On a lofty pinnacle obscured by rock and tree, Rossamund glimpsed the evidence of a fortification. It seemed to him that there was a remnant path leading to it from the road, and he was possessed with a strong desire to go up and explore.
"It is likely a Burgundian fastness." Europe answered his inquiry with a mildly didactic tone, chewing on a cold spatchcock greme clumsy supplied from the Monsiere's own larder. "Built during the subjugation of the monster-worshipping Piltdowners who were said to crowd these hills. This is how my schooldames taught it to me… though it has been some time now since my instruction at Fontrevault."
"Fontrevault?"
"The sequestury and aplombery of the Right of the Open Hand. My mother boarded me there, little doubt believing that training in the five graces would calm me. She did not, however, account for the bastinado and sagaris also taught there, nor my facility in them… Happy times." Europe's smile was ironic.
"Ye were lettered with calendars?" Fransitart asked over his shoulder.
"Indeed… and was expelled by them too." Europe sipped at her wine with an arch and sardonic air. "It was not much later that I left Naimes for good."
They moved up into the next crag and the sight of the ruin was lost.
As sour winds blew up from the distant Grume and the day grew gloomy and gray, they came to a ravine crossed by a viaduct known as the Cold Beam Bridge. Two likely fellows in heavy linen smocks were sitting on a large gray rock by the stony post of the bridge, fishing with long poles and even longer twine into the gorge below. There seemed to Rossamund something slightly repellent about them, though he could not say what it was, and neither Europe nor his old masters seemed to heed it.
"Ahoy, mates!" Fransitart slowed the landaulet and hailed them. "Don't ye know there is a fierce-some bugaboo about?"
"Ahoy ye back, ye salty scoundrel! Ye are far from the treacherous sea!" the older one returned, squinting skeptically at them all from under his wide floppy hat, one eye going only a little wide when he caught a sight of Europe. "Ye speak of the Gutterfear, little doubt."
Fransitart glanced quizzically back to Europe, who nodded.
The old fisher blinked at her. "I hear-ed this flaysome bugaboo were a nightly beast and no threat to daytime strollers… Besiden which," he added pointedly to Fransitart in forced whisper, "I figure with yer pugnacious lady arrived there, that the beastie will soon cease to be a problem at all." He nodded sagely and tapped his nose with the switch of grass he had been chewing.
"Aye," his younger compatriot agreed, patting a simple digital hanging from his sable and leuc baldric. On the back of the man's left hand Rossamund discerned an odd smudge over the second knuckle: a small spoor made in a variation on a lesser-case "e."
He had never seen such a thing.
"Besiden which," the young man was continuing, "we has our stinks and fitter trinkets to see it off with, so we'll fish till then, unbothered."
The other fellow nodded resolutely and, bowing to Europe, said, "In point of fact, m'lady, I have heard it that the Gutterfear is scunnered-"
"Scunnered, sir?" Europe leaned forward in her seat, causing the landaulet to rock slightly.
"Aye." The old fisher blanched, and bobbed another bow. "Left us, miss, gone north or east or somesuch, spotted with a batch of other seltlings all a-traveling in the same direction, leaving man and beast a'be, such was their determination."
"Well, I thank you for your intelligence." Europe sat back. "We shall continue on our course until I know this for myself. Go on, if you please, Master Vinegar."
"By the looks, the weather'll turn dirty afore the day is out, me hearties," Fransitart warned them as he set the horses to walk and the landaulet began to go on. "Best make yer way under roofs afore long."
They waved but did not show themselves the least inclined to heed him. The blustering night was spent in a collection of squalid high-houses called Scough Fell, gray hovels made of gray wood and gray thatch built into the gray stony banks either side of the road, guarded by thick gates hung with great conical thurifers-brass censers of night-burnt repellents. Louse-bitten and sleep deprived at the outset of the new day, Craumpalin and Rossamund sought to freshen the sisterfoot on Rufous and Candle's shabraques, but Europe stopped them.
"This is not a pleasant vigil amble," she insisted tartly. "Our objective is to attract a nicker, not hide from it, and horse meat is a compelling enticement."
The four went on their way out soon after, watched keenly by the cheerless, ill-humored denizens peering suspiciously from shuttered gaps or muttering together in hostile assemblies. Muffling themselves against the surprising cold, they broke their fast on the road. An hour on and the Pendlewick forked; the wider divergence to the right quickly became a channel cut into the rusted stone, its sides stained by black dribbles. The left way ascended steeply through knotted pines and cracking boulders, climbing a hill to a stoutly walled town of tall fortified high-houses rising out of the trees. A heavy sorrow seemed to emanate from this hilltop fastness. The forbidding hush in this empty land vibrated silently with unwelcoming vigilant malice, stifling conversation.
A moldering wooden post had been fixed on the prow of rock that split the two roads. Near its top was nailed a flayed skin, blackened with parch and rot, its origin obscure, yet most certainly not human. Rossamund thought he could make out a wide grinning mouth and pointed ears. Scrawled in white and some other dark substance upon the rock about it were the very same "e" signs they had seen on the young fisher's knuckle the day before.
"Pendle Hill," Europe declared grimly, her gaze narrowed on the far-off glimpse of shingles and chimneys. "The very hub of all the fantaisists and the cross-eyed folk."
"What are all those marks?" Rossamund asked. "That fisher had one such as this."
"Allegories," Craumpalin offered. "Find them often enough on vinegars…"
Fransitart ruttled disapprovingly. "They think it'll protect 'em against kraulswimmers."
Rossamund was none the wiser. "Allegories?"
"Cult signs," Europe finally said, pouring herself some claret. "The little signals the fantaisists in their various septs like to leave each other to say which false-god they fancy."
"Those fishers were for Sucoth," Craumpalin added soberly. "Who is spoke of as the worst of 'em all…"
Ashen-faced, the young factotum scrutinized every threatening vacancy between tree and rock.
"Take us right, Master Vinegar, if you please."
Past the mile-long channel and deeper into the Witherfells the hilltops grew rounder, the valleys less steep. Turpentine and pine grew thickly on the slopes, their roots tangled with spreading thorny blackberry, the ceaseless rushing of the wind in their upper stories drowning the clop of hoof and jink of horse harness. With the day's decline, Rossamund's inkling of hostile scrutiny grew until Fransitart warned of someone ahead, a single watcher standing at a major divergence of ways on the right-hand margin of the road. It was an arrogant figure wrapped in a heavy coachman's cloak of the deepest purple, face masked with a white oval striped with four level bars, head crowned with a high-fronted hevenhull stuck with five large white feathers tipped with red.
"Blighted fictler!" the ex-dormitory master hissed.
Craumpalin cocked the hammer of the musketoon resting in all appearance of ease in his lap.