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

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crimp(s) privately operating impress contractor, that is, a group or individual licensed to press people into naval or military service. They are usually given a quota by a ram's captain or a regimental colonel and with this authority trawl the streets of less well-heeled districts, seizing anyone appearing at that moment not to be engaged in gainful activity, regardless of the poor soul's true employment status. IN dour fungal light the twin rabbits Ogh and Urgh took Rossamund down the bending root-walled course, loping at an easy pace yet keeping out of his reach. He tried once to stride forward and pat one, and in an instant they shot ahead into the twilight of the tunnel that led away from the Lapinduce.

"Wait! Wait!" he called, finding them sitting in gloom in the middle of the passage floor, eyes glittering, noses twitching rapidly.

Guided by the flash of their bobbing sallow tails, he was shown through many dim intersections and lighted burrows, the flanks of the warren becoming coarser, more uneven. Tessellated floor gave over to cool earth and cold puddles, the walls to rough earth, then quickly to the brick and stone of the city's deep-sunk foundations. Finally even radiant fungus ceased, the threwd shrinking to little more than a sleepy suggestion, the merest hint for those who might care to notice.

Moldy twilight gave over to a strengthening warmer glow. Just about a bend he discovered Ogh and Urgh stopped, sitting silhouettes before a ragged window of umber and blue; the end of the hole.

"Thank you, good sirs," he said to the rabbits, bowing to each in turn, wishing they might respond with words of their own and divulge primeval secrets.

Mute, they regarded him blankly, noses ever twitch twitch twitch.

With a sigh, the young factotum pushed through the shrouding fringe of unchecked vegetation, and, blinking near-blinded in the bright afternoon sun, almost slid down the steeply slanted side of the brick-paved drain. Gripping the edge of the hole, he saw that he had emerged into the usual world from between the weedy roots of an old turpentine growing far beyond the bounds of the Moldwood in some tiny neglected common.

By its green trickle and orange carp he easily identified this channel. The Midwetter!-the very one flowing by Cloche Arde.

Darter Brown appeared over the top of the high roofs-somehow reckoning Rossamund's path despite his hidden progress. With a tweet! the little fellow alighted on a spear-pointed post of the fence that lined the height of the drain.

Rossamund straightened, set his thrice-high firmly on his head and went on by way of the channel, back to service and contradictions.Walking carefully along the slope, he had the disorienting sensation of rousing from a deep and convincing dream-some mystic abyss-to finally gasp mundane and sensible air. By the time he clambered up the side of the bridge to Footling Inch, his time with the Lapinduce was a small disquieting memory and his thoughts were more concerned with how he might explain his absence to his mistress.

Kitchen greeted him in the cold black vestibule. "Glad to see you have elected to return to us, Master Bookchild," the steward began, a little dryly. "You are expected in our gracious lady's file."

With a quiet knock at the carven door, Rossamund waited for the usual "In." When it did not occur, he rapped a little louder, at which the portal opened, revealing not Europe in some splendid gown but Fransitart, his worn, worried-looking eyes going wide with sharp relief.

"Rossamund!" he barked, grasping him by the shoulder as if never to let him go.

"Master Frans?" Rossamund said. "Where is Miss Europe?" Part stepping, part pulled into the file, he found Craumpalin there too, rising quickly from an easy chair before the fire, looking at him like one returned from the grave.

"Pullets and cockerels! We thought ye pinched by the crimps, lad, and forced to serve upon a cargo!" Fransitart chided sharply, guiding him to the comfortable chairs.

"Oh, no, not the crimps, Master Frans."The young factotum frowned abstractedly as he took a seat by Craumpalin.

"Aye, or carried off by some ill-informed mercator!" the old dispensurist added gruffly.

"Where were ye at, Rossamund?" Fransitart demanded, staring him hard in the eye. A penetrating, almost suspicious concern dawned in his eyes. "What troubles ye? What did ye see?"

At that point Europe chose to enter, looking flushed and puffing as if she had been running many miles. She was wearing a long-hemmed seclude of diagonal pink, red and dark magenta stripes clinched about her waist with broad black satin, its hems, collar and turned-up cuffs white embroidered with thread-of-gold.

"Is this to be your mode from here on, little man?" she asked with cool irony by way of salutation. "Are you thinking, now that I have released you from the straits of military life, to begin a career of adolescent revelry?"

"No… no, Miss Europe," he answered, a little surprised by his own directness. "Not intentionally, anyway."

"Well, out with it! A bad excuse is better than none. Where have you been?" Her gaze narrowed as she dabbed with a plush towel at the damp glow upon her forehead.

Rossamund had no notion of how to proceed.