Foundling Read Free Page B

free of their comp’ny.”
    Fransitart looked at his feet for a moment. Rossamünd wondered what he was remembering.
    “They are strange,” he went on finally, “and th’ unnatural organs within their bodies that make ’em so strong make ’em crotchety, feverish! Many a queer thing I ’ave seen, but nothin’ quite so wretched as a lahzar made sick by ’is organs.” He stared intently at Rossamünd. “My masters, lad, neither thee nor me wants to become one of them. Stick to a vinegaroon’s life—’tis a good, ’onest way to chance yer fortune.”

    “Well then, tell one of your stories,” Rossamünd persisted, his pamphlet forgotten for the moment, “of when you were a sailor upon the seas. Tell me about the Battle of the Mole, when you were saved by that white-haired fellow. Or when you fought against the pirate-kings of the Brigandine! Or when you captured that Lentine grand-cargo as a prize!”
    “Nay, nay, me boy, ye know ’em mostly already, especially them there second two . . .” The dormitory master lapsed into silence.
    Rossamünd became quiet for a moment too, inspecting an illustration of Harold battling the Slothog on a page of his pamphlet. In the drawing the skold looked as if he was about to be trampled.
    Fransitart stood.
    The boy looked up at his dormitory master shyly. “Master Fransitart . . .” he ventured. “Have you ever killed a monster?”
    For a moment, Fransitart seemed almost angry at this question and Rossamünd immediately regretted asking it. Old salts like the dormitory master could be very touchy about their past, and it was proper never to ask but always wait to be told.
    With the deepest sigh, the saddest sound Rossamünd had ever heard Master Fransitart give, the fury passed. “Aye, lad,” he said hoarsely, “I ’ave.”
    A thrill prickled Rossamünd’s scalp.
    The old man closed his eyes for a moment, and did something the boy had never seen him do before: he took off his long, wide-collared day coat and laid it neatly on the end of another cot. Fransitart rolled up the voluminous sleeve of his white muslin shirt, exposing much of his pale left arm. He bent down a little to show his gauntly knotted bicep. “Look ye there,” Fransitart growled.
    Wide eyes went wider as the boy saw what was shown: made from swirls and curls of red-brown lines was the small, crudely drawn face of some grinning, snarling bogle. A pointed tongue protruded obscenely from a gaping mouth, and its eyes were wide and staring horribly.
    A monster-blood tattoo!
    People were only ever marked with a monster-blood tattoo if they had fought and slain a nicker. The image of the fallen beast was pricked into the victor’s skin with the dead monster’s own blood. The stuff reacted strangely once under the skin, festered for a time and left its indelible mark. The boy looked agog at his dormitory master. He already had deep respect for the old man, but now he regarded him with an entirely new awe.
    “Master Fransitart!” Rossamünd hissed. “You’re a monster-slayer !”
    Most folk would be bursting with pride to bear such a mark. Fransitart just seemed ashamed. “As things be, Rossamünd, th’ creature I killed did nought to deserve such an end and, though me shipmates boasted me an ’ero, it were a cowardly thing I did, and I am sorry for it now.”
    Rossamünd’s astonishment grew. How could killing a monster be cowardly? How was it that Master Fransitart could be ashamed of being a hero ?
    To kill a monster was a grand thing, almost the grandest thing—everyone knew that. People were good. Monsters were bad. People had to kill monsters in order to live free and remain at peace. To feel sympathy for a bogle or to take pity on a nicker was to be labeled a sedorner—a monster-lover !—a shameful crime that at the very least had its perpetrator shunned, or stuck in the pillory for weeks or, worst of all, executed by hanging.
    How many secrets did the dormitory master have? Was he a