"Surely, my lady."
The parmisters and landholders murmured in approbation as the meeting was concluded and dispersed.
Trottinott beamed in pleasure at them, Europe and the world in general. Ahh, my problem is solved! was writ clear across his genial dial.
A pair of Trottinott's servants as their guides, Fransitart and Craumpalin went by one of the Monsiere's dozen carriages to Angas Welcome to retain any pathprys or other lurking fellows they could discover. Remaining at the manor to prepare, Europe and Rossamund took an early lunch with the family, supping in a modest but excellently appointed room attached to an enormous golden dining hall.
With the glow of good food in belly, Rossamund rode with Europe and Trottinott in the landaulet, driven-with the fulgar's permission-by one of the Monsiere's own men, the Monsiere himself well proofed and armed with a long-rifle richly ornamented with curling pearlescent devices. After much boyish persistence Autos had been allowed to come too, to the howling dismay of his little brother and clinging apprehension of his mother. Solemn-faced and harnessed like his father, the heir of Patredike now sat across from Rossamund, staring at him owlishly as they were taken down to a place called Scantling Aire. A small settlement of shepherds, vineyardists and hurtlemen, it was a bare few miles to the north and the site of the previous night's theroscade.
"Have you slayed many nickers?" Autos finally spoke, his voice stiff with contained intensity. He looked straight at the young factotum with serious, gray-blue eyes.
"I-ah-aye, some few…," Rossamund admitted after a small, sad breath. A memory of Threnody attempting to wit snarling, slavering nickers on the road before flashed unpleasantly in his thoughts.
The other boy's expression went wide, How can a boy my own age have already killed a nicker! obvious on his face.
For a moment Rossamund had an inkling of how peculiar he might look clad in his heavy proofing and laden with stoups and digitals like a proper skold.
"Where was this, young sir?" the Monsiere interjected, betraying no little amazement himself in his quizzically frowning mien.
"Ah… Out Bleak Lynche way, sir… on the Conduit Vermis," he added.
"Ahh, yes. I have heard some fluttering rumor that speaks of disquiet among the therian over that way," Trottinott observed. "I wonder if it bears any connection with our own distress."
"Perhaps," came Europe's soft reply.
Scantling Aire consisted of four round towers arranged in a square, the spaces between closed with a tall fence of stone and iron. Smilingly self-sufficient, the local parmister in plain gray soutaine greeted them in the iron-girded yard between these four tall cottages. They were quickly joined by many tired, solemn-eyed women dressed in white bagged sleeves and long-hemmed bibs of gray or brown, and ruddy barefoot children clad in sacklike smocks regardless of gender. These were the sheepwives and their bantlings-amiable enough, yet their hospitality was diminished by a deep fatigue.
There were, however, no other men.
Introduced as Master Parfait, the parmister was a windy, posturing, rooster of a man. He showed Europe about his tiny constituency with all the self-satisfaction of the sole male among a throng of frightened women.
"The men are all out in field or sleeping," Parfait explained to his lofty lady guest. "Some brave fellow has to keep eyes out for these lonesome ladies."
Rossamund looked away to hide his sour face.
"I am sure their menfolk have much to say about your bravery," Europe returned coldly.
The smug fellow's countenance fell. "Well… They… I-uh…" He spluttered and blundered to silence and was ignored forevermore.
In a flurry of curtsies and breathless "M'lady's!" the sheepwives were nevertheless reluctant to sacrifice a sheep to the demands of a fulgar.Yet, with some quiet encouragement from Trottinott, they singled out a young beast from the domestic pen. To their relief, Europe required only a little of its ichor let run into a bucket from a small hole pricked in its neck, and the life of the bewildered hogget was spared.
At the fulgar's instruction, this bucket of gore, two pails of soured sheep's milk and an armful of pudding basins were hefted by a quarto of doughty wives, carried outside of Scantling Aire's wall and about it to the meadow behind. This procession-Europe, Rossamund, the Monsiere and his son, and the senior-most wives of the village-was joined by children crowding and shouting and running after them as if it were a summerscale vigil.
Europe put Rossamund to work under the giggling gaze of the fascinated children peeking from the shade of the village wall.
The natural mound on which the community had been founded was knobbled with ancient, lichen-blotched boulders. Standing down on the meadow proper, elbow in hand, knuckle pressed to lip, the Branden Rose instructed Rossamund to set six pudding basins on the rocks, calling left, calling right until she was satisfied the bowls were spaced the correct number of yards apart along the whole eastern slant. His next task was to ladle soured sheep's milk from pail to basin, followed by a little sheep's blood.
"Make it twenty parts milk to one part red!" Europe instructed him as if it were some regular script.
The gore stained the curdlings the color of a person's skin; this sight and the accompanying smell made Rossamund's digesting stomach queasy.When all the pudding basins were full, he followed Europe out into the gray, broadly undulating land, dribbling a trail of blood-curdle from a gory bucket onto the teeth-mown turf. At a hundred yards he was instructed to place an earthen bowl down and fill it. He then trickled the bait for a similar distance and placed another blood-curdled bowl. This was repeated until the bucket was empty. To Rossamund's astonishment they had come near on a quarter of a mile.
"This should make an excellent slot for our hob-possum to follow to the bait proper," Europe observed, peering out into the pastures and up at the great hemisphere of patchy sky. "How sits the threwd?"
Found dumb for a moment by the directness of her question, Rossamund squinted into the east, to where they were told the threat usually arose. "It is unsettled," he replied carefully. "Not unfriendly, more… uncomfortable." It was the best word he could reckon.
The fulgar pursed her lips, her sharp gaze shifting from tussock to tussock as if monsters skulked behind every one.
"Miss Europe, what if this nicker is blithely?"
"I think you will find, Rossamund, that these humble people care little how blithely a nicker might be" was her quick reply, hazel eyes still intently scrutinizing their surroundings. "A beast of any stripe is a bane to a farmer if stealing his flocks."
Rossamund sighed. "Aye."
Europe arched a brow. "This nicker has begun to assail people's houses-hardly the evidence of a kindly nature, I would have thought…" Her expression abruptly hardened, and her attention fixed on something behind them, something toward Scantling Aire. "We are followed."
Rossamund spun about.
Maybe fifty yards behind stood Autos, hesitating, expression shifting manifestly between unease and keen inquisitiveness. "What are you doing?" he called as he dared to approach. Behind him, back by Scantling Aire, his father was standing among the boulders, watching apprehensively, hands cupped to mouth to shout his son back.
"I am making a slot for the unkindly nicker to follow," Europe explained bluntly. "Go back to your papa…"
"But he is no older than me!" Autos pointed stubbornly to Rossamund, his cracking voice an honest plea. "He helps you! I have an excellent fowling piece and can course with a whole kennel of talbots-"
"He is my factotum for a reason, child," Europe replied, her tone a warning, "holding vastly greater parts and practice than you! Go! I do not want to be forced to souse you with this bloody milk and leave you out here as part of the bait!"