Master Fransitart held Rossamund by the shoulders. 'Good-bye, lad,' he said at last.
'Good-bye, Master Fransitart,' Rossamund whispered. 'Tell Miss Verline and Master Craumpalin good-bye,' he added.
Madam Opera made a small disapproving noise, but Fransitart smiled and replied, 'I surely will, lad. Now! Step lively, new duties await ye!'
Rossamund took up his old stock and the peregrinat, doffed his hat as he thought a man might and stepped reluctantly out into the foggy autumn dawn.
As he turned to go on his way, he caught a glimpse of some of the children who remained, woken early and watching from the high windows of the foundlingery. Among them was Gosling. Rossamund was certain he would be fuming with silent jealousy.
Good riddance, he thought.
He followed the Vlinderstrat toward Hermeneguild and the river district, quickly reaching the point where tall shops and high apartments obscured Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society from view. His heart swelling with sharp, nameless regrets, he joined the dawning hustle of Sooningstrat.
4
Cromster (noun) one of the smallest of the armed, ironclad river-barges, having three-inch cast-iron strakes down each side and from four to twelve 12-pounder guns upon each broadside. Generally single-masted, though the biggest may have two masts. Below the open-deck is a single lower deck called the orlop. Forward of amidships (the middle of the craft) is typically hold space for cargo. Aft of amidships the orlop is reserved for the gastrines and their crews
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Mister Sebastipole was waiting as he said he would be, standing in the fog at the top of the Padderbeck Stair. He was wearing his telltale coachman's cloak and black thrice-high. He had his own satchel hanging across his body together with an oddly ordinary-looking box on a thick strap. Rossamund tried not to stare at the box. Inside it would be the leer's sthenicon. He had expected it to be much more unusual, and he was just a little disappointed to see that it was so very plain and ordinary. Sebastipole had been holding a small portable clock or some other such device when Rossamund arrived, and now secreted it away.
'You are late, young fellow,' he stated flatly. 'A lamps-man's life is punctuality-'twould be best to start forming that habit soon, don't you think?' There was no ire in Mister Sebastipole's voice, just honest, unself- conscious reproof. Rossamund had never encountered anything like it before.
'Uh… Aye, sir,' he puffed and set the valise down.
'Well, at least you have come lightly packed. Bravo.'
The lamplighter's agent pulled out an oblong of sealed paper and another of folded paper. He handed the sealed paper to Rossamund first, saying, 'This is my endorsement to our mutual masters.' He gave him the folded paper, saying, 'These are my instructions to you and to those who will meet you at the other end. Stow the first safely and read the second carefully.' The lamplighter's agent folded his arms and stared with his disturbing eyes. 'Your first destination is High Vesting and from there a fortress known as Winstermill. It is a manse, the headquarters of we lamplighters. You will be escorted thither from High Vesting. Your instructions say as much.' He squinted. 'Hark me, now! Do not dally on your way, but make directly to Winstermill, for my superiors are awaiting you and others like you to begin your 'prenticing. Agreed?'
'Aye, sir.' Rossamund carefully stowed the precious documents in his buff leather wallet.
Mister Sebastipole took out his little clock again, opened it and pursed his lips. With a snap of its lid, he declared, 'Well, the sooner you start, the sooner away.' The leer pointed Rossamund toward steps that went down from the high wall of the canal-side street to the Padderbeck itself. The fog had become almost impossibly thick. Rossamund could barely make out the tottering buildings festering on the other side of the narrow canal, their brooding window-lights of red and green showing only faintly.
'Down there-though you probably cannot see for all this fume,' the lamplighter's agent continued with a frown at the muggy air, 'down there along this very pier you will find a certain Rivermaster Vigilus waiting to take you aboard his cromster, Rupunzil. The vessel is sound and your way is paid.'
Rossamund could see nothing but fog in that direction. 'Ah… Aye…'
Mister Sebastipole gave a surprisingly warm smile and bowed. 'Well, lad, the moment of departure has arrived, it seems, so I shall bid you a safe journey and leave.'
Rossamund was stunned. The lamplighter's agent might not have been the friendliest chap, but such a prodigious journey as that upon which Rossamund was about to embark was, surely, better done with the leer's company than without.
'I… I thought you'd be coming too?' he ventured.
Mister Sebastipole smiled again. 'I have other tasks to attend to here in Boschenberg. You will see me again some day not too distant, I'm sure. Just head down the stair and along five berths. A lamplighter's life is independence of thought and deed, my boy. You will need to get used to this as soon as possible. Welcome to the lamplighters!' With that the leer bowed again and walked back up Sooningstrat. Mister Sebastipole waved once from the top of a rise in the street and, with a turn, was gone.
Just like that, Rossamund was on his own. Uneasy, he took up his valise and took the stairs down to the river. The fog was still too thick for him to see his destination. He passed a great post thickly painted white-a berth marker-appearing suddenly out of the gloom, then two more.
As the fourth emerged from the soupy morning vapors, he spied a vessel moored there-or the shadow of one at least. As he approached, the outlines of the craft became clearer. It was indeed a cromster, though one in very poor repair, sitting dangerously low in the water. It did not look at all steady or sound to Rossamund, rather it looked ready to founder even in the calm of the Humour. He frowned. The foundling had not lived so closeted a life that he had not seen dozens-even hundreds-of cromsters plying the mighty river. None of them came close to luxury, but all of them were in far better repair than this tub of rivets.
Cromsters, like most other ironclad river craft, sat low in the water, with a hull and keel that did not descend too deeply into the murky wash. This was necessary since rivers, even as large a stream as this, were much shallower than any sea, but Rossamund was sure that this one sat just a little too low. If the water lapped this near to the gunwale in the calm of a river, surely it would be spilling over it in great washes when the craft encountered even the smallest swells of the most sheltered ocean bays.
As he came closer, Rossamund could see that mean, sickly-looking men were wrestling great barrels aboard the craft.
'Ahoy!' came a call, and a hefty shadow of a man rolled down the sagging gangplank to the pier. 'Who might ye be, lubberin' about on th' pier in th' shadowy morning mists?'
Rossamund did not much like being told he was 'lubberin''-it was an unfriendly term seafaring folks used of those who were not. 'I'm looking for Rivermaster Vigilus and the cromster Rupunzil!' he declared briskly.
The hefty shadow came closer and clarified itself as an unsavory-looking fellow, tall and thickly built, with broad, round shoulders and matted eyebrows knotting over a darting, conspiratorial squint. His clothes were shabby, though they looked as if they had once been of good quality. His dark blue frock coat, probably proofed, with overly wide sleeves, was edged with even darker blue silk and lined with buff. This garment came down to his knees and covered everything but a pair of hard-worn shin-collar boots. The man emitted a powerfully foul odor, and altogether gave Rossamund a distinctly uneasy feeling.
'And where might ye be from, young master,' this fellow asked, almost sweetly, his breath proving even
