Depths still deeper for Economous I am afraid?
Economous
musgrove
© D.M.Cornish
PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION
Chapter 5 PART 3
Wretched Obscurity
Had this been before – before the portrait and the failed search for the Duke of Rabbits
– he might have retreated to the Moldwood to draw, to dream, to forget: but a
fellow cause of his confusion, the Lapinduce’s haunt was lost to him now.
Instead he bought three bottles of Missus Apostle’s Best Buttressed Claratine
from the first goose-a-grab grocer he clapped eyes upon and lost in angry
thoughts, somehow he stumbled homeward. Tripping and thumping up the narrow
staircase to his garret and ignoring the shouts of his landlady for “Quiet und
care, please!” he finally sank himself in to the forgetfulness of a triple
helping of cheap fortified wine.
Slouched upon
on his sole soiled tandem seat, Economous pondered joining those few
acquaintances he had managed to form in this great anonymous city bent on
ceaseless endeavour for the unspoken promise of a fortune as reward. The notion,
however, of an evening of revelry amongst happier souls he was still yet to
fully trust whilst he was so sunk of wind seemed a sour prospect indeed.
He stared now in
uncertain awe at the black calibrator of pricesless black elder lain with his
numrelogue on the cushion beside him. The spicy scent of the wood seemed to
saturate the close air of his cramped dwelling. He took up the wentry rod in
his grasp and was amazed once more at the lively tingling he had originally
remarked the first time he held the wood, a tingle that grew with every swig of
claratine until he was convinced this inanimate tool was animate after all. Yet
for all this, it was in some fashion a useless thing: how could he carry such a
priceless device about freely without gaining the unpleasant attention of some
unpleasant soul with an eye for such things? He certainly could never show it
to his fellow concometrists or the masters at Pike Athenaeum or Athingdon Athy.
It was just some secret memento of his secret meeting with a secret monster and
would remain that way for ever more.
“I name you Miserichord!” he declared with a wry
blurt of laughter, plucking the appellation from some half-recalled morsel of
history, the tale of an ancient blade of black wood and glass made by forgotten
arts.
The tingle of
the wood in his hand sharpened abruptly, cutting Economous’ mirth short and
causing him the drop the bizarre item to the floor. Glaring at it, his glower
turning to a puzzled frown as his mind was already disbelieving what had just
happened: that the calibrator had pulsed energetically, like the beat of humours or the wriggle of a live fish he had plucked with hookpoles from the
[CREEK NAME HERE] as a child. More perplexing yet was the profound sense that
it had done this almost as if in response to its naming.
“Pffff!” the
aimless illuminator puffed. “Nonsense! Drunken, wine-bibbled nonsense!”
The image of
the panderer on South Arm the fortnight gone – back when the Moldwood was an
innocent place of calm and comfort – glaring at him in dignified shock flashed
in his mind’s eye, set him to grinning, and her words repeating “How unseemly,
sir!” set him to guffaws that had him rocking until his gaze fixed with
disconcerting clarity upon his numrelogue, so unwittingly yet blasphemously
defaced.
With grim
reluctance, he took it up and beheld the gilt-framed, coal brown leather of its
cover. Finally opening the hallowed tome to the tear the Lapinduce had made in
it, Economous peered at the sundered wasp-paper in waxing dread that even his
fall-back future as concometrist was now likely in doubt.
One of the attributes
he long admired in the concometrists – in the entire Brotherly Order of
Metricians – was their comparatively broader way of reckoning upon the nature
of monsters and the nature of everymen. Indeed, as a sworn measurer, he knew
just how open such open thinking was. Yet even the most generous-minded
metrician he knew at Athingdon Athy would baulk at a tale of a page removed by
a mighty monster-lord, let alone the harder-headed brother-measurers of Pike
Athenaeum here in Brandenbrass. All he had for excuses then was some false
admission of negligence. Flexible as they might have been about a great many
notions, the concometrists’ entire devotion to measuring the length, breadth
and depth of all the world – and with
this the wholeness of the documents that made this possible – was not a place
where they bent.
Vision
swimming, he began to dab at the incriminating frays, pulling little lose bits
and pulling yet more with a clouded yet growing conviction that he might be
able to remove the remainder and disguise the damage. Alas! At the wrong moment
wine-clumsy fingers tugged a touch too hard, beginning an entire new tear on
the following leaf necessitating its complete removal. This proved harder than
the Duke of Rabbits had made it seem and only with a great determined wrenching
was Economous performed with a histrionic flourish and a leap of conscience
like he was a naught, taffie-stealing child. Alak! Such force in turn loosened
the sew of the binding of the whole gathering to with the leaf had belonged so
that it stuck out noticeably from fore edge.
Suddenly he was
ripping and pulling and tearing in a venting fit of furry, of whelming
frustration at all the forces that seemed to work against him, of panic for a
future without a goal. Sobbing – almost growling – Economous beheld the ruin he
had made of his precious numrelogue and refusing to own the blame for its
destruction, took up the black elder calibrator and flourished it, intent on
smashing it too as its touch seemed to fizz in his hand. CRACK! he brought the wentry tool down upon the iron-bound crown
of his trunk chest, fracturing the wood and bending the metal fittings. This
only served to raise his wrath. CRACK! he
swung the swart wood at a beam that held roof from floor, fully expecting the
calibrator to fly apart in splinters only to find the beam itself split and
splinter near half-way through. Still this did not stop him and eyes fixed upon
his tandem seat, he swung the rod high…
… The lightest
rattle and smallest thump of front door and deliberate noiselessness in the
vestibule three floors below – the telltale quiet of Asthetica’s return – stopped
him still.
His dudgeon was
vanished in an instant.
Panting, blinking
at the disarray and feeling utterly and abjectly foolish, he escaped the wreckage
of his violence. Eager to forget so unseemly an outburst, he hastened three
steps a stride down the cramped flights to small shuddering vestibule, where
his sozzled hopes told him Asthetica was even now reading his reply. He almost
fell the final flight when found that though indeed the beautiful lady was
there, so was the Reive of Lot-in-the-hole, arriving just in time to witness
Lord Fold pluck Economous’ heartfelt note from the Asthetica’s unwary grasp.
To her eternal
credit, Asthetica betrayed wide-eyed and red-cheeked shame at the audicity and
discourtesy of her guest and made a flapping attempt to take the letter back
but was simply thwarted by a raised hand from the reive.
Eyes angry and
wide, cognisant of the dire consequence for any lowly soul who dared raise threat
against a peer, Economous took a single step down.
The Reive
looked up at him with an arch smile the hopeless you fellow slowly descended
the last steps. “Such a handsome invitation, man,” he purred with supreme self-confidence.
“What a fine and steady hand you have. ’Tis almost pity to break such a noble
soul with the information that she chooses to grace this honoured body –” flourishing his hand with a twirl of purple-gloved
fingers and flick of wide mauve hems of his sleek frockcoat, he gave a mocking
bow to indicate himself “– with her excellent
and steady company…”
With a wine-sodden
rush in his humours and a flash of red passion so recently revealed in his
garret, Economous staggered a second step towards the upstart.
“Alas for you,
dear fellow, and you inadequate charms,” Lord Fold continued. “This excellent and steady maid will be with me for the Year Sending at none other than
Sashette’s.” Dropping the name of that finest and most fashionable of fine
eateries as if it were a trifling thing, the high-blown fellow blinked at Economous,
knowing, owl-like. Infinitely secure in his elevated status, a foul gleam in
his eyes dared the poorer, lower born man to do more, to go further, to take up
his little, low-station anger and act!
“He’s married
already, y’know,” Economous slurred in defiance, addressing Asthetica now as if
the Reive of Lot-in-the-hole was not there.
Gasping, clutching
at her pale, quivering throat, Asthetica looked at him wide-eyed, maybe even
ashamed. “I know,” she said in a small voice.
“Why you coarse
and stupid fellow!” Lord Fold declaimed with a sneering guffaw. “She already
has knowledge of this! Surely if you cannot be so patently stupid and
louse-headed to fail to apprehend that a man of broad power and high circumstance
such as I could not be so without such slight details being common knowledge.
If this is all that vexes you, boy, then know that this steady maid beside me
has contented herself as my mistress…” He took Asthetica’s arm in his and
patted it possessively.
Flummoxed and
desperate to avoid the violence he was sure he would perpetrate if he remained
even a breath longer, Economous shoved clumsily between Asthetica and the reive,
causing the maiden to cry in alarm. Stumbling from the vestibule and out into
the last evening of the old year without hat or neckerchief like some life-lost
wastrel, he pushed roughly past the reive’s spurns and hurried down the
To-Market lane before him, ignoring the cries of consternation from behind.
