"Factotum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornish D M)

FRANGIPANNI

"Licurius," Trudgette answered quickly, her accent giving the foul fellow's name a lyrical lift it did not deserve. "But 'e was nicker-killed zis six months passing."

"How did you know?" Rossamund was a little thrown that utter strangers might have tell of this.

"Because…," Rookwood answered, pulling a folded bundle of paper from his pocket, "we like to know all the doings of the lahzarines and other orgulars." He tapped the top sheet.

TheWasp, it read in gaudy print. It was a scandal.

A small knot clutching in his innards, Rossamund hoped that the Defamiere was on this fellow's reading list. Clearly, these four excited young souls were obsequines, ardent devotees of monster-hunters and especially lahzars. Rossamund peered at them guardedly.

"There, we are all met!" Rookwood declared happily. At the shimmering hoom of a gong he added, "Shall we go in?" He grasped Rossamund's arm. "Come along, the show is about to begin!"

Letting himself be carried along in this bluster of jovial enthusiasm, the young factotum, with his new companions, was shown by a footman through a door to a balcony stall. These were very good seats-close to the small stage and looking right over the boards.

Though dim, ready for the imminent performance, the heaven-blue theater was far taller and deeper than it appeared possible from its small front upon the street. Every edge and skirting and corner was gilt-rimmed, the long ceiling painted to look like a bank of fluffy moon-shone clouds warm-lit beneath as if illuminated by the radiance of the stage itself. Every balcony stall was filling with periwigs, gleaming silk, feathery frills and peering lorgnettes, the benches all but taken by scratch-bobs, straw bonnets and tricorns.

Rookwood waved to some associate down in the inferior benches. Rossamund saw the briefest glimpse of a thin fellow with round spectacles beckoning in return before all useful light was extinguished.

Only the soft glow from the musicians' pit to the left of the open stage remained.

The young factotum's chest thumped in anticipation.

To the swell of reedy nasal piping and clashing tambourine, the stage light flared and the panto began. Before a backdrop of wide idealized wildlands, tableau pines and elegant poplars dotting low and aesthetically pleasing hills, a man emerged from the side shadows. Dressed in an elaborate silver frock coat and silver-gray wig, the fancy's face was paste-white, his cheeks garishly rouged. For all his finery he held an ax that he flourished like some overly eager woodsman. "Lards, ladles and gentlespoons!" he cried with high-speaking elocution and many a rrrrolling "r" that reminded Rossamund of poor Master Pinsum, burned up in the fire of the marine society. "Our opening offerrring we brrring before you is sure to titivate your humours with its happy hijinkerrry. Here now the Buffoon Courteous Players playing the Thrrree Brrrothers Hob!"

The auditorium near burst with boisterous, hallooing applause.

Flushed with enchantment and glad to have been invited, Rossamund chortled and clapped with the rest as the players pranced a-stage. They wore grotesque wide-mouthed masks with crooked horns and protuberant ears-the classic lampoon of a nicker. Pronking about the boards, they waggled their back-ends at the cackling crowd and cried out with extreme and comic gravity. One farce steadily gave way to the next, and the entire panto unfolded as a bitter invective against monsters, the age-old anger submerged in cheap laughter and rowdy and hissing fun. Rossamund's delight diminished with each shoddy insult until he was sitting hunched in his seat.Yet beside him Rookwood laughed with such unabashed glee-rocking and hooting his approval at each new and authentically comical novelty-that the young factotum could not help smiles of his own.

Finally the show was run, and in an acme of relief, Rossamund was bustled by Rookwood and friends onto the cool street at last. Barreling aboard a takeny and on to the next venue without a pause, they were joined by the bespectacled friend seen waving from the benches: Eusebus Something… Rossamund did not catch his family name.Tall and thin, with strangely cropped hair, Eusebus was an initiate at the city's sole athenaeum and proved only mildly impressed at the young factotum's credentials.

"How-now, Mister Bookchild." Rookwood grinned as the driver slowly extracted them from the near-riotous profusion of carriages and carelessly cheerful pedestrians. "You did not seem to smile much as the show went on. I trust it was a tickle to your fancybone?"

"Not planning on becoming a ridiculous eeker, are you?" Eusebus offered wryly.

"Well, I… ah-," the young factotum began, but was happily overborne by the sickly Frangipanni.

"For the true teratologist and her devoted servant the contest with the monster is too serious to be so lightly treated," she declared imperiously in Rossamund's defense, a faint Gottish lift in her accent.

"You would surely know, Franny," Avarice responded. "I have never seen a more serious teratologist than you, and you never laugh at the pantos."

The young skold stared at her coldly, coughed feebly and said nothing.

Unable to goad her, Avarice turned to the young factotum. "So tell us, Master Factotum," she demanded happily. "Tell us of the Branden Rose."

So began an assault of questions.

"What is she like to work for? Is she overly harsh?"

"Well, she is not overly taut," Rossamund tried.

"Does she pay well?" This from Eusebus.

To this Rossamund just frowned, yet their eagerness was undiminished.

"Is she as careless of men as ze pamphlets say?"

Dumbfounded, all he could think to say was, "She is a private woman…"

"What first stance does she prefer? Procede sinister or procede dexter? Or does she do away with such formality and adopt perto adversus?"