What now? Rossamund wondered.
Partly concealed behind the pots was another door barely big enough for the old woman to fit through. A second key opened this port, and she encouraged Rossamund through with a firm hand.
At first Rossamund thought he had been shown into some kind of cupboard, but as the Snooks pushed in with her bright-limn he discovered that it was actually a landing. Before him he discerned a tightly winding wooden stair going up and going down. It was a furtigrade-a secret stair-cunningly built in a cavity between the walls, barely lit with ill-kept bright-limns fixed to the banister posts.
"This nasty squeeze'll take ye right up to where ye need to go." The Snooks patted a rail. "For too long I've been jamming me girth between them banisters, and now I hurt right deep in here," she said, patting her right hip tenderly. "I'd rather not climb anymore."
The meager width of the furtigrade was such that Rossamund marveled that the Snooks had been able to make the ascent at all.
"So that's why ye're here and that's where ye're to go with yer bundle. Just take the stairs all the way till ye come to a door and can't go no more. Bang hard low down and go through.To ye left ye'll find the surgeon's door, dark purple and banded in iron. Knock three times, then a pause, then three more, then another pause, then two."
Very unsure, Rossamund shifted his load. "The surgeon, ma'am?" he asked bemusedly. "Do you mean Swill?"
"Aye!" she snapped. "And ye tell him when he asks-and I know he'll ask," the corpulent culinare insisted as sweat-melted boudoir cream congealed on her brow in the cool of the landing, "that Mother Snooks is a-getting too age-ed to be running errands through back ways and is fed up of nasty, dusty, too-steep, too-narrow stairs. That she has seen fit to send me-that's ye, boyo-in her stead."
Rossamund hesitated.
"Up ye go, boyo!" She gave a ghastly grin.
That was enough for the prentice; he climbed. Each stair was just that inch higher than was comfortable to climb, requiring him to lift his feet awkwardly, every step creaking a protest as it bore his weight.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten, he counted under his breath, switch back!
The whole structure seemed to tremble slightly with every step. Between the rough stone wall and rickety rail there was barely room for the prentice to swing his elbows. The Snooks must have been squished like pudding in a dish to come up here.
Gritting his teeth determinedly, Rossamund climbed in the stuffy, dusty, closetlike dark, marveling at this secret stair and wondering how many folk in Winstermill knew of its existence. Eyes wide to make the best of the weak light, he hoisted the sack over his back. Something soft and blunt bumped and prodded again and again into his kidney.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten… Switch back!
Over and over, higher and higher, and it was colder and darker as he went.
On a landing by a dirty green bright-limn, Rossamund put the sack down. As he caught his wind he indulged a little curiosity.
He toed the bag. It rocked and squelched softly.
He gingerly undid the cord that bound the top, already loose and in need of retying-or so he told himself. The sack sagged open but that was all.
He lifted it up to the light and peeked within… and sat back with a stifled yelp.
An eye had stared back at him.
Rossamund recoiled, but the eye did not blink or twitch or twinkle with life. A little shaken, the prentice returned to his investigations. He pulled at the sack's mouth, carefully, cautiously, and there was the eye again-a dark, sightless eye and an anemic forehead a-bristle with short, white hairs… and a blunt, broad-nostriled snout. The smell of swine was strong now.
Looking closer he found it was indeed a pig-or the head of one, at least-sitting atop a gelatinous knot of gizzards. He grimaced. What could a surgeon possibly want with a pig's head? He closed the sack and tied the cord about with the best version of the previous knot he could manage. He had read that physicians and surgeons like to practice stitching wounds on pig bits. Or maybe he just wants to cut it up and see what's inside? Rossamund carried the sack for several flights more, uneasy with his package now he was aware of its gruesome contents, holding it away from his body as best he could.
At last the flights stopped at a square portal.
With a low, whistling puff of relief, Rossamund caught a breath.
There was no handle on the door before him, no grip or lock, just two solid panels of wood, big enough, he figured, for the Snooks to squeeze through. He thumped it hard and low and with a thunk, a click and a whir that made Rossamund flinch and shy in fright, the portal opened. The gap revealed the other side was better lit.The prentice gladly snatched up his package and crouched through and saw that the panels which had slid clear of the portal were really the back of a heavy bureau. On the farther side of the square opening he was amazed to find himself in a tight whitewashed corridor. There was a purple door at its farther end, just as the Snooks had described. What business did Swill have with such a secluded venue? Through the smudgy mullions of a small window set almost three feet into the wall Rossamund could see the frigid night, clear and starlit above the gray mass of Winstermill's roofs, and beyond this the dark line of the low hills of the Brindleshaws.
He rapped at the door just as he had been told: three knocks, three knocks, two. He could not hear any sound beyond, and was beginning to hope he could just leave the sack there and go back down to the kitchen. Douse-lanterns must be soon? Surely his imposition would be done by now?
The port slowly opened.
Rossamund came to attention.
Holding a bright-limn high, the owner of a flat round face regarded him shrewdly. "Aye?" Her thin lips contorted. This certainly was not Grotius Swill. It was the epimelain from the infirmary.
He declared more boldly than he felt, "Mother Snooks sent me up," and held up the sack. "I have a delivery for Mister Swill."
"Surgeon Swill to you, young man!"
"Surgeon Swill," Rossamund mouthed obediently.
The woman looked suspiciously down the long, narrow passage. "Stay," she insisted, and with a crisp rustle turned and swung the purple door closed. Yet it did not shut, and Rossamund was left with a sliver of a view into the room beyond. Her bright-limn made ghastly shadows as the epimelain shuffled across the room. He heard the creak and latching of some other door, then stillness. Trying not to make a sound, the young prentice peered through the gap between door and jamb. In the barely lit apartment was a long, low table with shallow gutters carved down each side that bent to a stoppered drain at its end. On the floor next to this sat a wooden pail of sawdust. Between this table and thin, shuttered windows in the right-hand wall stood a life-size armature of a human body made of wood and porcelain complete with removable parts, which Rossamund at first thought with a start was a sickly person retired into the corner. When he realized what it was, he stared for a moment in horror. Worse yet, what he could see of the back wall was neatly arranged with several tall screens showing oddly proportioned people in various states of flaying, dismemberment or decay. In such grisly surroundings, Rossamund wondered how a person could possibly remain in his right mind.
He pushed at the door just a little, his compulsion to see more overcoming his terror of being caught.
Near the door on a stand was a tray a-clutter with tools designed to prize flesh apart, or clamp flesh together; things to gouge and maim-all of them laid tidily inside velvet-lined boxes. Next to these were clumps of frayed cloth he recognized as pledgets and yards of tow, which must have been for tying off free-flowing wounds. Clustered above were many lamps shuttered with mirror-backed hoods that would reflect and intensify their light when lit.