The flares, their light quickly extinguishing on their downward path, gave only the most general sense of direction, far too vague for a successful navigation. By such scant evidence he might spend all night till the assault was done, lost uselessly in unfamiliar streets trying to find her. I could go to the Broken Doll…Yet it was supremely unlikely Maupin would have his true den in so obvious a location.
The hall clock tocked ponderously.
The house breathed.
Peeping through a torrid gap in the heavenly fume, the moon lit the glistening, dripping turnabout beneath for a merest breath, long enough for Rossamund to see sly activity: little lumps nosing about at the base of the cypress, one venturing toward the front door of the house itself.
A rabbit!
The tramp of Nectarius on his periodic round and the nimbus of his bright-limn coming about the corner of the lane running the side of Cloche Arde sent the furtive movement scattering. Holding his breath, Rossamund watched the nightlocksman, lantern up, peer skeptically at the yard. Something fluttered obviously in the cypress. Nectarius gave a start and shook a fist at the little fellow, growling calumnies about "that unwholesome bird and its unwholesome master!" as he turned inside.
A flurry of air passed over his head, and a little thing swooped about him around and around.
"Darter!" he whispered. "Where is Miss Europe? Is she well?"
Darter Brown, faithful bird, chirruped loudly as he hovered agitatedly in front of him, giving a series of sporadic tweets as he alighted for a beat on the windowsill to catch a breath before dashing back into the night.
Rossamund's heart missed a beat.
The little sparrow knew where she was!
Listening for the three telltale lots of thumps and clunks of the nightlocksman's retreat through the front, obverse doors and servants' port, Rossamund hurried on his best proofed coat over the fanices he still wore. Taking up his digitals and stoups, his rod of keys and moss-light from the bedside dresser, he eased discreetly out onto the landing. Pallette was there, looking shot through, a pail of steaming water in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other.
"I must be going out a moment," Rossamund said quickly.
The alice-'bout-house blinked muzzily at him and his harness and said with a clumsy half curtsy, "As you like, sir."
"And go to bed, all of you," he added. "I reckon cleaning will be done just as properly in the morning. Tell Mister Kitchen I said so."
"Yes, sir…"
Stepping down to the rain-washed yard, Rossamund was immediately met by Darter, who fluttered in agitation a few paces ahead, looping steadily toward the gate. Alert to the faintest tingle of threwd and moss-light thrust before him, Rossamund trod lightly in the huskily grinding gravel, peering about with straining, searching eyes. There among the glory vine runners in the wan effulgence of limulight and gate-post lamp, tiny black pearls glinted beadily back at him from a dark soft-furred face. Long ears folded back over a downy rump.This was not just some ordinary rabbit, Rossamund realized suddenly-certainly not the dreary one-eyed creature he had seen on his walk the other day; it was Ogh, one of the Lapinduce's own servants!
There was a soft press at his calves. It was Urgh, the twin of Ogh, urging him on.
Ogh took a long step toward the gate.
Darter Brown hopped about the ground between them in twittering agitation, patently keen to be on his way. Chirrup! cried the sparrow emphatically. Chirrup! Chirrup!
Humours beating loudly in his ears, Rossamund unfastened the lock of the gate and stepped out onto the Harrow Road to find three more rabbits, meaner, mangier-looking beasts surviving in the city itself, noses patiently twitching. Have they actually done as I have asked? he marveled. Securing the lock, he properly belted his digitals and stoups about his waist as Darter Brown took a perch upon his shoulder.
At the lead, this little drove of rabbits immediately set off, taking him south over the Footling Inch Bridge and toward Brandentown proper. On puddled moon-shone streets, Rossamund followed the pallid flash of the rabbits' cotton-tails as the blithely beasts bounded steadily from shadow to shadow. Often they would spring well ahead to wait on the edge of lantern light. When Rossamund drew near, on they would hop to the next bend or corner to wait once more. Whenever some night-active person crossed their path-a night-soil-man with stinking cart or a desperate takeny seeking a late fare-the rabbits would scurry into the murk and obstacles of the street, to emerge once more when the way was clear.
Going left off the Harrow Road it was a long jog before they finally approached the circuit before the Moldwood. Rossamund wondered for a moment as they passed its ironbound entrance what the Lapinduce might think of his little charges heeding Rossamund's bidding. He must surely know… Here they were met by another rabbit, as large as Ogh and Urgh yet with velvet fur of distinguished and near-invisible black, who took the lead and without hesitation continued onward down the Dove.
The blockhouse of the Cripplegate loomed, guarded even at this waning hour by a trio of flagging gate wards drooping on their muskets by a burning brazier in the shadow of the gate's great arch. Senses taut, Rossamund watched as first Ogh and Urgh passed through unremarked in the shadows of the deep slate gutters between road and walk, barely daring to breathe as he went along himself.
"A little late for the little lord, ain't it?Yer mistress got ye baiting lovers, 'ey, boy-o?" was the sole comment, which set the three gate wards to lewd chuckling. Mercifully, however, they did not press further with awkward questions.
Just beyond the Cripplegate the rabbits halted.
Grateful for the pause and wishing he had thought to bring a skin or biggin of water, Rossamund cautiously drew closer and saw them in silent communion with another of their tribe, a small and shabby beast.Their conference complete, the growing trace of coneys sprang off as one, made an abrupt left off the Dove and went down a street, running in the shadow of the curtain wall and its hem of half-houses. Rossamund glimpsed a sign calling it Cannon Street, and it proved a long curving way, the rabbits keeping to it as Phoebe reached her acme and began her descent of the murky, partly spangled sky. Finally at a fork they were met with another shabby city-living lapin-beast who assumed the role of pilot and took them right. On a lesser perpendicular junction yet another coney met them and took charge, keeping to the way they were on.
Abruptly a bedraggled hungry-eyed dog sprang bawling from some narrow alley and bore down on the coneys, intent on making one its late supper.The mangy rabbits disappeared in a trice, haring back past Rossamund, while Ogh and Urgh and their larger brother remained frozen in lantern light. Rossamund leaped forward to intervene, his sudden action flinging a sleepy Darter Brown from his shoulder roost. He need not have worried, for as soon as the cur closed, all three rabbits jumped high about it and kicked the dog savagely in its snout and neck, avoiding snapping jaws and kicking again and again.
The dog howled and stumbled. Utterly confounded, it scrabbled back.
Ogh and Urgh chased it down, still trying to kick it, sending the dog yowling to vanish down the lane whence it had sprung.
From a window high above, some surly soul half hollered for quiet.
Grown to a crowd of well over a dozen, the rough-rabbits reappeared and the weird band continued, new coneys materializing from obscure nooks at each significant change in course to take the lead. On streets empty and strangely still, Rossamund jogged stumblingly on, the rabbit-drove ever before and about him. Spotting a grand fountain bubbling on his left, set at the end of a very short alley in a tall alcove made into the side of some windowless wall, he called quietly for his guides to halt. Slaking his thirst with rapid slurping handfuls of the musty waters and joined by many of the rabbits too, he stared at the sculpted faucet. Made of black marble, its eyes a glaring gleaming white, it was a full-proportioned figure of the heldin Tascifarnias wrastling the great sea-wretchin Lampedusa, gripping the nadderer in a mortal stranglehold even as the beast pierced him through with its spines.Though he was certain the sculptor had not intended it, the image seemed to him apt: that the more everymen fought the monsters, the more they did themselves in…