"Allow me to name my wife-Lillette, the Madamine Trottinott…"
The auburn-haired beauty curtsied low with well-practiced ease and a slight creak of stays, her elaborate curls falling about her face and neck. "Gracious lady," she said with great gravity, the doubt in her eyes at this martial peeress discreetly contained.
"And two of my triple joys, Autos…"
The older boy bowed, saying with already breaking voice, "I am delighted, graciousness."
"… and Pathos."
The younger boy grinned. "Hullo, my lady!" he said with a slight rustic burr.
"And hullo to you, small fellow," Europe returned with the perfect model of an amiable smile.
"He loves to spend his days with my moilers," the father offered by way of explanation. "Their older sister, Muse, is boarded at the aplombery in Lo, applying herself to finishing her womanly graces."
Europe sniffed bitterly as if to say exactly what she thought of aplomberies, yet when she spoke, she was civil and smooth. "So tell me more, Monsiere, of this creature that besets you. Have you seen it?"
Trottinott's face fell. "Ah. That I have not, gracious lady, though several of my tenants and servants have. All that is sure is the evidence of their ravages: my kennels empty." He looked nervously to his sons, clearly uneasy about saying too much in front of them. "Vines in ruins, flocks… decimated, their herdsmen hurt and demanding exorbitant incentive to stay to the watch of their folds. It would be best to speak with them. I shall call them out tomorrow. They have had closest dealings with the… troublers… Apart, that is, from the fugelman we sought from Dough Hill to hunt it-but alas, he never returned, precipitating the very writ you have so fitly answered… Ah! But listen to me! It is a long road from the bright city to here." The Monsiere spread his hands before them. "You should take a day to recover yourselves."
"Idle hands find mischief, good sir, and idle minds even more," Europe proclaimed, to the gentleman's clear relief. "We shall begin tomorrow. Now, if you please, direct my factotum to the place most appropriate where he might make my plaudamentum."
15
Parmister essentially a foreman in charge of the various workings and facets of a franchise. Whether it is the shepherds and their flocks, the hay wards and their herds, the swains and their farrows, the moilers and their fields, the pruners and their trees, the pickers and their vines, the garnerers and their stores, there is a parmister in charge of each, and a master-parmister in charge of all and answering only to the owning lord or his seniormost agent.
In the half-light of a fresh, still day, gentle servants roused Rossamund early. With careful quiet they stoked the hearth and set more wash-water on the nightstand, then left him be. In the serene luxury he bathed away the stains of travel in the balmy comfort of the copper basin. After a dinner the night before of a full five removes and glaces, he had been too fatigued to do more than collapse on the opulent bed and sleep, despite the gale pounding at the shutters and howling desolately down the chimney flue.
A hesitating knock stirred him and had him leaping from the water to hurry on smalls and longshanks. Fransitart and Craumpalin had come, faces kindly, eyes shining with a strange agitation.
"Slept the slumber o' the innocent, 'ey, lad?" Fransitart smiled earnestly.
Rossamund could not conjure the words to fit his confusion. He stared hopefully at his old masters and realized that Fransitart was just in shirt and weskit, that he was carrying his heavy frock coat and the long shirtsleeve on his left arm-his puncted arm-was loose. "Master Frans…"
With a look to the door, the dormitory master drew back the cloth of his sleeve and bared the pallid flesh on the underside of his forearm. "It's showed itself, lad…"
There, marked by the butcher Grotius Swill during the inquest at Winstermill, and clean of any scab, was a small, scarce-begun cruorpunxis of faint red-brown lines-a monster-blood tattoo made from Rossamund's very own blood.
For a moment the young factotum simply stared at the incomplete figure. In the short time he had been afforded to work before Europe's intervention, Swill had still managed to mark what was recognizably a curling brow, a whorled eye and a nose. He was barely surprised to see it revealed, yet something within Rossamund still knotted, bringing with it a peculiar sense of dislocation, of observing himself as if from without.
"Ahh… I'm sorry, Rossamund," Fransitart murmured, shaking his venerable head as if he were at fault, quickly concealing the pristine cruorpunxis again under his sleeve.
Rossamund drew in deeply of the delicately scented air of the room. "I already know…," he breathed, a disconcerting ringing setting in his ears.
Craumpalin nodded sagely. "I can't say I am in any stretch flabbergasted meself, lad."
"No," the young factotum persisted. Time to be out with it all, time to trust these faithful men as good as fathers… "A monster-lord told me so."
"A monster-lord?"
"Where, lad? Out in the Paucitine?"
"No." Rossamund closed his eyes. "In the Moldwood in Brandenbrass… The Duke of Rabbits…"
"In the middle of a city!" Fransitart bridled. "Surely the line of dukes would've had a battalion of pugilists in there quick as levin to winkle it out?"
"It is too mighty for that, Master Frans. Most of the whole city doesn't fathom it's there. They never have, and I reckon they never will…"15
"Sparrows! Rabbits!" Fransitart exclaimed softly. "Brace me to a mizzenmast tree, what else be out there?"
"More'n common folk would reckon upon," Craumpalin replied knowingly, tapping his vinegar-scarred temple.
Rossamund let out a long and shuddering sigh.
The ex-dormitory master gripped him firmly by the arms and held him in his narrow, wondering gaze.
As unlikely and bizarre as it was, Rossamund was not just some causeless aberration; real though occult processes had brought him to be. He had been formed by ancient unsullied forces, a child of the threwd, of the very earth.
Suddenly, the young factotum flung himself into the old salt's grasp, Fransitart gathering him in to clasp him close and hard, somehow managing to smother him with his thin, still-strong arms. With a great gust of tears muffled in the rough stale proofing of the old salt's weskit, Rossamund poured out the weight and agony of it all.
"If ye were knit of me own stuff, boy, I could not love ye better!" Fransitart whispered.
"Aye, lad…," Craumpalin's emotion-cracking murmur confirmed.
Fransitart released him from his paternal embrace and he looked at his masters squarely. In return the two vinegaroons regarded him in wonder.
"Well, let's have a squint at thy trunk," said Craumpalin matter-of-factly, finally breaking the tender quiet. He held up his own satchel with its brews and bandages. "All gone," he marveled as Rossamund submitted to the scrutiny. "Nought left but slight bruemes."
Indeed, where livid bruises had covered half his ribs only two days ago there were but faint shades of the old contusions.
"Tend thy pumps and tell me if it hurts…"
Obediently, Rossamund took a deep breath… Barely a twinge.
"Thee always was a prodigious quick healer," Craumpalin said knowingly, patting him in fatherly fashion on the crown.
"Wish I could say the same," Fransitart muttered sardonically, bending with a wince at the hips. He fixed Rossamund with a determined eye. "We'll 'ave to be showin' me mark to yer mistress, lad," he said with old masterly firmness.