so you could've got yerself a kill.' He gave a sardonic grin.
'That was more than enough for me,' Crofton Wheede put in, wide-eyed. 'I thought we were done in and no mistaking! It was like how me poor mammy ended all over again…'
'Don't start on yer poor mammy, Wheede!' Eugus Smellgrove called testily, still lying abed.
'Aye,' Giddian Pillow offered, 'just be grateful they weren't one of them gudgeon-baskets I heard tell of-them ones running wild out Gathercoal way.'
'They reckon a wit can't stop a rever-man,' Wheede shuddered, clearly glad it had not been a brace of these vile creatures on the road last night.
Gudgeons! Rever-men? Rossamund sat up. 'Where did you hear about that?' he called.
'When we were in Silvernook the other day,' Pillow answered. 'Some fellow at the skittle-alley on the Hackstone Row says he'd come from Makepeace and that it was all abuzz about the quarry being haunted by some handmade beastie.'
Rossamund nodded, aghast. 'But how did it get there? They have to be put somewhere, don't they? Rever- men don't just wander about on their own-do they? Someone has to make them. Someone has to place them.'
'It probably got loose from a hob-rousing pit,' Pillow offered with a grim and knowing look.
Hob-rousing was the illegal practice of setting monsters against gudgeons and betting on the winner. Rossamund thought of Freckle and the rever-man once locked in the hold of the Hogshead. Maybe that was where they were headed? He was doubly glad now he had set Freckle free. 'But that's wrong!' he exclaimed without thinking.
The others looked at him blankly.
'Well, I've heard it that the fluffs use the baskets for guards to protect all their jools and secrets,' Plod said finally, rolling his eyes weirdly. He wiggled his fingers as if a great shower of coins were pouring through them, causing a chuckle among his fellows.
'I heard it said there's some poor fellow back at Winstermill who's all agog from what they reckon was a gudgeon fight,' Smellgrove joined in, fully awake at last. 'Was once a fine lighter but has never been right in his intellectuals since.'
'Clap it shut, little frogs!' Assimus snorted, startling them all, stomping into the room to rouse them out to the sip-pots to wash. 'Who talks on rever-men at this fresh hour of day? Git ye up and git ye at 'em! Out for yer scrubbing! Move yer carcasses!'
A line of tubs ran along a wall in a small yard adjacent to the foreyard of the northern keep. While the shivering boys scrubbed themselves in the freezing twilight, the topic of talk soon shifted to more friendly adventures. First it was the mischief done on the last Domesday visit to Silvernook and mischief planned for the next-for Domesday was the common, weekly vigil-day and their one occasion of rest. Much to the other boys' bemused disapproval, Rossamund had never joined them on these half-drunken jaunts, preferring to spend his money on pamphlets and remain behind at the manse reading. In the time since he started at Winstermill he had ventured down to Silvernook only twice to get more pamphlets and to see if he might meet again with Fouracres, who had helped him so much on his way to prenticing. The restless postman had not had an opportunity to come to Winstermill. Silvernook and the dwellings of the Brindleshaws were his range, and he was so devoted to his 'custom'-as he called the people he delivered to, he rarely had a common vigil himself. Their reunions had therefore been necessarily and unsatisfactorily brief, and Rossamund was still hoping for a day where they might sit and talk in earnest.
The boys' chatter changed again to the most common topic-in what cothouse each prentice thought he would like to serve once prenticing was done and they had all become lampsmen 3rd class.
'I want to go to Makepeace Stile,' Plod said eagerly. 'They work close with them obstaculars to catch bandits and dark traders and such.'
'What about Haltmire?' pondered Tworp, leering at Wheede. 'Ye get to see plenty of nickers there.'
'They don't send lampsmen 3rd class out there, Tworp!' Wheede rose to the goad. 'It's too unfriendly for new lighters.'
'Aye,' said Smellgrove, 'the way ye was whimpering last night I can see why.'
Rossamund did not particularly care: where he was sent was where he was sent. Surely it would all be the same: light the lamp, douse the lamp, light the lamp, douse the lamp, light the lamp, douse the lamp, always waiting for some monster to spring and deliver a horrible end…
Rossamund contrived to wash only his face and not remove his shirt before being herded back to the gallery to dress in full. Today was the day when he was due to change his nullodor: the Exstinker he had promised both Fransitart and Craumpalin to wear, splashed on the cambric sash wound about his chest, under his clothes. But his precious Exstinker was back at Winstermill, wrapped up in an oilcloth at the bottom of his bed chest at the base of the lumpy cot.
Before putting on his quabard-the vest of rigid proofing all lighters wore over their coats-he stared at the embroidered figure upon it. Stitched in thread-of-gold was an owl displayed wings out, talons reaching, sewn over panels of rouge and leuc-red and white. Sagix Glauxes Rex-the Sagacious Imperial Owl-the sign of an Emperor's man. For the Glory of Ol' Barny indeed!
The prentice-watch messed on the usual farrats and small beer (never as good as that served at the Harefoot Dig-always far too watery). Tomorrow's breakfast at the manse would be no better-dark pong bread swilled down with saloop, a drink of sassafras and sugar boiled in milk. The morning after that it would be farrats once more, then pong the next, then farrats, over and over.
Breakfast wolfed down, they paraded out in the yard of the northern keep before the sun had even peeped. Now they must douse all the lanterns back to Winstermill and be in time for limes, the morning interval between first morning instructions and second. This was where the prentices still at Winstermill were formed up to await the return of the lantern-watch, each given lime-laced pints of small beer to fend off ill-health. Ready for this returning and looking forward to limes, the boys stood shivering in the glow of bright seltzer lamps, the morning showing as a cold halo in a low and murky sky.This was the time of day figured safest, when night monsters had found their beds once more and daytime prowlers were still waking.
Surly and overtired, Assimus, Bellicos and Puttinger poked the boys into correct dressing with rough tugs and prods of their fodicars. Grindrod called them to attention and marched them out the gates. Back to Winstermill they went, to a little rest before resuming the solemn routines of their prenticing.
Back to Winstermill, that is, except for Rossamund. He had been left behind as a courtesy from the lamplighter-sergeant to rouse the calendars and accompany them to the manse. Returning from the foreyard, he passed Mister Bolt, the night-clerk and uhrsprechman, sitting in the north keep guardroom behind a small dirty stool that served as his table, and asked him the time of day.
Groggy, smelling of claret and squinting with lack of sleep, Mister Bolt peered at Rossamund. 'Quota hora est, he asks!' the night-clerk said, taking out his heavy fob. 'What time is it indeed?' He glared at its cryptic face beadily. 'Why, lantern-stick, it's a little before the half hour of five-o'the-clock on this cruel chill's morning, and the bad half of a good hour till the drummer wakes the rest and I get to me fleabag' (by which he meant his bed).
By their own instruction the calendars were not to be troubled for another hour. At last Rossamund had a moment of his own, without press or crowd or the impel of orders-a precious-rare commodity, he had learned, in a lamplighter's life. Secreting himself in a dim corner beneath the stairs that went up to the gallery, he hoped to remain inconspicuous, perhaps to read a little of his new pamphlet and avoid being discovered and set to some odious task.
He failed.
As the drums rataplanned again to wake the rest of the cothouse for another day, the house-major, on his way down to breakfast, spied Rossamund. 'You there! Lantern-stick! The one I spoke with last night,' the officer barked. 'Feed the dogs. Their meat is in the kitchen.'
'Aye, sir,' the young prentice said with sinking wind. It was properly the duty of the house-watch to feed the dogs. The house-major must have known that though Rossamund had been left behind, he was still part of the lantern-watch. He had rarely ever met a dog of any sort-they were not allowed in Madam Opera's-and any time he had, the meeting had not been comfortable. Shaken, the young prentice nevertheless obeyed without demur, asking directions of a kitchen hand.
'They're in the yard of the south keep,' a rough-shaven kitchen hand explained, handing Rossamund a rotund pot of dog vittles. 'Mind the weight!'
