Installed in downstairs apartments of their own at the back of Cloche Arde, Fransitart and Craumpalin received the news of the grand gala with profound excitement.
'There's a kindly change o' wind I weren't expectin',' the ex-dormitory master exclaimed. 'Here's me thinking it would be all clubs an' bruises an' hidden threats.What fancy will ye be dressing as, Rossamund?'
Knuckle to chin, Rossamund pondered a moment. 'I don't rightly know… Myself? That is fancy enough, isn't it?' he concluded with a wry twist to his mouth.
'What of that More-pins looby?' Craumpalin asked, puckering his brow, his inquiring grimace making his face disconcertingly gaunt. 'Thy mistress made to be prodigiously fixed on his just desserts. Seems a mite uncharacterly for her ladyship to let this More-pins off the hook so simply.'
Rossamund made a bemused face. 'I do not reckon she has,' he said.
Taking their rest from the rigors of the journey in a parlor overlooking the sluggish flow of the Midwetter, the old salts-as yet to receive their own communication from her-were greatly impressed by Verline's letter.
Craumpalin raised his glass tankard of soothing saloop. 'Will be nice to have a place to settle to, once Rossamund finds his feet and we lose the use of ours.'
'Aye,' Fransitart pondered solemnly. 'I tell ye, I regret not bein' able to reform that Gosling.'
Leg elevated on a turkoman, the old dispenser shifted awkwardly in his seat and snorted. 'It'd take one hundred of you and one hundred of Verline one hundred years to even begin to set one twisted part of Gosling's inward places aright.'
'Mayhap,' the ex-dormitory master returned. 'The mines of Euclasia will do naught to soothe his mucky soul, neither.'
'Thee wants to light him away to some sweeter hole, Frans?' Craumpalin chided. 'Take him under thy scrawny white oar and make good the rotten heart? Some folks just won't be learned under a softer hand.'
'Aye,' replied Fransitart sadly. 'Aye…' He gave Rossamund an unhappy and uncommonly confounded look.
The young factotum smiled sadly in return.
'Well, we won't be let off th' hook simple,' Fransitart finally said. 'It's going to be fetch an' carry unceasin' from now till next Midwich.'
'Aye,' Rossamund concurred. 'More than enough practicable to do even for you, Master Pin.'
'Aye,' Fransitart growled. 'If I can get some vittles into 'im first!'
The old dispenser threw him a wink. At the guidance of Kitchen and Clossette, Rossamund quickly learned that a grand gala was no simple dance, though certainly dancing was a central part; it was rather a great unfolding of entertainments, to be held on almost every floor of Cloche Arde.
The hiatus was to serve as a coat room and milling space. The billiard room by Rossamund's set was to be opened, but the other end of that level was to be occluded by a bom e'do screen guarded by Nectarius. The parlors and drawing rooms of the third story were set aside to host an oratory for rigorous debates directed by a set of orators; a glossary for thrilling gossip at the lead of a pair of talented glossicutes; and a leviate where souls could be refreshed while a quintet of fiddlers played to sooth overexercised nerves. There was to be a pantomime in the second drawing room and even a benign mesmerist to play tricks with people's senses. The ludion was set to be the main dance hall, the expanse of mirrors of the back wall folding aside and the partitions of chambers beyond- which to Rossamund's astonishment turned out to be quite portable-removed, opening up the entire top story of Cloche Arde into an ample floor. Here, behind the stairs, a stand was laid for a pair of orchestras to play upon in rotating shifts of an hour each.
Europe's file was to be prohibited to all comers on the night, her staff included.
There was a boggling list of tasks, and the young factotum was at his utmost to keep it all properly ordered in his thoughts. Along with the marshaling and sending of invites-which Europe had written by a professional pen on silken, rose-colored paper-was the arrival of provender and with it the hiring of extra cooking and serving staff. With this was the springtime cleaning of the entire house, ready to then be festooned with fathom upon fathom of red or magenta taffeta and hanging lanterns. Every runner and rug, drape and coverlet was hung from windows sprung wide to be beaten within an inch; floors were swabbed till they gleamed… then swabbed again; windows washed inside and out, poor Wenzel and Nectarius hung out on rickety ladders to get at the upper stories. In apprehension of his little 'parcels' left about the house, Housekeeper Clossette shooed Darter Brown outside, declaring tartly that he was 'not allowed back in until he can school his bowels the better!'
Sickly indigent chimney sweeps were summoned from the workers' fair in Steepling Oak to scramble precariously up flues. I thought teratology was dangerous, Rossamund pondered, watching in vague horror one gaunt boy half his own age clamber up the chimney of the file fire, encouraged by an older lad with a jointed pole. The thump and bang of the labors sounded about Cloche Arde the entire day, and all the while the maids were polishing, polishing, polishing.
Charged with control of the Duchess-in-waiting's purse, Mister Carp was summoned into the madness.Yet the man's parsimonious reluctance was little needed, for Rossamund was admirably troubled over the outflowing of his mistress' wealth.
'Miss Europe missed most of her prize-money on the knave,' he said in a low voice, making careful inquiry of Mister Carp as the fellow looked over a bill of expense for the decoration of the lower floors. 'I do not think she can afford all this after such losses.'
'Ahh, what a happy fellow!' The man-of-business smiled with sudden and uncommonly genuine kindness. 'May your credits always be greater than your debts! Calm your care, Master Bookchild; our mistress can compass the cost-she is worth ten thousand a year if she is worth a scruple!' His chest inflated a little.
'Ten thousand?' Rossamund goggled. Ten thousand sous!
'Indeed! Each year.'
Rossamund almost choked.
Mister Carp veritably glowed with satisfaction. 'Unlike many silk-purse peers, she is a shrewd patron and financier: holds interest in many prosperous endeavors. She shall make a formidable duchess should she ever consent to it.'
After this, Rossamund ceased fretting.
As for the Branden Rose, she spent much of her time in her file in close counsel with a continuous flow of kapelmasters and stepmasters, orators and amphigorers, psaltists and panto troupes. Interspersed among them were drabber souls who seemed unduly stern for such a festal occasion. First that Rossamund saw among these was the colonel of a lesquin company dressed in a dark clerical suit. Arms laden with various folios, the colonel was accompanied by a strikingly harnessed captain, complete with caudial honor at waist, whose haunted eyes seemed to hold something occult and severe. Arrived early Domesday morning, they did not leave until Rossamund delivered his mistress' treacle that evening, the colonel departing with the earnest pledge, 'We are ready to put our hand to whatever the lady directs.'
Europe said nothing on it and Rossamund knew better than to ask.
The next morning, as he was again dispensing the fulgar's plaudamentum, a gentleman in drab proofing and blue-tinted spectacles obscuring laggard-colored eyes was shown into the file. Introducing himself in clipped tones as a Mister Rakestraw, speculator privite, he went immediately into a report. 'We are near to weaseling out that dastard's bolt-hole.'
At this point the fulgar stopped the fellow and bid her young factotum to depart to his needful gala preparations. Lingering at the file door as he closed it, he still managed to catch, 'The fall of that lighters' fortress spooked him greatly and has driven him more deeply into cover.Yet I believe by tomorrow morn I shall be able to inform you of his exact locale.'
Swill? Rossamund pondered. Not for the first time he wondered upon his mistress' real intent. Whatever it might be, her determination to leave him out of the scheme was abundantly clear.
In the afternoon, he sat in the file with Europe and her hired pen-a certain Mister Chudleigh.Together they were sorting the next dispensing of seemingly endless invitations to be handed to the platoon of scopps waiting in the vestibule, when Wenzel, red-faced and panting, bustled in to announce, 'Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike!'
In a gray dress of flashing satin with sash of black tied in a great bow at the small of her back, the Lady Madigan's most striking feature was her sky blue eyes. Sad and penetrating, they lingered intelligently wherever she fixed her attention. Of similar generation to Europe, she bore a small, solid diamond etched under her lower lip like
