stepped up to this dispensury window.
It was not attended.
A velvet rope hung by, and the prentice gave this two hearty tugs, which set a hidden bell to violent ringing. Standing on tiptoes, Rossamund peered through the bars. From the aisles of boxes, bottles, drawers and shadows emerged a sharp-nosed, flabby-jowled fellow with a high collar and a crotchety, querulous mien. This was the almonder, Obbolute Fibullar, script-grinder and assistant to Volitus-Winstermill's dispensurist. He was a difficult fellow, about as opposite in temperament to Craumpalin as Rossamund reckoned possible. The prentice cleared his throat and, as confidently as he could, made his request.
'What d'you need thrombis for, lantern-stick, coming in here to drip and dribble all over my floors and on to my counter?' Obbolute leaned toward the bars and glared down at him. 'Are you bleeding?'
'No, sir. I am run out of thrombis,' Rossamund returned, startling himself with his own, unexpectedly 'what- else-do-you-reckon' manner. He held up his salumanticum as evidence.
The dispensury door swung, but Rossamund, intent on getting the needed potive, ignored this.
'You can wave that salt-bag about and gum away rudely all you like, young fellow.' The obstructive almonder sat back. 'I'll need a chit of authority from your commanding officer.'
'But…'
'Aye, aye, always 'but,' ' Obbolute mocked. 'No chit, no parts! That's the way it runs here. Time to learn it, don't you think?' He looked up beyond Rossamund, dismissing the prentice with that single gesture. 'Ah, welcome back among us once more, sir. How went the course? Did you get the basket?'
Rossamund looked up quickly and straight into the mildly amused red and blue eyes of Sebastipole. The prentice had no notion that the coursing party had returned.
'Well, my boy,' he said, ignoring the almonder, 'glad to see you again. I have just come back from the hunt. A grim event when all was done.'
'Hello, Mister Sebastipole,' Rossamund replied. There was no time for chatter. Mister Numps' foot must be attended to. His thoughts spun quickly. Terrible glimpses of Numps dead in a puddle of red ran through his head. 'Please, sir. I need thrombis urgently.'
Sebastipole looked at him strangely. He turned to Obbolute, producing a fold of paper. 'I will be needing pule-blande, a six-months' dose, and the same of gromwell too, for all it's worth. And… pass me your stylus, man.'
'Of course you will, sir.' The dispensurist half turned, ready to fetch these potives, all polite eagerness to this reader-of-truth. He pulled the pencil from behind his ear and pushed it through the bars.
'And,' the leer continued, looking down to Rossamund again as he scratched words on to the fold, 'a salumanticum's worth of thrombis too, or any other siccustrumn you might have.'
Rossamund could have cheered for joy and thrown his arms about the leer.
Obbolute's eyes narrowed as Sebastipole handed paper and pencil through the barred gap. A glimpse of temper trembled across the assistant's brow. He clearly wanted to contradict this request, yet how could he? A chit had been provided and, more so, the leer was his superior.
'I, ah-well, I,' he spluttered, his thoughts clearly at war, 'what were you needing that last item for, sir?' He looked narrowly at Rossamund.
'Because this lighter needs it and you will not give it him,' Sebastipole returned, his sangfroid as much as his rank impossible to argue with. 'Perhaps you will give it to me?'
A hoarse grumble from his throat and a pointed pause was about all the contrariness Obbolute dared as he filled the order. The leer took the potives with a solemn thank-you that the almonder did not acknowledge. As they left the infirmary, Sebastipole gave Rossamund the thrombis.
'So tell me, young Rossamund,' he said, 'how have you recovered from our excitement upon the road?'
At any other time the prentice would have been all for question-and-answers and exploring his confusions, but this was not that occasion.
'I am well, sir…,' he answered, looking over his shoulder down the passage to his path back to Numps.
The leer squinted at him sagely. 'Indeed? So tell me, what gives you such cause for haste?'
'Someone has cut himself terribly, Mister Sebastipole, and I need to get to him right quick to stop the bleeding!'
'Why did you not bring this 'him' to the infirmary?' Sebastipole pressed.
'Because he most definitely refused to come, sir… refuses to be seen to by Swill-um, Surgeon Swill, I meant.' Rossamund could not obey forms of right conduct any longer. 'I really must go now, sir-please give me leave.'
'Yes, yes! In fact I shall do one better.' Sebastipole put a gloved hand on Rossamund's shoulder. 'Lead on and I will help how I can. Perhaps persuade this fellow to get to the infirmary where he belongs.'
Rossamund dashed back out the Sally, into the rain and down to the Low Gutter, Sebastipole just one step behind.
'Where do you take us?' the leer called over the rush of falling waters. 'Who is it that is hurt so urgently?'
Through gasps and rain, Rossamund called over his shoulder. 'To the lantern store'-puff-'Door 143'-wheeze- 'It's Mister Numps-he's cut his foot with glass…' He almost staggered in a muddy puddle.
Sebastipole caught the prentice under his arm, saving him from the fall, and dragged him on. The leer quickened his stride, flying down the alley by the Pitch Stand, Rossamund trying as best he could to keep pace.
Throwing back Door 143 and springing inside, they found Numps sleepy yet still holding the rags to his foot.
'Oh, Numption,' Sebastipole hissed.
Rossamund was amazed at the genuine distress held in that expiration.
'Ready your thrombis, prentice-quick and steady. Now I understand your dilemma.'
Hands a-tremble, Rossamund opened the box and brought out a small sack of the 'bonny dust'-as Craumpalin used to call it.
'We must act apace!' The leer righted the toppled wicker chair and wrestled Numps' leg upon it. 'How did this happen?'
'I just went to shake his hand.' Rossamund's confession babbled out. 'Just to make his friendship, and he jumped and started and the glass fell from his hand and smashed about his feet.'
Numps looked up with slow eyes. 'Oh, Mister 'Pole, oh dear, you're swimming in my red again… Oh dear, Numps is dead…'
'Yes indeed, Numps, I find you all bloody like before. Easy, now. We'll fix you right, just like then.' Once more Rossamund was struck by the gentle anxiety in Sebastipole's voice. He never expected a leer might show such tenderness.
'There is glass still in the cuts,' the leer continued. 'Do you have forceps? Or spivers?'
Rossamund shook his head, but had a thought. 'I spied pliers on the rack there though, sir,' he said, even as he went to fetch them. 'Here, sir.'
'They will do.' Sebastipole snatched them. 'With haste, Rossamund, grip his leg under your arm and hold it firm and sure. This will not be easy-I am no man of physics.'
The prentice obeyed with alacrity.
Numps writhed and wailed as the leer poked and probed and tugged at the wounds. 'Help me, sparrow-man! They tear me apart! Limb from limb!' The glimner cried, 'Sparrow-man!' while Sebastipole shouted, 'Don't mind his calls, my boy, just hold him steady!' Rossamund never let go of Numps' ankle nor allowed his squirming to disrupt Mister Sebastipole's delicate work.
'Bravo, my boy,' Sebastipole muttered as he pulled out a wicked-looking shard, 'you have yourself a strong grip there.'
The make-do surgery was mercifully brief. With light-headed relief the prentice tapped hearty mounds of the thrombis on to a particularly nasty laceration under the knuckle of the big toe. It was from here that most of the blood had come. He watched as the dark powder quickly mixed with the gore, coagulating to a sticky, adhering mass wherever it did. When he was satisfied the thrombis had done its work, Rossamund bound Numps' foot as tightly as he could with all the swathes kept in his salumanticum. He sprinkled more thrombis between each bind till the box of it was all but empty and only Numps' toe tips showed.
Dazed from pain and distress, Numps remained supine among the old lamps.
