Though dim, ready for the imminent performance, the heaven-blue theater was far taller and deeper than it appeared possible from its small front upon the street. Every edge and skirting and corner was gilt-rimmed, the long ceiling painted to look like a bank of fluffy moon-shone clouds warm-lit beneath as if illuminated by the radiance of the stage itself. Every balcony stall was filling with periwigs, gleaming silk, feathery frills and peering lorgnettes, the benches all but taken by scratch-bobs, straw bonnets and tricorns.
Rookwood waved to some associate down in the inferior benches. Rossamund saw the briefest glimpse of a thin fellow with round spectacles beckoning in return before all useful light was extinguished.
Only the soft glow from the musicians' pit to the left of the open stage remained.
The young factotum's chest thumped in anticipation.
To the swell of reedy nasal piping and clashing tambourine, the stage light flared and the panto began. Before a backdrop of wide idealized wildlands, tableau pines and elegant poplars dotting low and aesthetically pleasing hills, a man emerged from the side shadows. Dressed in an elaborate silver frock coat and silver-gray wig, the fancy's face was paste-white, his cheeks garishly rouged. For all his finery he held an ax that he flourished like some overly eager woodsman. "Lards, ladles and gentlespoons!" he cried with high-speaking elocution and many a rrrrolling "r" that reminded Rossamund of poor Master Pinsum, burned up in the fire of the marine society. "Our opening offerrring we brrring before you is sure to titivate your humours with its happy hijinkerrry. Here now the Buffoon Courteous Players playing the Thrrree Brrrothers Hob!"
The auditorium near burst with boisterous, hallooing applause.
Flushed with enchantment and glad to have been invited, Rossamund chortled and clapped with the rest as the players pranced a-stage. They wore grotesque wide-mouthed masks with crooked horns and protuberant ears-the classic lampoon of a nicker. Pronking about the boards, they waggled their back-ends at the cackling crowd and cried out with extreme and comic gravity. One farce steadily gave way to the next, and the entire panto unfolded as a bitter invective against monsters, the age-old anger submerged in cheap laughter and rowdy and hissing fun. Rossamund's delight diminished with each shoddy insult until he was sitting hunched in his seat.Yet beside him Rookwood laughed with such unabashed glee-rocking and hooting his approval at each new and authentically comical novelty-that the young factotum could not help smiles of his own.
Finally the show was run, and in an acme of relief, Rossamund was bustled by Rookwood and friends onto the cool street at last. Barreling aboard a takeny and on to the next venue without a pause, they were joined by the bespectacled friend seen waving from the benches: Eusebus Something… Rossamund did not catch his family name.Tall and thin, with strangely cropped hair, Eusebus was an initiate at the city's sole athenaeum and proved only mildly impressed at the young factotum's credentials.
"How-now, Mister Bookchild." Rookwood grinned as the driver slowly extracted them from the near-riotous profusion of carriages and carelessly cheerful pedestrians. "You did not seem to smile much as the show went on. I trust it was a tickle to your fancybone?"
"Not planning on becoming a ridiculous eeker, are you?" Eusebus offered wryly.
"Well, I… ah-," the young factotum began, but was happily overborne by the sickly Frangipanni.
"For the true teratologist and her devoted servant the contest with the monster is too serious to be so lightly treated," she declared imperiously in Rossamund's defense, a faint Gottish lift in her accent.
"You would surely know, Franny," Avarice responded. "I have never seen a more serious teratologist than you, and you never laugh at the pantos."
The young skold stared at her coldly, coughed feebly and said nothing.
Unable to goad her, Avarice turned to the young factotum. "So tell us, Master Factotum," she demanded happily. "Tell us of the Branden Rose."
So began an assault of questions.
"What is she like to work for? Is she overly harsh?"
"Well, she is not overly taut," Rossamund tried.
"Does she pay well?" This from Eusebus.
To this Rossamund just frowned, yet their eagerness was undiminished.
"Is she as careless of men as ze pamphlets say?"
Dumbfounded, all he could think to say was, "She is a private woman…"
"What first stance does she prefer? Procede sinister or procede dexter? Or does she do away with such formality and adopt perto adversus?"
"I-"
"I knew it! Perto adversus! Like any fighter with a proper, modern mind ought."
"How many effreins-nickers-has she killed?"
At this he shrugged. "A lot, certainly…"
"I heard she marks her arms with little crosses; is that true?" Avarice pressed, and went straight on without an answer. "I shall do just the same upon my first kill-none of these vulgar so-called noble marks more common fighters get."
"Does she add anything… well, additional to her treacle?" Rookwood inquired knowingly.
Rossamund could not think of what additional part might be so infamously added to treacle, beyond sweet-lass.
"Ah yes!" Avarice added. "Some of Sinster's children like to have sang egregia or extract of goat weed put in their plaudamentum," she said with all the authority of a genuine factotum, "or replace xthylistic curd with lard of Nmis."
"Oh…" Rossamund scowled, recognizing these parts as those that, though they went to make a person brave and strong, were dangerously habit-forming and spoiled a person's soul. "No, nothing beyond the proper list."
"Were you zere when zis Licurius fell?" Trudgette asked, her voice low and shaking with scarce-contained enthusiasm.
Not at all willing to explore such a memory publicly, Rossamund simply stared at her.
Rookwood intervened. "Come! Let us not swamp the fine fellow with our zeal!"
That very moment, on a street of narrow-fronted countinghouses and clerical suppliers, the takeny overtook a gaggle of dolly-mops on their way to night-working mills and spinning halls, working even through a Domesday. Each was dressed in bright versions of maid's clobber, laughing and chatting and accosting any awkward fellow unfortunate enough to be in their path. Leaning far out from the window, Eusebus tipped his hat to them and sang loud and clear: Dance with a dolly with a hole in her stocking, a hole in her stocking, a hole in her stocking…
To this the laboring-girls shrieked friendly taunts.
"Come down here, my sweet, and we'll dance ye!"
"Ahh, modern girls." Eusebus beamed, at which his friends laughed heartily, and they passed on.
Though Rossamund could have with fair accuracy found north, after only fifteen minutes of the carriage's mazing progress in the dark and the increasing fog down rows of storehouses and shipping clericies, he had little notion of where they arrived. Now that the carriage was still, saturnine tollings of floating hazard bells could be heard lolling on the waves-some near, some far, speaking of his proximity to the sea. Indeed, the sweet vinegar stink and the pocked precipice of the Stunt Veil sea wall confirmed it. Across the gloomy street stood a lonely house, four stories tall and built on the harbor's edge right into the sea wall. A green bright-limn hung above its cherry-red painted front door, one of the few lights visible in the miry night.
"What is this?" Rossamund asked skeptically as they huddled from the damp beneath its eaves.
"The Broken Doll, my fine fellow!" Rookwood proclaimed cheerfully.
"The merry end of the night," Eusebus added, peering through water-splashed lenses. "Vittles, vino and gaming vices.You'd better hope Droid is smiling down upon you."
Droid? Rossamund frowned. He instinctively looked up to locate this heavenly light and was foiled by the obstructing cloud, a cloying roof on the night.