For all his mature airs, this Rookwood fellow was actually rather young-certainly a lot younger than, say, Fouracres or Mister Sebastipole. In light of the fellow's recent humiliation, there was something smilingly winsome and altogether pleasant in his expression, and Rossamund decided he liked him.
'Who was that other gentleman?' he asked.
'Oh.' Rookwood became sheepish. 'Uh-a friend… with a pretty wife… a strange turn of humor… and an overly fortuitous aim. Come! Let us be off before we are drowned.'
With only a foot of treadable sand left between water and wall, they found a stairway off the beach.
'Here we are, still dry in cheery Pebble Knife,' Rookwood said with a wry look to the lowering afternoon sky, the neglected seaside facades and the dour expressions and faded apparel of the few passing people. 'This is no place to strut alone… Perhaps we can walk each other out of here as we look for a takeny each and then go upon our ways?' he finished, with a look left and right.
They walked north along the shorefront for a time, going by blunt bastion-towers on the right and once-bright paint and once-gaudy awnings now moldy and frayed on the left. Down alleys and blindways Rossamund caught sight of twinkling pebbly eyes and tall twitching ears, quickly followed-when he tried to look closer-by the hasty bobbing flash of retreating cotton tails.
Rabbits!
In their own progress, Rookwood drew some dark looks himself from lowlier souls. He did not seem to mind them. Rather, walking with less of a limp now, he chatted merrily enough about airy things, and mostly about himself. 'Being a Bookchild would make you orphaned, yes? As am I, sir, as am I. My mother perished of the fevers…' He paused, reflective, for a breath. 'And my father was sunk at sea at the Battle of Maundersea.'
'Your father is Rear Admiral Fyfe?' Rossamund asked in astonishment, easily connecting this celebrated name from pamphlet tales and oft-taught lessons of naval matter; his admiration and wonder at this fellow were increasing with every moment.
'Indeed he was!' Rookwood frowned. 'The great man himself, who died even as he won himself immortal fame defeating the Lombardy picaroons and so leaving me to the capricious generosity of my aunt Saakrahenemus-my mother's sister and of the main branch of family line,' he added in rapid parenthesis. 'Under her stringent care I have had a scant living paid at the start of each month that is-Ah-hah!' he exclaimed abruptly, interrupting himself. 'The Lots grin on us! A moll potny!' He pointed to a lamppost corner where an olive-skinned girl in maid's smock and bonnet stood by a deep black pot sat atop a portable cast-iron stove. 'Are you hungry, Master Bookchild?'
Rossamund most certainly was, and eagerly admitted it.
This moll potny was selling the reputedly famous bunny daube, the dish proving to be a surprisingly meaty stew livened up with scringings and 'extras'-as she called them. For a gosling-a half-guise piece-she dished the dark brown mass from the pot into simple wooden pannikins bought for another gosling. Indeed, even rudimentary turnery was for sale.
'With enough money a fellow might never need to own his own kitchen!' Rookwood grinned.
Eating as they walked-Rossamund working hard to keep the sloppy daube from slipping down his coat front- they found a better quality of street that took them inland.
'If I may, how did you come by your hair?' Rossamund asked.
'Oh…' The fellow made a wry face. 'I am told it is evidence of a Turkeman skeleton in our esteemed familial closet, some shameful connection-upon my father's side, of course-with one of our Empire's northern rivals hidden in the shades of antiquity. My aunt will not suffer it to be spoken on, yet here I am as a constant reminder of her shame.' He grinned.
'I think too many folk are far too troubled by others' wherefores,' Rossamund said seriously despite his own answering smile.
Rookwood peered at him wonderingly. 'Just as I say, sir, just as I say… Isn't it always the way of it!' he complained suddenly. 'When you are in need of a takeny, they are never there, and when you don't, they are all about you pestering for a fare! There should be a stand of them about that next corner.'
Indeed there was, five in a row on Tomwither Walk, a thin curving street of limners and upholsterers and low-fashion perruquiers.
'Harkee, I thank you, young Rossamund, for your assistance,' the white-haired fellow declared with all the manner of one set on departing. 'I have places to be this evening and must be away.'
'As have I, sir,' the young factotum concurred. 'And treacle to brew when I get there,' he added with an anxious glance to the glow of the latening sun, hiding now behind steep roofs and making cryptic shadows of chimneys and spouts.
'Treacle, is it?' Rookwood seemed suddenly more attentive. 'As in plaudamentum?'
'The same, sir.'
'I take it then that you are a factotum?' The young man's interest was definitely piqued.
'That I am, sir.' Rossamund doffed his thrice-high and gave a slight yet gentlemanly bow. 'Factotum to the Branden Rose,' he said proudly, then immediately regretted it as needless showing away. With another bow to cover his error he made to leave.
However, the effect of this revelation on his companion was marked.
'Come, come, fine fellow,' Rookwood declared with a new animation, halting Rossamund with a light touch on his upper arm. 'I was so eager to honor my appointments I have done you discredit! You have helped me at my lowest and not left me in my embarrassment.The least I can return is some quisquillian deed as thank-you.'
'Oh-uh-really, it is not-,' Rossamund tried to say, wondering just what a quisquillian deed might be.
'Please, please! I insist you join me this evening-my appointment can become yours as well; I am diaried to join good friends at a rather well-acclaimed panto-show, The Munkler's Court-hilariously cackleworthy, or so I am told. Have you seen it?'
'Ah… no, sir, I have not.' Rossamund did not know how to proceed. He had barely met the fellow, yet… what a grand finish it would be to step out with this flash son of the celebrated Rear Admiral Fyfe-a hero of both the pamphlets and real matter. On either hand, he had to get back to test the treacle, and said as much to Rookwood.
For a moment the young gent pressed a knuckle to musingly pursed lips. 'I propose a plan that shall have you doing both,' and even as he said this, he hailed a takeny-coach with an economic wave and a streetwise wink to the driver. 'I shall accompany you to wherever you need to be to make your plaudamentum and, that done, you can don your gladdest threads and we shall make directly for the Hobby Horse, where the panto is playing.'
Rossamund hesitated in an agony of indecision. Curious and cautious in one, he agreed, and in the very next breath was aboard the takeny. 'I've never seen a panto before,' he admitted as they rattled along the darkening lanes back to Cloche Arde.
'Ah, Mister Factotum, then you will be in for a spectacle,' Rookwood enthused. 'Memories of my first show are still my most vivid. They are like an ever-giving gift; I have to but recall it and I return to bliss. I hope it turns the same for you, sir!'
In the waxing gloom Rossamund could see scruffy black-coated streetlimners in stovepipe hats emerging to wind the shorter, distinctive red-posted seltzer lamps with their flimsy hooks-slight devices, nothing like the heavy martial fodicars employed by the Imperial Lighters of the Emperor's Highroads.
Keen to have Europe's plaudamentum made and be swiftly away again, the young factotum sprang enthusiastically from the takeny as it drew to a halt in the yard of Cloche Arde, leaving the young white-haired gent to keep the hired lentum waiting. 'I might be some time,' Rossamund called behind him, before dashing through the front door of his new home.
'Take all the revolutions of the clock you require, sir!' Rookwood proclaimed munificently through the carriage window, ogling Cloche Arde with untoward fascination. 'We have the time, and my friends will happily accept my excuses when they find who it is I have brought with me.'
At mains on her own in the solar, Europe cocked Rossamund a quizzical look as he bustled in to her with her late-made treacle and breathy apologies.
'And here was I, worried you'd chosen naval life after all…,' she said mildly, a droll glimmer in her eye. 'Ugh!
