Foundling (2 page)

 

 

 

R
OSSAMÜND was a boy with a girl’s name. All the other children of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls teased and tormented him almost daily because of his name. And this day Rossamünd would have to fight his worst tormentor, Gosling—a boy who had caused him more misery than any other, a boy he worked hard to avoid. Unfortunately, when it was time to practice harundo, there was no escaping him.

At Rossamünd’s feet was the edge of a wide chalk circle drawn upon floorboards so fastidiously cleaned that the grain protruded as polished ridges. Opposite stood his enemy. Regretting the ill fortune that had paired him with his old foe, Rossamünd frowned across the circle; sour-faced and lank-haired, Gosling stared back contemptuously. The blankness behind Gosling’s eyes terrified Rossamünd; his opponent was a heartless shell. He delighted in causing pain, and Rossamünd knew that he would have to fight better today than he ever had before if he was to avoid a beating.

“I’m going to thrash you good, Rosy Posy,” Gosling hissed.

“Enough of that, young master Gosling!” barked the portly cudgel-master, Instructor Barthomæus. “You know the Hundred Rules, boy. Silence before a fight!”

Both Rossamünd and Gosling wore padded sacks of dirty white cotton, tied with black ribbons over their day-clothes. Each boy held a stock—a straight stick about two and a half feet long. Harundo was a form of stick-fighting, and these were their weapons.

Rossamünd was never able to get a comfortable hold on a stock. With the fight about to start, he shifted his awkward grip again. He tried to remember all the names, the moves, the positions he had ever been taught. The Hundred Rules of Harundo made perfect sense, but no matter how often he had trained or fought in practice, he could never make his body obey them.

In Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls the only room large enough for harundo was the dining hall. Trestles and benches had been dragged clear and left higgledy-piggledy against the walls. The cudgel-master raised his whistle and the two dozen other children standing around the circle fell silent. Rossamünd noticed some of them grinning knowingly. Others stared—slack-jawed and wondering—while the littlest shuddered with fear.

Gosling twirled his stock with a swagger.

Rossamünd looked to the overcleaned floorboards and waited.

The whistle shrilled.

Gosling strutted into the ring. “Time to get your scourging, Missy,” he gloated. “You’ve managed to dodge me all week, so you’ll suffer extra today.”

“That is
enough
, Gosling!” bellowed Barthomæus.

Rossamünd barely heard either of them. The Hundred Rules were racing madly about his mind as he stepped into the chalk circle. If he could just get them straight in his head, surely his limbs would follow!

With a venomous snarl, Gosling rushed him.

The tangle of Rossamünd’s thoughts served only to tangle his body.
Were his hands in the right place? What about his feet? How close was he to the edge of the ring? What was Instructor Barthomæus thinking of what he was doing? What would happen if he actually did land a blow?

Gosling swept up his stock clumsily. He was not much better at harundo than Rossamünd. Any other child, even many of the little ones, would have stepped out of the way, just as they should, and given Gosling a good crack on his back or shoulder. Instead, Gosling’s vehemence forced Rossamünd to take a clumsy backward step. By a small miracle, he got his stock up in time to swat away this first strike. The sticks collided with a deeply satisfying
chock
!

Gosling gave a furious curse as he was thrown back. He bared his teeth.

That felt right!
Rossamünd thought, a tiny glow of triumph within.

“No, dear boy! No!
Left
decede, then counteroffend with a culix!” Instructor Barthomæus hollered at Rossamünd. “You’ve seen it done. You’ve practiced it, lad! Just step away, then behind, then a
jab-jab-jab
with the handle! A halfhearted sustis is just not enough, boy!”

Rossamünd was deflated. Just when he thought he was getting it right, he was actually doing things worse than ever.

Gosling was on him by then, chopping at his head again and again with his stock. Rossamünd blocked one strike, swatted away another, then let one through. It smacked him crunchingly hard across his cheek and mouth. His head bursting with agony, his face stinging, Rossamünd flung his own stock out wildly, skewering Gosling right under his ribs.

With a wheeze and a gurgle, Gosling lurched backward.

Some of the littlest children gave a tiny cheer, but quickly went silent as Gosling swung around and glared at them. Rage clearly boiled within him. He threw down his stock and leaped. Instructor Barthomæus tried to intervene, but Gosling darted beyond his grasp, tackling Rossamünd about his stomach.

“No one stops
me
!” Gosling hissed through gritted teeth as he drove Rossamünd down to the glistening floor.

That’s not true
, Rossamünd thought as they tumbled.
The others beat you all the time!

Gosling smashed at him over and over with his fists. Rossamünd saw stars as Gosling struck him once, twice,
three
more times in the head. Instructor Barthomæus blustered sharp warnings that were ignored. Finally he grabbed at Gosling and dragged him off, but not before Gosling had landed cruel blows in tender places. The boy swatted at the air as the cudgel-master hefted and flung him to the other side of the ring.

“Get back, you miserable child!” roared Barthomæus.

Dazzled, his head ringing with pain, Rossamünd thought the instructor was shouting at him, and so he stayed down. Indeed, he found that he much preferred to lie still while the world swam.

Though clench-fisted and seething, Gosling did not move.

Rossamünd groaned. He felt powerful, serious pains he had never felt before.

Fransitart, the stoop-shouldered dormitory master, was called, and Verline, Madam Opera’s parlor maid, too.

The telltale sound of Verline’s rustling skirts arrived well before her. When she saw Rossamünd stricken within the chalk ring, she gave a startled cry.

Rossamünd’s senses began to fade. He was vaguely aware of voices raised in shrill anger. He dimly felt a cloth dabbing at his face. Somehow Master Fransitart was already there.The old dormitory master was growling at Gosling as the other children were shepherded out of the dining hall with a loud scuffing of boots.

Instructor Barthomæus lifted Rossamünd to his feet and wrapped him in a blanket. Verline let him lean on her all the long, crooked way to the boy’s dormitory, murmuring soothing, almost wordless things as they went. The dormitory was very long and very narrow and very, very smelly. Side by side, end on end, was crammed a clutter of cots—there was never enough room in Madam Opera’s. The dormitory was empty now. The other boys were still attending to classes and day-watch duties. Rossamünd’s own cot was at the farthest end from the short, narrow door. With the parlor maid’s help he stumbled through the inadequate gap between the beds, adding a stubbed toe to his woes. At last he could lie down, his head pounding, his cheek pounding—
throb, throb
—sharp, iron-tasting.

Verline fussed over him. “You’ll need a dose of birchet to set you to mending. I will fetch some from Master Craumpalin right away! You lie still, now. I’ll return as soon as I can.” With that, she swished away.

Master Craumpalin was the foundlingery’s dispensurist. This meant that he made most of the medicine and potives the marine society needed. From what Rossamünd could gather, Master Craumpalin had once served in the navy, just as Master Fransitart had done, though not always on the same vessels or for the same states. The old dispensurist had seen half the known world, and cured the rashes and fevers of a great many vinegaroons—as sailors were called—but that was all anyone seemed to know of him. He talked even less of his past than Master Fransitart did. Nevertheless, he let Rossamünd sit with him for hours at a time while he dabbled and brewed. Most of the time Craumpalin worked in silence and the boy would just learn what he could by watching. Occasionally, however, the dispensurist became talkative and would instruct him on the uses of potives, showing him how to pour and blend and stir and store. One of the greatest thrills for Rossamünd was to watch the wonderful and often violent reactions between ingredients as Craumpalin mixed and matched them.

Red goes with green and makes purple, blue powdered in yellow makes off-white with olive spots, black boiled in white makes vermilion with orange vapors
—
how wonderful!
These moments were so exciting, Rossamünd would hop about and usually get under the dispensurist’s feet. At this Craumpalin would yell, “Pullets and cock’rels, boy! Get out of me way before I spill this on ye and melt ye to a puddle!”

Rossamünd smiled woozily at the thought. Now he wanted to sleep but his aching face would not let him. He stared dumbly at the ceiling, obscure with shadows that seemed to creep and lurch. It had been a long time since he had been in the dormitory on his own—he had forgotten just how weirdly unnerving it could be in here, alone.

Such glimpses of the oppressive dark naturally led his thinking to Gosling—Gosling Corvinius Arbour of
the
Corvinius Arbours—a powerful family with ties to some of the most ancient bloodlines of Boschenberg and Brandenbrass, far away to the south. He was notorious at Madam Opera’s for many reasons, but the chief of these was the vigor with which he strove to make everyone’s life a misery. He would cut the hair of sleeping girls, glue shut the eyes of sleeping boys, put earwigs and dead things in unguarded shoes or untenanted beds, blab any secret he might discover. Punishment, no matter how severe, proved useless, for Gosling just did not care. He had been abandoned at Madam Opera’s foundlingery by his family. It was said that his parents had given him up so that they might afford to keep a pair of racehorses. Such a pathetic tale of rejection had not stopped Gosling from declaring to everyone just how important he really was, that he was not some ordinary fellow with only one name, but that he had three: a first name, a forename
and
a family name!

This grim line of thinking led Rossamünd to brood over his own, single and unfortunate name. He had spent his entire life beneath the high, peeling ceilings of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. He had arrived when he was little more than a wailing pink prune, left on the doorstep with an old piece of hatbox lining pinned to his swaddling. Upon this bit of card had been written one word, scratched awkwardly in charcoal:

With that word he was named. The fact was officially sealed with its entry into the grand ledger that all foundlingeries possessed, and which gave all foundlings the family name of
Bookchild
.

In the warren that was Madam Opera’s, Rossamünd often hid himself away from the taunts and snickers that he still endured from the other children. He would lose himself in his favorite books and pamphlets, reading them avidly. He dared to dream that there could be a better lot for him beyond the marine society’s corroding walls, and let his head fill with scenes of battles, and marauding monsters and the mighty heroes that conquered them. He might have trouble remembering the Hundred Rules of Harundo, but the things he discovered within the dogeared pages of his precious readers would stay with him forever.

Soon enough, Verline returned. She slid discreetly along the creaking wood, her great tent of many-layered skirts making their telltale rustling. The high ceiling bounced the hissing echoes softly back till the room was filled with the gentle susurrus of her passage. He was certain she floated with her feet some inches off the floor and, to him, this added to her virtue. In his tiny world, Verline was Rossamünd’s favorite. She was short and slight, her earth-dark hair hidden beneath the white cotton bonnet that female servants wore. She adored ribbons and bows, and even the plain, workaday clothes she wore had several knotted here and there, the biggest being a great white knot made from her apron straps, tied in the small of her back. Within the crook of her left arm, and wrapped in a cloth, she held a small porcelain crock. From it putrid, mustard-colored fumes boiled and evaporated in the close air of the dormitory, leaving a bad stink.

Befuddled as he was, he still recognized the yellow steam and rank smell. Birchet was a torture masquerading as a cure.

Verline extracted a turned ladle from one of the many pockets in her white apron. She swilled about in the crock with this and brought it out filled with what he knew would be the most disgusting muck he would ever have the unhappy luck to swallow.

“Now hold your nose and open your mouth,” she told him sternly.

Pinching closed his nostrils, and squeezing shut his eyes, Rossamünd opened his mouth. Verline spooned the restorative potion as best she could into the tiny hole he had reluctantly made of his lips. Rossamünd’s whole head instantly flared with the fires of a thousand burning lamps. His nose was filled to bursting with the stinging stench of the mangy armpit of a dead dog, and his nostril hairs withered like straw on a fire. He was certain that cadmium-colored steam was squirting from his ears. Just when he thought he could stand it no more, the burning-bursting subsided and left him feeling well and whole.