"Most certainly, Marshal-Subrogat." The surgeon bowed a third time to the Officers of the Board and went on as if he had not been interrupted. "But how can such a wicked abomination happen? I see the question clear on your corporate faces: how can a monster be found in the form of an everyman? As you are all well familiar, we know so little of the where and the why of the monsters, of how they perpetuate themselves.What we do know is that most teratologica survive so long they can be considered-as the short generations of men reckon it-to live forever.Yet the monsters do replace their numbers.We know some repeat themselves, budding like so many trees, dropping bits of themselves to grow into replicas of the original. This can be most commonly observed in the kraulschwimmen of the mares or the vicious brodchin of the wildest lands such as the Ichormeer or Loquor."
Here Swill paused, took a breath.
An awful, sick sensation was blossoming in Rossamund's gut.
Everyone expectant, the surgeon poured himself some wine from a sideboard, drank it all and continued.
"But what we have never seen is the creation work of the ancient gravid slimes, those places said to have been the nurseries of the earliest monsters, the eurinines-the first monster-lords-and used by them in turn to bring forth the lesser types of the theroid races." As he went on, a quaver of fervent enthusiasm entered the surgeon's voice. "Some of you might even know the history that was before history, the rumors of the beginnings; that these eurinines were granted by the clockwork of the universe to be able to put forth their threwd and make the muds fertile. Heated by the sun, worked on by the threwd, the very ground was made womblike and would pop to bring forth from the foul cesspits of the cosmos many of the worst and most notorious of the monsters that still stalk this groaning world today."
Rossamund did have some small understanding of the things said, but he had never heard the most ancient of histories put so directly. If he had not been in such a great anxiety, he would have eagerly listened to Swill wax learned like this for hours.
Wiping his mouth, Grotius Swill took up the cause once again. "Now these gravid muds continued to be used by the monster-lords, even through the rise and fall of ages, whereby they take the remains of some fallen nicker and bury them in the slimy womb-earth. After a time this spews forth some vital regeneration of those parts, another full-fledged monster to terrorize the homes of men." He looked about shrewdly.
Not one person moved. Swill had intrigued them all.
"But here is the rub, you see. The movements of the races of men and tribes of theroid, all those risings and fallings, have left many threwdishly fecund places untended by their monster-lords, deserted but still oozing with foul potential. Yet unattended and unchecked by a eurinine's will, these most threwdish of places we seldom if ever dare to navigate can still produce life, making strange beasties of whatever creatures might fetch up and die there. This abominable process we learned few call abinition, and this, lords, ladies, gentlemen"-Swill raised a salient finger into the air-"this is how Ingebiarge was made: a woman, some woman, nobody knows who, three thousand years ago perhaps, dies in one of these gravid places and falls, her remains swallowed by the hungry ooze. Sometime later out comes-what?" The surgeon shrugged and stared at his audience expectantly.
Expressions were blank, except Fransitart and Craumpalin: both were gray-faced, as ill-looking as Rossamund felt. Despairing, Rossamund looked to Europe. The fulgar was not paying him any mind, her astute, raptorial gaze fixed on the surgeon.
"Is it human? Is it monster? This thing sprung from the muds. We do not know for certain," Swill pressed on, unaware of this calculating regard. "What we do know is that what is 'born'-for the need of a better term-is reformed from the debris of human matter, birthed from the threwd, a wicked repeat of some lost and departed person. This we call a manikin, and whatever it might be, this reconstituted creature is certainly not human. I commend to you that if it is not human, then rationally it must be monster, and even if it is not, a manikin is not something we want walking free among us." He paused and looked about the room with evident academic pleasure. "In the case we have before us today, things, I fear, go much deeper than simple sedonition. Rather, events must have proceeded upon similar particulars as I have just related. In some blightedly threwdish dell in the hinterlands of Hergoatenbosch, some poor lost fellow dies and falls. His remains are sucked up by the mud and slowly, by action of heat and threwd, maybe over centuries, they are remade, an abominable simulacrum birthed from the loam; another manikin. And what becomes of it? This manikin is somehow found and taken to a wastrel-house in the city to be raised as an everyman.Yet it is, in fact, not one of us at all."
There was a baffled pause, people's faces intent or dumbly wondering.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we all know the name Rossamund-a sweet and apt name for some lovely, cherished girl… and, as it happens, the unfortunate and completely inapt name of this young lighter here"-Swill looked about keenly-"but who of you has heard of a rossamunderling?"
Vacant faces met him.
"None of you?" The surgeon's satisfaction was evident. "I am not surprised; such a word has never appeared on any of the usual taxonomists' lists. I, with all my reading, had not encountered such a word-until recently, that is, a happy accident of my persistent study. How does that interest us? Just so: Ingebiarge is a rossamunderling. All manikins are. You see, after much esoteric study I discovered in the most obscure of texts a most fascinating word: rossamunderling. It means 'little rose-mouth' or, more vulgarly, 'little pink lips.' More astonishingly yet, this word is a name the monsters of the east have for manikins. Rossamunderling-an unterman in the appearance of an everyman. Rossamund." The man now pivoted on his heel, spitting in his passion, and pointed ferociously at Rossamund. "For that is my point! That you-YOU, young Rossamund whatever-you-are-you are that mud-born abomination! You are a manikin! You are a rossamunderling! A thrice-blighted wretchling in human guise!"
There was a great shout of disbelief, of horror, from almost every throat in the room. Threnody jerked away from him, staring at him in dismay.
Rossamund could barely breathe. He did not know whether to laugh or cry or shout down the surgeon's foolishness. Mastering himself, he stood and looked to his old masters, and something in their eyes struck him more than any preposterous accusation of some strutting massacar. For their faces declared more eloquently than explanations that the words of Grotius Swill, secret maker of gudgeons and clandestine traitor to the Empire, might possibly be true.
Europe's gaze was narrow and inscrutable as she peered at Rossamund.
What does she think?
Laudibus Pile sneered, stroking his chin in wicked satisfaction.
The Master-of-Clerks actually managed to look stunned, and the Imperial Secretary with him.
"Yet if you need proofs of my logic, I simply quote this fine young peeress," Swill pursued, "the daughter of the august of our very own faithfully serving calendars."
The Lady Vey sat erect, her face hard and supercilious with hidden distaste, not giving a hint whose side she was for. She turned this brittle gaze to her daughter, and Threnody dropped her head, either unwilling or unable to look at Rossamund.
"This fine girl speaks of his great destroying strength," Swill continued, "a bizarre aberration that immediately piqued my curiosity.Then she explains of his habit of always hiding his smell behind a nullodor. Why would one perpetually wear a nullodor, I asked myself, when one spends one's life safe in the world of men? And the answer came: unless you were trying to hide that you were not a man at all!" The surgeon said this last with a very pointed look at Rossamund. "And of course you did not want to be marked with the blood of your own kind," he cried, "for not only would the idea be repugnant, you know that on your flesh a dolatramentis cannot show, for one monster's blood will surely not make a mark on another!"