don't claim quo gratia and have you clapped in irons yourself, you sot-headed dottard!'
Rossamund tried to pull his neck into his stock as a turtle might.
His fellow lighters gathered near, awestruck.
The lamplighter-sergeant was agog. 'Lowborn? Sot-headed? Quo gratia?' Grindrod's red face became an apoplectic purple. 'I'm not the want-wit who frissioned my watch to a daze in the middle of a bogle attack! They wasted the surgeon's fees on ye, poppet!'
Threnody let out a tight, wordless yell, both her hands clutching her temple.
Rossamund's head, his entire gall, revolted, and his sense of up and down collided. He staggered and fell, joining Grindrod, the lampsmen, the prentices and even the pistoleer writhing in the dirt.
'Enough!' cried Dolours, and the wayward frission ceased. The bane was the only one standing, her left hand to her temple, her right stretched over the now prone Threnody. She had witted the girl, striven one of her own. 'Enough,' she whispered again. Looking deeply unwell, she reached a conciliatory hand to Grindrod regardless, an offer of help.
'I can get to me feet meself, madam,' he seethed, tottering dazedly as he proved his words.
As Rossamund and his fellows unsteadily regained their feet, Dolours sighed. 'That 'poppet,' Sergeant, is the daughter of our august and a marchioness-in-waiting in her own right: you'd do well to pay your due respect.'
Lampsmen Bellicos, Puttinger and Assimus muttered grimly.
The prentice-lighters looked to their sergeant.
'And a great liability she'd be to ye too, I am sure.' Grindrod smiled. He nodded a bow, saying louder, 'I apologize to ye.' He wrestled with himself a moment, then with deliberate, frosty calm added, 'I don't know where such a custard-headed notion sprang from, madam, but women bain't wanted in the lighters!'
'We know it well, Lamplighter-Sergeant!' The calendar bane stood unsteadily and Rossamund saw her face turn a ghastly gray. Clearly she suffered from some feverish malady. She smiled sadly. 'Perhaps you are right, but yet it is not an impossible thing for a woman to take her place in your quartos, I am sure?'
Grindrod's mustachios bristled and writhed as he considered her words. 'Bain't really for me to say one way or t'other, bane,' he said finally. 'This shall have to be the decision of the Lamplighter-Marshal.'
'Hence our journey to Winstermill, Lamplighter-Sergeant,' Dolours countered.
'Well, our work tonight takes us in the contrary direction.' Grindrod rocked back on his heels, his arms still folded across his broad chest. 'However, I'll send back a transport with guard to gather the fallen and bring ye all back to Wellnigh. Now ye're six horses less they'll be having to give ye a billet, I reckon.' With that, the lamplighter-sergeant pivoted on his brightly polished heel and stepped out on to the road, calling the prentices and lampsmen to him.
Sick with too much frission, Rossamund came tumbling after, trying hard not to trip over the putrid bodies of the dead bogles. The lamplighter-sergeant made hasty arrangements: he and Bellicos and the other prentices would continue on to Wellnigh House, the sturdy little cottage-fortress to the east, continuing to light the remaining lanterns as they went. Rossamund, however, as possessor of the salumanticum, was to be left behind to tend the calendars' wounds. With him would remain Lampsmen Assimus and Puttinger as a nominal guard and fatigue party to help with the fallen and to salvage the luggage.
With a cry of, 'Prentice-watch in single file, by the left, march!' Lamplighter-Sergeant Grindrod, Lampsman 1st Class Bellicos and the wide-eyed, nervous prentices went on, leaving Rossamund and the other two lampsmen with the vigilant, silent calendars.
Assimus and Puttinger ignored Rossamund. Lampsmen rarely shared in chitter-chatter with prentices till they were full lampsmen themselves. Reluctantly they set to work finding belongings and goods amid the shatters and splinters, making a pile of the broken trunks and half-rent valises. Typical of the older men who worked on this easy stretch of road, they were crotchety half-pay pokers whose job was to babysit the lantern-sticks out on the road as they learned their trade. They paid no attention whatsoever to the lads unless duty demanded.
Feeling uncomfortable and unnecessary, Rossamund hugged his arms against the searching chill.
Balding branches rubbed together with whispering creaks. Dry twigs rattled.
Exposed and neglected, Rossamund looked to the calendars. Head bowed and shy, the young prentice fished about his salumanticum and brought out more bellpomash, offering it to Dolours with a nervous cough, 'I thought you might need this, m'lady. I'm sorry, I have nothing more appropriate for a fever-no febrifuges or soothing steams…'
She remained silent for a breath, looking to Rossamund's hands, then to his face. There was an unreal calmness in her gaze. Her spoors, those white lines that went vertically from her hairline across both eyes to her jaw, showed clearly in the night. They made her look serious, dangerous. Like Europe, she possessed a remote, almost casual deadliness.
Rossamund began to regret his boldness.
'Thank you, young lampsman.' The bane nodded graciously. 'It was foolish of me to have left both ill and without the chemistry for even a simple vigorant. Dispense away.'
Putting down his fodicar, Rossamund set about his task, also giving out lordia-to restore their humours, which, as he had read in a book from Winstermill's small library, was essential after times of great stress and exertion. He had bought this from a hedgeman, a wandering script-grinder who had visited Winstermill not more than a month ago.
Each restorative was gratefully received.
Such a concentrated collection of teratologists Rossamund had never seen before.While he dispensed, he sneaked beady, fascinated looks at their odd costumes.The calendars hid their well-proofed silken bossocks beneath mantles patterned in blue, orange and white. Dolours kept warm beneath a hackle of fur. She wore fleece-lined, buff-covered oversleeves called manchins tied to her shoulders with ribbons. Rossamund could not help staring at her wings. Although they looked real-outstretched and ready to fly-he knew they were simply ornaments.
Each of the calendars' feet was shod with quiet-shoes: flat-heeled, soft-soled, coming to a pronounced, flattened point at the toe. The strange, ornate hats upon the calendars' heads-known as dandicombs-varied, however. The pistoleer-whose name, he quickly learned, was Charllette-wore a broad thrice-high; the maimed dancer had been wearing a tight, vertical bundle of black ribbon and many, many hair-tines-these were being removed even as Rossamund watched. Threnody, evidently sulking, wore her own hair, with no hat or other flamboyant head covering. She, too, had a spoor: a thin arrow pointing up from her left brow-the mark of a wit. Rossamund had read that wits were always bald; he wondered how it was that this one was not.
With sad, taciturn direction from Dolours, the lampsmen discovered the body of a sixth calendar in the mess of the carriage.The lampsmen placed it on the side of the road, near the lamp and away from the corpses of bogles. Beside it they laid the fallen dancer, covering both in their patterned mantles and returning to their vitriolic mutterings and the search for luggage. If there was one thing Rossamund had learned well, it was that lamplighters liked to gripe.
The three calendars stood by the bodies, their heads bowed.
The lampsmen stopped their labors and watched, staying very much apart from the women as they grieved. Thinking it polite, Rossamund removed himself too, sitting on the side of the road. Sad in sympathy, he thought he could hear Threnody softly weeping as Dolours whispered almost inaudibly, 'Fare thee well, kind Pannette. Rest thee easy, dear Idesloe. The dove fold you in her down-ed wings…' More was said, special funeral potives lit to ward off scavenging bogles and hushed laments sung while the lampsmen stared.The sad task over, the calendars retired to the edges of the lamplight.
Ritual done, the lampsmen recovered the last of the dunnage. 'They expect her to join us!' Assimus piped up as he and Puttinger wrestled a trunk to the small collection of the calendars' belongings. 'They expect us to let a girl join! Have you ever, ever heard of such a thing, Putt? I don't give a fig what the Marshal might do: I've never heard of such a thing in all my time!'
Threnody, obviously overhearing, fixed them with an attempt at a withering eye.
Rossamund was caught by it, and though they were not his words, he blushed and shuffled awkward feet.
'You there,' Threnody called, soft yet sour, 'the little ledgermain. I am in need of evander, if you have
