this," he said, producing a vial of levenseep from his skolding collection, "and help you to a stairway?"
White-hair peered at the bottle and then looked a little doubtfully to Rossamund. "Leven-water, is it? I've not had that since Aunty saw me through the consumptive palsies of eighty-five. Well, thank you, my man." He took the vial and a healthy swig-more than necessary for a single dose-and smacked his lips as he gave the draught back. "There's the business!" he declared more cheerfully, with a couple of rapid, revivified blinks.
Peering about, Rossamund helped him to his feet, taking the weight as White-hair pressed heftily on him to rise.
"My word, you're a stout fellow," the young man declared in open surprise, shaking sandy grains from his sumptuous coat hems. Picking up his pistols, he examined them intensely for a moment with a deeply unhappy expression. "Sand in the workings," he muttered glumly, shaking his head.
"They look like fine pieces, sir," Rossamund observed conversationally.
"And well they are, sir!" the white-haired fellow exclaimed. "If you value your life over your purse, you will not spare even double money to buy a good dag: better an empty pocket than a cooling corpse, I say…" He blew hard over the locks and flints, cheeks bulging with the effort. With a quick glance to the sea, he returned them to the bright-black holsters hanging at either hip. "I believe it's time to depart. I suggest we go that way." He nodded back north, from where Rossamund had already come. "The closest grece is there."
The young factotum readily submitted to what he presumed was the man's superior local reckoning. He had felt the sting of the acrid Grume before and had no wish to soak in it again. The fellow shook off his discomfort, and his pace, though at first slow, soon picked up. They walked in silence, the young factotum pondering black beach and white sea, until the white-haired fellow piped, "What do they call you?"
"Uh… Rossamund… Rossamund Bookchild."
"Is that so?"
Rossamund could not tell whether the catch in his companion's voice was hesitation or the simple taking of a breath.
"How do ye do, Rossamund Bookchild. I am Rookwood-Rookwood Saakrahenemus Fyfe."
For all his mature airs, this Rookwood fellow was actually rather young-certainly a lot younger than, say, Fouracres or Mister Sebastipole. In light of the fellow's recent humiliation, there was something smilingly winsome and altogether pleasant in his expression, and Rossamund decided he liked him.
"Who was that other gentleman?" he asked.
"Oh." Rookwood became sheepish. "Uh-a friend… with a pretty wife… a strange turn of humor… and an overly fortuitous aim. Come! Let us be off before we are drowned."
With only a foot of treadable sand left between water and wall, they found a stairway off the beach.
"Here we are, still dry in cheery Pebble Knife," Rookwood said with a wry look to the lowering afternoon sky, the neglected seaside facades and the dour expressions and faded apparel of the few passing people. "This is no place to strut alone… Perhaps we can walk each other out of here as we look for a takeny each and then go upon our ways?" he finished, with a look left and right.
They walked north along the shorefront for a time, going by blunt bastion-towers on the right and once-bright paint and once-gaudy awnings now moldy and frayed on the left. Down alleys and blindways Rossamund caught sight of twinkling pebbly eyes and tall twitching ears, quickly followed-when he tried to look closer-by the hasty bobbing flash of retreating cotton tails.
Rabbits!
In their own progress, Rookwood drew some dark looks himself from lowlier souls. He did not seem to mind them. Rather, walking with less of a limp now, he chatted merrily enough about airy things, and mostly about himself. "Being a Bookchild would make you orphaned, yes? As am I, sir, as am I. My mother perished of the fevers…" He paused, reflective, for a breath. "And my father was sunk at sea at the Battle of Maundersea."
"Your father is Rear Admiral Fyfe?" Rossamund asked in astonishment, easily connecting this celebrated name from pamphlet tales and oft-taught lessons of naval matter; his admiration and wonder at this fellow were increasing with every moment.
"Indeed he was!" Rookwood frowned. "The great man himself, who died even as he won himself immortal fame defeating the Lombardy picaroons and so leaving me to the capricious generosity of my aunt Saakrahenemus-my mother's sister and of the main branch of family line," he added in rapid parenthesis. "Under her stringent care I have had a scant living paid at the start of each month that is-Ah-hah!" he exclaimed abruptly, interrupting himself. "The Lots grin on us! A moll potny!" He pointed to a lamppost corner where an olive-skinned girl in maid's smock and bonnet stood by a deep black pot sat atop a portable cast-iron stove. "Are you hungry, Master Bookchild?"
Rossamund most certainly was, and eagerly admitted it.
This moll potny was selling the reputedly famous bunny daube, the dish proving to be a surprisingly meaty stew livened up with scringings and "extras"-as she called them. For a gosling-a half-guise piece-she dished the dark brown mass from the pot into simple wooden pannikins bought for another gosling. Indeed, even rudimentary turnery was for sale.
"With enough money a fellow might never need to own his own kitchen!" Rookwood grinned.
Eating as they walked-Rossamund working hard to keep the sloppy daube from slipping down his coat front-they found a better quality of street that took them inland.