"Oi there, pip-squeak," the baxter warned. "Best mind yourself, afore you wind up in one of me loaves!"
At last in the farther corner he found an oblong hole in the floor through which steam was continuously venting in churning swirls. The scullery cellar. Paved steps went down and Rossamund descended till he was standing by a line of scrubbers, great wooden vats brimful of frothy, near-scalding water. The rosy-faced scullery maids, arms up to elbows in suds, greeted him with singsong cheer. The head scullery maid, Philostrata, handed him a soap-greasy cloth. "Sooner to start is sooner to end." She pointed with a nod to a tub crowded about with unsteady piles of grimed crockery and smeared turnery.
Vinegar flies floated about the stack delicately.
Pots-and-pans!
The water was tremendously hot, but when Rossamund flinched, the nearest scullery maid chided him gently. "Don't be a mewling great babbie, now." She smiled. "You'll get used to the scald. Young lantern-sticks need to grow into hardy lighters."
Rossamund washed pots, pans, plates, griddles, saucers, fine Gomroon porcelain, dainty Heil glassware, sturdy mugs, cutlery and turnery. Sweat dripped from his brow and soaked his shirt as he scrubbed away the grease and washed off the spittles and scraps. The water turned into a foul, tepid soup that was promptly replaced with steaming new water poured from large coppers and made sudsy with great scoops of scarlet-powder. Scullery hands bustled about taking washed plates, drying them, hustling them off to be stored.
As the scullery maids worked they gossiped and griped. "… Did you see what she upstairs had delivered today?" one woman huffed with a ceilingward glance and a dripping poke of her thumb in the vague direction of the Snooks. "We only used to get the finest, but now she rules the roost. Acacia says she carts in this awful cheap wheat dust from Doggenbrass! She ought to know better!"
"Tut!" another maid exclaimed. "The finest fields in the Sundergird just north of us, and she's importing poor stuffs from across the Grume! All because of that pinch-a-goose, Odious Podious."
"Larks! Been here but three years and it's like he rules the place!"
"Or like he wants to," came the first scullery maid's shrewd answer.
"Mm-hmm," her colleagues-in-suds agreed.
Rossamund washed for an hour, his puckered hands becoming insensible to the steaming water, and was relieved when Philostrata told him that his job was done and he could leave. Feeling a weight lifted, he hurried up the scullery steps eager for the seclusion of his cell.
His joy was premature.
Finding the happy prentice without a task and ready to leave, the Snooks put a heavy arm about Rossamund and guided him over to an enormous fireplace filled with chains and lumpish levers. The pendulous fat of her limb flowed about either side of his neck. Rossamund strained his head away from the noxious mixing of her posy-perfume and the funk of her armpits. Before him was a great cauldron, removed from its hooks over the hearth.
"Now I want ye to hop into there," the Snooks said, pointing to the enormous pot, "and scrub away till it all gleams."
The young prentice regarded the cauldron with sinking, wide-eyed disgust. With a helping hoist up and over from a soup cook, he was made to climb inside, and to his horror the pot was still warm from its cooking. He was expected to scratch at the crust of ages within with little more than a bent butter knife and an old brush. Squashed on his knees, Rossamund labored in dread of being forgotten and having some boiling, putrid fish-head stew poured atop him. Hacking at the crust with the handle of the brush, he had managed to make a fair pile of burnt smithereens at the bottom of the great pot when he felt it being lifted and saw the stone mantel of the fireplace loom over the rim to eclipse the smoke-stained white ceiling. They were going to boil him!
"Ahoy! Ahoy there! I'm in here!" he hollered. "I'm in here!"
The cauldron was tipped on its side and Rossamund rolled on to the slate-paved floor. Small unidentifiable pieces of char stuck to his face, hands and clothes.
"I'm sure ye're very tasty, me lad," the soup cook grinned, "though I reckon yer boots might make for some prodigious chewing."
Shaking just a little, Rossamund grinned with him. Brushing off the char, he presented himself back at the Snooks' chair. The kitchen was beginning to empty now, staff retiring for the night as their duties finished, and Rossamund was hopeful he would be among them.
Regarding him through light-reflecting lenses, the Snooks pursed and unpursed her lips. "What to do with ye now, eh?" she muttered. "What to do with ye now… I tell ye what, boyo," the old potato sack of a woman offered at last, "I need ye to do a little favor for yer old Mother Snooks.What do ye say?"
"W-What would I have to do, ma'am?"
"Why, just carry a trifling thing up some stairs for me, that is all."
"I… er…," Rossamund started.
"Or shall I tell dear Grind-yer-bones just how contrary ye are? I'd be happy to give ye a more regular place in me kitchen." The Snooks gave him an appraising look.
Rossamund made a strangled noise.
"I'll take that to be a 'yes,' shall I?" The culinaire grinned wickedly. "Good lantern-stick."
With that she took him back through the cookhouse and out into a small quadrangle that he never knew existed. It was sunk right down like a well amid the lofty walls of Winstermill and was lit dimly by the light showing from the kitchen door and slit windows. Stars showed through the high oblong hole above, blue Gethsemene-the brightest-winking at him silently. In the twilight Rossamund could tell the place was both manger and slaughterhouse, the stink of pig's sweat, lanolin, dung and blood mixing with the smoke of a fitfully glowing brazier. By it a man stood, warming his hands, clearly oblivious to the stink. He wore a striped apron and a belt holding wicked-looking carvers-a slaughterman.
The Snooks went to him. "Well, hello there, Slarks," she said in her friendliest voice. "Give my parcel to the lad."
"Right you are, Mother Snooks." Slarks hesitated, looked dubiously at Rossamund from crown to boot-toe and then went to fetch this "parcel."With a grunt he hefted a sack and handed it straight to the young prentice. "Watch out, lad-it might be a mite weighty for you!"
Rossamund grappled with it clumsily, expecting to be toppled by a ponderous weight. It smelled strongly of pigs and made vile squished noises, but it was not heavy.
The slaughterman regarded Rossamund. "You're a wiry little stick, ain't you?" He indicated the sack with a wink. "We won't be havin' the soup this week, eh?"
Rossamund had no notion what he meant.
"Follow me, me darling dumb-muscle, follow me!" The Snooks led the way back through the kitchen, past the mill to the pantry stalls. Into the leftmost of these the culinaire ambled, going to the very back. Behind a stack of wheat and barley bags was a red door, ironbound and locked. With a large key, the Snooks released the door, picked a bright-limn from the wall and took Rossamund beyond into a small cold room. Here were kept all the sweet dainties and rare nourishments set aside for the officers-and especially the Master-of-Clerks. Labels-handwritten, hand-pasted-identified the contents of many sacks, bags, boxes, tins and other containers: pickled peaches, plums, apricots, small black fish and so much more Rossamund could not catch a glimpse of in the swinging light as he was rushed through the store. For a breath they paused before a meat safe and several enormous earthen pots of unknown content.
What now? Rossamund wondered.
Partly concealed behind the pots was another door barely big enough for the old woman to fit through. A second key opened this port, and she encouraged Rossamund through with a firm hand.
At first Rossamund thought he had been shown into some kind of cupboard, but as the Snooks pushed in with her bright-limn he discovered that it was actually a landing. Before him he discerned a tightly winding wooden stair going up and going down. It was a furtigrade-a secret stair-cunningly built in a cavity between the walls, barely lit with ill-kept bright-limns fixed to the banister posts.
"This nasty squeeze'll take ye right up to where ye need to go." The Snooks patted a rail. "For too long I've been jamming me girth between them banisters, and now I hurt right deep in here," she said, patting her right hip tenderly. "I'd rather not climb anymore."
The meager width of the furtigrade was such that Rossamund marveled that the Snooks had been able to make the ascent at all.
"So that's why ye're here and that's where ye're to go with yer bundle. Just take the stairs all the way till ye come to a door and can't go no more. Bang hard low down and go through.To ye left ye'll find the surgeon's door, dark purple and banded in iron. Knock three times, then a pause, then three more, then another pause, then two."
Very unsure, Rossamund shifted his load. "The surgeon, ma'am?" he asked bemusedly. "Do you mean Swill?"
"Aye!" she snapped. "And ye tell him when he asks-and I know he'll ask," the corpulent culinare insisted as sweat-melted boudoir cream congealed on her brow in the cool of the landing, "that Mother Snooks is a-getting too age-ed to be running errands through back ways and is fed up of nasty, dusty, too-steep, too-narrow stairs. That she has seen fit to send me-that's ye, boyo-in her stead."
Rossamund hesitated.
"Up ye go, boyo!" She gave a ghastly grin.
That was enough for the prentice; he climbed. Each stair was just that inch higher than was comfortable to climb, requiring him to lift his feet awkwardly, every step creaking a protest as it bore his weight.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten, he counted under his breath, switch back!
The whole structure seemed to tremble slightly with every step. Between the rough stone wall and rickety rail there was barely room for the prentice to swing his elbows. The Snooks must have been squished like pudding in a dish to come up here.
Gritting his teeth determinedly, Rossamund climbed in the stuffy, dusty, closetlike dark, marveling at this secret stair and wondering how many folk in Winstermill knew of its existence. Eyes wide to make the best of the weak light, he hoisted the sack over his back. Something soft and blunt bumped and prodded again and again into his kidney.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten… Switch back!
Over and over, higher and higher, and it was colder and darker as he went.
On a landing by a dirty green bright-limn, Rossamund put the sack down. As he caught his wind he indulged a little curiosity.
He toed the bag. It rocked and squelched softly.
He gingerly undid the cord that bound the top, already loose and in need of retying-or so he told himself. The sack sagged open but that was all.
He lifted it up to the light and peeked within… and sat back with a stifled yelp.
An eye had stared back at him.
Rossamund recoiled, but the eye did not blink or twitch or twinkle with life. A little shaken, the prentice returned to his investigations. He pulled at the sack's mouth, carefully, cautiously, and there was the eye again-a dark, sightless eye and an anemic forehead a-bristle with short, white hairs… and a blunt, broad-nostriled snout. The smell of swine was strong now.
Looking closer he found it was indeed a pig-or the head of one, at least-sitting atop a gelatinous knot of gizzards. He grimaced. What could a surgeon possibly want with a pig's head? He closed the sack and tied the cord about with the best version of the previous knot he could manage. He had read that physicians and surgeons like to practice stitching wounds on pig bits. Or maybe he just wants to cut it up and see what's inside? Rossamund carried the sack for several flights more, uneasy with his package now he was aware of its gruesome contents, holding it away from his body as best he could.
At last the flights stopped at a square portal.
With a low, whistling puff of relief, Rossamund caught a breath.
There was no handle on the door before him, no grip or lock, just two solid panels of wood, big enough, he figured, for the Snooks to squeeze through. He thumped it hard and low and with a thunk, a click and a whir that made Rossamund flinch and shy in fright, the portal opened. The gap revealed the other side was better lit.The prentice gladly snatched up his package and crouched through and saw that the panels which had slid clear of the portal were really the back of a heavy bureau. On the farther side of the square opening he was amazed to find himself in a tight whitewashed corridor. There was a purple door at its farther end, just as the Snooks had described. What business did Swill have with such a secluded venue? Through the smudgy mullions of a small window set almost three feet into the wall Rossamund could see the frigid night, clear and starlit above the gray mass of Winstermill's roofs, and beyond this the dark line of the low hills of the Brindleshaws.
He rapped at the door just as he had been told: three knocks, three knocks, two. He could not hear any sound beyond, and was beginning to hope he could just leave the sack there and go back down to the kitchen. Douse-lanterns must be soon? Surely his imposition would be done by now?
The port slowly opened.
Rossamund came to attention.
Holding a bright-limn high, the owner of a flat round face regarded him shrewdly. "Aye?" Her thin lips contorted. This certainly was not Grotius Swill. It was the epimelain from the infirmary.
He declared more boldly than he felt, "Mother Snooks sent me up," and held up the sack. "I have a delivery for Mister Swill."
"Surgeon Swill to you, young man!"
"Surgeon Swill," Rossamund mouthed obediently.
The woman looked suspiciously down the long, narrow passage. "Stay," she insisted, and with a crisp rustle turned and swung the purple door closed. Yet it did not shut, and Rossamund was left with a sliver of a view into the room beyond. Her bright-limn made ghastly shadows as the epimelain shuffled across the room. He heard the creak and latching of some other door, then stillness. Trying not to make a sound, the young prentice peered through the gap between door and jamb. In the barely lit apartment was a long, low table with shallow gutters carved down each side that bent to a stoppered drain at its end. On the floor next to this sat a wooden pail of sawdust. Between this table and thin, shuttered windows in the right-hand wall stood a life-size armature of a human body made of wood and porcelain complete with removable parts, which Rossamund at first thought with a start was a sickly person retired into the corner. When he realized what it was, he stared for a moment in horror. Worse yet, what he could see of the back wall was neatly arranged with several tall screens showing oddly proportioned people in various states of flaying, dismemberment or decay. In such grisly surroundings, Rossamund wondered how a person could possibly remain in his right mind.
He pushed at the door just a little, his compulsion to see more overcoming his terror of being caught.
Near the door on a stand was a tray a-clutter with tools designed to prize flesh apart, or clamp flesh together; things to gouge and maim-all of them laid tidily inside velvet-lined boxes. Next to these were clumps of frayed cloth he recognized as pledgets and yards of tow, which must have been for tying off free-flowing wounds. Clustered above were many lamps shuttered with mirror-backed hoods that would reflect and intensify their light when lit.
He took half a step inside the door. Between the windows was a gaunt bookshelf carefully stacked with papery piles weighted with jars and pots of desiccated bits and parts: wizened embryos of unguessable genus, distorted eyeballs, withered organs, all decaying slowly, slowly, one tiny bubble at a time in preserving alcohols. Stacked with them was a small library of books. Rossamund struggled to make out their titles with such little light: Phantasmagoria one read perhaps; the thickest of all maybe showing Ex Monsteria. He had learned enough from Craumpalin to realize that these were rare books on forbidden subjects not normally required for a surgeon to read-and Rossamund longed to look into them.
Swill's voice, angry and loud, came from some other room deeper within. Rossamund pulled away from the fascinating slivered view and as he did, glimpsed a terrible sight: the flayed skin of a person, glistening as if fresh, pinned out on a frame that stood right by the door. He stoppered a cry of fright and took a clumsy rearward step.
Better light flooded the apartment and determined steps tramped toward the young prentice from behind the purple door. It flung wide and Grotius Swill stood there wearing a brown leather apron besmeared with darker brown stains, his own bright-limn up by his face. He looked furious.
"I… I have this for you, sir," Rossamund quailed, lifting the foul sack. "From Mother Snooks."
Swill took it, looking over his shoulder-gaze catching for but an instant on the flayed skin-and back to Rossamund. "Where is the Snooks? Why has she sent you?"
"She is down in the kitchens, I reckon, sir. She says her hip hurts too much to climb the stairs tonight." He delivered the message exactly as the culinare had told him.
Swill's lips pursed tight as he listened. His eyes became cold slits.
"I see," he said after a long pause. "And you are her porter, are you?"
"I… I've j-just done what I've b-been told, sir," the prentice stammered.
"Have you just? By which way did you come, child?" The surgeon's voice was pinched and menacing. "Who saw you come here?"
Rossamund tried to hide his fright. "I-ah-I came by-by the f-furtigrade, sir," he said in a small voice, pointing back to the barely distinguishable shadow of the bureau. "I-I don't reckon anyone could have seen me, sir, not at all."
"I see." Swill scratched at his throat. "Wait there," he said quickly, and the door closed, properly this time. Presently it reopened.
"When you see the Snooks again, give her this." Swill presented Rossamund with a sealed fold of paper. "It's my reply." He smiled inscrutably. "She will understand."
Something thumped loudly in the darkened surgery behind. There was a short, stifled yelp and a muffled, maniac gibbering.
"Go on now, quick-quick, get along! Patients need my ministrations." The surgeon gripped Rossamund's upper arm and hustled him back toward the hidden doorway. "Be certain to give that painted crone my reply," he insisted as the prentice clambered quickly back through the hole in the wall, knocking his head.
The prentice needed no further encouragement but rushed down the furtigrade, gasping, taking two or three steps with each stride, daring even to leap whole flights in his panic, the furtigrade shuddering dangerously. Pig's heads. Flayed skins. Clandestine stairs. What is all this?
With douse-lanterns imminent, the kitchens were near empty, only the night staff remaining to stir the pots and bake breads for the morrow's hungry. The Snooks was still at her domestic throne, waiting for him. "Did ye get the surgeon his bag?" she hissed.
"Aye."
"Did ye deliver me message?"
"Aye."
"Well?" The Snooks thrust her grinning, oily face at the prentice. "How did he like our new arrangement?"
"H-He just said 'I see'…"
"Is that all?" She grabbed Rossamund by his sweat-stained smock front. "Just 'I see'?"
The prentice pulled away from her. "And he told me to give you this," he said. The Snooks took the sealed fold of paper slowly and, reading it, went gray, her boudoir cream showing in ugly mealy blotches over her now ashen complexion.
Rossamund shuffled his feet and the Snooks gave him a sharp look.
"Ye may go," she barked.
The prentice hesitated.
"Ye're clear, ye're free! Go! Begone! I'm sick of the sight of ye!" the culinare cried, waving the paper in his face. Rossamund dashed from the kitchen.
"Douse lanterns!" came the call as Rossamund entered his own cell. He quickly shut the door and turned the bright-limn, undressing for bed in the settling gloom. Smock-less, shirtless and shivering, Rossamund sneaked out to the passage between the cells and scrubbed at the sweat and the cook-room stink as best he might with the frigid water of the common washbasin. The cold and a silly fear of something creeping at him from behind made him leave off washing, and he dashed back to his cold cot to shiver the night away, his bed chest dragged out to barricade the cell's door.