Wetting a handkerchief broidered elaborately at the corners with red and magenta, he went to dab at his forehead and found that the sparrow mask was still there, pushed up on his crown and forgotten.
A boom like the detonation of a cannon seemed to roll up from the harbor.
Europe's assault was proceeding more violently than he had imagined.
With one last noisy mouthful of water, Rossamund was quickly on the way again, a whole herd of rabbits stretched before him across the ancient paving.Though he could not be certain, their number seemed to have increased to near three dozen even as they had paused, becoming a tide of downy fur flowing through the streets and the small-hour hush of the city.Yet, such a crowd as they were, loping before or beside or behind him and even through his legs, Rossamund neither trod on one nor was tripped.
On the other side of an elegant four-arched bridge crossing a broad, hissing stream, Rossamund realized he was being escorted into the seedy side of the city: the dockland suburbs, where shadows were long, streets crooked and terrible affairs easily hidden. They moved in a patter of paws like muted rain down ancient stinking laneways whose cloacal reek even the approaching pungence of the Grume could not cover, passing rickety tenements whose foundations were laid before the Tutelarchs first arrived.
Somewhere near in this brooding den a fiddle and fife trilled a merry jig and voices called and jeered in desperate, almost angry pleasure.
Fastening his frock coat higher as if to ward himself, Rossamund pulled his sparrow mask over his face, hoping his own bizarre appearance might give folks given to violence cause to think again.
Grown to more than two score and ten, the drove of rabbits proved strangely and surprisingly certain in this menacing place, keeping confidently to their path despite the many blind lanes and bad-ending ambulatories. They surged by the few folk milling in self-absorbed groups or stumbling, soused, along the threatening row. Amazingly, the rabbits went largely ignored, and if acknowledged, they were greeted with either flabbergasted stupefaction or a kind of fumbling, familiar horror, even sending some poor soul blubbering and hastening some other way.
"Away with thee, Rabbit-o'-Blighty! Ex munster vackery!"
The sweetly acrid stink of the vinegar sea was doubled by an undeniably fishy odor as the streets gained a clutter of lobster pots and smudgy upside-down jolly boats.
Another powerful boom ahead set windows rattling.
Heads poked from windows and doors, all looking in the same direction.
"Been goin' on fer an hour now," he heard called above him by a crotchety onlooker.
"Full-blowed war right in the Alcoves," complained another. "Good gracious, what's that below us?"
"Blight me white, it's the Sparrownucker-man!"
Hurrying, panting, shuffling on, Rossamund thought he smelled powder smoke as he left the distressed natives to their alarm. Some way ahead came the echoing clatter of musketry, far off yet unmistakable. Gasping in air, he pushed against the waxing pangs in limb and lung.
The drove swollen surely beyond count, Rossamund was led on to broader streets, empty again, lined with sheers and loading stages: the stowage roads between storehouses, weighhalls and shipping clericies that went down to the harbor proper and the muffled tolling of buoys. At first lost, he still had a sense of heading south and east as he was guided far into this dockland, until as they came to a road of identically commonplace half-houses, he had notion he had seen such streets before…
On the way to the Broken Doll with Rookwood…
Brazen plaques fixed to the twin ranks of their front steps spoke universally of tolling offices, shipping clerks and maritime lawyers.Yet here on this dull street the great horde of coneys finally stopped. As a single creature they gathered on road and pavement to stare at one particular building some way down on the left and as unremarkable as every other grubby edifice on the entire row: same false arched windows, engaged columns and mass-produced entablatures, same rearing stone grindewhals projecting from curling pediments and clutching meaningless street numbers, same gray slate steps going up to glossy black doors.
Perplexed, Rossamund stood before the place, lifting his mask clear to suck in great lungfuls of sweet, healing air. There was no fight here, no battling roughs or debris of fallen bodies, just an empty street and these indistinguishable buildings.
Upon the homogenous post at the foot of the steps, a stained and corroded plaque read:
The structure did not look any different from the half-houses either side but for a lone rabbit sitting at its threshold at the summit of the steps.
With a chill of astonishment, Rossamund beheld that it was the very half-blind, broken-eared creature he had greeted in the yard of Cloche Arde.
"Oh, faithful beast!" Rossamund breathed. "All of you!" he wheezed to the mass of rabbits and Darter Brown too.
The coneys simply stared at him, snouts ever twitching.
Behind the sole-eyed rabbit the door to the house stood ajar.
Rossamund took it to mean only one thing: it was here that Europe had begun her assault on Pater Maupin and all those with him, and that somewhere within, his mistress was to be found.
There came another muted concussion, somewhere ahead and to the left.
The sole-eyed rabbit turned and pushed through the mere gap between door and jamb to disappear within.
With Phoebe well descended from her apex and Darter Brown flapping ahead, Rossamund flicked a caste of Frazzard's powder into hand, took out his moss-light, climbed the stone steps and went inside.
27
Peltisade hiding place of significant size, large enough for a person to live in permanently, with space for staff and entertainments, often functioning as the dens of the ne'er-do-well set of folk with enough money and influence to create such havens. Such structures are more common in cities than authorities would care to ponder upon, yet as universal as they might be, they are little reckoned to exist by most folk, which is precisely the point.
Illuminated feebly by a single yellowing bright-limn, the small front hall of the office of Messrs. Gabritas amp; Thring was dominated by a narrow stair. Europe was not here; nor, it seemed, was anyone else. Pausing, ear cocked, Rossamund listened. The building's emptiness was almost a presence in itself, an oppressive absence of activity, yet a memory of violence hovered in the untenanted space.
Sole-eye was nowhere to be seen.
To the left of the stairwell, light was faintly showing, as from a door ajar to a lit room. Boldly, Darter Brown disappeared into the dimness of the hall beside the stair, the sparrow's thin tweeting coming back to Rossamund as if to say, "All is well!"
Moss-light in one hand, caste of Frazzard's in other, the young factotum crept forward, regretting every groan or thump of the boards amplified in the surrounding silence. At the far end of the passage he could see a narrow lozenge-shaped bar of light-a door ajar indeed-and in its glow sat the sole-eyed rabbit waiting for him, Darter Brown standing between its ears.