As for the Princess of Pander Tar, sat at one end of the hall among a throng of admirers both adoring and purely inquisitive, Europe did not-of course-prove at all trumped. Paying no more respect than she received, the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting was perfectly measured at their meeting, her greeting as cool as the Princess'.

"I know you will not mind my bringing such an august guest uninvited to your night, dear cousin Naimes," the Archduke purred smugly in aside to his hostess. "As especial guest in my courts I could not very well leave the Fatemah behind . . ."

"A new bosom to distract you, sir," Europe returned discreetly. "Be careful, Lady Madigan might grow jealous."

"Hmm."The Archduke smiled through his teeth. "Indeed . . ."

Though many looked at her with unaffected awe and respect, there were a few with whom the heiress of Naimes exchanged genuine felicitations. Much of the way about the ludion-and with the other floors still to visit-Europe abruptly insisted Rossamund take his leave of her. "It shall be easier for me to make my path among the rest if I am unattended," she said.

Both relieved and a little perplexed to be so released, Rossamund descended to the floor below, moving through the billiard room with its swaggering young players to look in on the oratory happening in the parlor beyond. His own oration done, Doctor Crispus was arguing robustly with those guests who reckoned themselves erudite or scholarly, who had perhaps sat a foundation at an athenaeum or abacus. It was a rigorous conversation that Rossamund little understood, perpetually on the brink of devolving into more physical arguments. As for Mister and Madam Carp, they had apparently departed almost immediately after Europe had presented herself.

In the rear quarters the young factotum made another inquiry on his old masters' weal. Finding them both pale and flagging, he sent Fransitart and Craumpalin both-despite their grumbling about missing out-to their pallet to rest, ensuring healthy portions of the night's fare were sent promptly for them to sup on.

Under the sway of the latening hour and many a jovial gla.s.s, the solemnity of the gala began to unravel, and its graceful grandeur descended to something more akin to a country fete. As one of-the-clock was announced by Master Papelott, the more sensible people began to have thoughts for home. As was only proper, these prudent souls sought to say good night to their hostess. Disgruntled murmurs began to ripple through the collected gentry that the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting could not be found. Calls for a search came from bolder throats, and though Papelott and Rossamund, the footmen and most of the house staff sought high and low for her, it was to no avail.

The heiress of Naimes was gone.

Greatly affronted-all the work of Europe's bland affability undone in a moment-the sensible departed anyway, sniffing at apologies and claiming this as typical of such a fractious and unmanageable creature as the Branden Rose.

"She has invited us only to toy with us!" one grand dame declared severely on her exit.

"What do you expect from one who has her own money?" her equally elderly companion concurred, to the murmured agreement of all who heard.

At two-striking on Cloche Arde's long-case clocks, mantel timepieces and from the many repeaters in gentlemen's pockets-the orchestras finally submitted to exhaustion and, stowing their hundredweight of instruments aboard a large dray, left.

The fashionably or truly nocturnal remained, however, determined to avail themselves of the other entertainments while they were still to be had. Leaving these to the grace of Papelott and the footmen, Rossamund continued to seek his mistress from highest loft to lowest b.u.t.tery, from the most rearward pantry to the very gates of Cloche Arde, finding the Lady Madigan was missing too, with her Mister Rakestraw and the lesquin colonel. Even Baron Finance had departed, gone without a word. What was more, Darter Brown was nowhere to be found.

Standing finally in the foreyard, Rossamund stared into the gloomy night and fathomed full well what was up.

From almost their first day at Orchard Harriet, Europe must have been developing her scheme, sending letters, drawing in her influence even from that remote haven, plotting the entire undertaking down to a device sure to keep Rossamund out of her way. Even as he was occupied with the plans and arrangements for the grand gala, she had set deeper strategies in motion, and while he busied himself so self-importantly with the immediacy of his duties, she had brought her scheme to fruition . . . And now the Branden Rose was gone out into the perilous city to bring vengeance upon Pater Maupin while Rossamund, her own factotum, had been left deliberately and uselessly behind.

26.

UNINVITED CALLERS.

Lampedusa deep-dwelling kraulschwimmen serpent and mighty sea-wretchin who terrorized the waters of the Grume for a thousand years before it was called by that name. Finally, bearing the mythic spiegel-blade, Paschendralle, the legendary Piltdown heldin-king, Tascifarnias, stood upon the sh.o.r.e where Brandenbra.s.s now has its harbor and challenged Lampedusa to a contest to see who should rule land and sea. There upon the sand they fought,Tascifarnias slaying Lampedusa even as he was slain, the flowing of their combined blood purported to have changed the white sand black.

ROSSAMuND stood alone by an open window in his set. Behind him the house of the Branden Rose ticked, empty now of its revelry, starkly silent but for the sporadic thump or clink of clearing and cleaning after such a magnificent event. Though the desire was strong with those desperate for fun to remain into the small hours, the departure of the orchestra, for all intents, spelled the end of the gala. In various fine conveyances-a number including the Archduke, his lofty friends and sycophants-they left with a profound rattling of hoof and wheel to find a suitable small-hour club to pursue delight.

Outside it had become cold and still like a breath held, the low clouds fluorescing with Phoebe's radiance as she climbed to her acme beyond them.

She was out there somewhere amid the increasingly shadowy city and its inscrutable buildings, perhaps even now coming to hand strokes with Maupin and his agents, wrestling on public greens, in lanes, in cellars, room to room in those high ubiquitous half-houses.

Rossamund drew in a frustrated breath, smelling fresh-fallen rain.

Crickets made sweet spa.r.s.e song down in the yard.

He stood and he watched . . .

Of all the staff, only Kitchen was unsurprised at the extraordinary and unseen departure of the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting of Naimes. "I have given my word to her, sir," the steward said bluntly when pressed, and would not be prevailed upon to speak more.

Crispus declared himself utterly flummoxed at her disappearance. "It is a plum ruse," he observed when Rossamund quietly divulged his suspicion of her whereabouts. "But a rather excellent one too, don't you think."

The young factotum had to agree.

Well to the southeast, out in the sea of roofs and chimneys and trees a tiny orange glimmer shot on a steep and shuddering arc up into the heavens, then another of pinker hue sped into the inky firmament a little to the north. Flares! A third farther south joined them, a glittering delicate green. A thin wailing blew to him on the gusting, rising wind.

Rossamund knew with a certainty that these were the heralds of Europe's a.s.sault.

The flares, their light quickly extinguishing on their downward path, gave only the most general sense of direction, far too vague for a successful navigation. By such scant evidence he might spend all night till the a.s.sault was done, lost uselessly in unfamiliar streets trying to find her. I could go to the Broken Doll . . .Yet it was supremely unlikely Maupin would have his true den in so obvious a location.

The hall clock tocked ponderously.

The house breathed.

Peeping through a torrid gap in the heavenly fume, the moon lit the glistening, dripping turnabout beneath for a merest breath, long enough for Rossamund to see sly activity: little lumps nosing about at the base of the cypress, one venturing toward the front door of the house itself.

A rabbit!

The tramp of Nectarius on his periodic round and the nimbus of his bright-limn coming about the corner of the lane running the side of Cloche Arde sent the furtive movement scattering. Holding his breath, Rossamund watched the nightlocksman, lantern up, peer skeptically at the yard. Something fluttered obviously in the cypress. Nectarius gave a start and shook a fist at the little fellow, growling calumnies about "that unwholesome bird and its unwholesome master!" as he turned inside.

A flurry of air pa.s.sed over his head, and a little thing swooped about him around and around.

"Darter!" he whispered. "Where is Miss Europe? Is she well?"

Darter Brown, faithful bird, chirruped loudly as he hovered agitatedly in front of him, giving a series of sporadic tweets as he alighted for a beat on the windowsill to catch a breath before dashing back into the night.

Rossamund's heart missed a beat.

The little sparrow knew where she was!

Listening for the three telltale lots of thumps and clunks of the nightlocksman's retreat through the front, obverse doors and servants' port, Rossamund hurried on his best proofed coat over the fanices he still wore. Taking up his digitals and stoups, his rod of keys and moss-light from the bedside dresser, he eased discreetly out onto the landing. Pallette was there, looking shot through, a pail of steaming water in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other.

"I must be going out a moment," Rossamund said quickly.

The alice-'bout-house blinked muzzily at him and his harness and said with a clumsy half curtsy, "As you like, sir."

"And go to bed, all of you," he added. "I reckon cleaning will be done just as properly in the morning. Tell Mister Kitchen I said so."

"Yes, sir . . ."

Stepping down to the rain-washed yard, Rossamund was immediately met by Darter, who fluttered in agitation a few paces ahead, looping steadily toward the gate. Alert to the faintest tingle of threwd and moss-light thrust before him, Rossamund trod lightly in the huskily grinding gravel, peering about with straining, searching eyes. There among the glory vine runners in the wan effulgence of limulight and gate-post lamp, tiny black pearls glinted beadily back at him from a dark soft-furred face. Long ears folded back over a downy rump.This was not just some ordinary rabbit, Rossamund realized suddenly-certainly not the dreary one-eyed creature he had seen on his walk the other day; it was Ogh, one of the Lapinduce's own servants!

There was a soft press at his calves. It was Urgh, the twin of Ogh, urging him on.

Ogh took a long step toward the gate.

Darter Brown hopped about the ground between them in twittering agitation, patently keen to be on his way. Chirrup! cried the sparrow emphatically. Chirrup! Chirrup!

Humours beating loudly in his ears, Rossamund unfastened the lock of the gate and stepped out onto the Harrow Road to find three more rabbits, meaner, mangier-looking beasts surviving in the city itself, noses patiently twitching. Have they actually done as I have asked? he marveled. Securing the lock, he properly belted his digitals and stoups about his waist as Darter Brown took a perch upon his shoulder.

At the lead, this little drove of rabbits immediately set off, taking him south over the Footling Inch Bridge and toward Brandentown proper. On puddled moon-shone streets, Rossamund followed the pallid flash of the rabbits' cotton-tails as the blithely beasts bounded steadily from shadow to shadow. Often they would spring well ahead to wait on the edge of lantern light. When Rossamund drew near, on they would hop to the next bend or corner to wait once more. Whenever some night-active person crossed their path-a night-soil-man with stinking cart or a desperate takeny seeking a late fare-the rabbits would scurry into the murk and obstacles of the street, to emerge once more when the way was clear.

Going left off the Harrow Road it was a long jog before they finally approached the circuit before the Moldwood. Rossamund wondered for a moment as they pa.s.sed its ironbound entrance what the Lapinduce might think of his little charges heeding Rossamund's bidding. He must surely know . . . Here they were met by another rabbit, as large as Ogh and Urgh yet with velvet fur of distinguished and near-invisible black, who took the lead and without hesitation continued onward down the Dove.

The blockhouse of the Cripplegate loomed, guarded even at this waning hour by a trio of flagging gate wards drooping on their muskets by a burning brazier in the shadow of the gate's great arch. Senses taut, Rossamund watched as first Ogh and Urgh pa.s.sed through unremarked in the shadows of the deep slate gutters between road and walk, barely daring to breathe as he went along himself.

"A little late for the little lord, ain't it?Yer mistress got ye baiting lovers, 'ey, boy-o?" was the sole comment, which set the three gate wards to lewd chuckling. Mercifully, however, they did not press further with awkward questions.

Just beyond the Cripplegate the rabbits halted.

Grateful for the pause and wishing he had thought to bring a skin or biggin of water, Rossamund cautiously drew closer and saw them in silent communion with another of their tribe, a small and shabby beast.Their conference complete, the growing trace of coneys sprang off as one, made an abrupt left off the Dove and went down a street, running in the shadow of the curtain wall and its hem of half-houses. Rossamund glimpsed a sign calling it Cannon Street, and it proved a long curving way, the rabbits keeping to it as Phoebe reached her acme and began her descent of the murky, partly spangled sky. Finally at a fork they were met with another shabby city-living lapin-beast who a.s.sumed the role of pilot and took them right. On a lesser perpendicular junction yet another coney met them and took charge, keeping to the way they were on.

OGH AND DARTER BROWN.

Abruptly a bedraggled hungry-eyed dog sprang bawling from some narrow alley and bore down on the coneys, intent on making one its late supper.The mangy rabbits disappeared in a trice, haring back past Rossamund, while Ogh and Urgh and their larger brother remained frozen in lantern light. Rossamund leaped forward to intervene, his sudden action flinging a sleepy Darter Brown from his shoulder roost. He need not have worried, for as soon as the cur closed, all three rabbits jumped high about it and kicked the dog savagely in its snout and neck, avoiding snapping jaws and kicking again and again.

The dog howled and stumbled. Utterly confounded, it scrabbled back.

Ogh and Urgh chased it down, still trying to kick it, sending the dog yowling to vanish down the lane whence it had sprung.

From a window high above, some surly soul half hollered for quiet.

Grown to a crowd of well over a dozen, the rough-rabbits reappeared and the weird band continued, new coneys materializing from obscure nooks at each significant change in course to take the lead. On streets empty and strangely still, Rossamund jogged stumblingly on, the rabbit-drove ever before and about him. Spotting a grand fountain bubbling on his left, set at the end of a very short alley in a tall alcove made into the side of some windowless wall, he called quietly for his guides to halt. Slaking his thirst with rapid slurping handfuls of the musty waters and joined by many of the rabbits too, he stared at the sculpted faucet. Made of black marble, its eyes a glaring gleaming white, it was a full-proportioned figure of the heldin Tascifarnias wrastling the great sea-wretchin Lampedusa, gripping the nadderer in a mortal stranglehold even as the beast pierced him through with its spines.Though he was certain the sculptor had not intended it, the image seemed to him apt: that the more everymen fought the monsters, the more they did themselves in . . .

Wetting a handkerchief broidered elaborately at the corners with red and magenta, he went to dab at his forehead and found that the sparrow mask was still there, pushed up on his crown and forgotten.

A boom like the detonation of a cannon seemed to roll up from the harbor.

Europe's a.s.sault was proceeding more violently than he had imagined.

With one last noisy mouthful of water, Rossamund was quickly on the way again, a whole herd of rabbits stretched before him across the ancient paving.Though he could not be certain, their number seemed to have increased to near three dozen even as they had paused, becoming a tide of downy fur flowing through the streets and the small-hour hush of the city.Yet, such a crowd as they were, loping before or beside or behind him and even through his legs, Rossamund neither trod on one nor was tripped.

On the other side of an elegant four-arched bridge crossing a broad, hissing stream, Rossamund realized he was being escorted into the seedy side of the city: the dockland suburbs, where shadows were long, streets crooked and terrible affairs easily hidden. They moved in a patter of paws like muted rain down ancient stinking laneways whose cloacal reek even the approaching pungence of the Grume could not cover, pa.s.sing rickety tenements whose foundations were laid before the Tutelarchs first arrived.

Somewhere near in this brooding den a fiddle and fife trilled a merry jig and voices called and jeered in desperate, almost angry pleasure.

Fastening his frock coat higher as if to ward himself, Rossamund pulled his sparrow mask over his face, hoping his own bizarre appearance might give folks given to violence cause to think again.

Grown to more than two score and ten, the drove of rabbits proved strangely and surprisingly certain in this menacing place, keeping confidently to their path despite the many blind lanes and bad-ending ambulatories. They surged by the few folk milling in self-absorbed groups or stumbling, soused, along the threatening row. Amazingly, the rabbits went largely ignored, and if acknowledged, they were greeted with either flabbergasted stupefaction or a kind of fumbling, familiar horror, even sending some poor soul blubbering and hastening some other way.

"Away with thee, Rabbit-o'-Blighty! Ex munster vackery!"

The sweetly acrid stink of the vinegar sea was doubled by an undeniably fishy odor as the streets gained a clutter of lobster pots and smudgy upside-down jolly boats.

Another powerful boom ahead set windows rattling.

Heads poked from windows and doors, all looking in the same direction.

"Been goin' on fer an hour now," he heard called above him by a crotchety onlooker.

"Full-blowed war right in the Alcoves," complained another. "Good gracious, what's that below us?"

"Blight me white, it's the Sparrownucker-man!"

Hurrying, panting, shuffling on, Rossamund thought he smelled powder smoke as he left the distressed natives to their alarm. Some way ahead came the echoing clatter of musketry, far off yet unmistakable. Gasping in air, he pushed against the waxing pangs in limb and lung.

The drove swollen surely beyond count, Rossamund was led on to broader streets, empty again, lined with sheers and loading stages: the stowage roads between storehouses, weighhalls and shipping clericies that went down to the harbor proper and the m.u.f.fled tolling of buoys. At first lost, he still had a sense of heading south and east as he was guided far into this dockland, until as they came to a road of identically commonplace half-houses, he had notion he had seen such streets before . . .

On the way to the Broken Doll with Rookwood . . .

Brazen plaques fixed to the twin ranks of their front steps spoke universally of tolling offices, shipping clerks and maritime lawyers.Yet here on this dull street the great horde of coneys finally stopped. As a single creature they gathered on road and pavement to stare at one particular building some way down on the left and as unremarkable as every other grubby edifice on the entire row: same false arched windows, engaged columns and ma.s.s-produced entablatures, same rearing stone grindewhals projecting from curling pediments and clutching meaningless street numbers, same gray slate steps going up to glossy black doors.

Perplexed, Rossamund stood before the place, lifting his mask clear to suck in great lungfuls of sweet, healing air. There was no fight here, no battling roughs or debris of fallen bodies, just an empty street and these indistinguishable buildings.

Upon the h.o.m.ogenous post at the foot of the steps, a stained and corroded plaque read: The structure did not look any different from the half-houses either side but for a lone rabbit sitting at its threshold at the summit of the steps.

With a chill of astonishment, Rossamund beheld that it was the very half-blind, broken-eared creature he had greeted in the yard of Cloche Arde.

"Oh, faithful beast!" Rossamund breathed. "All of you!" he wheezed to the ma.s.s of rabbits and Darter Brown too.

The coneys simply stared at him, snouts ever twitching.

Behind the sole-eyed rabbit the door to the house stood ajar.

Rossamund took it to mean only one thing: it was here that Europe had begun her a.s.sault on Pater Maupin and all those with him, and that somewhere within, his mistress was to be found.

There came another muted concussion, somewhere ahead and to the left.

The sole-eyed rabbit turned and pushed through the mere gap between door and jamb to disappear within.

With Phoebe well descended from her apex and Darter Brown flapping ahead, Rossamund flicked a caste of Frazzard's powder into hand, took out his moss-light, climbed the stone steps and went inside.

27.

CONTESTS DARK AND VENOMOUS.