Factotum

hand.

She, however, half raised a hand and said, 'You may leave us to talk, man.'

After a pause, the steward obeyed.

'I will brook no disturbance,' his mistress added as Kitchen quietly closed the servants' port at the back of the room, leaving them alone with their meal and the great quandary of Rossamund's true nature.

Yet, now it had come to it, Rossamund did not know how to broach the questions he had held back for the last two days, and poked at his fancy meal in a dilemma of possible starts. From the edge of his sight he could sense Europe observing her guests silently, watching over the rim of her ample claret glass while the old vinegaroons did indeed eat hearty. Knotting his courage, Rossamund tried to speak again the question still unanswered at their exit from the lamplighters' mighty fortress. Who am I? What am I?

'Sirs,' Europe said suddenly, 'I might not have a falseman's knack, but it was obvious that you, Master Vinegar,' she said to Fransitart, 'and you, Master Salt,' to Craumpalin, 'were heartily discomfited by things said during that farcical inquiry. From such a show I would dare to say there is truth in the pratings of that surgeon. If you have a deeper inkling into Rossamund's history, now is the time to be out with it.'

The ex-dormitory master became still, fork poised between plate and mouth, its load slipping sloppily back to the dish. He looked wearily to Craumpalin. It was the merest glance, yet laden with deep, long-lived understandings.

The expression on Craumpalin's face in reply was clear. 'I reckon the lad's ears are ready to hear, Frans.'

Slowly, gravely, Rossamund drew in a breath and held it.

Folding his hands against the edge of the glossy red tabletop, Fransitart looked at them for a moment. 'This is something we… I might 'ave told ye a long stretch of years ago,' he began with cracking voice. 'I have pondered long an' often about how to steer me words-a truth half spoke is worse than none-but I'll not let that quill-licking basket Swill have th' last say on th' matter.' He took a toss of claret and a breath. 'Th' tale of it starts when I first took to me station at th' foundlingery…Whether th' deed were intended as a mercy or a mischief I can't rightly say, but… but th' very day I bore up at Madam Opera's'-he lifted his glass to the late marine society proprietress burned up in the foundlingery fire-'I spied a little bogle fumblin' with a parcel on th' Madam's very doorstep. An odd boggler it was, with the head of an oversized sparrow and all dressed in fine clothes like some midget Domesday struttin' fluff. I hailed th' mite with some angry remonstration, makin' to scare it off. Th' basket just looked at me cool as sit-on-yer-tail an' did not budge.'

Cinnamon! Rossamund could hardly credit it. 'I have seen such a fellow myself!' he exclaimed. 'Freckle said he has been watching out for me…'

'Freckle?' Europe arched her diamond-spoored brow. 'The bogle I saw skulking about Bleak Lynche after Wormstool fell…The bogle you had me free from the Hogshead…' Her voice trailed off in displeasure.

'Ah-aye…'

Fransitart looked at them a moment before he went on. 'Well, that Freckle bogle sounds blithely enough-ye ought not to judge a bugaboo too quick, as I knew well enough even then.'

Europe shifted in her seat yet said nothing.

'Be that as it is,' the ex-dormitory master pressed on, 'I was determined to fright it away; a city is no place for a nicker, nor a nicker-blithely or otherwise-th' right one for a city. So I lay alongside this sparrowling, me cudgel in hand to make me point more clear'-the old dormitory master raised his hands in demonstration-'an' I hailed it, 'Avast, Master Sparrow! What's yer mischief with that bundle? Clear off if ye value yer crown. Worse folks than me p'rambulate these streets!'-or some such I said. Yet far from affrighted, th' basket stood an' faced me though it was not more than half a fathom tall. Looking me a-loft an' a-low with its big blinking peepers, it spoke an' tells me, 'Ye take good care of this 'un'-I can't do its voice right, Rossamund, all twittery and tuneful and wi'out me salty glot-but 'Take care of this 'un', it says. 'This one'll be eaten by worse than me if I let 'im stay out in th' good-lands, so to th' world o' wicked men an' kind he must come.' That's when I realized just what manner of parcel it was in its clutches.'

Rossamund's throat constricted and tasted unpleasantly sharp. Somehow, he already knew what his old master was going to reveal.

'That parcel, Rossamund-,' said Fransitart, looking to him. 'That parcel were ye, lad…'

Rossamund's mouth went dry. He forced down a mouthful of watery claret.

'This sparrow-thing puts ye all tiny an' quiet in me arms,' Fransitart continued, 'an' it says, 'His name is what he is.' An' it points to that hatbox bit with th' scrawl of yer forename on it, Rossamund.Yet afore I can ask any more, open springs the foundlingery door an' there is th' Madam-rest her-arms akimbo an' glarin' like she did. Afore she could fathom its true nature, Master Sparrow harefoots it down th' Vlinderstrat an' was gone. But th' Madam? She only had eyes for ye, lad, an' takes ye, name-card an' all, an' writes ye up in her book, Rossamund Bookchild. She weren't nothin' if not efficient.' He respectfully raised a glass again, Craumpalin doing so with him.

Blinking, Rossamund stared at the old men, astounded at the long years Fransitart had lived enduring such a secret.

Europe leaned back in her seat, owlish gaze calculating.

Such a frank confession left them utterly vulnerable to her mercurial mercies.

'So that's the short of it,' Fransitart went on. 'Ye were hauled off to the cribs an' me to watch o'er ye and all the others with ye as a master. I kept the matter to meself, dwelt on it, stored it up in me soul until some time on, Master Pin fetched up to work at the Madam's-under me sage advice. Soon as he arrived an' I had th' chance, I found the bit of card an' took it into him an' told him just what this sparrow-fellow had spake: 'His name is what he is…' Never one to be spooked by oddities, ye thought an' ye thought on it, di'n't ye, Pin? Sent away to his soup- makin', tome-thumbin' friends on it…'

Head bowed, Craumpalin gave a single nod.

'An' he found such as we never hoped he would-probably in the same line of cryptic book as that dastard butcher claims to have investigated,' Fransitart growled. 'It said much as Swill claimed, that rossamunderlings were an ancient monster's name for bogles that look like everymen. We knew of such too, though by other names, that blighted Biarge lass being th' most famous among vinegars-'

'Such is the trouble that comes of talking to bogles,' Craumpalin muttered, speaking for the first time.

'Why not call me something else?' Rossamund insisted.

'Because Madam O wrote thee up right quick.' Craumpalin looked squarely at Rossamund. 'Once thy name were in the Madam's book, it was a matter of ineffaceable public record. There was no renaming thee after that, and no fuss could be made without lookin' mightily suspicious. So we had to luff up and let the matter be. I comforted Frans and meself it was such an obscure word, I reckoned on none that thee might meet ever knowing of it… other than the name of a lass mistakenly given to a lad, that is.'

'Unfortunate in itself, I would have thought,' Europe added quietly.

Fransitart gave her an unhappy look. 'We never reckoned on such dangersome waters as ye finding yerself thrust into service with a book-eatin' massacar like Swill,' he said bitterly.

'They do seem to be everywhere,' the Duchess-in-waiting returned dryly.

The ex-dormitory master scowled again. 'Once it came time to take yer place in the world, lad, Pin an' I were at full stretch to know what to do with ye. Let ye go an' risk some kind of discovery…'

'Which was what I was vouching for,' Craumpalin inserted. 'Holding that risk to be small-'

'Aye, or go my way of it an' keep ye back where we could know ye were safest-'

'Aye,' Craumpalin interrupted again. 'Inviting suspicions and dooming the lad to some half-lived life.'

Old troubles flashed in Fransitart's dark eyes. 'So ye said then, Pin, an' I followed yer lead an' 'ere we are now-'

'We would be in this or some other strait by either heading, Frans.' The aging dispensurist looked wounded. 'It has always been a matter of time's passing.The stone and the sty if ever a siteeation was…'

The ex-dormitory master looked instantly regretful. 'Aye, Pin, aye…'

'That is why you had me wrapped in nullodour,' Rossamund interjected. Critchitichiello the hedgeman had said Master Craumpalin's Exstinker would never foil a monster's senses. 'The noses you were keeping me safe from weren't monsters but dogs and-and men.' This it had most certainly done. If it had not been for the Exstinker, Rossamund knew full well that in his native monster's stink he would have been slain out-of-hand by Licurius while he still hid in the boxthorn growing in the pastures of Sulk End or set dogs howling after his blood well before he