Aubergene and Lightbody kept watch at their backs.
There was only a brief wait before the lofty door opened with a clunk and a small head peeped without.
"Ah-hah, das gut aufheitermen!" Rossamund seemed to hear, a soft woman's voice speaking incomprehensibly in what he could only presume-from his prenticing with Lampsman Puttinger-was Gott. "Guten Tag, happy fellows!" the voice called a little louder in Brandenard.
"Mother Lieger!" Poesides gave a hoarse cry, trying to be heard without making noise. "We have yer stores."
"Gut, gut," and the head disappeared.What had appeared like a small, moldering eave over the door shuddered and, with a click, began to drop smoothly to the ground, lowered on thick cord.
It was an elevator.They were rare in Boschenberg and, no matter how simple this device was, out in the wilds was the last place Rossamund expected to find one.
Each lighter was raised up on this small, worn platform. Poesides went first, and as the smallest Rossamund was sent up next, finding the elevator more stable than it first appeared. He had no notion how Mama Lieger might operate this device if ever she left the house, but this pondering did not occupy his mind long. At the top he found a tiny front room-the obverse-with loopholes in the back wall and another solid door too, which was currently open. The woman was not there, though domestic bustle was coming from some rearward room. Rossamund waited as the under-sergeant worked the mechanism that raised the platform. All present, Poesides led them through the second door to carefully deposit their burdens in a small closet at the end of a short, white hall.
"Ahh," came that soft female voice, getting louder as the speaker appeared from a side door. "I must be thanking you once again for keeping a poor old einsiedlerin's pantry full."
Bearing a tray of opaque white glasses, Mama Lieger turned out to be a neat, rather dumpy old lady, silvery tresses arranged in a precise bun, neither too tight nor too relaxed. Her homely clothes of shawl, stomacher-dress and apron were sensibly simple as was the interior of her humble dwelling. Run-down as it was, the parlor into which the men were invited was clean and tidy, any drafty holes plugged with unused flour-bags neatly rolled and wedged into the gaps. Yet for all this orderly homeliness there remained in her puddingy features evidence of the sharp, hawklike face she would have once possessed and a disquieting keen and untamed twinkle in her penetrating gaze-something deeply aware and utterly irrepressible. Serving them the piping, sharply spiced saloop the old eeker-woman looked Rossamund over hat-brim to boot-toe. "Who is this new one, then?" she smiled, her expression most definitely hawkish. "Do they make lighters in half sizes now, yes? To take up less room in your festung-your fortress-yes?"
Poesides and the lampsmen gave a hearty chuckle.
"I-" Rossamund fumbled for a proper response.
As she passed a drink to him, the young lighter noticed the hint of a dark brown swirl sinuating out from under the eeker-woman's long sleeve, its style and color looking so very like a monster-blood tattoo. Rossamund nearly missed his grip on the cup of saloop.
Mama Lieger noticed him noticing her marks and peered at him closely. "What a one you have brought me, Poesides." The neat old lady's wild, black eyes gleamed disconcertingly. "It is so very clear this one has seen his tale of ungerhaur; have you not, my little enkle, yes? Poor young fellow, I see the touch on him-I see he bears the burden of seeing like Mama Lieger sees, of thinking like she thinks, yes?"
Is she calling me a sedorner too? Rossamund looked nervously from her to his billet-mates: he did not relish being ostracized so early in his posting.
"Aye, aye, Mama." The under-sergeant came to his rescue. "Ye'd have everyone lost in the outramour if ye could," he said tightly.
"That I would and the better for the world if you all were. Not to matter, you stay out here for a long time and the land will quietly speak to you-mutter mutter-the schrecken- the threwd-changing your mind: is that not right, my little enkle?" She peered at Rossamund once more.
"I-ah-" How can she talk such dangerous words so freely? He wondered at the mild expressions of his fellow lampsmen, sipping tentatively at their piquant saloop and trying not to show how unpleasant they found it. Why doesn't Poesides damn her as a vile traitor and have her hanged from the nearest tree? These fellows weren't mindless invidists-monsterhaters-not at all. Rossamund did not know what to think of them.
Apparently heedless, Mama Lieger sat in a soft high-backed chair and engaged the older fellows in simple chatter for a time, yet her shrewd attention constantly flickered over to Rossamund.
Uncomfortable, Rossamund looked at the mantel above the cheerily crackling fire. There he spied a strange-looking doll, a grinning little mannish-shaped thing with a big head and small body made entirely of bark and tufts of old grass. Even as he looked at it the smile seemed to expand more cheekily and, for a sinking beat, Rossamund was sure he saw an eye open-a deep yellow eye that reminded him ever so much of Freckle.
The eye gave him a wink.
Rossamund jerked in fright, spilling a little of his saloop.
All other eyes turned on him.
"Ye got the horrors, Lampsman?" Poesides asked in his most authoritative voice, a hint of disapproval in his eyes, as if Rossamund's behavior was a shame to the lighters.
"I-" was all Rossamund could say for a moment. He gripped his startled thoughts and chose better words. "I have not, Under-Sergeant, I–I was startled by that ugly little doll," he finished weakly.
"An ugly doll." Poesides looked less than pleased.
Mama Lieger stood spryly. "He is never ugly!" she insisted, rising to stand by the wizened little thing. "My little holly-hop man. He is just sleeping his little sleeping-head." She patted the rugged thing with a motherly "coo," and turned a knowing look on Rossamund.
He could not believe she was being so bold, nor that his fellows did not seem overly perturbed. Rossamund looked fixedly into his glass of too-spicy, barely-drunk saloop and did not look up again till they were shuffling out of the room to leave. It was a relief to be going, despite the friendly threwd.The four made a hasty journey in the needling cold, Rossamund as eager as the others to be home, back to the familiarity of the cothouse, their path easier for the lightening of their backs. He was glad too for the enforced silence to stopper his questioning mouth and for the distraction of the threwd growing less friendly again to occupy his troubled thoughts. With Wormstool clearly in sight, a dark, stumpy stone finger protruding high upon the flatland, Aubergene dared a quiet question.
"What were you getting all spooked at with that unlighterly display in front of the Mama, Rossamund?"
Rossamund flushed with shame. "That-that holly-hop doll moved, Aubergene," he hissed. "It winked and grinned at me!" he added at the other lighter's incredulous look.
"You're a dead-strange one, Lampsman Bookchild." Aubergene gave a grin of his own. "Maybe Mama Lieger is right and you can see like she sees?" He scratched his cheek with an open palm. "I've sure seen the dead-strangest occurrences since being out here; changes the way you think, it does. Perhaps you can put in a good word to the monsters for us too, 'ey?"
Rossamund's guts griped. Was the man being serious? Yet Aubergene's grin was wry and teasing and Rossamund grinned foolishly in return.
"Hush it the brace of ye!" Poesides growled. "Ye knows better…"
Of one thing Rossamund was becoming more certain: he was quickly growing to like these proud, hardworking, simple-living lighters. He could begin to imagine a lamplighter's life out here with them. During their third week and an endless round of chores, Europe stopped by Wormstool, accompanied by a lampsman from Bleakhall as her hired lurksman. She had managed to persuade his superiors to release him to aid in her vital task of keeping the Paucitine safe-that was how she told it at least. Thoroughly impressed to be meeting the Branden Rose, the Stoolers joked with their Bleaker chum, declaring him the most fortunate naught-good box-sniffer in all the Idlewild.