Determined as she was to return to Brandenbrass and have at her antagonists, Europe was not fit enough for such a confrontation, nor was Craumpalin well enough for the journey. Though in truth it vexed her, the Branden Rose submitted to the scholarly security and unending comfort of Orchard Harriet until the four travelers had sufficiently recuperated. 'A hasty step is ever a misstep,' she said the next morning after the Grand Supper, sharing breakfast with Rossamund in her room. 'I can wait…'
Unaware of Rossamund's injured flank, Gentleman Plume invited him for a stroll about 'O' Harriet'-as the historian was fond of calling it. In the midst of the wooded hills, the manor itself was a peculiar conglomeration of found stone, dressed slabs, fired brick, aged timber. The main portion at the northern end was clearly the remains of an old fortress, with turrets, loophole windows and crenellated wall, a section at the back actually collapsed and unused, crawling with creeping vines and spangled with brilliant orange pumpkin flowers. Additions were built in stages over many centuries, completed with different processes and materials and scant regard for the manner of construction of the previous parts.
'Not the most attractive of structures, I'll grant you,' Gentleman Plume admitted as they walked. 'Its story is long and rather obscure, but it makes a perfectly excellent hiding hole and, properly fitted, is as snug as any fine city hall.'
Nestled in the forested valley between great bald hills, this confused homey mass of stones sat among a field of turnsoles, surrounded by thick groves of blossoming fruiting trees. At the north end flowed a swift stream, its made banks dense with a narrow wood of beech and plane.
Despite Philemon Plume's vague hints about their departure, Rossamund peered about in hope of Freckle or Cinnamon yet emerging. Upon the young factotum's inquiry the younger Plume declared himself at a loss.
'Neither of them has shown himself since two days gone,' he mused. 'That is ever their way, my boy-to come unbidden and leave inexplicably. Where they have got to, you can be sure it is needful.'
Every morning Rossamund would fright awake from rushing visions of masked perils and snarling, sermonizing jackstraws. Only after long moments would he feel with relief the warm and downy softness and fathom that his tarrying alarm was but the work of dreams' unruly vapors. With every new day he would inspect his wounds, observing in wonder the rapidity of their healing until he kept his flank and hand bandaged only to avoid intelligent questions. As friendly to monsters as these goodly folk might have been, they did not need to know that it was him about whom Swill was conducting controversial lectures.
Steadily-slowly-Craumpalin's legs knitted and he became more lucid; Fransitart's cold cleared, his bruises diminished. The bloom returned to Europe's cheeks, and a grim resolve set itself in her eye.
Most evenings Gentleman Plume would gather everyone in a large drawing room to share the fruits of their toils. Gaspard himself might read his day's theorizing. Pluto would show a particularly excellent drawing from her daily observations. Hesiod Gutter typically had them all take parts in the back-and-forth of his latest scene, or play upon the pianoforte a passage of a movement from his long-awaited second operetta. Amonias Silence usually graced them with doggerel or a sonnet penned in moments between pages of the Gentleman Plume's dictations:
There was a young lady from Flint, Accused as a cold-hearted bint. She took a hot coal, And swallowed it whole; From then on she spoke with a glint.
Even Fabia performed once, playing a cheerful tune with marvelous dexterity upon a guittern, the lively unusual music at odds with the fixedly somber expression of the player.
Encouraged to the brink of discourtesy, the guests were prevailed upon to participate; Fransitart dared something Rossamund had never known him do and sang a brief selection of mildly bawdy capstan songs, each one popular enough to have the whole room chanting, thumping tables and clapping along. Beetroot-red and feeling very bland, Rossamund did the only thing he could think of, and shared definitions from a five-year-old peregrinat he had found in Gentleman Plume's well-stocked library.
'An excellent fact, sir!' Gaspard would utter, which he or Silence or Gutter would then enlarge on or correct.
To Rossamund's profound amazement, Europe consented just once to take her turn on the pianoforte. Brow slightly creased in concentration, head erect, frame upright, she proceeded to play a strong and sweetly flowing piece.
'Ahh, Phoebus Sonora in D minor.' Hesiod Gutter smiled warmly, tipping his glass of viscous, dark purple sirope in approbation. 'What evening would be complete without a bit of Quillion?'
Europe played on, her eyes almost closing as she dared let the passion of the music have her, the melody transforming into a peculiarly melancholy second movement, then shifting pleasingly to a strident yet fitting finale. When she was finished, amid applause and commendations she returned to her tandem seat with a dignified air as if nothing had happened.
Philemon Plume would contribute only his presence to a night's diversions, sitting on an easy chair by the hearth, clutching an ever-present tumbler, a melancholy half smile rarely leaving his lips. Frequently, he would stare fixedly at a painting above the mantelshelf, an image of an unknown woman with bright face, lively eyes and raven-dark hair. Sometimes he would even raise his glass to it in sad salute to this mysterious absent lady. At the start of their second week of secluded convalescence-early in the month now named Narcis-Rossamund stood one morning in the main sitting room admiring a painting. A true original by Student, it depicted martial men handing other martial men a wad of wax-and-ribbon-endorsed paper, all looking out at the viewer with lofty expressions.
He sighed long-sufferingly.
Behind him, Europe sat by the broad sitting-room windows, wrapped in a coverlet and brooding over her ledger and a slowly accumulating collection of missives.Through the help of the ever-cheerful Amonias Silence or the ever-grumpy Spedillo trotting between Orchard Harriet and Coddlingtine Dell, the fulgar had managed to get several cryptically addressed messages out to various agents in the city and had that very day received replies.
'I am making designs for our return' was all she said on the matter.
She would not allow Rossamund to see what she wrote, yet kept him close should she need an errand run. These were not frequent, and so he spent much of his day looking at the great variety of paintings hung here and throughout the grand manor.
Passing through on a task of her own, Pluto hesitated, and, approaching Rossamund, politely remarked on his fascination with the image. 'Would you care to join me out in the woods and vales to wander and draw?' she suddenly asked.
Rossamund declared that he very much would, and, careful to take his leave of Europe, he left her to her secretive plans.
Going forth in a heavy proofed long-coat of sage green and glossy copstain stuck with the feather of some mighty hunting bird, Pluto also took a two-barreled hauncet in holster at her hip. She advised Rossamund to do the same, and he proceeded in frock coat and weskit, and brought his digitals too. Giving him a small card-covered drafting folio and a stylus of his own, the fabulist took him roaming through combes tangled with only partly tamed pine woods and myrtle copses, to see, to draw, and climb the high bald hills to look east out over the pallid waters of the distant Grume. Tiniest oblong shapes, barely discernible, seemed to bob and twinkle distantly out on the waves, squadrons of rams and convoy of cargoes on their way to or from Fayelillian.
Immersed in the joy of leaf and branch and singing birds, Rossamund near forgot his cares as Pluto shared her delight for all the humble things, pointing out the names of everything she knew the names for-weeds and bugs and fallen feathers from the great variety of woodland birds that twittered and dived and scooted above, welcoming Darter Brown among them with song.
Following her lead, Rossamund pressed flowers medicinal and ornamental within the pages of his compleat or applied himself to her patient instructions to draw with a frustrating lack of success in his drafting book. Oftentimes they would lie staring down at tadpoles dancing in a pond or insect larvae playing for life in a tiny runnel chattering down the stony shoulder of some hill. On other occasions they would watch transfixed at safe distance azure-crowned asps or great dun snakes belly across one of the many obscure paths Pluto knew, or stand among a flurry of tiny lavender moths feeding on the pollens of the little white flowers that festooned the wild turf of the wooded hills. Many times they would sit on a highland meadow to gaze up at the wondrous shapes made in the vapors above by the large white springtime clouds and just breathe the curative, untrammeled aromas. Every day they ate lunch together in a small glade of tiny white flowers that grew at the base of a cliff higher up the
