Читать онлайн «Factotum»

At a mere four hours, the passage from High Vesting to Brandenbrass was, as water-faring journeys go, rather brief. Though certainly not the busiest sea lane on the vinegar seas, it was nevertheless plied every day-and sometimes into the night too-by all manner of vessels. The most common of these were the packet rams, old naval frigates rescued from breaking and put into civil service, taking people and goods back and forth ceaselessly. Yet for Rossamund, who sat at the tossing prow of the small packet ram Widgeon plowing stoutly through the milky gray-green swell and holding tightly to his newest hat lest it be blown off his crown, the crossing could not be quick enough.

Since their departure from the Imperial Lamplighters' fortress of Winstermill and throughout the entire journey to High Vesting and aboard the Widgeon, the two retired vinegaroons, Fransitart and Craumpalin, had been tight-lipped and unyieldingly alert-as taut as Rossamund had ever known them. Only now, treading across the Grume and many miles distant from the deadly allegations of the Master-of-Clerks and his ambitious surgeon, Grotius Honorius Ludius Swill, did they seem to unbend a little.

Embarked early that morning on what was his very first proper seagoing voyage, Rossamund was aware that at some other time he might have thrilled to the rough passage of the Widgeon; that with each mile he might have savored the bitter sting of the spindrift sprayed by the clash of ram with wave, and his soul soared with the cries of the sooty terns, the mollyhawks and the whimbrel-gulls that teemed in the pale sky above.

Yet he did not.

Two days' journey from that ordeal, Rossamund found himself pinned between sweet relief and restless, anxious dismay. He was free, yes, saved once again by Europa of Naimes, fulgar teratologist and Duchess-in-waiting, but what was he? Though he had escaped the grip of his accusers, he could not escape their accusations turning endlessly in his head. At first indicting him for sedonition, the surgeon, Swill, had stood to claim on evidence that Rossamund was not just a simple sedorner-a monster-lover-but a monster in and of himself. A rossamunderling, or so Swill had called him-"little pink lips," a monster that looks like an everyman. His proofs? The startling effect Rossamund had upon dogs, his monster-slaying strength, even his own name. The man had gone as far as to take some of Rossamund's own blood to mark Fransitart with a proving cruorpunxis. It was then-with a puncting only just begun on the ex-dormitory master's arm-that Europe had intervened. Yet the worst of it was that his old masters, who had known him longest and best, had looked burdened during the inquest, and this was horribly suggestive that the surgeon's wild claims might very well be true.