Titus Groan – Gormenghast 01

by Mervyn Peake

First published in 1946 by Eyre & Spottiswoode

Copyright 1968 by The Estate of Mervyn Peake

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ISBN: 0-87951-628-3

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This electronic edition differs from the published source in the numbering of

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TITUS GROAN

      Dost thou love picking meat? Or would'st thou see

      A man in the clouds, and have him speak to thee?

                        BUNYAN

1

THE HALL OF THE BRIGHT CARVINGS

      Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by

itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it

possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed

like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth,

each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts,

the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves

thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted

this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their

irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten

buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow

of the Tower of Flints . This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like

a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed

blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day

it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

      Very little communication passed between the denizens of these outer

quarters and those who lived _within_ the walls, save when, on the first June

morning of each year, the entire population of the clay dwellings had sanction

to enter the Grounds in order to display the wooden carvings on which they had

been working during the year. These carvings, blazoned in strange colour, were

generally of animals or figures and were treated in a highly stylized manner

peculiar to themselves. The competition among them to display the finest object

of the year was bitter and rabid. Their sole passion was directed, once their

days of love had guttered, on the production of this wooden sculpture, and among

the muddle of huts at the foot of the outer wall, existed a score of creative

craftsmen whose position as leading carvers gave them pride of place among the

shadows.

      At one point _within_ the Outer Wall, a few feet from the earth, the great

stones of which the wall itself was constructed, jutted forward in the form of a

massive shelf stretching from east to west for about two hundred to three

hundred feet. These protruding stones were painted white, and it was upon this

shelf that on the first morning of June the carvings were ranged every year for

judgement by the Earl of Groan. Those works judged to be the most consummate,

and there were never more than three chosen, were subsequently relegated to the

Hall of the Bright Carvings.

      Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their

fantastic shadows on the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour

with the sun's rotation, exuded a kind of darkness for all their colour. The air

between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy. The craftsmen stood about

like beggars, their families clustered in silent groups. They were uncouth and

prematurely aged. All radiance gone.

      The carvings that were left unselected were burned the same evening in the

courtyard below Lord Groan's western balcony, and it was customary for him to

stand there at the time of the burning and to bow his head silently as if in

pain, and then as a gong beat thrice from within, the three carvings to escape

the flames would be brought forth in the moonlight. They were stood upon the

balustrade of the balcony in full view of the crowd below, and the Earl of Groan

would call for their authors to come forward. When they had stationed themselves

immediately beneath where he was standing, the Earl would throw down to them the

traditional scrolls of vellum, which, as the writings upon them verified,

permitted these men to walk the battlements above their cantonment at the full

moon of each alternate month. On these particular nights, from a window in the

southern wall of Gormenghast, an observer might watch the minute moonlit figures

whose skill had won for them this honour which they so coveted, moving to and

fro along the battlements.

      Saving this exception of the day of carvings, and the latitude permitted

to the most peerless, there was no other opportunity for those who lived within

the walls to know of these "outer" folk, nor in fact were they of interest to

the "inner" world, being submerged within the shadows of the great walls.

      They were all-but forgotten people: the breed that was remembered with a

start, or with the unreality of a recrudescent dream. The day of carvings alone

brought them into the sunlight and reawakened the memory of former times. For as

far back as even Nettel, the octogenarian who lived in the tower above the

rusting armoury, could remember, the ceremony had been held. Innumerable

carvings had smouldered to ashes in obedience to the law, but the choicest were

still housed in the Hall of the Bright Carvings.

      This hall which ran along the top storey of the north wing was presided

over by the curator, Rottcodd, who, as no one ever visited the room, slept

during most of his life in the hammock he had erected at the far end. For all

his dozing, he had never been known to relinquish the feather duster from his

grasp; the duster with which he would perform one of the only two regular tasks

which appeared to be necessary in that long and silent hall, namely to flick the

dust from the Bright Carvings.

      As objects of beauty, these works held little interest to him and yet in

spite of himself he had become attached in a propinquital way to a few of the

carvings. He would be more than thorough when dusting the Emerald Horse. The

black-and-olive Head which faced it across the boards and the Piebald Shark were

also his especial care. Not that there were any on which the dust was allowed to

settle.

      Entering at seven o'clock , winter and summer, year in and year out,

Rottcodd would disengage himself of his jacket and draw over his head a long

grey overall which descended shapelessly to his ankles. With his feather duster

tucked beneath his arm, it was his habit to peer sagaciously over his glasses

down-the length of the hall. His skull was dark and small like a corroded musket

bullet and his eyes behind the gleaming of his glasses were the twin miniatures

of his head. All three were constantly on the move, as though to make up for the

time they spent asleep, the head wobbling in a mechanical way from side to side

when Mr. Rottcodd walked, and the eyes, as though taking their cue from the

parent sphere to which they were attached, peering here, there, and everywhere

at nothing in particular. Having peered quickly over his glasses on entering and

having repeated the performance along the length of the north wing after

enveloping himself in his overall, it was the custom of Rottcodd to relieve his

left armpit of the feather duster, and with that weapon raised, to advance

towards the first of the carvings on his right hand side, without more ado.

Being at the top floor of the north wing, this hall was not in any real sense a

hall at all, but was more in the nature of a loft. The only window was at its

far end, and opposite the door through which Rottcodd would enter from the upper

body of the building. It gave little light. The shutters were invariably

lowered. The Hall of the Bright Carvings was illuminated night and day by seven

great candelabra suspended from the ceiling at intervals of nine feet. The

candles were never allowed to fail or even to gutter, Rottcodd himself seeing to

their replenishment before retiring at nine o'clock in the evening. There was a

stock of white candles in the small dark ante-room beyond the door of the hail,

where also were kept ready for use Rottcodd's overall, a huge visitors' book,

white with dust, and a stepladder. There were no chairs or tables, nor indecd

any furniture save the hammock at the window end where Mr. Rottcodd slept. The

boarded floor was white with dust which, so assiduously kept from the carvings,

had no alternative resting place and had collected deep and ash-like,

accumulating especially in the four corners of the hall.

      Having flicked at the first carving on his right, Rottcodd would move

mechanically down the long phalanx of colour standing a moment before each

carving, his eyes running up and down it and all over it, and his head wobbling

knowingly on his neck before he introduced his feather duster. Rottcodd was

unmarried. An aloofness and even a nervousness was apparent on first

acquaintance and the ladies held a peculiar horror for him. His, then, was an

ideal existence, living alone day and night in a long loft. Yet occasionally,

for one reason or another, a servant or a member of the household would make an

unexpected appearance and startle him with some question appertaining to ritual,

and then the dust would settle once more in the hall and on the soul of Mr.

Rottcodd.

      What were his reveries as he lay in his hammock with his dark bullet head

tucked in the crook of his arm? What would he be dreaming of, hour after hour,

year after year? It is not easy to feel that any great thoughts haunted his mind

nor -- in spite of the sculpture whose bright files surged over the dust in

narrowing perspective like the highway for an emperor -- that Rottcodd made any

attempt to avail himself of his isolation, but rather that he was enjoying the

solitude for its Own Sake, with, at the back of his mind, the dread of an

intruder.

      One humid afternoon a visitor _did_ arrive to disturb Rottcodd as he lay

deeply hammocked, for his siesta was broken sharply by a rattling of the door

handle which was apparently performed in lieu of the more popular practice of

knocking at the panels. The sound echoed down the long room and then settled

into the fine dust on the boarded floor. The sunlight squeezed itself between

the thin cracks of the window blind. Even on a hot, stifling, unhealthy

afternoon such as this, the blinds were down and the candlelight filled the room

with an incongruous radiance. At the sound of the door handle being rattled

Rottcodd sat up suddenly. The thin bands of moted light edging their way through

the shutters barred his dark head with the brilliance of the outer world. As he

lowered himself over the hammock, it wobbled on his shoulders, and his eyes

darted up and down the door returning again and again after their rapid and

precipitous journeys to the agitations of the door handle. Gripping his feather

duster in his right hand, Rottcodd began to advance down the bright avenue, his

feet giving rise at each step to little clouds of dust. When he had at last

reached the door the handle had ceased to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to

his knees he placed his right eye at the keyhole, and controlling the

oscillation of his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever

trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by

dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an

eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron

marble but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. This

third eye which was going through the same performance as the one belonging to

Rottcodd, belonged to Flay, the taciturn servant of Sepuichrave, Earl of

Gormenghast. For Flay to be four rooms horizontally or one floor vertically away

from his lordship was a rare enough thing in the castle. For him to be absent at

all from his master's side was abnormal, yet here apparently on this stifling

summer afternoon was the eye of Mr. Flay at the outer keyhole of the Hall of the

Bright Carvings, and presumably the rest of Mr. Flay was joined on behind it. On

mutual recognition the eyes withdrew simultaneously and the brass doorknob

rattled again in the grip of the visitor's hand. Rottcodd turned the key in the

lock and the door opened slowly.

      Mr. Flay appeared to clutter up the doorway as he stood revealed, his arms

folded, surveying the smaller man before him in an expressionless way. It did

not look as though such a bony face as his could give normal utterance, but

rather that instead of sounds, something more brittle, more ancient, something

dryer would emerge, something perhaps more in the nature of a splinter or a

fragment of stone. Nevertheless, the harsh lips parted. "It's me," he said, and

took a step forward into the room, his knee joints cracking as he did so. His

passage across a room -- in fact his passage through life -- was accompanied by

these cracking sounds, one per step, which might be likened to the breaking of

dry twigs.

      Rottcodd, seeing that it was indeed he, motioned him to advance by an

irritable gesture of the hand, and closed the door behind him.

      Conversation was never one of Mr. Flay's accomplishments and for some time

he gazed mirthlessly ahead of him, and then, after what seemed an eternity to

Rottcodd he raised a bony hand and scratched himself behind the ear. Then he

made his second remark, "Still here, eh?" he said, his voice forcing its way out

of his face.

      Rottcodd, feeling presumably that there was little need to answer such a

question, shrugged his shoulders and gave his eyes the run of the ceiling.

      Mr. Flay pulled himself together and continued: "I said still here, eh,

Rottcodd?" He stared bitterly at the carving of the Emerald Horse. "You're still

here, eh?"

      "I'm invariably here," said Rottcodd, lowering his gleaming glasses and

running his eyes all over Mr. Flay's visage. "Day in, day out, invariably. Very

hot weather. Extremely stifling. Did you want anything?"

      "Nothing," said Flay and he turned towards Rottcodd with something

menacing in his attitude. "I want _nothing_." He wiped the palms of his hands on

his hips where the dark cloth shone like silk.

      Rottcodd flicked ash from his shoes with the feather duster and tilted his

bullet head. "Ah," he said in a non-committal way.

      "You say 'ah',". said Flay, turning his back on Rottcodd and beginning to

walk down the coloured avenue, "but I tell you, it is more than 'ah'."

      "Of course," said Rottcodd. "Much more, I dare say. But I fail to

understand. I am a Curator." At this he drew his body up to full height and

stood on the tips of his toes in the dust.

      "A what?" said Flay, straggling above him for he had returned. "A

curator?"

      "That is so," said Rottcodd, shaking his head.

      Flay made a hard noise in his throat. To Rottcodd it signified a complete

lack of understanding and it annoyed him that the man should invade his

province.

      "Curator," said Flay, after a ghastly silence, "I will tell you something.

I know something. Eh?"

      "Well?" said Rottcodd.

      "I'll tell you," said Flay. "But first, what day is it? What month, and

what year is it? Answer me."

      Rottcodd was puzzled at this question, but he was becoming a little

intrigued. It was so obvious that the bony man had something on his mind, and he

replied, "It is the eighth day of the eighth month, I am uncertain about the

year. But why?"

      In a voice almost inaudible Flay repeated "The eighth day of the eighth

month." His eyes were almost transparent as though in a country of ugly hills

one were to find among the harsh rocks two sky-reflecting lakes. "Come here," he

said, "come closer, Rottcodd, I will tell you. You don't understand Gormenghast,

what happens in Gormenghast -- the things that happen -- no, no. Below you,

that's where it all is, under this north wing. What are these things up here?

These wooden things? No use now. Keep them, but no use now. Everything is

moving. The castle is moving. Today, first time for years he's alone, his

Lordship. Not in my sight." Flay bit at his knuckle. "Bedchamber of Ladyship,

that's where he is. Lordship is beside himself: won't have me, won't let me in

to see the New One. The New One. He's come. He's downstairs. I haven't seen

him." Flay bit at the corresponding knuckle on the other hand as though to

balance the sensation. "No one's been in. Of course not. I'll be next. The birds

are lined along the bedrail. Ravens, starlings, all the perishers, and the white

rook. There's a kestrel; claws through the pillow. My lady feeds them with

crusts. Grain and crusts. Hardly seen her new-born. Heir to Gormenghast. Doesn't

look at him. But my lord keeps staring. Seen him through the grating. Needs me.

Won't let me in. Are you listening?"

      Mr. Rottcodd certainly was listening. In the first place he had never

heard Mr. Flay talk so much in his life before, and in the second place the news

that a son had been born at long last to the ancient and historic house of Groan

was, after all, an interesting tit-bit for a curator living alone on the upper

storey of the desolate north wing. Here was something with which he could occupy

his mind for some time to come. It was true, as Mr. Flay pointed out, that he,

Rottcodd, could not possibly feel the pulse of the castle as he lay in his

hammock, for in point of fact Rottcodd had not even suspected that an heir was

on its way. His meals came up in a miniature lift through darkness from the

servants' quarters many floors below and he slept in the ante-room at night and

consequently he was completely cut off from the world and all its happenings.

Flay had brought him real news. All the same he disliked being disturbed even

when information of this magnitude was brought. What was passing through the

bullet-shaped head was a question concerning Mr. Flay's entry. Why had Flay, who

never in the normal course of events would have raised an eyebrow to acknowledge

his presence -- why had he now gone to the trouble of climbing to a part of the

castle so foreign to him? And to force a conversation on a personality as

unexpansive as his own. He ran his eyes over Mr. Flay in his own peculiarly

rapid way and surprised himself by saying suddenly, "To what may I attribute

your presence, Mr. Flay?"

      "What?" said Flay. "What's that?" He looked down on Rottcodd and his eyes

became glassy.

      In truth Mr. Flay had surprised himself. Why, indeed, he thought to

himself, had he troubled to tell Rottcodd the news which meant so much to him?

Why Rottcodd, of all people? He continued staring at the curator for some while,

and the more he stood and pondered the clearer it became to him that the

question he had been asked was, to say the very least, uncomfortably pertinent.

      The little man in front of him had asked a simple and forthright question.

It had been rather a poser. He took a couple of shambling steps towards Mr.

Rottcodd and then, forcing his hands into his trouser pockets, turned round very

slowly on one heel.

      "Ah," he said at last, "I see what you mean, Rottcodd -- I see what you

mean."

      Rottcodd was longing to get back to his hammock and enjoy the luxury of

being quite alone again, but his eye travelled even more speedily towards the

visitor's face when he heard the remark. Mr. Flay had said that he saw what

Rottcodd had meant. Had he really? Very interesting. What, by the way, _had_ he

meant? What precisely was it that Mr. Flay had seen? He flicked an imaginary

speck of dust from the gilded head of a dryad.

      "You are interested in the birth below?" he inquired.

      Flay stood for a while as though he had heard nothing, but after a few

minutes it became obvious he was thunderstruck. "Interested!" he cried in a

deep, husky voice, "Interested! The child is a Groan. An authentic male Groan.

Challenge to Change! No _Change_, Rottcodd. No Change!"

      "Ah," said Rottcodd. "I see your point, Mr. Flay. But his lordship was not

dying?"

      "No," said Mr. Flay, "he was not dying, but _teeth lengthen_!" and he

strode to the wooden shutters with long, slow heron-like paces, and the dust

rose behind him. When it had settled Rottcodd could see his angular

parchment-coloured head leaning itself against the lintel of the window.

      Mr. Flay could not feel entirely satisfied with his answer to Rottcodd's

question covering the reason for his appearance in the Hall of the Bright

Carvings. As he stood there by the window the question repeated itself to him

again and again. Why Rottcodd? Why on earth Rottcodd? And yet he knew that

directly he heard of the birth of the heir, when his dour nature had been

stirred so violently that he had found himself itching to communicate his

enthusiasm to another being -- from that moment Rottcodd had leapt to his mind.

Never of a communicative or enthusiastic nature he had found it difficult even

under the emotional stress of the advent to inform Rottcodd of the facts. And,

as has been remarked, he had surprised even himself not only for having

unburdened himself at all, but for having done so in so short a time.

      He turned, and saw that the Curator was standing wearily by the Piebald

Shark, his small cropped round head moving to and fro like a bird"s, and his

hands clasped before him with the feather duster between his fingers. He could

see that Rottcodd was politely waiting for him to go. Altogether Mr. Flay was in

a peculiar state of mind. He was surprised at Mr. Rottcodd for being so

unimpressed at the news, and he was surprised at himself for having brought it.

He took from his pocket a vast watch of silver and held it horizontally on the

flat of his palm. "Must go," he said awkwardly. "Do you hear me, Rottcodd, I

must go?"

      "Good of you to call," said Rottcodd. "Will you sign your name in the

visitors' book as you go out?"

      "No! Not a visitor." Flay brought his shoulders up to his ears. "Been with

lordship thirty-seven years. Sign a _book_," he added contemptuously, and he

spat into a far corner of the room.

      "As you wish," said Mr. Rottcodd. "It was to the section of the visitors'

book devoted to the staff that I was referring."

      "No!" said Flay.

      As he passed the curator on his way to the door he looked carefully at him

as he came abreast, and the question rankled. Why? The castle was filled with

the excitement of the nativity. All was alive with conjecture. There was no

control. Rumour swept through the stronghold. Everywhere, in passage, archway,

cloister, refectory, kitchen, dormitory, and hall it was the same. Why had he

chosen the unenthusiastic Rottcodd? And then, in a flash he realized. He must

have subconsciously known that the news would be new tono one else; that

Rottcodd was virgin soil for his message, Rottcodd the curator who lived alone

among the Bright Carvings was the only one on whom he could vent the tidings

without jeopardizing his sullen dignity, and to whom although the knowledge

would give rise to but little enthusiasm it would at least be new.

      Having solved the problem in his mind and having realized in a dullish way

that the conclusion was particularly mundane and uninspired, and that there was

no question of his soul calling along the corridors and up the stairs to the

soul of Rottcodd, Mr. Flay in a thin straddling manner moved along the passages

of the north wing and down the curve of stone steps that led to the stone

quadrangle, feeling the while a curious disillusion, a sense of having suffered

a loss of dignity, and a feeling of being thankful that his visit to Rottcodd

had been unobserved and that Rottcodd himself was well hidden from the world in

the Hall of the Bright Carvings.

2

THE GREAT KITCHEN

      As Flay passed through the servants' archway and descended the twelve

steps that led into the main corridor of the kitchen quarters, he became aware

of an acute transformation of mood. The solitude of Mr. Rottcodd's sanctum,

which had been lingering in his mind, was violated. Here among the stone

passages were all the symptoms of ribald excitement. Mr. Flay hunched his bony

shoulders and with his hands in his jacket pockets dragged them to the front so

that only the black cloth divided his clenched fists. The material was stretched

as though it would split at the small of his back. He stared mirthlessly to

right and left and then advanced, his long spidery legs cracking as he

shouldered his way through a heaving group of menials. They were guffawing to

each other coarsely and one of them, evidently the wit, was contorting his face,

as pliable as putty, into shapes that appeared to be independent of the skull,

if indeed he had a skull beneath that elastic flesh. Mr. Flay pushed past.

      The corridor was alive. Clusters of aproned figures mixed and disengaged.

Some were singing. Some were arguing and some were draped against the wall,

quite silent from exhaustion, their hands dangling from their wrists or flapping

stupidly to the beat of some kitchen catch-song. The clamour was pitiless.

Technically this was more the spirit which Flay liked to see, or at all events

thought to be more appropriate to the occasion. Rottcodd's lack of enthusiasm

had shocked him and here, at any rate, the traditional observance of felicity at

the birth of an heir to Gormenghast was being observed. But it would have been

impossible for him to show any signs of enthusiasm himself when surrounded by it

in others. As he moved along the crowded corridor and passed in turn the dark

passages that led to the slaughter-house with its stench of fresh blood, the

bakeries with their sweet loaves and the stairs that led down to the wine vaults

and the underground network of the castle cellars, he felt a certain

satisfaction at seing how many of the roysterers staggered aside to let him

pass, for his station as retainer-in-chief to his Lordship was commanding and

his sour mouth and the frown that had made a permanent nest upon his jutting

forehead were a warning.

      It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in

happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

But on an occasion such as this it was different, for the spirit of convention

was being rigorously adhered to, and in between his ribs Mr. Flay experienced

twinges of pleasure.

      He had come to where, on his left, and halfway along the servants'

corridor, the heavy wooden doors of the Great Kitchen stood ajar. Ahead of him,

narrowing in dark perspective, for there were no windows, the rest of the

corridor stretched silently away. It had no doors on either side and at the far

end it was terminated by a wall of flints. This useless passage was, as might be

supposed, usually deserted, but Mr. Flay noticed that several figures were lying

stretched in the shadows. At the same time he was momentarily deafened by a

great bellowing and clattering and stamping.

      As Mr. Flay entered the Great Kitchen the steaming, airless concentration

of a ghastly heat struck him. He felt that his body had received a blow. Not

only was the normal sickening atmosphere of the kitchen augmented by the sun's

rays streaming into the room at various points through the high windows, but, in

the riot of the festivities, the fires had been banked dangerously. But Mr. Flay

realized that it was _right_ that this should be as insufferable as it was. He

even realized that the four grillers who were forcing joint after joint between

the metal doors with their clumsy boots, until the oven began to give under the

immoderate strain, were in key with the legitimate temper of the occasion. The

fact that they had no idea what they were doing nor why they were doing it was

irrelevant. The Countess had given birth; was this a moment for rational

behaviour?

      The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were

built with grey slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of

eighteen men known as the "Grey Scrubbers". It had been their privilege on

reaching adolescence to discover that, being the sons of their fathers, their

careers had been arranged for them and that stretching ahead of them lay their

identical lives consisting of an unimaginative if praiseworthy duty. This was to

restore, each morning, to the great grey floor and the lofty walls of the

kitchen a stainless complexion. On every day of the year from three hours before

daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the scaffolding and ladders became a

hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their hereditary calling.

Through the character of their trade, their arms had become unusually powerful,

and when they let their huge hands hang loosely at their sides, there was more

than an echo of the simian. Coarse as these men appeared, they were an integral

part of the Great Kitchen. Without the Grey Scrubbers something very earthy,

very heavy, very real would be missing to any sociologist searching in that

steaming room, for the completion of a circle of temperaments, a gamut of the

lower human values.

      Through daily proximity to the great slabs of stone, the faces of the Grey

Scrubbers had become like slabs themselves. There was no expression whatever

upon the eighteen faces, unless the lack of expression is in itself an

expression. They were simply slabs that the Grey Scrubbers spoke from

occasionally, stared from incessantly, heard with, hardly ever. They were

traditionally deaf. The eyes were there, small and flat as coins, and the colour

of the walls themselves, as though during the long hours of professional staring

the grey stone had at last reflected itself indelibly once and for all. Yes, the

eyes were there, thirty-six of them and the eighteen noses were there, and the

lines of the mouths that resembled the harsh cracks that divided the stone

slabs, they were there too. Although nothing physical was missing from any one

of their eighteen faces yet it would be impossible to perceive the faintest sign

of animation and, even if a basinful of their features had been shaken together

and if each feature had been picked out at random and stuck upon some dummy-head

of wax at any capricious spot or angle, it would have made no difference, for

even the most fantastic, the most ingenious of arrangements could not have

tempted into life a design whose component parts were dead. In all, counting the

ears, which on occasion may be monstrously expressive, the one hundred and eight

features were unable, at the best of times, to muster between them, individually

or taken _en masse_, the faintest shadow of anything that might hint at the

workings of what lay beneath.

      Having watched the excitement developing around them in the Great Kitchen,

and being unable to comprehend what it was all about for lack of hearing, they

had up to the last hour or two been unable to enter into that festive spirit

which had attacked the very heart and bowels of the kitchen staff.

      But here and now, on this day of days, cognizant at last of the arrival of

the new Lord, the eighteen Grey Scrubbers were lying side by side upon the

flagstones beneath a great table, dead drunk to a man. They had done honour to

the occasion and were out of the picture, having been rolled under the table one

by one like so many barrels of ale, as indeed they were.

      Through the clamour of the voices in the Great Kitchen that rose and fell,

that changed tempo, and lingered, until a strident rush or a wheezy slide of

sound came to a new pause, only to be shattered by a hideous croak of laughter

or a thrilled whisper, or a clearing of some coarse throat -- through all this

thick and interwoven skein of bedlam, the ponderous snoring of the Grey

Scrubbers had continued as a recognizable theme of dolorous persistence.

      In favour of the Grey Scrubbers it must be said that it was not until the

walls and floor of the kitchen were shining from their exertions that they

attacked the bungs as though unweaned. But it was not only they who had

succumbed. The same unquestionable proof of loyalty could be observed in no less

than forty members of the kitchen, who, like the Grey Scrubbers, recognizing the

bottle as the true medium through which to externalize their affection for the

family of Groan, were seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

      Mr. Flay, wiping away with the back of his claw-like hand the perspiration

that had already gathered on his brow, allowed his eyes to remain a moment on

the inert and foreshortened bodies of the inebriate Grey Scrubbers. Their heads

were towards him, and were cropped to a gun-grey stubble. Beneath the table a

shadow had roosted, and the rest of their bodies, receding in parallel lines,

were soon devoured in the darkness. At first glance he had been reminded of

nothing so much as a row of curled-up hedgehogs, and it was some time before he

realized that he was regarding a line of prickly skulls. When he had satisfied

himself on this point his eyes travelled sourly around the Great Kitchen.

Everything was confusion, but behind the flux of the shifting figures and the

temporary chaos of overturned mixing tables, of the floor littered with

stock-pots, basting pans, broken bowls and dishes, and oddments of food, Mr.

Flay could see the main fixtures in the room and keep them in his mind as a

means of reference, for the kitchen swam before his eyes in a clammy mist.

Divided by the heavy stone wall in which was situated a hatch of strong timber,

was the _garde-manger_ with its stacks of cold meat and hanging carcases and on

the inside of the wall the spit. On a fixed table running along a length of the

wall were huge bowls capable of holding fifty portions. The stock-pots were

perpetually simmering, having boiled over, and the floor about them was a mess

of sepia fluid and egg-shells that had been floating in the pots for the purpose

of clearing the soup. The sawdust that was spread neatly over the floor each

morning was by now kicked into heaps and soaked in the splashings of wine. And

where scattered about the floor little blobs of fat had been rolled or trodden

in, the sawdust stuck to them giving them the appearance of rissoles. Hanging

along the dripping walls were rows of sticking knives and steels, boning knives,

skinning knives and two-handed cleavers, and beneath them a twelve-foot by

nine-foot chopping block, cross-hatched and hollowed by decades of long wounds.

      On the other side of the room, to Mr. Flay's left, a capacious enormous

copper, a row of ovens and a narrow doorway acted as his landmarks. The doors of

the ovens were flying wide and acid flames were leaping dangerously, as the fat

that had been thrown into the fires bubbled and stank.

      Mr. Flay was in two minds. He hated what he saw, for of all the rooms in

the castle, it was the kitchen he detested most, and for a very real reason; and

yet a thrill in his scarecrow body made him aware of how right it all was. He

could not, of course, analyse his feelings nor would the idea have occurred to

him, but he was so much a part and parcel of Gormenghast that he could

instinctively tell when the essence of its tradition was running in a true

channel, powerfully and with no deviation.

      But the fact that Mr. Flay appreciated, as from the profoundest of

motives, the vulgarity of the Great Kitchen in no way mitigated his contempt for

the figures he saw before him as individuals. As he looked from one to another

the satisfaction which he had at first experienced in seeing them collectively

gave way to a detestation as he observed them piecemeal.

      A prodigious twisted beam, warped into a spiral, floated, or so it seemed

in the haze, across the breadth of the Great Kitchen. Here and there along its

undersurface, iron hooks were screwed into its grain. Slung over it like sacks

half filled with sawdust, so absolutely lifeless they appeared, were two

pastry-cooks, an ancient _poissonnier_, a _rôtier_ with legs so bandy as to

describe a rugged circle, a red-headed _légumier_, and five _sauciers_ with

their green scarves around their necks. One of them near the far end from where

Flay stood twitched a little, but apart from this all was stillness. They were

very happy.

      Mr. Flay took a few paces and the atmosphere closed around him. He had

stood by the door unobserved, but now as he came forward a roysterer leaping

suddenly into the air caught hold of one of the hooks in the dark beam above

them. He was suspended by one arm, a cretinous little man with a face of

concentrated impudence. He must have possessed a strength out of all proportions

to his size, for with the weight of his body hanging on the end of one arm he

yet drew himself up so that his head reached the level of the iron hook. As Mr.

Flay passed beneath, the dwarf, twisting himself upside down with incredible

speed, coiled his legs around the twisted beam and dropping the rest of himself

vertically with his face a few inches from that of Mr. Flay, grinned at him

grotesquely with his head upside down, before Flay could do anything save come

to an abrupt halt. The dwarf had then swung himself on to the beam again and was

running along it on all fours with an agility more likely to be found in jungles

than in kitchens.

      A prodigious bellow outvoicing all cacophony caused him to turn his head

away from the dwarf. Away to his left in the shade of a supporting pillar he

could make out the vague unmistakable shape of what had really been at the back

of his brain like a tumour, ever since he had entered the great kitchen.

3

SWELTER

      The chef of Gormenghast, balancing his body with difficulty upon a cask of

wine, was addressing a group of apprentices in their striped and sodden jackets

and small white caps. They clasped each other's shoulders for their support.

Their adolescent faces steaming with the heat of the adjacent ovens were quite

stupefied, and when they laughed or applauded the enormity above them, it was

with a crazed and sycophantic fervour. As Mr. Flay approached to within a few

yards of the cluster, another roar, such as he had heard a moment or two

earlier, rolled into the heat above the wine-barrel.

      The young scullions had heard this roar many times before but had never

associated it with anything other than anger. At first, consequently, it had

frightened them, but they had soon perceived that there was no irritation in its

note today.

      The chef, as he loomed over them, drunken, arrogant and pedantic, was

enjoying himself.

      As the apprentices swayed tipsily around the wine cask, their faces

catching and losing the light that streamed through a high window, they also, in

a delirious fashion -- were enjoying themselves. The echoes died from the

apparently reasonless bellow of the chief chef and the sagging circle about the

barrel stamped its feet feverishly and gave high shrill cries of delight, for

they had seen an inane smile evolving from the blur of the huge head above them.

Never before had they enjoyed such latitude in the presence of the chef. They

struggled to outdo one another in the taking of liberties unheard of hitherto.

They vied for favours, screaming his name at the tops of their voices. They

tried to catch his eye. They were very tired, very heavy and sick with the drink

and the heat, but were living fiercely on their fuddled reserves of nervous

energy. All saving one high-shouldered boy, who throughout the scene had

preserved a moody silence. He loathed the figure above him and he despised his

fellow-apprentices. He leaned against the shadowy side of the pillar, out of the

chef's line of vision.

      Mr. Flay was annoyed, even on such a day, by the scene. Although approving

in theory, in practice it seemed to him that the spectacle was unpleasant. He

remembered, when he had first come across Swelter, how he and the chef had

instantaneously entertained a mutual dislike, and how this antipathy festered.

To Swelter it was irksome to see the bony straggly figure of Lord Sepulchrave's

first servant in his kitchen at all, the only palliative to this annoyance being

the opportunity which if afforded for the display of his superior wit at Mr.

Flay's expense.

      Mr. Flay entered Swelter's steaming province for one purpose only. To

prove to himself as much as to others, that he, as Lord Groan's personal

attendant, would on no account be intimidated by any member of the staff.

      To keep this fact well in front of his own mind, he made a tour of the

servants' quarters every so often, never entering the kitchen, however, without

a queasiness of stomach, never departing from it without a renewal of spleen.

      The long beams of sunlight, which were reflected from the moist walls in a

shimmering haze, had pranked the chef's body with blotches of ghost-light. The

effect from below was that of a dappled volume of warm vague whiteness and of a

grey that dissolved into swamps of midnight -- of a volume that towered and

dissolved among the rafters. As occasion merited he supported himself against

the stone pillar at his side and as he did so the patches of light shifted

across the degraded whiteness of the stretched uniform he wore. When Mr. Flay

had first eyed him, the cook's head had been entirely in shadow. Upon it the

tall cap of office rose coldly, a vague topsail half lost in a fitful sky. In

the total effect there was indeed something of the galleon.

      One of the blotches of reflected sunlight swayed to and fro across the

paunch. This particular pool of light moving in a mesmeric manner backwards and

forwards picked out from time to time a long red island of spilt wine. It seemed

to leap forward from the mottled cloth when the light fastened upon it in

startling contrast to the chiaroscuro and to defy the laws of tone. This

ungarnished sign of Swelter's debauche, taking the swollen curve of linen, had

somehow, to Mr. Flay's surprise, a fascination. For a minute he watched it

appear, and disappear to reappear again -- a lozenge of crimson, as the body

behind it swayed.

      Another senseless bout of foot-stamping and screaming broke the spell, and

lifting his eyes he scowled about him. Suddenly, for a moment, the memory of Mr.

Rottcodd in his dusty deserted hall stole into his consciousness and he was

shocked to realize how much he had really preferred -- to this inferno of

time-hallowed revelry -- the limp and seemingly disloyal self-sufficiency of the

curator. He straddled his way to a vantage point, from where he could see and

remain unseen, and from there he noticed that Swelter was steadying himself on

his legs and with a huge soft hand making signs to the adolescents below him to

hold their voices. Flay noticed how the habitual truculence of his tone and

manner had today altered to something mealy, to a conviviality weighted with

lead and sugar, a ghastly intimacy more dreadful than his most dreaded rages.

His voice came down from the shadows in huge wads of sound, or like the warm,

sick notes of some prodigious mouldering bell of felt.

      His soft hand had silenced the seething of the apprentices and he allowed

his thick voice to drop out of his face.

      "Gallstones!" and in the dimness he flung his arms apart so that the

buttons of his tunic were torn away, one of them whizzing across the room and

stunning a cockroach on the opposite wall. "Close your ranks and close your

ranks and listen mosht attentivesome. Come closer then, my little sea of faces,

come ever closer in, my little ones."

      The apprentices edged themselves forward, tripping and treading upon each

other's feet, the foremost of them being wedged against the wine-barrel itself.

      "Thatsh the way. Thatsh jusht the way," said Swelter, leering down at

them. "Now we're quite a happly little family. Mosht shelect and advanced."

      He then slid a fat hand through a slit in his white garment of office and

removed from a deep pocket a bottle. Plucking out the cork with his lips, that

had gripped it with an uncanny muscularity, he poured half a pint down his

throat without displacing the cork, for he laid a finger at the mouth of the

bottle, so dividing the rush of wine into two separate spurts that shot adroitly

into either cheek, and so, making contact at the back of his mouth, down his

throat in one dull gurgle to those unmentionable gulches that lay below.

      The apprentices screamed and stamped and tore at each other in an access

of delight and of admiration.

      The chef removed the cork and twisted it around between his thumb and

forefinger and satisfying himself that it had remained perfectly dry during the

operation, recorked the bottle and returned it through the slit into his pocket.

      Again he put up his hand and silence was restored save for the heavy,

excited breathing.

      "Now tell me thish, my stenching cherubs. Tell me thish and tell me

exshtra quickly, who am _I_? Now tell me exshtra quickly."

      "Swelter," they cried, "Swelter, sir! Swelter!"

      "Is that _all_ you know?" came the voice. "Is that _all_ you know, my

little sea of faces? Silence now! and lishen well to me, chief chef of

Gormenghast, man and boy forty years, fair and foul, rain or shine, sand and

sawdust, hags and stags and all the resht of them done to a turn and spread with

sauce of aloes and a dash of prickling pepper."

      "With a dash of prickling pepper," yelled the apprentices hugging

themselves and each other in turn. "Shall we cook it, sir? We"ll do it now, sir,

and slosh it in the copper, sir, and stir it up. Oh! what a tasty dish, sir, oh!

what a tasty dish!"

      "Shilence," roared the chef. "Silensh, my fairy boys. Silence, my belching

angels. Come closer here, come closer with your little creamy faces and I'll

tell you who I am."

      The high-shouldered boy, who had taken no part in the excitement, pulled

out a small pipe of knotted worm-wood and filled it deliberately. His mouth was

quite expressionless, curving neither up nor down, but his eyes were dark and

hot with a mature hatred. They were half closed but their eloquence smouldered

through the lashes as he watched the figure on the barrel lean forward

precariously.

      "Now lishen well," continued the voice, "and I'll tell you exactly who I

am and then I'll shing to you a shong and you will know who's shinging to you,

my ghastly little ineffectual fillets."

      "A song! A song!" came the shrill chorus.

      "Firshtly," said the chef leaning forward and dropping each confidential

word like a cannon ball smeared with syrup. "Firshtly, I am none other than

Abiatha Swelter, which meansh, for you would not know, that I am the shymbol of

both excellence and plenty. I am the _father_ of exchellence and plenty. Who did

I shay I was?"

      "Abafer Swelter," came the scream.

      The chef leaned back on his swollen legs and drew the corners of his mouth

down until they lost themselves among the shadows of his hot dewlaps.

      "Abi_a_tha," he repeated slowly, stressing the central "A". "Abiatha. What

did I shay my name wash?"

      "Abi_a_tha," came the scream again.

      "Thatsh right, thatsh right. Abiatha. Are you lishening, my pretty vermin,

are you lishening?"

      The apprentices gave him to understand that they were listening very hard.

      Before the chef continued he applied himself to the bottle once again.

This time he held the glass neck between his teeth and tilting his head back

until the bottle was vertical, drained it and spat it out over the heads of the

fascinated throng. The sound of black glass smashing on the flagstones was

drowned in screams of approval.

      "Food," said Swelter, "is shelestial and drink is mosht entrancing -- such

flowers of flatulence. Sush gaseous buds. Come closer in, _steal_ in, and I will

shing. I will lift my sweetest heart into the rafters, and will shing to you a

shong. An old shong of great shadness, a most dolorous piece. Come closer in."

      It was impossible for the apprentices to force themselves any closer to

the chef, but they struggled and shouted for the song, and turned their

glistening faces upwards.

      "Oh what a pleasant lot of little joints you are," said Swelter, peering

at them and wiping his hands up and down his fat hips. "What a very drippy lot

of little joints. Oh yesh you are, but so underdone. Lishen cocks, I'll twisht

your grandma's so shweetly in their graves. We"ll make them turn, my dears,

we"ll make them turn -- and what a turn for them, my own, and for the worms that

nibble. Where's Steerpike?"

      "Steerpike! Steerpike!" yelled the youths, the ones in front twisting

their heads and standing upon their toes, the ones in the rear craning forward

and peering about them. "Steerpike! Steerpike! He's somewhere here, sir! Oh

there he is sir! There he is sir! Behind the pillar sir!"

      "Silence," bellowed the chef, turning his gourd of a head in the direction

of the pointed hands as the high-shouldered boy was pushed forward.

      "Here he is, sir! Here he is, sir!"

      The boy Steerpike looked impossibly small as he stood beneath the

monstrous monument.

      "I shall shing to _you_, Steerpike, to _you_," whispered the cook, reeling

and supporting himself with one hand against the stone pillar that was

glistening with condensed heat, little trickles of moisture moving down its

fluted sides. "To you, the newcomer, the blue mummer and the slug of summer-- to

you the hideous, and insidious, and appallingly cretinous goat in a house of

stenches."

      The apprentices rocked with joy.

      "To you, only to _you_, my core of curdled cat-bile. To you alone, sho

hearken diligentiums. Are you sharkening? Are you all lishening for this his

how's it goesh. My shong of a hundred yearsh ago, my plaintively mosht

melancholic shong."

      Swelter seemed to forget he was about to sing, and after wiping the sweat

from his hands on the head of a youth below him, peered for Steerpike again.

      "And why to you, my ray of addled sunshine? Why to you aslone? Shtaking it

for granted, my dear little Steerpike -- taking it for more than for mosht

granted, that you, a creature of lesh consequence than stoat"s-blood, are sho

far removal'd from anything approaching nature -- yet tell me, more rather,

don't tell me why your ears which musht originally have been deshigned for

fly-papers, are, for shome reason butter known to yourself, kept imodeshtly

unfurled. What do you proposhe to do next in thish batter? You move here and

there on your little measly legs. I have sheen you at it. You breathe all over

my kitchen. You look at thingsh with your insholent animal eyes. I've sheen you

doing it. I have sheen you look at me. Your looking at me now. Shteerpike, my

impatient love-bird, what doesh it all mean, and why should I shing for you?"

      Swelter leaned back and seemed to be considering his own question a moment

as he wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his forearm. But he waited for no

reply and flung his pendulent arms out sideways and somewhere on the orbit of an

immense arc something or other gave way.

      Steerpike was not drunk. As he stood below Mr. Swelter, he had nothing but

contempt for the man who had but yesterday struck him across the head. He could

do nothing, however, except stay where he was, prodded and nudged from behind by

the excited minions, and wait.

      The voice recurred from above. "It is a shong, my Steerpike, to an

imaginawary monshter, jusht like yourshelf if only you were a twifle bigger and

more monshtrous shtill. It is a shong to a hard-hearted monshter sho lishen

mosht shfixedly, my pretty wart. Closher, closher! Can't you come a little

closher to a dirgeous mashterpeesh?"

      The wine was beginning to redouble its subversive activity in the chef's

brain. He was now supporting himself almost the whole of the while against the

sweating pillar and was sagging hideously.

      Steerpike stared up at him from under his high bony brow. The cook's eyes

were protruding like bloodshot bubbles. One arm hung, a dead-weight, down the

fluted surface of the support. The enormous area of the face had fallen loose.

It glistened like a jelly.

      A hole appeared in the face. Out of it came a voice that had suddenly

become weaker.

      "I am Shwelter," it repeated, "the great chef Abiatha Shwelter, scook to

hish Lordshipsh, boardshipsh and all shorts of ships that shail on shlippery

sheas. Abiafa Shwelter, man and boy and girls and ribbonsh, lots of kittensh,

forty year of cold and shunny, where"sh the money, thick and hairy, I'm a fairy!

I'm a shongster! Lishen well, lishen well!"

      Mr. Swelter lowered his head downwards over his wine-raddled breast

without moving his shoulders and made an effort to see whether his audience was

sufficiently keyed up for his opening chords. But he could make out nothing

below him saving the "little sea of faces" which he had alluded to, but the

little sea had now become practically obliterated from him by a swimming mist.

      "Are you lishening?"

      "Yes, yes! The song, the song!"

      Swelter lowered his head yet again into the hot spindrift and then held up

his right hand weakly. He made one feeble effort to heave himself away from the

pillar and to deliver his verses at a more imposing angle, but, incapable of

mustering the strength he sank back, and then, as a vast inane smile opened up

the lower half of his face, and as Mr. Flay watched him, his hard little mouth

twisted downwards, the chef began gradually to curl in upon himself, as though

folding himself up for death. The kitchen had become as silent as a hot tomb. At

last, through the silence, a weak gurgling sound began to percolate but whether

it was the first verse of the long awaited poem, none could tell for the chef,

like a galleon, lurched in his anchorage. The great ship's canvas sagged and

crumpled and then suddenly an enormousness foundered and sank. There was a sound

of something spreading as an area of seven flagstones became hidden from view

beneath a catalyptic mass of wine-drenched blubber.

4

THE STONE LANES

      Mr. Flay's gorge had risen steadily and, as the dreadful minutes passed,

he had been filled with a revulsion so consuming that but for the fact that the

chef was surrounded by the youths he would have attacked the drunkard. As it was

he bared his sand-coloured teeth, and fixed his eyes for a last moment on the

cook with an expression of unbelievable menace. He had turned his head away at

last and spat, and then brushing aside whoever stood in his path, had made his

way with great skeleton strides, to a narrow doorway in the wall opposite that

through which he had entered. By the time Swelter's monologue was dragging to

its crapulous close, Mr. Flay was pacing onwards, every step taking him another

five feet further from the reek and horror of the Great Kitchen.

      His black suit, patched on the elbows and near the collar with a greasy

sepia-coloured cloth, fitted him badly but belonged to him as inevitably as the

head of a tortoise emerging from its shell or the vulture's from a rubble of

feathers belong to that reptile or that bird. His head, parchment-coloured and

bony, was indigenous to that greasy fabric. It stuck out from the top window of

its high black building as though it had known no other residence.

      While Mr. Flay was pacing along the passages to that part of the castle

where Lord Sepulchrave had been left alone for the first time for many weeks,

the curator, sleeping peacefully in the Hall of the Bright Carvings, snored

beneath the venetian blind. The hammock was still swinging a little, a very

little, from the movement caused by Mr. Rottcodd's depositing himself therein

directly he had turned the key on Mr. Flay. The sun burned through the shutters,

made bands of gold around the pedestals that supported the sculpture and laid

its tiger stripes across the dusty floor boarding.

      The sunlight, as Mr. Flay strolled on, still had one finger through the

kitchen window, lighting the perspiring stone pillar which was now relieved of

its office of supporting the chef for the soak had fallen from the wine-barrel a

moment after the disappearance of Mr. Flay and lay stretched at the foot of his

rostrum.

      Around him lay scattered a few small flattened lumps of meat, coated with

sawdust. There was a strong smell of burning fat, but apart from the prone bulk

of the chef, the Grey Scrubbers under the table, and the gentlemen who were

suspended from the beam, there was no one left in the huge, hot, empty hall.

Every man and boy who had been able to move his legs had made his way to cooler

quarters.

      Steerpike had viewed with a mixture of amazement, relief and malignant

amusement the dramatic cessation of Mr. Swelter's oratory. For a few moments he

had gazed at the wine-spattered form of his overlord spread below him, then

glancing around and finding that he was alone he had made for the door through

which Mr. Flay had passed and was soon racing down the passages turning left and

right as he ran in a mad effort to reach the fresh air.

      He had never before been through that particular door, but he imagined

that he would soon find his way into the open and to some spot where he could be

on his own. Turning this way and that he found that he was lost in a labyrinth

of stone corridors, lit here and there by candles sunk in their own wax and

placed in niches in the walls. In desperation he put his hands to his head as he

ran, when suddenly, as he rounded the curve of a wall a figure passed rapidly

across the passage before him, neither looking to right or left.

      As soon as Mr. Flay -- for it was his lordship's servant on his way to the

residential apartments -- as soon as he had passed from sight, Steerpike peered

round the corner and followed, keeping as much as possible in step to hide the

sound of his own feet. This was almost impossible, as Mr. Flay's spider-like

gait besides being particularly long of stride, had, like the slow-march, a

time-lag before the ultimate descent of the foot. However, young Steerpike,

feeling that here at any rate was his one chance of escaping from these endless

corridors, followed as best he could in the hope that Mr. Flay would eventually

turn into some cool quadrangle or open space where get-away could be effected.

At times, when the candles were thirty or forty feet apart, Mr. Flay would be

lost to view and only the sound of his feet on the flagstones would guide his

follower. Then slowly, as his erratic shape approached the next guttering aura

he would begin by degrees to become a silhouette, until immediately before the

candle he would for a moment appear like an inky scarecrow, a mantis of

pitch-black cardboard worked with strings. Then the progression of the lighting

would be reversed and for a moment immediately after passing the flame Steerpike

would see him quite clearly as a lit object against the depths of the

still-to-be-trodden avenues of stone. The grease at those moments shone from the

threadbare cloth across his shoulders, the twin vertical muscles of his neck

rose out of the tattered collar nakedly and sharply. As he moved forward the

light would dim upon his back and Steerpike would lose him, only hearing the

cracking of his knee-joints and his feet striking the stones, until the ensuing

candle carved him anew. Practically exhausted, first by the unendurable

atmosphere of the Great Kitchen and now with this seemingly endless journey, the

boy, for he was barely seventeen, sank suddenly to the ground with exhaustion,

striking the flags with a thud, his boots dragging harshly on the stone. The

noise brought Flay to a sudden halt and he turned himself slowly about, drawing

his shoulders up to his ears as he did so. "What's that?" he croaked, peering

into the darkness behind him.

      There was no answer. Mr. Flay began to retrace his steps, his head

forward, his eyes peering. As he proceeded he came into the light of one of the

candles in the wall. He approached it, still keeping his small eyes directed

into the darkness beyond, and wrenched the candle, with a great substratum of

ancient tallow with it, from the wall and with this to help him he soon came

across the boy in the centre of the corridor several yards further on.

      He bent forward and lowered the great lump of lambent wax within a few

inches of Steerpike, who had fallen face downwards, and peered at the immobile

huddle of limbs. The sound of his footsteps and the cracking of his knee-joints

had given place to an absolute silence. He drew back his teeth and straightened

himself a little. Then he turned the boy over with his foot. This roused

Steerpike from his faintness and he raised himself weakly on one elbow.

      "Where am I?" he said in a whisper. "Where am I?"

      "One of Swelter's little rats," thought Flay to himself, taking no notice

of the question. "One of Swelter"s, eh? One of his striped rats." "Get up," said

Mr. Flay aloud. "What you doing here?" and he put the candle close to the boy's

face.

      "I don't know where I am," said young Steerpike. "I'm lost here. Lost.

Give me daylight."

      "What you doing here, I said . . . what you doing here?" said Flay. "I

don't want Swelter's boys here. Curse them!"

      "I don't _want_ to be here. Give me daylight and I'll go away. Far away."

      "Away? Where?"

      Steerpike had recovered control of his mind, although he still felt hot

and desperately tired. He had noticed the sneer in Mr. Flay's voice as he had

said "I don't want Swelter's boys here," and so, at Mr. Flay's question "Away

where?" Steerpike answered quickly, "Oh anywhere, anywhere from that dreadful

Mr. Swelter."

      Flay peered at him for a moment or two, opening his mouth several times to

speak, only to close it again.

      "New?" said Flay looking expressionlessly through the boy.

      "Me?" said young Steerpike.

      "_You_," said Flay, still looking clean through the top of the boy's head,

"New?"

      "Seventeen years old, sir," said young Steerpike, "but new to that

kitchen."

      "When?" said Flay, who left out most of every sentence.

      Steerpike, who seemed able to interpret this sort of shorthand talk,

answered.

      "Last month. I want to leave that dreadful Swelter," he added, replaying

his only possible card and glancing up at the candlelit head.

      "Lost, were you?" said Flay after a pause, but with perhaps less darkness

in his tone. "Lost in the Stone Lanes, were you? One of Swelter's little rats,

lost in the Stone Lanes, eh?" and Mr. Flay raised his gaunt shoulders again.

      "Swelter fell like a log," said Steerpike.

      "Quite right," said Flay, "doing honours. What have _you_ done?"

      "Done, sir?" said Steerpike, "when?"

      "What Happiness?" said Flay, looking like a death's-head. The candle was

beginning to fail. "How much Happiness?"

      "I haven't any happiness," said Steerpike.

      "What! no Great Happiness? Rebellion. Is it rebellion?"

      "No, except against Mr. Swelter."

      "Swelter! Swelter! Leave his name in its fat and grease. Don't talk of

that name in the Stone Lanes. Swelter, always Swelter! Hold your tongue. Take

this candle. Lead the way. Put it in the niche. Rebellion is it? Lead the way,

left, left, right, keep to the left, now right . . .    I'll teach you to be

unhappy when a Groan is born . . . keep on . . . straight on . . ."

      Young Steerpike obeyed these instructions from the shadows behind him.

      "A Groan is born," said Steerpike with an inflection of voice which might

be interpreted as a question or a statement.

      "Born," said Flay. "And you mope in the Lanes. With me, Swelter's boy.

Show you what it means. A male Groan. New, eh? Seventeen? Ugh! Never understand.

Never. Turn right and left again -- again . . .  through the arch. Ugh! A new

body under the old stones -- one of Swelter"s, too . . . don't like him, eh?"

      "No, sir."

      "H'm," said Flay. "Wait here."

      Steerpike waited as he was told and Mr. Flay, drawing a bunch of keys from

his pocket and selecting one with great care as though he were dealing with

objects of rarity inserted it into the lock ofan invisible door, for the

blackness was profound. Steerpike heard the iron grinding in the lock.

      "Here!" said Flay out of the darkness. "Where's that Swelter boy? Come

here."

      Steerpike moved forward towards the voice, feeling with his hands along

the wall of a low arch. Suddenly he found himself next to the dank smelling

garments of Mr. Flay and he put forward his hand and held Lord Groan's servant

by a loose portion of the long jacket. Mr. Flay brought down his bony hand

suddenly over the boy's arm, knocking it away and a t"ck, t"ck, t"ck, sounded in

the tall creature's throat, warning him against any further attempts at

intimacy.

      "Cat room," said Flay, putting his hand to the iron knob of the door.

      "Oh," said Steerpike, thinking hard and repeating "Cat room" to fill in

time, for he saw no reason for the remark. The only interpretation he could give

to the ejaculation was that Flay was referring to him as a cat and asking to be

given more room. Yet there had been no irritation in the voice.

      "Cat room," said Flay again, ruminatively, and turned the iron doorknob.

He opened the door slowly and Steerpike, peering past him, found no longer any

need for an explanation.

      A room was filled with the late sunbeams. Steerpike stood quite still, a

twinge of pleasure running through his body. He grinned. A carpet filled the

floor with blue pasture. Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes,

or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire

setting, inter-weaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of

snow-white cats.

      As Mr. Flay passed down the centre of the room, Steerpike could not but

notice the contrast between the dark rambling figure with his ungainly movements

and the monotonous cracking of his knees, the contrast between this and the

superb elegance and silence of the white cats. They took not the slightest

notice of either Mr. Flay or of himself save for the sudden cessation of their

purring. When they had stood in the darkness, and before Mr. Flay had removed

the bunch of keys from his pocket, Steerpike had imagined he had heard a heavy,

deep throbbing, a monotonous sea-like drumming of sound, and he now knew that it

must have been the pullulation of the tribe.

      As they passed through a carved archway at the far end of the room and had

closed the door behind them he heard the vibration of their throats, for now

that the white cats were once more alone it was revived, and the deep unhurried

purring was like the voice of an ocean in the throat of a shell.

5

"THE SPY-HOLE"

      "Whose are they?" asked Steerpike. They were climbing stone stairs. The

wall on their right was draped with hideous papers that were peeling off and

showed rotting surfaces of chill plaster behind. A mingling of many weird

colours enlivened this nether surface, dark patches of which had a submarine and

incredible beauty. In another dryer area, where a great sail of paper hung away

from the wall, the plaster had cracked into a network of intricate fissures

varying in depth and resembling a bird"s-eye view, or map of some fabulous

delta. A thousand imaginary journeys might be made along the banks of these

rivers of an unexplored world.

      Steerpike repeated his question, "Whose are they?" he said.

      "Whose what?" said Flay, stopping on the stairs and turning round. "Still

here are you? Still following me?"

      "You suggested that I should," said Steerpike.

      "Ch! Ch!" said Flay, "what d'you want, Swelter's boy?"

      "Nauseating Swelter," said Steerpike between his teeth but with one eye on

Mr. Flay, "vile Swelter."

      There was a pause during which Steerpike tapped the iron banisters with

his thumb-nail.

      "Name?" said Mr. Flay.

      "My name?" asked Steerpike.

      "Your name, yes, your name. I know what my name is." Mr. Flay put a

knuckly hand on the banisters preparatory to mounting the stairs again, but

waited, frowning over his shoulder, for the reply.

      "Steerpike sir," said the boy.

      "Queerpike, eh? eh?" said Flay.

      "No, Steerpike."

      "What?"

      "Steerpike. Steerpike."

      "What for?" said Flay.

      "I beg your pardon?"

      "What for, eh? Two Squeertikes, two of you. Twice over. What for? One's

enough for a Swelter's boy."

      The youth felt it would be useless to clear up the problem of his name. He

concentrated his dark eyes on the gawky figure above him for a few moments and

shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. Then he spoke again, showing no sign of

irritation.

      "Whose cats were those, sir? May I ask?"

      "Cats?" said Flay, "who said cats?"

      "The white cats," said Steerpike. "All the white cats in the Cat room. Who

do they belong to?"

      Mr. Flay held up a finger. "My Lady"s," he said. His hard voice seemed a

part of this cold narrow stairway of stone and iron. "They belong to my Lady.

Lady's white cats they are. Swelter's boy. All hers."

      Steerpike pricked his ears up. "Where does she live?" he said. "Are we

close to where she lives?"

      For answer Mr. Flay shot his head forward out of his collar and croaked,

"Silence! you kitchen thing. Hold your tongue you greasy fork. Talk too much,"

and he straddled up the stairs, passing two landings in his ascent, and then at

the third he turned sharply to his left and entered an octagonal apartment where

full-length portraits in huge dusty gold frames stared from seven of the eight

walls. Steerpike followed him in.

      Mr. Flay had been longer away from his lordship than he had intended or

thought right and it was on his mind that the earl might be needing him.

Directly he entered the octagonal room he approached one of the portraits at the

far end and pushing the suspended frame a little to one side, revealed a small

round hole in the panelling the size of a farthing. He placed his eye to this

hole and Steerpike watched the wrinkles of his parchment-coloured skin gather

below the protruding bone at the base of the skull, for Mr. Flay both had to

stoop and then to raise his head in order to apply his eye at the necessary

angle. What Mr. Flay saw was what he had expected to see.

      From his vantage point he was able to get a clear view of three doors in a

corridor, the central one belonging to the chamber of her ladyship, the

seventy-sixth Countess of Groan. It was stained black and had painted upon it an

enormous white cat. The wall of the landing was covered with pictures of birds

and there were three engravings of cacti in bloom. This door was shut, but as

Mr. Flay watched the doors on either side were being constantly opened and

closed and figures moved quickly in and out or up and down the landing, or

conversed with many gesticulations or stood with their chins in the curled palms

of their hands as though in profound meditation.

      "Here," said Flay without turning round.

      Steerpike was immediately at Flay's elbow. "Yes?" he said.

      Cat door's hers," said Flay removing his eye, and then, stretching his

arms out he spread his long fingers to their tips and yawned cavernously.

      Young Steerpike glued his eye to the hole, keeping the heavy gold frame

from swinging back with his shoulder. All at once he found himself contemplating

a narrow-chested man with a shock of grey hair and glasses which magnified his

eyes so that they filled the lenses up to their gold rims, when the central door

opened, and a dark figure stole forth, closing the door behind him quietly, and

with an air of the deepest dejection. Steerpike watched him turn his eyes to the

shockheaded man, who inclined his body forward clasping his hands before him. No

notice was taken of this by the other, who began to pace up and down the

landing, his dark cloak clasped around him and trailing on the floor at his

heels. Each time he passed the doctor, for such it was, that gentleman inclined

his body, but as before there was no response, until suddenly, stopping

immediately before the physician in attendance, he drew from his cape a slender

rod of silver mounted at the end with a rough globe of black jade that burned

around its edges with emerald fire. With this unusual weapon the mournful figure

beat sadly at the doctor's chest as though to inquire whether there was anyone

at home. The doctor coughed. The silver and jade implement was pointed to the

floor, and Steerpike was amazed to see the doctor, after hitching his

exquisitely creased trousers to a few inches above his ankle, squat down. His

great vague eyes swam about beneath the magnifying lenses like a pair of

jellyfish seen through a fathom of water. His dark grey hair was brushed out

over his eyes like thatch. For all the indignity of his position it was with a

great sense of style that he became seated following with his eyes the gentleman

who had begun to walk around him slowly. Eventually the figure with the silver

rod came to a halt.

      "Prunesquallor," he said.

      "My Lord?" said the doctor, inclining his grey hayrick to the left.

      "Satisfactory, Prunesquallor?"

      The doctor placed the tips of his fingers together. "I am exceptionally

gratified my lord, exceptionally. Indeed I am. Very, very much so; ha, ha, ha.

Very, very much so."

      "Professionally you mean, I imagine?" said Lord Sepulchrave, for as

Steerpike had begun to realize to his amazement, the tragic-looking man was none

other than the seventy-sixth Earl ofGroan and the owner of, as Steerpike put it

to himself, the whole caboodle, bricks, guns and glory.

      "Professionally . . ." queried the doctor to himself, ". . . what does he

mean?" Aloud he said, "professionally, my lord, I am unspeakably satisfied, ha,

ha, ha, ha, and socially, that is to say, er, as a gesture, ha, ha, I am

over-awed. I am a proud fellow, my lord, ha, ha, ha, ha, a very proud fellow."

      The laugh of Doctor Prunesquallor was part of his conversation and quite

alarming when heard for the first time. It appeared to be out of control as

though it were a part of his voice, a top-storey of his vocal range that only

came into its own when the doctor laughed. There was something about it of wind

whistling through high rafters and there was a good deal of the horse's whinny,

with a touch of the curlew. When giving vent to it, the doctor's mouth would be

practically immobile like the door of a cabinet left ajar. Between the laughs he

would speak very rapidly, which made the sudden stillness of his beautifully

shaven jaws at the time of laughter all the more extraordinary. The laugh was

not necessarily connected with humour at all. It was simply a part of his

conversation.

      "Technically, I am so satisfied as to be unbearable even to myself, ha,

ha, ha, he, he, ha. Oh very, very satisfactory it all was. Very much so."

      "I am glad," said his lordship, gazing down at him for a moment. "Did you

notice anything?" (Lord Sepulchrave glanced up and down the corridor.) "Strange?

Anything unusual about him?"

      "Unusual?" said Prunesquallor. "Did you say unusual, my lord?"

      "I did," said Lord Sepulchrave, biting his lower lip. "Anything wrong with

him? You need not be afraid to speak out."

      Again his lordship glanced up and down the landing but there was no one to

be seen.

      "Structurally, a sound child, sound as a bell, tinkle, tinkle,

structurally, ha, ha, ha," said the doctor.

      "Damn the structure!" said Lord Groan.

      "I am at a loss, my lord, ha, ha. Completely at a loss, sir. If not

structurally, then how, my lord?"

      "His face," said the earl. "Didn't you see his face?"

      Here the doctor frowned profoundly to himself and rubbed his chin with his

hand. Out of the corner of his eyes he looked up to find his lordship

scrutinizing him. "Ah!" he said lamely, "the face. The face of his little

lordship. Aha!"

      "Did you notice it, I say?" continued Lord Groan. "Speak man!"

      "I noticed his face, sir. Oh yes, definitely I noticed it." This time the

doctor did not laugh but drew a deep breath from his narrow chest.

      "Did you or did you not think it was strange? Did you or did you not?"

      "Speaking professionally," said Doctor Prunesquallor, "I should say the

face was irregular."

      "Do you mean it's ugly?" said Lord Groan.

      "It is unnatural," said Prunesquallor.

      "What is the difference, man," said Lord Groan.

      "Sir?" questioned the doctor.

      "I asked if it was ugly, sir, and you answer that it is unnatural. Why

must you hedge?"

      "Sir!" said Prunesquallor, but as he gave no colour to the utterance, very

little could be made of it.

      "When I say 'ugly' have the goodness to use the word. Do you understand?"

Lord Groan spoke quietly.

      "I comprehend, sir. I comprehend."

      "Is the boy hideous," persisted Lord Groan as though he wished to thrash

the matter out. "Have you ever delivered a more hideous child? Be honest."

      "Never," said the doctor. "Never, ha, ha, ha, ha. Never. And never a boy

with such -- er, ha, ha, ha, never a boy with such extraordinary eyes."

      "Eyes?" said Lord Groan, "what's wrong with them?"

      "Wrong?" cried Prunesquallor. "Did you say 'wrong' your lordship? Have you

not seen them?"

      "No, quick, man. Hurry yourself. What is it? What is the matter with my

son's eyes?"

      "They are violet."

6

FUCHSIA

      As his lordship stared at the doctor another figure appeared, a girl of

about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and

in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have

become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich -- her eyes smouldered.

      A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her shapeless dress was a

flaming red.

      For all the straightness of her back she walked with a slouch.

      "Come here," said Lord Groan as she was about to pass him and the doctor.

      "Yes father," she said huskily.

      "Where have you been for the last fortnight, Fuchsia?"

      "Oh, here and there, father," she said, staring at her shoes. She tossed

her long hair and it flapped down her back like a pirate's flag. She stood in

about as awkward a manner as could be conceived. Utterly unfeminine -- no man

could have invented it.

      "Here and there?" echoed her father in a weary voice. "What does 'here and

there' mean? You've been in hiding. Where, girl?"

      "'N the libr'y and 'n the armoury, 'n walking about a lot," said Lady

Fuchsia, and her sullen eyes narrowed. "I just heard silly rumours about mother.

They said I've got a brother -- idiots! idiots! I hate them. I haven't, have I?

Have I?"

      "A little brother," broke in Doctor Prunesquallor. "Yes, ha, ha, ha, ha,

ha, ha, ha, a minute, infinitesimal, microscopic addition to the famous line is

now behind this bedroom door. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he, he, he! Oh yes! Ha,

ha! Oh yes indeed! Very much so."

      "No!" said Fuchsia so loudly that the doctor coughed crisply and his

lordship took a step forward with his eyebrows drawn together and a sad curl at

the corner of his mouth.

      "It's not true!" shouted Fuchsia, turning from them and twirling a great

lock of black hair round and round her wrist. "I don't believe it! Let me go!

Let me go!"

      As no one was touching her, her cry was unnecessary and she turned and ran

with strange bounds along the corridor that led from the landing. Before she was

lost to view, Steerpike could hear her voice shouting from the distance, "Oh how

I hate! hate! hate! How I _hate_ people! Oh how I _hate_ people!"

      All this while Mr. Flay had been gazing out of a narrow window in the

octagonal room and was preoccupied with certain matters relating to how he could

best let Lord Groan know that he, Flay, his servant for over forty years,

disapproved of having been put aside as it were at the one moment when a son had

been born -- at the one moment when he, Flay, would have been invaluable as an

ally. Mr. Flay was rather hurt about the whole business, and he very much wanted

Lord Groan to know this, and yet at the same time it was very difficult to think

of a way in which he could tactfully communicate his chagrin to a man quite as

sullen as himself. Mr. Flay bit his nails sourly. He had been at the window for

a much longer time than he had intended and he turned with his shoulders raised,

an attitude typical of him and saw young Steerpike, whose presence he had

forgotten. He strode over to the boy and catching him by his coat-tails jerked

him backwards into the centre of the room. The great picture swung back across

the spy-hole.

      "Now," he said, "back! You've seen her door, Swelter's boy."

      Steerpike, who had been lost in the world beyond the oak partition, was

dazed, and took a moment to come to.

      "Back to that loathsome chef?" he cried at last, "oh no! couldn't!"

      "Too busy to have you here," said Flay, "too busy, can't wait."

      "He's ugly," said Steerpike fiercely.

      "Who?" said Flay. "Don't stop here talking."

      "Oh so ugly, he is. Lord Groan said so. The doctor said so. Ugh! So

hideous."

      "Who's hideous, you kitchen thing," said Flay, jerking his head forward

grotesquely.

      "Who?" said Steerpike. "The baby. The new baby. They both said so. Most

terrible he is."

      "What's this?" cried Flay. "What's these lies all about? Who've you heard

talking? Who've you been listening to? I'll tear your little ears off, you

snippet thing! Where've you been? Come here!"

      Steerpike, who had determined to escape from the Great Kitchen, was now

bent on finding an occupation among those apartments where he might pry into the

affairs of those above him.

      "If I go back to Swelter I'll tell him and all of them what I heard his

lordship say and then . . ."

      "Come here!" said Flay between his teeth, "come here or I'll break your

bones. Been agaping, have you? I'll fix you." Flay propelled Steerpike through

the entrance at a great pace and halted halfway down a narrow passage before a

door. This he unlocked with one of his many keys and thrusting Steerpike inside

turned it upon the boy.

7

"TALLOW AND BIRDSEED"

      Like a vast spider suspended by a metal chord, a candelabrum presided over

the room nine feet above the floor boards. From its sweeping arms of iron, long

stalactites of wax lowered their pale spilths drip by drip, drip by drip. A

rough table with a drawer half open, which appeared to be full of birdseed, was

in such a position below the iron spider that a cone of tallow was mounting by

degrees at one corner into a lambent pyramid the size of a hat.

      The room was untidy to the extent of being a shambles. Everything had the

appearance of being put aside for the moment. Even the bed was at an angle,

slanting away from the wall and crying out to be pushed back flush against the

red wallpaper. As the candles guttered or flared, so the shadows moved from side

to side, or up and down the wall, and with those movements behind the bed there

swayed the shadows of four birds. Between them vacillated an enormous head. This

umbrage was cast by her ladyship, the seventy-sixth Countess of Groan. She was

propped against several pillows and a black shawl was draped around her

shoulders. Her hair, a very dark red colour of great lustre, appeared to have

been left suddenly while being woven into a knotted structure on the top of her

head. Thick coils still fell about her shoulders, or clustered upon the pillows

like burning snakes.

      Her eyes were of the pale green that is common among cats. They were large

eyes, yet seemed, in proportion to the pale area of her face, to be small. The

nose was big enough to appear so in spite of the expanse that surrounded it. The

effect which she produced was one of bulk, although only her head, neck,

shoulders and arms could be seen above the bedclothes.

      A magpie moving sideways up and down her left forearm, which lay supine

upon the bedclothes, pecked intermittently at a heap of grain which lay in the

palm of her hand. On her shoulders sat a stonechat, and a huge raven which was

asleep. The bed-rail boasted two starlings, a missel-thrush and a small owl.

Every now and then a bird would appear between the bars of a small high window

which let in less than no light. The ivy had climbed through it from the outside

and had begun to send its tendrils down the inner wall itself and over the

crimson wallpaper. Although this ivy had choked out what little light might have

trickled into the room, it was not strong enough to prevent the birds from

finding a way through and from visiting Lady Gertrude at any hour of night or

day.

      "That's enough, that's enough, that's enough!" said the Countess in a deep

husky voice, to the magpie. "That's enough for you today, my dear." The magpie

jumped a few inches into the air and landed again on her wrist and shook his

feathers; his long tail tapped on the eiderdown.

      Lady Groan flung what remained of the grain across the room and the

stonechat hopping from the bed-rail to her head, took off again from that rabous

landing ground with a flutter, circled twice around the room steering during his

second circuit through the stalactites of shining wax, and landed on the floor

beside the grain.

      The Countess of Groan dug her elbows into the pillows behind her, which

had become flattened and uncomfortable and levered her bulk up with her strong,

heavy arms. Then she relaxed again, and spread out her arms to left and right

along the bed-rail behind her and her hands drooped from the wrists at either

extremity, overhanging the edges of the bed. The line of her mouth was neither

sad nor amused, as she gazed abstractedly at the pyramid of wax that was

mounting upon the table. She watched each slow drip as it descended upon the

blunt apex of the mound, move sluggishly down the uneven side and solidify into

a long pulpy petal.

      Whether the Countess was thinking deeply or was lost in vacant reverie it

would have been impossible to guess. She reclined hugely and motionlessly, her

arms extended along the iron rail, when suddenly a great fluttering and

scrambling broke into the wax-smelling silence of the room and turning her eyes

to the ivy-filled window, fourteen feet from the ground, the Countess without

moving her head, could see the leaves part and the white head and shoulders of

an albino rook emerge guiltily.

      "Ah-ha," she said slowly, as though she had come to a conclusion, "so it

is you, is it? So it is the truant back again. Where has he been? What has he

been doing? What trees has he been sitting in? What clouds has he been flying

through? What a boy he is! What a bunch of feathered whiteness. What a bunch of

wickedness!"

      The rook had been sitting fringed on all sides with the ivy leaves, with

his head now on one side, now on the other; listening or appearing to listen

with great interest and a certain show of embarrassment, for from the movement

that showed itself in the ivy leaves from time to time, the white rook was

evidently shifting from foot to foot.

      "Three weeks it is," continued the Countess, "three weeks I've been

without him; I wasn't good enough for him, oh no, not for Master Chalk, and here

he is back again, wants to be forgiven! Oh yes! Wants a great treeful of

forgiveness, for his heavy old beak and months of absolution for his plumage."

      Then the Countess hoisted herself up in bed again, twisted a strand of her

dark hair round a long forefinger, and with her face directed at the doorway,

but her eyes still on the bird, said as though to herself and almost inaudibly,

"Come on then." The ivy rustled again, and before that sound was over the bed

itself vibrated with the sudden arrival of the white rook.

      He stood on the foot-rail, his claws curled around it, and stared at Lady

Groan. After a moment or two of stillness the white rook moved his feet up and

down on the rail in a treading motion and then, flopping on to the bedclothes at

her ladyship's feet, twisted his head around and pecked at his own tail, the

feathers of his neck standing out as he did so, crisply like a ruff. The pecking

over he made his way over the undulating terrain of the bed, until within a few

inches of her ladyship's face, when he tilted his big head in a characteristic

manner and cawed.

      "So you beg my pardon, do you?" said Lady Groan, "and you think that's the

end of it? No more questions about where you've been or where you've flown these

three long weeks? So that's it, is it, Master Chalk? You want me to forgive you

for old sakes' sake? Come here with your old beak and rub it on my arm. Come

along my whitest one, come along, then. Come along." The raven on Lady Groan's

shoulder awoke from his sleep and raised his ethiopian wing an inch or two,

sleepily. Then his eyes focused upon the rook in a hard stare. He sat there wide

awake, a lock of dark red hair between his feet. The small owl as though to take

the place of the raven fell asleep. One of the starlings turned about in three

slow paces and faced the wall. The missel-thrush made no motion, and as a candle

guttered, a ghoul of shadow from under a tall cupboard dislodged itself and

moved across the floorboards, climbed the bed, and crawled half way across the

eiderdown before it returned by the same route, to curl up and roost beneath the

cupboard again.

      Lady Groan's gaze had returned to the mounting pyramid of tallow. Her pale

eyes would either concentrate upon an object in a remorseless way or would

appear to be without sight, vacant, with the merest suggestion of something

childish. It was in this abstracted manner that she gazed through the pale

pyramid, while her hands, as though working on their own account, moved gently

over the breast, head and throat of the white rook.

      For some time there was complete silence in the room and it was with

something of a shock that a rapping at the panels of her bedroom door awakened

Lady Groan from her reverie.

      Her eyes now took on the concentrated, loveless, cat-like look.

      The birds coming to life at once, flapped simultaneously to the end rail

of the bed, where they stood balancing in a long uneven line, each one on the

alert, their heads turned towards the door.

      "Who's that?" said Lady Groan heavily.

      "It's me, my lady," cried a quavering voice.

      "Who's that hitting my door?"

      "It's me with his lordship," replied the voice.

      "What?" shouted Lady Groan. "What d'you want? What are you hitting my door

for?"

      Whoever it was raised her voice nervously and cried, "Nannie Slagg, it is.

It's me, my lady; Nannie Slagg."

      "What d'you want?" repeated her ladyship, settling herself more

comfortably.

      "I've brought his Lordship for you to see," shouted Nannie Slagg, a little

less nervously.

      "Oh, you have, have you? You've brought his lordship. So you want to come

in, do you? With his lordship." There was a moment's silence. "What for? What

have you brought him to me for?"

      "For you to see, if you please, my lady," replied Nannie Slagg. "He's had

his bath."

      Lady Groan relaxed still further into the pillows. "Oh, you mean the _new_

one, do you?" she muttered.

      "Can I come in?" cried Nannie Slagg.

      "Hurry up then! Hurry up then! Stop scratching at my door. What are you

waiting for?"

      A rattling at the door handle froze the birds along the iron bed-rail and

as the door opened they were all at once in the air, and were forcing their way,

one after another through the bitter leaves of the small window.

8

A GOLD RING FOR TITUS

      Nannie Slagg entered, bearing in her arms the heir to the miles of

rambling stone and mortar; to the Tower of Flints and the stagnant moat; to the

angular mountains and the lime-green river where twelve years later he would be

angling for the hideous fishes of his inheritance.

      She carried the child towards the bed and turned the little face to the

mother, who gazed right through it and said:

      "Where's that doctor? Where's Prunesquallor? Put the child down and open

the door."

      Mrs. Slagg obeyed, and as her back was turned Lady Groan bent forward and

peered at the child. The little eyes were glazed with sleep and the candlelight

played upon the bald head, moulding the structure of the skull with shifting

shade.

      "H'm," said Lady Groan, "what d'you want me to do with him?"

      Nannie Slagg, who was very grey and old, with red rims around her eyes and

whose intelligence was limited, gazed vacantly at her ladyship.

      "He's had his bath," she said. "He's just had his bath, bless his little

lordship's heart."

      "What about it?" said Lady Groan.

      The old nurse picked the baby up dexterously and began to rock him gently

by way of an answer.

      "Is Prunesquallor there?" repeated Lady Groan.

      "Down," whispered Nannie, pointing a little wrinkled finger at the floor,

"d-downstairs; oh yes, I think he is still downstairs taking punch in the

Coldroom. Oh dear, yes, bless the little thing."

      Her last remark presumably referred to Titus and not to Doctor

Prunesquallor. Lady Groan raised herself in bed and looking fiercely at the open

door, bellowed in the deepest and loudest voice, "SQUALLOR!"

      The word echoed along the corridors and down the stairs, and creeping

under the door and along the black rug in the Coldroom, just managed, after

climbing the doctor's body, to find its way into both his ears simultaneously,

in a peremptory if modified condition. Modified though it was, it brought Doctor

Prunesquallor to his feet at once. His fish eyes swam all round his glasses

before finishing at the top, where they gave him an expression of fantastic

martyrdom. Running his long, exquisitely formed fingers through his mop of grey

hair, he drained his glass of punch at a draught and started for the door,

flicking small globules of the drink from his waistcoat.

      Before he had reached her room he had begun a rehearsal of the

conversation he expected, his insufferable laughter punctuating every other

sentence whatever its gist.

      "My lady," he said, when he had reached her door and was showing the

Countess and Mrs. Slagg nothing except his head around the doorpost in a

decapitated manner, before entering. "My lady, ha, ha, he, he. I heard your

voice downstairs as I er -- was --"

      "Tippling," said Lady Groan.

      "Ha, ha -- how very right you are, how very very right you are, ha, ha,

ha, he, as I was, as you so graphically put it, ha, ha, tippling. Down it came,

ha, ha -- down it came."

      "What came?" interrupted the Countess loudly.

      "Your voice," said Prunesquallor, raising his right hand and deliberately

placing the tips of his thumb and little finger together, "your voice located me

in the Coldroom. Oh yes, it did!"

      The Countess stared at him heavily and then dug her elbows into the

pillow.

      Mrs. Slagg had rocked the baby to sleep.

      Doctor Prunesquallor was running a long tapering forefinger up and down a

stalactite of wax and smiling horribly.

      "I called you," said the Countess, "to tell you, Prunesquallor, that

tomorrow I get up."

      "Oh, he, ha, ha, oh ha, ha, my ladyship, oh, ha, ha, my ladyship --

_tomorrow_?"

      "Tomorrow," said the Countess, "why not?"

      "Professionally speaking --" began Doctor Prunesquallor.

      "Why not?" repeated the Countess interrupting him.

      "Ha, ha, most abnormal, most unusual, ha, ha, ha, most unique, so _very_

soon."

      "So you would docket me, would you, Prunesquallor? I thought you would; I

guessed it. I get up tomorrow -- tomorrow _at dawn_."

      Doctor Prunesquallor shrugged his narrow shoulders and raised his eyes.

Then placing the tips of his fingers together and addressing the dark ceiling

above him, "I _advise_, but never order," he said, in a tone which implied that

he could have done any amount of ordering had he thought it necessary. "Ha ha,

ha, oh no! I only advise."

      "Rubbish," said the Countess.

      "I do not think so," replied Prunesquallor, still gazing upwards. "Ha, ha,

ha, ha, oh no! not at all." As he finished speaking his eyes for a second

travelled downwards at great speed and took in the image of the Countess in bed

and then even more rapidly swam up the glasses. What he had seen disquieted him,

for he had found in her expression such a concentration of distaste that as he

deflected his gaze away from her he found that his feet were moving backwards

one after the other and that he was at the door before he knew that he had

decided what to do. Bowing quickly he withdrew his body from the bedroom.

      "Isn't he sweet, oh isn't he the sweetest drop of sugar that ever was?"

said Mrs. Slagg.

      "Who?" shouted the Countess so loudly that a string of tallow wavered in

the shifting light.

      The baby awoke at the sound and moaned, and Nannie Slagg retreated.

      "His little lordship," she whimpered weakly, "his pretty little lordship."

      "Slagg," said the Countess, "go away! I would like to see the boy when he

is six. Find a wet nurse from the Outer Dwellings. Make him green dresses from

the velvet curtains. Take this gold ring of mine. Fix a chain to it. Let him

wear it around his wry little neck. Call him Titus. Go away and leave the door

six inches open."

      The Countess put her hand under the pillow and drew forth a small reed,

placed it in her vast mouth and gave it breath. Two long sweet notes sang out

through the dark air. At the sound, Mrs. Slagg, grabbing the gold ring from the

bedclothes, where the Countess had thrown it, hurried as fast as her old legs

could carry her from the room as though a werewolf were at her heels. Lady Groan

was leaning forward in bed, her eyes were like a child"s; wide, sweet and

excited. They were fixed upon the door. Her hands were gripping the edges of her

pillow. She became rigid.

      In the distance, a vibration was becoming louder and louder until the

volume seemed to have filled the chamber itself, when suddenly there slid

through the narrow opening of the door and moved into the fumid atmosphere of

the room an undulation of whiteness, so that, within a breath, there was no

shadow in all the room that was not blanched with cats.

9

SEPULCHRAVE

      Every morning of the year, between the hours of nine and ten, he may be

found, seated in the Stone Hall. It is there, at the long table that he takes

his breakfast. The table is raised upon a dais, and from where he sits he can

gaze down the length of the grey refectory. On either side and running the

entire length, great pillars prop the painted ceiling where cherubs pursue each

other across a waste of flaking sky. There must be about a thousand of them all

told, interweaving among the clouds, their fat limbs for ever on the move and

yet never moving, for they are imperfectly articulated. The colours, once

garish, have faded and peeled away and the ceiling is now a very subtle shade of

grey and lichen green, old rose and silver.

      Lord Sepulchrave may have noticed the cherubs long ago. Probably when a

child he had attempted more than once to count them, as his father had done, and

as young Titus in his turn will try to do; but however that might be, Lord Groan

had not cast up his eyes to the old welkin for many years. Nor did he ever stare

about him now. How could he _love_ this place? He was a part of it. He could not

imagine a world outside it; and the idea of loving Gormenghast would have

shocked him. To have asked him of his feelings for his hereditary home would be

like asking a man what his feelings were towards his own hand or his own throat.

But his lordship remembered the cherubs in the ceiling. His great grandfather

had painted them with the help of an enthusiastic servant who had fallen seventy

feet from the scaffolding and had been killed instantly. But it seemed that Lord

Sepulchrave found his only interest in these days among the volumes in his

library and in a knob ofjade on his silver rod, which he would scrutinize for

hours on end.

      Arriving, as was his consistent habit, at exactly nine o'clock every

morning, he would enter the long hall and move with a most melancholy air

between rows of long tables, where servants of every grade would be awaiting

him, standing at their places, their heads bowed.

      Mounting the dais he would move around to the far side of the table where

hung a heavy brass bell. He would strike it. The servants sitting down at once,

would begin their meal of bread, rice wine and cake.

      Lord Groan's menu was otherwise. As he sat, this morning, in his

high-backed chair, he saw before him -- through a haze of melancholia that

filmed his brain and sickened his heart, robbing it of power and his limbs of

health -- he saw before him a snow-white tablecloth. It was set for two. The

silver shone and the napkins were folded into the shapes of peacocks and were

perched decoratively on the two plates. There was a delicious scent of bread,

sweet and wholesome. There were eggs painted in gay colours, toast piled up

pagoda-wise, tier upon tier and each as frail as a dead leaf; and fish with

their tails in their mouths lay coiled in sea-blue saucers. There was coffee in

an urn shaped like a lion, the spout protruding from that animal's silver jaws.

There were all varieties of coloured fruits that looked strangely tropical in

that dark hall. There were honeys and jams, jellies, nuts and spices and the

ancestral breakfast plate was spread out to the greatest advantage amid the

golden cutlery of the Groans. In the centre of the table was a small tin bowl of

dandelions and nettles.

      Lord Sepulchrave sat silently. He did not seem to notice the delicacies

spread before him, nor when for a moment or two at a time his head was raised,

did he appear to see the long cold dining-hall nor the servants at their tables.

To his right, at the adjacent corner of the board, was arranged the cutlery and

earthenware crockery that implied the imminent arrival of his lordship's

breakfast companion. Lord Groan, his eyes upon the jade knob of the rod which he

was twisting slowly upon its ferrule, again rang the brass bell and a door

opened in the wall behind him. Sourdust entered with great books under his arm.

He was arrayed in crimson sacking. His beard was knotted and the hairs that

composed it were black and white. His face was very lined, as though it had been

made of brown paper that had been crunched by some savage hand before being

hastily smoothed out and spread over the tissues. His eyes were deep-set and

almost lost in the shadows cast by his fine brow, which for all its wrinkles,

retained a sweeping breadth of bone.

      The old man seated himself at the end of the table, and stacked the four

volumes beside a porcelain decanter, and raising his sunken eyes to Lord Groan,

murmured these words in a weak and shaking voice and yet with a certain dignity

as though it were not simply a case of having to get through the ritual, but

that it was now, as always, well worth getting through.

      "I, Sourdust, lord of the library, personal adviser to your lordship,

nonagenarian, and student of the Groan lore, proffer to your lordship the

salutations of a dark morning, robed as I am in rags, student as I am of the

tomes, and nonagenarian as I happen to be in the matter of years."

      This was delivered in one breath and then he coughed unpleasantly several

times, his hand at his chest.

      Lord Groan propped his chin on the knuckles of his hands that were cupping

the jade knob. His face was very long and was olive coloured. The eyes were

large, and of an eloquence, withdrawn. His nostrils were mobile and sensitive.

His mouth, a narrow line. On his head was the iron crown of the Groans that

fastens with a strap under the chin. It had four prongs that were shaped like

arrow heads. Between these barbs small chains hung in loops. The prerogative of

precedent on his side, he was wrapped in his dark grey dressing-gown.

      He did not seem to have heard Sourdust's salutations, but focusing his

eyes for the first time upon the table, he broke a corner off a piece of toast,

and placed it mechanically in his mouth. This he muzzled in his cheek for the

major part of the meal. The fish became cold on the plate. Sourdust had helped

himself to one of them, a slice of watermelon and a fire-green egg, but all else

lost its freshness or its heat upon the ritualistic table.

      Below in the long basement of the hall the clattering of the knives had

ceased. The rice wine had been passed up and down the table, and the jugs were

empty. They were waiting for the sign to go about their duties,

      Sourdust, having wiped his old mouth with the napkin, turned his eyes to

his lordship, who was now leaning back in the chair and sipping at a glass of

black tea, his eyes un-focused as usual. The Librarian was watching the left

eyebrow of his lordship. It was twenty-one minutes to ten by the clock at the

far end of the hall. Lord Groan appeared to be looking through this clock.

Three-quarters of a minute went by, it was ten seconds -- five seconds -- three

seconds -- one second -- to twenty to ten. It was twenty minutes to ten. Lord

Groan's left eyebrow rose up his forehead mechanically and stayed suspended

beneath three wrinkles. Then it slowly lowered itself. At the movement, Sourdust

arose and stamped upon the ground with an old thin leg. The crimson sacking

about his body shook as he did so and his beard of black and white knots swung

madly to and fro.

      The tables were at once emptied and within half a minute the last of the

retainers had vanished from the hall, and the servants' door at the far end had

been closed and bolted.

      Sourdust re-seated himself, panting a little and coughing in an ugly way.

Then he leaned across the table and scratched the white cloth in front of Lord

Groan with a fork.

      His lordship turned his black and liquid eyes towards the old librarian

and adviser. "Well?" he said, in a far-away voice, "what is it, Sourdust?"

      "It is the ninth day of the month," said Sourdust.

      "Ah," said his lordship.

      There was a period of silence, Sourdust making use of the interim by

re-knotting several tassels of his beard.

      "The ninth," repeated his lordship.

      "The ninth," muttered Sourdust.

      "A heavy day," mused his lordship, "very heavy."

      Sourdust, bending his deep-set eyes upon his master, echoed him: "A heavy

day, the ninth . . . always a heavy day."

      A great tear rolled down Sourdust's cheek threading its way over the

crumpled surface. The eyes were too deeply set in their sockets of shadow to be

seen. By not so much as the faintest sign or movement had Sourdust suggested

that he was in a state of emotional stress. Nor was he, ever, save that at

moments of reflection upon matters connected with the traditions of the Castle,

it so happened that great tears emerged from the shadows beneath his brow. He

fingered the great tomes beside his plate. His lordship, as though making the

resolve after long deliberation, leaned forward, placed his rod on the table and

adjusted his iron crown. Then, supporting his long olive chin with his hands, he

turned his head to the old man: "Proceed," he whispered.

      Sourdust gathered the sacking about himself in a quick shaky way, and

getting to his feet moved round to the back of his own chair which he pushed a

few inches closer to the table, and squeezing between the table and the chair he

re-seated himself carefully and was apparently more comfortable than before.

Then with great deliberation, bending his corrugated brow upon each in turn he

pushed the varied assortment of dishes, cruets, glasses, cutlery and by now

tepid delicacies away from before him, clearing a semi-circle ofwhite cloth.

Only then did he remove the three tomes from beside his elbow. He opened them

one after the other by balancing them carefully on their vellum spines and

allowing them to break open at pages indicated by embroidered book-markers.

      The left hand pages were headed with the date and in the first of the

three books this was followed by a list of the activities to be performed hour

by hour during the day by his lordship. The exact times; the garments to be worn

for each occasion and the symbolic gestures to be used. Diagrams facing the left

hand page gave particulars of the routes by which his lordship should approach

the various scenes of operation. The diagrams were hand tinted.

      The second tome was full of blank pages and was entirely symbolic, while

the third was a mass of cross references. If, for instance, his lordship,

Sepulchrave, the present Earl of Groan, had been three inches shorter, the

costumes, gestures and even the routes would have differed from the ones

described in the first tome, and from the enormous library, another volume would

have had to have been chosen which would have applied. Had he been of a fair

skin, or had he been heavier than he was, had his eyes been green, blue or brown

instead of black, then, automatically another set of archaic regulations would

have appeared this morning on the breakfast table. This complex system was

understood in its entirety only by Sourdust -- the technicalities demanding the

devotion of a lifetime, though the sacred spirit of tradition implied by the

daily manifestations was understood by all.

      For the next twenty minutes Sourdust instructed his lordship in the less

obvious details of the day's work that lay ahead, in a high cracked old voice,

the cross-hatching of the skin at the corners of his mouth twitching between the

sentences. His lordship nodded silently. Occasionally the routes marked down for

the "ninth" in the diagrams of the first tome are obsolete, as for instance,

where at 2.37 in the afternoon Lord Groan was to have moved down the iron

stairway in the grey vestibule that led to the pool of carp. That stairway had

been warped and twisted out of shape seventy years ago when the vestibule had

been razed to the ground in the great fire. An alternative route had to be

planned. A plan approaching as far as possible to the spirit of the original

conception, and taking the same amount of time. Sourdust scored the new route

shakily on the tablecloth with the point of a fork. His lordship nodded.

      The day's duties being clear, and with only a minute to run before ten,

Sourdust relaxed in his chair and dribbled into his black-and-white beard. Every

few seconds he glanced at the clock.

      A long sigh came from his lordship. For a moment a light appeared in his

eyes and then dulled. The line of his mouth seemed for a moment to have

softened.

      "Sourdust," he said, "have you heard about my son?"

      Sourdust, with his eyes on the clock, had not heard his lordship's

question. He was making noises in his throat and chest, his mouth working at the

corners.

      Lord Groan looked at him quickly and his face whitened under the olive.

Taking a spoon he bent it into three-quarters of a circle.

      The door opened suddenly in the wall behind the dais and Flay entered.

      "T's time," he said, when he reached the table.

      Lord Sepulchrave rose and moved to the door.

      Flay nodded sullenly at the man in crimson sacking, and after filling his

pockets with peaches followed his lordship between the pillars of the Stone

Hall.

10

PRUNESQUALLOR'S KNEE-CAP

      Fuchsia's bedroom was stacked at its four corners with her discarded toys,

books and lengths of coloured cloth. It lay in the centre of the western wing

and upon the second floor. A walnut bed monopolized the inner wall in which

stood the doorway. The two triangular windows in the opposite wall gave upon the

battlements where the master sculptors from the mud huts moved in silhouette

across the sunset at the full moon of alternate months. Beyond the battlements

the flat pastures spread and beyond the pastures were the Twisted Woods of thorn

that climbed the ever steepening sides of Gormenghast mountain.

      Fuchsia had covered the walls of her room with impetuous drawings in

charcoal. There had been no attempt to create a design of any kind upon the

coral plaster at either end of the bedroom. The drawings had been done at many

an odd moment of loathing or excitement and although lacking in subtlety or

proportion were filled with an extraordinary energy. These violent devices gave

the two walls of her bedroom such an appearance of riot that the huddled heaps

of toys and books in the four corners looked, by comparison, compact.

      The attic, her kingdom, could be approached only through this bedchamber.

The door of the spiral staircase that ascended into the darkness was immediately

behind the bedstead, so that to open this door which resembled the door of a

cupboard, the bed had to be pulled forward into the room.

      Fuchsia never failed to return the bed to its position as a precaution

against her sanctum being invaded. It was unnecessary, for no one saving Mrs.

Slagg ever entered her bedroom and the old nurse in any case could never have

manoeuvred herself up the hundred or so narrow, darkened steps that gave

eventually on the attic, which since the earliest days Fuchsia could remember

had been for her a world undesecrate.

      Through succeeding generations a portion of the lumber of Gormenghast had

found its way into this zone of moted half-light, this warm, breathless,

timeless region where the great rafters moved across the air, clouded with

moths. Where the dust was like pollen and lay softly on all things.

      The attic was composed of two main galleries and a cock loft, the second

gallery leading at right angles from the first after a descent of three rickety

steps. At its far end a wooden ladder rose to a balcony resembling a narrow

verandah. At the left extremity of this balcony a doorway, with its door hanging

mutely by one hinge, led to the third of the three rooms that composed the

attic. This was the loft which was for Fuchsia a very secret place, a kind of

pagan chapel, an eyrie, a citadel, a kingdom never mentioned, for that would

have been a breach of faith -- a kind of blasphemy.

      On the day of her brother's birth, while the castle beneath her, reaching

in room below room, gallery below gallery, down, down to the very cellars, was

alive with rumour, Fuchsia, like Rottcodd, in his Hall of the Bright Carvings

was unaware of the excitement that filled it.

      She had pulled at the long black pigtail of a chord which hung from the

ceiling in one corner of her bedroom and had set a bell jangling in the remote

apartment which Mrs. Slagg had inhabited for two decades.

      The sunlight was streaming through the eastern turrets and was lighting

the Carvers' Battlement and touching the sides of the mountain beyond. As the

sun rose, thorn tree after thorn tree on Gormenghast mountain emerged in the

pale light and became a spectre, one following another, now here, now there,

over the huge mass until the whole shape was flattened into a radiant jagged

triangle against the darkness. Seven clouds like a group of naked cherubs or

sucking-pigs, floated their plump pink bodies across a sky of slate. Fuchsia

watched them through her window sullenly. Then she thrust her lower lip forward.

Her hands were on her hips. Her bare feet were quite still on the floorboards.

      "Seven," she said, scowling at each. "There's seven of them. One, two,

three, four, five, six, seven. Seven clouds."

      She drew a yellow shawl more tightly around her shoulders for she was

shivering in her nightdress, and pulled the pigtail again for Mrs. Slagg.

Rummaging in a drawer, she found a stick of black chalk and approaching an area

of wall that was comparatively vacant she chalked a vicious 7 and drew a circle

round it with the word "CLOWDS" written beneath in heavy, uncompromising

letters.

      As Fuchsia turned away from the wall she took an awkward shuffling step

towards the bed. Her jet black hair hung loosely across her shoulders. Her eyes,

that were always smouldering, were fixed on the door. Thus she remained with one

foot forward as the door knob turned and Mrs. Slagg entered.

      Seeing her, Fuchsia continued her walk from where she had left off, but

instead of going towards the bed, she approached Mrs. Slagg with five strides,

and putting her arms quickly around the old woman's neck, kissed her savagely,

broke away, and then beckoning her to the window, pointed towards the sky. Mrs.

Slagg peered along Fuchsia's outstretched arm and finger and inquired what there

was to look at.

      "Fat clouds," said Fuchsia. "There's seven of them."

      The old woman screwed up her eyes and peered once more but only for a

moment. Then she made a little noise which seemed to indicate that she was not

impressed.

      "Why seven?" said Fuchsia. "Seven is for something. What's seven for? One

for a glorious golden grave -- two for a terrible torch of tin; three for a

hundred hollow horses; four for a knight with a spur of speargrass; five for a

fish with fortunate fins, six -- I've forgotten six, and seven -- what's seven

for? Eight for a frog with eyes like marbles, nine, what's nine? Nine for a --

nine, nine -- ten for a tower of turbulent toast -- but what is seven. What is

seven?"

      Fuchsia stamped her foot and peered into the poor old nurse's face.

      Nannie Slagg made little noises in her throat which was her way of filling

in time and then said, "Would you like some hot milk, my precious? Tell me now

because I'm busy, and must feed your mother's white cats, dear.Just because I'm

of the energetic system, my dearheart, they give me everything to do. What did

you ring for? Quickly, quickly my caution. What did you ring for?"

      Fuchsia bit her big red lower lip, tossed a mop of midnight from her brow

and gazed out of the window, her hands grasping her elbows behind her. Very

stiff she had become and angular.

      "I want a big breakfast," said Fuchsia at last. "I want a lot to eat, I'm

going to think today."

      Nannie Slagg was scrutinizing a wart on her left forearm.

      "You don't know where I'm going, but I'm going somewhere where I can

think."

      "Yes, dear," said the old nurse.

      "I want hot milk and eggs and lots of toast done only on one side."

Fuchsia frowned as she paused; "and I want a bag of apples to take along with me

for the whole of the day, for I get hungry when I think."

      "Yes, dear," said Mrs. Slagg again, pulling a loose thread from the hem of

Fuchsia's skirt. "Put some more on the fire, my caution, and I'll bring your

breakfast and make your bed for you, though I'm not very well."

      Fuchsia descended suddenly upon her old nurse again and kissing her cheek,

released her from the room, closing the door on her retreating figure with a

crash that echoed down the gloomy corridors.

      As soon as the door had closed, Fuchsia leaped at her bed and diving

between the blankets head first, wriggled her way to the far end, where from all

appearances, she became engaged in a life and death struggle with some ambushed

monster. The heavings of the bedclothes ended as suddenly as they had begun and

she emerged with a pair of long woollen stockings which she must have kicked off

during the night. Sitting on her pillows she began pulling them on in a series

of heaves, twisting with difficulty, at a very late stage, the heel of each from

the front to the back.

      "I won't see anybody today," she said to herself -- "no, not anybody at

all. I will go to my secret room and think things over." She smiled a smile to

herself. It was sly but it was so childishly sly that it was lovable. Her lips,

big and well-formed and extraordinarily mature, curled up like plump petals and

showed between them her white teeth.

      As soon as she had smiled her face altered again, and the petulant

expression peregrine to her features took control. Her black eyebrows were drawn

together.

      Her dressing became interrupted between the addition of each garment by

dance movements of her own invention. There was nothing elegant in these

attitudes into which she flung herself, standing sometimes for a dozen of

seconds at a time in some extraordinary position of balance. Her eyes would

become glazed like her mother's and an expression of abstract calm would for an

instant defy the natural concentration of her face. Finally her blood-red dress,

absolutely shapeless, was pulled over her head. It fitted nowhere except where a

green cord was knotted at her waist. She appeared rather to inhabit, than to

wear her clothes.

      Meanwhile Mrs. Slagg had not only prepared the breakfast for Fuchsia in

her own little room, but was on the way back with the loaded tray shaking in her

hands. As she turned a corner of the corridor she was brought to a clattering

standstill by the sudden appearance of Doctor Prunesquallor, who also halting

with great suddenness, avoided a collision.

      "Well, well, well, well, well, ha, ha, ha, if it isn't dear Mrs. Slagg,

ha, ha, ha, how very very, very dramatic," said the doctor, his long hands

clasped before him at his chin, his high-pitched laugh creaking along the timber

ceiling of the passage. His spectacles held in either lens the minute reflection

of Nannie Slagg.

      The old nurse had never really approved of Doctor Prunesquallor. It was

true that he belonged to Gormenghast as much as the Tower itself. He was no

intruder, but somehow, in Mrs. Slagg's eyes he was definitely wrong. He was not

her idea of a doctor in the first place, although she could never have argued

why. Nor could she pin her dislike down to any other cause. Nannie Slagg found

it very difficult to marshal her thoughts at the best of times, but when they

became tied up with her emotions she became quite helpless. What she felt but

had never analysed was that Doctor Prunesquallor rather played down to her and

even in an obtuse way made fun of her. She had never thought this, but her bones

knew of it.

      She gazed up at the shock-headed man before her and wondered why he never

brushed his hair, and then she felt guilty for allowing herself such thoughts

about a gentleman and her tray shook and her eyes wavered a little.

      "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, my dear Mrs. Slagg, let me take your tray, ha, ha,

until you have tasted the fruits of discourse and told me what you have been up

to for the last month or more. Why have I not seen you, Nannie Slagg? Why have

my ears not heard your footfall on the stairs, and your voice at nightfall,

calling . . . calling . . . ?"

      "Her ladyship don't want me any more, sir," said Nannie Slagg, looking up

at the doctor reproachfully. "I am kept in the west wing now, sir."

      "So that's it, is it?" said Doctor Prunesquallor, removing the loaded tray

from Nannie Slagg and lowering both it and himself at the same time to the floor

of the long passage. He sat there on his heels with the tray at his side and

peered up at the old lady, who gazed in a frightened way at his eye swimming

hugely beneath his magnifying spectacles.

      "You are _kept_ in the west wing? So that's it?" Doctor Prunesquallor with

his forefinger and thumb stroked his chin in a profound manner and frowned

magnificently. "It is the word 'kept', my dear Mrs. Slagg, that galls me. Are

you an animal, Mrs. Slagg? I repeat are you an animal?" As he said this he rose

halfway to his feet and with his neck stretched forward repeated his question a

third time.

      Poor Nannie Slagg was too frightened to be able to give her answer to the

query.

      The doctor sank back on his heels.

      "I will answer my own question, Mrs. Slagg. I have known you for some

time. For, shall we say, a decade? It is true we have never plumbed the depths

of sorcery together nor argued the meaning of existence -- but it is enough for

me to say that I have known you for a considerable time, and that you are _no

animal_. No animal _whatsoever_. Sit upon my knee."

      Nannie Slagg, terrified at this suggestion, raised her little bony hands

to her mouth and raised her shoulders to her ears. Then she gave one frightened

look down the passage and was about to make a run for it when she was gripped

about the knees, not unkindly, but firmly and without knowing how she got there

found herself sitting upon the high bony knee-cap of the squatting doctor.

      "You are _not_ an animal," repeated Prunesquallor, "are you?"

      The old nurse turned her wrinkled face to the doctor and shook her head in

little jerks.

      "Of course you're not. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, of course you're not. Tell me

what you _are_?"

      Nannie's fist again came to her mouth and the frightened look in her eyes

reappeared.

      "I'm . . . I'm an old woman," she said.

      "You're a very unique old woman," said the doctor, "and if I am not

mistaken, you will very soon prove to be an exceptionally invaluable old woman.

Oh yes, ha, ha, ha, oh yes, a very invaluable old woman indeed." (There was a

pause.) "How long is it since you saw her ladyship, the Countess? It must be a

very long time."

      "It is, it is," said Nannie Slagg, "a very long time. Months and months

and months."

      "As I thought," said the doctor. "Ha, ha, ha, as I very much thought. Then

you can have no idea of why you will be indispensable?"

      "Oh no, sir!" said Nannie Slagg, looking at the breakfast tray whose load

was fast becoming cold.

      "Do you like babies, my very dear Mrs. Slagg?" asked the doctor, shifting

the poor woman on to his other acutely bended knee joint and stretching out his

former leg as though to ease it. "Are you fond of the little creatures, taken by

and large?"

      "Babies?" said Mrs. Slagg in the most animated tone that she had so far

used. "I could eat the little darlings, sir, I could eat them up!"

      "Quite," said Doctor Prunesquallor, "quite so, my good woman. You could

eat them up. That will be unnecessary. In fact it would be positively injurious,

my dear Mrs. Slagg, and especially under the circumstances about which I must

now enlighten you. A child will be placed in your keeping. Do not devour him

Nannie Slagg. It is for you to bring him up, that is true, but there will be no

need for you to swallow him first. You would be, ha, ha, ha, ha -- swallowing a

Groan."

      This news filtered by degrees through Nannie Slagg's brain and all at once

her eyes looked very wide indeed.

      "No, oh no, sir!"

      "Yes, oh yes, sir!" replied the physician. "Although the Countess has of

late banished you from her presence, yet, Nannie Slagg, you will of necessity be

restored, ha, ha, ha, be restored to a very important state. Sometime today, if

I am not mistaken, my wide-eyed Nannie Slagg, I shall be delivering a brand new

Groan. Do you remember when I delivered the Countess of Lady Fuchsia?"

      Nannie Slagg began to shake all over and a tear ran down her cheek as she

clasped her hands between her knees, very nearly overbalancing from her

precarious perch.

      "I can remember every little thing sir -- every little thing. Who would

have thought?"

      "Exactly," interrupted Doctor Prunesquallor. "Who would have thought. But

I must be going, ha, ha, ha, I must dislodge you, Nannie Slagg, from my patella

-- but tell me, did you know nothing of her ladyship's condition?"

      "Oh, sir," said the old lady, biting her knuckle and shifting her gaze.

"Nothing! nothing! No one ever tells me anything."

      "Yet all the duties will devolve on you," said Doctor Prunesquallor.

"Though you will doubtless enjoy yourself. There is no doubt at all about that.

Is there?"

      "Oh, sir, another baby, after all this time! Oh, I could smack him

already."

      "Him?" queried the doctor. "Ha, ha, ha, you are very sure of the gender,

my dear Mrs. Slagg."

      "Oh yes, sir, it's a him, sir. Oh, what a blessing that it is. They _will_

let me have him, sir? They will let me won't they?"

      "They have no choice," said the doctor somewhat too briskly for a

gentleman and he smiled a wide inane smile, his thin nose pointing straight at

Mrs. Slagg. His grey hayrick of hair removed itself from the wall. "What of my

Fuchsia? Has she an inkling?"

      "Oh, no, not an inkling. Not an inkling, sir, bless her. She hardly ever

leaves her room except at night, sir. She don't know nothing, sir, and never

talks to no one but me."

      The doctor, removing Nannie Slagg from his knee, rose to his feet. "The

rest of Gormenghast talks of nothing else, but the western wing is in darkness.

Very, very, very strange. The child's nurse and the child's sister are in

darkness, ha, ha, ha. But not for long, not for long. By all that's enlightened,

very much not so!"

      "Sir?" queried Nannie Slagg as the doctor was about to move away.

      "What?" said Doctor Prunesquallor, scrutinizing his finger nails. "What is

it my dear Mrs. Slagg? Be quick."

      "Er -- how is _she_, sir? How is her ladyship?"

      "Tough as behemoth," said Prunesquallor, and was around the corner in an

instant, and Nannie Slagg, with her mouth and eyes wide open, could, as she

lifted up the cold tray, hear his feet in a far passage tapping an elegant

tattoo as he moved like a bird towards the bedroom of the Countess of Groan.

      As Mrs. Slagg knocked at Fuchsia's door, her heart was beating very fast.

It was always a long time before she realized the import of whatever she were

told, and it was only now that the full measure of what the doctor had divulged

was having its effect. To be again, after all these years, the nurse of an heir

to the house of Groan -- to be able to bathe the helpless limbs, to iron out the

little garments and to select the wet nurse from the outer dwellings! To have

complete authority in anything connected with the care of the precious mite --

all this was now weighing with a great load of painful pride across her heart

that was beating rapidly.

      So overpowered was she by this emotion that she had knocked twice before

she noticed that there was a note pinned upon the outside of the door. Peering

at it she at last made out what Fuchsia had scrawled in her invariable charcoal.

      _Can't wait until the doomsday --you're so SLOW!_

      Mrs. Slagg tried the door handle although she knew that the door would be

locked. Leaving the tray and the apples on the mat outside she retreated to her

own room where she might indulge herself in halcyon glimpses of the future.

Life, it seemed, was not over for her.

11

THE ATTIC

      Meanwhile Fuchsia had, after waiting impatiently for her breakfast, gone

to a cupboard where she kept an emergency supply of eatables -- half an old seed

cake and some dandelion wine. There was also a box of dates which Flay had

purloined and brought up for her several weeks before, and two wrinkled pears.

These she wrapped in a piece of cloth. Next she lit a candle and placed it on

the floor near the wall, then hollowing her strong young back she laid hold of

the foot-rail of her bed and dragged it back sufficiently for her to squeeze

herself between the rail and the wall and to unlatch the cupboard door.

Stretching over the head-rail she grasped her bundle of food and then picked up

the candle from near her feet, and ducking her head crept through the narrow

opening and found herself at the lowermost steps of the flight that led upwards

in dark spirals. Closing the door behind her, she dragged a bolt into position

and the tremors which she always experienced at this moment of locking herself

in, took hold of her and for a moment she shook from head to foot.

      Then, with her candle lighting her face and the three sliding steps before

her as she climbed, she ascended into her region.

      As Fuchsia climbed into the winding darkness her body was impregnated and

made faint by a qualm as of green April. Her heart beat painfully.

      This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and

reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their

world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a

free flame.

      The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls

and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he

is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every coloured sponge. As he

holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's

rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He

is in love.

      The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great

coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas

stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm

from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared

across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged

along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The

window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine.

He moves towards his half-born. He is in love.

      The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver

murmurs, "I am home" as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the

painter mutters, "I am me" on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman

on his acre'd marl -- says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, "I am

home."

      It was this feeling of belonging to the winding stair and the attic which

Fuchsia experienced as she ran her right hand along the wooden wall as she

climbed and encountered after some time the loose board which she expected. She

knew that only eighteen steps remained and that after two more turns in the

staircase the indescribable grey-gold filtering glow of the attic would greet

her.

      Reaching the top-most step she stooped and leaned over a three-foot swing

door, like the door of a byre, unfastened the latch and entered the first of the

three sections of the attic.

      An infiltration of the morning's sun gave the various objects a certain

vague structure but in no way dispelled the darkness. Here and there a thin beam

of light threaded the warm brooding dusk and was filled with slowly moving motes

like an attenuate firmament of stars revolving in grave order.

      One of these narrow beams lit Fuchsia's forehead and shoulder, and another

plucked a note of crimson from her dress. To her right was an enormous crumbling

organ. Its pipes were broken and the keyboard shattered. Across its front the

labour of a decade of grey spiders had woven their webs into a shawl of lace. It

needed but the ghost of an infanta to arise from the dust to gather it about her

head and shoulders as the most fabulous of all mantillas.

      In the gloom Fuchsia's eyes could barely be seen for the light upon her

forehead sank deeper shadows, by contrast, through her face. But they were calm.

The excitement that had wakened within them on the stairway had given place to

this strange calm. She stood at the stairhead almost another being.

      This room was the darkest. In the summer the light seemed to penetrate

through the fissures in the warped wood and through the dislodged portions of

stone slating in a less direct way than was the case in the larger room or

gallery to its right. The third, the smallest attic, with its steps leading

upwards from the gallery with the banistered verandah was the best lit, for it

boasted a window with shutters which, when opened, gave upon a panorama of

roof-tops, towers and battlements that lay in a great half-circle below. Between

high bastions might be seen, hundreds of feet beneath, a portion of quadrangle

wherein, were a figure to move across, he would appear no taller than a thimble.

      Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then

paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters

loomed and while she straightened herself she noticed them and unconsciously

loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked

relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind

of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion

that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia's ancestors, spread

from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high,

narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning

at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber

did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no,

for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep

into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the

incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what

appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites,

pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an

Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and

head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose beyond the

dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm

still half-light, but Fuchsia, had she wished to, could have disappeared

awkwardly but very suddenly into these fantastic mountains, reached their centre

and lain down upon an ancient couch with a picture book at her elbow and been

entirely lost to view within a few moments.

      This morning, she was bound for the third of her rooms and moved forward

through the canyon, ducking beneath the stuffed leg of a giraffe that caught a

thread of the moted sunlight and which, propped across Fuchsia's path, made a

kind of low lintel immediately before the passage curved away to the right. As

Fuchsia rounded this bend she saw what she expected to see. Twelve feet away

were the wooden steps which led down to the second attic. The rafters above the

steps were warped into a sagging curve so that it was not possible to obtain

more than a restricted view of the room beyond. But the area of empty floor that

was visible gave an indication of the whole. She descended the steps. There was

a ripping away of clouds; a sky, a desert, a forsaken shore spread through her.

      As she stepped forward on the empty board, it was for her like walking

into space. Space, such as the condors have shrill inklings of, and the

cock-eagle glimpses through his blood.

      Silence was there with a loud rhythm. The halls, towers, the rooms of

Gormenghast were of another planet. Fuchsia caught at a thick lock of her hair

and dragged her own head back as her heart beat loudly and, tingling from head

to foot little diamonds appeared at the inner corners of her eyes.

      With what characters she had filled this lost stage of emptiness! It was

here that she would see the people of her imagination, the fierce figures of her

making, as they strolled from corner to corner, brooded like monsters or flew

through the air like seraphs with burning wings, or danced, or fought, or

laughed, or cried. This was her attic of makebelieve, where she would watch her

mind's companions advancing or retreating across the dusty floor.

      Gripping her eatables tightly in their cloth, her feet echoing dully, she

walked onwards towards the fixed ladder that led to the balcony at the far end.

She climbed the ladder, both feet coming together on each rung for it was

difficult for her to climb with the bottle and her food for the day tucked under

her arm. There was no one to see her strong straight back and shoulders and the

gauche, indecorous movements of her legs as she climbed in her crimson dress;

nor the length of her tangled and inky hair. Half-way up she was able to lift

her bundle above her head and push it on to the balcony, and then to swarm after

it and find herself standing with the great stage below her as empty as an

unremembered heart.

      As she looked down, her hands on the wooden banister that ran along the

attic verandah, she knew that at a call she could set in motion the five main

figures of her making. Those whom she had so often watched below her, almost as

though they were really there. At first it had not been easy to understand them

nor to tell them what to do. But now it would be easy, at any rate for them to

enact the scenes that she had watched them so often perform. Munster, who would

crawl along the rafters and drop chuckling into the middle of the floor in a

cloud of dust and then bow to Fuchsia before turning and searching for his

barrel of bright gold. Or the Rain Man, who moved always with his head lowered

and his hands clasped behind him and who had but to lift his eyelid to quell the

tiger that followed him on a chain.

      These and the dramas in which they took part were now latent in the room

below her, but Fuchsia passed the high-backed chair where she would sit at the

verandah edge, pulled back the door carefully on its one hinge, and entered into

the third of the three rooms.

      She put her bundle upon a table in one corner, went to the window and

pushed open the two shutters. Her stocking was half-way down her leg again and

she knotted the string more firmly round her thigh. It was often her habit in

this room to think aloud to herself. To argue with herself. Looking down from

her little window upon the roofs of the castle and its adjacent buildings she

tasted the pleasure of her isolation. "I am alone," she said, her chin in her

hands and her elbows on the sill. "I am quite alone, like I enjoy it. Now I can

think for there's no one to provoke me here. Not in my room. No one to tell me

what I ought to do because I'm a Lady. Oh no. I do just what I like here.

Fuchsia is quite alright here. None of them knows where I go to. Flay doesn't

know. Father doesn't know. Mother doesn't know. None of them knows. Even Nannie

doesn't know. Only I know. I know where I go. I go here. This is where I go. Up

the stairs and into my lumber room. Through my lumber room and into my acting

room. All across my acting room and up the ladder and on to my verandah. Through

the door and into my secret attic. And here it is I am. I am here now. I have

been here lots of times but that is in the past. That is over, but now I'm here

it's in the present. This is the present. I'm looking on the roofs of the

present and I'm leaning on the present window-sill and later on when I'm older I

will lean on this window-sill again. Over and over again.

      "Now I'll make myself comfortable and eat my breakfast," she continued to

herself, but as she turned away her quick eyes noticed in the corner of one of

the diminished quadrangles far below her an unusually large gathering of what

she could just make out to be servants from the kitchen quarters. She was so

used to the panorama below her being deserted at that hour in the morning, the

menials being at their multifarious duties about the castle that she turned

suddenly back to the window and stared down with a sense of suspicion and almost

of fear. What was it that quickened her to a sense of something irreparable

having been done? To an outsider there would have been nothing untoward or

extraordinary in the fact that a group had gathered hundreds of feet below in

the corner of a sunny stone quadrangle, but Fuchsia born and bred to the iron

ritual of Gormenghast knew that something unprecedented was afoot. She stared,

and as she stared the group grew. It was enough to throw Fuchsia out of her mood

and to make her uneasy and angry.

      "Something has happened," she said, "something no one's told me of. They

haven't told me. I don't like them. I don't like any of them. What are they all

doing like a lot of ants down there? Why aren't they working like they should

be?" She turned around and faced her little room.

      Everything was changed, she picked up one of the pears and bit a piece out

of it abstractedly. She had looked forward to a morning of rumination and

perhaps a play or two in the empty attic before she climbed down the stairs

again to demand a big tea from Mrs. Slagg. There was something portentous in the

group far below her. Her day was disrupted.

      She looked around at the walls of her room. They were hung with pictures

once chosen as her favourites from among the scores that she had unearthed in

the lumber room. One wall was filled with a great mountain scene where a road

like a snake winding around and around the most impressive of crags was filled

with two armies, one in yellow and the other, the invading force battling up

from below, in purple. Lit as it were by torch-light the whole scene was a

constant source of wonder to Fuchsia, yet this morning she gazed at it blankly.

The other walls were less imposingly arranged, fifteen pictures being

distributed among the three. The head of a jaguar; a portrait of the

twenty-second Earl of Groan with pure white hair and a face the colour of smoke

as a result of immoderate tattooing, and a group of children in pink and white

muslin dresses playing with a viper were among the works which pleased her most.

Hundreds of very dull heads and full-length portraits of her ancestors had been

left in the lumber room. What Fuchsia wanted from a picture was something

unexpected. It was as though she enjoyed the artist telling her something quite

fresh and new. Something she had never thought of before.

      A great writhing root, long since dragged from the woods of Gormenghast

mountain, stood in the centre of the room. It had been polished to a rare gloss,

its every wrinkle gleaming. Fuchsia flung herself down on the most imposing

article in the room, a couch of faded splendour and suavity of contour in which

the angles of Fuchsia's body as she lay in a half sprawl were thrown out with

uncompromising severity. Her eyes which, since she had entered the attic, had

taken on the calm expression so alien to her, were now smouldering again. They

moved about the room as though they were seeking in vain a resting place, but

neither the fantastic root, nor the ingenious patterns in the carpet below her

had the power to hold them.

      "Everything's wrong. Everything. Everything," said Fuchsia. Again she went

to the window and peered down at the group in the quadrangle. By now it had

grown until it filled all that was visible of the stone square. Through a flying

buttress to the left of her she could command a view of four distant alleys in a

poor district of Gormenghast. These alley-ways were pranked with little knots of

folk, and Fuchsia believed that she could hear the far sound of their voices

rising through the air. It was not that Fuchsia felt any particular interest in

"occasions" or festivities which might cause excitement below, but that this

morning she felt acutely aware that something in which she would become involved

was taking place.

      On the table lay a big coloured book of verses and pictures. It was always

ready for her to open and devour. Fuchsia would turn over the pages and read the

verses aloud in a deep dramatic voice. This morning she leaned forward and

turned over the pages listlessly. As she came upon a great favourite she paused

and read it through slowly, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

                  THE FRIVOLOUS CAKE

            A freckled and frivolous cake there was

                  That sailed on a pointless sea,

            Or any lugubrious lake there was

                  In a manner emphatic and free.

            How jointlessly, and how jointlessly

                  The frivolous cake sailed by

            On the waves of the ocean that pointlessly

                  Threw fish to the lilac sky.

            Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was

                  Of a glory beyond compare,

            And every conceivable make there was

                  Was tossed through the lilac air.

            Up the smooth billows and over the crests

                  Of the cumbersome combers flew

            The frivolous cake with a knife in the wake

                  Of herself and her curranty crew.

            Like a swordfish grim it would bounce and skim

                  (This dinner knife fierce and blue),

            And the frivolous cake was filled to the brim

                  With the fun of her curranty crew.

            Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was

                  Of a glory beyond compare --

            And every conceivable make there was

                  Was tossed through the lilac air.

            Around the shores of the Elegant Isles

                  Where the cat-fish bask and purr

            And lick their paws with adhesive smiles

                  And wriggle their fins of fur,

            They fly and fly "neath the lilac sky --

                  The frivolous cake, and the knife

            Who winketh his glamorous indigo eye

                  In the wake of his future wife.

            The crumbs blow free down the pointless sea

                  To the beat of a cakey heart

            And the sensitive steel of the knife can feel

                  That love is a race apart.

            In the speed of the lingering light are blown

                  The crumbs to the hake above,

            And the tropical air vibrates to the drone

                  Of a cake in the throes of love.

      She ended the final verse with a rush, taking in nothing at all of its

meaning. As she ended the last line mechanically, she found herself getting to

her feet and making for the door. Her bundle was left behind, open, but, save

for the pear, untouched on the table. She found herself on the balcony and

lowering herself down the ladder was in the empty attic and within a few moments

had reached the head of the stairs in the lumber room. As she descended the

spiral staircase her thoughts were turning over and over.

      "What have they done? What have they done?" And it was in a precipitous

mood that she entered her room and ran to the corner where, catching hold of the

pigtail bell-rope she pulled it as though to wrench it from the ceiling.

      Within a few moments Mrs. Slagg came running up to the door, her slippered

feet scraping along unevenly on the floorboards. Fuchsia opened the door to her

and as soon as the poor old head appeared around the panels, she shouted at it,

"What's happening Nannie, what's happening down there? Tell me at once, Nannie,

or I won't love you. Tell me, tell me."

      "Quiet, my caution, quiet," said Mrs. Slagg. "What's all the bother, my

conscience! oh my poor heart. You"ll be the death of me."

      "You must tell me, Nannie. Now! now! or I'll hit you," said Fuchsia.

      From so small a beginning of suspicion Fuchsia's fears had grown until

now, convinced by a mounting intuition, she was almost on the point of striking

her old nurse, whom she loved so desperately. Nannie Slagg took hold of

Fuchsia's hand between eight old fingers and squeezed it.

      "A little brother for you, my pretty. Now _there's_ a surprise to quieten

you; a little  _brother_. Just like you, my ugly darling -- born in the

lap-sury."

      No!" shouted Fuchsia, the blood rushing to her cheek. "No! no! I won't

have it. Oh no, no, no! I won't! I won't! It _mustn't_ be, it _mustn't_ be!" And

Fuchsia flinging herself to the floor burst into a passion of tears.

12

"MRS SLAGG BY MOONLIGHT"

      These then, Lord Sepulchrave, the Countess Gertrude, Fuchsia their eldest

child, Doctor Prunesquallor, Mr. Rottcodd, Flay, Swelter, Nannie Slagg,

Steerpike and Sourdust, have been discovered at their pursuits on the day of the

advent, and have perhaps indicated the atmosphere into which it was the lot of

Titus to be born.

      For his first few years of life, Titus was to be left to the care of

Nannie Slagg, who bore this prodigious responsibility proudly upon her thin

little sloping shoulders. During the first half of this early period only two

major ceremonies befell the child and of these Titus was happily unaware, namely

the christening, which took place twelve days after his birth, and a ceremonial

breakfast on his first birthday. Needless to say, to Mrs. Slagg, every day

presented a series of major happenings, so entirely was she involved in the

practicalities of his upbringing.

      She made her way along the narrow stone path between the acacia trees on

this memorable nativity evening and downhill to the gate in the castle wall

which led into the heart of the mud dwellings. As she hurried along, the sun was

setting behind Gormenghast mountain in a swamp of saffron light and her shadow

hurried alongside between the acacia trees. It was seldom that she ventured out

of doors and it was with quite a flutter that she had opened with difficulty the

heavy lid of a chest in her room and extricated, from beneath a knoll of

camphor, her best hat. It was very black indeed, but by way of relief it had

upon its high crown a brittle bunch of glass grapes. Four or five of them had

been broken but this was not very noticeable.

      Nannie Slagg had lifted the hat up to her shoulder level and peered at it

obliquely before puffing at the glass grapes to remove any possible dust. Seeing

that she had dulled them with her breath she lifted up her petticoat and

doubling up over her hat she gave a quick little polish to each fruit in turn.

      Then she had approached the door of her room almost furtively and placed

her ear at the panel. She had heard nothing, but whenever she found herself

doing anything unorthodox, no matter how necessary, she would feel very guilty

inside and look around her with her red rimmed eyes opened wide and her head

shaking a little, or if alone in a room as at the moment, she would run to the

door and listen.

      When she felt quite certain that there was no one there she would open the

door very quickly and stare out into the empty passage and then go to her task

again with renewed confidence. This time, the putting on of her best hat at nine

o'clock at night with the idea of sallying forth from the castle, down the long

drive and then northwards along the acacia avenue, had been enough to send her

to her own doorway as though she suspected someone might be there, someone who

was listening to her thoughts. Tiptoeing back to her bed she had added fourteen

inches to her stature by climbing into her velvet hat. Then she had left the

room, and the stairs had seemed frighteningly empty to her as she descended the

two flights.

      Remembering, as she turned through the main doorway of the west wing, that

the Countess herself had given her the orders to pursue this unusual mission,

she had felt a little stronger, but whatever factual authority, it was something

much deeper that had worried her, something based upon the unspoken and

iron-bound tradition of the place. It had made her feel she was doing wrong.

However, a wet nurse had to be found for the infant and the immediate logic of

this had jostled her forward. As she had left her own room she had picked up a

pair of black woollen gloves. It was a soft, warm, summer evening but Nannie

Slagg felt stronger in her gloves.

      The acacia trees, silhouetted on her right, cut patterns against the

mountain and on her left glowed dimly with a sort of subterranean light. Her

path was striped like the dim hide of a zebra from the shadows of the acacia

trunks. Mrs. Slagg, a midget figure beneath the rearing and overhanging of the

aisle of dark foliage, awakened small echoes in the neighbouring rocks as she

had moved, for her heels beat a quick uneven measure on the stone path.

      This avenue lasted for some considerable distance, and when at last the

old nurse found herself at its northern end she was welcomed by the cold light

of the rising moon. The outer wall of Gormenghast had suddenly reared above her.

She passed through an archway.

      Mrs. Slagg knew that about this hour the Dwellers would be at their

supper. As she pattered onwards the memory of a very similar occasion worked its

way into her consciousness: The time when she had been delegated to make a

similar choice for Fuchsia. That time it had also been in the evening although

an hour or so earlier. The weather had been gusty and she remembered how her

voice had failed to carry in the wind, and how they had all misunderstood her

and had imagined that Lord Groan had died.

      Only three times since that day had she been to this part of the Dwellers'

province, and on those occasions it had been to take Fuchsia for the long walks

that at one time she had so insisted upon, rain or shine.

      Mrs. Slagg's days of long walks were over, but she had on one of those

occasions passed the mud huts when the Dwellers were having their last meal. She

knew that the Dwellers always had their supper in the open, at tables that

reached in four long rows over the drab, grey-coloured dust. In this dust, she

remembered, a few cactus trees were alone able to take root.

      Following the gradual decline of a scarred green that sloped from the arch

in the wall and petered out into the dust upon which the hovels were built, she

saw suddenly, on raising her eyes from the path, one of these cactus trees.

      Fifteen years is a difficult depth of time for an old woman's memory to

plumb -- more difficult than the waters of her childhood, but when Mrs. Slagg

saw the cactus tree she remembered clearly and in detail how she had stopped and

stared at the great scarred monster on the day of Fuchsia's birth.

      Here it was again, its flaking bole dividing into four uprights like the

arms of a huge grey candlestick studded with thorns, each one as large and

brutal as the horn of a rhinoceros. No flaming flower relieved its black

achromatism although that tree had been known long ago to burst open with a

three-hour glory. Beyond this tree the ground rose into a little dreary hill,

and it was only when she had climbed this hill that Mrs. Slagg saw before her

the Dwellers at their long tables. Behind them the clay huts were huddled

together in a grey swarm, spreading to the foot of the wall. Four or five cacti

grew between and reared over the supper tables.

      The cacti were similar both in size and in the way they split into high

uncouth prongs to the one which Mrs. Slagg first saw, and as she approached,

were edged with the hot afterglow of the sun.

      At the line of tables nearest the outer wall were ranged the elderly, the

grandparents, the infirm. To their left, were the married women and their

children whom they were tending.

      The remaining two tables were filled with men and boys. The girls from the

age of twelve to twenty-three had their meals in a low mud building on their

own, a few of them being delegated to wait each day upon the ancients at their

tables immediately under the battlements.

      Beyond, the land dipped into a dry shallow valley which held the

dwellings, so that as she came forward step by step the figures at the tables

had for their background the rough roofs of mud, the walls of their huts being

hidden by the contour of the ground. It was a dreary prospect. From the lush

shadows of the acacia drive Mrs. Slagg had suddenly broken in upon an arid

world. She saw the rough sections of white jarl root and their bowls of sloe

wine standing before them. The long tubular jarl root which they dug each day

from a wood in the vicinity, stood upon the tables every evening, sliced up into

scores of narrow cylinders. This, she remembered, was their traditional diet.

      Noting the white roots spreading away in perspective, each piece with its

shadow, she remembered with a flutter that her social status was very much in

advance of that held by these poor mud-hut dwellers. It was true that they made

pretty carvings, but they were not _within_ the walls of Gormenghast, and Nannie

Slagg, as she approached the nearest table, pulled on her gloves more tightly

still and worked them up around her fingers, pursing her little wrinkled mouth.

      The Dwellers had seen her immediately her hat had appeared above the dry

brow of the hill, and every head had been turned, and every eye focused upon

her. The mothers had paused, some of them with spoons halfway to their

children's mouths.

      It was unusual for them to have the "Castles", as they termed any who came

from within the walls, approach them at their meals. They stared without moving

and without speaking.

      Mrs. Slagg had stopped. The moonlight flared on the glass grapes.

      A very old man like a prophet arose and approached her. When he reached

her he stood silently until an elderly woman who had waited until he halted, was

helped to her feet and, following his example, had reached Mrs. Slagg and stood

silently by the old man's side. Thereupon two magnificent urchins of five or six

years of age had been sent forward from the table of mothers. These two, when

they reached Mrs. Slagg stood quietly and then, lifting their arms in imitation

of their elders and, placing their wrists together cupped their hands and bowed

their heads.

      They remained in this attitude for a few moments until the old man lifted

his shaggy head and parted the long rough line of his mouth.

      "Gormenghast," he said, and his voice was like the noise of boulders

rolling through far valleys, and as he had said "Gormenghast" the intonation was

such as implied reverence. This was the greeting of the Dwellers to any who were

of the Castle and once that word had been spoken the person to whom it was

addressed replied -- "The Bright Carvers". Conversation could then proceed. This

response, deaf as the Dwellers were to any flattery, holding themselves to be

the supreme judges of their work and indifferent to the outside interest, was in

its way a palliative in the sense that it put them where they felt in their

bones they belonged -- on a spiritual if not a worldly or hereditary level. It

introduced a certain concord at the outset. It was a master stroke of judgement,

a tower of tact, in the seventeenth Earl of Groan, when hundreds of years before

he had introduced this tenet into the ritual of the Castle.

      Very, very far from bright were the Carvers themselves. They were

uniformly dressed in dark grey cloth, tied about the waist with tough thongs

which were stripped from the outer surface of the jarl root, whose inner hard

white flesh they ate. Nothing was bright about their appearance, save one thing.

The light in the eyes of the younger children. Indeed, in the youths and maidens

also up to the age of nineteen and sometimes twenty. These young Dwellers were

in such contrast to their elders, even to those in their mid-twenties, that it

was difficult to imagine that they were of the same stock. The tragic reason was

that after they had come to their physical maturity of form their loveliness

crumbled away and they became withered as flowers after their few fresh hours of

brilliance and strength.

      No one looked middle aged. The mothers were, save for the few who had

borne their children in their late teens, as ancient in appearance as their own

parents.

      And yet they did not die as might be imagined, any earlier than is normal.

On the contrary, from the long line of ancient faces at the three tables nearest

the great wall, it might be imagined that their longevity was abnormal.

      Only their children's had radiance, their eyes, the sheen on their hair,

and in another way, their movements and their voices. Bright with a kind of

_unnatural_ brightness. It was not the wholesome lustre of a free flame, but of

the hectic radiance that sheet-lightning gives suddenly to limbs of trees at

midnight; of sudden flares in the darkness, of a fragment that is lit by

torchlight into a spectre.

      Even this unnatural emanation died in these youths and girls when they had

reached their nineteenth year; along with the beauty of their features, this

radiance vanished too. Only within the bodies of the adult Dwellers was there a

kind of light, or if not light, at least hotness -- the hotness of creative

restlessness. These were the Bright Carvers.

      Mrs. Slagg hoisted her little claw of a hand very high in the air. The

four who were lined in front of her had taken less formal stances, the children

peering up at her with their slim, dusty arms around each others' shoulders.

      "I have come," she said in a voice which, thin as a curlew, carried along

the tables, "I have come -- although it is so late -- to tell you a wonderful

thing." She readjusted her hat and felt as she did so, with great pleasure, the

shining volume of the glass grapes.

      The old man turned to the tables and his voice rolled out along them. "She

has come to tell us a wonderful thing," and the old woman followed him up like a

distorted echo and screamed, "A wonderful thing."

      "Yes, yes, it is wonderful news for you," the old nurse continued. "You

will all be very proud, I am quite sure."

      Mrs. Slagg, now she had started was rather enjoying herself. She clasped

her gloved hands together more tightly whenever she felt a qualm of nervousness.

      "We are all proud. All of us. The Castle," (she said this in a rather vain

way) "is very very satisfied and when I tell you what has happened, then, you"ll

be happy as well; oh yes, I am sure you will. Because I know you are _dependent_

on the castle."

      Mrs. Slagg was never very tactful. "You have some food thrown down to you

from the battlements every morning, don't you?" She had pursed her mouth and

stopped a moment for breath.

      A young man lifted his thick black eyebrows and spat.

      "So you are very much thought of by the Castle. Every day you are thought

of, aren't you? And that's why you"ll be so happy when I tell you the wonderful

thing that I'm going to tell you."

      Mrs. Slagg smiled to herself for a moment, but suddenly felt a little

nervous in spite of her superior knowledge and had glanced quickly, like a bird,

from one face to another. She had bridled up her wispy head and had peered as

sternly as she could at a small boy who answered with a flashing smile. His hair

was clustered over his shoulders. Between his teeth as he grinned glistened a

white nugget ofjarl root.

      She shifted her gaze and clapped her hands together sharply two or three

times as though for silence, although there was no noise at all. Then she

suddenly felt she wanted to be back in the castle and in her own little room and

she said before she knew it, "A new little Groan has been born, a little boy. A

little boy of the Blood. I am in charge, of course, and I want a wet nurse for

him _at once_. I must have one _at once_ to come back with me. There now! I've

told you everything."

      The old women had turned to one another and had then walked away to their

huts. They returned with little cakes and bottles of sloe wine. Meanwhile the

men formed a large circle and repeated the name Gormenghast seventy-seven times.

While Mrs. Slagg waited and watched the children who had been set playing, a

woman had come forward. She told Mrs. Slagg that her child had died a few hours

after he had been born some days ago but that she was strong enough and would

come. She was, perhaps, twenty, and was well-built, but the tragic

disintegration of her beauty had begun although her eyes still had the afterglow

upon them. She fetched a basket and did not seem to expect any sort of refusal

to her offer. And Nannie Slagg was about to ask a few questions, as she felt

would be correct, but the Dweller, packing the sloe wine and cakes into a

basket, had taken Mrs. Slagg quietly by the arm and the old nurse found herself

to be making for the Great Wall. She glanced up at the young woman beside her

and wondered whether she had chosen correctly, and then, realizing that she

hadn't chosen at all, she half stopped and glanced back nervously over her

shoulder.

13

KEDA

      The cactus trees stood hueless between the long tables. The Dwellers were

all in their places again. Mrs. Slagg ceased to interest them. There were no

shadows save immediately below every object. The moon was overhead. It was a

picture painted on silver. Mrs. Slagg's companion had waited with her quietly.

There was a kind of strength in the way she walked and in the way she kept

silent. With the dark cloth hanging to her ankles and caught in at her waist

with the thong of jarl root; with her bare legs and feet and her head still

holding the sunset of her darkened day, she was in strange contrast to little

Nannie Slagg, with her quick jerky walk, her dark satin dress, her black gloves,

and her monumental hat of glass grapes. Before they descended the dry knoll

towards the archway in the wall, a sudden guttural cry as of someone being

strangled, froze the old woman's blood and she clutched at the strong arm beside

her and clung to it like a child. Then she peered towards the tables. They were

too far for her to see clearly with her weak eyes, but she thought she could

make out figures standing and there seemed to be someone crouching like a

creature about to spring.

      Mrs. Slagg's companion appeared, after glancing casually in the direction

of the sound, to take no more notice of the incident, but keeping a firmer grip

this time on the old lady, propelled her forward towards the stone gate.

      "It is nothing," was the sole reply which Mrs. Slagg received and by the

time the two were in the acacia avenue her blood had quietened.

      When they were turning from the long drive into the doorway of Gormenghast

through which Nannie had stepped out into the evening air so surreptitiously an

hour or so before, she glanced up at her companion and shrugging her shoulders a

little, contrived to take on an expression of mock importance.

      "Your name? Your name?" she said.

      "Keda."

      "Well, Keda, dear, if you will follow me, I will take you to the little

boy. I'll show you him myself. He is by the window in _my_ room." Nannie's voice

suddenly took on a confidential, almost pathetic note. "I haven't a very big

room," she said, "but I've always had the same one, I don't like any of the

other ones," she added rather untruthfully, "I'm nearer Lady Fuchsia."

      "Perhaps I shall see her," said the girl, after a pause.

      Nannie suddenly stopped on the stairs. "I don't _know_ about that," she

said, "oh no, I'm not _sure_ about that. She is very strange. I never know what

she's going to do next."

      "To do?" said Keda. "How do you mean?"

      "About little Titus." Nannie's eyes began to wander. "No, I don't know

what she"ll do. She's such a terror -- the naughtiest terror in the castle --

she can be."

      "Why are you frightened?" said Keda.

      "I know she"ll hate him. She likes to be the only one, you know. She likes

to dream that she's the queen and that when the rest are dead there"ll be no one

who can order her to do anything. She said, dear, that she'd burn down the whole

place, burn down Gormenghast when she was the ruler and she'd live on her own,

and I said she was wicked, and she said that everyone was -- everyone and

everything except rivers, clouds, and some rabbits. She makes me frightened

sometimes."

      They climbed up remaining steps, along a passageway and up the remaining

flight to the second floor in silence.

      When they had come to the room Mrs. Slagg placed her finger at her lips

and gave a smile which it would be impossible to describe. It was a mixture of

the cunning and the maudlin. Then turning the handle very carefully she opened

the door by degrees and putting her high hat of glass grapes through the narrow

opening by way of a vanguard, followed it stealthily with all that remained of

her.

      Keda entered the room. Her bare feet made no noise on the floor. When Mrs.

Slagg reached the cradle she put her fingers to her mouth and peered over it as

though into the deepest recesses of an undiscovered world. There he was. The

infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of

the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was

there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were

pure violet. Earth's passions, earth's griefs, earth's incongruous, ridiculous

humours -- dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face.

      Nannie Slagg bending over him waggled a crooked finger before his eyes.

"My little sugar," she tittered. "How _could_ you? how _could_ you?"

      Mrs. Slagg turned round to Keda with a new look in her face. "Do you think

I should have left him?" she said. "When I went to fetch you. Do you think I

should have left him?"

      Keda stared down at Titus. Tears were in her eyes as she watched the

child. Then she turned to the window. She could see the great wall that held in

Gormenghast. The wall that cut her own people away, as though to keep out a

plague; the walls that barred from her view the stretches of arid earth beyond

the mud huts where her child had so recently been buried.

      To come within the walls was itself something of an excitement to those of

the mud huts and something which in the normal course of events was reserved for

the day of the Bright Carvings, but to be within the castle itself was something

unique. Yet Keda did not seem impressed and had not troubled to ask Mrs. Slagg

any questions nor even so much as glance about her. Poor Mrs. Slagg felt this

was something of an impertinence but did not know whether or not she ought to

say something about it.

      But Titus had stolen the limelight and Keda's indifference was soon

forgotten, for he was beginning to cry, and his crying grew and grew in spite of

Mrs. Slagg's dangling a necklace in front of his screwed up eyes and an attempt

at singing a lullaby from her half-forgotten store. She had him over her

shoulder, but his shrill cries rose in volume. Keda's eyes were still upon the

wall, but of a sudden, breaking herself away from the window, she moved up

behind Nannie Slagg and, as she did so, parted the dark brown material from her

throat and freeing her left breast, took the child from the shoulders of the old

woman. Within a few moments the little face was pressed against her and

struggles and sobs were over. Then as she turned and sat at the window a calm

came upon her as from her very centre, the milk of her body and the riches of

her frustrated love welled up and succoured the infant creature in her keeping.

14

"FIRST BLOOD"

      Titus, under the care of Nannie Slagg and Keda, developed hourly in the

western wing. His weird little head had changed shape, from day to day as the

heads of infants do, and at last settled to its own proportion. It was both long

and of a bulk that promised to develop into something approaching the unique.

      His violet eyes made up, in the opinion of Mrs. Slagg, for any strangeness

in the shape of his head and features which were, after all, nothing

extraordinary for a member of his family.

      Even from the very first there was something lovable about Titus. It is

true that his thin crying could be almost unbearable, and Mrs. Slagg, who

insisted upon having the whole charge of him between his meals, was driven at

times to a kind of fluttering despair.

      On the fourth day the preparations for his christening were well in hand.

      This ceremony was always held in the afternoon of the twelfth day, in a

pleasant open room on the ground level, which, with its bay windows, gave upon

the cedar trees and shaven lawns that sloped away to the Gormenghast terraces

where the Countess walked at dawn with her snow-white cats.

      The room was perhaps the most homely and at the same time the most elegant

in the castle. There were no shadows lurking in the corners. The whole feeling

was of quiet and pleasing distinction, and when the afternoon sun lit up the

lawns beyond the bay windows into a green-gold carpet, the room with its cooler

tints became a place to linger in. It was seldom used.

      The Countess never entered it, preferring those parts of the castle where

the lights and the shadows were on the move and where there was no such clarity.

Lord Sepulchrave was known to walk up and down its length on rare occasions and

to stop and stare at the cedars on the lawn as he passed the window, and then to

leave the room again for a month or two until the next whim moved him.

      Nannie Slagg had on a few occasions sat there, furtively knitting with her

paper bag of wool on the long refectory table in the centre, and the high back

of the carved chair towering over her. Around her the spaciousness of the

temperate room. The tables with their vases of garden flowers, plucked by

Pentecost, the head gardener. But for the most part the room was left empty week

after week, saving for an hour in the morning of each day when Pentecost would

arrange the flowers. Deserted as the room was, Pentecost would never permit a

day to pass in which he had not changed the water in the vases and refilled them

again with taste and artistry, for he had been born in the mud huts and had in

his marrow the love and understanding of colour that was the hall-mark of the

Bright Carvers.

      On the morning of the christening he had been out to cut the flowers for

the room. The towers of Gormenghast rose into the morning mists and blocked away

a commotion of raw cloud in the eastern sky. As he stood for a moment on the

lawns he looked up at the enormous piles of masonry and could vaguely discern

among the shadows the corroded carvings and broken heads of grey stone.

      The lawns beneath the west wall where he stood were black with dew, but

where, at the foot of one of the seven cedars, a grazing shaft of sun fell in a

little pool of light, the wet grass blazed with diamonds of every colour. The

dawn air was cold, and he drew more closely about him the leather cape which he

wore over his head like a monk. It was strong and supple and had been stained

and darkened by many storms and by the dripping of the rain from moss-gloved

trees. From a cord hanging at his side hung his gardening knife.

      Above the turrets, like a wing ripped from the body of an eagle, a

solitary cloud moved northwards through the awakening air quilled with blood.

      Above Pentecost the cedars, like great charcoal drawings, suddenly began

to expose their structure, the layers of flat foliage rising tier above tier,

their edges ribbed with sunrise.

      Pentecost turned his back upon the castle and made his way through the

cedars, leaving in his wake upon the glittering blotches of the dew, black

imprints of feet that turned inwards. As he walked it seemed that he was moving

into the earth. Each stride was a gesture, a probing. It was a kind of downward,

inward search, as though he knew that what was important for him, what he really

understood and cared for, was below him, beneath his slowly moving feet. It was

in the earth -- it was the earth.

      Pentecost, with his leather cowl, was not of impressive dimensions, and

his walk, although filled with meaning, had nevertheless something ridiculous

about it. His legs were too short in proportion to his body, but his head,

ancient and lined, was nobly formed and majestic with its big-boned, wrinkled

brow and straight nose.

      Of flowers he had a knowledge beyond that of the botanist, or the artist,

being moved by the growth rather than the fulfilment, the organic surge that

found its climax in the gold or the blue rather than in the colours, the

patterns or anything visible.

      As the mother who would not love the child the less were its face to be

mutilated, so was he with flowers. To all growing things he brought this

knowledge and love, but to the apple tree he gave himself up wholly.

      Upon the northern slope of a low hill that dropped gradually to a stream,

his orchard trees arose clearly, each one to Pentecost a personality in its own

right.

      On August days Fuchsia from her window in the attic could see him far

below standing at times upon a short ladder, and sometimes when the boughs were

low enough, upon the grass, his long body and little legs foreshortened and his

cowl over his fine head hiding his features; and diminutive as he appeared from

that immense height, she could make out that he was polishing the apples into a

mirror-like gloss as they hung from the boughs, bending forward to breathe upon

them and then with silk cloth rubbing them until she could see the glint upon

their crimson skins -- even from the height of her eyrie in the shadowy loft.

      Then he would move away from the tree that he had burnished and pace

around it slowly, enjoying the varied grouping of its apples and the twisted

stem of the supporting bole.

      Pentecost spent some time in the walled-in garden, where he cut the

flowers for the christening room. He moved from one part to another until he

knew and could visualize the vases filled in the room and had decided upon the

colour for the day.

      The sun was by now clear of the mists, and like a bright plate in the sky,

rose as though drawn up by an invisible string. In the Christening Room there

was still no light, but Pentecost entered by the bay-window, a dark

mis-proportioned figure with the flowers smouldering in his arms.

      Meanwhile the castle was either awaking or awakened. Lord Sepulchrave was

having his breakfast with Sourdust in the refectory. Mrs. Slagg was pushing and

prodding at a heap of blankets beneath which Fuchsia lay curled up in darkness.

Swelter was having a glass of wine in bed, which one of the apprentices had

brought him, and was only half awake, his huge bulk wrinkled in upon itself in a

ghastly manner. Flay was muttering to himself as he walked up and down an

endless grey passage, his knee joints, like a clock, ticking off his every step.

Rottcodd was dusting the third of the carvings, and sending up little clouds

with his feet as he moved; and Doctor Prunesquallor was singing to himself in

his morning bath. The walls of the bathroom were hung with anatomical diagrams

painted on long scrolls. Even in his bath he was wearing his glasses and as he

peered over the side to recover a piece of scented soap, he sang to his external

oblique as though it were his love.

      Steerpike was looking at himself in a mirror and examining an insipid

moustache, and Keda in her room in the northern wing was watching the sunlight

as it moved across the Twisted Woods.

      Lord Titus Groan, innocent that the breaking day heralded the hour of his

christening, was fast asleep. His head was lolling over on one side, and his

face was nearly obscured by the pillow, one of his little fists rammed in his

mouth. He wore a yellow silk nightdress, covered with blue stars, and the light

through the half-drawn blinds crept over his face.

      The morning moved on. There was a great deal of coming and going. Nannie

was practically insane with excitement and without Keda's silent help would have

been incapable of coping with the situation.

      The christening dress had to be ironed, the christening rings and the

little jewelled crown to be procured from the iron case in the armoury, and only

Shrattle had the key and he was stone deaf.

      The bath and dressing of Titus had to be especially perfect, and with

everything to do the hours slipped away all too quickly for Mrs. Slagg and it

was two o'clock in the afternoon before she knew where she was.

      Keda had found Shrattle at last and had persuaded him by ingenious signs

that there was a christening that afternoon and that the crown was necessary and

that she would return it as soon as the ceremony was over, and had in fact

smoothed over, or solved all the difficulties that made Nannie Slagg wring her

hands together and shake her old head in despair.

      The afternoon was perfect. The great cedars basked magnificently in the

still air. The lawns had been cut and were like dull emerald glass. The carvings

upon the walls that had been engulfed in the night and had faltered through the

dawn were now chiselled and free in the brightness.

      The Christening Room itself looked cool and clear and unperturbed. With

space and dignity it awaited the entrance of the characters. The flowers in

their vases were incredibly gracious. Pentecost had chosen lavender as the

dominant note for the room, but here and there a white flower spoke coolly to a

white flower across the green carpet spaces and one gold orchid was echoed by

another.

      Great activity might have been observed in many of the rooms of

Gormenghast as the hour of three approached, but the cool room waited in a

serene silence. The only life in the room lay in the throats of the flowers.

      Suddenly the door opened and Flay came in. He was wearing his long black

moth-eaten suit, but there had been some attempt on his part at getting rid of

the major stains and clipping the more ragged edges of cuff and trouser into

straight raw lines. Over and above these improvements he wore around his neck a

heavy chain of brass. In one hand he balanced, on a tray, a bowl of water. The

negative dignity of the room threw him out in relief as a positive scarecrow. Of

this he was quite unconscious. He had been helping to dress Lord Sepulchrave,

and had made a rapid journey with the christening bowl as his lordship stood

polishing his nails at the window of his bedroom, his toilet completed. The

filling of the bowl and placing it on the central table in the cool room was his

only duty, until the actual ceremony took place. Putting the bowl down

unceremoniously on the table he scratched the back of his head and then drove

his hands deep into his trouser pockets. It was some time since he was last in

the Cool Room. it was not a room that he cared for. To his mind it was not a

part of Gormenghast at all. With a gesture of defiance he shot his chin forward

like a piece of machinery and began to pace around the room glancing

malevolently at the flowers, when he heard a voice beyond the door, a thick,

murderously unctuous voice.

      "Woah, back there, woah! back there; watch your feet, my little rats'

eyes! To the _side_. To the _side_, or I'll fillet you! Stand still! stand

_still_! Merciful flesh that I should have to deal with puts!"

      The door knob moved and then the door began to open and Flay's physical

opposite began to appear around the opening. For some time, so it seemed to

Flay, taut areas of cloth evolved in a great arc and then at last above them a

head around the panels and the eyes embedded in that head concentrated their

gaze upon Mr. Flay.

      Flay stiffened -- if it is possible for something already as stiff as a

piece of teak to stiffen still further -- and he lowered his head to the level

of his clavicles and brought his shoulders up like a vulture. His arms were

absolutely straight from the high shoulders to where the fists were clenched in

his trouser pockets.

      Swelter, as soon as he saw who it was, stopped dead, and across his face

little billows of flesh ran swiftly here and there until, as though they had

determined to adhere to the same impulse, they swept up into both oceans of soft

cheek, leaving between them a vacuum, a gaping segment like a slice cut from a

melon. It was horrible. It was as though nature had lost control. As though the

smile, as a concept, as a manifestation of pleasure, had been a mistake, for

here on the face of Swelter the idea had been abused.

      A voice came out of the face: "Well, well, well," it said, "may I be

boiled to a frazzle if it isn't Mr. Flee. The one and only Flee. Well, well,

well. Here before me in the Cool Room. Dived through the keyhole, I do believe.

Oh, my adorable lights and liver, if it isn't the Flee itself."

      The line of Mr. Flay's mouth, always thin and hard, became even thinner as

though scored with a needle. His eyes looked up and down the white mountain,

crowned with its snowy, high cloth hat of office, for even the slovenly Swelter

had dressed himself up for the occasion.

      Although Mr. Flay had avoided the cook whenever possible, an occasional

accidental meeting such as today's was unavoidable, and from their chance

meetings in the past Mr. Flay had learned that the huge house of flesh before

him, whatever its faults, had certainly a gift for sarcasm beyond the limits of

his own taciturn nature. It had therefore been Mr. Flay's practice, whenever

possible, to ignore the chef as one ignores a cesspool by the side of a road,

and although his pride was wounded by Swelter's mis-pronunciation of his name

and the reference to his thinness, Flay held his spiky passions in control,

merely striding to the doorway after his examination of the other's bulk and

spitting out of the bay window as though to clear his whole system of something

noxious. Silent though he had learned by experience to be, each galling word

from Swelter did not fail to add to the growing core of hatred that burned

beneath his ribs.

      Swelter, as Mr. Flay spat, had leaned back in his traces as though in mock

alarm, his head folded back on his shoulders, and with an expression of comic

concentration, had gazed alternately at Mr. Flay and then out of the window

several times. "Well, well, well," he said in his most provoking voice that

seemed to seep out of dough -- "well, well, well -- your accomplishments will

never end. Baste me! Never. One lives and learns. By the little eel I skinned

last Friday night, one lives and one learns." Wheeling round he presented his

back to Mr. Flay and bellowed, "Advance and make it sprightly! Advance the

triumvirate, the little creatures who have wound themselves around my heart.

Advance and be recognized."

      Into the room filed three boys of about twelve years of age. They each

carried a large tray stacked with delicacies.

      "Mr. Flee, I will introduce you," said Swelter, as the boys approached,

glueing their frightened eyes on their precarious cargoes. "Mr. Flee -- Master

Springers -- Master Springers -- Mr. Flee. Mr. Flee -- Master Wrattle, Master

Wrattle -- Mr. Flee. Mr. Flee -- Master Spurter, Master Spurter -- Mr. Flee.

Flee -- Springers -- Flee -- Wrattle -- Flee -- Spurter -- Flee!"

      This was brought out with such a mixture of eloquence and impertinence

that it was too much for Mr. Flay. That he, the first servant of Gormenghast --

Lord Sepulchrave's confidant -- should be introduced to Swelter's ten-a-penny

kitchen boys was trying him too hard, and as he suddenly strode past the chef

towards the door (for he was in any event due back with his lordship), he pulled

the chain over his head and slashed the heavy brass links across the face of his

taunter. Before Swelter had recovered, Mr. Flay was well on his way along the

passages. The chef's face had suffered a transformation. All the vast _media_ of

his head became, as clay becomes under the hand of the modeller, bent to the

externalization of a passion. Upon it, written in letters of pulp, was spelt the

word _revenge_. The eyes had almost instantly ceased to blaze and had become

like little pieces of glass.

      The three boys had spread the delicacies upon the table, and, leaving in

the centre the simple christening bowl, they now cowered in the bay window,

longing in their hearts to run, to run as they had never run before, out into

the sunshine and across the lawns and over streams and fields, until they were

far, far away from the white presence with the hectic red marks of the

chain-links across its face.

      The chef, with his hatred so riveted upon the person of Flay, had

forgotten them and did not vent his spleen upon them. His was not the hatred

that rises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the

initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a

bloodless way. The fact that three minions had seen their dreaded overlord

suffer an indignity was nothing to Swelter at this moment, for he could see the

situation in proportion and in it these children had no part.

      Without a word he walked to the centre of the room. His fat hands

rearranged a few of the dishes nimbly upon the table. Then he advanced to a

mirror that hung above a vase of flowers and examined his wounds critically.

They hurt him. Catching sight of the three boys as he shifted his head in order

to peer again more closely at himself, for he was only able to see portions of

his face at one and the same time, he signalled to them to be gone. He followed

shortly afterwards and made his way to his room above the bakeries.

      By this time the hour was practically at hand for the gathering and from

their various apartments the persons concerned were sallying forth. Each one

with his or her particular stride. His or her particular eyes, nose, mouth,

hair, thoughts and feelings. Self-contained, carrying their whole selves with

them as they moved, as a vessel that holds its own distinctive wine, bitter or

sweet. These seven closed their doors behind them, terrifyingly _themselves_, as

they set out for the Cool Room.

      There were, in the Castle, two ladies, who, though very seldom

encountered, were of the Groan blood, and so, when it came to a family ceremony

such as this, were of course invited. They were their ladyships Cora and

Clarice, sisters-in-law to Gertrude, sisters of Sepulchrave, and twins in their

own right. They lived in a set of rooms in the southern wing and shared with

each other an all-absorbing passion for brooding upon an irony of fate which

decreed that they should have no say in the affairs of Gormenghast. These two

along with the others were on their way to the Cool Room.

      Tradition playing its remorseless part had forced Swelter and Flay to

return to the Cool Room to await the first arrival, but luckily someone was

there before them -- Sourdust, in his sacking garment. He stood behind the

table, his book open before him. In front of him the bowl of water, around which

the examples of Swelter's art sat, perched on golden salvers and goblets that

twinkled in the reflected sunlight.

      Swelter, who had managed to conceal the welts on his face by an admixture

of flour and white honey, took up his place to the left of the ancient

librarian, over whom he towered as a galleon above a tooth of rock. Around his

neck he also wore a ceremonial chain similar to that of Flay, who appeared a few

moments later. He stalked across the room without glancing at the chef, and

stood upon the other side of Sourdust, balancing from the artist's point of view

if not the rationalist"s, the components of the picture.

      All was ready. The participants in the ceremony would be arriving one by

one, the less important entering first, until the penultimate entrance of the

Countess harbingered a necessary piece of walking furniture, Nannie Slagg, who

would be carrying in her arms a shawl-full of destiny -- the Future of the Blood

Line. A tiny weight that was Gormenghast, a Groan of the strict lineage --

Titus, the Seventy-Seventh.

15

"ASSEMBLAGE"

      First to arrive was the outsider -- the commoner -- who through his

service to the family was honoured by a certain artificial equality of status,

liable at any moment to be undermined -- Doctor Prunesquallor.

      He entered fluttering his perfect hands, and, mincing to the table, rubbed

them together at the level of his chin in a quick, animated way as his eyes

travelled over the spread that lay before him.

      "My very dear Swelter, ha, ha, may I offer you my congratulations, ha, ha,

as a doctor who knows something of stomachs, my dear Swelter, something indeed

of stomachs? Not only of stomachs but of palates, of tongues, and of the

membrane, my dear man, that covers the roof of the mouth, and not only of the

membrane that covers the roof of the mouth but of the sensitized nerve endings

that I can positively assure you are tingling, my dear and very excellent

Swelter, at the very thought of coming into contact with these delicious-looking

oddments that you've no doubt tossed off at an odd moment, ha, ha, very, very

likely I should say, oh yes, very, very likely."

      Doctor Prunesquallor smiled and exhibited two brand new rows of

gravestones between his lips, and darting his beautiful white hand forward with

the little finger crooked to a right angle, he lifted a small emerald cake with

a blob of cream atop of it, as neatly off the top of a plate of such trifles as

though he were at home in his dissecting room and were removing some organ from

a frog. But before he had got it to his mouth, a hissing note stopped him short.

It came from Sourdust, and it caused the doctor to replace the green cake on the

top of the pile even more swiftly than he had removed it. He had forgotten for

the moment, or had pretended to forget, what a stickler for etiquette old

Sourdust was. Until the Countess herself was in the room no eating could begin.

      "Ha, ha, ha, ha, very very right and proper Mr. Sourdust, very right and

proper indeed," said the doctor, winking at Swelter. The magnified appearance of

his eyes gave this familiarity a peculiar unpleasantness. "Very, very right

indeed. But that's what this man Swelter does to one, with his irresistible

little lumps of paradise -- ha, ha, he makes one quite barbarian he does, don't

you Swelter? You barbarize one, ha, ha, don't you? You positively barbarize

one."

      Swelter, who was in no mood for this sort of badinage, and in any case

preferred to hold the floor if there was to be any eloquence, merely gave a

mirthless twitch to his mouth and continued to stare out of the window. Sourdust

was running his finger along a line in his book which he was re-reading, and

Flay was a wooden effigy.

      Nothing, however, seemed to be able to keep the mercury out of Doctor

Prunesquallor, and after looking quickly from face to face, he examined his

finger nails, one by one, with a ridiculous interest; and then turning suddenly

from his task as he completed the scrutiny of the tenth nail, he skipped to the

window, a performance grotesquely incongruous in one of his years, and leaning

in an over-elegant posture against the window frame, he made that peculiarly

effeminate gesture of the left hand that he was so fond of, the placing of the

tips of thumb and index finger together, and thus forming an O, while the

remaining three fingers were strained back and curled into letter C's of

dwindling sizes. His left elbow, bent acutely, brought his hand about a foot

away from him and on a level with the flower in his buttonhole. His narrow

chest, like a black tube, for he was dressed in a cloth of death's colour, gave

forth a series of those irritating laughs that can only be symbolized by "_ha,

ha, ha_", but whose pitch scraped at the inner wall of the skull.

      "Cedars," said Doctor Prunesquallor, squinting at the trees before him

with his head tilted and his eyes half closed, "are excellent trees. Very, very

excellent. I positively enjoy cedars, but do cedars positively enjoy me? Ha, ha

-- do they, my dear Mr. Flay, do they? -- or is this rather above you, my man,

is my philosophy a trifle above you? For if I enjoy a cedar but a cedar does

not, ha, ha, enjoy me, then surely I am at once in a position of compromise,

being, as it were, ignored by the vegetable world, which would think twice, mark

you, my dear fellow, would think twice about ignoring a cartload of mulch, ha,

ha, or to put it another way . . ."

      But here Doctor Prunesquallor's reflections were interrupted by the first

of the family arrivals, the twin sisters, their ladyships Cora and Clarice. They

opened the door very slowly and peered around it before advancing. It had been

several months since they had ventured from their apartments and they were

suspicious of everyone and of everything.

      Doctor Prunesquallor advanced at once from the window. "Your ladyships

will forgive me, ha, ha, the presumption of receiving you into what is, ha, ha,

after all more your own room than mine, ha, ha, ha, but which is nevertheless, I

have reason to suspect, a little strange to you if I may be so extraordinarily

flagrant; so ludicrously indiscreet, in fact . . ."

      "It's the doctor, my dear," the lady Cora whispered flatly to her twin

sister, interrupting Prunesquallor.

      Lady Clarice merely stared at the thin gentleman in question until anyone

but the doctor would have turned and fled.

      "I know it is," she said at last. "What's wrong with his eyes?"

      "He's got some disease of course, I suppose. Didn't you know?" replied

Lady Cora.

      She and her sister were dressed in purple, with gold buckles at their

throats by way of brooches, and another gold buckle each at the end of hatpins

which they wore through their grey hair in order apparently to match their

brooches. Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite

expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were

waiting for sentience to be injected.

      "What are you doing here?" said Cora, staring remorselessly.

      Doctor Prunesquallor bent forward towards her and showed her his teeth.

Then he clasped his hands together. "I am privileged," he said, "very, very much

so, oh yes, very, very much."

      "Why?" said Lady Clarice. Her voice was so perfect a replica of her

sister's as might lead one to suppose that her vocal cords had been snipped from

the same line of gut in those obscure regions where such creatures are

compounded.

      The sisters were now standing, one on either side of the doctor, and they

stared up at him with an emptiness of expression that caused him to turn his

eyes hurriedly to the ceiling, for he had switched them from one to the other

for respite from either, but had found no relief. The white ceiling by contrast

teemed with interest and he kept his eyes on it.

      "Your ladyships," he said, "can it be that you are ignorant of the part I

play in the social life of Gormenghast? I say the social life, but who, ha, ha,

ha, who could gainsay me if I boast that it is more than the _social_ life, ha,

ha, ha, and is, my very dear ladyships, positively the organic life of the

castle that I foster, and control, ha, ha, in the sense that, trained as I

undoubtedly am in the science of this, that, and the other, ha, ha, ha, in

connection with the whole anomatical caboodle from head to foot. I, as part of

my work here, deliver the new generations to the old -- the sinless to the

sinful, ha, ha, ha, the stainless to the tarnished -- oh dear me, the white to

the black, the healthy to the diseased. And this ceremony today, my very dear

ladyships, is a result of my professional adroitness, ha, ha, ha, on the

occasion of a brand new Groan."

      "What did you say?" said Lady Clarice, who had been staring at him the

whole time without moving a muscle.

      Doctor Prunesquallor closed his eyes and kept them closed for a very long

time. Then opening them he took a pace forward and breathed in as much as his

narrow chest would allow. Then turning suddenly he wagged his finger at the two

in purple.

      "Your ladyships," he said. "You must _listen_, you will never get on in

life unless you _listen_."

      "Get _on_ in life?" said Lady Cora at once, "get _on_ in life. I like

that. What chance have we, when Gertrude has what we ought to have?"

      "Yes, yes," said the other, like a continuation of her sister's voice in

another part of the room. "We ought to have what she has."

      "And what is _that_, my very dear ladyships?" queried Doctor

Prunesquallor, tilting his head at them.

      "Power," they replied blankly and both together, as though they had

rehearsed the scene. The utter tonelessness of their voices contrasted so

incongruously with the gist of the subject that even Doctor Prunesquallor was

for a moment taken aback and loosened his stiff white collar around his throat

with his forefinger.

      "It's power we want," Lady Clarice repeated. "We'd like to have that."

      "Yes, it's that we want," echoed Cora, "lots of power. Then we could make

people do things," said the voice.

      "But Gertrude has all the power," came the echo, "which we ought to have

but which we haven't got."

      Then they stared at Swelter, Sourdust and Flay in turn.

      "_They_ have to be here, I suppose?" said Cora, pointing at them before

returning her gaze to Doctor Prunesquallor, who had reverted to examining the

ceiling. But before he could reply the door opened and Fuchsia came in, dressed

in white.

      Twelve days had elapsed since she had discovered that she was no longer

the only child. She had steadily refused to see her brother and today for the

first time she would be obliged to be with him. Her first anguish, inexplicable

to herself, had dulled to a grudging acceptance. For what reason she did not

know, but her grief had been very real. She did not know what it was that she

resented.

      Mrs. Slagg had had no time to help Fuchsia to look presentable, only

telling her to comb her hair and to put her white dress on at the _last_ minute

so that it should not be creased, and then to appear in the Cool Room at two

minutes past three.

      The sunlight on the lawns and the flowers in the vases and the room itself

had seemed pleasant auguries for the afternoon before the entrance of the two

servants, and the unfortunate incident that occurred. This violence had set a

bitter keynote to the ensuing hours.

      Fuchsia came in with her eyes red from crying. She curtseyed awkwardly to

her mother's cousins and then sat down in a far corner, but she was almost at

once forced to regain her feet, for her father, followed closely by the

Countess, entered and walked slowly to the centre of the room.

      Without a word of warning Sourdust rapped his knuckles on the table and

cried out with his old voice: "All are gathered save only him, for whom this

gathering is gathered. All are here save only he for whom we all are here. Form

now before the table of his baptism in the array of waiting, while I pronounce

the entrance of Life's enterer and of the Groan inheritor, of Gormenghast's

untarnished child-shaped mirror."

      Sourdust coughed in a very ill way and put his hand to his chest. He

glanced down at the book and ran his finger along a new line. Then he tottered

around the table, his knotted grey-and-white beard swinging a little from side

to side, and ushered the five into a semi-circle around the table, with their

backs to the window. In the centre were the Countess and Lord Sepulchrave,

Fuchsia was to her father's left and Doctor Prunesquallor on the right of Lady

Groan, but a little behind the semi-circle. The twin sisters were separated, one

standing at either extremity of the arc. Flay and Swelter had retreated a few

paces backwards and stood quite still. Flay bit at his knuckles.

      Sourdust returned to his position behind the table which he held alone,

and was relatively more impressive now that the crag of Flay and the mound of

Swelter no longer dwarfed him. His lifted his voice again, but it was hard for

him to speak, for there were tears in his throat and the magnitude of his office

weighed heavily on him. As a savant in the Groan lore he knew himself to be

spiritually responsible for the correct procedure. Moments such as this were the

highlights in the ritualistic cycle of his life.

      "Suns and the changing of the seasonal moons; the leaves from trees that

cannot keep them leaves, and the fish from olive waters have their voices!"

      His hands were held before him as though in prayer, and his wrinkled head

was startlingly apparent in the clear light of the room. His voice grew

stronger.

      "Stones have their voices and the quills of binds; the anger of the

thorns, the wounded spirits, the antlers, ribs that curve, bread, tears and

needles. Blunt boulders and the silence of cold marshes -- these have their

voices -- the insurgent clouds, the cockenel and the worm."

      Sourdust bent down over his book and found the place with his finger and

then turned the page.

      "Voices that grind at night from lungs of granite. Lungs of blue air and

the white lungs of rivers. All voices haunt all moments of all days; all voices

fill the crannies of all regions. Voices that he shall hear when he has

listened, and when his ear is tuned to Gormenghast; whose voice is endlessness

of endlessness. This is the ancient sound that he must follow. The voice of

stones heaped up into grey towers, until he dies across the Groan's

death-turret. And banners are ripped down from wall and buttress and he is

carried to the Tower of Towers and laid among the moulderings of his fathers."

      "How much more is there?" said the Countess. She had been listening less

attentively than the occasion merited and was feeding with crumbs from a pocket

in her dress a grey bird on her shoulder.

      Sourdust looked up from his book at Lady Groan's question. His eyes grew

misty for he was pained by the irritation in her voice.

      "The ancient word of the twelfth lord is complete, your ladyship," he

said, his eyes on the book.

      "Good," said Lady Groan. "What now?"

      "We turn about, I think, and look out on the garden," said Clarice

vaguely, "don't we, Cora? You remember just before baby Fuchsia was carried in,

we all turned round and looked at the garden through the window. I'm sure we did

-- long ago."

      "Where have you been since then?" said Lady Groan, suddenly addressing her

sisters-in-law and staring at them one after the other. Her dark-red hair was

beginning to come loose over her neck, and the bird had scarred with its feet

the soft inky-black pile of her velvet dress so that it looked ragged and grey

at her shoulder.

      "We've been in the south wing all the time, Gertrude," replied Cora.

      "That's where we've been," said Clarice. "In the south wing all the time."

      Lady Groan emptied a look of love across her left shoulder, and the grey

bird that stood there with its head beneath its wing moved three quick steps

nearer to her throat. Then she turned her eyes upon her sisters-in-law: "Doing

what?" she said.

      "Thinking," said the twins together, "that's what we've been doing --

thinking a lot."

      A high uncontrolled laugh broke out from slightly behind the Countess.

Doctor Prunesquallor had disgraced himself. It was no time for him to emphasize

his presence. He was there on sufferance, but a violent rapping on the table

saved him and all attention was turned to Sourdust.

      "Your lordship," said Sourdust slowly, "as the seventy-sixth Earl of Groan

and Lord of Gormenghast, it is written in the laws that you do now proceed to

the doorway of the Christening Room and call for your son along the empty

passage."

      Lord Sepulchrave, who up to this moment, had, like his daughter beside

him, remained perfectly still and silent, his melancholy eyes fixed upon the

dirty vest of his servant Flay which he could just see over the table, turned

towards the door, and on reaching it, coughed to clear his throat.

      The Countess followed with her eyes, but her expression was too vague to

understand. The twins followed him with their faces -- two areas of identical

flesh. Fuchsia was sucking her knuckles and seemed to be the only one in the

room unintenested in the progress of her fathen. Flay and Swelter had their eyes

fixed upon him, for although their thoughts were still engaged with the violence

of half an hour earlier, they were so much a part of the Groan ritual that they

followed his lordship's every movement with a kind of surly fascination.

      Sourdust, in his anxiety to witness a perfect piece of traditional

procedure, was twisting his black-and-white beard into what must surely have

been inextricable knots. He leaned forward over the christening bowl, his hands

on the refectory table.

      Meanwhile, hiding behind a turn in the passage, Nannie Slagg, with Titus

in her arms, was being soothed by Keda as she waited for her call.

      "Now, now be quiet, Mrs. Slagg, be quiet and it will be oven soon," said

Keda to the little shaking thing that was dressed up in the shiniest of

dank-green satin and upon whose head the grape hat arose in magnificent

misproportion to her tiny face.

      "Be quiet, indeed," said Nannie Slagg in a thin animated voice. "If you

only knew what it means to be in such a position of honour -- oh, my poor heart!

You would not dare to try to make me quiet indeed! I have never heard such

ignorance. Why is he so long? Isn't it time for him to call me? And the precious

thing so quiet and good and ready to cry any minute -- oh, my poon heart! Why is

he so long? Brush my dress again."

      Keda, who had been commanded to bring a soft brush with her, would have

been brushing Nannie's satin dress for practically the whole morning had the old

nurse had her way. She was now instructed by an irritable gesture of Mrs.

Slagg's hand to brush her anew and to soothe the old woman she complied with a

few strokes.

      Titus watched Keda's face with his violet eyes, his grotesque little

features modified by the dull light at the corner of the passage. There was the

history of man in his face. A fragment from the enormous rock of mankind. A leaf

from the forest of man's passion and man's knowledge and man's pain. That was

the ancientness of Titus.

      Nannie's head was old with lines and sunken skin, with the red rims of her

eyes and the puckers of her mouth. A vacant anatomical ancientry.

      Keda's oldness was the work of fate, alchemy. An occult agedness. A

transparent darkness. A broken and mysterious grove. A tragedy, a glory, a

decay.

      These three sere beings at the shadowy corner waited on. Nannie was

sixty-nine, Keda was twenty-two, Titus was twelve days old.

      Lord Sepulchrave had cleared his throat. Then he called:

      "My Son."

16

"TITUS IS CHRISTENED"

      His voice moved down the corridor and turned about the stone corner, and

when he first heard the sound of Mrs. Slagg's excited footsteps he continued

with that part of the procedure which Sourdust had recited to him over their

breakfast for the last three mornings.

      Ideally, the length of time which it took him to complete the speech

should have coincided with the time it took Nannie Slagg to reach the door of

the Cool Room from the darkened corner.

      "Inheritor of the powers I hold," came his bnooding voice from the

doorway, "continuer of the blood-stock of the stones, freshet of the unending

river, approach me now. I, a mere link in the dynastic chain, adjure you to

advance, as a white bird on iron skies through walls of solemn cloud. Approach

now to the bowl, where, named and feted, you shall be consecrate in Gonmenghast.

Child! Welcome!"

      Unfortunately Nannie, having tripped oven a loose flagstone, was ten feet

away at the word "Welcome" and Sourdust, upon whose massive forehead a few beads

of perspiration had suddenly appeared, felt the thnee long seconds pass with a

ghastly slowness before she appeared at the door of the room. Immediately before

she had left the corner Keda had placed the little iron crown gently on the

infant's head to Nannie's satisfaction, and the two of them as they appeared

before the assembly made up for their three seconds' tardiness by a preposterous

quality that was in perfect harmony with the situation.

      Sourdust felt satisfied as he saw them, and their delay that had rankled

was forgotten. He approached Mns Slagg canrying his great book with him, and

when he had reached them he opened the volume so that it fell apart in two equal

halves and then, extending it forward towards Nannie Slagg, he said:

      "It is written, and the writing is adhered to, that between these pages

where the flax is grey with wisdom, the first-born male-child of the House of

Groan shall be lowered and laid lengthways, his head directed to the chnistening

bowl, and that the pages that are heavy with words shall be bent in and over

him, so that he is engulfed in the sene Text encircled with the Profound, and is

as one with the inviolable Law."

      Nannie Slagg, an inane expression of importance on her face, lowered Titus

within the obtuse V shape of the half-opened book so that the crown of his head

just overlapped the spine of the volume at Sourdust's end and his feet at Mrs.

Slagg"s.

      Then Lord Sepulchrave folded the two pages over the helpless body and

joined the tube of thick parchment at its centre with a safety-pin.

      Resting upon the spine of the volume, his minute feet protruding from one

end of the paper trunk and the iron spikes of the little crown protruding from

the other, he was, to Sourdust, the very quintessential of traditional

propriety. So much so that as he carried the loaded book towards the refectory

table his eyes became so blurred with tears of satisfaction, that it was

difficult for him to make his way between the small tables that lay in his path,

and the two vases of flowers that stood so still and clear in the cool air of

the room were each in his eyes a fume of lilac, and a blurr of snow.

      He could not rub his eyes, and free his vision, for his hands were

occupied, so he waited until they were at last clear of the moisture that filmed

them.

      Fuchsia, in spite of knowing that she should remain where she was, had

joined Nannie Slagg. She had been irritated by an attempt that Clarice had made

to nudge her in a furtive way whenever she thought that no one was watching.

      "You never come to see me although you're a relation, but that's because I

don't want you to come and never ask you," her aunt had said, and had then

peered round to see whether she was being watched, and noticing that Gertrude

was in a kind of enormous trance, she continued:

      "You see, my poor child, I and my sister Cora are a good deal older than

you and we both had convulsions when we were about your age. You may have

noticed that our left arms are rather stiff and our left legs, too. That's not

our fault."

      Her sister's voice came from the other side of the semi-circle of figures

in a hoarse flat whisper, as though it was trying to reach the eans of Fuchsia

without making contact with the row of ears that lay between. "Not our fault at

all," she said, "not a bit our fault. Not any of it."

      "The epileptic fits, my poor child," continued Cora, after nodding at her

sister's interruption, "have left us practically starved all down the right

side. Practically starved. We had these fits you see."

      "When we were about your age," came the empty echo.

      "Yes, just about your age," said Cora, "and being practically starved all

down the right side we have to do our embroidered tapestries with one hand."

      "Only one hand," said Clarice. "It's very clever of us. But no one sees

us."

      She leaned forward as she wedged in this remark, forcing it upon Fuchsia

as though the whole future of Gormenghast hung upon it.

      Fuchsia fiddled and wound her hair round her fingers savagely.

      "Don't do that," said Cora. "Your hair is too black. Don't do that."

      "Much too black," came the flat echo.

      "Especially when your dress is so white."

      Cora bent forward from her hips so that her face was within a foot of

Fuchsia"s. Then with only her eyes turned away, but her face broadside on to her

niece, "We don't _like_ your mother," she said.

      Fuchsia was startled. Then she heard the same voice from the other side,

"That's true," said the voice, "we don't."

      Fuchsia turned suddenly, swinging her inky bulk of hair. Cora had

disobeyed all the rules and unable to be so far from the conversation had moved

like a sleep-walker round the back of the group, keeping an eye on the

black-velvet mass of the Countess.

      But she was doomed to disappointment, for as soon as she arrived, Fuchsia,

glancing around wildly, caught sight of Mrs. Slagg and she mooched away from her

cousins and watched the ceremony at the table where Sourdust held her brother in

the leaves of the book. As soon as Nannie was unburdened of Titus Fuchsia went

to her side, and held her thin green-satin arm. Sourdust had reached the table

with Lord Sepulchrave behind him. He re-instated himself. But his pleasure at

the way things were proceeding was suddenly disrupted when his eyes, having

cleared themselves of the haze, encountered no ceremonial curve of the select,

but a room of scattered individuals. He was shocked. The only persons in

alignment were the Countess, who through no sense of obedience, but rather from

a kind of coma, was in the same position in which she had first anchored

herself, and her husband who had returned to her side. Sourdust hobbled round

the table with the tome-full. Cora and Clarice were standing close together,

their bodies facing each othen but their heads staring in Fuchsia's direction.

Mrs. Slagg and Fuchsia were together and Prunesquallor, on tip-toe, was peering

at the stamen of a white flower in a vase through a magnifying lens he had

whipped from his pocket. There was no need for him to be on tip-toe for it was

neither a tall table nor a tall vase nor indeed a tall flower. But the attitude

which pleased him most when peering at flowers was one in which the body was

bent over the petals in an elegant curve.

      Sourdust was shocked. His mouth worked at the corners. His old, fissured

face became a fantastic area of cross-hatching and his weak eyes grew desperate.

Attempting to lower the heavy volume to the table before the christening bowl

where a space had been left for it, his fingers grew numb and lost their grip on

the leather and the book slid from his hands, Titus slipping through the pages

to the ground and tearing as he did so a corner from the leaf in which he had

lain sheathed, for his little hand had clutched at it as he had fallen. This was

his first recorded act of blasphemy. He had violated the Book of Baptism. The

metal crown fell from his head. Nannie Slagg clutched Fuchsia's arm, and then

with a scream of "Oh my poor heart!" stumbled to where the baby lay crying

piteously on the floor.

      Sourdust was trying to tear the sacking of his clothes and moaning with

impotence as he strained with his old fingers. He was in torture. Doctor

Prunesquallor's white knuckles had travelled to his mouth with amazing speed,

and he stood swaying a little. He had turned a moment later to Lady Groan.

      "They resemble rubber, your ladyship, ha, ha, ha, ha. Just a core of

india-rubber, with an elastic centre. Oh yes, they are. Very, very much so.

Resilience is no word for it. Ha, ha, ha, absolutely no word for it -- oh dear

me, no. Every ounce, a bounce, ha, ha, ha! Every ounce a bounce."

      "What are you talking about man!" said the Countess.

      "I was referring to your child, who has just fallen on the floor."

      "Fallen?" queried the Countess in a gruff voice. "Where?"

      "To earth, your ladyship, ha, ha, ha. Fallen positively to earth. Earth,

that is, with a veneer or two of stone, wood and carpet, in between its barbaric

self and his minute lordship whom you can no doubt hear screaming."

      "So that's what it is," said Lady Groan, from whose mouth, which was

shaped as though she were whistling, the grey bird was picking a morsel of dry

cake.

      "Yes," said Cora on her right, who had run up to her directly the baby had

fallen and was staring up at her sister-in-law's face. "Yes, that's what it is."

      Clarice, who had appeared on the other side in a reverse of her sister's

position, confirmed her sister's interpretation, "that's just what it is."

      Then they both peered around the edge of the Countess and caught each

other's eyes knowingly.

      When the grey bird had removed the piece of cake from her ladyship's big

pursed-up mouth it fluttered from her shoulder to perch upon her crooked finger

where it clung as still as a carving, while she, leaving the twins (who, as

though her departure had left a vacuum between them came together at once to

fill it) proceeded to the site of the tragedy. There she saw Sourdust recovering

his dignity, but shaking in his crimson sacking while he did so. Her husband,

who knew that it was no situation for a man to deal with, stood aside from the

scene, but looked nervously at his son. He was biting the ferrule of his

jade-headed rod and his sad eyes moved here and there but constantly returned to

the crying infant in the nurse's arms.

      The Countess took Titus from Mrs. Slagg and walked to the bay window.

      Fuchsia, watching her mother, felt in spite of herself a quickening of

something akin to pity for the little burden she carried. Almost a qualm of

nearness, of fondness, fon since she had seen her brother tear at the leaves

that encased him, she had known that there was another being in the room for

whom the whole fustian of Gormenghast was a thing to flee from. She had imagined

in a hot blurr of jealousy that her brother would be a beautiful baby, but when

she saw him and found that he was anything but beautiful, she warmed to him, her

smouldering eyes taking on, for a second, something of that look which her

mother kept exclusively for her birds and the white cats.

      The Countess held Titus up into the sunlight of the window and examined

his face, making noises in her cheek to the grey bind as she did so. Then she

turned him around and examined the back of his head for some considerable time.

      "Bring the crown," she said.

      Docton Prunesquallor came up with his elbows raised and the fingers of

both hands splayed out, the metal crown poised between them. His eyes rolled

behind his lenses.

      "Shall I crown him in the sunlight? ha, he, ha. Positively crown him," he

said, and showed the Countess the same series of uncompromising teeth that he

had honoured Cora with several minutes before.

      Titus had stopped crying and in his mother's prodigious arms looked

unbelievably tiny. He had not been hurt, but frightened by his fall. Only a sob

or two survived and shook him every few seconds.

      "Put it on his head," said the Countess. Doctor Prunesquallor bent forward

from the hips in a straight oblique line. His legs looked so thin in their black

casing that when a small breath of wind blew from the garden it seemed that the

material was blown inwards beyond that pant where his shin bones should have

been. He lowered the crown upon the little white potato of a head.

      "Sourdust," she said without turning round, "come here."

      Sourdust lifted his head. He had recovered the book from the floor and was

fitting the torn piece of paper into position on the conner of the torn page,

and smoothing it out shakily with his forefinger.

      "Gome along, come along now!" said the Countess.

      He came around the corner of the table and stood before her.

      "We"ll go for a walk, Sourdust, on the lawn and then you can finish the

christening. Hold yourself still, man," she said. "Stop rattling."

      Sourdust bowed, and feeling that to interrupt a christening of the direct

heir in this way was sacrilege, followed her out of the window, while she called

out over her shoulder, "all of you! all of you! servants as well!"

      They all came out and each choosing their parallel shades of the mown

grass that converged in the distance in perfectly straight lines of green,

walked abreast and silently thus, up and down, for forty minutes.

      They took their pace from the slowest of them, which was Sourdust. The

cedars spread over them from the northern side as they began their journey.

Their figures dwindling as they moved away on the striped emerald of the shaven

lawn. Like toys; detachable, painted toys, they moved each one on his mown

stripe.

      Lord Sepulchrave walked with slow strides, his head bowed. Fuchsia

mouched. Doctor Prunesquallor minced. The twins propelled themselves forward

vacantly. Flay spidered his path. Swelter wallowed his.

      All the time the Countess held Titus in her arms and whistled varying

notes that brought through gilded air strange fowl to her from unrecorded

forests.

      When at last they had re-gathered in the Cool Room, Sourdust was more

composed, although tired from the walk.

      Signalling them to their stations he placed his hands upon the torn volume

with a qualm and addressed the semi-circle before him.

      Titus had been replaced in the Book and Sourdust lowered him carefully to

the table.

      "I place thee, Child-Inheritor," he said, continuing from where he had

been interrupted by the age of his fingers, "Child-Inheritor of the rivers, of

the Tower of Flints and the dark recesses beneath cold stairways and the sunny

summer lawns. Child-Inheritor of the spring breezes that blow in from the jarl

forests and of the autumn misery in petal, scale, and wing. Winter's white

brilliance on a thousand turrets and summer's torpor among walls that crumble --

listen. Listen with the humility of princes and understand with the

understanding of the ants. Listen, Child-Inheritor, and wonder. Digest what I

now say."

      Sourdust then handed Titus oven the table to his mother, and cupping his

hand, dipped it in the christening bowl. Then, his hand and wrist dripping, he

let the water trickle through his fingers and on to the baby's head where the

crown left, between its prongs, an oval area of bone-forced skin.

      "Your name is TITUS," said Sourdust very simply, "TITUS the

seventy-seventh Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast. I do adjure you hold each

cold stone sacred that clings to these, your grey ancestral walls. I do adjure

you hold the dark soil sacred that nourishes your high leafburdened trees. I do

adjure you hold the tenets sacred that ramify the creeds of Gormenghast. I

dedicate you to your father's castle. Titus, be true."

      Titus was handed back to Sourdust, who passed him to Nannie Slagg. The

room was delicious with the cool scent of flowers. As Sourdust gave the sign,

after a few minutes of meditation, that feeding might begin, Swelter came

forward balancing four plates of delicacies on each of his forearms and with a

plate in either hand went the rounds. Then he poured out glasses of wine, while

Flay followed Lord Sepulchrave around like a shadow. None of the company

attempted to make conversation, but stood silently eating on drinking in

different parts of the room, or stood at the bay window, munching or sipping as

they stared across the spreading lawns. Only the twins sat in a corner of the

room and made signs to Swelter when they had finished what was on their plates.

The afternoon would be for them the theme for excited reminiscence for many a

long day. Lord Sepulchrave touched nothing as the delicacies were passed round,

and when Swelter approached him with a salver of toasted larks, Flay motioned

him away peremptorily, and noticing as he did so the evil expression in the

chef's pig-like eyes, he drew his bony shoulders up to his ears.

      As the time moved on Sourdust began to grow more and more conscious of his

responsibilities as the master of ritual, and eventually, having registered the

time by the sun, which was split in half by the slim branch of a maple, he

clapped his hands and shambled towards the door.

      It was then for the assembled company to gather in the centre of the room

and for one after another to pass Sourdust and Mrs. Slagg, who, with Titus on

her lap, was to be stationed at his side.

      These positions were duly taken up, and the first to walk forward to the

door was Lord Sepulchrave, who lifted his melancholy head in the air, and, as he

passed his son spoke the one word "Titus" in a solemn, abstracted voice. The

Countess shambled after him voluminously and bellowed "TITUS" at the wrinkled

infant.

      Each in turn followed: the twins confusing each other in their efforts to

get the first word in, the doctor brandishing his teeth at the word "Titus" as

though it were the signal for some romantic advance of sabred cavalry. Fuchsia

felt embarrassed and stared at the prongs of her little brother's crown.

      At last they had all passed by, delivering with their own peculiar

intonations the final word "Titus" as they reared their heads up, and Mrs. Slagg

was left alone, for even Sourdust had left her and followed in the wake of Mr.

Flay.

      Now that she was left by herself in the Cool Room Mrs. Slagg stared about

her nervously at the emptiness and at the sunlight pouring through the great bay

window.

      Suddenly she began to cry with fatigue and excitement and from the shock

she had received when the Countess had bellowed at his little lordship and

herself. A shrunken, pathetic creature she looked in the high chair with the

crowned doll in her arms. Her green satin gleamed mockingly in the afternoon

light. "Oh, my weak heart," she sobbed, the tears crawling down the dry,

pear-skin wrinkles of her miniature face -- "my poor, poor heart -- as though it

were a crime to love him." She pressed the baby's face against her wet cheek.

Her eyes were clenched and the moisture clung to her lashes, and as her lips

quivered, Fuchsia stole back and knelt down, putting her strong arms around her

old nurse and her brother.

      Mrs. Slagg opened her bloodshot eyes and leaned forward, the three of them

coming together into a compact volume of sympathy.

      "I _love_ you --" whispered Fuchsia, lifting her sullen eyes. "I love you,

I love you," then turning her head to the door -- "you've made her cry," she

shouted, as though addressing the string of figures who had so recently passed

through -- "you've made her cry, you beasts!"

17

MEANS OF ESCAPE

      Mr. Flay was possessed by two major vexations. The first of these lay in

the feud which had arisen between himself and the mountain of pale meat; the

feud that had flared up and fructified in his assault upon the chef. He avoided

even more scrupulously than before any corridor, quadrangle or cloister where

the unmistakable proportions of his enemy might have loomed in sight. As he

performed his duties, Mr. Flay was perpetually aware that his enemy was in the

castle and was haunted by the realization that some devilish plot was being

devised, momently, in that dropsical head -- some infernal hatching, in a word

-- _revenge_. What opportunities the chef would find or make, Flay could not

imagine, but he was constantly on the alert and was for even tunning oven in his

dank skull any possibilities that occurred to him. If Flay was not actually

frightened he was at least apprehensive to a point this side of fear.

      The second of his two anxieties hinged upon the disappearance of

Steerpike. Fourteen days ago he had locked the urchin up and had returned twelve

hours later with a jug of water and a dish of potatoes only to find the room

empty. Since then there had been no sign of him, and Mr. Flay, although

uninterested in the boy for his own sake, was nevertheless disturbed by so

phenomenal a disappearance and also by the fact that he had been one of

Swelter's kitchen hands and might, were he to return to the foetid regions from

which he had strayed, disclose the fact they had met, and probably, in a garbled

version of the affair, put it to the chef that he had been lured away from his

province and incarcerated for some sinister reason of his own invention. Not

only this, for Mr. Flay remembered how the boy had overheard the remarks which

Lord Groan had made about his son, remarks which would be detrimental to the

dignity of Gormenghast if they were to be noised abroad to the riff-raff of the

castle. It would not do if at the very beginning of the new Lord Groan's career

it were common knowledge that the child was ugly, and that Lord Sepulchrave was

distressed about it. What could be done to ensure the boy's silence Flay had not

yet determined, but it was obvious that to find him was the prime necessity. He

had, during his off moments, searched room after room, balcony after balcony,

and had found no clue as to his whereabouts.

      At night as he lay before his master's door he would twitch and awake and

then sit bolt upright on the cold floor-boards. At first the face of Swelter

would appear before his eyes, huge and indistinct, with those beady eyes in

their folds of flesh, cold and remorseless. He would shoot his hard, cropped

head forward, and wipe the sweat from his palms upon his clothes. Then, as the

foul phantom dissolved in the darkness, his mind would lure him into the empty

room where he had last seen Steerpike and in his imagination he would make a

circuit of the walls, feeling the panels with his hands and come at last to the

window, where he would stare down the hundreds of feet of sheer wall to the yard

below.

      Straightening out his legs again his knee joints would crack in the

darkness as he stretched himself out, the iron-tasting key between his teeth.

      What had actually happened in the Octagonal Room and the subsequent events

that befell Steerpike are as follows:

      When the boy heard the key turn in the lock he half-ran to the door and

glued his eye to the keyhole and watched the seat of Mr. Flay's trousers

receding down the passage. He had heard him turn a corner, and then a door was

shut in the distance with a fan bang, and thereafter there had been silence.

Most people would have tried the handle of the door. The instinct, however

irrational, would have been too strong; the first impulse of one who wishes to

escape. Steerpike looked at the knob of the door for a moment. He had heard the

key turn. He did not disobey the simple logic of his mind. He turned from the

only door in the room and, leaning out of the window, glanced at the drop below.

      His body gave the appearance of being malformed, but it would be difficult

to say exactly what gave it this gibbous quality. Limb by limb it appeared that

he was sound enough, but the sum of these several members accrued to an

unexpectedly twisted total. His face was pale like clay and save for his eyes,

masklike. These eyes were set very close together, and were small, dark red, and

of startling concentration.

      The striped kitchen tunic which he wore fitted him tightly. On the back of

his head was pushed a small white skull cap.

      As he gazed downward quietly at the precipitous drop he pursed his mouth

and his eyes roved quickly over the quadrangle below him. Then suddenly he left

the window and with his peculiar half-run, half-walk, he hurried around the

room, as though it were necessary for him to have his limbs moving concurrently

with his brain. Then he returned to the window. Everywhere was stillness. The

afternoon light was beginning to wane in the sky although the picture of turrets

and rooftops enclosed by the window frame was still warmly tinted. He took one

last comprehensive glance over his shoulder at the walls and ceiling of the

prison room, and then, clasping his hands behind his back, returned his

attention to the casement.

      This time, leaning precariously out over the sill and with his face to the

sky, he scrutinized the rough stones of the wall _above_ the lintel and noticed

that after twenty feet they ended at a sloping roof of slates. This roof

terminated in a long horizontal spine like a buttress, which, in turn, led in

great sweeping curves towards the main rooftops of Gormenghast. The twenty feet

above him, although seeming at first to be unscalable, were, he noticed,

precarious only for the first twelve feet, where only an occasional jutting of

irregular stone offered dizzy purchase. Above this height a gaunt, half-dead

creeper that was matted greyly over the slates, lowered a hairy arm which,

unless it snapped at his weight, would prove comparatively easy climbing.

      Steerpike reflected that once astride the cornice he could, with

relatively little difficulty, make his way over the whole outer shell of central

Gonmenghast.

      Again he fastened his gaze upon the first dozen feet of vertical stone,

choosing and scrutinizing the grips that he would use. His survey left him

uneasy. It would be unpleasant. The more he searched the wall with his intense

eyes the less he liked the prospect, but he could see that it _was_ feasible if

he concentrated every thought and fibre upon the attempt. He hoisted himself

back into the room that had suddenly added an atmosphere of safety to its

silence. Two courses were open to him. He could either wait and, in due course

presumably Flay would reappear and would, he suspected, attempt to return him to

the kitchens -- or he could make the hazardous trial.

      Suddenly, sitting on the floor, he removed his boots and tied them by

their laces about his neck. Then he rammed his socks into his pockets and stood

up. Standing on tiptoe in the middle of the room he splayed his toes out and

felt them tingle with awareness, and then he pulled his fingers sideways

cruelly, awakening his hands. There was nothing to wait for. He knelt on the

windowsill and then, turning around, slowly raised himself to his feet and stood

outside the window, the hollow twilight at his shoulder-blades.

18

"A FIELD OF FLAGSTONES"

      He refused to allow himself to think of the sickening drop and glued his

eyes upon the first of the grips. His left hand clasped the lintel as he felt

out with his right foot and curled his toes around a rough corner of stone.

Almost at once he began to sweat. His fingers crept up and found a cranny he had

scrutinized at leisure. Biting his underlip until it bled freely over his chin,

he moved his left knee up the surface of the wall. It took him perhaps seventeen

minutes by the clock, but by the time of his beating heart he was all evening

upon the swaying wall. At moments he would make up his mind to have done with

the whole thing, life and all, and to drop back into space, where his straining

and sickness would end. At other moments, as he clung desperately, working his

way upwards in a sick haze, he found himself repeating a line on two from some

long forgotten rhyme.

      His fingers were almost dead and his hands and knees shaking wildly when

he found that his face was being tickled by the nagged fibres that hung upon the

end of the dead creeper. Gripping it with his right hand, his toes lost purchase

and for a moment or two he swung over the empty air. But his hands could bring

into play unused muscles and although his arms were cracking he scraped his way

up the remaining fifteen feet, the thick, bnittle wood holding true, small

pieces only breaking away from the sides. As soon as he had edged himself over

the guttering, he lay, face downwards, weak and shaking fantastically. He lay

there for an hour. Then, as he raised his head and found himself in an empty

world of rooftops, he smiled. It was a young smile, a smile in keeping with his

seventeen years, that suddenly transformed the emptiness of the lower part of

his face and as suddenly disappeared; from where he lay at an angle along the

sun-warmed slates, only sections of this new rooftop world were visible and the

vastness of the failing sky. He raised himself upon his elbows, and suddenly

noticed that where his feet had been prized against the guttering, the support

was on the point of giving way. The corroded metal was all that lay between the

weight of his body as he lay slanting steeply on the slates and the long drop to

the quadrangle. Without a moment's delay he began to edge his way up the

incline, levering with his bare feet, his shoulder blades rubbing the

moss-patched roof.

      Although his limbs felt much stronger after their rest he retched as he

moved up the slate incline. The slope was longer than it had appeared from

below. Indeed, all the various roof structures-- parapet, turret and cornice --

proved themselves to be of greater dimensions than he had anticipated.

      Steerpike, when he had reached the spine of the roof, sat astride it and

regained his breath for the second time. He was surrounded by lakes of fading

daylight.

      He could see how the ridge on which he sat led in a wide curve to where in

the west it was broken by the first of four towers. Beyond them the sweep of

roof continued to complete a half circle fan to his right. This was ended by a

high lateral wall. Stone steps led from the ridge to the top of the wall, from

which might be approached, along a cat-walk, an area the size of a field,

surrounding which, though at a lower level, were the heavy, rotting structures

of adjacent roofs and towers, and between these could be seen other roofs far

away, and other towers.

      Steerpike's eyes, following the rooftops, came at last to the parapet

surrounding this area. He could not, of course, from where he was guess at the

stone sky-field itself, lying as it did a league away and well above his eye

level, but as the main massing of Gormenghast arose to the west, he began to

crawl in that direction along the sweep of the ridge.

      It was oven an hour before Steerpike came to where only the surrounding

parapet obstructed his view of the stone sky-field. As he climbed this parapet

with tired, tenacious limbs he was unaware that only a few seconds of time and a

few blocks of vertical stone divided him from seeing what had not been seen for

over four hundred years. Scrabbling one knee over the topmost stones he heaved

himself over the rough wall. When he lifted his head wearily to see what his

next obstacle might be, he saw before him, spreading oven an area of four square

acres, a desert of grey stone slabs. The parapet on which he was now sitting

bolt upright surrounded the whole area, and swinging his legs over he dropped

the four odd feet to the ground. As he dropped and then leaned back to support

himself against the wall, a crane arose at a far corner of the stone field and,

with a slow beating of its wings, drifted over the distant battlements and

dropped out of sight. The sun was beginning to set in a violet haze and the

stone field, save for the tiny figure of Steerpike, spread out emptily, the cold

slabs catching the prevailing tint of the sky. Between the slabs there was dark

moss and the long coarse necks of seeding grasses. Steerpike's greedy eyes had

devoured the arena. What use could it be put to? Since his escape this surely

was the strongest card for the pack that he intended to collect. Why, or how, or

when he would use his hoarded scraps of knowledge he could not tell. That was

for the future. Now he knew only that by risking his life he had come across an

enormous quadrangle as secret as it was naked, as hidden as it was open to the

wrath or tenderness of the elements. As he gave at the knees and collapsed into

a half-sleeping, half-fainting huddle by the wall, the stone field wavered in a

purple blush, and the sun withdrew.

19

"OVER THE ROOFSCAPE"

      The darkness came down over the castle and the Twisted Woods and over

Gormenghast Mountain. The long tables of the Dwellers were hidden in the

thickness of a starless night. The cactus trees and the acacias where Nannie

Slagg had walked, and the ancient thorn in the servants' quadrangle were as one

in their shrouding. Darkness over the four wings of Gormenghast. Darkness lying

against the glass doors of the Christening Room and pressing its impalpable body

through the ivy leaves of Lady Groan's choked window. Pressing itself against

the walls, hiding them to all save touch alone; hiding them and hiding

everything; swallowing everything in its insatiable omnipresence. Darkness over

the stone sky-field where clouds moved through it invisibly. Darkness over

Steerpike, who slept, woke and slept fitfully and then woke again -- with only

his scanty clothing, suitable more to the stifling atmosphere of the kitchens

than to this nakedness of night air. Shivering he stared out into a wall of

night, relieved by not so much as one faint star. Then he remembered his pipe. A

little tobacco was left in a tin box in his hip pocket.

      He filled the bowl in the darkness, ramming it down with his thin, grimed

forefinger, and with difficulty lit the strong coarse tobacco. Unable to see the

smoke as it left the bowl of the pipe and drifted out of his mouth, yet the glow

of the leaf and the increasing warmth of the bowl were of comfort. He wrapped

both his thin hands around it and with his knees drawn up to his chin, tasted

the hot weed on his tongue as the long minutes dragged by. When the pipe was at

last finished he found himself too wide awake to sleep, and too cold, and he

conceived the idea of making a blind circuit of the stone field, keeping one

hand upon the low wall at his side until he had returned to where he now stood.

Taking his cap off his head he laid it on the parapet and began to feel his way

along to the right, his hand rubbing the rough stone surface just below the

level of his shoulder. At first he began to count his steps so that on his

return he might while away a portion more of the night by working out the area

of the quadrangle, but he had soon lost count in the labours of his slow

progress.

      As far as he could remember there were no obstacles to be expected nor any

break in the parapet, but his memories of the climb and his first view of the

sky-field were jumbled up together, and he could not in the inky darkness rely

on his memory. Therefore he felt for every step, sometimes certain that he was

about to be impeded by a wall or a break in the stone flags, and he would stop

and move forward inch by inch only to find that his intuition had been wrong and

that the monotonous, endless, even course of his dark circuit was empty before

him. Long before he was halfway along the first of the four sides, he was

feeling for his cap on the balustrade, only to remember that he had not yet

reached the first corner.

      He seemed to have been walking for hours when he felt his hand stopped, as

though it had been struck, by the sudden right angle of the parapet. Three times

more he would have to experience the sudden change of direction in the darkness,

and then he would, as he groped forward, find his cap.

      Feeling desperate at the stretch of time since he had started his

sightless journey he became what seemed to him in the darkness to be almost

reckless in his pace, stepping forward jerkily foot by foot. Once on twice,

along the second wall, he stopped and leaned over the parapet. A wind was

beginning to blow and he hugged himself.

      As he neared unknowingly the third corner a kind of weight seemed to lift

from the air, and although he could see nothing, the atmosphere about him

appeared thinner and he stopped as though his eyes had been partially relieved

of a bandage. He stopped, leaned against the wall, and stared above him.

Blackness was there, but it was not the opaque blackness he had known.

      Then he felt, rather than saw, above him a movement of volumes. Nothing

could be discerned, but that there were forces that travelled across the

darkness he could not doubt; and then suddenly, as though another layer of

stifling cloth had been dragged from before his eyes, Steerpike made out above

him the enormous, indistinct shapes of clouds following one another in grave

order as though bound on some portentous mission.

      It was not, as Steerpike at first suspected, the hint of dawn. Long as the

time had seemed to him since he clambered over the parapet, it was still an hour

before the new day. Within a few moments he saw for himself that his hopes were

ill founded, for as he watched, the vague clouds began to thin as they moved

overhead, and between them yet others, beyond, gave way in their turn to even

more distant regions. The three distances of cloud moved oven, the nearest --

the blackest -- moving the fastest. The stone field was still invisible, but

Steerpike could make out his hand before his face.

      Then came the crumbling away of a grey veil from the face of the night,

and beyond the furthermost film of the terraced clouds there burst of a sudden a

swarm of burning crystals, and, afloat in their centre, a splinter of curved

fire.

      Noting the angle of the moon and judging the time, to his own annoyance,

to be hours earlier than he had hoped, Steerpike, glancing above him, could not

help but notice how it seemed as though the clouds had ceased to move, and how,

instead, the cluster of the stars and the thin moon had been set in motion and

were skidding obliquely across the sky.

      Swiftly they ran, those bright marvels, and, like the clouds, with a

purpose most immediate. Here and there oven the wide world of tattered sky,

points of fire broke free and ran, until the last dark tag of cloud had slid

away from the firmament and all at once the high, swift beauty of the floating

suns ceased in their surging and a night of stationany stars shone down upon the

ghostly field of flags.

      Now that heaven was alive with yellow stones it was possible for Steerpike

to continue his walk without fear, and he stumbled along preferring to complete

his detour than to make his way across the flags to his cloth cap. When he

reached his starting point he crammed the cap on his head, for anything was

precious in those hours that might mitigate the cold. By now he was fatigued

beyond the point of endurance.

      The ordeal of the last twelve to fifteen hours had sapped his strength.

The stifling inferno of Swelter's drunken province, the horror of the Stone

Lanes where he had fainted and had been found by Flay, and then the nightmare of

his climb up the wall and the slate roof, and thence by the less perilous but by

no means easy stages to the great stone field where he now stood, and where when

he had arrived he had swooned for the second time that day: all this had taken

its toll. Now, even the cold could not keep him awake and he lay down suddenly,

and with his head upon his folded arms, slept until he was awakened by a

hammering of hunger in his stomach and by the sun shining strongly in the

morning sky.

      But for the aching of his limbs, which gave him painful proof of the

reality of what he had endured, the trials of the day before had about them the

unreality of a dream. This morning as he stood up in the sunlight it was as

though he found himself transplanted into a new day, almost a new life in a new

world. Only his hunger prevented him from leaning contentedly over the warming

parapet and, with a hundred towers below him, planning for himself an incredible

future.

      The hours ahead held no promise of relaxation. Yesterday had exhausted

him, yet the day that he was now entering upon was to prove itself equally

rigorous, and though no part of the climbing entailed would be as desperate as

the worst of yesterday's adventures, his hunger and faintness augured for the

hours ahead a nightmare in sunshine.

      Within the first hour from the time when he had awakened, he had descended

a long sloping roof, after dropping nine feet from the parapet, and had then

come upon a small, winding stone staircase which led him across a gap between

two high walls to where a cluster of conical roofs forced him to make a long and

hazardous circuit. Arriving at last at the opposite side of the cluster, faint

and dizzy with fatigue and emptiness and with the heat of the strengthening sun,

he saw spread out before him in mountainous façades a crumbling panorama, a

roofscape of Gormenghast, its crags and its stark walls of cliff pocked with

nameless windows. Steerpike for a moment lost heart, finding himself in a region

as barren as the moon, and he became suddenly desperate in his weakness, and

falling on his knees retched violently.

      His sparse tow-coloured hair was plastered over his big forehead as though

with glue, and was darkened to sepia. His mouth was drawn down very slightly at

the corners. Any change in his masklike features was more than noticeable in

him. As he knelt he swayed. Then he very deliberately sat himself down on his

haunches and, pushing back some of the sticky hair from his brow so that it

stuck out from his head in a stiff dank manner, rested his chin on his folded

arms and then, very slowly, moved his eyes across the craggy canvas spread below

him, with the same methodical thoroughness that he had shown when scanning the

wall above the window of the prison room.

      Famished as he was, he never for a moment faltered in his scrutiny,

although it was an hour later when having covered every angle, every surface, he

relaxed and released his eyes from the panorama, and after shutting them for a

while fixed them again upon a certain window that he had found several minutes

earlier in a distant precipice of grey stone.

20

"NEAR AND FAR"

      Who can say how long the eye of the vulture or the lynx requires to grasp

the totality of a landscape, or whether in a comprehensive instant the seemingly

inexhaustible confusion of detail falls upon their eyes in an ordered and

intelligible series of distances and shapes, where the last detail is perceived

in relation to the corporate mass?

      It may be that the hawk sees nothing but those grassy uplands, and among

the coarse grasses, more plainly than the field itself, the rabbit or the rat,

and that the landscape in its entirety is never seen, but only those areas lit,

as it were with a torch, where the quarry slinks, the surrounding regions

thickening into cloud and darkness on the yellow eyes.

      Whether the scouring, sexless eye of the bird or beast of prey disperses

and sees all or concentrates and evades all saving that for which it searches,

it is certain that the less powerful eye of the human cannot grasp, even after a

life of training, a scene in its entirety. No eye may see dispassionately. There

is no comprehension at a glance. Only the recognition of damsel, horse on fly

and the assumption of damsel, horse or fly; and so with dreams and beyond, for

what haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye

and leaving the main of Life in darkness.

      When Steerpike began his scrutiny the roofscape was neither more nor less

than a conglomeration of stone structures spreading to right and left and away

from him. It was a mist of masonry. As he peered, taking each structure

individually, he found that he was a spectator of a stationary gathering of

stone personalities. During the hour of his concentration he had seen, gnowing

from three-quarters the way up a sheer, windowless face of otherwise arid wall,

a tree that curved out and upwards, dividing and subdividing until a labyrinth

of twigs gave to its contour a blur of sunlit smoke. The tree was dead, but

having grown fnom the south side of the wall it was shielded from the violence

of the winds, and, judging by the harmonious fanlike beauty of its shape, it had

not suffered the loss of a single sapless limb. Upon the lit wall its perfect

shadow lay as though engraved with superhuman skill. Brittle and dry, and so old

that its first tendril must surely have begun to thrust itself forth before the

wall itself had been completed, yet this tree had the grace of a young girl, and

it was the intricate lace-like shadow upon the wall that Steerpike had seen

first. He had been baffled until all at once the old tree itself, whose

brightness melted into the bright wall behind it, materialized.

      Upon the main stem that grew out laterally from the wall, Steerpike had

seen two figures walking. They appeared about the size of those stub ends of

pencil that are thrown away as too awkward to hold. He guessed them to be women

for as far as he could judge they were wearing identical dresses of purple, and

at first sight it appeared that they were taking their lives in their hands as

they trod that horizontal stem above a drop of several hundred feet, but by the

relative sizes of the figures and the tree trunk it was obvious that they were

as safe as though they had been walking along a bridge.

      He had watched them reach a point where the branch divided into three and

where as he shaded his eyes he could see them seat themselves upon chairs and

face one another across a table. One of them lifted her elbow in the position of

one pouring out tea. The other had then arisen and hurried back along the main

stem until she had reached the face of wall into which she suddenly disappeared;

and Steerpike, straining his eyes, could make out an irregularity in the

stonework and presumed that there must have been a window or doorway immediately

above where the tree grew from the wall. Shutting his eyes to rest them, it was

a minute before he could locate the tree again, lost as it was among a scone of

roofs and very far away; but when he did find it he saw that there were two

figures once again seated at the table. Beneath them swam the pellucid volumes

of the morning air. Above them spread the withered elegance of the dead tree,

and to their left its lace-like shadow.

      Steerpike had seen at a glance that it would be impossible for him to

reach the tree or the window and his eyes had continued their endless searching.

      He had seen a tower with a stone hollow in its summit. This shallow basin

sloped down from the copestones that surrounded the tower and was half filled

with rainwater. In this circle of water whose glittering had caught his eye, for

to him it appeared about the size of a coin, he could see that something white

was swimming. As far as he could guess it was a horse. As he watched he noticed

that there was something swimming by its side, something smaller, which must

have been the foal, white like its parent. Around the rim of the tower stood

swarms of cnows, which he had identified only when one of them, having flapped

away from the rest, grew from the size of a gnat to that of a black moth as it

circled and approached him before turning in its flight and gliding without the

least tremor of its outspread wings back to the stone basin, where it landed

with a flutter among its kind.

      He had seen, thirty feet below him and frighteningly close, after his eyes

had accustomed themselves to the minutiae of distances a head suddenly appear at

the base of what was more like a vertical black gash in the sunny wall than a

window. It had no window-frame, no curtains, no window-sill. It was as though it

waited for twelve stone blocks to fill it in, one above the other. Between

Steerpike and this wall was a gap of eighteen to twenty feet. As Steerpike saw

the head appear he lowered himself gradually behind an adjacent turret so as not

to attract attention and watched it with one eye around the masonry.

      It was a long head.

      It was a wedge, a sliver, a grotesque slice in which it seemed the

features had been forced to stake their claims, and it appeared that they had

done so in a great hurry and with no attempt to form any kind of symmetrical

pattern for their mutual advantage. The nose had evidently been the first upon

the scene and had spread itself down the entire length of the wedge, beginning

among the grey stubble of the hair and ending among the grey stubble of the

beard, and spreading on both sides with a ruthless disregard for the eyes and

mouth which found precarious purchase. The mouth was forced by the lie of the

terrain left to it, to slant at an angle which gave to its right-hand side an

expression of grim amusement and to its left, which dipped downwards across the

chin, a remorseless twist. It was forced by not only the unfriendly monopoly of

the nose, but also by the tapering characten of the head to be a short mouth;

but it was obvious by its very nature that, under normal conditions, it would

have covered twice the area. The eyes in whose expression might be read the

unending grudge they bore against the nose were as small as marbles and peered

out between the grey grass of the hair.

      This head, set at a long incline upon a neck as wry as a turtle's cut

across the narrow vertical black strip of the window.

      Steerpike watched it turn upon the neck slowly. It would not have

surprised him if it had dropped off, so toylike was its angle.

      As he watched, fascinated, the mouth opened and a voice as strange and

deep as the echo of a lugubrious ocean stole out into the morning. Neven was a

face so belied by its voice.

      The accent was of so weird a lilt that at first Steerpike could not

recognize more than one sentence in three, but he had quickly attuned himself to

the original cadence and as the words fell into place Steerpike realized that he

was staring at a poet.

      For some time after the long head had emptied itself of a slow, ruminative

soliloquy it stared motionlessly into the sky. Then it turned as though it were

scanning the dark interior of whatever sort of room it was that lay behind that

narrow window.

      In the long light and shade the protruding vertebrae of his neck, as he

twisted his head, stood out like little solid parchment-covered knobs. All at

once the head was facing the warm sunlight again, and the eyes travelled rapidly

in every direction before they came to nest. One hand propped up the stubbly peg

of a chin. The other, hanging listlessly over the rough sill-less edge of the

aperture swung sideways slowly to the simple rhythm of the verses he then

delivered.

            Linger now with me, thou Beauty,

            On the sharp archaic shore.

            Surely "tis a wastrel's duty

            And the gods could ask no more.

            If you lingerest when I linger,

            If thou tread"st the stones I tread,

            Thou wilt stay my spirit's hunger

            And dispel the dreams I dread.

            Come thou, love, my own, my only,

            Through the battlements of Groan;

            Lingering becomes so lonely

            When one lingers on one's own.

            I have lingered in the cloisters

            Of the Northern Wing at night,

            As the sky unclasped its oysters

            On the midnight pearls of light.

            For the long remorseless shadows

            Chilled me with exquisite fear.

            I have lingered in cold meadows

            Through a month of rain, my dear.

            Come, my Love, my sweet, my Only,

            Through the parapets of Groan.

            Lingering can be very lonely

            When one lingers on one's own.

            In dark alcoves I have lingered

            Conscious of dead dynasties.

            I have lingered in blue cellars

            And in hollow trunks of trees.

            Many a traveller through moonlight

            Passing by a winding stair

            Or a cold and crumbling archway

            Has been shocked to see me there.

            I have longed for thee, my Only,

            Hark! the footsteps of the Groan!

            Lingering is so very lonely

            When one lingers all alone.

            Will you come with me, and linger?

            And discourse with me of those

            Secret things the mystic finger

            Points to, but will not disclose?

            When I'm all alone, my glory,

            Always fades, because I find

            Being lonely drives the splendour

            Of my vision from my mind.

            Come, oh, come, my own! my Only!

            Through the Gormenghast of Groan.

            Lingering has become so lonely

            As I linger all alone!

      Steerpike, after the end of the second verse ceased to pay any attention

to the words, for he conceived the idea, now that he realized that the dreadful

head was no index to the character, of making his presence known to the poet,

and of craving from him at least some food and water if not more. As the voice

swayed on he realized that to appear suddenly would be a great shock to the

poet, who was so obviously under the impression that he was alone. Yet what else

was there to do? To make some sort of preparatory noise of warning before he

showed himself occurred to him, and when the last chorus had ended he coughed

gently. The effect was electric. The face reverted instantaneously to the

soulless and grotesque mask which Steerpike had first seen and which during the

recitation had been transformed by a sort of inner beauty. It had coloured, the

parchment of the dry skin reddening from the neck upwards like a piece of

blotting-paper whose conner has been dipped into red ink.

      Out of the black window Steerpike saw, as a result of his cough, the small

gimlety eyes peer coldly from a crimson wedge.

      He raised himself and bowed to the face across the gully.

      One moment it was there, but the next, before he could open his mouth, it

was gone. In the place of the poet's face was, suddenly, an inconceivable

commotion. Every sort of object suddenly began to appear at the window, starting

at the base and working up like an idiotic growth, climbing erratically as one

thing after another was crammed between the walls.

      Feverishly the tower of objects grew to the top of the window, hemmed in

on both sides by the coarse stones. Steerpike could not see the hands that

raised the mad assortment so rapidly. He could only see that out of the darkness

object after object was scrammed one upon the other, each one lit by the sun as

it took its place in the fantastic pagoda. Many toppled over, and fell, during

the hectic filling of the frame. A dank gold carpet slipped and floated down the

abyss, the pattern upon its back showing plainly until it drifted into the last

few fathoms of shadow. Three heavy books fell together, their pages fluttering,

and an old high-backed chair, which the boy heard faintly as it crashed far

below.

      Steerpike had dug his nails into the palms of his hands partly from

self-reproach for his failure, and partly to keep himself from relaxing in his

roofscape scrutiny In spite of his disappointment. He turned his head from the

near object and continued to comb the roofs and the walls and the towers.

      He had seen away to his right a dome covered with black moss. He had seen

the high façade of a wall that had been painted in green-and-black checks. It

was faded and partly overgrown with clinging weeds and had cracked from top to

bottom in a gigantic saw-toothed curve.

      He had seen smoke pouring through a hole between the slabs of a long

terrace. He had seen the favourite nesting grounds of the storks and a wall that

was emerald with lizards.

21

"DUST AND IVY"

      All this while he had been searching for one thing and one thing only -- a

means of entering the castle. He had made a hundred imaginary journeys, taking

into account his own weakness, but one after another they had led to blank

unscalable walls and to the edges of the roofs. Window after window he took as

his objective and attempted to trace his progress only to find that he was

thwarted. It was not until the end of the hour approached that a journey he was

unravelling in his eye culminated with his entry at a high window in the Western

Wing. He went over the whole journey again, from where he sat, to the tiny

window in the fan wall and realized that it could be done, if luck was on his

side and if his strength lasted.

      It was now two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was merciless. He

removed his jacket and, leaving it behind him, set forth shakily.

      The next three hours made him repent that he had ever left the kitchens.

Had it been possible for him to have suddenly been conjured back to Swelter's

enormous side he would have accepted the offer in his weakness. As the light

began to wane, twenty-four hours after he had lain above the prison room on the

sloping roof of slates, he came to the foot of that high wall, near the summit

of which was the window he had seen three hours previously. There he rested. He

was about midway between the ground two hundred feet below him and the window.

He had been accurate in his observation when he had guessed that the face of the

wall was covered over its entire area with a thick, ancient growth of ivy. As he

sat against the wall, his back against the enormous hairy stem of the creeper as

thick as the bole of a tree, the ivy leaves hung far out and oven him and,

turning his head upwards, he found that he was gazing into a profound and dusty

labyrinth. He knew that he would have to climb through darkness, so thick was

the skein of the coarse, monotonous foliage; but the limbs of the straggling

weed were thick and strong, so that he could nest at times in his climb and lean

heavily upon them. Knowing that with every minute that passed his weakness was

growing, he did not wait longer than to regain his breath, and then, with a

twist of his mouth he forced himself as close as he could to the wall, and

engulfed in the dust-smelling darkness of the ivy he began, yet again, to climb.

      For how long Steerpike clambered upwards in the acrid darkness, for how

long he breathed in the rotten, dry, dust-filled air, is of no consequence

compared to the endlessness of the nightmare in his brain. That was the reality,

and all he knew, as he neared the window, was that he had been among black

leaves for as far back as he could recall -- that the ivy stem was dry and

coarse and hairy to hold, and that the bitter leaves exuded a pungent and

insidious smell.

      At times he could see glimpses of the hot evening reflected through the

leaves, but for the most part he struggled up in darkness, his knees and

knuckles bleeding and his arms weary beyond weariness from the forcing back of

the fibrous growth and from tearing the tendrils from his face and clothing.

      He could not know that he was nearing the window. Distance, even more than

time, had ceased to have any meaning for him, but all at once he found that the

leaves were thinning and that blotches of light lay pranked about him. He

remembered having observed from below how the ivy had appeared to be less

profuse and to lie closer to the wall as it neared the window. The hirsute

branches were less dependable now and several had snapped at his weight, so that

he was forced to keep to one of the main stems that clung dustily to the wall.

Only a foot or two in depth, the ivy lay at his back partially shielding him

from the sun. A moment later and he was alone in the sunshine. It was difficult

for his fingers to find purchase. Fighting to wedge them between the clinging

branches and the wall he moved, inch by inch, upwards. It seemed to him that all

his life he had been climbing. All his life he had been ill and tortured. All

his life he had been terrified, and red shapes rolled. Hammers were beating and

the sweat poured into his eyes.

      The questionable gods who had lowered for him from the roof above the

prison room that branch of creeper when he was in similar peril were with him

again, for as he felt upwards his hand struck a protruding layer of stone. It

was the base of a rough window-sill. Steerpike sobbed and forced his body

upwards and loosing his hands for a moment from the creeper, he flung his hands

over the sill. There he hung, his arms outstretched stiffly before him like a

wooden figure, his legs dangling. Then, wriggling feebly, he rolled himself at

length over the stone slab, overbalanced, and in a whirl of blackness fell with

a crash upon the boarded floor of Fuchsia's secret attic.

22

"THE BODY BY THE WINDOW"

      On the afternoon following her brother's birth, Fuchsia stood silently at

the window of her bedroom. She was crying, the tears following one another down

her flushed cheeks as she stared through a smarting film at Gormenghast

Mountain. Mrs. Slagg, unable to comprehend, made abortive efforts to console

her. This time there had been no mutual hugging and weeping, and Mrs. Slagg's

eyes were filled with a querulous, defeated expression. She clasped her little

wrinkled hands together.

      "What is it, then, my caution dear? What is it, my own ugliness? Tell me!

Tell me at once. Tell your old Nannie about your little sorrows. Oh, my poor

heart! you must tell me all about it. Come, inkling, come."

      But Fuchsia might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only her

tears moved.

      At last the old lady pattered out of the room, saying she would bring in a

currant cake for her caution, that no one ever answered her, and that her back

was aching.

      Fuchsia heard the tapping of her feet in the corridor. Within a moment she

was racing along the passage after her old nurse, whom she hugged violently

before running back and floundering with a whirl of her blood-red dress down

long flights of stains and through a series of gloomy halls, until she found

herself in the open, and beyond the shadows of the castle walls. She ran on in

the evening sunshine. At last, after skirting Pentecost's orchard and climbing

to the edge of a small pine wood she stopped running and in a quick, stumbling

manner forced a path through a low decline of ferns to where a lake lay

motionless. There were no swans. There were no wild wadens. From the reflected

trees there came no cries from birds.

      Fuchsia fell at full length and began to chew at the grass in front of

her. Her eyes as they gazed upon the lake were still inflamed.

      "I hate things! I hate all things! I hate and hate every single tiniest

thing. I hate the _world_," said Fuchsia aloud, raising herself on her elbows,

her face to the sky.

      "I shall live _alone_. Always alone. In a house, or in a tree."

      Fuchsia started to chew at a fresh grass blade.

      "Someone will come then, if I live alone. Someone from another kind of

world -- a new world -- not from this world, but someone who is _different_, and

he will fall in love with me at once because I live alone and aren't like the

other beastly things in this world, and he"ll enjoy having me because of my

pride."

      Another flood of tears came with a rush.

      "He will be tall, taller than Mr. Flay, and strong like a lion and with

yellow hair like a lion"s, only more curly; and he will have big, strong feet

because mine are big, too, but won't look so big if his are bigger; and he will

be cleverer than the Doctor, and he"ll wean a long black cape so that my clothes

will look brighten still; and he will say: 'Lady Fuchsia', and I shall say:

'What is it?' "

      She sat up and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

      The lake darkened, and while she sat and stared at the motionless water,

Steerpike was beginning his climb of the ivy.

      Mrs. Slagg was telling her troubles to Keda and trying to preserve the

dignity which she thought she ought to show as the head nurse of the direct and

only heir to Gormenghast, and at the same time longing to unburden herself in a

more natural way. Flay was polishing an ornate helmet which Lord Groan had to

wear, that evening being the first after the advent, and Swelter was whetting a

long meat-knife on a grindstone. He was doubled over it like a crammed bolster,

and was evidently taking great pains to bring the blade to an uncommonly keen

edge. The grindstone, dwarfed ridiculously by the white mass above it, wheeled

to the working of a foot-treadle. As the steel whisked obliquely across the flat

of the whirling stone, the harsh, sandy whistling of the sound apparently gave

pleasure to Mr. Swelter, for a wodge of flesh kept shifting its position on his

face.

      As Fuchsia got to her feet and began to push her way up the hill of ferns,

Steerpike was forty feet from her window and clawing away at the dry, dirty

bunches of old sparrows' nests that were blocking his upward climb.

      When Fuchsia reached the castle she made straight for her room, and when

she had closed the door behind her, drew a bolt across it and going to an old

cardboard box in a corner found, after some rummaging, a piece of soft charcoal.

She approached a space on the wall and stood staring at the plaster. Then she

drew a heart and around it she wrote: _I am Fuchsia. I must always be. I am me.

Don't be frightened. Wait and see._

      Then she felt a great yearning for her picture-book with the poems. She

lit a candle and, pulling back her bed, crept through the stairway door and

began to climb spirally upwards to her dim sanctum.

      It was not very often that she climbed to the attic in the late afternoon,

and the dankness of the front room as she entered stopped her on the last stair

for a moment. Her candle as she passed through the narrow gully illumined

fitfully the weird assortment that comprised its walls, and when she came to the

emptiness of her acting room she moved forward slowly, treading in the pale aura

of light cast by the candleflame.

      In her third especial attic she knew that she had left, some weeks before,

a supply of red-and-green wax tapers that she had unearthed, put aside, and

forgotten. She had rediscovered them. Three of these would light the room up

beautifully for she wanted the window to be shut. She climbed the ladder to the

balcony, pushed open the door with one hinge and entered, with a gush of dark

love.

      Her long coloured candles were by the door and she lit one of them

immediately from the little white one in her hand. Turning to place it on the

table, her heart stopped beating, for she found that she was staring across the

room at a body lying huddled beneath her window.

      Steerpike had lain in a dead faint for some considerable time when

consciousness began to seep through him. Twilight had fallen over Gormenghast.

Out of the blackness of his brain far shapes that surrounded him in the room had

begun to approach him growing in definition and in bulk as they did so until

they became recognizable.

      For several minutes he lay there. The comparative coolness of the room and

the stillness of his body at length restored in his mind a state of inquiry. He

could not remember the room, as was natural, nor could he remember how he had

arrived there. He only knew that his throat was parched and beneath his belt a

tiger was clawing in his stomach. For a long time he stared at a drunken and

grotesque shape that arose from the centre of the floor. Had he been awakened

from sleep to see it looming up before him it would no doubt have startled him

considerably, but recovering from his faint, he was drained of apprehension; he

was only weak. It would have been strange for him to have recognized in the dim

light of the twilit room Fuchsia's fantastic Root from the Twisted Woods.

      His eyes travelled away from it at length and noticed the darkened

pictures on the walls, but the light was too dim for him to be able to discern

what they contained.

      His eyes moved here and there, recovering their strength; but his body lay

inert, until at length he raised himself upon one elbow.

      Above him was a table, and with an effort he struggled on to his knees

and, gripping its edge raised himself by degrees. The room began to swim before

his eyes and the pictures on the walls dwindled away to the size of stamps and

swayed wildly across the walls. His hands were not his hands as he gripped the

table edge. They were another's hands in which he could vaguely, and in an

occult way, feel the shadows of sentiency. But the fingers held on,

independently of his brain or body, and he waited until his eyes cleared and he

saw below him the stale oddments of food that Fuchsia had brought up to the

attic on the morning of the previous day.

      They were littered on the table, each object remorseless in its actuality.

      The nebulous incoherence of things had changed in his brain, as he stared

down upon the still-life group on the table, to a frightening _proximity_.

      Two wrinkled pears; haifa seed cake; nine dates in a battered white

cardboard box, and ajug of dandelion wine. Beside these a large handpainted book

that lay open where a few verses were opposed by a picture in purple and grey.

It was to Steerpike in his unusual physical state as though that picture were

the world, and that he, in some shadowy adjacent province, were glimpsing the

reality.

      He was the ghost, the purple-and-grey page was truth and actual fact.

      Below him stood three men. They were dressed in grey, and purple flowers

were in their dark confused locks. The landscape beyond them was desolate and

was filled with old metal bridges, and they stood before it together upon the

melancholy brow of a small hill. Their hands were exquisitely shaped and their

bare feet also, and it seemed that they were listening to a strange music, for

their eyes gazed out beyond the page and beyond the reach of Steerpike, and on

and on beyond the hill of Gormenghast and the Twisted Woods.

      Equally real to the boy at that moment were the grey-black simple letters

that made up the words and the meaning of the verses on the opposite side of the

page. The uncompromising visual starkness of all that lay on the table had for a

moment caused him to forget his hunger, and although uninterested in poetry on

pictures, Steerpike, in spite of himself, read with a curiously slow and

deliberate concentration upon the white page of the three old men in their grey

and purple world.

            Simple, seldom and sad

                  We are;

            Alone on the Halibut Hills

                  Afar,

            With sweet mad Expressions

                  Of old

            Strangely beautiful,

                  So we're told

            By the Creatures that Move

                  In the sky

                  And Die

            On the night when the Dead Trees

                  Prance and Cry.

            Sensitive, seldom and sad --

            Sensitive, seldom and sad --

            Simple, seldom and sad

                  Are we

            When we take our path

                  To the purple sea --

            With mad, sweet Expressions

                  Of Yore,

            Strangely beautiful,

                  Yea, and More

            On the Night of all Nights

                  When the sky

                  Streams by

            In rags, while the Dead Trees

                  Prance and Cry.

            Sensitive, seldom, and sad --

            Sensitive, seldom, and sad.

      Steerpike noticed small thumb-marks on the margin of the page. They were

as important to him as the poems or the picture. Everything was equally

important because all had become so real now where all had been so blurred. His

hand as it lay on the table was now his own. He had forgotten at once what the

words had meant, but the scnipt was there, black and rounded.

      He put out his hand and secured one of the wrinkled pears. Lifting it to

his mouth he noticed that a bite had already been taken from its side.

      Making use of the miniature and fluted precipice of hard, white

discoloured flesh, where Fuchsia's teeth had left their parallel grooves, he bit

greedily, his top teeth severing the wrinkled skin of the pear, and the teeth of

his lower jaw entering the pale cliff about halfway up its face; they met in the

secret and dank centre of the fruit -- in that abactinal region where, since the

petals of the pear flower had been scattered in some far June breeze, a stealthy

and profound maturing had progressed by day and night.

      As he bit, for the second time, into the fruit his weakness filled him

again as with a thin atmosphere, and he carefully lowered himself face down over

the table until he had recovered strength to continue his clandestine meal. As

he lifted his head, he noticed the long couch with its elegant lines. Taking

hold of the seed cake in one hand and the jug of dandelion wine in the other,

after tipping the dates out of their cardboard box into his pocket, he felt his

way along the edge of the table and stumbled across the few paces that divided

him from the couch, where he seated himself suddenly and put his dusty feet up,

one after the other, upon the wine-red leather of the upholstery.

      He had supposed the jug to contain water, for he had not looked inside

when he lifted it and felt its weight in his wrist, and when he tasted the wine

on his tongue he sat up with a sudden revival of strength, as though the very

thought of it had resuscitated him. Indeed, the wine worked wonders with him,

and within a few minutes, with the cake, the dates and the rest of the second

pear to support its tonic properties, Steerpike was revived, and getting to his

feet he shuffled around the room in his own peculiar way. Drawing his lips back

from his closed teeth, he whistled in a thin, penetrating, tuneless manner,

breaking off every now and then as his eyes nested with more than a casual

glance on some picture on another.

      The light was fading very rapidly, and he was about to try the handle of

the door to see whether, dark as it was, he could find a still more comfortable

room in which to spend the night before he finally stretched himself on the long

couch, when he heard the distinct sound of a footstep.

      With a hand still outstretched towards the door, he stood motionless for a

moment, and then his head inclined itself to the left as he listened. There was

no doubt that someone was moving either in the next noom or in the next room but

one.

      Moving one step nearer to the door as silently as a ghost, he turned the

handle and drew it back the merest fraction, but sufficiently for him to place

one eye at the aperture and to command a view of something which made him suck

at his breath.

      There was no reason why, because the room he had been in for the last hour

or more was small, he should have presumed that the door out of it would lead to

an apartment of roughly the same size. But when on peering through the chink

between the door and the lintel he saw how mistaken had been his intuition

regarding the size of the room beyond, he received a shock second only to that

of seeing the figure that was approaching him.

      Nor was it only the _size_. It was perhaps even more of a shock to realize

that he had been _above_ the adjacent room. Through the gloom he watched the

figure of a girl, holding in her hand a lighted candle that lit the bodice of

her dress to crimson. The floor across which she walked slowly but firmly

appeared to stretch endlessly behind her and to her right and to her left. That

she was below him and that within a few feet a balcony divided him from her, as

she approached, was so unexpected that a sense of unreality such as he had

experienced during his recovery from his faint again pervaded him. But the sound

of her footsteps was very real and the light of the candle flame upon her lower

lip awoke him to the actuality. Even in his predicament he could not help

wondering where he had seen her before. A sudden movement of the shadows on her

face had awakened a memory. Thoughts moved swiftly through his mind. No doubt

there were steps leading up to the balcony. She would enter the room in which he

stood. She walked with certainty. She did not hesitate. She was unafraid. These

must be her rooms, he had entered. Why was she here at this hour? Who was she?

He closed the door softly.

      Where had he seen that red dress before? Where? Where? Very recently. The

crimson. He heard her climbing the stairs. He glanced around the room. There was

no hiding place. As his eyes moved he saw the Book on the table. Her book. He

saw a few crumbs where the seed cake had been standing on the cloth. He half ran

on tip-toe to the window and glanced down. The emptiness of the dark air falling

to the tops of towers sickened him as memories of his climb were reawakened. He

turned away. Even as he heard her feet on the balcony he was saying: "Where?

Where? Where did I see the red dress?" and as the feet stopped at the door he

remembered, and at the same moment dropped softly to his hands and knees beneath

the window. Then, huddling himself into an awkward position, and with one arm

outstretched limply, he closed his eyes in emulation of the faint from which he

had not so long ago recovered.

      He had seen her through the circular spyhole in the wall of the Octagonal

Room. She was the Lady Fuchsia Groan, the daughter of Gormenghast. His thoughts

pursued each other through his head. She had been distraught. She had been

enraged that a brother had been born for her; she had escaped down the passage

from her father. There could be no sympathy _there_. She was, like her father,

ill at ease. She was opening the door. The air wavered in the candlelight.

Steerpike, watching from between his lashes, saw the air grow yet brighten as

she lit two long candles. He heard her turn upon her heel and take a pace

forward and then there was an absolute silence.

      He lay motionless, his head thrown back upon the carpet and twisted

slightly on his neck.

      It seemed that the girl was as motionless as he, and in the protracted and

deathly stillness he could hear a heart beating. It was not his own.

23

"ULLAGE OF SUNFLOWER"

      For the first few moments Fuchsia had remained inert, her spirit dead to

what she saw before her. As with those who on hearing of the death of their

lover are numb to the agony that must later wrack them, so she for those first

few moments stood incomprehensive and stared with empty eyes.

      Then, indeed, was her mind split into differing passions, the paramount

being agony that her secret had been discovered -- her casket of wonder rifled

-- her soul, it seemed, thrown naked to a world that could never understand.

      Behind this passion lay a fear. And behind her fear was curiosity --

curiosity as to who the figure was. Whether he was recovering on dying; how he

had got there, and a long way behind the practical question of what she should

do. As she stood there it was as though within her a bonfire had been lighted.

It grew until it reached the zenith of its power and died away, but

undestroyable among the ashes lay the ache of a wound for which there was no

balm.

      She moved a little nearer in a slow, suspicious way, holding the candle

stiffly at arm's length. A blob of the hot wax fell across her wrist and she

started as though she had been struck. Another two cautious paces brought her to

the side of the figure and she bent down and peered at the tilted face. The

light lay upon the large forehead and the cheekbones and throat. As she watched,

her heart beating, she noticed a movement in the stretched gullet. He was alive.

The melting wax was hurting her hand as it ran down the coloured side of the

candle. A candlestick was kept behind the couch on a rickety shelf and she

raised herself from her stooping with the idea of finding it, and began to

retreat from Steerpike. Not daring to take her eyes off him, she placed one leg

behind the other with a grotesque deliberation and so moved backwards. Before

neaching the wall, however, the calf of her leg came into unexpected contact

with the edge of the couch, and she sat down very suddenly upon it as though she

had been tapped behind the knees. The candle shook in her hand and the light

flickered across the face of the figure on the floor. Although it seemed to her

that the head started a little at the noise she had made, she put it down to the

fickle play of the light upon his features, but peered at him for a long time

nevertheless to convince herself. Eventually she curled her legs under her on

the couch and raised herself to her knees and, reaching her free hand out behind

her, she felt her fingers grip the shelf and after some fumbling close upon the

iron candlestick.

      She forced the candle at once into one of the three iron arms and, getting

up, placed it on the table by her book.

      It had come into her mind that some effort might be made to reinvigorate

the crumpled thing. She approached it again. Horrible as the thought was, that

if she were the means of a recovery she would be compelled to talk to a stranger

in _her_ room, yet the idea of him lying there indefinitely, and perhaps dying

there, was even more appalling.

      Forgetting for a moment her fear, she knelt loudly on the floor beside him

and shook him by the shoulder, her lower lip sticking out plumply and her black

hair falling across her cheeks. She stopped to scrape some tallow from her

fingers and then continued shaking him. Steerpike let himself be pushed about

and remained perfectly limp; he had decided to delay his recovery.

      Fuchsia suddenly remembered that when she had seen her Aunt Cora faint, a

very long time ago, in the central hall of the East Wing, her father had ordered

a servant in attendance to get a glass of water, and that when they had been

unable to get the drink down the poor white creature's throat, they had thrown

it in her face and she had recovered immediately.

      Fuchsia looked about her to see whether she had any water in the room.

Steerpike had left the jug of dandelion wine by the side of the couch, but it

was out of her range of vision and she had forgotten it. As her eyes travelled

around her room they came at last to rest upon an old vase of semi-opaque

dark-blue glass, which a week on so ago Fuchsia had filled with water, for she

had found among the wild grass and the nettles near the moat, a tall,

heavy-necked sunflower with an enormous Ethiopian eye of seeds and petals as big

as her hand and as yellow as even she could wish for. But its long, rough neck

had been broken and its head hung in a deadweight of fire among the tares. She

had feverishly bitten through those fibres that she could not tear apart where

the neck was fractured and had run all the way with her wounded treasure through

the castle and up the flights of stairs and into her room, and then up again,

around and around as she climbed the spinal staircase, and had found the

dark-blue glass vase and filled it with water and then, quite exhausted, had

lowered the dry, hairy neck into the depths of the vase and, sitting upon the

couch, had stared at it and said to herself aloud:

      "Sunflower who's broken, I found you, so drink some water up, and then you

won't die -- not so quickly, anyway. If you do, I'll buny you, anyway. I'll dig

a long grave and bury you. Pentecost will give me a spade. If you don't die, you

can stay. I'm going now," she had finished by saying, and had gone to her room

below and had found her nurse, but had made no mention of her sunflower.

      It had died. Indeed she had only changed the water once, and with its

petals decaying it still leaned stiffly out of the blue glass vase.

      Directly Fuchsia saw it she thought of the water in the vase. She had

filled it full of clear white water. That it might have evaporated never entered

her head. Such things were not part of her world of knowledge.

      Steerpike's vision, for he would peer cunningly through his eyelashes

whenever occasion favoured, was obtruded by the table and he could not see what

the Lady Fuchsia was doing. He heard her approaching and kept his eyelids

together, thinking it was just about time for him to groan, and begin to

recover, for he was feeling cramped, when he realized that she was bending

directly over him.

      Fuchsia had removed the sunflower and laid it on the floor, noticing at

the same time an unpleasant and sickly smell. There was something pungent in it,

something disgusting. Tipping the vase suddenly upside down, she was amazed to

see, instead of a rush of refreshing water, a sluggish and stenching trickle of

slime descend like a green soup over the upturned face of the youth.

      She had tipped something wet oven the face of someone who was ill and that

to Fuchsia was the whole principle, so she was not surprised when she found that

its cogency was immediate.

      Steerpike, indeed, had received a nasty shock. The stench of the stagnant

slime filled his nostrils. He spluttered and spat the slough from his mouth, and

rubbing his sleeve across his face smeared it more thinly but more evenly and

completely than before. Only his dark-red concentrated eyes stared out from the

filthy green mask, unpolluted.

24

SOAP FOR GREASEPAINT

      Fuchsia squatted back on her heels in surprise as he sat bolt upright and

glared at her. She could not hear what he muttered through his teeth. His

dignity had been impaired, or perhaps not so much his dignity as his vanity.

Passions he most certainly had, but he was more wily than passionate, and so

even at this moment, with the sudden wrath and shock within him, he yet held

himself in check and his brain overpowered his anger, and he smiled hideously

through the putrid scum. He got to his feet painfully.

      His hands were the dull sepia-red of dry blood for he had been bruised and

cut in his long hours of climbing. His clothes were torn; his hair dishevelled

and matted with dust and twigs and filth from his climb in the ivy.

      Standing as straight as he could, he inclined himself slightly towards

Fuchsia, who had risen at the same time.

      "The Lady Fuchsia Groan," said Steerpike, as he bowed.

      Fuchsia stared at him and clenched her hands at her sides. She stood

stiffly, her toes were turned slightly inwards towards each other, and she

leaned a little forwards as her eyes took in the bedraggled creature in front of

her. He was not much bigger than she was, but much more clever; she could see

that at once.

      Now that he had recovered, her mind was filled with horror at the idea of

this alien at large in her room.

      Suddenly, before she had known what she was doing, before she had decided

to speak, before she knew of what to speak, her voice escaped from her hoarsely:

      "What do you want? Oh, what do you want? This is _my_ room. _My_ room."

      Fuchsia clasped her hands at the curve of her breasts in the attitude of

prayer. But she was not praying. Her nails were digging into the flesh of either

hand. Her eyes were wide open.

      "Go away," she said. "Go away from my room." And then her whole mood

changed as her feelings arose like a tempest.

      "I hate you!" she shouted, and stamped her foot upon the ground. "I hate

you for coming here. I hate you in my room." She seized the table edge with both

her hands behind her and rattled it on its legs.

      Steerpike watched her carefully.

      His mind had been working away behind his high forehead. Unimaginative

himself he could recognize imagination in her: he had come upon one whose whole

nature was the contradiction of his own. He knew that behind her simplicity was

something he could never have. Something he despised as impractical. Something

which would never carry her to power nor riches, but would retard her progress

and keep her apart in a world of her own make-believe. To win her favour he must

talk in her own language.

      As she stood breathless beside the table and as he saw her cast her eyes

about the room as though to find a weapon, he struck an attitude, raising one

hand, and in an even, flat, hand voice that contrasted, even to Fuchsia in her

agony, with her own passionate outcry said:

      "Today I saw a great pavement among the clouds made of grey stones, bigger

than a meadow. No one goes there. Only a heron.

      "Today I saw a tree growing out of a high wall, and people walking on it

fan above the ground. Today I saw a poet look out of a narrow window. But the

stone field that is lost in the clouds is what you'd like best. Nobody goes

there. It's a good place to play games and to" (he took the plunge cunningly)

"-- and to _dream_ of things." Without stopping, for he felt that it would be

hazardous to stop:

      "I saw today," he said, "a horse swimming in the top of a tower: I saw a

million towers today. I saw clouds last night. I was cold. I was colder than

ice. I have had no food. I have had no sleep." He curled his lip in an effort at

a smile. "And then you pour green filth on me," he said.

      "And now I'm here where you hate me being. I'm here because there was

nowhere else to go. I have seen so much. I have been out all night. I have

escaped" (he whispered the word dramatically) "and, best of all, I found the

field in the clouds, the field of stones."

      He stopped for breath and lowered his hand from its posturing and peered

at Fuclisia.

      She was leaning against the table, her hands gripping its sides. It may

have been the dankness that deceived him, but to his immense satisfaction he

imagined she was staring through him.

      Realizing that if this were so, and his words were beginning to work upon

her imagination, he must proceed without a pause sweeping her thoughts along,

allowing her only to think of what he was saying. He was clever enough to know

what would appeal to her. Her crimson dress was enough for him to go on. She was

romantic. She was a simpleton; a dreaming girl of fifteen years.

      "Lady Fuchsia," he said, and clenched his hand at his forehead, "I come

for sanctuary. I am a rebel. I am at your service as a dreamer and a man of

action. I have climbed for hours, and am hungry and thirsty. I stood on the

field of stones and longed to fly into the clouds, but I could only feel the

pain in my feet."

      "Go away," said Fuchsia in a distant voice. "Go away from me." But

Steerpike was not to be stopped, for he noticed that her violence had died and

he was tenacious as a ferret.

      "Where can I go to?" he said. "I would go this instant if I knew where to

escape to. I have already been lost for hours in long corridors. Give me first

some water so that I can wash this horrible slime from my face, and give me a

little time to rest and then I will go, fan away, and I will never come again,

but will live alone in the stone sky-field where the herons build."

      Fuchsia's voice was so vague and distant that it appeared to Steerpike

that she had not been listening, but she said slowly: "Where is it? Who are

you?"

      Steerpike answered immediately.

      "My name is Steerpike," he said, leaning back against the window in the

darkness, "but I cannot tell you now where the field of stones lies all cold in

the clouds. No, I couldn't tell you that -- not yet."

      "Who are you?" said Fuchsia again. "Who are you in my room?"

      "I have told you," he said. "I am Steerpike. I have climbed to your lovely

room. I like your pictures on the walls and your book and your horrible root."

      "My root is beautiful. Beautiful!" shouted Fuchsia. "Do not talk about my

things. I hate you for talking about my things. Don't look at them." She ran to

the twisted and candle-lit root of smooth wood in the wavering darkness and

stood between it and the window where he was.

      Steerpike took out his little pipe from his pocket and sucked the stem.

She was a strange fish, he thought, and needed carefully selected bait.

      "How did you get to my room?" said Fuchsia huskily.

      "I climbed," said Steerpike. "I climbed up the ivy to your room. I have

been climbing all day."

      "Go away from the window," said Fuchsia. "Go away to the door."

      Steerpike, surprised, obeyed her. But his hands were in his pockets. He

felt more sure of his ground.

      Fuchsia moved gauchely to the window taking up the candle as she passed

the table, and peering over the sill, held the shaking flame above the abyss.

The drop, which she remembered so well by daylight, looked even more terrifying

now.

      She turned towards the room. "You must be a good climber," she said

sullenly but with a touch of admiration in her voice which Steerpike did not

fail to detect.

      "I am," said Steerpike. "But I can't bear my face like this any longer.

Let me have some water. Let me wash my face, your Ladyship; and then if I can't

stay here, tell me where I can go and sleep. I haven't had a cat's nap. I am

tired; but the stone field haunts me. I must go there again after I've rested."

      There was a silence.

      "You've got kitchen clothes on," said Fuchsia flatly.

      "Yes," said Steerpike. "But I'm going to change them. It's the kitchen I

escaped from. I detested it. I want to be free. I shall never go back."

      "Are you an _adventurer_?" said Fuchsia, who, although she did not think

he looked like one, had been more than impressed by his climb and by the flow of

his words.

      "I am," said Steerpike. "That's just what I am. But at the moment I want

some water and soap."

      There was no waten in the attic, but the idea of taking him down to her

bedroom where he could wash and then go away for food, rankled in her, for he

would pass through her other attic rooms. Then she realized that he had, in any

event, to leave her sanctum and, saving for a return climb down the ivy the only

path lay through the attics and down the spiral staircase to her bedroom. Added

to this was the thought that if she took him down now he would see very little

of her rooms in the dankness, whereas tomorrow her attic would be exposed.

      "Lady Fuchsia," said Steerpike, "what work is there that I can do? Will

you introduce me to someone who can employ me? I am not a kitchen lackey, my

Ladyship, I am a man of purpose. Hide me tonight, Lady Fuchsia, and let me meet

someone tomorrow who may employ me. All I want is one interview. My brains will

do the rest."

      Fuchsia stared at him, open mouthed. Then she thrust her full lower lip

forward and said:

      "What's the awful smell?"

      "It's the filthy dregs you drowned me in," said Steerpike. "It's my face

you're smelling."

      "Oh," said Fuchsia. She took up the candle again. "You'd better follow."

      Steerpike did so, out of the door, along the balcony, and then down the

ladder. Fuchsia did not think of helping him in the ill-lit darkness, though she

heard him stumble. Steerpike kept as close to her as he could and the little

patch of faint candlelight on the floor which preceded her, but as she threaded

her way dexterously between the oddments that lay banked up in the first attic,

he was more than once struck across the face, by a hanging rope of spiked

seashells, by the giraffe's leg which Fuchsia ducked beneath, and once he was

brought to a gasping halt by the brass hilt of a sword.

      When he had reached the head of the spiral staircase Fuchsia was already

halfway down and he wound after her, cursing.

      After a long time he felt the close air of the staircase lighten about him

and a few moments later he had come to the last of the descending circles and

had stepped down into a bedroom. Fuchsia lit a lamp on the wall. The blinds were

not drawn and the black night filled up the triangles of her window.

      She was pouring from a jug the water which Steerpike so urgently needed.

The smell was beginning to affect him, for as he had stepped down into the room

he had retched incontinently, with his thin, bony hands at his stomach.

      At the gungling sound of the water as it slopped into the bowl on

Fuchsia's washstand he drew a deep breath through his teeth. Fuchsia, hearing

his foot descend upon the boards of her room, turned, jug in hand, and as she

did so she overflooded the bowl with a rush of water which in the lamplight made

bright pools on the dark ground. "Water," she said, "if you want it."

      Steerpike advanced rapidly to the basin and plucked off his coat and vest,

and stood beside Fuchsia in the darkness very thin, very bunched at the

shoulders, and with an extraordinary perkiness in the poise of his body.

      "What about soap?" said Steerpike, lowering his arms into the basin. The

water was cold, and he shivered. His shoulder blades stood out sharply from his

back as he bent over and shrugged his shoulders together. "I can't get this muck

off without soap and a scrubbing-brush, your Ladyship."

      "There's some things in that drawer," said Fuchsia slowly. "Hurry up and

finish, and then go away. You're not in your own room. You're in my room where

no one's allowed to come, only my old nurse. So hurry up and go away."

      "I will," said Steerpike, opening the drawer and rummaging among the

contents until he had found a piece of soap. "But don't forget you promised to

introduce me to someone who might employ me."

      "I didn't," said Fuchsia. "How do you dare to tell such lies to me? How do

you dare!"

      Then came Steerpike's stroke of genius. He saw that there was no object in

pressing his falsehood any further and, making a bold move into the unknown he

leapt with great agility away from the basin, his face now thick in lather.

Wiping away the white froth from his lips, he channelled a huge dank mouth with

his forefinger and posturing in the attitude of a clown listening he remained

immobile for seven long seconds with his hand to his ear. Where the idea had

come from he did not know, but he had felt since he first met Fuchsia that if

anything were to win her favour it was something tinged with the theatre, the

bizarre, and yet something quite simple and guileless, and it was this that

Steerpike found difficult. Fuchsia stared hard. She forgot to hate him. She did

not see him. She saw a clown, a living limb of nonsense. She saw something she

loved as she loved her root, her giraffe leg, her crimson dress.

      "Good!" she shouted, clenching her hands. "Good! good! good! good!" All at

once she was on her bed, landing upon both her knees at once. Her hands clasped

the footrail.

      A snake writhed suddenly under the ribs of Steerpike. He had succeeded.

What he doubted fon the moment was whether he could live up to the standard he

had set himself.

      He saw, out of the corner of his eye, which like the rest of his face was

practically smothered in soap-suds, the dim shape of Lady Fuchsia looming a

little above him on the bed. It was up to him. He didn't know much about clowns,

but he knew that they did irrational things very seriously, and it had occurred

to him that Fuchsia would enjoy them. Steerpike had an unusual gift. It was to

understand a subject without appreciating it. He was almost entirely cerebral in

his approach. But this could not easily be perceived; so shrewdly, so surely he

seemed to enter into the heart of whatever he wished, in his words or his deeds,

to mimic.

      From the ludicrous listening posture he straightened himself slowly, and

with his toes turned outwards extravagantly he ran a few steps towards a corner

of Fuchsia's room, and then stopped to listen again, his hand at his ear.

Continuing his run he reached the corner and picked up, after several efforts at

getting his hand to reach as far down as the floor, a piece of green cloth which

he hobbled back with, his feet as before turned out so far as to produce between

them a continuous line.

      Fuchsia, in a transport, watched him, the knuckles of her right hand in

her mouth, as he began a thorough examination of the bed rail immediately below

her. Every now and then he would find something very wrong with the iron surface

of the rail and would rub it vigorously with his rag, stand back from it for a

longer view, with his head on one side, the dark of the soapless mouth drooping

at each corner in anguish, and then polish the spot again, breathing upon it and

rubbing it with an inhuman concentration of purpose. All the time he was

thinking, "What a fool I am, but it will work." He could not sink himself. He

was not the artist. He was the exact imitation of one.

      All at once he removed with his forefinger a plump sud of soap from the

centre of his forehead, leaving a rough, dark circle of skin where it had been,

and tapped his frothy finger along the footrail three times at equal intervals,

leaving about a third of the soap behind at each tap. Waddling up and down at

the end of the bed, he examined each of these blobs in turn and, as though

trying to decide which was the most imposing specimen, removed one after the

other until, with only the centnal sud remaining, he came to a halt before it,

and then, kicking away one of his feet in an extraordinarily nimble way, he

landed himself flat on his face in a posture of obedience.

      Fuchsia was too thrilled to speak. She only stared, happy beyond

happiness. Steerpike got to his feet and grinned at her, the lamplight glinting

upon his uneven teeth. He went at once to the basin and renewed his ablutions

more vigorously than ever.

      While Fuchsia knelt on her bed and Steerpike rubbed his head and face with

an ancient and grubby towel, there came a knock upon the door and Nannie Slagg's

voice piped out thinly:

      "Is my conscience there? Is my sweet piece of trouble there? Are you

there, my dear heart, then? Are you there?"

      "No, Nannie, no, I'm not! Not _now_. Go away and come back again soon, and

I'll be here," shouted Fuchsia thickly, scrambling to the door. And then with

her mouth to the keyhole: "What d'you want? What d'you want?"

      "Oh, my poor heart! what's the matter, then? What's the matter, then? What

is it, my conscience?"

      "Nothing, Nannie. Nothing. What d'you want?" said Fuchsia, breathing hard.

      Nannie was used to Fuchsia's sudden and strange changes of mood; so after

a pause in which Fuchsia could hear her sucking her wrinkled lower lip, the old

nurse answered:

      "It's the Doctor, dear. He says he's got a present for you, my baby. He

wants you to go to his house, my only, and I'm to take you."

      Fuchsia, hearing a "Tck! tck!" behind her, turned and saw a very

clean-looking Steerpike gesturing to her. He nodded his head rapidly and jerked

his thumb at the door, and then, with his index and longest finger strutting

along the washstand, indicated, as far as she could read, that she should accept

the offer to walk to the Doctor's with Nannie Slagg.

      "All right!" shouted Fuchsia, "but I'll come to _your_ room. Go there and

wait."

      "Hurry, then, my love!" wailed the thin, perplexed voice from the passage.

"Don't keep him waiting."

      As Mrs. Slagg's feet receded, Fuchsia shouted: "What's he giving me?"

      But the old nurse was beyond earshot.

      Steerpike was dusting his clothes as well as he could. He had brushed his

sparse hair and it looked like dank grass as it lay flatly over his big

forehead.

      "Can I come, too?" he said.

      Fuchsia turned her eyes to him quickly.

      "Why?" she said at last.

      "I have a reason," said Steerpike. "You can't keep me here all night,

anyway, can you?"

      This argument seemed good to Fuchsia and, "Oh, yes, you can come, too,"

she said at once. "But what about Nannie," she added slowly. "What about my

nurse?"

      "Leave her to me," said Steerpike. "Leave her to me."

      Fuchsia hated him suddenly and deeply for saying this, but she made no

answer.

      "Come on, then," she said. "Don't stay in my room any more. What are you

waiting for?" And unbolting the door she led the way, Steerpike following her

like a shadow to Mrs. Slagg's bedroom.

25

AT THE PRUNESQUALLORS

      Mrs. Slagg was so agitated at the sight of an outlandish youth in the

company of her Fuchsia that it was several minutes before she had recovered

sufficiently to listen to anything in the way of an explanation. Her eyes would

dart to and fro from Fuchsia to the features of the intruder. She stood for so

long a time, plucking nervously at her lower lip, that Fuchsia realized it was

useless to continue with her explanation and was wondering what to do next when

Steerpike's voice broke in.

      "Madam," he said, addressing Mrs. Slagg, "my name is Steerpike, and I ask

you to forgive my sudden appearance at the door of your room." And he bowed very

low indeed, his eyes squinting up through his eyebrows as he did so.

      Mrs. Slagg took three uncertain steps towards Fuchsia and clutched her

arm. "What is he saying? What is he saying? Oh, my poor heart, who is he, then?

What has he done to you, my only?"

      "He's coming, too," said Fuchsia, by way of an answer. "Wants to see Dr.

Prune as well. What's his present? What's he giving me a present for? Come on.

Let's go to his house. I'm tired. Be quick, I want to go to bed."

      Mrs. Slagg suddenly became very active when Fuchsia mentioned her

tiredness and started for the door, holding the girl by her forearm. "You"ll be

into your bed in no time. I'll put you there myself and tuck you in, and turn

your lamp out for you as I always did, my wickedness, and you can go to sleep

until I wake you, my only, and can give you breakfast by the fire; so don't you

mind, my tired thing. Only a few minutes with the Doctor -- only a few minutes."

      They passed through the door, Mrs. Slagg peering suspiciously around

Fuchsia's arm at the quick movements of the high-shouldered boy.

      Without another word between them they began to descend several flights of

stains until they reached a hall where armour hung coldly upon the walls and the

corners were stacked with old weapons that were as rich with rust as a hedge of

winter beech. It was no place to linger in, for a chill cut upwards from the

stone floor and cold beads of moisture stood like sweat upon the tarnished

surface of iron and steel.

      Steerpike arched his nostrils at the dank air and his eyes travelled

swiftly oven the medley of corroding trophies, of hanging panoplies, smouldering

with rust; and the stack of small arms, and noted a slim length of steel whose

far end seemed to be embedded in some sort of tube, but it was impossible to

make it out clearly in the dim light. A sword-stick leapt to his mind, and his

acquisitive instincts were sharpened at the thought. There was no time, however,

for him to rummage among the heaps of metal at the moment, for he was conscious

of the old woman's eyes upon him, and he followed her and Fuchsia out of the

hall vowing to himself that at the first opportunity he would visit the chill

place again.

      The door by which they made their exit lay opposite the flight that led

down to the centre of the unhealthy hail. On passing through it they found

themselves at the beginning of an ill-lit corridor, the walls of which were

covered with small prints in faded colours. A few of them were in frames, but of

these only a small proportion had their glass unbroken. Nannie and Fuchsia,

being familiar with the corridor, had no thought for its desolate condition nor

for the mellowed prints that depicted in elaborate but unimaginative detail the

more obviously pictorial aspects of Gormenghast. Steerpike rubbed his sleeve

across one or two as he followed, removing a quantity of dust, and glanced at

them critically, for it was unlike him to let any kind of information slip from

him unawares.

      This corridor ended abruptly at a heavy doorway, which Fuchsia opened with

an effort, letting in upon the passage a less oppressive darkness for it was

late evening, and beyond the door a flock of clouds were moving swiftly across a

slate-coloured sky in which one star rode alone.

      "Oh, my poor heart, how late it's getting!" said Nannie, peering anxiously

at the sky, and confiding her thoughts to Fuchsia in such a surreptitious way

that it might be supposed she was anxious that the firmament should not overhear

her. "How late it _is_ getting, my only, and I must be back with your Mother

very soon. I must take her something to drink, the poor huge thing. Oh, no, we

mustn't be long!"

      Before them was a large courtyard and at the opposite corner was a

three-storied building attached to the main bulk of the castle by a flying

buttress. By day it stood out strangely from the ubiquitous grey stone of

Gormenghast, for it was built with a hard red sandstone from a quarry that had

never since been located.

      Fuchsia was very tired. The day had been overcharged with happenings. Now,

as the last of the daylight surrendered in the west, she was still awake and

beginning, not ending, another experience.

      Mrs. Slagg was clasping her arm, and as they approached the main doorway,

she stopped suddenly and, as was her usual habit when flustered, brought her

hand up to her mouth and pulled at her little lower lip, her old watery eyes

peering weakly at Fuchsia. She was about to say something, when the sound of

footsteps caused her and her two companions to turn and to stare at a figure

approaching in the darkness. A faint sound as of something brittle being broken

over and over again accompanied his progress towards them.

      "Who is it?" said Mrs. Slagg. "Who is it, my only? Oh, how dark it is!"

      "It's only Flay," said Fuchsia. "Come on. I'm tired." But they were hailed

from the gloom.

      "Who?" cried the hard, awkward voice. Mr. Flay's idiom, if at times

unintelligible, was anything but prolix.

      "What do you want, Mr. Flay?" shouted Nannie, much to her own and to

Fuchsia's surprise.

      "Slagg?" queried the hard voice again. "Wanted," it added.

      "Who's wanted?" Nannie shrilled back, for she felt that Mr. Flay was

always too brusque with her.

      "Who's with you?" barked Flay, who was now within a few yards. "Three just

now."

      Fuchsia, who had long ago acquired the knack of interpreting the

ejaculations of her father's servant, turned her head around at once and was

both surprised and relieved to find that Steerpike had disappeared. And yet, was

there a tinge of disappointment as well? She put out her arm and pressed the old

nurse against her side.

      "Three just now," repeated Flay, who had come up.

      Mrs. Slagg also noticed that the boy was missing. "Where is he?" she

queried. "Where's the ugly youth?"

      Fuchsia shook her head glumly and then turned suddenly on Flay, whose

limbs seemed to straggle away into the night. Her weariness made her irritable

and now she vented her pent-up emotion upon the dour servant.

      "Go away! go away!" she sobbed. "Who wants you here, you stupid, spiky

thing? Who wants you -- shouting out 'Who's there?' and thinking yourself so

important when you're only an old thin thing? Go away to my father where you

belong, but leave us alone." And Fuchsia, bursting into a great exhausted cry,

ran up to the emaciated Flay and, throwing her arms about his waist, drenched

his waistcoat in her tears.

      His hands hung at his sides, for it would not have been right for him to

touch the Lady Fuchsia however benevolent his motive, for he was, after all,

only a servant although a most important one.

      "Please go now," said Fuchsia at last, backing away from him.

      "Ladyship," said the servant, after scratching the back of his head,

"Lordship wants her." He jerked his head at the old nurse.

      "Me?" cried Nannie Slagg, who had been sucking her teeth.

      "You," said Flay.

      "Oh, my poor heart! When? When does he want me? Oh, my dear body! What can

he want?"

      "Wants you tomorrow," replied Flay and, turning about, began to walk away

and was soon lost to sight, and a short time afterwards even the sound of his

knee joints was out of hearing.

      They did not wait any longer, but walked as swiftly as they could to the

main door of the house of sandstone, and Fuchsia gave a heavy rap with a door

knocker, rubbing with her sleeve at the moisture in her eyes.

      As they waited they could hear the sound of a violin.

      Fuchsia knocked at the door again, and a few seconds later the music

ceased and footsteps approached and stopped. A bolt was drawn back, the door

opened upon a strong light, and the Doctor waved them in. Then he closed the

door behind them, but not before a thin youth had squeezed himself past the

doorpost and into the hail where he stood between Fuchsia and Mrs. Slagg.

      "Well! well! well! well!" said the Doctor, flicking a hair from the sleeve

of his coat, and flashing his teeth. "So you have brought a friend with you, my

dear little Ladyship, so you have brought a friend with you -- or" (and he

raised his eyebrows) "haven't you?"

      For the second time Mrs. Slagg and Fuchsia turned about to discover the

object of the Doctor's inquiry, and found that Steerpike was immediately behind

them.

      He bowed, and with his eye on the Doctor, "At your service," he said.

      "Ha, ha, ha! but I don't want anyone at my service," said Dr.

Prunesquallor, folding his long white hands around each other as though they

were silk scarves. "I'd rather have somebody 'in' my service perhaps. But not

_at_ it. Oh, no. I wouldn't have any service left if every young gentleman who

arrived through my door was suddenly _at_ it. It would soon be in shreds. Ha,

ha, ha! absolutely in shreds."

      "He's come," said Fuchsia in her slow voice, "because he wants to work

because he's clever, so I brought him."

      "Indeed," said Prunesquallor. "I have always been fascinated by those who

want to work, ha, ha. Most absorbing to observe them. Ha, ha, ha! most absorbing

and uncanny. Walk along, dear ladies, walk along. My very dear Mrs. Slagg, you

look a hundred years younger every day. This way, this way. Mind the corner of

that chair, my very dear Mrs. Slagg, and oh! my dear woman, you must look where

you're going, by all that's circumspect, you really must. Now, just allow me to

open this door and then we can make ourselves comfortable. Ha, ha, ha! that's

right, Fuchsia, my dear, prop her up! prop her up!"

      So saying, and shepherding them in front of him and at the same time

rolling his magnified eyes all over Steerpike's extraordinary costume, the

Doctor at last arrived within his own room and closed the door behind himself

sharply with a click. Mrs. Slagg was ushered into a chair with soft

wine-coloured upholstery, where she looked particularly minute, and Fuchsia into

another of the same pattern. Steerpike was waved to a high-backed piece of oak,

and the Doctor himself set about bringing bottles and glasses from a cupboard

let into the wall.

      "What is it to be? What is it to be? Fuchsia, my dear child! what do you

fancy?"

      "I don't want anything, thank you," said Fuchsia. "I feel like going to

sleep, Dr. Prune."

      "Aha! aha! A little stimulant, perhaps. Something to sharpen your

faculties, my dear. Something to tide you over until -- ha, ha, ha! you are snug

within your little bed. What do you think? what do you think?"

      "I don't know," said Fuchsia.

      "Aha! but _I_ do. _I_ do," said the Doctor, and whinnied like a horse;

then, pulling back his sleeves so that his wrists were bare, he advanced like

some sort of fastidious bird towards the door, where he pulled a cord in the

wall. Lowering his sleeves again neatly over his cuffs, he waited, on tip-toe,

until he heard a sound without, at which he flung open the door, uncovering, as

it were, a swarthy-skinned creature in white livery whose hand was raised as

though to knock upon the panels. Before the Doctor had said a word Nannie leaned

forward in her chair. Her legs, unable to reach the floor, were dangling

helplessly.

      "It's elderberry wine that you love best, isn't it?" she queried in a

nervous, penetrating whisper to Fuchsia. "Tell the Doctor that. Tell him that,

at once. You don't want any stimulant, do you?"

      The Doctor tilted his head slightly at the sound but did not turn, merely

raising his forefinger in front of the servant's eyes and wagging it, and his

thin, rasping voice gave an order, for a powder to be mixed and for a bottle of

elderberry wine to be procured. He closed the door, and, dancing up to Fuchsia,

      "Relax, my dear, relax," he said. "Let your limbs wander wherever they

like, ha, ha, ha, as long as they do not stray _too_ far, ha, ha, ha! as long as

they don't stray _too_ far. Think of each of them in turn until they're all as

limp as jellyfish, and you"ll be ready to run to the Twisted Woods and back

before you know where you are."

      He smiled and his teeth flashed. His mop of grey hair glistened like twine

in the strong lamplight. "And what for you, Mrs. Slagg? What for Fuchsia's

Nannie? A little port?"

      Mrs. Slagg ran her tongue between her wrinkled lips and nodded as her

fingers went to her mouth on which a silly little smile hovered. She watched the

Doctor's every movement as he filled up the wineglass and brought it over to

her.

      She bowed in an old-fashioned way from her hips as she took the glass, her

legs pointing out stiffly in front of her for she had edged herself further back

in the chair and might as well have been sitting on a bed.

      Then all at once the Doctor was back at Fuchsia's chair, and bending over

her. His hands, wrapped about each other in a characteristic manner, were

knotted beneath his chin.

      "I've got something for you, my dear; did your nurse tell you?" His eyes

rolled to the side of his glasses giving him an expression of fantastic roguery

which on his face would have been, for one who had never met him, to say the

least, unsettling.

      Fuchsia bent forward, her hands on the red bolster-like arms of the chair.

      "Yes, Dr. Prune. What is it, thank you, what is it?"

      "Aha! ha, ha, ha, ha! Aha, ha, ha! It is something for you to wear, ha,

ha! If you like it and if it's not too heavy. I don't want to fracture your

cervical vertebrae, my little lady. Oh no, by all that's most healthy I wouldn't

care to do that; but I'll trust you to be careful. You will, won't you? Ha, ha."

      "Yes, yes, I will," said Fuchsia.

      He bent even closer to Fuchsia. "Your baby brother has hurt you. _I_ know,

ha, ha. _I_ know," the Doctor whispered, and the sound edged between his rows of

big teeth, very faintly, but not so faintly as to escape Steerpike's hearing. "I

have a stone for your bosom, my dear child, for I saw the diamonds within your

tearducts when you ran from your mother's door. These, if they come again, must

be balanced by a heavier if less brilliant stone, lying upon your bosom."

      Prunesquallor's eyes remained quite still for a moment. His hands were

still clasped at his chin.

      Fuchsia stared. "Thank you, Dr. Prune," she said at last.

      The physician relaxed and straightened himself. "Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"

he trilled, and then bent forward to whisper again. "So I have decided to give

you a stone from another land."

      He put his hand into his pocket, but kept it there as he glanced over his

shoulder.

      "Who is your friend of the fiery eyes, my Fuchsia? Do you know him well?"

      Fuchsia shook her head and stuck her lower lip out as though with

instinctive distaste.

      The Doctor winked at her, his magnified right eye closing enormously. "A

little later, perhaps," said Prunesquallor, opening his eyelid again like some

sort of sea creature, "when the night is a little further advanced, a little

longer in the molar, ha, ha, ha!" He straightened himself. "When the world has

swung through space a further hundred miles or so, ha, ha! then -- ah, yes. . .

then --" and for the second time he looked knowing and winked. Then he swung

round upon his heel.

      "And now," he said, "what will _you_ have? And what, in the name of

hosiery, are you wearing?"

      Steerpike got to his feet. "I am wearing what I am forced to wear until

clothes can be found which are more appropriate," he said. "These rags, although

an official uniform, are as absurd upon me as they are insulting. Sir," he

continued, "you asked me what I would take. Brandy, I thank you, sir, Brandy."

Mrs. Slagg, staring her poor old eyes practically out of their hot sockets,

peered at the Doctor as the speech ended, to hear what he could possibly say

after so many words. Fuchsia had not been listening. Something to wear, he had

said. Something to lie heavily on her bosom. A stone. Tired as she was she was

all excitement to know what it could be. Dr. Prunesquallor had always been kind

to her, if rather above her, but he had never given her a present before. What

colour would the heavy stone be? What would it be? What would it be?

      The Doctor was for a moment nonplussed at the youth's self-assurance, but

he did not show it. He simply smiled like a crocodile. "Am I mistaken, dear boy,

or is that a kitchen jacket you're wearing?"

      "Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and

kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except

myself, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor."

      "And what," said Prunesqualior, placing the tips of his fingers together,

"are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly

unhygienic even for Swelter's kitchen. What _are_ you? Are you a problem case,

my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha,

ha, ha?"

      "With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas,

though at the moment plenty of problems, too."

      "Is that so?" said the Doctor. "Is that so? How very unique! Have your

brandy first, and perhaps some of them will fade gently away upon the fumes of

that very excellent narcotic. Ha, ha, ha! Fade gently and imperceptibly away . .

." And he fluttered his long fingers in the air.

      At this moment a knock upon the door panels caused the Doctor to cry out

in his extraordinary falsetto:

      "Make entry! Come along, come along, my dear fellow! Make entry! What in

the name of all that's rapid are you waiting for?"

      The door opened and the servant entered, balancing a tray upon which stood

a bottle of elderberry wine and a small white cardboard box. He deposited the

bottle and the box upon the table and retired. There was something sullen about

his manner. The bottle had been placed upon the table with perhaps too casual a

movement. The door had clicked behind him with rather too sharp a report.

Steerpike noticed this, and when he saw the Doctor's gaze return to his face, he

raised his eyebrows quizzically and shrugged his shoulders the merest fraction.

      Prunesquallor brought a brandy bottle to the table in the centre of the

room, but first poured out a glass of elderberry wine which he gave to Fuchsia

with a bow.

      "Drink, my  Fuchsia dear," he said. "Drink to all those things that you

love best. _I_ know. _I_ know," he added with his hands folded at his chin

again. "Drink to everything that's bright and glossy. Drink to the Coloured

Things."

      Fuchsia nodded her head unsmilingly at the toast and took a gulp. She

looked up at the Doctor very seriously. "It's nice," she said. "I like

elderberry wine. Do you like your drink, Nannie?"

      Mrs. Slagg very nearly spilt her port over the arm of the chair when she

heard herself addressed. She nodded her head violently.

      "And now for the brandy," said the Doctor. "The brandy for Master . . .

Master . . ."

      "Steerpike," said the youth. "My name is Steerpike, sir."

      "Steerpike of the Many Problems," said the Doctor. "What did you say they

were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It's as fickle as a fox. Ask me to

name the third lateral bloodvessel from the extremity of my index finger that

runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk

to be found in the knuckles of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year,

ha, ha, ha! -- or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of

frogs two minutes before they die of scabies -- these things are no tax upon my

memory, ha, ha, ha! but ask me to remember exactly what you said your problems

were, a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly.

Now why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?"

      "Because I never mentioned them," said Steerpike.

      "That accounts for it," said Prunesquallor. "That, no doubt, accounts for

it."

      "I think so, sir," said Steerpike.

      "But you _have_ problems," said the Doctor.

      Steerpike took the glass of brandy which the Doctor had poured out.

      "My problems are varied," he said. "The most immediate is to impress you

with my potentialities. To be able to make such an unorthodox remark is in

itself a sign of some originality. I am not indispensable to you at the moment,

sir, because you have never made use of my services; but after a week's

employment under your roof, sir, I could become so. I would be invaluable. I am

purposely precipitous in my remarks. Either you reject me here and now or you

have already at the back of your mind a desire to know me further. I am

seventeen, sir. Do I sound like seventeen? Do I act like seventeen? I am clever

enough to know I am clever. You will forgive my undiplomatic approach, sir,

because you are a gentleman of imagination. That then, sir, is my immediate

problem. To impress you with my talent, which would be put to your service in

any and every form." Steerpike raised his glass. "To you, sir, if you will allow

my presumption."

      The Doctor all this while had had his glass of cognac raised, but it had

remained motionless an inch from his lips, until now, as Steerpike ended and

took a sip at his brandy, he sat down suddenly in a chair beside the table and

set down his own glass untasted.

      "Well, well, well, well," he said at last. "Well, well, well, well, well!

By all that's intriguing this is really the quintessential. What maladdress, by

all that's impudent! What an enormity of surface! What a very rare frenzy

indeed!" And he began to whinny, gently at first, but after a little while his

high-pitched laughter increased in volume and in tempo, and within a few minutes

he was helpless with the shrill gale of his own merriment. How so great a

quantity of breath and noise managed to come from lungs that must have been, in

that tube of a chest, wedged uncomfortably close together, it is difficult to

imagine. Keeping, even at the height of his paroxysms, an extraordinary

theatrical elegance, he rocked to and fro in his chair, helpless for the best

part of nine minutes after which with difficulty he drew breath thinly through

his teeth with a noise like the whistling of steam; and eventually, still

shaking a little, he was able to focus his eyes upon the source of his

enjoyment.

      "Well, Prodigy, my dear boy! you have done me a lot of good. My lungs have

needed something like that for a long time."

      "I have done something for you already, then," said Steerpike with the

clever imitation of a smile on his face. During the major part of the Doctor's

helplessness he had been taking stock of the room and had poured himself out

another glass of brandy. He had noted the _objets d"art_, the expensive carpets

and mirrors, and the bookcase of calf-bound volumes. He had poured out some more

port for Mrs. Slagg and had ventured to wink at Fuchsia, who had stared emptily

back, and he had turned the wink into an affection of his eye.

      He had examined the labels on the bottles and their year of vintage. He

had noticed that the table was of walnut and that the ring upon the Doctor's

right hand was in the form of a silver serpent holding between his gaping jaw a

nugget of red gold. At first the Doctor's laughter had caused him a shock, and a

certain mortification, but he was soon his cold, calculating self, with his

ordered mind like a bureau with tabulated shelves and pigeon-holes of reference,

and he knew that at all costs he must be pleasant. He had taken a risky turning

in playing such a boastful card, and at the moment it could not be proved either

a failure or a success; but this he did know, that to be able to take risks was

the keynote of the successful man.

      Prunesquallor, when his strength and muscular control were restored

sufficiently, sipped at his cognac in what seemed a delicate manner, but

Steerpike was surprised to see that he had soon emptied the glass.

      This seemed to do the Doctor a lot of good. He stared at the youth.

      "You _do_ interest me, I must admit that much, Master Steerpike," he said.

"Oh yes, I'll go that far, ha, ha, ha! You interest me, or rather you tantalize

me in a pleasant sort of way. But whether I want to have you hanging around my

house is, as you with your enormous brain will readily admit, quite a different

kettle of fish."

      "I don't hang about, sir. It is one of those things I never do."

      Fuchsia's voice came slowly across the room.

      "You hung about in my room," she said. And then, bending forward, she

looked up at the Doctor with an almost imploring expression. "He _climbed_

there," she said. "He's clever." Then she leaned back in her chair. "I am tired;

and he saw my own room that nobody ever saw before he saw it, and it is worrying

me. Oh, Dr. Prune."

      There was a pause.

      "He climbed there," she said again.

      "I had to go somewhere," said Steerpike. "I didn't know it was your room.

How could I have known? I am sorry, your Ladyship."

      She did not answer.

      Prunesquallor had looked from one to the other.

      "Aha! aha! Take a little of this powder, Fuchsia dear," he said, bringing

across to her the white cardboard box. He removed the lid and tilted a little

into her glass which he filled again with elderberry wine. "You won't taste

anything at all, my dear girl; just sip it up and you will feel as strong as a

mountain tiger, ha, ha! Mrs. Slagg, you will take this box away with you. Four

times a day, with whatever the dear child happens to be drinking. It is

tasteless. It is harmless, and it is extremely efficacious. Do not forget, my

good woman, will you? She needs something and this is the very something she

needs, ha, ha, ha! this is the very something!"

      Nannie received the box on which was written "_Fuchsia. One teaspoonful to

be taken 4 times a day._"

      "Master Steerpike," said the Doctor, "is that the reason you wanted to see

me, to beard me in my den, and to melt my heart like tallow upon my own

hearth-rug?" He tilted his head at the youth.

      "That is so, sir," said Steerpike. "With Lady Fuchsia's permission I

accompanied her. I said to her: 'Just let me see the Doctor, and put my case to

him, and I am confident he will be impressed'."

      There was a pause. Then in a confidential voice Steerpike added: "In my

less ambitious moments it is as a research scientist that I see myself, sir, and

in my still less ambitious, as a dispenser."

      "What knowledge of chemicals have you, if I may venture to remark?" said

the Doctor.

      "Under your initial guidance my powers would develop as rapidly as you

could wish," said Steerpike.

      "You are a clever little monster," said the Doctor, tossing off another

cognac and placing the glass upon the table with a click. "A diabolically clever

little monster."

      "That is what I hoped you would realize, Doctor," said Steerpike. "But

haven't all ambitious people something of the monstrous about them? You, sir,

for instance, if you will forgive me, are a little bit monstrous."

      "But, my poor youth," said Prunesquallor, beginning to pace the room,

"there is not the minutest molecule of ambition in my anatomy, monstrous though

it may appear to you, ha, ha, ha!"

      His laughter had not the spontaneous, uncontrollable quality that it

usually possessed.

      "But, sir," said Steerpike, "there has been."

      "And why do you think so?"

      "Because of this room. Because of the exquisite furnishings you possess;

because of your calf-bound books; your glassware; your violin. You could not

have collected together such things without ambition."

      "That is not ambition, my poor confused boy," said the Doctor: "it is a

union between those erstwhile incompatibles, ha, ha, ha! -- taste and a

hereditary income."

      "Is not taste a cultivated luxury?" said Steerpike.

      "But yes," said the Doctor. "But yes. One has the potentialities for

taste; on finding this out about oneself, ha, ha! -- after a little selfprobing,

it is a cultivated thing, as you remark."

      "Which needs assiduous concentration and diligence, no doubt," said the

youth.

      "But yes; but yes," answered the Doctor smiling, with a note in his voice

that suggested it was only common politeness in him to keep amused.

      "Surely such diligence is the same thing as ambitiousness. Ambitiousness

to perfect your taste. That is what I mean by 'ambition', Doctor, I believe you

have it. I do not mean ambition for success, for 'success' is a meaningless word

-- the successful, so I hear, being very often, to themselves, failures of the

first water."

      "You interest me," said Prunesquallor. "I would like to speak to Lady

Fuchsia alone. We haven't been paying very much attention to her, I am afraid.

We have deserted her. She is alone in a desert of her own. Only watch her."

      Fuchsia's eyes were shut as she leaned back in the chair, her knees curled

up under her.

      "While I speak with her you will be so very, very good as to leave the

room. There's a chair in the hail, Master Steerpike. Thank you, dear youth. It

would be a handsome gesture."

      Steerpike disappeared at once, taking his brandy with him.

      Prunesquallor looked at the old woman and the girl. Mrs. Slagg, with her

little mouth wide open, was fast asleep. Fuchsia had opened her eyes at the

sound of the door shutting behind Steerpike.

      The Doctor immediately beckoned her to approach. She came to him at once,

her eyes wide.

      "I've waited so long, Dr. Prune," she said. "Can I have my stone now?"

      "This very moment," said the Doctor. "This very second. You will not know

very much about the nature of this stone, but you will treasure it more than

anyone I could possibly think of. Fuchsia dear, you were so distraught as you

ran like a wild pony away from your father and me; so distraught with your black

mane and your big hungry eyes -- that I said to myself: 'It's for Fuchsia',

although ponies don't usually care much about such things, ha, ha, ha! But you

will, won't you?"

      The Doctor took from his pocket a small pouch of softest leather.

      "Take it out yourself," he said. "Draw it out with this slender chain."

      Fuchsia took the pouch from the Doctor's hand and from it drew forth into

the lamplight a ruby like a lump of anger.

      It burned in her palm.

      She did not know what to do. She did not wonder what she ought to say.

There was nothing at all to say. Dr. Prunesquallor knew something of what she

felt. At last, clutching the solid fire between her fingers, she shook Nannie

Slagg, who screamed a little as she awoke. Fuchsia got to her feet and dragged

her to the door. A moment before the Doctor opened it for them, Fuchsia turned

her face up to his and parted her lips in a smile of such dark, sweet

loveliness, so subtly blended with her brooding strangeness, that the Doctor's

hand clenched the handle of the door. He had never seen her look like this

before. He had always thought of her as an ugly girl of whom he was strangely

fond. But now, what was it he had seen? She was no longer a small girl for all

her slowness of speech and almost irritating simplicity.

      In the hall they passed the figure of Steerpike sitting comfortably on the

floor beneath a large carved clock. They did not speak, and when they parted

with the Doctor Nannie said: "Thank you" in a sleepy voice and bowed slightly,

one of her hands in Fuchsia"s. Fuchsia's fingers clenched the blood-red stone

and the Doctor only said: "Goodbye, and take care, my dears, take care. Happy

dreams. Happy dreams," before he closed the door.

26

A GIFT OF THE GAB

      As he returned through the hall his mind was so engrossed with his new

vision of Fuchsia that he had forgotten Steerpike and was startled at the sound

of steps behind him. A moment or two earlier Steerpike had himself been startled

by footsteps descending the staircase immediately above where he had been

sitting in the shadowy, tiger stripes of the bannisters.

      He moved swiftly up to the Doctor. "I am afraid I am still here," he said,

and then glanced over his shoulder following the Doctor's eyes. Steerpike turned

and saw, descending the last three steps of the staircase, a lady whose

similarity to Dr. Prunesquallor was unmistakable, but whose whole deportment was

more rigid. She, also, suffered from faulty eyesight, but in her case the

glasses were darkly tinted so that it was impossible to tell at whom she was

looking save by the general direction of the head, which was no sure indication.

      The lady approached them. "Who is this?" she said directing her face at

Steerpike.

      "This," said her brother, "is none other than Master Steerpike, who was

brought to see me on account of his talents. He is anxious for me to make use of

his brain, ha, ha! -- not, as you might suppose, as a floating specimen in one

of my jam jars, ha, ha, ha! but in its functional capacity as a vortex of

dazzling thought."

      "Did he go upstairs just now?" said Miss Irma Prunesquallor. "I said did

he go upstairs just now?"

      The tall lady had the habit of speaking at great speed and of repeating

her questions irritably before there had been a moment's pause in which they

might be answered. Prunesquallor had in moments of whimsy often amused himself

by trying to wedge an answer to her less complex queries between the initial

question and its sharp echo.

      "Upstairs, my dear?" repeated her brother.

      "I said 'upstairs', I think," said Irma Prunesquallor sharply. "I think I

said 'upstairs'. Have you, or he, or anyone been upstairs a quarter of an hour

ago? Have you? Have you?"

      "Surely not! surely not!" said the Doctor. "We have all been downstairs, I

think. Don't you?" he said, turning to Steerpike.

      "I do," said Steerpike. The Doctor began to like the way the youth

answered quietly and neatly.

      Irma Prunesquallor drew herself together. Her long tightly fitting black

dress gave peculiar emphasis to such major bone formations as the iliac crest,

and indeed the entire pelvis; the shoulder blades, and in certain angles, as she

stood in the lamplight, to the ribs themselves. Her neck was long and the

Prunesquallors' head sat upon it surrounded by the same grey thatch-like hair as

that adopted by her brother, but in her case knotted in a low bun at the neck.

      "The servant is out. OUT," she said. "It is his evening _out_. Isn't it?

Isn't it?"

      She seemed to be addressing Steerpike, so he answered: "I have no

knowledge of the arrangements you have made, madam. But he was in the Doctor's

room a few minutes ago, so I expect it was he whom you heard outside your door."

      "Who said I heard anything outside my door?" said Irma Prunesquallor, a

trifle less rapidly than usual. "Who?"

      "Were you not within your room, madam?"

      "What of it? what of it?"

      "I gathered from what you said that you thought that there was someone

walking about upstairs," answered Steerpike obliquely; "and if, as you say, you

were _inside_ your room, then you must have heard the footsteps _outside_ your

room. That is what I attempted to make clear, madam."

      "You seem to know too much about it. Don't you? don't you?" She bent

forward and her opaque-looking glasses stared flatly at Steerpike.

      "I know nothing, madam," said Steerpike.

      "What, Irma dear, _is_ all this? What in the name of all that's circuitous

_is_ all this?"

      "I heard feet. That is all. Feet," said his sister; and then, after a

pause she added with renewed emphasis: "Feet."

      "Irma, my dear sister," said Prunesquallor, "I have two things to say.

Firstly, why in the name of discomfort are we hanging around in the hail and

probably dying of a draught that as far as I am concerned runs up my right

trouser leg and sets my gluteous maximus twitching; and secondly, what is wrong,

when you boil the matter down -- with feet? I have always found mine singularly

useful, especially for walking with. In fact, ha, ha, ha, one might almost

imagine that they had been designed for that very purpose."

      "As usual," said his sister, "you are drunk with your own levity. You have

a brain, Alfred. I have never denied it. Never. But it is undermined by your

insufferable levity. I tell you that someone has been prowling about upstairs

and you take no notice. There has been no one to prowl. Do you not see the

point?"

      "I heard something, too," said Steerpike, breaking in. "I was sitting in

the hall where the Doctor suggested I should remain while he decided in what

capacity he would employ me, when I heard what sounded like footsteps upstairs.

I crept to the top of the stairs silently, but there was rio one there, so I

returned."

      Steerpike, thinking the upstairs to be empty, had in reality been making a

rough survey of the first floor, until he heard what must have been Irma moving

to the door of her room, at which sound he had slid down the bannisters.

      "You hear what he says," said the lady, following her brother with a stiff

irritation in every line of her progress. "You hear what he says."

      "Very much so!" said the Doctor. "Very much so, indeed. Most

indigestible."

      Steerpike moved a chair up for Irma Prunesquallor with such a show of

consideration for her comfort and such adroitness that she stared at him and her

hard mouth relaxed at one corner.

      "Steerpike," she said, wrinkling her black dress above her hips as she

reclined a little into her chair.

      "I am at your service, madam," said Steerpike. "What may I do for you?"

      "What on earth are you wearing? What are you wearing, boy?"

      "It is with great regret that at my introduction to you I should be in

clothes that so belie my fastidious nature, madam," he said. "If you will advise

me where I may procure the cloth I will endeavour to have myself fitted

tomorrow. Standing beside you, madam, in your exquisite gown of darkness --"

      "'Gown of darkness' is good," interrupted Prunesquallor, raising his hand

to his head, where he spread his snow-white fingers across his brow. " 'Gown of

darkness'. A phrase, ha, ha! Definitely a phrase."

      "You have broken in, Alfred!" said his sister. "Haven't you? haven't you?

I will have a suit cut for you tomorrow, Steerpike," she continued. "You will

live here, I suppose? Where are you sleeping? Is he sleeping here? Where do you

live? Where does he live, Alfred? What have you arranged? Nothing, I expect.

Have you done anything? Have you? have you?"

      "What sort of thing, Irma, my dear? What sort of thing are you referring

to? I have done all sorts of things. I have removed a gallstone the size of a

potato. I have played delicately upon my violin while a rainbow shone through

the dispensary window; I have plunged so deeply into the poets of grief that

save for my foresight in attaching fishhooks to my clothes I might never again

have been drawn earthwards, ha, ha! from those excruciating depths!"

      Irma could tell exactly when her brother would veer off into soliloquy and

had developed the power to pay no attention at all to what he said. The

footsteps upstairs seemed forgotten. She watched Steerpike as he poured her out

a glass of port with a gallantry quite remarkable in its technical perfection of

movement and timing.

      "You wish to be employed. Is that it? Is that it?" she said.

      "It is my ardent desire to be in your service," he said.

      "Why? Tell me why," said Miss Prunesquallor.

      "I endeavour to keep my mind in an equipoise between the intuitive, and

rational reasoning, madam," he said. "But with you I cannot, for my intuitive

desire to be of service overshadows my reasons, though they are many. I can only

say I feel a desire to fulfil myself by finding employment under your roof. And

so," he added, turning up the corners of his mouth in a quizzical smile, "that

is the reason _why_ I cannot exactly say _why_."

      "Mixed up with this metaphysical impulse, this fulfilment that you speak

of so smoothly," said the Doctor, "is no doubt a desire to snatch the first

opportunity of getting away from Swelter and the unpleasant duties which you

have no doubt had to perform. Is that not so?"

      "It is," said Steerpike.

      This forthright answer so pleased the Doctor that he got up from his chair

and, smiling toothily, poured himself yet another glass. What pleased him

especially was the mixture of cunning and honesty which he did not yet perceive

to be a still deeper strata of Steerpike's cleverness.

      Prunesquallor and his sister both felt a certain delight in making the

acquaintance of a young gentleman with brains, however twisted those brains

might be. It was true that in Gormenghast there were several cultivated persons,

but they very seldom came in contact with them these days. The Countess was no

conversationalist. The Earl was usually too depressed to be drawn upon subjects

which had he so wished he could have discussed at length and with a dreamy

penetration. The twin sisters could never have kept to the point of any

conversation.

      There were many others apart from the servants with whom Prunesquallor

came into almost daily contact in the course of his social or professional

duties, but seeing them overmuch had dulled his interest in their conversation

and he was agreeably surprised to find that Steerpike, although very young, had

a talent for words and a ready mind. Miss Prunesquallor saw less of people than

her brother. She was pleased by the reference to her dress and was flattered by

the manner in which he saw to her comforts. To be sure, he was rather a small

creature. His clothes, of course, she would see to. His eyes at first she found

rather monkey-like in their closeness and concentration, but as she got used to

them she found there was something exciting in the way they looked at her. It

made her feel he realized she was not only a lady, but a woman.

      Her own brain was sharp and quick, but unlike her brother's it was

superficial, and she instinctively recognized in the youth a streak of

cleverness akin to her own, although stronger. She had passed the age when a

husband might be looked for. Had any man ever gazed at her in this light, the

coincidence of his also having the courage to broach such a subject would have

been too much to credit. Irma Prunesqualior had never met such a person, her

admirers confining themselves to purely verbal approach.

      As it happened Miss Prunesquallor, before her thoughts were interrupted by

the sound of Steerpike's feet padding past her bedroom door, had been in a state

of dejection. Most people have periods of retrospection in which their thoughts

are centred upon the less attractive elements in their past. Irma Prunesquallor

was no exception, but today there had been something wild about her dejection.

After readjusting her glasses irritably upon the bridge of her nose, she had

wrung her hands before sitting at her mirror. She ignored the fact that her neck

was too long, that her mouth was thin and hard, that her nose was far too sharp,

and that her eyes were quite hidden, and concentrated on the profusion of coarse

grey hair which swept back from her brow in one wave to where, low down on her

neck, it gathered itself into a great hard knot -- and on the quality of her

skin, which was, indeed, unblemished. These two things alone in her eyes made

her an object destined for admiration. And yet, what admiration had she

received? Who was there to admire her or to compliment her upon her soft and

peerless skin and on her sweep of hair?

      Steerpike's gallantry had for a moment taken the chill off her heart.

      By now all three of them were seated. The Doctor had drunk rather more

than he would have ever prescribed to a patient. His arms were moving freely

whenever he spoke and he seemed to enjoy watching his fingers as they

emphasized, in dumb show, whatever he happened to be talking about.

      Even his sister had felt the effect of more than her usual quota of port.

Whenever Steerpike spoke she nodded her head sharply as though in total

agreement.

      "Alfred," she said. "Alfred, I'm speaking to you. Can you hear me? Can

you? Can you?"

      "Very distinctly, Irma, my very dear, dear sister. Your voice is ringing

in my middle ear. In fact, it's ringing in both of them. Right in the very

middle of them both, or rather, in both their very middles. What is it, flesh of

my flesh?"

      "We shall dress him in pale grey," she said.

      "Who, blood of my blood?" cried Prunesquallor. "Who is to be apparisoned

in the hue of doves?"

      "Who? How can you say 'Who?'! This youth, Alfred, this youth. He is taking

Pellet's place. I am discharging Pellet tomorrow. He has always been too slow

and clumsy. Don't you think so? Don't you think so?"

      "I am far beyond thinking, bone of my bone. Far, far beyond thinking. I

hand over the reins to you, Irma. Mount and begone. The world awaits you."

      Steerpike saw that the time was ripe.

      "I am confident I shall give satisfaction, dear lady," he said. "My reward

will be to see you, perhaps, once more, perhaps twice more, if you will allow

me, in this dark gown that so becomes you. The slight stain which I noticed upon

the hem I will remove tomorrow, with your permission. Madam," he said, with that

startling simplicity with which he interlarded his remarks, "where can I sleep?"

      Rising to her feet stiffly, but with more self-conscious dignity than she

had found it necessary to assume for some while past, she motioned him to follow

her with a singularly wooden gesture, and led the way through the door.

      Somewhere in the vaults of her bosom a tiny imprisoned bird had begun to

sing.

      "Are you going forever and a day?" shouted the Doctor from his chair in

which he was spread out like a length of rope. "Am Ito be marooned forever, ha,

ha, ha! for evermore and evermore?"

      "For tonight, yes," replied his sister's voice. "Mister Steerpike will see

you in the morning."

      The Doctor yawned with a final flash of his teeth, and fell fast asleep.

      Miss Prunesquallor led Steerpike to the door of a room on the second

floor. Steerpike noticed that it was simple, spacious and comfortable.

      "I will have you called in the morning, after which I will instruct you in

your duties. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?"

      "With great pleasure, madam."

      Her passage to the door was more stilted than ever, for she had not for a

very long while made such an effort to walk attractively. The black silk of her

dress gleamed in the candlelight and rustled at the knees. She turned her head

at the door and Steerpike bowed, keeping his head down until the door was closed

and she had gone.

      Moving quickly to the window he opened it. Across the courtyard the

mountainous outline of Gormenghast Castle rose darkly into the night. The cool

air fanned his big protruding forehead. His face remained like a mask, but deep

down in his stomach he grinned.

27

WHILE THE OLD NURSE DOZES

      For the time being Steerpike must be left at the Prunesquallors, where in

the somewhat elastic capacity of odd-job man, medical assistant, lady's help and

conversationalist, he managed to wedge himself firmly into the structure of the

household. His ingratiating manner had, day by day, a more insidious effect,

until he was looked upon as part of the _ménage_, being an alien only with the

cook who, as an old retainer, felt no love for an upstart and treated him with

undisguised suspicion.

      The Doctor found him extremely quick to learn and within a few weeks

Steerpike was in control of all the dispensary work. Indeed, the chemicals and

drugs had a strong fascination for the youth and he would often be found

compiling mixtures of his own invention.

      Of the compromising and tragic circumstances that were the outcome of all

this, is not yet time to speak.

      Within the castle the time-honoured rituals were performed daily. The

excitement following upon the birth of Titus had in some degree subsided. The

Countess, against the warnings of her medical adviser was, as she had declared

she would be, up and about. She was, it is true, very weak at first, but so

violent was her irritation at not being able to greet the dawn as was her habit,

accompanied by a white tide of cats, that she defied the lassitude of her body.

      She had heard the cats crying to her from the lawn sixty feet below her

room as she lay in bed those three mornings after little Titus had been

delivered, and lying there hugely in her candlelit room she had yearned to be

with them, and beads of sweat had stood out upon her skin as in her agony she

hankered for strength.

      Had not her birds been with her, the frustration of her spirit must surely

have done her more than the physical harm of getting up. The constantly changing

population of her feathered children were the solace of those few days that

seemed to her like months.

      The white rook was the most constant in his re-appearances at the

ivy-choked window, although up to the moment of her confinement he had been the

most fickle of visitors.

      In her deep voice she would hold converse with him for an hour at a time,

referring to him as "Master Chalk" or her "wicked one". All her companions came.

Sometimes the room was alive with song. Sometimes, feeling the need to exercise

their pinions in the sky, a crowd of them would follow one another through the

window of ivy, around which in the shadowy air as they waited their turn to

scramble through, a dozen birds at a time would hover, fall and rise, rattling

their many-coloured wings.

      Thus it might be that from time to time she would be almost deserted. On

one occasion only a stonechat and a bedraggled owl were with her.

      Now she was strong enough to walk and watch them circling in the sky or to

sit in her arbour at the end of the long lawn, and with the sunlight smouldering

in the dark red hair and lying wanly over the area of her face and neck, watch

the multiform and snow-white convolutions of her malkins.

      Mrs. Slagg had found herself becoming more and more dependent upon Keda's

help. She did not like to admit this to herself. There was something so still

about Keda which she could not understand. Every now and again she made an

effort to impress the girl with an authority which she did not possess, keeping

on the alert to try and find some fault in her. This was so obvious and pathetic

that it did not annoy the girl from the Mud Dwellings. She knew that an hour or

so afterwards when Mrs. Slagg felt that her position was once again established,

the old nurse would run up to her, nearly in tears for some petty reason or

other and bury her shaking head in Keda's side.

      Fond as Keda had become of Titus whom she had suckled and cared for

tenderly, she had begun to realize that she must return to the Mud Dwellings.

She had left them suddenly as a being who, feeling that Providence has called

him, leaves the old life suddenly for the new. But now she realized that she had

made a mistake and knew that she would be false to remain any longer in the

castle than was necessary for the child. Not so much a mistake as a crime

against her conscience, for it was with a very real reason that she had

accompanied Mrs. Slagg at such short notice.

      Day after day from the window in the small room she had been given next to

Mrs. Slagg's she gazed to where the high surrounding wall of the castle grounds

hid from her sight the Dwellings that she had known since her infancy, and where

during the last year her passions had been so cruelly stirred.

      Her baby, whom she had buried so recently, had been the son of an old

carver of matchless reputation among the Dwellers. The marriage had been forced

upon her by the iron laws. Those sculptors who were unanimously classed as

pre-eminent were, after the fiftieth year, allowed to choose a bride from among

the damsels, and against their choice no shadow of objection could be raised.

This immemorial custom had left Keda no option but to become the wife of this

man, who, though a sour and uncouth old creature, burned with a vitality that

defied his years.

      From the morning until the light failed him he would be with his carvings.

He would peer at it from all angles, or crouch grotesquely at some distance, his

eyes narrowed in the sunlight. Then, stealing up upon it, it would seem that he

was preparing to strike like a beast attacking its paralysed quarry; but on

reaching the wooden form he would run his great hand over the surfaces as a

lover will fondle the breasts of his mistress.

      Within three months from the time when he and Keda had performed the

marriage ceremony, standing alone upon the marriage hill, to the south of the

Twisted Woods, while an ancient voice called to them through the half-lit

distances, their hands joined, her feet upon his -- within the three months that

followed he had died. Suddenly letting the chisel and the hammer fall to the

ground, his hands had clutched at his heart, his lips had drawn themselves away

from his teeth, and he had crumpled up, his energy passing out of him and

leaving only the old dry sack of his body. Keda was alone. She had not loved him

but had admired him and the passion that consumed him as an artist. Once more

she was free save that, on the day that he died, she felt within her the

movement of another life than her own and now, nearly a year later, her

firstborn was lying near the father, lifeless, in the dry earth.

      The dreadful and premature age that descended so suddenly upon the faces

of the Dwellers had not yet completely fallen over her features. It was as

though it was so close upon her that the beauty of her face cried out against

it, defying it, as a stag at bay turns upon the hounds with a pride of stance

and a shaking of antlers.

      A hectic beauty came upon the maidens of the Mud buildings a month or so

before the ravages to which they were predestined attacked them. From infancy

until this tragic interim of beauty their loveliness was of a strange innocence,

a crystal-like tranquillity that held no prescience of the future. When in this

clearness the dark seeds began to root and smoke was mixed with the flame, then,

as with Keda now, a thorny splendour struck outward from their features.

      One warm afternoon, sitting in Mrs. Slagg's room with Titus at her breast,

she turned to the old nurse and said quietly: "At the end of the month I shall

return to my home. Titus is strong and well and he will be able to do without

me."

      Nannie, whose head had been nodding a little, for she was always either

dropping off for a nap or waking up from one, opened her eyes when Keda's words

had soaked into her brain. Then she sat up very suddenly and in a frightened

voice called out: "No! no! you mustn't go. You mustn't! You mustn't! Oh, Keda,

you know how old I am." And she ran across the room to hold Keda's arm. Then for

the sake of her dignity: "I've told you not to call him Titus," she cried in a

rush." 'Lord Titus' or 'his Lordship,' is what you _should_ say." And then, as

though with relief, she fell back upon her trouble. "Oh, you can't go! you can't

go!"

      "I must go," said Keda. "There are reasons why I must go."

      "Why? why? why?" Nannie cried out through the tears that were beginning to

run jerkily down her foolish wrinkled face. "Why must you go?" Then she stamped

a tiny slippered foot that made very little noise. "You must answer me! You

must! Why are you going away from me?" Then, clenching her hands -- "I'll tell

the Countess," she said, "I'll tell her."

      Keda took no notice at all, but lifted Titus from one shoulder to another

where his crying ceased.

      "He will be safe in your care," said Keda. "You must find another helper

when he grows older for he will be too much for you."

      "But they won't be like you," shrilled Nannie Slagg, as though she were

abusing Keda for her suitability. "They won't be like _you_. They"ll bully me.

Some of them bully old women when they are like me. Oh, my weak heart! my poor

weak heart! what can I do?"

      "Come," said Keda. "It is not as difficult as that."

      "It _is_. It _is_!" cried Mrs. Slagg, renewing her authority. "It's worse

than that, much worse. Everyone deserts me, because I'm old."

      "You must find someone you can trust. I will try and help you," said Keda.

      "_Will_ you? _will_ you?" cried Nannie, bringing her fingers up to her

mouth and staring at Keda through the red rims of her eyelids. "Oh, _will_ you?

They make me do everything. Fuchsia's mother leaves everything to me. She has

hardly seen his little Lordship, has she? Has she?"

      "No," said Keda. "Not once. But he is happy."

      She lifted the infant away from her and laid him between the blankets in

his cot, where after a spell of whimpering he sucked contentedly at his fist.

      Nannie Slagg suddenly gripped Keda's arm again. "You haven't told me why;

you haven't told me why," she said. "I want to know why you're going away from

me. You never tell me anything. Never. I suppose I'm not worth telling. I

suppose you think I don't matter. Why don't you tell me things? Oh, my poor

heart, I suppose I'm too old to be told anything."

      "I will tell you why I have to go," said Keda. "Sit down and listen."

Nannie sat upon a low chair and clasped her wrinkled hands together. "Tell me

everything," she said.

      Why Keda broke the long silence that was so much a part of her nature she

could not afterwards imagine, feeling only that in talking to one who would

hardly understand her she was virtually talking to herself. There had come to

her a sense of relief in unburdening her heart.

      Keda sat upon Mrs. Slagg's bed near the wall. She sat very upright and her

hands lay in her lap. For a moment or two she gazed out of the window at a cloud

that had meandered lazily into view. Then she turned to the old woman.

      "When I returned with you on that first evening," said Keda quietly, "I

was troubled. I was troubled and I am still unhappy because of love. I feared my

future; and my past was sorrow, and in my present you had need of me and I had

need of refuge, so I came." She paused.

      "Two men from our Mud Dwellings loved me. They loved me too much and too

violently." Her eyes returned to Nannie Slagg, but they hardly saw her, nor

noticed that her withered lips were pursed and her head tilted like a sparrow"s.

She continued quietly:

      "My husband had died. He was a Bright Carver, and died struggling. I would

sit down in the long shadows by our dwellings and watch a dryad's head from day

to day finding its hidden outline. To me it seemed he carved the child of

leaves. He would not rest, but fight; and stare -- and stare. Always he would

stare, cutting the wood away to give his dryad breath. One evening when I felt

my unborn moving within me my husband's heart stopped beating and his weapons

fell. I ran to him and knelt beside his body. His chisel lay in the dust. Above

us his unfinished dryad gazed over the Twisted Woods, an acorn between its

teeth.

      "They buried him, my rough husband, in the long sandy valley, the valley

of graves where we are always buried. The two dark men who loved and love me

carried his body for me and they lowered it into the sandy hollow that they had

scooped. A hundred men were there and a hundred women; for he had been the

rarest of the carvers. The sand was heaped upon him and there was only another

dusty mound among the mounds of the Valley and all was very silent. They held me

in their eyes while he was buried -- the two who love me. And I could not think

of him whom we were mourning. I could not think of death. Only of life. I could

not think of stillness, only of movement. I could not understand the burying,

nor that life could cease to be. It was all a dream. I was alive, _alive_, and

two men watched me standing. They stood beyond the grave, on the other side. I

saw only their shadows for I dared not lift up my eyes to show my gladness. But

I knew that they were watching me and I knew that I was young. They were strong

men, their faces still unbroken by the cruel bane we suffer. They were strong

and young. While yet my husband lived I had not seen them. Though one brought

white flowers from the Twisted Woods and one a dim stone from the Gormen

Mountain, yet I saw nothing of them, for I knew temptation.

      "That was long ago. All is changed. My baby has been buried and my lovers

are filled with hatred for one another. When you came for me I was in torment.

From day to day their jealousy had grown until, to save the shedding of blood, I

came to the castle. Oh, long ago with you, that dreadful night."

      She stopped and moved a lock of hair back from her forehead. She did not

look at Mrs. Slagg, who blinked her eyes as Keda paused and nodded her head

wisely.

      "Where are they now? How many, many times have I dreamed of them! How

many, many times have I, into my pillow, cried: 'Rantel!' whom I first saw

gathering the Root, his coarse hair in his eyes. cried 'Braigon!' who stood

brooding in the grove. Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own

quietness is with me. I am not drowned with them in Love's unkindness. I am

unable to do aught but watch them, and fear them and the hunger in their eyes.

The rapture that possessed me by the grave has passed. I am tired now, with a

love I do not quite possess. Tired with the hatreds I have woken. Tired that I

am the cause and have no power. My beauty will soon leave me, soon, soon, and

peace will come. But ah! too soon."

      Keda raised her hand and wiped away the slow tears from her cheeks. "I

must have love," she whispered.

      Startled at her own outburst she stood up beside the bed rigidly. Then her

eyes turned to the nurse. Keda had been so much alone in her reverie that it

seemed natural to her to find that the old woman was asleep. She moved to the

window. The afternoon light lay over the towers. In the straggling ivy beneath

her a bird rustled. From far below a voice cried faintly to some unseen figure

and stillness settled again. She breathed deeply, and leaned forward into the

light. Her hands grasped the frame of the window on her either side and her eyes

from wandering across the towers were drawn inexorably to that high encircling

wall that hid from her the houses of her people, her childhood, and the

substance of her passion.

28

FLAY BRINGS A MESSAGE

      Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its

stronghold. Its breath could be felt in forgotten corridors, -- Gormenghast had

itself _become_ autumn. Even the denizens of this fastness were its shadows.

      The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and

every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and

dripped, and their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles

through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted

themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreaths that drifted

through the turrets and swarmed up the hidden walls.

      From high in the Tower of Flints the owls inviolate in their stone

galleries cried inhumanly, or falling into the windy darkness set sail on

muffled courses for their hunting grounds. Fuchsia was less and less to be found

in the castle. As, with every day that passed, the weather became increasingly

menacing, so she seemed to protract the long walks that had now become her chief

pleasure. She had captured anew the excitement that had once filled her when

with Mrs. Slagg, several years before, she had insisted on dragging her nurse on

circuitous marches which had seemed to the old lady both hazardous and

unnecessary. But Fuchsia neither needed nor wanted a companion now.

      Revisiting those wilder parts of the environs that she had almost

forgotten, she experienced both exaltation and loneliness. This mixture of the

sweet and bitter became necessary to her, as her attic had been necessary. She

watched with frowning eyes the colour changing on the trees and loaded her

pockets with long golden leaves and fire-coloured ferns and, indeed, with every

kind of object which she found among the woods and rocky places. Her room became

filled with stones of curious shapes that had appealed to her, fungi resembling

hands or plates: queer-shaped flints and contorted branches; and Mrs. Slagg,

knowing it would be fruitless to reproach her, gazed each evening, with her

fingers clutching her lower lip, at Fuchsia emptying her pockets of fresh

treasures and at the ever- growing hoard that had begun to make the room a

tortuous place to move about in.

      Among Fuchsia's hieroglyphics on the wall great leaves had begun to take

residence, pinned or pasted between her drawings, and areas of the floor were

piled with trophies.

      "Haven't you got enough, dear?" said Nannie, as Fuchsia entered late one

evening and deposited a moss-covered boulder on her bed. Tiny fronds of fern

emerged here and there from the moss, and white flowers the size of gnats.

      Fuchsia had not heard Nannie's question, so the little old creature

advanced to the side of the bed.

      "You've got enough now, haven't you, my caution? Oh, yes, yes, I think so.

Quite enough for your room now, dear. How dirty you are, my . . . Oh, my poor

heart, how unappetizing you are."

      Fuchsia tossed back her dripping hair from her eyes and neck, so that it

hung in a heavy clump like black seaweed over the collar of her cape. Then after

undoing a button at her throat with a desperate struggle, and letting the corded

velvet fall to her feet, she pushed it under her bed with her foot. Then she

seemed to see Mrs. Slagg for the first time. Bending forward she kissed her

savagely on the forehead and the rain dripped from her on to the nurse's

clothes.

      "Oh, you dirty thoughtless thing! you naughty nuisance. Oh, my poor heart,

how could you?" said Mrs. Slagg, suddenly losing her temper and stamping her

foot. "All over my black satin, you dirty thing. You nasty wet thing. Oh, my

poor dress! Why can't you stay in when the weather is muddy and blowy? You

always were unkind to me! Always, always."

      "That's not true," said Fuchsia, clenching her hands.

      The poor old nurse began to cry.

      "Well, _is_ it, _is_ it?" said Fuchsia.

      "I don't know. I don't know at all," said Nannie. "Everyone's unkind to

me; how should I know?"

      "Then I'm going away," said Fuchsia.

      Nannie gulped and jerked her head up. "Going away?" she cried in a

querulous voice. "No, no! you mustn't go away." And then with an inquisitive

look struggling with the fear in her eyes, "Where to?" she said. "Where could

you go to, dear?"

      "I'd go far away from here -- to another kind of land," said Fuchsia,

"where people who didn't know that I was the Lady Fuchsia would be surprised

when I told them that I _was_; and they would treat me better and be more polite

and do some homage sometimes. But I wouldn't stop bringing home my leaves and

shining pebbles and fugnesses from the woods, whatever they thought."

      "You'd go away from me?" said Nannie in such a melancholy voice that

Fuchsia held her in her strong arms.

      "Don't cry," she said. "It isn't any good."

      Nannie turned her eyes up again and this time they were filled with the

love she felt for her "child". But even in the weakness of her compassion she

felt that she should preserve her station and repeated: "_Must_ you go into the

dirty water, my own one, and tear your clothes just like you've always done,

caution dear? Aren't you big enough to go out only on nice days?"

      "I like the autumn weather," said Fuchsia very slowly. "So that's why I go

out to look at it."

      "Can't you see it from out of your window, precious?" said Mrs. Slagg.

"Then you would keep warm at the same time, though what there is to stare at _I_

don't know; but there, I'm only a silly old thing."

      "I know what I want to do, so don't you think about it any more," said

Fuchsia. "I'm finding things out."

      "You're a wilful thing," said Mrs. Slagg a little peevishly, "but I know

much more than you think about all sorts of things. I do; yes, I do; but I'll

get you your tea at once. And you can have it by the fire, and I will bring the

little boy in because he ought to be awake by now. Oh dear! there is so much to

do. Oh, my weak heart, I wonder how long I will last."

      Her eyes, following Fuchsia"s, turned to the boulder around which a wet

mark was spreading on the patchwork quilt.

      "You're the dirtiest terror in the world," she said. "What's that stone

for? What is it _for_, dear? What's the _use_ of it? You never listen. Never.

Nor grow any older like I told you to. There's no one to help me now. Keda's

gone, and I do everything." Mrs. Slagg wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Change your wet clothes or I won't bring you anything, and your dirty wet shoes

at once!" . . . Mrs. Slagg fumbled at the door-handle, opened the door and

shuffled away down the corridor, one hand clasped at her chest.

      Fuchsia removed her shoes without untying the laces by treading on the

heels and working her feet loose. Mrs. Slagg had made up a glowing fire and

Fuchsia, pulling off her dress, rubbed her wet hair with it. Then, wrapping a

warm blanket about her, she fell back into a low armchair that had been drawn up

to the fire and, sinking into its familiar softness, gazed absently at the

leaping flames with half-closed eyes.

      When Mrs. Slagg returned with a tray of tea and toasted scones, currant

bread, butter and eggs and a jar of honey, she found Fuchsia asleep.

      Placing the tray on the hearth she tiptoed to the door and disappeared, to

return within the minute with Titus in her arms. He was dressed in a white

garment which accentuated what warmth of colour there was in his face. At birth

he had been practically bald, but now, though it was only two months later, he

was blessed with a mop of hair as dark as his sister"s.

      Mrs. Slagg sat down with Titus in a chair opposite Fuchsia and peered

weakly at the girl, wondering whether to wake her at once or whether to let her

finish her sleep and then to make another pot of tea. "But the scones will be

cold, too," she said to herself. "Oh, how tiresome she is." But her problem was

solved by a loud single knuckle-rap at the door, which caused her to start

violently and clutch Titus to her shoulder, and Fuchsia to wake from her doze.

      "Who is it?" cried Mrs. Slagg. "Who is it?"

      "Flay," said the voice of Lord Sepulchrave's servant. The door opened a

few inches and a bony face looked in from near the top of the door.

      "Well?" said Nannie, jerking her head about. "Well? Well? What is it?"

      Fuchsia turned her head and her eyes moved up the fissure between the door

and the wall until they came at last to settle on the cadaverous features.

      "Why don't you come inside?" she said.

      "No invitation," said Flay flatly. He came forward, his knees cracking at

each step. His eyes shifted from Fuchsia to Mrs. Slagg and from Mrs. Slagg to

Titus, and then to the loaded tea-tray by the fire, on which they lingered

before they returned to Fuchsia wrapped in her blanket. When he saw she was

still looking at him his right hand raised itself like a bunch of blunt talons

and began to scratch at a prominent lump of bone at the back of his head.

      "Message from his Lordship, my Lady," he said; and then his eyes returned

to the tea-tray.

      "Does he want me?" said Fuchsia.

      "Lord Titus," said Flay, his eyes retaining upon their lenses the pot of

tea, toasted scones, currant bread, butter, eggs and ajar of honey.

      "He wants little Titus, did you say?" cried Mrs. Slagg, trying to make her

feet reach the ground.

      Flay gave a mechanical nod. "Got to meet me, quadrangle-arch, half-past

eight," added Flay, wiping his hands on his clothes.

      "He wants my little Lordship," whispered the old nurse to Fuchsia, who

although her first antipathy to her brother had worn off had not acquired the

same excited devotion which Nannie lavished upon the infant. "He wants my little

wonder."

      "Why not?" said Flay and then relapsed into his habitual silence after

adding: "Nine o'clock -- library."

      "Oh, my poor heart, he ought to be in bed by then," gulped the nurse; and

clutched Titus even closer to her.

      Fuchsia had been looking at the tea-tray as well.

      "Flay," she said, "do you want to eat anything?"

      By way of reply the spidery servant made his way at once across the room

to a chair which he had kept in the corner of his eye, and returned with it to

seat himself between the two. Then he took out a tarnished watch, scowled at it

as though it were his mortal enemy, and returned it to a secret recess among his

greasy black clothes.

      Nannie edged herself out of the chair and found a cushion for Titus to lie

on in front of the fire, and then began to pour out the tea. Another cup was

found for Flay, and then for a long while the three of them sat silently

munching or sipping, and reaching down to the floor for whatever they needed but

making no effort to look after each other. The firelight danced in the room, and

the warmth was welcome, for outside or in the corridors the wet earthy draughts

of the season struck to the marrow.

      Flay took out his watch again and, wiping his mouth with the back of his

hand, arose to his feet. As he did so, he upset a plate at the side of his chair

and it fell and broke on the floor. At the sound he started and clutched the

back of the chair and his hand shook. Titus screwed his face up at the noise as

though about to cry, but changed his mind.

      Fuchsia was surprised at so obvious a sign of agitation in Flay whom she

had known since her childhood and on whom she had never before noticed any sign

of nerves.

      "Why are you shaking?" she said. "You never used to shake."

      Flay pulled himself together and then sat down suddenly again, and turned

his expressionless face to Fuchsia. "It's the night," he said tonelessly. "No

sleep, Lady Fuchsia." And he gave a ghastly mirthless laugh like something rusty

being scraped by a knife.

      Suddenly he had regained his feet again and was standing by the door. He

opened it very gradually and peered through the aperture before he began to

disappear inch by inch, and the door clicked finally upon him.

      "Nine o'clock," said Nannie tremulously. "What does your father want with

my little Lordship at nine o'clock? Oh, my poor heart, what does he want him

for?"

      But Fuchsia, tired out from her long day among the dripping woods was once

more fast asleep, the red firelight flickering to and fro across her lolling

head.

29

THE LIBRARY

      The library of Gormenghast was situated in the castle's Eastern wing which

protruded like a narrow peninsula for a distance out of all proportion to the

grey hinterland of buildings from which it grew. It was from about midway along

this attenuated East wing that the Tower of Flints arose in scarred and lofty

sovereignty over all the towers of Gormenghast.

      At one time this Tower had formed the termination of the Eastern wing, but

succeeding generations had added to it. On its further side the additions had

begun a tradition and had created the precedent for Experiment, for many an

ancestor of Lord Groan had given way to an architectural whim and made an

incongruous addition. Some of these additions had not even continued the

Easterly direction in which the original wing had started, for at several points

the buildings veered off into curves or shot out at right angles before

returning to continue the main trend of stone.

      Most of these buildings had about them the rough-hewn and oppressive

weight of masonry that characterized the main volume of Gormenghast, although

they varied considerably in every other way, one having at its summit an

enormous stone carving of a lion's head, which held between its jaws the limp

corpse of a man on whose body was chiselled the words: "_He was an enemy of

Groan_"; alongside this structure was a rectangular area of some length entirely

filled with pillars set so closely together that it was difficult for a man to

squeeze between them. Over them, at the height of about forty feet, was a

perfectly flat roof of stone slabs blanketed with ivy. This structure could

never have served any practical purpose, the closely packed forest of pillars

with which it was entirely filled being of service only as an excellent place in

which to enjoy a fantastic game of hide-and-seek.

      There were many examples of an eccentric notion translated into

architecture in the spine of buildings that spread eastwards over the undulating

ground between the heavy walls of conifer, but for the most part they were built

for some especial purpose, as a pavilion for entertainments, or as an

observatory, or a museum. Some in the form of halls with galleries round three

sides had been intended for concerts or dancing. One had obviously been an

aviary, for though derelict, the branches that had long ago been fastened across

the high central hall of the building were still hanging by rusty chains, and

about the floor were strewn the broken remains of drinking cups for the birds;

wire netting, red with rust, straggled across the floor among rank weeds that

had taken root.

      Except for the library, the eastern wing, from the Tower of Flints

onwards, was now but a procession of forgotten and desolate relics, an Ichabod

of masonry that filed silently along an avenue of dreary pines whose needles hid

the sky.

      The library stood between a building with a grey dome and one with a

façade that had once been plastered. Most of the plaster had fallen away, but

scraps had remained scattered over the surface, sticking to the stones. Patches

of faded colour showed that a fresco had once covered the entire face of the

building. Neither doors nor windows broke the stone surface. On one of the

larger pieces of plaster that had braved a hundred storms and still clung to the

stone, it was possible to make out the lower part of a face, but nothing else

was recognizable among the fragments.

      The library, though a lower building than these two to which it was joined

at either end, was of a far greater length than either. The track that ran

alongside the eastern wing, now in the forest, and now within a few feet of the

kaleidoscopic walls shadowed by the branches of the evergreens, ended as it

curved suddenly inwards towards the carved door. Here it ceased among the

nettles at the top of the three deep steps that led down to the less imposing of

the two entrances to the library, but the one through which Lord Sepulchrave

always entered his realm. It was not possible for him to visit his library as

often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which

were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only

pleasure -- books.

      Despite his duties, it was Lord Sepulchrave's habit to resort each

evening, however late the hour, to his retreat and to remain there until the

small hours of the following day.

      The evening on which he sent Flay to have Titus brought to him found Lord

Sepulchrave free at seven in the evening, and sitting in the corner of his

library, sunk in a deep reverie.

      The room was lit by a chandelier whose light, unable to reach the

extremities of the room lit only the spines of those volumes on the central

shelves of the long walls. A stone gallery ran round the library at about

fifteen feet above the floor, and the books that lined the walls of the main

hall fifteen feet below were continued upon the high shelves of the gallery.

      In the middle of the room, immediately under the light, stood a long

table. It was carved from a single piece of the blackest marble, which reflected

upon its surface three of the rarest volumes in his Lordship's collection.

      Upon his knees, drawn up together, was balanced a book of his

grandfather's essays, but it had remained unopened. His arms lay limply at his

side, and his head rested against the velvet of the chair back. He was dressed

in the grey habit which it was his custom to wear in the library. From full

sleeves his sensitive hands emerged with the shadowy transparency of alabaster.

For an hour he had remained thus; the deepest melancholy manifested itself in

every line of his body.

      The library appeared to spread outwards from him as from a core. His

dejection infected the air about him and diffused its illness upon every side.

All things in the long room absorbed his melancholia. The shadowing galleries

brooded with slow anguish; the books receding into the deep corners, tier upon

tier, seemed each a separate tragic note in a monumental fugue of volumes.

      It was only on those occasions now, when the ritual of Gormenghast

dictated, that he saw the Countess. They had never found in each other's company

a sympathy of mind or body, and their marriage, necessary as it was from the

lineal standpoint, had never been happy. In spite of his intellect, which he

knew to be far and away above hers, he felt and was suspicious of the heavy,

forceful vitality of his wife, not so much a physical vitality as a blind

passion for aspects of life in which he could find no cause for interest. Their

love had been passionless, and save for the knowledge that a male heir to the

house of Groan was imperative, they would have gladly forgone their embarrassing

yet fertile union. During her pregnancy he had only seen her at long intervals.

No doubt the unsatisfactory marriage had added to his native depression, but

compared with the dull forest of his inherent melancholy it was but a tree from

a foreign region that had been transplanted and absorbed.

      It was never this estrangement that grieved him, nor anything tangible but

a constant and indigenous sorrow.

      Of companions with whom he could talk upon the level of his own thought

there were few, and of these only one gave him any satisfaction, the Poet. On

occasion he would visit that long, wedge-headed man and find in the abstract

language with which they communicated their dizzy stratas of conjecture a

temporary stir of interest. But in the Poet there was an element of the

idealist, a certain enthusiasm which was a source of irritation to Lord

Sepulchrave, so that they met only at long intervals.

      The many duties, which to another might have become irksome and appeared

fatuous, were to his Lordship a relief and a relative escape from himself. He

knew that he was past all hope a victim of chronic melancholia, and were he to

have had each day to himself he would have had to resort constantly to those

drugs that even now were undermining his constitution.

      This evening, as he sat silently in the velvet-backed chair, his mind had

turned to many subjects like a black craft, that though it steers through many

waters has always beneath it a deathly image reflected among the waves.

Philosophers and the poetry of Death -- the meaning of the stars and the nature

of these dreams that haunted him when in those chloral hours before the dawn the

laudanum built for him within his skull a tallow-coloured world of ghastly

beauty.

      He had brooded long and was about to take a candle that stood ready on a

table at his elbow and search for a book more in keeping with his mood than were

the essays on his knee, when he felt the presence of another thought that had

been tempering his former cogitations, but which now stood boldly in his mind.

It had begun to make itself felt as something that clouded and disturbed the

clarity of his reflections when he had pondered on the purpose and significance

of tradition and ancestry, and now with the thought detached from its erudite

encumbrances he watched it advance across his brain and appear naked, as when he

had first seen his son, Titus.

      His depression did not lift; it only moved a little to one side. He rose

to his feet and, moving without a sound, replaced the book in a shelf of essays.

He returned as silently to the table.

      "Where are you?" he said.

      Flay appeared at once from the darkness of one of the corners.

      "What hour is it?"

      Flay brought out his heavy watch. "Eight, your Lordship."

      Lord Sepulchrave, with his head hanging forward on his breast, walked up

and down the length of the library for a few minutes. Flay watched him as he

moved, until his master stopped opposite his servant.

      "I wish to have my son brought to me by his nurse. I shall expect them at

nine. You will conduct them through the woods. You may go."

      Flay turned and, accompanied by the reports of his knee-joints,

disappeared into the shadows of the room. Pulling back the curtain from before

the door at the far end, he unlatched the heavy oak and climbed the three steps

into the night. Above him the great branches of the pines rubbed against one

another and grated in his ears. The sky was overcast and had he not made this

same journey through the darkness a thousand times he must surely have lost

himself in the night. To his right he could sense the spine of the Western Wing

although he could not see it. He walked on and in his mind he said: "Why now?

Had the summer to see his son in. Thought he'd forgotten him. Should have seen

the child long ago. What's the game? Heir to Gormenghast to come through woods

on cold night. Wrong. Dangerous. Catch a cold. But Lordship knows. He knows. I

am only his servant. First servant. No one else that. Chose me; ME, Flay,

because he trusts me. Well may he trust me. Ha, ha, ha! And why? they wonder. Ha

ha! Silent as a corpse. That's why."

      As he neared the Tower of Flints the trees thinned and a few stars

appeared in the blackness above him. By the time the body of the castle was

reached only half the sky was hidden by the night clouds and he could make out

vague shapes in the darkness. Suddenly he stopped, his heart attacking his ribs,

and drew up his shoulders to his ears; but a moment later he realized that the

vague obese patch of blackness a few feet from him was a shrub of clipped box

and not that figure of evil who now obsessed him.

      He straddled onwards, and came at last to an entrance beneath the sweep of

an archway. Why he did not enter it at once and climb the stairs to find Nannie

Slagg he did not know. That he could see through the archway and across the

darkness of the servants' quadrangle a dim light in a high window of one of the

kitchen buildings was in itself nothing unusual. There was generally a light

showing somewhere in the kitchen quarters although most of the staff would have

resorted to their underground dormitories by that time of night. An apprentice

given some fatigue duty to perform after his normal hours might be scrubbing a

floor, or an especial dish for the morrow might necessitate a few cooks working

late into the evening.

      Tonight, however, a dull greenish light from a small window held his eye,

and before he realized that he was even intrigued, he found that his feet had

forestalled his brain and were carrying him across the quadrangle.

      On his way across he stopped twice to tell himself that it was a pointless

excursion and that he was in any case feeling extremely cold; but he went on

nevertheless with an illogical and inquisitive itch overriding his better

judgement.

      He could not tell which room it was that gave forth this square, greenish,

glow. There was something unhealthy about its colour. No one was about in the

quadrangle; there were no other footsteps but his own. The window was too high

for even him to peer into, although he could easily reach it with his hands.

Once again he said to himself: "What are you doing? Wasting your time. Told by

Lordship to fetch Nannie Slagg and child. Why are you here? What are you doing?"

      But again his thin body had anticipated him and he had begun to roll away

an empty cask from against the cloister walls.

      In the darkness it was no easy matter to steer the barrel and to keep it

balanced upon the tilted rim as he rolled it towards the square of light; but he

managed with very little sound to bring it eventually immediately under the

window.

      He straightened his back and turned his face up to the light that escaped

like a kind of gas and hovered about the window in the haze of the autumn night.

      He had lifted his right foot onto the barrel, but realized that to raise

himself into the centre of the window would cause his face to catch the light

from the room. Why, he did not know, but the curiosity which he had felt beneath

the low arch was now so intense, that after lowering his foot and pulling the

barrel to the right of the small window, he scrambled upon it with a haste that

startled him. His arms were outstretched on either side along the viewless walls

and his fingers, spread out like the ribs of a bone fan, began to sweat as he

moved his head gradually to the left. He could already see through the glass (in

spite of a sweep of old cobwebs, like a fly-filled hammock) the smooth stone

walls of the room beneath him; but he had still to move his head further into

the light in order to obtain a clear view of the floor of the room.

      The light that seeped in a dull haze through the window dragged out as

from a black canvas the main bone formation of Mr. Flay's head, leaving the eye

sockets, the hair, an area beneath the nose and lower lip, and everything that

lay beneath the chin, as part of the night itself. It was a mask that hung in

the darkness.

      Mr. Flay moved it upwards inch by inch until he saw what he had by some

prophetic qualm known all along that it was his destiny to see. In the room

below him the air was filled with an intensification of that ghastly green which

he had noticed from across the quadrangle. The lamp that hung from the centre of

the room by a chain was enclosed in a bowl of lime-green glass. The ghoulish

light which it spewed forth gave to every object in the room a theatrical

significance.

      But Flay had no eyes for the few scattered objects in the nightmare below

him, but only for an enormous and sinister _presence_, the sight of which had

caused him to sicken and sway upon the cask and to remove his head from the

window while he cooled his brow on the cold stones of the wall.

30

IN A LIME-GREEN LIGHT

      Even in his nausea he could not help wondering what it was that Abiatha

Swelter was doing. He raised his head from the wall and brought it by degrees to

its former position.

      This time Flay was surprised to find that the room appeared empty, but,

with a start at its dreadful nearness, he found that the chef was sitting on a

bench against the wail and immediately below him. It was not easy to see him

clearly through the filth and cobwebs of the window, but the great pasty dome of

his head surrounded by the lamp-tinted whiteness of his swollen clothes, seemed,

when Flay located them, almost at arm's length. This proximity injected into Mr.

Flay's bones a sensation of exquisite horror. He stood fascinated at the pulpy

baldness of the chef's cranium and as he stared a portion of its pale plush

contracted in a spasm, dislodging an October fly. Nothing else moved. Mr. Flay's

eyes shifted for a moment and he saw a grindstone against the wall opposite.

Beside it was a wooden stool. To his right, he saw two boxes placed about four

feet apart. On either side of these wooden boxes two chalk lines ran roughly

parallel to each other, and passed laterally along the room below Mr. Flay.

Nearing the left hand wall of the room they turned to the right, keeping the

same space between them, but in their new direction they could not proceed for

more than a few feet before being obstructed by the wall. At this point

something had been written between them in chalk, and an arrow pointed towards

the wall. The writing was hard to read, but after a moment Flay deciphered it

as: "_To the Ninth stairs._" This reading of the chalk came as a shock to Mr.

Flay, if only for the reason that the Ninth stairs were those by which Lord

Sepulchrave's bedroom was reached from the floor below. His eyes returned

swiftly to the rough globe of a head beneath him, but there was still no

movement except perhaps the slight vibration of the chef's breathing.

      Flay turned his eyes again to the right where the two boxes were standing,

and he now realized that they represented either a door or an entrance of some

sort from which led this chalked passageway before it turned to the right in the

direction of the Ninth stairs. But it was upon a long sack which had at first

failed to attract his attention that he now focused his eyes. It lay as though

curled up immediately between and a little in advance of the two boxes. As he

scrutinized it, something terrified him, something nameless, and which he had

not yet had time to comprehend, but something from which he recoiled.

      A movement below him plucked his eyes from the sack and a huge shape

arose. It moved across the room, the whiteness of the enveloping clothes

tinctured by the lime-green lamp above. It sat beside the grindstone. It held in

its hand what seemed, in proportion to its bulk, a small weapon, but which was

in reality a two-handed cleaver.

      Swelter's feet began to move the treadles of the grindstone, and it began

to spin in its circles. He spat upon it rapidly three or four times in

succession, and with a quick movement slid the already razor-keen edge of the

cleaver across the whirr of the stone. Doubling himself over the grindstone he

peered at the shivering edge of the blade, and every now and then lifted it to

his ear as though to listen for a thin and singing note to take flight from the

unspeakable sharpness of the steel.

      Then again he bent to his task and continued whetting the blade for

several minutes before listening once more to the invisible edge. Flay began to

lose contact with the reality of what he saw and his brain to drift into a

dream, when he found that the chef was drawing himself upwards and travelling to

that part of the wall where the chalk lines ended and where the arrow pointed to

the Ninth staircase. Then he removed his shoes, and lifted his face for the

first time so that Mr. Flay could see the expression that seeped from it. His

eyes were metallic and murderous, but the mouth hung open in a wide, fatuous

smile.

      Then followed what appeared to Flay an extraordinary dance, a grotesque

ritual of the legs, and it was some time before he realized, as the cook

advanced by slow, elaborate steps between the chalk lines, that he was

practising tip-toeing with absolute silence. "What's he practising that for?"

thought Flay, watching the intense and painful concentration with which Swelter

moved forward step by step, the cleaver shining in his right hand. Flay glanced

again at the chalk arrow. "He's come from the ninth staircase: he's turned left

down the worn passage. There's no rooms right or left in the worn passage. I

ought to know. _He's approaching the Room._" In the darkness Flay turned as

white as death.

      The two boxes could represent only one thing -- the doorposts of Lord

Sepulchrave's bedroom. And the sack . . .

      He watched the chef approach the symbol of himself asleep outside his

master's room, curled up as he always was. By now the tardiness of the approach

was unendingly slow. The feet in their thick soles would descend an inch at a

time, and as they touched the ground the figure cocked his head of lard upon one

side and his eyes rolled upwards as he listened for his own footfall. When

within three feet of the sack the chef raised the cleaver in both hands and with

his legs wide apart to give him a broader area of balance, edged his feet

forward, one after the other, in little, noiseless shiftings. He had now judged

the distance between himself and the sleeping emblem of his hate. Flay shut his

eyes as he saw the cleaver rise in the air above the cumulous shoulder and the

steel flared in the green light.

      When he opened his eyes again, Abiatha Swelter was no longer by the sack,

which appeared to be exactly as he had last seen it. He was at the chalk arrow

again and was creeping forward as before. The horror that had filled Flay was

aggravated by a question that had entered his mind. How did Swelter know that he

slept with his chin at his knees? How did Swelter know his head always pointed

to the east? Had he been observed during his sleeping hours? Flay pressed his

face to the window for the last time. The dreadful repetition of the same

murderous tip-toeing journey towards the sack, struck such a blow at the very

centre of his nervous control that his knees gave way and he sank to his

haunches on the barrel and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

Suddenly his only thought was of escape -- of escape from a region of the castle

that could house such a fiend; to escape from that window of green light; and,

scrambling from the cask, he stumbled into the mist-filled darkness and, never

turning his head again to the scene of horror, made tracks for the archway from

whence he had deviated so portentously from his course.

      Once within the building he made directly for the main stairs and with

gigantic paces climbed like a mantis to the floor in which Nannie Slagg's room

was situated. It was some time before he came to her door, for the west wing in

which she lived was on the opposite side of the building and necessitated a

detour through many halls and corridors.

      She was not in her room, and so he went at once to Lady Fuchsia"s, where,

as he had surmised, he found her sitting by the fire with little of the

deference which he felt she should display in front of his Lordship's daughter.

      It was when he had knocked at the door of the room with the knuckly single

rap, that he had wakened Fuchsia from her sleep and startled the old nurse.

Before he had knocked on the panels he had stood several minutes recovering his

composure as best he could. In his mind emerged the picture of himself striking

Swelter across the face with the chain, long ago as it seemed to him now in the

Cool Room. For a moment he started sweating again and he wiped his hands down

his sides before he entered. His throat felt very dry, and even before noticing

Lady Fuchsia and the nurse he had seen the tray. That was what he wanted.

Something to drink.

      He left the room with a steadier step and, saying that he would await Mrs.

Slagg and Titus under the archway and escort her to the library, he left them.

31

REINTRODUCING THE TWINS

      At the same moment that Flay was leaving Fuchsia's bedroom, Steerpike was

pushing back his chair from the supper table at the Prunesquallors", where he

had enjoyed, along with the Doctor and his sister Irma, a very tender chicken, a

salad and a flask of red wine; and now, the black coffee awaiting them on a

little table by the fire, they were preparing to take up warmer and more

permanent stations. Steerpike was the first to rise and he sidled around the

table in time to remove the chair from behind Miss Prunesquallor and to assist

her to her feet. She was perfectly able to take care of herself, in fact she had

been doing it for years, but she leaned on his arm as she slowly assumed the

vertical.

      She was swathed to her ankles in maroon-coloured lace. That her gowns

should cling to her as though they were an extra layer of skin was to her a

salient point, in spite of the fact that of all people it was for her to hide

those angular outcrops of bone with which Nature had endowed her and which in

the case of the majority of women are modified by a considerate layer of fat.

      Her hair was drawn back from her brow with an even finer regard for

symmetry than on the night when Steerpike had first seen her, and the knot of

grey twine which formed a culmination as hard as a boulder, a long way down the

back of her neck, had not a single hair out of place.

      The Doctor had himself noticed that she was spending more and more time

upon her toilette, although it had at all times proved one of her most absorbing

occupations; a paradox to the Doctor's mind which delighted him, for his sister

was, even in his fraternal eyes, cruelly laden with the family features. As she

approached her chair to the left of the fire, Steerpike removed his hand from

her elbow, and, shifting back the Doctor's chair with his foot while

Prunesquallor was drawing the blinds, pulled forward the sofa into a more

favourable position in front of the fire.

      "They don't meet -- I said 'They don't _meet_'," said Irma Prunesquallor,

pouring out the coffee.

      How she could see anything at all, let alone whether they met or not,

through her dark glasses was a mystery.

      Dr. Prunesqualior, already on his way back to his chair, on the padded

arms of which his coffee was balancing, stopped and folded his hands at his

chin.

      "To what are you alluding, my dear? Are you speaking of a brace of

spirits? ha ha ha! -- twin souls searching for consummation, each in the other?

Ha ha! ha ha ha! Or are you making reference to matters more terrestrial?

Enlighten me, my love."

      "Nonsense," said his sister. "Look at the curtains. I said: 'Look at the

curtains'."

      Dr. Prunesquailor swung about.

      "To me," he said, "they look exactly like curtains. In fact, they _are_

curtains. Both of them. A curtain on the left, my love, and a curtain on the

right. Ha ha! I'm absolutely certain they are!"

      Irma, hoping that Steerpike was looking at her, laid down her coffeecup.

      "What happens in the _middle_, I said: what happens right down the

_middle_?" Her pointed nose warmed, for she sensed victory.

      "There is a great yearning one for the other. A fissure of impalpable

night divides them. Irma, my dear sister, there is a lacuna."

      "Then _kill_ it," said Irma, and sank back into her chair. She glanced at

Steerpike, but he had apparently taken no notice of the conversation and she was

disappointed. He was leaning back into one corner of the couch, his legs

crossed, his hands curled around the coffee-cup as though to feel its warmth,

and his eyes were peering into the fire. He was evidently far away.

      When the Doctor had joined the curtains together with great deliberation

and stood back to assure himself that the Night was satisfactorily excluded from

the room, he seated himself, but no sooner had he done so than there was a

jangling at the door-bell which continued until the cook had scraped the pastry

from his hands, removed his apron and made his way to the front door.

      Two female voices were speaking at the same time.

      "Only for a moment, only for a moment," they said. "Just passing -- On our

way home -- Only for a moment -- Tell him we won't stay -- No, of course not; we

won't stay. Of course not. Oh no -- Yes, yes. Just a twinkling -- only a

twinkling."

      But for the fact that it would have been impossible for one voice to wedge

so many words into so short a space of time and to speak so many of them

simultaneously, it would have been difficult to believe that it was not the

voice of a single individual, so continuous and uniform appeared the flat colour

of the sound.

      Prunesquallor cast up his hands to the ceiling and behind the convex

lenses of his spectacles his eyes revolved in their orbits.

      The voices that Steerpike now heard in the passage were unfamiliar to his

quick ear. Since he had been with the Prunesquallors he had taken advantage of

all his spare time and had, he thought, run to earth all the main figures of

Gormenghast. There were few secrets hidden from him, for he had that

scavenger-like faculty of acquiring unashamedly and from an infinite variety of

sources, snatches of knowledge which he kept neatly at the back of his brain and

used to his own advantage as opportunity offered.

      When the twins, Cora and Clarice, entered the room together, he wondered

whether the red wine had gone to his head. He had neither seen them before nor

anything like them. They were dressed in their inevitable purple.

      Dr. Prunesquallor bowed elegantly. "Your Ladyships," he said, "we are more

than honoured. We are really very much more than honoured, ha ha ha!" He

whinnied his appreciation. "Come right along, my dear ladies, come right the way

in. Irma, my dear, we have been doubly lucky in our privileges. Why 'doubly' you

say to yourself, why 'doubly'? Because, O sister, they have _both_ come, ha ha

ha! Very much so, very much so."

      Prunesquallor, who knew from experience that only a fraction of what

anyone said ever entered the brains of the twins, permitted himself a good deal

of latitude in his conversation, mixing with a certain sycophancy remarks for

his own amusement which could never have been made to persons more astute than

the twins.

      Irma had come forward, her iliac crest reflecting a streak of light.

      "Very charmed, your Ladyships; I said 'very, very charmed'."

      She attempted to curtsey, but her dress was too tight.

      "You know my sister, of course, of course, of course. Will you have

coffee? Of course you will, and a little wine? Naturally -- or what would you

prefer?"

      But both the Doctor and his sister found that the Ladies Cora and Clarice

had not been paying the slightest attention but had been staring at Steerpike

more in the manner of a wall staring at a man than a man staring at a wall.

      Steerpike in a well-cut uniform of black cloth, advanced to the sisters

and bowed. "Your Ladyships," he said, "I am delighted to have the honour of

being beneath the same roof. It is an intimacy that I shall never forget." And

then, as though he were ending a letter -- "I am your very humble servant," he

added.

      Clarice turned herself to Cora, but kept her eyes on Steerpike.

      "He says he's glad he's under the same roof as us," she said.

      "Under the same roof," echoed Cora. "He's very glad of it."

      "Why?" said Clarice emptily. "What difference does it make about the

roof?"

      "It couldn't make any difference whatever the roof's like," said her

sister.

      "I like roofs," said Clarice; "they are something I like more than most

things because they are on top of the houses they cover, and Cora and I like

being over the tops of things because we love power, and that's why we are both

fond of roofs."

      "That's why," Cora continued. "That's the reason. Anything that's on top

of something else is what we like, unless it is someone we don't like who's on

top of something we are pleased with like ourselves. We're not allowed to be on

top, except that our own room is high, oh, so high up in the castle wall, with

our Tree -- our own Tree that grows from the wall, that is so much more

important than anything Gertrude has."

      "Oh yes," said Clarice; "she hasn't anything as important as that. But she

steals our birds."

      She turned her expressionless eyes to Cora, who met them as though she

were her sister's reflection. It may be that between them they recognized shades

of expression in each other's faces, but it is certain that no one else, however

keen his eyesight, could have detected the slightest change in the muscles that

presumably governed the lack of expressions of their faces. Evidently this

reference to stolen birds was the reason why they came nearer to each other so

that their shoulders touched. It was obvious that their sorrow was conjoined.

      Dr. Prunesquallor had, during all this, been trying to shepherd them into

the chairs by the fire, but to no avail. They had no thought for others when

their minds were occupied. The room, the persons around them ceased to exist.

They had only enough room for one thought at a time.

      But now that there was a sudden lull the Doctor, reinforced this time by

Irma, managed to shift the twins by means of a mixture of deference and force

and to get them established by the fire. Steerpike, who had vanished from the

room, now returned with another pot of coffee and two more cups. It was this

sort of thing that pleased Irma, and she tilted her head on its neck and turned

up the corners of her mouth into something approaching the coy.

      But when the coffee was passed to the twins they did not want it. One,

taking her cue from the other, decided that she, or the other one, or possibly

both, or neither, did not want it.

      Would they have anything to drink? Cognac, sherry, brandy, a liqueur,

cherry wine . . . ?

      They shook their heads profoundly.

      "We only came for a moment," said Cora.

      "Because we were passing," said Clarice. "That's the only reason."

      But although they refused on those grounds to indulge in a drink of any

sort, yet they gave no indication of being in a hurry to go, nor had they for a

long time anything to say, but were quite content to sit and stare at Steerpike.

      But after a long interval, halfway through which the Doctor and his sister

had given up all attempts to make conversation, Cora turned her face to

Steerpike.

      "Boy," she said, "what are you here for?"

      "Yes," echoed Clarice, "that's what we want to know."

      "I want," said Steerpike, choosing his words, "only your gracious

patronage, your Ladyships. Only your favour."

      The twins turned their faces towards each other and then at the same

moment they returned them to Steerpike.

      "Say that again," said Cora.

      "All of it," said Clarice.

      "Only your gracious patronage, your Ladyships. Only your favour. That is

what I want."

      "Well, we"ll give it you," said Clarice. But for the first time the

sisters were at variance for a moment.

      "Not yet," said Cora. "It's too soon for that."

      "Much too soon," agreed Clarice. "It's not time yet to give him any favour

at all. What's his name?"

      This was addressed to Steerpike.

      "His name is Steerpike," was the youth's reply.

      Clarice leaned forward in her chair and whispered to Cora across the

hearthrug: "His name is Steerpike."

      "Why not?" said her sister flatly. "It will do."

      Steerpike was, of course, alive with ideas and projects. These two

half-witted women were a gift. That they should be the sisters of Lord

Sepulchrave was of tremendous strategic value. They would prove an advance on

the Prunesqualiors, if not intellectually at any rate socially, and that at the

moment was what mattered. And in any case, the lower the mentality of his

employers the more scope for his own projects.

      That one of them had said his name "Steerpike" would "do" had interested

him. Did it imply that they wished to see more of him? That would simplify

matters considerably.

      His old trick of shameless flattery seemed to him the best line to take at

this critical stage. Later on, he would see. But it was another remark that had

appealed to his opportunist sense even more keenly, and that was the reference

to Lady Groan.

      These ridiculous twins had apparently a grievance, and the object of it

was the Countess. This when examined further might lead in many directions.

Steerpike was beginning to enjoy himself in his own dry, bloodless way.

      Suddenly as in a flash he remembered two tiny figures the size of halma

players, dressed in the same crude purple. Directly he had seen them enter the

room an echo was awakened somewhere in his subconscious, and although he had put

it aside as irrelevant to the present requirements, it now came back with

redoubled force and he recalled where he had seen the two minute replicas of the

twins.

      He had seen them across a great space of air and across a distance of

towers and high walls. He had seen them upon the lateral trunk of a dead tree in

the summer, a tree that grew out at right angles from a high and windowless

wall.

      Now he realized why they had said "Our Tree that grows from the wall that

is so much more important than anything Gertrude has." But then Clarice had

added: "But she steals our birds." What did that imply? He had, of course, often

watched the Countess from points of vantage with her birds or her white cats.

That was something he must investigate further. Nothing must be let fall from

his mind unless it were first turned to and fro and proved to be useless.

      Steerpike bent forward, the tips of his fingers together. "Your

Ladyships," he said, "are you enamoured of the feathered tribe? -- Their beaks,

their feathers, and the way they fly?"

      "What?" said Cora.

      "Are you in love with birds, your Ladyships?" repeated Steerpike, more

simply.

      "What?" said Clarice.

      Steerpike hugged himself inside. If they could be as stupid as this, he

could surely do anything he liked with them.

      "Birds," he said more loudly; "do you like them?"

      "What birds?" said Cora. "What do you want to know for?"

      "We weren't talking about birds," said Clarice unexpectedly. "We hate

them."

      "They're such silly things," Cora ended.

      "Silly and stupid; we hate them," said Clarice.

      "_Avis, avis_, you are undone, undone!" came Prunesquallor's voice. "Your

day is over. Oh, ye hordes of heaven! the treetops shall be emptied of their

chorus and only clouds ride over the blue heaven."

      Prunesquallor leaned forward and tapped Irma on the knee.

      "Pretty pleasing," he said, and showed her all his brilliant teeth

together. "What didyou think, my riotous one?"

      "Nonsense!" said Irma, who was sitting on the couch with Steerpike.

Feeling that as the hostess she had so far this evening had very little

opportunity of exhibiting what she, and she alone, felt was her outstanding

talent in that direction, she bent her dark glasses upon Cora and then upon

Clarice and tried to speak to both of them at once.

      "Birds," she said, with something arch in her voice and manner, "birds

_depend_ -- don't you think, my dear Ladyships -- I said birds _depend_ a lot

upon their eggs. Do you not agree with me? I said do you not agree with me?"

      "We're going now," said Cora, getting up.

      "Yes, we've been here too long. Much too long. We've got a lot of sewing

to do. We sew beautifully, both of us."

      "I am sure you do," said Steerpike. "May I have the privilege of

appreciating your craft at some future date when it is convenient for you?"

      "We do embroidery as well," said Cora, who had risen and had approached

Steerpike.

      Clarice came up to her sister's side and they both looked at him. "We do a

lot of needlework, but nobody sees it. Nobody is interested in us, you see. We

only have two servants. We used --"

      "That's all," said Cora. "We used to have hundreds when we were younger.

Our father gave us hundreds of servants. We were of great -- of great --"

      "Consequence," volunteered her sister. "Yes, that's exactly what it was

that we were. Sepulchrave was always so dreamy and miserable, but he did play

with us sometimes; so we did what we liked. But now he doesn't ever want to see

us."

      "He thinks he's so wise," said Cora. "But he's no cleverer than we are."

      "He's not as clever," said Clarice.

      "Nor is Gertrude," they said almost at the same moment.

      "She stole your birds, didn't she?" said Steerpike, winking at

Prunesquallor.

      "How did you know?" they said, advancing on him a step further.

      "Everyone knows, your Ladyships. Everyone in the castle knows," replied

Steerpike, winking this time at Irma.

      The twins held hands at once and drew close together. What Steerpike had

said had sunk in and was making a serious impression on them. They had thought

it was only a private grievance, that Gertrude had lured away their birds from

the Room of Roots which they had taken so long preparing. But everyone knew!

Everyone knew!

      They turned to leave the room, and the Doctor opened his eyes, for he had

almost fallen asleep with one elbow on the central table and his hand propping

his head. He arose to his feet but could do nothing more elegant than to crook a

finger, for he was too tired. His sister stood beside him creaking a little, and

it was Steerpike who opened the door for them and offered to accompany them to

their room. As they passed through the hall he removed his cape from a hook.

Flinging it over his shoulders with a flourish he buttoned it at the neck. The

cloak accentuated the highness of his shoulders, and as he drew its folds about

him, the spareness of his body.

      The aunts seemed to accept the fact that he was leaving the house with

them, although they had not replied when he had asked their permission to escort

them to their rooms.

      With an extraordinary gallantry he shepherded them across the quadrangle.

      "Everybody knows, you said." Cora's voice was so empty of feeling and yet

so plaintive that it must have awakened a sympathetic response in anyone with a

more kindly heart than Steerpike"s.

      "That's what you said," repeated Clarice.

      "But what can we do? We can't do anything to show what we could do if only

we had the power we haven't got," said Clarice lucidly. "We used to have

hundreds of servants."

      "You shall have them back," said Steerpike. "You shall have them all back.

New ones. Better ones. Obedient ones. I shall arrange it. They shall work for

you, _through_ me. Your floor of the castle shall be alive again. You shall be

supreme. Give me the administration to handle, your Ladyships, and I will have

them dancing to your tune -- whatever it is -- they"ll dance to it."

      "But what about Gertrude?"

      "Yes, what about Gertrude," came their flat voices.

      "Leave everything to me. I will secure your rights for you. You are Lady

Cora and Lady Clarice, Lady Clarice and Lady Cora. You must not forget that. No

one must be allowed to forget it."

      "Yes, that's what must happen," said Cora.

      "Everyone must think of who we are," said Clarice.

      "And never stop thinking about it," said Cora.

      "Or we will use our power," said Clarice.

      "Meanwhile, I will take you to your rooms, dear ladies. You must trust me.

You must not tell anyone what we've said. Do you both understand?"

      "And we"ll get our birds back from Gertrude."

      Steerpike took them by the elbows as they climbed the stairs.

      "Lady Cora," he said, "you must try to concentrate on what I am saying to

you. If you pay attention to me I will restore you to your places of eminence in

Gormenghast from which Lady Gertrude has dethroned you."

      "Yes."

      "Yes."

      The voices showed no animation, but Steerpike realized that only by what

they said, not by _how_ they said it, could he judge whether their brains

reacted to his probing.

      He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal

advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master. He knew

that when he reached their door he would itch to get inside and to see what sort

of appointments they had and what on earth they meant by their Room of Roots.

But he also knew to a nicety the time to slacken the rein. Such creatures as the

aunts for all their slowness of intellect had within them the Groan blood which

might at any moment, were a false step to be made, flare up and undo a month of

strategy. So Steerpike left them at the door of their apartments and bowed

almost to the ground. Then as he retired along the oak passage, and was turning

a corner to the left he glanced back at the door where he had left the twins.

They were still looking after him, as motionless as a pair of waxen images.

      He would not visit them tomorrow, for it would do them good to spend a day

of apprehension and of silly discussion between themselves. In the evening they

would begin to get nervous and need consoling, but he would not knock at the

door until the following morning. Meanwhile he would pick up as much information

as he could about them and their tendencies.

      Instead of crossing over to the Doctor's house when he had reached the

quadrangle he decided he would take a stroll across the lawns and perhaps around

by the terraces to the moat, for the sky had emptied itself of cloud and was

glittering fiercely with a hundred thousand stars.

32

"THE FIR-CONES"

      The wind had dropped, but the air was bitterly cold and Steerpike was glad

of his cape. He had turned the collar up and it stood stiffly above the level of

his ears. He seemed to be bound for somewhere in particular, and was not simply

out for a nocturnal stroll. That peculiar halfwalking, half-running gait was

always with him. It appeared that he was eternally upon some secret mission, as

indeed from his own viewpoint he generally was.

      He passed into deep shadows beneath the arch, and then as though he were a

portion of that inky darkness that had awakened and disengaged itself from the

main body, he reappeared beyond the archway in the half light.

      For a long time he kept close to the castle walls, moving eastwards

continually. His first project of making a detour by way of the lawns and the

terraces where the Countess walked before breakfast had been put aside, for now

that he had started walking he felt an enjoyment in moving alone, absolutely

alone, under the starlight. The Prunesquallors would not wait up for him. He had

his own key to the front door and, as on previous nights, after late wanderings

he would pour himself out a nightcap and perhaps enjoy some of the Doctor's

tobacco in his little stubby pipe before he retired.

      Or he might, as he had so often done before during the night, resort to

the dispensary and amuse himself by compounding potions with lethal

possibilities. It was always to the shelf of poisons that he turned at once when

he entered and to the dangerous powders.

      He had filled four small glass tubes with the most virulent of these

concoctions, and had removed them to his own room. He had soon absorbed all that

the Doctor, whose knowledge was considerable, had divulged on the subject. Under

his initial guidance he had, from poisonous weeds found in the vicinity,

distilled a number of original and death-dealing pastes. To the Doctor these

experiments were academically amusing.

      Or on retiring to the Prunesquallors' he might take down one of the

Doctor's many books and read, for these days a passion to accumulate knowledge

of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know

all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a

full pack of cards to play from. He imagined to himself occasions when the

conversation of one from whom he foresaw advancement might turn to astronomy,

metaphysics, history, chemistry, or literature, and he realized that to be able

to drop into the argument a lucid and exact thought, an opinion based on what

might _appear_ to be a life-time study, would instantaneously gain more for him

than an hour of beating about the bush and waiting until the conversation turned

upon what lay within his scope of experience.

      He foresaw himself in control of men. He had, along with his faculty of

making swift and bold decisions, an unending patience. As he read in the

evenings after the Doctor and Irma had retired for the night, he would polish

the long, narrow steel of the swordstick blade which he had glimpsed and which

he had, a week later, retrieved from the pile of ancient weapons in the chill

hall. When he had first drawn it from the pile it had been badly tarnished, but

with the skilful industry and patience with which he applied himself to whatever

he undertook, it had now become a slim length of white steel. He had after an

hour's hunting found the hollow stick which was screwed into the innocentlooking

hilt by a single turn of the wrist.

      Whether on his return he would apply himself to the steel of his

swordstick, and to the book on heraldry which he had nearly completed, or

whether in the dispensary he would grind in the mortar, with the red oil, that

feathery green powder with which he was experimenting, or whether he would be

too tired to do anything but empty a glass of cognac and climb the stairs to his

bedroom, he did not know, nor, for that matter, was he looking so short a way

ahead. He was turning over in his mind as he walked briskly onwards not only

every remark which he could remember the twins having let fall during the

evening, but the trend of the questions which he proposed to put to them on the

evening of the day after tomorrow.

      With his mind working like an efficient machine, he thought out probable

moves and parries, although he knew that in any dealings with the aunts the

illogical condition of their brains made any surmise or scheming on his part

extraordinarily difficult. He was working with a low-grade material, but one

which contained an element which natures more elevated lack -- the incalculable.

      By now he had reached the most eastern corner of the central body of the

castle. Away to his left he could distinguish the high walls of the west wing as

they emerged from the ivy-blackened, sunset-facing precipice of masonry that

shut off the northern halls of Gormenghast from the evening's lighi. The Tower

of Flints could only be recognized as a narrow section of the sky the shape of a

long black ruler standing upon its end, the sky about it was crowded with the

stars.

      It occurred to him as he saw the Tower that he had never investigated the

buildings which were, he had heard, continued on its further side. It was too

late now for such an expedition and he was thinking of making a wide circle on

the withered lawns which made good walking at this corner of the castle, when he

saw a dim light approaching him. Glancing about, he saw within a few yards the

black shapes of stunted bushes. Behind one of these he squatted and watched the

light, which he recognized now as a lantern, coming nearer and nearer. It seemed

that the figure would pass within a few feet of him, and peering over his

shoulder to see in what direction the lantern was moving, he realized that he

was immediately between the light and the Tower of Flints. What on earth could

anyone want at the Tower of Flints on a cold night? Steerpike was intrigued. He

dragged his cape well over himself so that only his eyes were exposed to the

night air. Then, remaining as still as a crouching cat, he listened to the feet

approaching.

      As yet the body of whoever it was that carried the lantern had not

detached itself from the darkness, but Steerpike, listening intently, heard now

not only the long footsteps but the regular sound of a dry stick being broken.

"Flay," said Steerpike to himself. But what was that other noise? Between the

regular sounds of the paces and the click of the knee joints a third, a quicker,

less positive sound, came to his ears.

      Almost at the same moment as he recognized it to be the pattering of tiny

feet, he saw, emerging from the night, the unmistakable silhouettes of Flay and

Mrs. Slagg.

      Soon the crunching of Flay's footsteps appeared to be almost on top of

him, and Steerpike, motionless as the shrub he crouched beneath, saw the

straggling height of Lord Sepulchrave's servant hastily pass above him, and as

he did so a cry broke out. A tremor ran down Steerpike's spine, for if there was

anything that worried him it was the supernatural. The cry, it seemed, was that

of some bird, perhaps of a seagull, but was so close as to disprove that

explanation. There were no birds about that night nor, indeed, were they ever to

be heard at that hour, and it was with some relief that he heard Nannie Slagg

whisper nervously in the darkness:

      "There, there, my only . . . It won't be long, my little Lordship dear . .

. it won't be long now. Oh, my poor heart! why must it be at night?" She seemed

to raise her head from the little burden she carried and to gaze up at the lofty

figure who strode mechanically beside her; but there was no answer.

      "Things become interesting," said Steerpike to himself. "Lordships, Flays

and Slaggs, all heading for the Tower of Flints."

      When they were almost swallowed into the darkness, Steerpike rose to his

feet and flexed his cape-shrouded legs to get the stiffness from them, and then,

keeping the sound of Mr. Flay's knees safely within earshot, he followed them

silently.

      Poor Mrs. Slagg was utterly exhausted by the time they arrived at the

library, for she had consistently refused to allow Flay to carry Titus, for he

had, much against his better judgement, offered to do so when he saw how she was

continually stumbling over the irregularities of the ground, and when, among the

conifers how she caught her feet in the pine roots and ground creepers.

      The cold air had thoroughly wakened Titus, and although he did not cry it

was obvious that he was disconcerted by this unusual adventure in the dark. When

Flay knocked at the door and they entered the library, he began to whimper and

struggle in the nurse's arms.

      Flay retired to the darkness of his corner, where there was presumably

some chair for him to sit on. All he said was: "I've brought them, Lordship." He

usually left out the "your" as being unnecessary for him as Lord Sepulchrave's

primary attendant.

      "So I see," said the Earl of Groan, advancing down the room, "I have

disturbed you, nurse, have I not? It is cold outside. I have just been out to

get these for him."

      He led Nannie to the far side of the table. On the carpet in the lamplight

lay scattered a score of fir-cones, each one with its wooden petals undercut

with the cast shadow of the petal above it.

      Mrs. Slagg turned her tired face to Lord Sepulchrave. For once she said

the right thing. "Are they for his little Lordship, sir?" she queried. "Oh, he

will love them, won't you, my only?"

      "Put him among them. I want to talk to you," said the Earl. "Sit down."

      Mrs. Slagg looked around for a chair and seeing none turned her eyes

pathetically towards his Lordship, who was now pointing at the floor in a tired

way. Titus, whom she had placed amongst the cones, was alternately turning them

over in his fingers and sucking them.

      "It's all right, I've washed them in rainwater," said Lord Groan. "Sit on

the floor, nurse, sit on the floor." Without waiting, he himself sat upon the

edge of the table, his feet crossed before him, his hands upon the marble

surface at his side.

      "Firstly," he said, "I have had you come this way to tell you that I have

decided upon a family gathering here in a week's time. I want you to inform

those concerned. They will be surprised. That does not matter. They will come.

You will tell the Countess. You will tell Fuchsia. You will also inform their

Ladyships Cora and Clarice."

      Steerpike, who had opened the door inch by inch, had crept up a stairway

he had found immediately to his left. He had shut the door quietly behind him

and tiptoed up to a stone gallery which ran around the building. Conveniently

for him it was in the darkest shadow, and as he leaned against the bookshelves

which lined the walls and watched the proceedings below, he rubbed the palms of

his hands together silently.

      He wondered where Flay had got to, for as far as he could see there was no

other way out save by the main doorway, which was barred and bolted. It seemed

to him that he must, like himself, be standing or sitting quietly in the

shadows, and not knowing in what part of the building that might be, he kept

absolute silence.

      "At eight o'clock in the evening, I shall be awaiting him and them, for

you must tell them I have in my mind a breakfast that shall be in honour of my

son."

      As he said these words, in his rich, melancholy voice, poor Mrs. Slagg,

unable to bear the insufferable depression of his spirit, began to clutch her

wrinkled hands together. Even Titus seemed to sense the sadness which flowed

through the slow, precise words of his father. He forgot the fir-cones and began

to cry.

      "You will bring my son Titus in his christening robes and will have with

you the crown of the direct heir to Gormenghast. Without Titus the castle would

have no future when I am gone. As his nurse, I must ask you to remember to

instil into his veins, from the very first, a love for his birthplace and his

heritage, and a respect for all of the written and unwritten laws of the place

of his fathers.

      "I will speak to them, much against my own peace of spirit: I will speak

to them of this and of much more that is in my mind. At the Breakfast, of which

the details will be discussed on this same evening of next week, he shall be

honoured and toasted. It shall be held in the Refectory."

      "But he is only two months old, the little thing," broke in Nannie in a

tear-choked voice. "There is no time to lose, nevertheless," answered the Earl.

"And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The

leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears -- the wind howls. Why must

you mimic them?"

      Her old eyes gazed at him and were filmed. Her mouth quivered. "I am so

tired, sir," she said.

      "Then lie down, good woman, lie down," said Lord Sepulchrave. "It has been

a long walk for you. Lie down."

      Mrs. Slagg found no comfort in lying upon her back on the huge library

floor with the Earl of Groan talking to her from above in phrases that meant

nothing to her.

      She gathered Titus to her side and stared at the ceiling, her tears

running into her dry mouth. Titus was very cold and had begun to shiver.

      "Now, let me see my son," said his Lordship slowly. "My son Titus. Is it

true that he is ugly?"

      Nannie scrambled to her feet and lifted Titus in her arms.

      "He is not ugly, your Lordship," she said, her voice quavering. "My little

one is lovely."

      "Let me see him. Hold him up, nurse; hold him up to the light. Ah! that is

better. He has improved," said Lord Sepulchrave. "How old is he?"

      "Nearly three months," said Nannie Slagg. "Oh, my weak heart! he is nearly

three months old."

      "Well, well, good woman, that is all. I have talked too much tonight. That

is all that I wanted -- to see my son, and to tell you to inform the Family of

my desire to have them here at eight o'clock today week. The Prunesquallors had

better come as well. I will inform Sourdust myself. Do you understand?"

      "Yes, sir," said Nannie, already making for the door. "I will tell them,

sir. Oh, my poor heart, how tired I am!"

      "Flay!" said Lord Sepulchrave, "take the nurse back to her room. You need

not return tonight. I shall have left in four hours' time. Have my room prepared

and the lanthorn on my bedside table. You may go."

      Flay, who had emerged into the lamplight, nodded his head, relit the wick

of the lamp, and then followed Nannie Slagg out of the door and up the steps to

the starlight. This time he took no heed of her expostulations, but taking Titus

from her, placed him carefully into one of his capacious jacket pockets, and

then, lifting the tiny struggling woman in his arms, marched solemnly through

the woods to the castle.

      Steerpike followed, deep in thought, and did not even trouble to keep them

in sight.

      Lord Sepulchrave, lighting a candle, climbed the staircase by the door

and, moving along the wooden balcony, came at last to a shelf of dusty volumes.

He blew the grey pollen from the vellum spine of one which he tilted forward

from the rest with his index finger and then, turning over a page or two, near

the beginning, made his way around the balcony again and down the stairs.

      When he had reached his seat he leaned back and his head fell forward on

his chest. The book was still in his hand. His sorrowful eyes wandered about the

room from under the proud bone of his brow, until they fell at last upon the

scattered fir-cones.

      A sudden uncontrollable gust of anger seized him. He had been childish in

gathering them. Titus had not in any case derived any amusement from them.

      It is strange that even in men of much learning and wisdom there can be an

element of the infantile. It may be that it was not the cones themselves that

angered him, but that they acted in some way as a reminder of his failures. He

flung the book from him, and then immediately retrieved it, smoothing its sides

with his shaking hands. He was too proud and too melancholy to unbend and be the

father of the boy in anything but fact; he would not cease to isolate himself.

He had done more than he expected himself to do. At the breakfast which he had

envisaged he would toast the heir to Gormenghast. He would drink to the Future,

to Titus, his only son. That was all.

      He sat back again in the chair, but he could not read.

33

KEDA AND RANTEL

      When Keda came back to her people the cacti were dripping with the rain.

The wind was westerly, and above the blurred outline of the Twisted Woods the

sky was choked with crumpled rags. Keda stood for a moment and watched the dark

rulers of the rain slanting steadily from the ragged edge of the clouds to the

ragged edge of the woods. Behind the opaque formations the sun was hidden as it

sank, so that but little light was reflected from the empty sky above her.

      This was the darkness she knew of. She breathed it in. It was the late

autumn darkness of her memories. There was here no taint of those shadows which

had oppressed her spirit within the walls of Gormenghast. Here, once again an

Outer dweller, she stretched her arms above her head in her liberation.

      "I am free," she said. "I am home again." But directly she had said these

words she knew that it was not so. She was home, yes, among the dwellings where

she was born. Here beside her, like an ancient friend, stood the gaunt cactus,

but of the friends of her childhood who were left? Who was there to whom she

could go? She did not ask for someone in whom she could confide. She only wished

that she might go unhesitatingly to one who would ask no questions, and to whom

she need not speak.

      Who was there? And against this question arose the answer which she

feared: There were the two men.

      Suddenly the fear that had swept her died and her heart leapt with

inexplicable joy and as the clouds above her in the sky had rolled away from

their zenith, those that had choked her heart broke apart and left her with an

earthless elation and a courage that she could not understand. She walked on in

the gathering dusk and, passing by the empty tables and benches that shone

unnaturally in the darkness with the film of the rain still upon them, she came

at last to the periphery of the mud dwellings.

      It seemed at first as though the narrow lanes were deserted. The mud

dwellings, rising usually to a height of about eight feet, faced each other

across dark lanes like gullies, and all but met overhead. At this hour in the

lanes it would have been pitch dark if it had not been for the dwellers' custom

of hanging lamps above the doors of all their houses, and lighting them at

sunset.

      Keda had turned several corners before she came upon the first sign of

life. A dwarf dog, of that ubiquitous breed that was so often to be seen

slinking along the mud lanes, ran past Keda on little mangy legs, hugging the

wall as he ran. She smiled a little. Since childhood she had been taught to

despise these scavenging and stunted curs, but as she watched it slink past her

she did not despise it, but in the sudden gladness that had filled her heart she

knew of it only as a part of her own being, her all-embracing love and harmony.

The dog-urchin had stopped a few yards after passing her and was sitting up on

its mangy haunches and scratching with one of its hind legs at an itch beneath

its ear. Keda felt her heart was breaking with a love so universal that it drew

into its fiery atmosphere all things because they _were_; the evil, the good,

the rich, the poor, the ugly, the beautiful, and the scratching of this little

yellowish hound.

      She knew these lanes so well that the darkness did not hinder her

progress. The desertion of the mud lanes was, she knew, natural to that hour of

evening when the majority of the dwellers would be huddled over their root

fires. It was for this reason that she had left the castle so late on her

homeward journey. There was a custom among the dwellers that when passing each

other at night they should move their heads into the light of the nearest

door-lamp and then, as soon as they had observed one another, continue upon

their journeys. There was no need for them to show any expression; the chances

were that the mutual recognition of friends would be infrequent. The rivalry

between the families and the various schools of carving was relentless and

bitter, and it would often happen that enemies would find each other's features

in this way within a few feet of their own, lit by these hanging lamps; but this

custom was rigorously observed -- to stare for a moment and pass on.

      It had been Keda's hope that she would be able to reach her house, the

house which was hers through the death of her old husband, without having to

move into the lamplight and be recognized by a passing Dweller, but now she did

not mind. It seemed to her that the beauty that filled her was keener than the

edge of a sword and as sure a protection against calumny and gossip, the

jealousies and underground hatreds which she had once feared.

      What was it that had come over her? she wondered. A recklessness alien to

the whole quietness of her nature startled but fascinated her. This, the very

moment which she had anticipated would fill her with anxiety -- when the

problems, to escape which she had taken refuge in the castle, would lower

themselves over her like an impenetrable fog and frighten her -- was now an

evening of leaves and flame, a night of ripples.

      She walked on. From behind the rough wooden doors of many of the dwellings

she could hear the heavy voices of those within. She now came to the long lane

that led directly up to the sheer outer wall of Gormenghast. This lane was a

little broader than most, being about nine feet wide and broadening at times to

almost twelve. It was the highway of the Dwellers, and the daily rendezvous for

groups of the Bright Carvers. Old women and men would sit at the doors, or

hobble on their errands, and the children play in the dust in the shifting

shadow of the great Wall that edged by degrees along the street until by evening

it had swallowed the long highway and the lamps were lit. Upon the flat roof of

many of the dwellings a carving would be placed, and on evenings of sunset the

easterly line of those wooden forms would smoulder and burn and the westerly

line against the light in the sky would stand in jet-black silhouette, showing

the sweeping outlines and the harsh angles which the Dwellers delighted in

contrasting.

      These carvings were now lost in the upper darkness above the door lamps,

and Keda, remembering them as she walked, peered in vain for a glimpse of them

against the sky.

      Her home did not lie in this highway but at the corner of a little mud

square-where only the most venerable and revered of the Bright Carvers were

permitted to settle. In the centre of this square stood the pride of the mud

dwellers -- a carving, some fourteen feet high, which had been hewn several

hundred years before. It was the only one of that carver's works which the

dwellers possessed although several pieces from his hand were within the castle

walls, in the Hall of the Bright Carvings. There were diverse opinions as to who

he may have been, but that he was the finest of all the carvers was never

disputed. This work, which was repainted each year in its original colours, was

of a horse and rider. Hugely stylized and very simple, the bulk of rhythmic wood

dominated the dark square. The horse was of the purest grey and its neck was

flung backwards in a converse arch so that its head faced the sky, and the coils

of its white mane were gathered like frozen foam about the nape of its strained

neck and over the knees of the rider, who sat draped in a black cape. On this

cape were painted dark crimson stars. He was very upright, but his arms and

hands, in contrast to the vitality of the grey and muscular neck of the horse,

hung limply at his sides. His head was very sharply cut with the chisel and was

as white as the mane, only the lips and the hair relieving the deathlike mask,

the former a pale coral and the latter a dark chestnut brown. Rebellious

children were sometimes brought by their mothers to see this sinister figure and

were threatened with his disfavour should they continue in their wrongdoing.

This carving had a terror for them, but to their parents it was a work of

extraordinary vitality and beauty of form, and with a richness of mysterious

mood the power of which in a work was one of their criteria of excellence.

      This carving had come into Keda's mind as she approached that turning from

the highway which led to the mud square, when she heard the sound of feet behind

her. Ahead, the road lay silent, the door lamps lighting faintly small areas of

the earth below them, but giving no intimation of any passing figure. Away to

the left, beyond the mud square, the sudden barking of a dog sounded in her

ears, and she became conscious of her own footsteps as she listened to those

that were overtaking her.

      She was within a few yards of one of the door lamps and knowing that were

she to pass it before the approaching figure had done so, then both she and the

unknown man would have to walk together in the darkness until the next lamp was

reached, when the ritual of scanning each other's features would be observed,

Keda slackened her pace, so that the observance might be more rapidly disposed

of and the follower, whoever he was, might proceed on his way.

      She stopped as she came to the light, nor in doing so and waiting was

there anything unusual, for such was the not infrequent habit of those who were

nearing the lamps and was, in fact, considered an act of politeness. She moved

through the glow of the lamp so that on turning about the rays would illumine

her face, and the approaching figure would then both see her and be seen the

more easily.

      In passing under the lamp the light wavered on her dark brown hair

lighting its highest strands almost to the colour of barley, and her body,

though full and rounded, was upright and lithe, and this evening, under the

impact of her new emotion had in it a buoyancy, an excitement, that through the

eyes attacked the one who followed.

      The evening was electric and unreal, and yet perhaps, thought Keda, this

_is_ reality and my past life has been a meaningless dream. She knew that the

footsteps in the darkness which were now only a few yards away were a part of an

evening she would not forget and which she seemed to have enacted long ago, or

had foreseen. She knew that when the footsteps ceased and she turned to face the

one who followed she would find that he was Rantel, the more fiery, the more

awkward of the two who loved her.

      She turned and he was standing there.

      For a long time they stood. About them the impenetrable blackness of the

night shut them in as though they were in a confined space, like a hall, with

the lamp overhead.

      She smiled, her mature, compassionate lips hardly parting. Her eyes moved

over his face -- over the dark mop of his hair, his powerful jutting brow, and

the shadows of his eyes that stared as though fixed in their sockets, at her

own. She saw his high cheekbones and the sides of his face that tapered to his

chin. His mouth was drawn finely and his shoulders were powerful. Her breast

rose and fell, and she was both weak and strong. She could feel the blood

flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and

flowers. It was not passion that she felt: not the passion of the body, though

that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of

the life of which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined

was centred love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was

in love with what he meant to her as someone she _could_ love.

      He moved forward in the light so that his face was darkened to her and

only the top of his ruffled hair shone like wire.

      "Keda," he whispered.

      She took his hand. "I have come back."

      He felt her nearness; he held her shoulders in his hands.

      "You have come back," he said as though repeating a lesson. "Ah, Keda --

is this you? You went away. Every night I have watched for you." His hands shook

on her shoulders. "You went away," he said.

      "You have followed me?" said Keda. "Why did you not speak to me by the

rocks?"

      "I wanted to," he said, "but I could not."

      "Oh, why not?"

      "We will move from the lamp and then I will tell you," he said at last.

"Where are we going?"

      "Where? To where should I go but to where I lived -- to my house?"

      They walked slowly. "I will tell you," he said suddenly. "I followed you

to know where you would go. When I knew it was not to Braigon I overtook you."

      "To Braigon?" she said. "Oh Rantel, you are still as unhappy."

      "I cannot alter, Keda; I cannot change."

      They had reached the square.

      "We have come here for nothing," said Rantel, coming to a halt in the

darkness. "For nothing, do you hear me, Keda? I must tell you now. Oh, it is

bitterness to tell you."

      Nothing that he might say could stop a voice within her that kept crying:

"_I_ am with you, Keda! I am _life_! I am _life_! Oh, Keda, Keda, _I_ am with

you!" But her voice asked him as though something separate from her real self

were speaking:

      "Why have we come for nothing?"

      "I followed you and then I let you continue here with me, but your house,

Keda, where your husband carved, has been taken from you. You can do nothing.

When you left us the Ancients met, the Old Carvers, and they have given your

house to one who is of their company, for they say that now that your husband is

dead you are not worthy to live in the Square of the Black Rider."

      "And my husband's carvings," said Keda, "what has become of them?"

      While she waited for him to answer she heard his breathing quicken and

could dimly see him dragging his forearm over his brow.

      "I will tell you," he said. "O fire! why was I so slow -- so _slow_! While

I was watching for you, watching from the rocks, as I have done every night

since you left, Braigon broke into your house and found the Ancients dividing up

your own carvings among themselves. 'She will not come back,' they said of you.

'She is worthless. The carvings will be left untended,' they said, 'and the

grain-worm will attack them.' But Braigon drew his knife and sent them into a

room below the stairs and made twelve journeys and carried the carvings to his

own house, where he has hidden them, he says, until you come.

      "Keda, Keda, what can _I_ do for you? Oh Keda, what can _I_ do?"

      "Hold me close to you," she said. "Where is that music?"

      In the silence they could hear the voice of an instrument.

      "Keda . . ."

      His arms were about her body and his face was deep in her hair.

      She could hear the beating of his heart, for her head was lying close to

him. The music had suddenly ended and silence, as unbroken as the darkness about

them, returned.

      Rantel spoke at last. "I will not live until I take you, Keda. Then I will

live. I am a Sculptor. I will create a glory out of wood. I will hack for you a

symbol of my love. It will curve in flight. It will leap. It shall be of crimson

and have hands as tender as flowers and feet that merge into the roughness of

earth, for it shall be its body that leaps. And it shall have eyes that see all

things and be violet like the edge of the spring lightning, and upon the breast

I shall carve your name -- Keda, Keda, Keda -- three times, for I am ill with

love."

      She put up her hand and her cool fingers felt the bones of his brow and

his high cheekbones, and came to his mouth where they touched his lips.

      After a little while Rantel said softly: "You have been crying?"

      "With joy," she said.

      "Keda . . ."

      "Yes . . ."

      "Can you bear cruel news?"

      "Nothing can pain me any more," said Keda. "I am no longer the one you

knew. I am alive."

      "The law that forced you in your marriage, Keda, may bind you again. There

is another. I have been told he has been waiting for you, Keda, waiting for you

to return. But I could slay him, Keda, if you wish." His body toughened in her

arms and his voice grew harsher. "Shall I slay him?"

      "You shall not speak of death," said Keda. "He shall not have me. Take me

with you to your house." Keda heard her own voice sounding like that of another

woman, it was so different and clear. "Take me with you -- he will not take me

after we have loved. They have my house, where else should I sleep tonight but

with you? For I am happy for the first time. All things are clear to me. The

right and the wrong, the true and the untrue. I have lost my fear. Are you

afraid?"

      "I am not afraid!" cried Rantel into the darkness, "if we love one

another."

      "I love all, all," said Keda. "Let us not talk."

      Dazed, he took her with him away from the square, and threading their way

through the less frequented lanes found themselves at last at the door of a

dwelling at the base of the castle wall.

      The room they entered was cold, but within a minute Rantel had sent the

light from an open fire on the earth dancing across the walls. On the mud floor

was the usual grass matting common to all the dwellings.

      "Our youth will pass from us soon," said Keda. "But we are young this

moment and tonight we are together. The bane of our people will fall on us, next

year or the year after, but now -- NOW, Rantel; it is NOW that fills us. How

quickly you have made the fire! Oh, Rantel, how beautifully you have made it!

Hold me again."

      As he held her there was a tapping at the window; they did not move, but

only listened as it increased until the coarse slab of glass sunk in the mud

walls vibrated with an incessant drumming. The increasing volume of the sudden

rain was joined by the first howls of a young wind.

      The hours moved on. On the low wooden boards, Rantel and Keda lay in the

warmth of the fire, defenceless before each other's love.

      When Keda wakened she lay for some while motionless. Rantel's arm was

flung over her body and his hand was at her breast like a child"s. Lifting his

arm she moved slowly from him, lowered his hand again softly to the floor. Then

she rose and walked to the door. And as she took the first steps, there flashed

through her the joyous realization that the mood of invulnerability before the

world was still with her. She unlatched the door and flung it open. She had

known that the outer wall of Gormenghast would face her as she did so, Its rough

base within a stone's throw would rise like a sheer cliff. And there it was, but

there was more. Ever since she could remember anything the face of the outer

wall had been like the symbol of endlessness, of changelessness, of power, of

austerity and of protection. She had known it in so many moods. Baked to dusty

whiteness, and alive with basking lizards, she could remember how it flaked in

the sun. She had seen it flowering with the tiny pink and blue creeper flowers

that spread like fields of coloured smoke in April across acres of its temperate

surface. She had seen its every protruding ledge of stone, its every jutting

irregularity furred with frost, or hanging with icicles. She had seen the snow

sitting plumply on those juttings, so that in the darkness when the wall had

vanished into the night these patches of snow had seemed to her like huge stars

suspended.

      And now this sunlit morning of late autumn gave to it a mood which she

responded to. But as she watched its sunny surface sparkling after a night of

heavy rain, she saw at the same moment a man sitting at its ba&e, his shadow on

the wall behind him. He was whittling at a branch in his hand. But although it

was Braigon who was sat there and who lifted his eyes as she opened the door,

she did not cry in alarm or feel afraid or ashamed, but only looked at him

quietly, happily, and saw him as a figure beneath a sparkling wall, a man

whittling at a branch; someone she had longed to see again.

      He did not get to his feet, so she walked over to him and sat down at his

side. His head was massive and his body also; squarely built, he gave the

impression of compact energy and strength. His hair covered his head closely

with tangled curls.

      "How long have you been here, Braigon, sitting in the sun carving?"

      "Not long."

      "Why did you come?"

      "To see you."

      "How did you know that I had come back?"

      "Because I could carve no more."

      "You stopped carving?" said Keda.

      "I could not see what I was doing. I could only see your face where my

carving had been."

      Keda gave vent to a sigh of such tremulous depth that she clasped her

hands at her breast with the pain that it engendered.

      "And so you came here?"

      "I did not come at once. I knew that Rantel would find you as you left the

gate in the Outer Wall, for he hides each night among the rocks waiting for you.

I knew that he would be with you. But this morning I came here to ask him where

he had found you a dwelling for the night, and where you were, for I knew your

house had been taken away from you by the law of the Mud Square. But when I

arrived here an hour ago I saw the ghost of your face on the door, and you were

happy; so I waited here. You are happy, Keda?"

      "Yes," she said.

      "You were afraid in the castle to come back; but now you are here you are

not afraid. I can see what it is," he said. "You have found that you are in

love. Do you love him?"

      "I do not know. I do not understand. I am walking on air, Braigon. I

cannot tell whether I love him or no, or whether it is the world I love so much

and the air and the rain last night, and the passions that opened like flowers

from their tight buds. Oh, Braigon, I do not know. If I love Rantel, then I love

you also. As I watch you now, your hand at your forehead and your lips moving

such a little, it is you I love. I love the way you have not wept with anger and

torn yourself to shreds to find me here. The way you have sat here all by

yourself, oh Braigon, whittling a branch, and waiting, unafraid and

understanding everything, I do not know how, for I have not told you of what has

transformed me, suddenly."

      She leaned back against the wall and the morning sun lay whitely upon her

face. "Have I changed so much?" she said.

      "You have broken free," he said.

      "Braigon," she cried, "it is you -- it is _you_ whom I love." And she

clenched her hands together. "I am in pain because of you and him, but my pain

makes me happy. I must tell you the truth, Braigon. I am in love with all things

-- pain and all things, because I can now watch them from above, for something

has happened and I am clear -- clear. But I love you, Braigon, more than all

things. It is _you_ I love."

      He turned the branch over in his hand as though he had not heard, and then

he turned to her.

      His heavy head had been reclining upon the wall and now he turned it

slightly towards her, his eyes half closed.

      "Keda," he said, "I will meet you tonight. The grass hollow where the

Twisted Woods descend. Do you remember?"

      "I will meet you there," she said. While she spoke the air became shrill

between their heads and the steel point of a long knife struck the stones

between them and snapped with the impact.

      Rantel stood before them, he was shaking.

      "I have another knife," he said in a whisper which they could only just

hear. "It is a little longer. It will be sharper by this evening when I meet you

at the hollow. There is a full moon tonight. Keda! Oh Keda! Have you forgotten?"

      Braigon got to his feet. He had moved only to place himself before Keda's

body. She had closed her eyes and she was quite expressionless.

      "I cannot help it," she said, "I cannot help it. I am happy."

      Braigon stood immediately before his rival. He spoke over his shoulder,

but kept his eyes on his enemy.

      "He is right," he said. "I shall meet him at sunset. One of us will come

back to you."

      Then Keda raised her hands to her head. "No, no, no, no!" she cried. But

she knew that it must be so, and became calm, leaning back against the wall, her

head bowed and the locks of her hair falling over her face.

      The two men left her, for they knew that they could never be with her that

unhappy day. They must prepare their weapons. Rantel re-entered his hut and a

few moments later returned with a cape drawn about him. He approached Keda.

      "I do not understand your love," he said.

      She looked up and saw his head upright upon his neck. His hair was like a

bush of blackness.

      She did not answer. She only saw his strength and his high cheekbones and

fiery eyes. She only saw his youth.

      "I am the cause," she said. "It is I who should die. And I _will_ die,"

she said quickly. "Before very long -- but now, now what is it? I cannot enter

into fear or hate, or even agony and death. Forgive me. Forgive me."

      She turned and held his hand with the dagger in it.

      "I do not know. I do not understand," she said. "I do not think that we

have any power."

      She released his hand and he moved away along the base of the high wall

until it curved to the right and she lost him.

      Braigon was already gone. Her eyes clouded.

      "Keda," she said to herself, "Keda, this is tragedy." But as her words

hung emptily in the morning air, she clenched her hands for she could feel no

anguish and the bright bird that had filled her breast was still singing . . .

was still singing.

34

THE ROOM OF ROOTS

      "That's quite enough for today," said Lady Cora, laying down her

embroidery on a table beside her chair.

      "But you've only sewn three stitches, Cora," said Lady Clarice, drawing

out a thread to arm's length.

      Cora turned her eyes suspiciously. "You have been watching me," she said.

"Haven't you?"

      "It wasn't private," replied her sister. "Sewing isn't private." She

tossed her head.

      Cora was not convinced and sat rubbing her knees together, sullenly.

      "And now I've finished as well," said Clarice, breaking the silence. "Half

a petal, and quite enough, too, for a day like this. Is it tea time?"

      "Why do you always want to know the time?" said Cora. "'Is it breakfast

time, Cora?' . . . 'Is it dinner time, Cora?'     . . . 'Is it tea time, Cora?'

-- on and on and on. You know that it doesn't make any difference _what_ the

time is."

      "It does if you're hungry," said Clarice.

      "No, it doesn't. Nothing matters very much; even if you're hungry."

      "Yes, it does," her sister contested. "I _know_ it does."

      "Clarice Groan," said Cora sternly, rising from her chair, "you know _too_

much."

      Clarice did not answer, but bit her thin, loose lower lip.

      "We usually go on much longer with our sewing, don't we, Cora?" she said

at last. "We sometimes go on for hours and hours, and we nearly always talk a

lot, but we haven't today, have we, Cora?"

      "No," said Cora.

      "Why haven't we?"

      "I don't know. Because we haven't needed to, I suppose, you silly thing."

      Clarice got up from her chair and smoothed her purple satin, and then

looked archly at her sister. "_I_ know why we haven't been talking," she said.

      "Oh no, you don't."

      "Yes, I do," said Clarice. "_I_ know."

      Cora sniffed, and after walking to a long mirror in the wall with a

swishing of her skirts, she readjusted a pin in her hair. When she felt she had

been silent long enough:

      "Oh no, you don't," she said, and peered at her sister in the mirror over

the reflection of her own shoulder. Had she not had forty-nine years in which to

get accustomed to the phenomenon she must surely have been frightened to behold

in the glass, next to her own face, another, smaller, it is true, for her sister

was some distance behind her, but of such startling similarity.

      She saw her sister's mouth opening in the mirror.

      "I _do_," came the voice from behind her, "because I know what _you've_

been thinking. It's easy."

      "You _think_ you do," said Cora, "but I know you _don't_, because I know

exactly what you've been thinking all day that I've been thinking and that's

why."

      The logic of this answer made no lasting impression upon Clarice, for

although it silenced her for a moment she continued: "Shall I tell you what

you've been brooding on?" she asked.

      "You can if you like, I suppose. _I_ don't mind. What, then? I might as

well incline my ear. Go on."

      "I don't know that I want to now," said Clarice. "I think I'll keep it to

myself although it's _obvious_." Clarice gave great emphasis to this word

"obvious". Isn't it tea time yet? Shall I ring the bell, Cora? What a pity it's

too windy for the tree."

      "You were thinking of that Steerpike boy," said Cora, who had sidled up to

her sister and was staring at her from very close quarters. She felt she had

rather turned the tables on poor Clarice by her sudden renewal of the subject.

      "So were you," said Clarice. "I knew that long ago. Didn't you?"

      "Yes, I did," said Cora. "Very long ago. Now we both know."

      A freshly burning fire flung their shadows disrespectfully to and fro

across the ceiling and over the walls where samples of their embroidery were

hung. The room was a fair size, some thirty feet by twenty. Opposite the

entrance from the corridor was a small door. This gave upon the Room of Roots,

in the shape of a half circle. On either side of this smaller opening were two

large windows with diamond panes of thick glass and on the two end walls of the

room, in one of which was the small fireplace, were narrow doorways, one leading

to the kitchen and the rooms of the two servants, and the other to the

dining-room and the dark yellow bedroom of the twins.

      "He said he would exalt us," said Clarice. "You heard him, didn't you?"

      "I'm not deaf," said Cora.

      "He said we weren't being honoured enough and we must remember who we are.

We're Lady Clarice and Cora Groan; that's who we are."

      "Cora and Clarice," her sister corrected her, "of Gormenghast."

      "But no one is awed when they see us. He said he'd make them be."

      "Make them be what, dear?" Cora had begun to unbend now that she found

their thoughts had been identical.

      "Make them be awed," said Clarice. "That's what they ought to be. Oughtn't

they, Cora?"

      "Yes; but they won't do it."

      "No. That's what it is," said Clarice, "although I tried this morning."

      "What, dear?" said Cora.

      "I tried this morning, though," repeated Clarice.

      "Tried what?" asked Cora in a rather patronizing voice.

      "You know when I said 'I'll go for a saunter'?"

      "Yes." Cora sat down and produced a minute but heavily scented

handkerchief from her flat bosom. "What about it?"

      "I didn't go to the bathroom at all." Clarice sat down suddenly and

stiffly. "I took some ink instead -- _black_ ink."

      "What for?"

      "I won't tell you yet, for the time isn't ripe," said Clarice importantly;

and her nostrils quivered like a mustang"s. "I took the black ink, and I poured

it into a jug. There was lots of it. Then I said to myself, what you tell me

such a lot, and what I tell you as well, which is that Gertrude is no better

than us -- in fact, she's not as good because she hasn't got a speck of Groan

blood in her veins like we have, but only the common sort that's no use. So I

took the ink and I knew what I would do. I didn't tell you because you might

have told me not to, and I don't know why I'm telling you now because you may

think I was wrong to do it; but it's all oven now so it doesn't matter what you

think, dear, does it?"

      "I don't know yet," said Cora rather peevishly.

      "Well, I knew that Gertrude had to be in the Central Hall to receive the

seven most hideous beggars of the Outer Dwellings and pour a lot of oil on them

at nine o'clock, so I went through the door of the Central Hall at nine o'clock

with my jug full of ink, and I walked up to her at nine o'clock, but it was not

what I wanted because she had a black dress on."

      "What do you mean?" said Cora.

      "Well, I was going to pour the ink all oven her dress."

      "That would be good, _very_ good," said Cora. "Did you?"

      "Yes," said Clarice, "but it didn't show because her dress was black, and

she didn't see me pouring it, anyway, because she was talking to a starling."

      "One of _our_ birds," said Cora.

      "Yes," said Clarice. "One of the stolen birds. But the others saw me. They

had their mouths open. They saw my decision. But Gertrude didn't, so my decision

was no use. I hadn't anything else to do and I felt frightened, so I ran all the

way back; and now I think I'll wash out the jug."

      She got up to put her idea into operation when there was a discreet

tapping at their door. Visitors were very few and far between and they were too

excited for a moment to say "Come in."

      Cora was the first to open her mouth and her blank voice was raised more

loudly than she had intended:

      "Come in."

      Clarice was at her side. Their shoulders touched. Their heads were thrust

forward as though they were peering out of a window.

      The door opened and Steerpike entered, an elegant stick with a shiny metal

handle under his arm. Now that he had renovated and polished the pilfered

sword-stick to his satisfaction, he carried it about with him wherever he went.

He was dressed in his habitual black and had acquired a gold chain which he wore

about his neck. His meagre quota of sandy-coloured hair was darkened with

grease, and had been brushed down over his pale forehead in a wide curve.

      When he had closed the door behind him he tucked his stick smartly under

his arm and bowed.

      "Your Ladyships," he said, "my unwarranted intrusion upon your privacy,

with but the summary knock at the panels of your door as my mediator, must be

considered the acme of impertinence were it not that I come upon a serious

errand."

      "Who's died?" said Cora.

      "Is it Gertrude?" echoed Clarice.

      "No one has died," said Steerpike, approaching them. "I will tell you the

facts in a few minutes; but first, my dear Ladyships, I would be most honoured

if I were permitted to appreciate your embroideries. Will you allow me to see

them?" He looked at them both in turn inquiringly.

      "He said something about them before; at the Prunesquallors' it was,"

whispered Clarice to her sister. "He said he wanted to see them before. Our

embroideries."

      Clarice had a firm belief that as long as she whispered, no matter how

loudly, no one would hear a word of what she said, except her sister.

      "I heard him," said her sister. "I'm not blind, am I?"

      "Which do you want to see first?" said Clarice. "Our needlework or the

Room of Roots or the Tree?"

      "If I am not mistaken," said Steerpike by way of an answer, "the creations

of your needle are upon the walls around us, and having seen them, as it were,

in a flash, I have no choice but to say that I would first of all prefer to

examine them more closely, and then if I may, I would be delighted to visit your

Room of Roots."

      "'Creations of our needle', he said," whispered Clarice in her loud, flat

manner that filled the room.

      "Naturally," said her sister, and shrugged her shoulders again, and

turning her face to Steerpike gave to the right-hand corner of her inexpressive

mouth a slight twitch upwards, which although it was as mirthless as the curve

between the lips of a dead haddock, was taken by Steerpike to imply that she and

he were above making such _obvious_ comments.

      "Before I begin," said Steerpike, placing his innocent-looking sword-stick

on a table, "may I inquire out of my innocence why you ladies were put to the

inconvenience of bidding me to enter your room? Surely your footman has

forgotten himself. Why was he not at the door to inquire who wished to see you

and to give you particulars before you allowed yourselves to be invaded? Forgive

my curiosity, my dear Ladyships, but where was your footman? Would you wish me

to speak to him?"

      The sisters stared at each other and then at the youth. At last Clarice

said:

      "We haven't got a footman."

      Steerpike, who had turned away for this very purpose, wheeled about, and

then took a step backwards as though struck.

      "No footman!" he said, and directed his gaze at Cora.

      She shook her head. "Only an old lady who smells," she said. "No footman

at all."

      Steerpike walked to the table and, leaning his hands upon it, gazed into

space.

      "Their Ladyships Cora and Clarice Groan of Gormenghast have no footman --

have no one save an old lady who smells. Where are their servants? Where are

their retinues, their swarms of attendants?" And then in a voice little above a

whisper: "This must be seen to. This must end." With a clicking of his tongue he

straightened his back. "And now," he continued in a livelier voice, "the

needlework is waiting."

      What Steerpike had said, as they toured the walls, began to refertilize

those seeds of revolt which he had sown at the Prunesquallors". He watched them

out of the corner of his eyes as he flattened their handiwork, and he could see

that although it was a great pleasure for them to show their craft, yet their

minds were continually returning to the question he had raised. "We do it all

with our left hands, don't we, Cora?" Clarice said, as she pointed to an ugly

green-and-red rabbit of intricate needlework.

      "Yes," said Cora, "it takes a long time because it's all done like that --

with our left hands. Our night arms are starved, you know," she said, turning to

Steerpike. "They're quite, quite starved."

      "Indeed, your Ladyship," said Steerpike. "How is that?"

      "Not only our left arms," Clarice broke in, "but all down our left-hand

sides and our right-hand legs, too. That's why they're rather stiff. It was the

epileptic fits which we had. That's what did it, and that's what makes our

needlework all the more clever."

      "And beautiful," said Cora.

      "I cannot but agree," said Steerpike.

      "But nobody sees them," said Clarice. "We are left alone. Nobody wants our

advice on anything. Gertrude doesn't take any notice of us, nor does

Sepulchrave. You know what we ought to have, don't you, Cora?"

      "Yes;" said her sister, "I know."

      "What, then?" said Clarice. "Tell me. Tell me."

      "Power," said Cora.

      "That's right. Power. That's the very thing we want." Clarice turned her

eyes to Steerpike. Then she smoothed the shiny purple of her dress.

      "I rather liked them," she said.

      Steerpike, wondering where on earth her thoughts had taken her, tilted his

head on one side as though reflecting upon the truth in her remark, when Cora's

voice (like the body of a plaice translated into sound) asked:

      "You rather liked _what_?"

      "My convulsions," said Clarice earnestly. "When my left arm became starved

for the finst time. _You_ remember, Cora, don't you? When we had our _first_

fits? I rather liked them."

      Cora rustled up to her and raised a forefinger in front of her sister's

face. "Clarice Groan," she said, "we finished talking about _that_ long ago.

We're talking about Power now. Why can't you follow what we're talking about?

You are always losing your place. I've noticed that."

      "What about the Room of Roots?" asked Steerpike with affected gaiety. "Why

is it called the Room of Roots? I am most intrigued."

      Don't you _know_?" came their voices.

      "He doesn't know," said Clarice. "You see how we've been forgotten. He

didn't know about our Room of Roots."

      Steerpike was not kept long in ignorance. He followed the two purple

ninepins through the door, and after passing down a short passage, Cora opened a

massive door at the far end whose hinges could have done with a gill of oil

apiece, and followed by her sister entered the Room of Roots. Steerpike in his

turn stepped over the threshold arid his curiosity was more than assuaged.

      If the name of the room was unusual there was no doubt about its being

apt. It was certainly a room of roots. Not of a few simple, separate formations,

but of a thousand branching, writhing, coiling, intertwining, diverging,

converging, interlacing limbs whose origin even Steerpike's quick eyes were

unable for some time to discover.

      He found eventually that the thickening stems converged at a tall, narrow

aperture on the far side of the room, through the upper half of which the sky

was pouring a grey, amorphous light. It seemed at first as though it would be

impossible to stir at all in this convoluting meshwork, but Steerpike was amazed

to see that the twins were moving about freely in the labyrinth. Years of

experience had taught them the possible approaches to the window. They had

already reached it and were looking out into the evening. Steerpike made an

attempt at following them, but was soon inextricably lost in the writhing maze.

Whenever he turned he was faced with a network of weird arms that nose and fell,

dipped and clawed, motionless yet alive with serpentine rhythms.

      Yet the roots were dead. Once the room must have been filled with earth,

but now, suspended for the most pant in the higher reaches of the chamber, the

thread-like extremities clawed impotently in the air. Nor was it enough that

Steerpike should find a room so incongruously monopolized, but that every one of

these twisting terminals should be _hand-painted_ was even more astonishing. The

various main limbs and their wooden tributaries, even down to the minutest

rivulet of root, were painted in their own especial colours, so that it appeared

as though seven coloured boles had forced their leafless branches through the

window, yellow, red and green, violet and pale blue, coral pink and orange. The

concentration of effort needed for the execution of this work must have been

considerable, let alone the almost superhuman difficulties and vexations that

must have resulted from the efforts to establish, among the labyrinthic

entanglements of the finer roots, which tendril belonged to which branch, which

branch to which limb, and which limb to which trunk, for only after discovering

its source could its correct colour be applied.

      The idea had been that the birds on entering should choose those roots

whose colours most nearly approximated to their own plumage, on if they had

preferred it to nest among roots whose hue was complementary to their own.

      The work had taken the sisters well oven three years, and yet when all had

been completed the project for which all this work had been designed had proved

to be empty, the Room of Roots a failure, their hopes frozen. From this

mortification the twins had never fully recovered. It is true that the room, as

a room, gave them pleasure, but that the birds never approached it, let alone

settled and nested there, was a festering sore at the back of what minds they

had.

      Against this nagging disappointment was the positive pride which they felt

in having a room of roots at all. And not only the Roots but logically enough

the Tree whose branches had once drawn sustenance into its highest twigs, and,

long ago, burst forth each April with its emerald jets. It was this Tree that

was their chief source of satisfaction, giving them some sense of that

distinction which they were now denied.

      They turned their eyes from its branches and looked around for Steerpike.

He was still not unravelled. "Can you assist me; my dear Ladyships?" he called,

peering through a skein of purple fibres.

      "Why don't you come to this window?" said Clarice.

      "He can't find the way," said Cora.

      "Can't he? I don't see why not," said Clarice.

      "Because he can't," said Cora. "Go and show him."

      "All right. But he must be very stupid," said Clarice, walking through the

dense walls of roots which seemed to open up before her and close again behind

her back. When she reached Steerpike, she walked past him and it was only by

practically treading on her heels that he was able to thread his way towards the

window. At the window there was a little more space, for the seven stems which

wedged their way through its lower half protruded some four feet into the room

before beginning to divide and subdivide. Alongside the window there were steps

that led up to a small platform which nested on the thick horizontal stems.

      "Look outside," said Cora directly Steerpike arrived, "and you"ll see It."

      Steerpike climbed the few steps and saw the main trunk of the tree

floating out horizontally into space and then running up to a great height, and

as he saw it he recognized it as the tree he had studied from the rooftops, half

a mile away near the stone sky-field.

      He saw how, what had then seemed a perilous balancing act on the part of

the distant figures, was in reality a safe enough exercise, for the bole was

conveniently flat on its upper surface. When it reached that point where it

began to ascend and branch out, the wooden highway spread into an area that

could easily have accommodated ten or twelve people standing in a close group.

      "Definitely a _tree_," he said. "I am all in favour of it. Has it been

dead as long as you can remember it?"

      "Of course," said Clarice.

      "We're not as old as _that_," said Cora, and as this was the first joke

she had made for over a year, she tried to smile, but her facial muscles had

become, through long neglect, unusable.

      "Not so old as what?" said Clarice.

      "You don't understand," said Cora. "You are much slower than I am. I've

noticed that."

35

"INKLINGS OF GLORY"

      "I want some tea," said Clarice; and leading the way she performed the

miraculous journey through the room once more, Steerpike at her heels like a

shadow and Cora taking an alternative path.

      Once more in the comparatively sane living room where the tapers had been

lit by the old woman, they sat before the fire and Steerpike asked if he might

smoke. Cora and Clarice after glancing at each other nodded slowly, and

Steerpike filled his pipe and lit it with a small red coal.

      Clarice had pulled at a bell-nope that hung by the wall, and now as they

sat in a semi-circle about the blaze, Steerpike in the centre chair, a door

opened to their night and an old dark-skinned lady, with very short legs and

bushy eyebrows, entered the room.

      "Tea, I suppose," she said in a subterranean voice that seemed to have

worked its way up from somewhere in the room beneath them. She then caught sight

of Steerpike and wiped her unpleasant nose with the back of her hand before

retiring and closing the door behind her like an explosion. The embroideries

flapped outwards in the draught this occasioned, and sank again limply against

the walls.

      "This is too much," said Steerpike. "How can you bear it?"

      "Bear what?" said Clarice.

      "Do you mean, your Ladyships, that you have become used to being treated

in this offhand and insolent manner? Do you not mind whether your natural and

hereditary dignities are flouted and abused -- when an old commoner slams the

doors upon you and speaks to you as though you were on her own degraded level?

How can the Groan blood that courses so proudly and in such an undiluted stream,

through your veins, remain so quiet? Why in its purple wrath is it not boiling

at this moment?" He paused a moment and leant further forward.

      "Your birds have been stolen by Gertrude, the wife of your brother. Your

labour of love among the roots, which but for that woman would now be bearing

fruit, is a fiasco. Even your Tree is forgotten. I had not _heard_ of it. Why

had I not heard of it? Because you and all you possess have been put aside,

forgotten, neglected. There are few enough of your noble and ancient family in

Gormenghast to carry on the immemorial rites, and yet you two who could uphold

them more scrupulously than any, are slighted at every turn."

      The twins were staring at him very hard. As he paused they turned their

eyes to one another. His words, though sometimes a little too swift for them,

communicated nevertheless their subversive gist. Here, from the mouth of a

stranger, their old sores and grievances were being aired and formulated.

      The old lady with the short legs returned with a tray which she set before

them with a minimum of deference. Then inelegantly waddling away, she turned at

the door and stared again at their visitor, wiping, as before, the back of her

large hand across her nose.

      When she had finally disappeared, Steerpike leaned forward and, turning to

Cora and Clarice in turn, and fixing them with close and concentrated eyes, he

said:

      "Do you believe in honour? Your Ladyships, answer me, do you believe in

honour?"

      They nodded mechanically.

      "Do you believe that injustice should dominate the castle?"

      They shook their heads.

      "Do you believe it should go unchecked -- that it should flourish without

just retribution?"

      Clarice, who had rather lost track of the last question, waited until she

saw Cora shaking her head before she followed suit.

      "In other words," said Steerpike, "you think that something must be

_done_. Something to crush this tyranny."

      They nodded their heads again, and Clarice could not help feeling a little

satisfied that she had so far made no mistake with her shakes and nods.

      "Have you any ideas?" said Steerpike. "Have you any plans to suggest?"

      They shook their heads at once.

      "In that case," said Steerpike, stretching his legs out before him and

crossing his ankles, "may I make a suggestion, your Ladyships?"

      Again, most flatteringly, he faced each one in turn to obtain her consent.

One after the other they nodded heavily, sitting bolt upright in their chairs.

      Meanwhile, the tea and the scones were getting cold, but they had all

three forgotten them.

      Steerpike got up and stood with his back to the fire so that he might

observe them both at the same time.

      "Your gracious Ladyships," he began, "I have received information which is

of the highest moment. It is information which hinges upon the unsavouny topic

with which we have been forced to deal. I beg your undivided concentration; but

I will first of all ask you a question: who has the undisputed control over

Gormenghast? Who is it who, having this authority, makes no use of it but allows

the great traditions of the castle to drift, forgetting that even his own

sisters are of his blood and lineage and are entitled to homage and -- shall I

say it? -- yes, to adulation, too? Who is that man?"

      "Gertrude," they replied.

      "Come, come," said Steerpike, raising his eyebrows, "who is it who forgets

even his own sisters? Who is it, your Ladyships?"

      "Sepulchrave," said Cora.

      "Sepulchrave," echoed Clarice.

      They had become agitated and excited by now although they did not show it,

and had lost control over what little circumspection they had even possessed.

Every word that Steerpike uttered they swallowed whole.

      "Lord Sepulchrave," said Steerpike. After a pause, he continued. "If it

were not that you were his sisters, and of the Family, how could I dare to speak

in this way of the Lord of Gormenghast? But it is my duty to be honest. Lady

Gertrude has slighted you, but who could make amends? Who has the final power

but your brother? In my efforts to reestablish you, and to make this South Wing

once again alive with your servants, it must be remembered that it is your

selfish brother who must be reckoned with."

      "He _is_ selfish, you know," said Clarice.

      "Of course he is," said Cora. "Thoroughly selfish. What shall we do? Tell

us! Tell us!"

      "In all battles, whether of wits or of war," said Steerpike, "the first

thing to do is to take the initiative and to strike hard."

      "Yes," said Cora, who had reached the edge of the chair and was stroking

her smooth heliotrope knees in quick, continual movements which Clarice

emulated.

      "One must choose _where_ to strike," said Steerpike, "and it is obvious

that to strike at the most vulnerable nerve centre of the opponent is the

shrewdest preliminary measure. But there must be no half-heartedness. It is all

on nothing."

      "All or nothing," echoed Clarice.

      "And now you must tell me, dear ladies, what is your brother's main

interest?"

      They went on smoothing their knees.

      "Is it not literature?" said Steerpike. "Is he not a great lover of

books?"

      They nodded.

      "He's very clever," said Cora.

      "But he reads it all in books," said Clarice.

      "Exactly." Steerpike followed quickly upon this. "Then if he lost his

books, he would be all but defeated. If the centre of his life were destroyed he

would be but a shell. As I see it, your Ladyships, it is at his library that our

first thrust must be directed. You must have your rights," he added hotly. "It

is only fair that you should have your rights." He took a dramatic step towards

the Lady Cora Groan; he raised his voice: "My Lady Cora Groan, do you not

agree?"

      Cora, who had been sitting on the extreme edge of her chair in her

excitement, now rose and nodded her head so violently as to throw her hair into

confusion.

      Clarice, on being asked, followed her sister's example, and Steerpike

relit his pipe from the fire and leaned against the mantelpiece for a few

moments, sending out wreaths of smoke from between his thin lips.

      "You have helped me a great deal, your Ladyships," he said at last,

drawing at his stubby pipe and watching a smoke-ring float to the ceiling. "You

are prepared, I am sure, for the sake of your own honour, to assist me further

in my struggle for your deliverance." He understood from the movements of their

perched bodies that they agreed that this was so.

      "The question that arises in that case," said Steerpike, "is how are we to

dispose of your brother's books and thereby bring home to him his

responsibilities? What do you feel is the obvious method of destroying a library

full of books? Have you been to his library lately, your Ladyships?"

      They shook their heads.

      "How would you proceed, Lady Cora? What method would you use to destroy a

hundred thousand books?"

      Steerpike removed his pipe from his lips and gazed intently at her.

      "I'd burn them," said Cora.

      This was exactly what Steerpike had wanted her to say; but he shook his

head. "That would be difficult. What could we burn it with?"

      "With fire," said Clarice.

      "But how would we start the fire, Lady Clarice?" said Steerpike pretending

to look perplexed.

      "Straw," said Cora.

      "That is a possibility," said Steerpike, stroking his chin. "I wonder if

_your_ idea would work swiftly enough. Do you think it would?"

      "Yes, yes!" said Clarice. "Straw is lovely to burn."

      "But would it catch the books," persisted Steerpike, "all on its own?

There would have to be a great deal of it. Would it be quick enough?"

      "What's the hurry?" said Cora.

      "It must be done swiftly," said Steerpike, "otherwise the flames might be

put out by busybodies."

      "I love fires," said Clarice.

      "But we oughtn't to burn down Sepulchrave's library, ought we?"

      Steerpike had expected, sooner or later, that one of them would feel

conscience-stricken and he had retained his trump card.

      "Lady Cora," he said, "sometimes one has to do things which are

unpalatable. When great issues are involved one can't toy with the situation in

silk gloves. No. We are making history and we must be stalwart. Do you recall

how when I first came in I told you that I had received information? You do?

Well, I will now divulge what has come to my ears. Keep calm and steady;

remember who you are. I shall look after your interests, have no fear, but at

this moment sit down, will you, and attend?

      "You tell me you have been treated badly for this and for that, but only

listen now to the latest scandal that is being repeated below stairs. '_They_

aren't being asked,' everyone is saying. '_They_ haven't been asked.' "

      "Asked what?" said Clarice.

      "Or where?" said Cora.

      "To the Great Gathering which your brother is calling. At this Great

Gathering the details for a party for the New Heir to Gonmenghast, your nephew

Titus, will be discussed. Everyone of importance is going. Even the

Prunesquallors are going. It is the first time for many years that your brother

has become so worldly as to call the members of his family together. He has, it

is said, many things which he wishes to talk of in connection with Titus, and in

my opinion this Great Gathering in a week's time will be of prime importance. No

one knows exactly what Lord Sepulchrave has in mind, but the general idea is

that preparations must be begun even now for a party on his son's first

Birthday.

      "Whether you will even be invited to that Party I would not like to say,

but judging from the remarks I have heard about how you two have been thrust

aside and forgotten like old shoes, I should say it was very unlikely.

      "You see," said Steerpike, "I have not been idle. I have been listening

and taking stock of the situation, and one day my labouns will prove themselves

to have been justified -- when I see you, my dear Ladyships, sitting at either

end of a table of distinguished guests, and when I hear the glasses clinking and

the rounds of applause that greet your every remark I shall congratulate myself

that I had long ago enough imagination and ruthless realism to proceed with the

dangerous work of raising you to the level to which you belong.

      "Why should you not have been invited to the party? Why? Why? Who are you

to be spurned thus and derided by the lowest menials in Swelter's kitchen?"

      Steerpike paused and saw that his words had produced a great effect.

Clarice had gone over to Cora's chair where now they both sat bolt upright and

very close together.

      "When you suggested so perspicaciously just now that the solution to this

insufferable state of affairs lay in the destruction of your brother's

cumbersome library, I felt that you were right and that only through a brave

action of that kind might you be able to lift up your heads once more and feel

the slur removed from your escutcheon. That idea of yours spelt genius. I appeal

to your Ladyships to do what you feel to be consistent with your honour and your

pride. You are not old, your Ladyships, oh no, you are not old. But are you

young? I should like to feel that what years you have left will be filled with

glamorous days and romantic nights. Shall it be so? Shall we take the step

towards justice? Yes or no, my dear ladies, yes or no."

      They got up together. "Yes," they said, "we want Power back."

      "We want our servants back and justice back and everything back," Cora

said slowly, a counterpoint of intense excitement weaving through the flat

foreground of her voice.

      "And romantic nights," said Clarice. "I'd like that. Yes, yes. Burn!

Burn," she continued loudly, her flat bosom beginning to heave up and down like

a machine. "Burn! burn! burn!"

      "When?" said Cora. "When can we burn it up?"

      Steerpike held up his hand to quieten them. But they took no notice, only

leaning forward, holding each other's hands and crying in their dreadful

emotionless voices:

      "Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!" until they had exhausted themselves.

      Steerpike had not flinched under this ordeal. He now realized more

completely than before why they were ostracized from the normal activities of

the castle. He had known they were slow, but he had not known that they could

behave like this.

      He changed his tone.

      "Sit down!" he rapped out. "Both of you. Sit down!"

      They complied at once, and although they were taken aback at the

peremptory nature of his order, he could see that he now had complete control

over them, and though his inclination was to show his authority and to taste for

the first time the sinister delights of his power, yet bespoke to them gently --

for, first of all, the library must be burned for a reason of his own. After

that, with such a dreadful hold over them, he could relax for a time and enjoy a

delicious dictatorship in the South Wing.

      "In six days' time, your Ladyships," he said, fingering his gold chain --

"on the evening before the Great Gathering to which you have not been invited --

the library will be empty and you may burn it to the ground. I shall prepare the

incendiaries and will school you in all the details later; but on the great

night itself when you see me give the signal you will set fire at once to the

fuel and will make your way immediately to. this room."

      "Can't we watch it burn?" said Cora.

      "Yes," said Clarice, "can't we?"

      "From your Tree," said Steerpike. "Do you want to be found out?"

      "No!" they said. "No! No!"

      "Then you can watch it from your Tree and be quite safe. I will remain in

the woods so that I can see that nothing goes wrong. Do you understand?"

      "Yes," they said. "Then we"ll have Power, won't we?"

      The unconscious irony of this caused Steerpike's lip to lift, but he said:

      "Your Ladyships will then have Power." And approaching them in turn he

kissed the tips of their fingers. Picking up his sword-stick from the table he

walked swiftly to the door, where he bowed.

      Before he opened it he said: "We are the only ones who know. The only ones

who will ever know, aren't we?"

      "Yes," they said. "Only us."

      "I will return within a day or two," said Steerpike, "and give you the

details. Your honour must be saved."

      He did not say good night, but opened the door and disappeared into the

darkness.

36

"PREPARATIONS FOR ARSON"

      On one excuse or another Steerpike absented himself from the

Prunesquallors' during the major part of the next two days. Although he

accomplished many things during this short period, the three stealthy

expeditions which he made to the library were the core of his activities. The

difficulty lay in crossing, unobserved, the open ground to the conifer wood.

Once in the wood and among the pines there was less danger. He realized how

fatal it might prove to be seen in the neighbourhood of the library, so shortly

before the burning. On the first of the reconnaissances, after waiting in the

shadows of the Southern wing before scudding across the overgrown gardens to the

fields that bordered the conifers, he gathered the information which he needed.

He had managed after an hour's patient concentration to work the lock of the

library door with a piece of wire, and then he had entered the silent room, to

investigate the structure of the building. There was a remoteness about the

deserted room. Shadowy and sinister though it was by night, it was free of the

vacancy which haunted its daylight hours. Steerpike felt the insistent silence

of the place as he moved to and fro, glancing oven his high shoulder more than

once as he took note of the possibilities for conflagration.

      His survey was exhaustive, and when he finally left the building he

appreciated to a nicety the nature of the problem. Lengths of oil-soaked

material would have to be procured and laid behind the books where they could

stretch unobserved from one end of the room to the other. After leading around

the library they could be taken up the stairs and along the balcony. To lay

these twisted lengths (no easy matter to procure without awakening speculation)

was patently a job for those hours of the early morning, after Lord Sepulchrave

had left for the castle. He had staggered, on his second visit, under an

enormous bundle of rags and a tin of oil to the pine wood at midnight, and had

occupied himself during the hours while he waited for Lord Sepulchrave to leave

the building in knotting together the odd assortment of pilfered cloth into

lengths of not less than forty feet.

      When at last he saw his Lordship leave the side door and heard his slow,

melancholy footsteps die away on the pathway leading to the Tower of Flints, he

rose and stretched himself.

      Much to his annoyance the probing of the lock occupied even more time than

on the last occasion, and it was four o'clock in the morning before he pushed

the door open before him.

      Luckily, the dank autumn mornings were on his side, and he had a clean

three hours. He had noticed that from without no light could be observed and he

lit the lamp in the centre of the room.

      Steerpike was nothing if not systematic, and two hours later, taking a

tour of the library, he was well satisfied, Not a trace of his handiwork could

be seen save only where four extremities of the cloth hung limply beside the

main, unused, door of the building. These strips were the terminals of the four

lengths that circumscribed the library and would be dealt with.

      The only thing that caused him a moment's reflection was the faint smell

of the oil in which he had soaked the tightly twisted cloth.

      He now concentrated his attention upon the four strips and twining them

together into a single cord, he knotted it at its end. Somehow or other this

cord must find its way through the door to the outside world. He had on his last

visit eventually arrived at the only solution apart from that of chiselling a

way through the solid wall and the oak that formed the backs of the bookshelves.

This was obviously too laborious. The alternative, which he had decided on, was

to bore a neat hole through the door immediately under the large handle in the

shadow of which it would be invisible save to scrutiny. Luckily for him there

was a reading-stand in the form of a carven upright with three short, bulbous

legs. This upright supported a tilted surface the size of a very small table.

This piece stood unused in front of the main door. By moving it a fraction to

the right, the twisted cord of cloth was lost in darkness and although its

discovery was not impossible, both this risk and that of the faint aroma of oil

being noticed, were justifiable.

      He had brought the necessary tools with him and although the oak was tough

had bored his way through it within half an hour. He wriggled the cord through

the hole and swept up the sawdust that had gathered on the floor.

      By this time he was really tired, but he took another walk about the

library before turning down the lamp and leaving by the side door. Once in the

open he bore to his night, and skirting the adjacent wall, arrived at the main

door of the building. As this entrance had not been used for many years, the

steps that led to it were invisible beneath a cold sea of nettles and giant

weeds. He waded his way through them and saw the loose end of the cord hanging

through the raw hole he had chiselled. It glimmered whitely and was hooked like

a dead finger. Opening the blade of a small sharp knife he cut through the

twisted cloth so that only about two inches protruded, and to prevent this stub

end slipping back through the hole, drove a small nail through the cloth with

the butt of his knife.

      His work for the night now seemed to be complete and, only stopping to

hide the can of oil in the wood, he retraced his steps to the Prunesquallors",

where climbing at once to his room he curled up in bed, dressed as he was, and

incontinently fell asleep.

      The third of his expeditions to the library, the second during the

daylight, was on other business. As might be supposed, the childishness of

burning down Lord Sepulchrave's sanctum did not appeal to him. In a way it

appalled him. Not through any prickings of conscience, but because destruction

in any form annoyed him. That is, the destruction of anything inanimate that was

well constructed. For living creatures he had not this same concern, but in a

well-made object, whatever its nature, a sword or a watch or a book, he felt an

excited interest. He enjoyed a thing that was cleverly conceived and skilfully

wrought, and this notion, of destroying so many beautifully bound and printed

volumes, had angered him against himself, and it was only when his plot had so

ripened that he could neither retract nor resist it, that he went forward with a

single mind. That it should be the Twins who would actually set light to the

building with their own hands was, of course, the lynch-pin of the manoeuvre.

The advantages to himself which would accrue from being the only witness to the

act were too absorbing for him to ponder at this juncture.

      The aunts would, of course, not realize that they were setting fire to a

library filled with people: nor that it would be the night of the Great

Gathering to which, as Steerpike had told them, they were not to be invited. The

youth had waylaid Nannie Slagg on her way to the aunts and had inquired whether

he could save her feet by delivering her message to them. At first she had been

disinclined to divulge the nature of her mission, but when she at last furbished

him with what he had already suspected, he promised he would inform them at once

of the Gathering, and after a pretence of going in their direction, he had

returned to the Prunesquallors' in time for his midday meal. It was on the

following morning that he told the Twins that they had _not_ been invited.

      Once Cora and Clarice had ignited the cord at the main door of the library

and the fire was beginning to blossom, it would be up to him to be as active as

an eel on a line.

      It seemed to Steerpike that to save two generations of the House of Groan

from death by fire should stand him in very good stead, and moreover, his

headquarters would be well established in the South Wing with their Ladyships

Cora and Clarice who after such an episode would, if only through fear of their

guilt being uncovered, eat out of his hand.

      The question of how the fire started would follow close upon the rescue.

On this he would have as little knowledge as anyone, only having seen the glow

in the sky as he was walking along the South Wing for exercise. The

Prunesquallors would bear out that it was his habit to take a stroll at sundown.

The twins would be back in their room before news of the burning could even

reach the castle.

      Steerpike's third visit to the library was to plan how the rescues were to

be effected. One of the first things was, of course, to turn and remove the key

from the door when the party had entered the building, and as Lord Sepulchrave

had the convenient habit of leaving it in the lock until he removed it on

retiring in the small hours, there should be no difficulty about this. That such

questions as "Who turned the key?" and "how did it disappear?" would be asked at

a later date was inevitable, but with a well-rehearsed alibi for himself and the

twins, and with the Prunesquallors' cognizance of his having gone out for a

stroll on that particular evening, he felt sure the suspicion would no more

centre upon himself than on anyone else. Such minor problems as might anise in

the future could be dealt with in the future.

      This was of more immediate consequence: How was he to rescue the family of

Groan in a manner reasonably free of danger to himself and yet sufficiently

dramatic to cause the maximum admiration and indebtedness?

      His survey of the building had shown him that he had no wide range of

choice -- in fact, that apart from forcing one of the doors open by some

apparently superhuman effort at the last moment, or by smashing an opening in

the large skylight in the roof through which it would be both too difficult and

dangerous to rescue the prisoners, the remaining possibility lay in the only

window, fifteen feet from the ground.

      Once he had decided on this window as his focus he turned over in his mind

alternative methods of rescue. It must appear, above all else, that the

deliverance was the result of a spontaneous decision, translated at once into

action. It did not matter so much if he were suspected, although he did not

imagine that he _would_ be; what mattered was that nothing could later be proved

as _prearranged_.

      The window, about four feet square, was above the main door and was

heavily glazed. The difficulty naturally centred on how the prisoners were to

reach the window from the inside, and how Steerpike was to scale the outer wall

in order to smash the pane and show himself.

      Obviously he must not be armed with anything which he would not normally

be carrying. Whatever he used to force an entrance must be something he had

picked up on the spur of the moment outside the library or among the pines. A

ladder, for instance, would at once arouse suspicions, and yet something of that

nature was needed. It occurred to him that a small tree was the obvious

solution, and he began to search for one of the approximate length, already

felled, for many of the pines which were cleared for the erection of the library

and adjacent buildings were still to be seen lying half buried in the thick

needle-covered ground. It did not take him long to come upon an almost perfect

specimen of what he wanted. It was about twelve to fifteen feet long, and most

of its lateral branches were broken off close to the bole, leaving stumps

varying from three inches to a foot in length. "Here," said Steerpike to

himself, "is _the_ thing."

      It was less easy for him to find another, but eventually he discovered

some distance from the librany what he was searching for. It lay in a dank

hollow of ferns. Dragging it to the library wall, he propped both the pines

upright against the main door and under the only window. Wiping the sweat from

his bulging forehead he began to climb them, stamping off those branches that

would be too weak to support Lady Groan, who would be the heaviest of the

prisoners. Dragging them away from the wall, when he had completed these minor

adjustments, and feeling satisfied that his "ladders" were now both serviceable

yet _natural_, he left them at the edge of the trees where a number of felled

pines were littered, and next cast about for something with which he could smash

the window. At the base of the adjacent building, a number of moss-covered lumps

of masonry had fallen away from the walls. He carried several of these to within

a few yards of the "ladders". Were there any question of his being suspected

later, and if questions were raised as to how he came across the ladders and the

piece of masonry so conveniently, he could point to the heap of half-hidden

stones and the litter of trees. Steerpike closed his eyes and attempted to

visualize the scene. He could see himself making frantic efforts to open the

doors, rattling the handles and banging the panels. He could hear himself

shouting "Is there anybody in there?" and the muffled cries from within. Perhaps

he would yell: "Where's the key? Where's the key?" or a few gallant

encouragements, such as "I'll get you out somehow." Then he would leap to the

main door and beating on it a few times, deliver a few more yells before

dragging up the "ladders", for the fire by that time should be going very well.

Or perhaps he would do none of these things, simply appearing to them like the

answer to a prayer, in the nick of time. He grinned.

      The only reason why he could not spare himself both time and energy by

propping the "ladders" against the wall after the last guest had entered the

library was that the Twins would see them as they performed their task. It was

imperative that they should not suspect the library to be inhabited, let alone

gain an inkling of Steerpike's preparations.

      On this, the last occasion of his three visits to the library, he once

again worked the lock of the side door and overhauled his handiwork. Lord

Sepulchrave had been there on the previous night as usual, but apparently had

suspected nothing. The tall bookstand was as he had left it, obstructing a view

of and throwing a deep shadow over the handle of the main doon from beneath

which the twisted cloth stretched like a tight rope across the two foot span to

the end of the long bookshelves. He could now detect no smell of oil, and

although that meant that it was evaporating, he knew that it would still be more

inflammable than the dry cloth.

      Before he left he selected half a dozen volumes from the less conspicuous

shelves, which he hid in the pine wood on his return journey, and which he

collected on the following night from their rainproof nest of needles in the

decayed bole of a dead larch. Three of the volumes had vellum bindings and were

exquisitely chased with gold, and the others were of equally rare craftsmanship,

and it was with annoyance, on returning to the Prunesquallors' that night, that

he found it necessary to fashion for them their neat jackets of brown paper and

to obliterate the Groan crest on the fly-leaves.

      It was only when these nefarious doings were satisfactorily completed that

Steerpike visited the aunts for the second time and re-primed them in their very

simple roles as arsonists. He had decided that rather than tell the

Prunesquallors that he was going out for a stroll he would say instead that he

was paying a visit to the aunts, and then with them to prove his alibi (for

somehow or other they must be got to and from the library without the knowledge

of their short-legged servant); their story and that of the Doctor's would

coincide.

      He had made them repeat a dozen or so times: "We've been indoors _all_ the

time. We've been indoors _all_ the time," until they were themselves as

convinced of it as though they were reliving the Future!

37

THE GROTTO

      It happened on the day of Steerpike's second daylight visit to the

Library. He was on his return journey and had reached the edge of the pine woods

and was awaiting an opportunity to run unobserved across the open ground, when,

away to his left, he saw a figure moving in the direction of Gonmenghast

Mountain.

      The invigorating air, coupled with his recognition of the distant figure,

prompted him to change his course, and with quick, birdlike steps he moved

rapidly along the edge of the wood. In the rough landscape away to his left, the

tiny figure in its crimson dress sang out against the sombre background like a

ruby on a slate. The midsummer sun, and how much less this autumn light, had no

power to mitigate the dreary character of the region that surrounded

Gonmenghast. It was like a continuation of the castle, rough and shadowy, and

though vast and often windswept, oppressive too, with a kind of raw weight.

      Ahead lay Gormenghast Mountain in all its permanence, a sinister thing as

though drawn out of the earth by sorcery as a curse on all who viewed it.

Although its base appeared to struggle from a blanket of trees within a few

miles of the castle, it was in reality a day's journey on horseback. Clouds were

generally to be seen clustering about its summit even on the finest days when

the sky was elsewhere empty, and it was common to see the storms raging across

its heights and the sheets of dark rain slanting mistily over the blurred crown

and obscuring half the mountain's hideous body, while, at the same time,

sunlight was playing across the landscape all about it and even on its own lower

slopes. Today, however, not even a single cloud hung above the peak, and when

Fuchsia had looked out of her bedroom window after her midday meal she had

stared at the Mountain and said: "Where are the clouds?"

      "What clouds?" said the old nurse, who was standing behind her, rocking

Titus in her arms. "What is it, my caution?"

      "There's nearly always clouds on top of the Mountain," said Fuchsia.

      "Aren't there any, dear?"

      "No," said Fuchsia. "Why aren't there?"

      Fuchsia realized that Mrs. Slagg knew virtually nothing, but the long

custom of asking her questions was a hard one to break down. This realization

that grown-ups did not necessarily know any more than children was something

against which she had fought. She wanted Mrs. Slagg to remain the wise recipient

of all her troubles and the comforter that she had always seemed, but Fuchsia

was growing up and she was now realizing how weak and ineffectual was her old

guardian. Not that she was losing her loyalty or affection. She would have

defended the wrinkled midget to her last breath if necessary; but she was

isolated within herself with no one to whom she could run with that

unquestioning confidence -- that outpouring of her newest enthusiasms -- her

sudden terrors -- her projects -- her stories.

      "I think I'll go out," she said, "for a walk."

      "Again?" said Mrs. Slagg, stopping for a moment the rocking of her arms.

"You go out such a lot now, don't you? Why are you always going away from me?"

      "It's not from you," said Fuchsia; "it's because I want to walk and think.

It isn't going away from you. You know it isn't."

      "I don't know anything," said Nannie Slagg, her face puckered up, "but I

know you never went out all the summer, did you dear? And now that it is so

tempensome and cold you are always going out into the nastiness and getting wet

on frozen every day. Oh, my poor heart. Why? Why _every_ day?"

      Fuchsia pushed her hands into the depths of the big pockets of her red

dress.

      It was true she had deserted her attic for the dreary moons and the rocky

tracts of country about Gonmenghast. Why was this? Had she suddenly outgrown her

attic that had once been all in all to her? Oh no; she had not outgrown it, but

something had changed ever since that dreadful night when she saw Steerpike

lying by the window in the darkness. It was no longer inviolate -- secret --

mysterious. It was no longer another world, but a part of the castle. Its

magnetism had weakened -- its silent, shadowy drama had died and she could no

longer bear to revisit it. When last she had ventured up the spiral stairs and

entered the musty and familiar atmosphere, Fuchsia had experienced a pang of

such sharp nostalgia for what it had once been to her that she had turned from

the swaying motes that filled the air and the shadowy shapes of all that she had

known as her friends; the cobwebbed organ, the crazy avenue of a hundred loves

-- turned away, and stumbled down the dank staircase with a sense of such

desolation as seemed would never lift. Her eyes grew dim as she remembered these

things; her hands clenched in her deep pockets.

      "Yes," she said, "I have been out a lot. Do you get lonely? If you do, you

needn't, because you know I love you, don't you? You _know_ that, don't you?"

      She thrust her lower lip forward and frowned at Mrs. Slagg, but this was

only to keep her tears back, for nowadays Fuchsia had so lonely a feeling that

tears were never far distant. Never having had either positive cruelty or

kindness shown to her by her parents, but only an indifference, she was not

conscious of what it was that she missed -- affection.

      It had always been so and she had compensated herself by weaving stories

of her own Future, or by lavishing her own love upon such things as the objects

in her attics, or more recently upon what she found or saw among the woods and

wastelands.

      "You know that, don't you?" Fuchsia repeated.

      Nannie rocked Titus more vigorously than was necessary and by the pursing

of her lips indicated that his Lordship was asleep and that she was speaking too

loudly.

      Then Fuchsia came up to her old nurse and stared at her brother. The

feeling of aversion for him had disappeared, and though as yet the lilac-eyed

creature had not affected her with any sensation of sisterly love, nevertheless

she had got used to his presence in the Castle and would sometimes play with him

solemnly for half an hour on so at a time.

      Nannie's eyes followed Fuchsia"s.

      "His little Lordship," she said, wagging her head, "it's his little

Lordship."

      "Why do you love him?"

      "Why do I love him! oh, my poor, weak heart! Why do I love him, stupid?

How could you say such a thing?" cried Nannie Slagg. "Oh my little Lordship

_thing_. How could I _help_ it -- the innocent notion that he is! The very next

of Gormenghast, aren't you, my only? The very next of all. What did your cruel

sister say, then, what did she say?

      "He must go to his cot now, for his sleep, he must, and to dream his

golden dreams."

      "Did you talk to me like that when I was a baby?" asked Fuchsia.

      "Of course I did," said Mrs. Slagg. "Don't be silly. Oh, the ignorance of

you! Are you going to tidy your room for me now?"

      She hobbled to the door with her precious bundle. Every day she asked this

same question, but never waited for an answer, knowing that whatever it was, it

was _she_ who would have to make some sort of order out of the chaos.

      Fuchsia again turned to the window and stared at the Mountain whose shape

down to the last outcrop had long since scored its outline in her mind.

      Between the castle and Gormenghast Mountain the land was desolate, for the

main part empty wasteland, with large areas of swamp where undisturbed among the

needy tracts the waders moved. Curlews and peewits sent their thin cries along

the wind. Moorhens reared their young and paddled blackly in and out of the

rushes. To the east of Gormenghast Mountain, but detached from the trees at its

base, spread the undulating darkness of the Twisted Woods. To the west the

unkempt acres, broken here and there with low stunted trees bent by the winds

into the shape of hunchbacks.

      Between this dreary province and the pine wood that surrounded the West

Wing of the castle, a dark, shelving plateau rose to a height of about a hundred

to two hundred feet -- an irregular tableland of greenyblack rock, broken and

scarred and empty. It was beyond these cold escarpments that the river wound its

way about the base of the Mountain and fed the swamps where the wild fowl lived.

      Fuchsia could see three short stnetches of the river from her window. This

afternoon the central portion and that to its right were black with the

reflection of the Mountain, and the third, away to the west beyond the rocky

plateau, was a shadowy white strip that neither glanced nor sparkled, but,

mirroring the opaque sky, lay lifeless and inert, like a dead arm.

      Fuchsia left the window abruptly and closing the door after her with a

crash, ran all the way down the stairs, almost falling as she slipped clumsily

on the last flight, before threading a maze of corridors to emerge panting in

the chilly sunlight.

      Breathing in the sharp air she gulped and clenched her hands together

until her nails bit at her palms. Then she began to walk. She had been walking

for over an hour when she heard footsteps behind her and, turning, saw

Steerpike. She had not seen him since the night at the Prunesquallors' and never

as clearly as now, as he approached her through the naked autumn. He stopped

when he noticed that he was observed and called:

      "Lady Fuchsia! May I join you?"

      Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien,

incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something which she

understood, something which she could never do without, or be without, for it

seemed as though it were her own self, her own body, at which she gazed and

which lay so intimately upon the skyline. Gormenghast. The long, notched outline

of her home. It was now his background. It was a screen of walls and towers

pocked with windows. He stood against it, an intruder, imposing himself so

vividly, so solidly, against her world, his head overtopping the loftiest of its

towers.

      "What do you want?" she said.

      A breeze had lifted from beyond the Twisted Woods and her dress was blown

across her so that down her right side it clung to her showing the strength of

her young body and thighs.

      "Lady Fuchsia!" shouted Steerpike across the strengthening wind. "I'll

tell you." He took a few quick paces towards her and reached the sloping rock on

which she stood. "I want you to explain this region to me -- the marshes and

Gormenghast Mountain. Nobody has even told me about it. You know the country --

you understand it," (he filled his lungs again) "and though I love the district

I'm very ignorant." He had almost reached her. "Can I share your walks,

occasionally? Would you consider the idea? Are you returning?" Fuchsia had moved

away. "If so, may I accompany you back?"

      "That's not what you've come to ask me," said Fuchsia slowly. She was

beginning to shake in the cold wind.

      "Yes, it is," said Steerpike, "it is just what I've come to ask you. And

whether you will tell me about Nature."

      "I don't know anything about Nature," said Fuchsia, beginning to walk down

the sloping rock. "I don't understand it. I only look at it. Who told you I knew

about it? Who makes up these things?"

      "No one," said Steerpike. "I thought you must know and understand what you

love so much. I've seen you very often returning to the castle laden with the

things you have discovered. And also, you _look_ as though you understand."

      "I _do_?" said Fuchsia, surprised. "No, I can't do. I don't understand

wise things at all."

      "Your knowledge is intuitive," said the youth. "You have no need of book

learning and such like. You only have to gaze at a thing to _know_ it. The wind

is getting stronger, your Ladyship, and colder. We had better return."

      Steerpike turned up his high collar, and gaining her permission to

accompany her back to the castle, he began with her the descent of the grey

rocks. Before they were halfway down, the rain was falling and the autumn

sunlight had given way to a fast, tattered sky.

      "Tread carefully, Lady Fuchsia," said Steerpike suddenly; and Fuchsia

stopped and stared quickly over her shoulder at him as though she had forgotten

he was there. She opened her mouth as though to speak when a far rattle of

thunder reverberated among the rocks and she turned her head to the sky. A black

cloud was approaching and from its pendulous body the rain fell in a mass of

darkness.

      Soon it would be above them and Fuchsia's thoughts leapt backwards through

the years to a certain afternoon when, as today, she had been caught in a sudden

rainstorm. She had been with her mother on one of those rare occasions, still

rarer now, when the Countess for some reason or other decided to take her

daughter for a walk. Those occasional outings had been silent affairs, and

Fuchsia could remember how she had longed to be free of the presence that moved

at her side and above her, and yet she recalled how she had envied her huge

mother when the wild binds came to her at her long, shrill, sweet whistle and

settled upon her head and arms and shoulders. But what she chiefly remembered

was how, on that day, when the storm broke above them, her mother instead of

turning back to the castle, continued onwards towards these same layers of dark

rock which she and Steerpike were now descending. Her mother had turned down a

rough, narrow gully and had disappeared behind a high slab of dislodged stone

that was leaning against a face of rock. Fuchsia had followed. But instead of

finding her mother sheltering from the downpour against the cliff and behind the

slab, to her surprise she found herself confronted with the entrance to a

grotto. She had peered inside, and there, deep in its chilly throat, was her

mother sitting upon the ground and leaning against the sloping wall, very still

and silent and enormous.

      They had waited there until the storm had tired of its own anger and a

slow rain descended like remorse from the sky. No word had passed between them,

and Fuchsia, as she remembered the grotto, felt a shiver run through her body.

But she turned to Steerpike. "Follow me, if you want to," she said. "I know a

cave."

      The rain was by now thronging across the escarpment, and she began to run

over the slippery grey rock surfaces with Steerpike at her heels.

      As she began the short, steep descent she turned for an instant to see

whether Steerpike had kept pace with her, and as she turned, her feet slipped

away from under her on the slithery surface of an oblique slab, and she came

crashing to the ground, striking the side of her face, her shoulders and shin

with a force that for the moment stunned her. But only for a moment. As she made

an effort to rise and felt the pain growing at her cheekbone, Steerpike was

beside her. He had been some twelve yards away as she fell, but he slithened

like a snake among the rocks and was kneeling beside her almost immediately. He

saw at once that the wound upon her face was superficial. He felt her shoulder

and shinbone with his thin fingers and found them sound. He removed his cape,

covered her and glanced down the gully. The rain swam over his face and thrashed

on the rocks. At the base of the steep decline he could see, looming vaguely

through the downpour, a huge propped rock, and he guessed that it was towards

this that Fuchsia had been running, for the gully ended within forty feet in a

high, unscalable wall of granite.

      Fuchsia was trying to sit up, but the pain in her shoulder had drained her

of strength.

      "Lie still!" shouted Steerpike through the screen of rain that divided

them. Then he pointed to the propped rock.

      "Is that where we were going?" he asked.

      "There's a cave behind it," she whispered. "Help me up. I can get there

all night."

      "Oh no," said Steerpike. He knelt down beside her, and then with great

cane he lifted her inch by inch from the rocks. His winy muscles toughened in

his slim arms, and along his spine, as by degrees he raised her to the level of

his chest, getting to his feet as he did so. Then, step by tentative step over

the splashing boulders he approached the cave. A hundred rain-thrashed pools had

collected among the rocks.

      Fuchsia had made no remonstrance, knowing that she could never have made

this difficult descent; but as she felt his arms around her and the proximity of

his body, something deep within her tried to hide itself. Through the thick,

tousled strands of her drenched hair she could see his sharp, pale, crafty face,

his powerful dark-ned eyes focused upon the rocks below them, his high

protruding forehead, his cheekbones glistening, his mouth an emotionless line.

      This was Steerpike. He was holding her; she was in his arms; in his power.

His hard arms and fingers were taking the weight at her thighs and shoulders.

She could feel his muscles like bars of metal. This was the figure whom she had

found in her attic, and who had climbed up the sheer and enormous wall. He had

said that he had found a stone sky-field. He had said that she understood

Nature. He wanted to learn from her. How could he with his wonderful long

sentences learn anything from her? She must be careful. He was clever. But there

was nothing wrong in being clever. Dr. Prune was clever and she liked him. She

wished she was clever herself.

      He was edging between the wall of rock and the slanting slab, and suddenly

they were in the dim light of the grotto. The floor was dry and the thunder of

the rain beyond the entrance seemed to come from another world.

      Steerpike lowered her carefully to the ground and propped her against a

flat, slanting portion of the wall. Then he pulled off his shirt and began,

after wringing as much moisture from it as he could, to tear it into long narrow

pieces. She watched him, fascinated in spite of the pain she was suffering. It

was like watching someone from another world who was worked by another kind of

machinery, by something smoother, colder, harder, swifter. Her heart rebelled

against the bloodlessness of his precision, but she had begun to watch him with

a grudging admiration for a quality so alien to her own temperament.

      The grotto was about fifteen feet in depth, the roof dipping to the earth,

so that in only the first nine feet from the entrance was it possible to stand

upright. Close to the arching roof, areas of the rock-face were broken and

fretted into dim convolutions of stone, and a fanciful eye could with a little

difficulty beguile any length of time by finding among the inter-woven patterns

an inexhaustible army of ghoulish or seraphic heads according to the temper of

the moment.

      The recesses of the grotto were in deep darkness, but it was easy enough

for Fuchsia and Steerpike to see each other in the dull light near the shielded

entrance.

      Steerpike had torn his shirt into neat strips and had knelt down beside

Fuchsia and bandaged her head and staunched the bleeding which, especially from

her leg, where the injury was not so deep, was difficult to check. Her upper arm

was less easy, and it was necessary for her to allow Steerpike to bare her

shoulder before he could wash it clean.

      She watched him as he carefully dabbed the wound. The sudden pain and

shock had changed to a raw aching and she bit her lip to stop her tears. In the

half light she saw his eyes smouldering in the shadowy whiteness of his face.

Above the waist he was naked. What was it that made his shoulders look deformed?

They were high, but were sound, though like the rest of his body, strangely taut

and contracted. His chest was narrow and firm.

      He removed a swab of cloth from her shoulder slowly and peered to see

whether the blood would continue to flow.

      "Keep still," he said. "Keep your arm as still as you can. How's the

pain?"

      "I'm all right," said Fuchsia.

      "Don't be heroic," he said, sitting back on his heels. "We're not playing

a game. I want to know _exactly_ how much you're in pain -- not whether you are

brave or not. I know that already. Which hurts you most?"

      "My leg," said Fuchsia. "It makes me want to be ill. And I'm cold. Now you

know."

      Their eyes met in the half light.

      Steerpike straightened himself. "I'm going to leave you," he said.

"Otherwise the cold will gnaw you to bits. I can't get you back to the castle

alone. I'll fetch the Prune and a stretcher. You"ll be all night here. I'll go

now, at once. We"ll be back within half an hour. I can move when I want to."

      "Steerpike," said Fuchsia.

      He knelt down at once. "What is it?" he said, speaking very softly.

      "You've done quite a lot to help," she said.

      "Nothing much," he replied. His hand was close to hers.

      The silence which followed became ludicrous and he got to his feet.

      "Mustn't stay." He had sensed the beginning of something less frigid. He

would leave things as they were. "You"ll be shaking like a leaf if I don't

hurry. Keep absolutely still."

      He laid his coat over her and then walked the few paces to the opening.

      Fuchsia watched his hunched yet slender outline as he stood for a moment

before plunging into the rain-swept gully. Then he had gone, and she remained

quite still, as he had told her, and listened to the pounding of the rain.

      Steerpike's boast as to his fleetness was not an idle one. With incredible

agility he leapt from boulder to boulder until he had reached the head of the

gully and from there, down the long slopes of the escarpment, he sped like a

Dervish. But he was not reckless. Every one of his steps was a calculated result

of a decision taken at a swifter speed than his feet could travel.

      At length the rocks were left behind and the castle emerged through a dull

blanket.

      His entrance into the Prunesquallors' was dramatic. Irma, who had never

before seen any male skin other than that which protrudes beyond the collar and

the cuffs, gave a piercing cry and fell into her brother's arms only to recover

at once and to dash from the room in a typhoon of black silk. Prunesquallor and

Steerpike could hear the stair rods rattling as she whirled her way up the

staircase and the crashing of her bedroom door set the pictures swaying on the

walls of all the downstairs rooms.

      Dr. Prunesquallor had circled around Steerpike with his head drawn back so

that his cervical vertebrae nested against the near wall of his high collar, and

a plumbless abysm yawned between his Adam's apple and his pearl stud. With his

head bridled backwards thus, somewhat in the position of a cobra about to

strike, and with his eyebrows raised quizzically, he was yet able at the same

time to flash both tiers of his startling teeth which caught and reflected the

lamplight with an unnatural brilliancy.

      He was in an ecstasy of astonishment. The spectacle of a half-nude,

dripping Steerpike both repelled and delighted him. Every now and again

Steerpike and the Doctor could hear an extraordinary moaning from the floor

above.

      When, however, the Doctor heard the cause of the boy's appearance, he was

at once on the move. It had not taken Steerpike long to explain what had

happened. Within a few moments the Doctor had packed up a small bag and rung for

the cook to fetch both a stretcher and a couple of young men as bearers.

      Meanwhile, Steerpike had dived into another suit and run across to Mrs.

Slagg in the castle, whom he instructed to replenish the fire and to have

Fuchsia's bed ready and some hot drink brewing, leaving her in a state of

querulous collapse, which was not remedied by his tickling her rudely in the

ribs as he skipped past her to the door.

      Coming into the quadrangle he caught sight of the Doctor as he was

emerging from his garden gate with the two men and the stretcher. Prunesquallor

was holding his umbrella over a bundle of rugs under which he had placed his

medical bag.

      When he had caught them up, he gave them their directions saying that he

would run on ahead, but would reappear on the escarpment to direct them in the

final stage of their journey. Tucking one of the blankets under his cape he

disappeared into the thinning rain. As he ran on alone, he made jumps into the

air. Life was amusing. _So_ amusing. Even the rain had played into his hand and

made the rock slippery. Everything, he thought to himself, can be of use.

Everything. And he clicked his fingers as he ran grinning through the rain.

      When Fuchsia awoke in her bed and saw the firelight flickering on the

ceiling and Nannie Slagg sitting beside her, she said:

      "Where is Steerpike?"

      "Who, my precious? Oh, my poor pretty one!" And Mrs. Slagg fidgeted with

Fuchsia's hand which she had been holding for oven an hour. "What is it you

need, my only? What is it, my caution dear? Oh, my poor heart, you've nearly

killed me, dear. Very nearly. Yes, very nearly, then. There, there. Stay still,

and the Doctor will be here again soon. Oh, my poor, weak heart!" The tears were

streaming down her little, old terrified face.

      "Nannie," said Fuchsia, "where's Steerpike?"

      "That horrid boy?" asked Nannie. "What about him, precious? You don't want

to see him, do you? Oh no, you couldn't want that boy. What is it, my only? Do

you want to see him?"

      "Oh, no! no!" said Fuchsia. "I don't want to. I feel so tired. Are you

there?"

      "What is it, my only?"

      "Nothing; nothing. I wonder where he is."

38

KNIVES IN THE MOON

      The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the

feet of all that cast them, and as Rantel approached the hollow at the hem of

the Twisted Woods he was treading in a pool of his own midnight.

      The roof of the Twisted Woods reflected the staring circle in a

phosphorescent network of branches that undulated to the lower slopes of

Gormenghast Mountain. Rising from the ground and circumscribing this baleful

canopy the wood was walled with impenetrable shadow. Nothing of what supported

the chilly haze of the topmost branches was discernible -- only a winding façade

of blackness.

      The crags of the mountain were ruthless in the moon; cold, deadly and

shining. Distance had no meaning. The tangled glittering of the forest roof

rolled away, but its furthermost reaches were brought suddenly nearer in a bound

by the terrifying effect of proximity in the mountain that they swarmed. The

mountain was neither far away nor was it close at hand. It arose starkly,

enormously, across the lens of the eye. The hollow itself was a cup of light.

Every blade of the grass was of consequence, and the few scattered stones held

an authority that made their solid, separate marks upon the brain -- each one

with its own unduplicated shape: each rising brightly from the ink of its own

spilling.

      When Rantel had come to the verge of the chosen hollow he stood still. His

head and body were a mosaic of black and ghastly silver as he gazed into the

basin of grass below him. His cloak was drawn tightly about his spare body and

the rhythmic folds of the drapery held the moonlight along their upper ridges.

He was sculpted, but his head moved suddenly at a sound, and lifting his eyes he

saw Braigon arise from beyond the rim across the hollow.

      They descended together, and when they had come to the level ground they

unfastened their cloaks, removed their heavy shoes and stripped themselves

naked. Rantel flung his clothes away to the sloping grass. Braigon folded his

coarse garments and laid them across a boulder. He saw that Rantel was feeling

the edge of his blade which danced in the moonlight like a splinter of glass.

      They said nothing. They tested the slippery grass with their naked feet.

      Then they turned to one another. Braigon eased his fingers around the

short bone hilt. Neither could see the expression in the other's face for their

features were lost in the shadows of their brows and only their tangled hair

held the light. They crouched and began to move, the distance closing between

them, the muscles winding across their backs.

      With Keda for hearts' reason, they circled, they closed, they feinted,

their blades parrying the thrusts of the knife by sudden cross movements of

their forearms.

      When Rantel carved it was onslaught. It was as though the wood were his

enemy. He fought it with rasp and chisel, hacking its flesh away until the shape

that he held in his mind began to surrender to his violence. It was in this way

that he fought. Body and brain were fused into one impulse -- to kill the man

who crouched before him. Not even Keda was in his mind now.

      His eyes embraced the slightest movement of the other's body, of his

moving feet, of his leaping knife. He saw that around Braigon's left arm a line

of blood was winding from a gash in the shoulder. Rantel had the longer reach,

but swiftly as his knife shot forward to the throat or breast, Braigon's forearm

would swing across behind it and smack his arm away from its target. Then at the

impact Rantel would spin out of range, and again they would circle and close in

upon one another, their shoulders and arms gleaming in the unearthly brilliance.

      As Braigon fought he wondered where Keda was. He wondered whether there

could ever be happiness for her after himself or Rantel had been killed; whether

she could forget that she was the wife of a murderer; whether to fight were not

to escape from some limpid truth. Keda came vividly before his eyes, and yet his

body worked with mechanical brilliance, warding off the savage blade and

attacking his assailant with a series of quick thrusts, drawing blood from

Rantel's side.

      As the figure moved before him he followed the muscles as they wove

beneath the skin. He was not only fighting with an assailant who was awaiting

for that split second in which to strike him dead, but he was stabbing at a

masterpiece -- at sculpture that leapt and heaved, at a marvel of inky shadow

and silver light. A great wave of nausea surged through him and his knife felt

putrid in his hand. His body went on fighting.

      The grass was blotched with the impression of their feet. They had

scattered and crushed the dew and a dank irregular patch filled the centre of

the hollow showing where their game with death had led them. Even this bruised

darkness of crushed grass was pale in comparison with the intensity of their

shadows which, moving as they moved, sliding beneath them, springing when they

sprang, were never still.

      Their hair was sticking to the sweat on their brows. The wounds in their

bodies were weakening them, but neither could afford to pause.

      About them the stillness of the pale night was complete. The moonlight lay

like rime along the ridges of the distant castle. The reedy marshlands far to

the east lay inert -- a region of gauze. Their bodies were raddled now with the

blood from many wounds. The merciless light gleamed on the wet, warm streams

that slid ceaselessly oven their tired flesh. A haze of ghostly weakness was

filling their nakedness and they were fighting like characters in a dream.

      Keda's trance had fallen from her in a sudden brutal moment and she had

started to run towards the Twisted Woods. Through the great phosphorescent

night, cloakless, her hair unfastening as she climbed, she came at last to the

incline that led to the lip of the hollow. Her pain mounted as she ran. The

strange, unworldly strength had died in her, the glory was gone -- only an agony

of fear was with her now.

      As she climbed to the ridge of the hollow she could hear -- so small a

sound in the enormous night -- the panting of the men, and her heart for a

moment lifted, for they were alive.

      With a bound she reached the brow of the slope and saw them crouching and

moving in moonlight below her. The cry in her throat was choked as she saw the

blood upon them, and she sank to her knees.

      Braigon had seen her and his tired arms rang with a sudden strength. With

a flash of his left arm he whirled Rantel's daggered hand away, and springing

after him as swiftly as though he were a part of his foe, he plunged his knife

into the shadowy breast.

      As he struck he withdrew the dagger, and as Rantel sank to the ground,

Braigon flung his weapon away.

      He did not turn to Keda. He stood motionless, his hands at his head. Keda

could feel no grief. The corners of her mouth lifted. The time for horror was

not yet. This was not _real_ -- yet. She saw Rantel raise himself upon his left

arm. He groped for his dagger and felt it beside him in the dew. His life was

pouring from the wound in his breast. Keda watched him as, summoning into his

right arm what strength remained in his whole body, he sent the dagger running

through the air with a sudden awkward movement of his arm. It found its mark in

a statue's throat. Braigon's arms fell to his sides like dead weights. He

tottered forward, swayed for a little, the bone hilt at his gullet, and then

collapsed lifeless across the body of his destroyer.

39

"THE SUN GOES DOWN AGAIN"

      "Equality," said Steerpike, "is the thing. It is the only true and central

premise from which constructive ideas can radiate freely and be operated without

prejudice. Absolute equality of status. Equality of wealth. Equality of power."

      He tapped at a stone that lay among the wet leaves with his swordstick and

sent it scurrying through the undergrowth.

      He had waylaid Fuchsia with a great show of surprise in the pine woods as

she was returning from an evening among the trees. It was the last evening

before the fateful day of the burning. There would be no time tomorrow for any

dallying of this kind. His plans were laid and the details completed. The Twins

were rehearsed in their roles and Steerpike was reasonably satisfied that he

could rely on them. This evening, after having enjoyed a long bath at the

Prunesquallors". lie had spent more time than usual dressing himself. He had

plastered his sparse tow-coloured hair over his bulging forehead with unusual

care, viewing himself as he did so from every angle in the three mirrors he had

erected on a table by the window.

      As he left the house, he spun the slim swordstick through his fingers. It

circled in his hand like the spokes of a wheel. Should he, or should he not pay

a quick call on the Twins? On the one hand he must not excite them, for it was

as though they had been primed for an examination and might suddenly forget

everything they had been taught. On the other hand, ifhe made no direct

reference to tomorrow's enterprise but encouraged them obliquely it might keep

them going through the night. It was essential that they should have a good

night's sleep. He did not want them sitting bolt upright on the edge of their

beds all night staring at each other, with their eyes and mouths wide open.

      He decided to pay a very short visit and then to take a stroll to the

woods, where he thought he might find Fuchsia, for she had made a habit of lying

for hours beneath a certain pine in what she fondly imagined was a secret glade.

      Steerpike decided he would see them for a few moments, and at once he

moved rapidly across the quadrangle. A fitful light was breaking through the

clouds, and the arches circumscribing the quadrangle cast pale shadows that

weakened or intensified as the clouds stole across the sun. Steerpike shuddered

as he entered the sunless castle.

      When he came to the door of the aunts' apartments he knocked, and entered

at once. There was a fire burning in the grate and he walked towards it,

noticing as he did so the twin heads of Cora and Clarice twisted on their long

powdered necks. Their eyes were staring at him over the embroidered back of

their couch, which had been pulled up to the fire. They followed him with their

heads, their necks unwinding as he took up a position before them with his back

to the fire, his legs astride, his hands behind him.

      "My dears," he said, fixing them in turn with his magnetic eyes; "my

_dears_, how are you? But what need is there to ask? You both look radiant. Lady

Clarice, I have seldom seen you look lovelier; and your sister refuses to let

you have it all your own way. You refuse utterly, Lady Cora, don't you? You are

about as bridal as I ever remember you. It is a delight to be with you again."

The twins stared at him and wriggled, but no expression appeared in their faces.

      After a long silence during which Steerpike had been warming his hands at

the blaze Cora said, "Do you mean that I'm glorious?"

      "That's not what he said," came Clarice's flat voice.

      "Glorious," said Steerpike, "is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned

by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts,

the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new

enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled

language, my dears, you _are_ glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new

sound that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in

your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet

for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me. I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is

apt."

      "You could try," said Clarice. "We aren't busy."

      She smoothed the shining fabric of her dress with her long, lifeless

fingers.

      "Impossible," replied the youth, rubbing his chin. "Quite impossible. Only

believe in my admiration for your beauty that will one day be recognized by the

whole castle. Meanwhile, preserve all dignity and silent power in your twin

bosoms."

      "Yes, yes," said Cora, "we"ll preserve it. We"ll preserve it in our

bosoms, won't we, Clarice? Our silent power."

      "Yes, all the power we've got," said Clarice. "But we haven't got much."

      "It is coming to you," said Steerpike. "It is on its way. You are of the

blood; who else but you should wield the sceptre? But alone you cannot succeed.

For years you have smarted from the insults you have been forced to endure. Ah,

how patiently, you have smarted! How patiently! Those days have gone. Who is it

that can help you?" He took a pace towards them and bent forward. "Who is it

that can restore you: and who will set you on your glittering thrones?"

      The aunts put their arms about one another so that their faces were cheek

to cheek, and from this doublehead they gazed up at Steerpike with a row of four

equidistant eyes. There was no reason why there should not have been forty, or

four hundred of them. It so happened that only four had been removed from a dead

and endless frieze whose inexhaustible and repetitive theme was forever, eyes,

eyes, eyes.

      "Stand up," said Steerpike. He had raised his voice.

      They got to their feet awkwardly and stood before him evil. A sense of

power filled Steerpike with an acute enjoyment.

      "Take a step forward," he said.

      They did so, still holding one another.

      Steerpike watched them for some time, his shoulders hunched against the

mantelpiece. "You heard me speak," he said. "You heard my question. Who is it

that will raise you to your thrones?"

      "Thrones," said Cora in a whisper; "our thrones."

      "Golden ones," said Clarice. "That is what we want."

      "That is what you shall have. Golden thrones for Lady Cora and Lady

Clarice. Who will give them to you?"

      He stretched forward his hands and, holding each of them firmly by an

elbow, brought them forward in one piece to within a foot of himself. He had

never gone so far before, but he could see that they were clay in his hands and

the familiarity was safe. The dreadful proximity of the identical faces caused

him to draw his own head back.

      "Who will give you the thrones, the glory and the power?" he said. "Who?"

      Their mouths opened together. "You," they said. "It's _you_ who"ll give

them to us. Steerpike will give them to us."

      Then Clarice craned her head forward from beside her sister's and she

whispered as though she were telling Steerpike a secret for the first time.

      We're burning Sepulchrave's books up," she said, "the whole of his silly

library. We're doing it -- Cora and I. Everything is ready."

      "Yes," said Steerpike. "Everything is ready."

      Clarice's head regained its normal position immediately above her neck,

where it balanced itself, a dead thing, on a column, but Cora's came forward as

though to take the place of its counterpart and to keep the machinery working.

In the same flat whisper she continued from where her sister had left off:

      "All we do is to do what we've been told to do." Her head came forward

another two inches. "There isn't anything difficult. It's easy to do. We go to

the big door and then we find two little pieces of cloth sticking through from

the inside, and then --"

      "We set them on fire!" broke in her sister in so loud a voice that

Steerpike closed his eyes. Then with a profound emptiness: "We"ll do it _now_,"

said Clarice. It's easy."

      "Now?" said Steerpike. "Oh no, not now. We decided it should be tomorrow,

didn't we? Tomorrow evening."

      "I want to do it _now_," said Clarice. "Don't you, Cora?"

      "No," said Cora.

      Clarice bit solemnly at her knuckles. "You're frightened," she said;

"frightened of a little bit of fire. You ought to have more pride than that,

Cora. I have, although I'm gently manured."

      "Mannered, you mean," said her sister. "You _stupid_. How ignorant you

are. With our blood, too. I am ashamed of our likenesses and always will be, so

_there_!"

      Steerpike brushed an elegant green vase from the mantel with his elbow,

which had the effect he had anticipated. The four eyes moved towards the

fragments on the floor -- the thread of their dialogue was as shattered as the

vase.

      "A sign!" he muttered in a low, vibrant voice. "A portent! A symbol! The

circle is complete. An angel has spoken."

      The twins stared open-mouthed.

      "Do you see the broken porcelain, dear ladies?" he said. "Do you _see_

it?"

      They" nodded.

      "What else is that but the _Régime_, broken for ever -- the bullydom of

Gertrude -- the stony heart of Sepulchrave -- the ignorance, malice and

brutality of the House of Groan as it now stands -- smashed for ever? It is a

signal that your hour is at hand. Give praise, my dears; you shall come unto

your splendour."

      "When?" said Cora. "Will it be soon?"

      "What about tonight?" said Clarice. She raised her flat voice to its

second floor, where there was more ventilation. "What about tonight?"

      "There is a little matter to be settled first," said Steerpike. "One

little job to be done. Very simple; very, very simple; but it needs clever

people to do it." He struck a match.

      In the four lenses of the four flat eyes, the four reflections of a single

flame, danced -- danced.

      "Fire!" they said. "We know all about it. All, all, all."

      "Oh, then, to bed," said the youth, speaking rapidly. "To bed, to bed, to

bed."

      Clarice lifted a limp hand like a slab of putty to her breast and

scratched herself abstractedly. "All right," she said, "Good night." And as she

moved towards the bedroom door she began to unfasten her dress.

      "I'm going too," said Cora. "Good night." She also, as she retired, could

be seen unclasping and unhooking herself. Before the door closed behind her she

was half unravelled of imperial purple.

      Steerpike filled his pocket with nuts from a china bowl and letting

himself out of the room began the descent to the quadrangle. He had had no

intention of broaching the subject of the burning, but the aunts had happily

proved less excitable than he had anticipated and his confidence in their

playing their elementary roles effectively on the following evening was

strengthened.

      As he descended the stone stairs he filled his pipe, and on coming into

the mild evening light, his tobacco smouldering in the bowl, he felt in an

amiable mood, and spinning his swordstick he made for the pine woods, humming to

himself as he went.

      He had found Fuchsia, and had built up some kind of conversation, although

he always found it more difficult to speak to her than to anyone else. First he

inquired with a certain sincerity whether she had recovered from the shock. Her

cheek was inflamed, and she limped badly from the severe pain in her leg. The

Doctor had bandaged her up carefully and had left instructions with Nannie that

she must not go out for several days, but she had slipped away when her nurse

was out of the room, leaving a scribble on the wall to the effect that she loved

her; but as the creature never looked at the wall the message was abortive.

      By the time they had come to the edge of the woods Steerpike was talking

airily of any subject that came into his head, mainly for the purpose of

building up in her mind a picture of himself as someone profoundly brilliant,

but also for the enjoyment of talking for its own sake, for he was in a

sprightly mood.

      She limped beside him as they passed through the outermost trees and into

the light of the sinking sun. Steerpike paused to remove a stagbeetle from where

it clung to the soft bark of a pine.

      Fuchsia went on slowly, wishing she were alone.

      "There should be no rich, no poor, no strong, no weak," said Steerpike,

methodically pulling the legs off the stag-beetle, one by one, as he spoke.

"Equality is the great thing, equality is _everything_." He flung the mutilated

insect away. "Do you agree, Lady Fuchsia?" he said.

      "I don't know anything about it, and I don't care much," said Fuchsia.

      "But don't you think it's wrong if some people have nothing to eat and

others have so much they throw most of it away? Don't you think it's wrong if

some people have to work all their lives for a little money to exist on while

others never do any work and live in luxury? Don't you think brave men should be

recognized and rewarded, and not just treated the same as cowards? The men who

climb mountains, or dive under the sea, or explore jungles full of fever, or

save people from fires?"

      "I don't know," said Fuchsia again. "Things ought to be fair, I suppose.

But I don't know anything about it."

      "Yes, you do," said Steerpike. "When you say 'Things ought to be fair' it

is exactly what I mean. Things _ought_ to be fair. Why aren't they fair? Because

of greed and cruelty and lust for power. All that sort of thing must be

stopped."

      "Well, why don't you stop it, then?" said Fuchsia in a distant voice. She

was watching the sun's blood on the Tower of Flints, and a cloud like a drenched

swab, descending, inch by inch, behind the blackening tower.

      "I am going to," said Steerpike with such an air of simple confidence that

Fuchsia turned her eyes to him.

      "You're going to stop cruelty?" she asked. "And greediness, and all those

things? I don't think you could. You're very clever, but, oh no, you couldn't do

anything like that."

      Steerpike was taken aback for a moment by this reply. He had meant his

remark to stand on its own -- a limpid statement of fact -- something that he

imagined Fuchsia might often turn over in her mind and cogitate upon.

      "It's nearly gone," said Fuchsia as Steerpike was wondering how to

reassert himself. "Nearly gone."

      "What's nearly gone?" He followed her eyes to where the circle of the sun

was notched with turrets. "Oh, you mean the old treacle bun," he said. "Yes, it

will get cold very quickly now."

      "Treacle bun?" said Fuchsia. "Is that what you call it?" She stopped

walking. "I don't think you ought to call it that. It's not respectful." She

gazed. As the death-throes weakened in the sky, she watched with big, perplexed

eyes. Then she smiled for the first time. "Do you give names to other things

like that?"

      "Sometimes," said Steerpike. "I have a disrespectful nature."

      "Do you give people names?"

      "I have done."

      "Have you got one for me?"

      Steerpike sucked the end of his swordstick and raised his straw-coloured

eyebrows. "I don't think I have," he said. "I usually think of you as Lady

Fuchsia."

      "Do you call my mother anything?"

      "Your mother? Yes."

      "What do you call my mother?"

      "I call her the old Bunch of Rags," said Steerpike.

      Fuchsia's eyes opened wide and she stood still again. "Go away," she said.

      "That's not very fair," said Steerpike. "After all, you _asked_ me."

      "What do you call my father, then? But I don't want to know. I think

you're cruel," said Fuchsia breathlessly, "you who said you'd stop cruelty

altogether. Tell me some more names. Are they _all_ unkind -- and funny?"

      "Some other time," said Steerpike, who had begun to feel chilly. "The cold

won't do your injuries any good. You shouldn't be out walking at all.

Prunesquallor thinks you're in bed. He sounded very worried about you."

      They walked on in silence, and by the time they had reached the castle

night had descended.

40

"MEANWHILE"

      The morning of the next day opened drearily, the sun appearing only after

protracted periods of half-light, and then only as a pale paper disc, more like

the moon than itself, as, for a few moments at a time it floated across some

corridor of cloud. Slow, lack-lustre veils descended with almost imperceptible

motion over Gormenghast, blurring its countless windows, as with a dripping

smoke. The mountain appeared and disappeared a scone of times during the morning

as the drifts obscured it on lifted from its sides. As the day advanced the

gauzes thinned, and it was in the late afternoon that the clouds finally

dispensed to leave in their place an expanse of translucence, that stain, chill

and secret, in the throat of a lily, a sky so peerless, that as Fuchsia stared

into its glacid depths she began unwittingly to break and re-break the

flower-stem in her hands.

      When she turned her head away it was to find Mrs. Slagg watching her with

such a piteous expression that Fuchsia put her arms about her old nurse and

hugged her less tenderly than was her wish, for she hurt the wrinkled midget as

she squeezed.

      Nannie gasped for breath, her body bruised from the excess of Fuchsia's

burst of affection, and a gust of temper shook her as she climbed excitedly onto

the seat of a chair.

      "How _dare_ you! How _dare_ you!" she gasped at last after shaking and

wriggling a miniature fist all around Fuchsia's surprised face. "How _dare_ you

bully me and hunt me and crush me into so much pain, you wicked thing, you

vicious, naughty thing! _You_, whom I've always done everything for. _You_, whom

I washed and brushed and dressed and spoiled and cooked for since you were the

size of a slipper. You . . . you . . ." The old woman began to cry, her body

shaking underneath her black dress like some sort ofjerking toy. She let go of

the rail of the chair, crushed her fists into her tearful, bloodshot eyes, and,

forgetting where she was, was about to run to the door, when Fuchsia jumped

forward and caught her from falling. Fuchsia carried her to the bed and laid her

down.

      "Did I hurt you very much?"

      Her old nurse, lying on the coverlet like a withered doll in black satin,

pursed her lips together and waited until Fuchsia, seating herself on the side

of the bed, had placed one of her hands within range. Then her fingers crept

forward, inch by inch, oven the eiderdown, and with a sudden grimace of

concentrated naughtiness she smacked Fuchsia's hand as hard as she was able.

Relaxing against the pillow after this puny revenge, she peered at Fuchsia, a

triumphant gleam in her watery eyes.

      Fuchsia, hardly noticing the malicious little blow, leant over and

suffered herself to be hugged for a few moments.

      "Now you must start getting dressed," said Nannie Slagg. "You must be

getting ready for your father's Gathering, mustn't you? It's always one thing on

another. 'Do this. Do that.' And my heart in the state it is. Where will it all

end? And what will you wear today? What dress will look the noblest for the

wicked, tempestable thing?"

      "You're coming, too, aren't you?" Fuchsia said.

      "Why, what a _thing_ you are," squeaked Nannie Slagg, climbing down over

the edge of the bed. "Fancy such an ignorous question! I am taking his little

LORDSHIP, you big stupid!"

      "What! is Titus going, too?"

      "Oh, your _ignorance_," said Nannie. "'Is Titus going, _too_?' she says."

Mrs. Slagg smiled pityingly. "Poor, poor, wicked thing! what a querail!" The old

woman gave forth a series of pathetically unconvincing laughs and then put her

hands on Fuchsia's knees excitedly. "Of _course_ he's going," she said. "The

Gathering is _for_ him. It's about his Birthday Breakfast."

      "Who else is going, Nannie?"

      Her old nurse began to count on her fingers.

      "Well, there's your father," she began, placing the tips of her

forefingers together and raising her eyes to the ceiling. "First of all there's

him, your father . . ."

      As she spoke Lord Sepulchrave was returning to his room after performing

the bi-annual ritual of opening the iron cupboard in the armoury, and, with the

traditional dagger which Sourdust had brought for the occasion, of scratching on

the metal back of the cupboard another half moon, which, added to the long line

of similar half moons, made the seven hundred and thirty-seventh to be scored

into the iron. According to the temperaments of the deceased Earls of

Gormenghast the half moons were executed with precision or with carelessness. It

was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortunately the

records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being

unintelligible.

      Old Sourdust had closed the iron door of the ugly, empty cupboand with

great care, turning the key in the lock, and but for the fact that while

inserting the key a few strands of his beard had gone in with it and been turned

and caught, he would have felt the keen professional pleasure that all ritual

gave him. It was in vain for him to pull, for not only was he held fast, but the

pain to his chin brought tears to his eyes. To bring the key out and the hairs

of his beard with it would ruin the ceremony, for it was laid down that the key

must remain in the lock for twenty-three hours, a retainer in yellow being

posted to guard the cupboard for that period. The only thing to do was to sever

the strands with the knife, and this is eventually what the old man did, after

which he set fire to the grey tufts of his alienated hairs that protruded from

the keyhole like a fringe around the key. These flamed a little, and when the

sizzling had ceased Sourdust turned apologetically to find that his Lordship had

gone.

      When Lord Sepulchrave reached his bedroom he found Flay laying out the

black costume that he habitually wore. The Earl had it in his mind to dress more

elaborately this evening. There had been a slight but perceptible lifting of his

spirit ever since he had conceived this Breakfast for his son. He had become

aware of a dim pleasure in having a son. Titus had been born during one of his

blackest moods, and although he was still shrouded in melancholia, his

introspection had, during the last few days, become tempered by a growing

interest in his heir, not as a personality, but as the symbol of the Future. He

had some vague presentiment that his own tenure was drawing to a close and it

gave him both pleasure when he remembered his son, and a sense of stability amid

the miasma of his waking dreams.

      Now that he knew he had a son he realized how great had been the unspoken

nightmare which had lurked in his mind. The terror that with _him_ the line of

Groan should perish. That he had failed the castle of his forebears, and that

rotting in his sepulchre the future generations would point at his, the last of

the long line of discoloured monuments and whisper: "He was the last. He had no

son."

      As Flay helped him dress, neither of them speaking a word, Lord

Sepulchrave thought of all this, and fastening a jewelled pin at his collar he

sighed, and within the doomed and dark sea-murmur of that sigh was the plashing

sound of a less mournful billow. And then, as he gazed absently past himself in

the mirror at Flay, another comber of far pleasure followed the first, for his

books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless

row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the

stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the

picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific -- the essays, the poetry and the

drama.

      All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of

words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

      "Then _next_," said Mrs. Slagg, counting on her fingers, "there's your

mother, of course. Your father and your mother-- that makes Two."

      Lady Gertrude had not thought of changing her dress. Nor had it occurred

to her to prepare for the gathering.

      She was seated in her bedroom. Her feet were planted widely apart as

though for all time. Her elbows weighed on her knees, from between which the

draperies of her skirt sagged in heavy U-shaped folds. In her hands was a

paper-covered book, with a coffee-stain across its cover and with as many dogs'

ears as it had pages. She was reading aloud in a deep voice that rose above the

steady drone of a hundred cats. They filled the room. Whiter than the tallow

that hung from the candelabra or lay broken on the table of birdseed. Whiter

than the pillows on the bed. They sat everywhere. The counterpane was hidden

with them. The table, the cupboards, the couch, all was luxuriant with harvest,

white as death, but the richest crop was all about her feet where a cluster of

white faces stared up into her own. Every luminous, slit-pupilled eye was upon

her. The only movement lay in the vibration in their throats. The voice of the

Countess moved on like a laden ship upon a purring tide.

      As she came to the end of every right-hand page and was turning it over

her eyes would move around the room with an expression of the deepest

tenderness, her pupils filling with the minute white reflections of her cats.

      Then her eyes would turn again to the printed page. Her enormous face had

about it the wonderment of a child as she read. She was reliving the stony, the

old story which she had so often read to them.

      "And the door closed, and the latch clicked, but the prince with stars for

his eyes and a new-moon for his mouth didn't mind, for he was young and strong,

and though he wasn't handsome, he had heard lots of doors close and click before

this one, and didn't feel at all frightened. But he would have been if he had

known who had closed the door. It was the Dwarf with brass teeth, who was more

dreadful than the most spotted of all things, and whose ears were fixed on

backwards.

      "Now when the prince had finished brushing his hair . . ."

      While the Countess was turning the page Mrs. Slagg was ticking off the

third and fourth fingers of her left hand.

      "Dr. Prunesquallor and Miss Irma will come as well, dear: they always come

to nearly everything -- don't they, though I can't see _why_ -- they aren't

ancestral. But they always come. Oh, my poor conscience! it's always I who have

to bear with them, and do everything, and I'll have to go in a moment, my

caution, to remind your mother, and she"ll shout at me and make me so nervous;

but I'll have to go for she won't remember, but that's just how it _always_

happens. And the Doctor and Miss Irma make another two people, and that makes

four altogether." Mrs. Slagg gasped for breath. "I don't like Dr. Prunesquallor,

my baby; I don't like his proud habits," said Nannie. "He makes me feel so silly

and small when I'm not. But he's always asked, even when his vain and ugly

sister isn't; but she's been asked this time so they"ll both be there, and you

must stay next to me, won't you? Won't you? Because I've got his little Lordship

to care for. Oh, my dear heart! I'm not well -- I'm not; I'm _not_. And nobody

canes -- not even you." Her wrinkled hand gripped at Fuchsia"s. "You will look

after me?"

      "Yes," said Fuchsia. "But I like the Doctor."

      Fuchsia lifted up the end of her mattress and burrowed beneath the

feather-filled weight until she found a small box. She turned her back on her

nurse for a moment and fastened something around her neck, and when she turned

again Mrs. Slagg saw the solid fine of a great ruby hung beneath her throat.

      "You must wear it _today_!" Mrs. Slagg almost screamed. "Today, today, you

naughty thing, when everyone's there. You will look as pretty as a flowering

lamb, my big, untidy thing."

      "No, Nannie, I won't wear it like that. not when it's a day like today. I

shall wear it only when I'm alone or when I meet a man who reverences me."

      The Doctor, meanwhile, lay in a state of perfect contentment in a hot bath

filled with blue crystals. The bath was veined marble and was long enough to

allow the Doctor to lie at full length. Only his quill-like face emerged above

the perfumed surface of the water. His hair was filled with winking

lather-bubbles; and his eyes were indescribably roguish. His face and neck were

bright pink as though direct from a celluloid factory.

      At the far end of the bath one of his feet emerged from the depths. He

watched it quizzically with his head cocked so far upon one side that his left

ear filled with water. "Sweet foot," he cried. "Five toes to boot and what-not

in the beetroot shoot!" He raised himself and shook the hot water gaily from his

ear and began swishing the water on either side of his body.

      The eyes closed and the mouth opened and all the teeth were there shining

through the steam. Taking a great breath, or rather, a deep breath, for his

chest was too narrow for a great one, and with a smile of dreadful bliss

irradiating his pink face, the Doctor emitted a whinny of so piercing a quality,

that Irma, seated at her boudoir table, shot to her feet, scattering hairpins

across the carpet. She had been at her toilet for the last three hours,

excluding the preliminary hour and a half spent in her bath -- and now, as she

swished her way to the bedroom door, a frown disturbing the powder on her brow,

she had, in common with her brother, more the appearance of having been plucked

or peeled, than of cleanliness, though _clean_ she was, scrupulously clean, in

the sense of a rasher of bacon.

      "What on earth is the matter with you; I said, what on earth is the matter

with you, Bernard?" she shouted through the bathroom keyhole.

      "Is that you my love? Is that you?" her brother's voice came thinly from

behind the door.

      "Who _else_ would it be; I said, who _else_ would it be," she yelled back,

bending herself into a stiff satin right angle in order to get her mouth to the

keyhole.

      "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," came her brother's shrill, unbearable laughter. "Who

else indeed? Well, well, let us think, let us _think_. It might be the

moon-goddess, but that's improbable, ha, ha, ha; or it might be a sword

swallower approaching me in my professional capacity, ha, ha, that is _less_

improbable -- in fact, my dear tap-root, have you by any chance been swallowing

swords for years on end without ever telling me, ha, ha? Or haven't you?" His

voice rose: "Years on end, and swords on end -- where will it end, if our ears

unbend -- what shall I spend on a wrinkled friend in a pair of tights like a

bunch of lights?"

      Irma who had been straining her ears cried out at last in her irritation:

"I suppose you know you"ll be late -- I said: 'I suppose you --'"

      "A merry plague upon you, O blood of my blood," the shrill voice broke in.

"What is Time, O sister of similar features, that you speak of it so

subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that second-hand, overrated

knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse

upon their ridiculous dictatorship! What say you, Irma, my Irma, wrapped in

rumour, Irma, of the incandescent tumour?" he trilled happily. And his sister

rose rustling to her full height, arching her nostrils as she did so, as though

they itched with pedigree. Her brother annoyed her, and as she seated herself

again before the mirror in her boudoir she made noises like a lady as she

applied the powderpuff for the hundredth time to her spotless length of neck.

      "Sourdust will be there, too," said Mrs. Slagg, "because he knows all

about things. He knows what order you do things in, precious, and when you must

_start_ doing them, and when you ought to _stop_."

      "Is that everyone?" asked Fuchsia.

      "Don't hurry me," replied the old nurse, pursing her lips into a prune of

wrinkles. "Can't you wait a minute? Yes, that makes five, and you make six, and

his little Lordship makes seven . . ."

      "And you make eight," said Fuchsia. "So you make the most."

      "Make the most what, my caution?"

      "It doesn't matter," said Fuchsia.

      While, in various pants of the Castle, these eight persons were getting

ready for the Gathering the twins were sitting bolt upright on the couch

watching Steerpike drawing the cork out of a slim, dusty bottle. He held it

securely between his feet and bending over with the corkscrew firmly embedded

was easing the conk from the long black cormorant throat.

      Having unwound the corkscrew and placed the undamaged cork on the

mantelpiece, he emptied a little of the wine into a glass and tasted it with a

critical expression on his pale face,

      The aunts leaned forward, their hands on their knees, watching every

movement.

      Steerpike took one of the Doctor's silk handkerchiefs from his pocket and

wiped his mouth. Then he held the wineglass up to the light for a long time and

studied its translucence.

      "What's wrong with it?" said Clarice slowly.

      "Is it poisoned?" said Cora.

      "Who poisoned it?" echoed Clarice.

      "Gertrude," said Cora. "She'd kill us if she could."

      "But she can't," said Clarice.

      "And that's why we're going to be powerful."

      "And proud," added Clarice.

      "Yes, because of today."

      "Because of _today_."

      They joined their hands.

      "It is good vintage, your Ladyship. A very adequate vintage. I selected it

myself. You will, I know, appreciate it fully. It is not poisoned, my dear

women. Gertrude, though she has poisoned your lives, has not, as it so happens,

poisoned this particular bottle of wine. May I pour you out a glassful each, and

we will drink a toast to the business of the day?"

      "Yes, yes," said Cora. "Do it now."

      Steerpike filled their glasses.

      "Stand up," he said.

      The purple twins arose together, and as Steerpike was about to propose the

toast, his night hand holding the glass on the level of his chin and his left

hand in his pocket, Cora's flat voice broke in:

      "Let's drink it on our Tree," she said. "It's lovely outside. On our

Tree."

      Clarice turned to her sister with her mouth open. Her eyes were as

expressionless as mushrooms.

      "That's what we"ll do," she said.

      Steerpike, instead of being annoyed, was amused at the idea. After all,

this was an important day for him. He had worked hard to get all in readiness

and he knew that his future hung upon the smooth working of his plan, and

although he would not congratulate himself until the library was in ashes, he

felt that it was up to him and the aunts to relax for a few minutes before the

work that lay ahead.

      To drink a toast to the Day upon the boughs of the dead Tree appealed to

his sense of the dramatic, the appropriate and the ridiculous.

      A few minutes later the three of them had passed through the Room of

Roots, filed along the horizontal stem and sat down at the table.

      As they sat, Steerpike in the middle and the twins at either side, the

evening air was motionless beneath them and around. The aunts had apparently no

fear of the dizzy drop. They never thought of it. Steerpike, although he was

enjoying the situation to the full, nevertheless averted his eyes as far as

possible from the sickening space below him. He decided to deal gently with the

bottle. On the wooden table their three glasses glowed in the warm light. Thirty

feet away the sunny south wall towered above and fell below them featureless

from its base to its summit save for the lateral offshoot of this dead tree,

halfway up its surface, on which they sat, and the exquisitely pencilled shadows

of its branches.

      "Firstly, dear Ladyships," said Steerpike, rising to his feet and fixing

his eyes upon the shadow of a coiling bough, "firstly I propose a health to

_you_. To your steadfast purpose and the faith you have in your own destinies.

To your courage. Your intelligence. Your beauty." He raised his glass. "I

drink," he said, and took a sip.

      Clarice began to drink at the same moment, but Cora nudged her elbow. "Not

yet," she said.

      "Next I must propose a toast to the future. Primarily to the Immediate

Future. To the task we have resolved to carry through today. To its success. And

also to the Great Days that will result from it. The days of your reinstatement.

The days of your Power and Glory. Ladies, to the Future!"

      Cora, Clarice and Steerpike lifted their elbows to drink. The warm air

hung about them, and as Cora's raised elbow struck her sister's and jogged the

wineglass from her hand, and as it rolled from the table to the tree and from

the tree out into the hollow air, the western sunlight caught it as it fell,

glittering, through the void.

41

"THE BURNING"

      Although it was Lord Sepulchrave who had summoned the Gathering, it was to

Sourdust that the party turned when they had all arrived in the library, for his

encyclopaedic knowledge of ritual gave authority to whatever proceedings were to

follow. He stood by the marble table and, as the oldest, and in his opinion, the

wisest person present, had about him a quite understandable air of his own

importance. To wean rich and becoming apparel no doubt engenders a sense of

well-being in the wearer, but to be draped, as was Sourdust, in a sacrosanct

habit of crimson rags is to be in a world above such consideration as the price

and fit of clothes and to experience a sense of propriety that no wealth could

buy. Sourdust knew that were he to demand it the wardrobes of Gormenghast would

be flung open to him. He did not want it. His mottled beard of alternate black

and white hairs was freshly knotted. The crumpled parchment of his ancestral

face glimmened in the evening light that swam through the high window.

      Flay had managed to find five chairs, which he placed in a line before the

table. Nannie, with Titus on her lap, took up the central position. On her right

Lord Sepulchrave and on her left the Countess Gertrude sat in attitudes peculiar

to them, the former with his right elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin

lost in the palm of his hand, and the Countess obliterating the furniture she

sat in. On her right sat the Doctor, his long legs crossed and a footling smile

of anticipation on his face. At the other end of the row his sister sat with her

pelvis at least a foot to the rear of an excited perpendicular -- her thorax,

neck and head. Fuchsia, for whom, much to her relief, no chair was to be found,

stood behind them, her hands behind her back. Between her fingers a small green

handkerchief was being twisted round and round, She watched the ancient Sourdust

take a step forward and wondered what it must feel like to be so old and

wrinkled. "I wonder if I'll ever be as old as that," she thought; "an old

wrinkled woman, older than my mother, olden than Nannie Slagg even." She gazed

at the black mass of her mother's back. "Who is there anyway who isn't old?

There isn't anybody. Only that boy who hasn't any lineage. I wouldn't mind much,

but he's different from me and too clever for me. And even he's not young. Not

like I'd like my friends to be."

      Her eyes moved along the line of heads. One after the other: old heads

that didn't understand.

      Her eyes nested at last on Irma.

      "She hasn't any lineage, either," said Fuchsia to herself, "and her neck

is much too clean and it's the longest and thinnest and funniest I've ever seen.

I wonder if she's really a white giraffe all the time, and pretending she

isn't." Fuchsia's mind flew to the stuffed giraffe's leg in the attic. "Perhaps

it belongs to _her_," she thought. And the idea so appealed to Fuchsia that she

lost control of herself and spluttered.

      Sourdust, who was about to begin and had raised his old hand for the

purpose, started and peered across at her. Mrs. Slagg clutched Titus a little

tighter and listened very hard for anything further. Lord Sepulchrave did not

move his body an inch, but opened one eye slowly. Lady Gertrude, as though

Fuchsia's splutter had been a signal, shouted to Flay, who was behind the

library door:

      "Open the door and let that bird in! What are you waiting for, man?" Then

she whistled with a peculiar ventriloquism, and a wood warbler sped, undulating

through the long, dark hollow of library air, to land on her finger.

      Irma simply twitched but was too refined to look round, and it was left to

the Doctor to make contact with Fuchsia by means of an exquisitely timed wink

with his left eye behind its convex lens, like an oyster shutting and opening

itself beneath a pool of water.

      Sourdust, disturbed by this unseemly interjection and also by the presence

of the wood warbler, which kept distracting his eye by running up and down Lady

Gertrude's arm, lifted his head again, fingering a running bowline in his beard.

      His hoarse and quavering voice wandered through the library like something

lost.

      The long shelves surrounded them, tier upon tier, circumscribing their

world with a wall of other worlds imprisoned yet breathing among the network of

a million commas, semi-colons, full stops, hyphens and every other sort of

printed symbol.

      "We are gathered together," said Sourdust, "in this ancient library at the

instigation of Sepulchrave, 76th Earl to the house of Gormenghast and lord of

those tracts of country that stretch on every hand, in the North to the

wastelands, in the South to the grey salt marshes, in the East to the quicksands

and the tideless sea, and in the West to knuckles of endless rock."

      This was delivered in one weak, monotonous stream. Sourdust coughed for

some time and then, regaining his breath, continued mechanically: "We are

gathered on this seventeenth day of October to give ear to his Lordship. These

nights the moon is in the ascendant and the river is full of fish. The owls in

the Tower of Flints seek their prey as heretofore and it is appropriate that his

Lordship should, on the seventeenth day of an autumn month, bring forward the

matter that is in his mind. The sacred duties which he has never wavered to

perform are over for the hour. It is appropriate that it should be now -- now,

at the sixth hour of the daylight clock.

      "I as master of Ritual, as Guardian of the Documents and as Confidant to

the Family, am able to say that for his Lordship to speak to you in no way

contravenes the tenets of Gormenghast.

      "But, your Lordship, and your revered Ladyship," said Sourdust in his old

sing-song, "it is no secret to those here gathered that it is towards the child

who now occupies pride of place, it is towards Lord Titus that our thoughts will

converge this afternoon. That is no secret."

      Sourdust gave vent to a dreadful chesty cough. "It is to Lord Titus," he

said, gazing mistily at the child and then, raising his voice, "it is to Lond

Titus," he repeated irritably.

      Nannie suddenly realized that the old man was making signs at her, and

understood that she was to lift the infant up in the air as though he were a

specimen, or something to be auctioned. She lifted him, but no one looked at the

exhibit except Prunesquallor, who nearly engulfed Nannie, baby and all with a

smile so devouring, so dental, as to cause Nannie to raise her shoulder against

it and to snatch Titus back to her little flat chest.

      "I will turn my back on you and strike the table four times," said

Sourdust. "Slagg will bring the child to the table and Lord Sepulchrave will --"

here he suffered a more violent fit of coughing than ever, and at the same

moment Irma's neck quivered a little and she in her own way followed suit with

five little ladylike barks. She turned her head apologetically in the direction

of the Countess and wrinkled her forehead in self-deprecation. She could see

that the Countess had taken no notice of her mute apology. She arched her

nostrils. It had not crossed her mind there was a smell in the room other than

the prevalent smell of musty leather: it was just that her nostrils with their

hyper-sensitive nerve-endings were acting on their own accord.

      Sourdust took some time to recover from his bout, but eventually he

straightened himself and repeated:

      "Slagg will bring the child to the table, and Lord Sepulchrave will

graciously advance, following his menial, and on arriving at a point immediately

behind me will touch the back of my neck with the forefinger of his left hand.

      "At this signal I and Slagg will retire, and Slagg, having left the infant

on the table, Lord Sepulchrave will pass behind the table and stand facing us

across its surface."

      "Are you hungry, my little love? Is there no grain inside you? Is that it?

Is that it?"

      The voice came forth so suddenly and heavily and so closely upon the

quavering accents of Sourdust that everyone felt for the first few moments that

the remark was addressed to them personally; but on turning their heads they

could see that the Countess was addressing herself exclusively to the wood

warbler. Whether the warbler made any reply was never ascertained for not only

was Irma seized with a new and less ladylike bout of short dry coughs, but her

brother and Nannie Slagg, joining her, filled the room with noise.

      The bird rose into the air, startled, and Lord Sepulchrave stopped on his

passage to the table and turned irritably to the line of noisy figures; but as

he did so a faint smell of smoke making itself perceptible for the first time

caused him to raise his head and sniff the air in a slow, melancholy way. At the

same time Fuchsia felt a roughness in her throat. She glanced about the room and

wrinkled her nose, for smoke though still invisible was infiltrating steadily

through the library.

      Prunesquallor had risen from beside the Countess and with his white hands

wound about each other and with his mouth twisted into a quizzical line he

permitted his eyes to move rapidly around the room. His head was cocked on one

side.

      "What's the matter, man?" asked the Countess heavily from immediately

below him. She was still seated.

      "The matter?" queried the Doctor, smiling more emphatically but still

keeping his eyes on the move. "It is a case of atmosphere, as far as I can dare

to judge at such very, very short notice, your Ladyship, as far as I _dare_ to

judge, ha, ha, ha! It is a case of thickening atmosphere, ha, ha!"

      "Smoke," said the Countess heavily and bluntly. "What is the matter with

smoke? Haven't you even smelt it before?"

      "Many and many a time, your Ladyship," answered the Doctor. "But never, if

I may say so, never in _here_."

      The Countess grunted to herself and settled deeper into the chair.

      "There never _is_ smoke in here," said Lord Sepulchrave. He turned his

head to the door and raised his voice a little:

      "Flay."

      The long servant emerged out of the shadows like a spider.

      "Open the door," said Lord Sepulchrave sharply; and as the spider turned

and began its return journey his Lordship took a step towards old Sourdust, who

was by now doubled over the table in a paroxysm of coughing. His Lordship taking

one of Sourdust's elbows beckoned to Fuchsia, who came across the room and

supported the old man on the other side, and the three of them began to make

their way to the door in Flay's wake.

      Lady Groan simply sat like a mountain and watched the little bird.

      Dr. Prunesquallor was wiping his eyes, his thick glasses pushed for the

moment above his eyebrows. But he was very much on the alert and as soon as his

spectacles were again in place he grinned at everyone in turn. His eye lingered

for a moment on his sister Irma, who was systematically tearing an expensively

embroidered cream-coloured silk handkerchief into small pieces. Behind the dank

lenses of her glasses her eyes were hidden from view, but to judge from the

thin, wet, drooping line of her mouth and the twitching of the skin on her

pointed nose it might be safely assumed that they were making contact with, and

covering the inner side of, the lenses of her spectacles with the moisture with

which the smoke had filmed them.

      The Doctor placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together and then,

separating the tapering extremities of the index fingers, he watched them for a

few seconds as they gyrated around one another. Then his eyes turned to the far

end of the room where he could see the Earl and his daughter, with the old man

between them, approaching the library door. Someone, presumably Flay, seemed to

be making a great deal of noise in wrestling with the heavy iron door-handle.

      The smoke was spreading, and the Doctor, wondering why in the devil's name

the door had not been thrown open, began to peer about the room in an effort to

locate the source of the ever-thickening wreaths. As he took a step past Nannie

Slagg he saw that she was standing by the table from whose marble surface she

had plucked Titus. She was holding him very closely to herself and had wrapped

him in layers of cloth which had completely hidden him from view. A sound of

muffled crying could be heard coming from the bundle. Nannie's little wrinkled

mouth was hanging open. Her streaming eyes were redder than usual with the

stinging smoke. But she stood quite still.

      "My very dear good woman," said Dr. Prunesquallor, turning on his heel as

he was about to float past her, "my very dear Slagg, convey his minute Lordship

to the door that for some reason that is too subtle for me to appreciate remains

shut. Why, in the name of Ventilation, _I_ don't know. But it _does_. It remains

shut. Take him nevertheless, my dear Slagg, to the aforesaid door and place his

infinitesimal head at the keyhole (surely _THAT'S_ still open!), and even if you

cannot squeeze the child right through it you can at least give his Lordship's

lungs something to get on with."

      Nannie Slagg was never very good at interpreting the Doctor's long

sentences, especially when coming through a haze of smoke, and all that she

could gather was that she should attempt to squeeze her tiny Lordship through

the keyhole. Clutching the baby even tighter in her thin arms, "No! no! no!" she

cried, retreating from the doctor.

      Dr. Prunesquallor rolled his eyes at the Countess. She was apparently

aware of the state of the room at last and was gathering together great swathes

of drapery in a slow, deliberate manner preparatory to rising to her feet.

      The rattling at the library door became more violent, but the indigenous

shadows and the smoke combined to make it impossible to see what was going on.

      "Slagg," said the Doctor, advancing on her, "go to the door immediately,

like the intelligent woman you are!"

      "No! no!" shrieked the midget, in so silly a voice that Doctor

Prunesquallor after taking a handkerchief from his pocket lifted her from her

feet and tucked her under his arm. The handkerchief enveloping Nannie Slagg's

waist prevented the nurse's garments from coming in contact with the Doctor's

clothes. Her legs, like black twigs blown in the wind, gesticulated for a few

moments and then were still.

      Before they had reached the door, however, they were met by Lord

Sepulchrave, who emerged darkly from the smoke. "The door has been locked from

the outside," he whispered between fits of coughing.

      "Locked?" queried Prunesquallor. "Locked, your Lordship? By all that's

perfidious! This is becoming intriguing. Most intriguing. Perhaps a bit too

intriguing. What do _you_ think, Fuchsia, my dear little lady? Eh? ha, ha! Well,

well, we must become positively cerebral, mustn't we? By all that's enlightened

we really must! Can it be smashed?" He turned to Lord Sepulchrave. "Can we

breach it, your Lordship, battery and assault and all that delicious sort of

thing?"

      "Too thick, Prunesquallor," said Lord Sepulchrave: "four-inch oak."

      He spoke slowly in strange contrast to Prunesquallor's rapid, ejaculatory

chirping.

      Sourdust had been propped near the door, where he sat coughing as though

to shake his old body to bits.

      "No key for the other door," continued Lord Sepulchrave slowly. "It is

never used. What about the window?" For the first time a look of alarm appeared

on his ascetic face. He walked quickly to the nearest bookshelves and ran his

fingers along the spines of calf. Then he turned with a quickness unusual for

him. "Where is the smoke thickest?"

      "I've been searching for its origin, your Lordship," came Prunesquallor's

voice out of the haze. "It's everywhere so thick that it's very difficult to

say. By all the pits of dankness it most damnably is. But I'm looking, ha, ha!

I'm looking." He trilled for a moment like a bird. Then his voice came again.

"Fuchsia, dear!" he shouted. "Are you all right?"

      "Yes!" Fuchsia had to swallow hard before she could shout back, for she

was very frightened. "Yes, Dr. Prune."

      "Slagg!" shouted the Doctor, "keep Titus near the keyhole. See that she

does, Fuchsia."

      "Yes," whispered Fuchsia; and went in search of Mrs. Slagg.

      It was just then that an uncontrolled scream rang through the room.

      Irma, who had been tearing her cream-coloured handkerchief, now found that

she had ripped it into such minute particles that with nothing left to tear, and

with her hands in forced idleness, she could control herself no longer. Her

knuckles had tried to stifle the cry, but her terror had grown too strong for

such expedients, and at the final moment she forgot all she had learnt about

decorum and about how to be a lady, and clenching her hands at her thighs she

had stood on tiptoe and screamed from her swanlike throat with an effect

calculated to freeze the blood of a macaw.

      An enormous figure had loomed out of the smoke a few feet from Lord

Sepulchrave, and as he watched the vague head take shape and recognized it as

that belonging to the top half of his wife's body, his limbs had stiffened, for

Irma's scream had rung out simultaneously with the appearance of the head, the

untoward proximity of which conjoined with the scream giving ventriloquistic

horror to the moment. Added to the frightfulness of a head and a voice,

attacking his ear and eye simultaneously though from different distances, was

the dreadful conception of Gertrude losing control in that way and giving vent

to a scream of such a shrill pitch as to be incompatible with the slack "cello

string that reverberated so heavily in her throat. He knew at once that it was

_not_ Gertrude who had screamed, but the very idea that it might have been,

filled him with sickness, and there raced through his mind the thought that for

all his wife's uncompromising, loveless weight of character it would be a grim

and evil thing were she to change.

      The flat blur of his wife's head turned itself towards the scream upon a

blurred neck, and he could see the vast wavering profile begin to move away from

him, inch by inch, and steer into the thickness beyond, charting its course by

the shrill shooting-star of Irma's cry.

      Lord Sepulchrave gripped his hands together convulsively until his

knuckles were bloodless and their ten staring crests wavered whitely through the

smoke which lay between his hands and his head.

      The blood began to beat a tattoo at his temples, and upon his high white

brow a few big beads gathered.

      He was biting at his lower lip, and his eyebrows were drawn down over his

eyes as though he were cogitating upon some academic problem. He knew that no

one could see him, for by now the smoke was all but opaque, but he was watching

himself. He could see that the position of his arms, and the whole attitude of

his body was exaggerated and stiffened. He discovered that his fingers were

splayed out in a histrionic gesture of alarm. It was for him to control his

members before he could hope to organize the activities in the smoke-filled

room. And so he watched and waited for the moment to assert himself, and as he

watched he found himself struggling. There was blood on his tongue. He had

bitten his wrist. His hands were now grappling with one another and it seemed an

eternity before the fingers ceased their deadly, interlocked and fratricidal

strangling. Yet his panic could have taken no longer than a few moments, for the

echo of Irma's scream was still in his ears when he began to loosen his hands.

      Meanwhile Prunesquallor had reached his sister's side and had found her

bridling her body up in preparation for another scream. Prunesquallor, as urbane

as even, had nevertheless something in his fish-like eyes that might almost be

described as determination. One glance at his sister was sufficient to make him

realize that to attempt to reason with her would be about as fruitful as to try

to christianize a vulture. She was on tip-toe and her lungs were expanded when

he struck her across her long white face with his long white hand, the pent

breath from her lungs issuing from her mouth, ears and nostrils. There was

something of shingle in the sound -- of shingle dragged seawards on a dark

night.

      Dragging her across the room swiftly, her heels scraping the floor, he

found a chair, after probing around in the smoke with his delicate feet, and sat

his sister in it.

      "Irma!" he shouted into her ear, "my humiliating and entirely unfortunate

old string of whitewash, sit where you are! Alfred will do the rest. Can you

hear me? Be good now! blood of my blood, be good now, damn you!"

      Irma sat quite still as though dead, save for a look of profound wonder in

her eyes.

      Prunesquallor was on the point of making another effort to locate the

origin of the smoke when he heard Fuchsia's voice high above the coughing that

by now was a constant background of noise in the library.

      "Dr. Prune! Dr. Prune! quickly! Quickly, Dr. Prune!"

      The Doctor pulled down his cuffs smartly oven his wrists, tried to square

his shoulders, but met with no success, and then began to pick his way, half

running, half walking, towards the door where Fuchsia, Mrs. Slagg and Titus had

been last seen. When he judged he was about halfway to the door and was clear of

the furniture, Prunesquallor began to accelerate his speed. This he did by

increasing not only the length of his stride but the height also, so that he

was, as it were, prancing through the air, when he was brought to a sudden

ruthless halt by a collision with something that felt like an enormous bolster

on end.

      When he had drawn his face away from the tallow-smelling draperies that

seemed to hang about him like curtains, he stretched out his hand tentatively

and shuddered to feel it come in contact with large fingers.

      "'Squallor?" came the enormous voice. "Is that 'Squallor?" The mouth of

the Countess was opening and shutting within an inch of his left ear.

      The Doctor gesticulated eloquently, but his artistry was wasted in the

smoke.

      "It _is_. Or rather," he continued, speaking even more rapidly than usual

-- "it is _Prunesquallor_, which is, if I may say so, more strictly correct, ha,

ha, ha! even in the dank."

      "Where's Fuchsia?" said the Countess. Prunesquallor found that his

shoulder was being gripped.

      "By the door," said the Doctor, longing to free himself from the weight of

her Ladyship's hand, and wondering, even in the middle of the coughing and the

darkness, what on earth the material that fitted around his shoulders so

elegantly would look like when the Countess had finished with it. "I was on the

point of finding her when we met, ha, ha! met, as it were, so palpably, so

inevitably."

      "Quiet, man! quiet!" said Lady Gertrude, loosening her grasp. "Find her

for me. Bring her here -- and smash a window, 'Squallor, smash a window."

      The Doctor was gone from her in a flash and when he judged himself to be a

few feet from the door -- "Are you there, Fuchsia?" he trilled.

      Fuchsia was just below him, and he was startled to hear her voice come up

jerkily through the smoke.

      "She's ill. Very ill. Quick, Dr. Prune, quick! Do something for her." The

Doctor felt his knees being clutched. "She's down here, Dr. Prune. I'm holding

her."

      Prunesquallor hitched up his trousers and knelt down at once.

      There seemed to be more vibration in the atmosphere in this part of the

room, more than could be accounted for by any modicum of air that might have

been entering through the keyhole. The coughing was dreadful to hear; Fuchsia's

was heavy and breathless; but the thin, weak, and ceaseless coughing of Mrs.

Slagg gave the Doctor the more concern. He felt for the old nurse and found her

in Fuchsia's lap. Slipping his hand across her little chicken-bosom he found

that her heart was the merest flutter. To his left in the dankness there was a

mouldy smell, and then the driest series of brick-dust coughs he had ever heard

revealed the proximity of Flay, who was fanning the air mechanically with a

large book he had clawed out of a nearby shelf. The fissure left in the row of

hidden books had filled immediately with the coiling smoke -- a tall, narrow

niche of choking darkness, a ghastly gap in a now of leather wisdom teeth.

      "Flay," said the Doctor, "can you hear me, Flay? Where's the largest

window in the room, my man? Quickly now, where is it?"

      "North wall," said Flay. "High up."

      "Go and shatter it at once. At once."

      "No balcony there," said Flay. "Can't reach."

      "Don't argue! Use what you've got in that head of yours. You know the

room. Find a missile, my good Flay -- find a missile, and break a window. Some

oxygen for Mrs. Slagg. Don't you think so? By all the zephyrs, yes! Go and help

him, Fuchsia. Find where the window is and break it, even if you have to throw

Irma at it, ha, ha, ha! And don't be alarmed. Smoke, you know, is only smoke:

it's not composed of crocodiles, oh dear no, nothing so tropical. Hurry now.

Break the window somehow and let the evening pour itself in -- and I will see to

dear Mrs. Slagg and Titus, ha, ha, ha! Oh dear, yes!"

      Flay gripped Fuchsia's arm, and they moved away into the dankness.

      Prunesquallor did what he could to help Mrs. Slagg, more by way of

assuring her that it would be over in a brace of shakes than through anything

scientific. He saw that Titus was able to breathe although wrapped up very

tightly. Then he sat back on his heels and turned his head, for an idea had

struck him.

      "Fuchsia!" he shouted, "find your father and ask him to sling his

jade-cane at the window."

      Lord Sepulchrave, who had just fought down another panic, and had nearly

bitten his lower lip in half, spoke in a wonderfully controlled voice

immediately after the Doctor had finished piping his message.

      "Where are you, Flay?" he said.

      "I'm here," said Flay from a few feet behind him.

      "Come to the table."

      Flay and Fuchsia moved to the table, feeling for it with their hands.

      "Are you at the table?"

      "Yes, Father," said Fuchsia, "we're both here."

      "Is that you, Fuchsia?" said a new voice. It was the Countess.

      "Yes," said Fuchsia. "Are you all right?"

      "Have you seen the warbler?" answered her mother. "Have you seen him?"

      "No," said Fuchsia. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the darkness was

terror. Like her father, she had choked a score of cries in her throat.

      Prunesquallor's voice rang out again from the far end of the room: "Damn

the warbler and all its feathered friends! Have you got the missiles, Flay?"

      "Come here, you 'Squallor," began the Countess; but she could not

continue, for her lungs had filled with black wreaths.

      For a few moments there was no one in the room who was capable of speaking

and their breathing was becoming momently more difficult. At last Sepulchrave's

voice could be distinguished.

      "On the table," he whispered -- "paper-weight -- brass -- on the table.

Quick -- Flay -- Fuchsia -- feel for it. Have you found it? -- Paper-weight --

brass."

      Fuchsia's hands came across the heavy object almost at once, and as they

did so the room was lit up with a tongue of flame that sprang into the air among

the books on the right of the unused door. It died almost at once, withdrawing

itself like the tongue of an adder, but a moment later it shot forth again and

climbed in a crimson spiral, curling from left to right as it licked its way

across the gilded and studded spines of Sepulchrave's volumes. This time it did

not die away, but gripped the leather with its myriad flickering tentacles while

the names of the books shone out in ephemeral glory. They were never forgotten

by Fuchsia, those first few vivid titles that seemed to be advertising their own

deaths.

      For a few moments there was a deadly silence, and then, with a hoarse cry,

Flay began to run towards the shelves on the left of the main door. The

firelight had lit up a bundle on the floor, and it was not until Flay had picked

it up and carried it to the table that the others were reminded with horror of

the forgotten octogenarian -- for the bundle was Sourdust. For some time it was

difficult for the Doctor to decide whether he were alive or not.

      While Prunesquallor was attempting to revive the old man's breathing as he

lay in his crimson rags upon the marble table, Sepulchrave, Fuchsia and Flay

took up positions beneath the window, which could be seen with ever growing

clarity. Sepulchrave was the first to fling the brass paper-weight, but his

effort was pitiable, final proof (if any were needed) that he was no man of

action, and that his life had not been mis-spent among his books. Flay was the

next to try his skill. Although having the advantage of his height, he was no

more successful than his Lordship, on account of a superabundance of calcium

deposit in his elbow joints.

      While this was going on, Fuchsia had begun to climb up the bookshelves,

which reached upwards to within about five feet of the window. As she climbed

laboriously, her eyes streaming and her heart beating wildly, she scooped the

books to the ground in order to find purchase for her hands and feet. It was a

difficult climb, the ascent being vertical and the polished shelves too slippery

to grip with any certainty.

      The Countess had climbed to the balcony, where she had found the

wood-warbler fluttering wildly in a dark corner. Plucking out a strand of her

dark-ned hair she had bound the bind's wings carefully to its sides, and then

after laying its pulsing breast against her cheek, had slipped it between her

own neck and the neck of her dress, and allowed it to slide into the capacious

midnight regions of her bosom, where it lay quiescent between great breasts,

thinking, no doubt, when it had necovered from the terror of the flames, that

here, if anywhere, was the nest of nests, softer than moss, inviolate, and warm

with drowsy blood.

      When Prunesquallor had ascertained beyond doubt that Sourdust was dead, he

lifted one of the loose ends of crimson sacking that straggled across the marble

table from the ancient shoulders and laid it across the old man's eyes.

      Then he peered oven his shoulders at the flames. They had spread in area

and now covered about a quarter of the east wall. The heat was fast becoming

insufferable. His next glance was directed to the door that had so mysteriously

become locked, and he saw that Nannie Slagg, with Titus in her arms, was

crouching immediately before the keyhole, the only possible place for them. If

the only window could be broken and some form of erection constructed below it,

it was just possible that they could climb out in time, though how, in heaven's

name, they were to descend on the far side was another matter. A rope, perhaps.

But where was a rope to be found -- and for that matter what could the erection

be constructed with?

      Prunesquallor peered around the room in an effort to catch sight of

anything that might be used. He noticed that Irma was full length on the floor,

and twitching like a section of conger-eel that has been chopped off but which

still has ideas of its own. Her beautiful, tightly fitting skirt had become

rucked up around her thighs. Her manicured nails were scratching convulsively at

the floor boards. "Let her twitch," he said to himself quickly. "We can deal

with her later, poor thing." Then he turned his eyes again to Fuchsia, who was

by now very near the top of the bookcase and was reaching precariously for her

father's rod with the knob of black jade.

      "Keep steady, my Fuchsia-child."

      Fuchsia dimly heard the Doctor's voice come up to her from below. For a

moment everything swam before her eyes, and her right hand which gripped the

slippery shelf was shaking. Slowly her eyes cleared. It was not easy for her to

swing the rod with her left hand, but she drew her arm back stiffly preparatory

to swinging at the window with a single rigid movement.

      The Countess, leaning over the balcony, watched her as she coughed

heavily, and shifting her gaze between her seismic bouts whistled through her

teeth to the bird in her bosom, pulling the neck of her dress forward with a

forefinger as she did so.

      Sepulchrave was gazing upwards at his daughter half way up the wall among

the books that danced in the crimson light. His hands were fighting each other

again, but his delicate chin was jutting forward, and there was mixed with the

melancholy of his eyes not more of panic than would be considered reasonable in

any normal man under similar conditions. His home of books was on fire. His life

was threatened, and he stood quite still. His sensitive mind had ceased to

function, for it had played so long in a world of abstract philosophies that

this other world of practical and sudden action had deranged its structure. The

ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation

for the unexpected. He watched Fuchsia with a dream-like fascination, while his

locked hands fought on.

      Flay and Prunesquallor stood immediately below Fuchsia, for she had been

swaying above them. Now, with her arm extended and ready to strike they moved a

little to the right in order to escape any glass that might fly inwards.

      As Fuchsia began to swing her arm at the high window she focused her eyes

upon it and found herself staring at a face -- a face framed with darkness

within a few feet of her own. It sweated firelight, the crimson shadows shifting

across it as the flames leapt in the room below. Only the eyes repelled the

lurid air. Close-set as nostrils they were not so much eyes as narrow tunnels

through which the Night was pouring.

42

AND HORSES TOOK THEM HOME

      As Fuchsia recognized the head of Steerpike the rod fell from her

outstretched arm, her weakened hand loosed its grasp upon the shelf and she fell

backwards into space, the dark hair of her head reaching below her as she fell,

her body curving backwards as though she had been struck.

      The Doctor and Flay, leaping forward, half caught her. A moment later and

the glass above them came splintering into the room, and Steerpike's voice from

overhead cried:

      "Hold your horses! I'm letting down a ladder. Don't panic there. Don't

panic!"

      Every eye was turned from Fuchsia to the window, but Prunesquallor as he

had heard the glass break above him had shielded the girl by swinging her behind

him. It had fallen all about them, one large piece skimming the Doctor's head

and splintering on the floor at his feet. The only one to sustain any injury was

Flay, who had a small piece of flesh nicked from his wrist.

      "Hang on there!" continued Steerpike in an animated voice which sounded

singularly unrehearsed. "Don't stand so near, I'm going to crack some more glass

out."

      The company below the window drew back and watched him strike off the

jagged corners of glass from the sides of the window with a piece of flint. The

room behind them was now well ablaze, and the sweat was pouring from their

upturned faces, their clothes scorching dangerously, and their flesh smarting

with the intense heat.

      Steerpike, on the outside of the wall, standing on the short protruding

branches of the pine-ladder began to struggle with the other length of pine

which he had propped beside him. This was no easy job, and the muscles of his

arms and back were strained almost to failing point as he levered the long pole

upwards and over his shoulder by degrees, keeping his balance all the while with

the greatest difficulty. As well as he could judge the library ought by now to

be in perfect condition for a really theatrical piece of rescue work. Slowly but

surely he edged and eased the pole across his shoulder and through the broken

window. It was not only a heavy and dangerous feat, standing as he was, balanced

upon the stubby six-inch off-shoots of pine and hauling the resinous thing over

his shoulder, but what added to his difficulty was these lateral stubs

themselves which caught in his clothes and on the window ledge at each attempt

he made to slide the long monster through the opening and down into the bright

library.

      At last both difficulties were overcome and the gathering on the inner

side of the wall below the window found the fifteen-foot bole of a pine edging

its way through the smoky air above them, swaying over their heads and then

landing with a crash at their feet. Steerpike had held fast to the upper end of

the pole and it would have been possible for one of the lighter members of the

party to have climbed it at once, but Prunesquallor moved the base of the tree a

little to the left and swivelled it until the most powerful of the stubby,

lateral "rungs" were more conveniently situated.

      Steerpike's head and shoulders now appeared fully in view through the

broken window. He peered into the crimson smoke. "Nice work," he said to

himself, and then shouted, "Glad I found you! I'm just coming!"

      Nothing could have gone more deliciously according to plan. But there was

no time to waste. No time to crow. He could see that the floor-boards had caught

and there was a snake of fire slithering its way beneath the table.

      Steerpike lifted his voice. "The Heir of Gormenghast!" he shouted. "Where

is Lord Titus? Where is Lord Titus?"

      Prunesquallor had already reached Mrs. Slagg, who had collapsed over the

child, and he lifted them both together in his arms and ran swiftly back to the

ladder. The Countess was there; they were all there at the foot of the pine; all

except Sourdust, whose sacking had begun to smoulder. Fuchsia had dragged Irma

across the floor by her heels and she lay as though she had been washed ashore

by a tempest. Steerpike had crawled through the window and was a third of the

way down the bole. Prunesquallor, climbing to the third rung, was able to pass

Titus to the youth, who retreated through the window backwards and was down the

outer ladder in a flash.

      He left the infant among the ferns under the library wall and swarmed up

the ladder for the old nurse. The tiny, limp midget was almost as easy to deal

with as Titus, and Prunesquallor passed her through the window as though he were

handling a doll.

      Steerpike laid her next to Titus, and was suddenly back at the window. It

was obvious that Irma was the next on the list, but it was with her that the

difficulties began. The moment she was touched she began to thrash about with

her arms and legs. Thirty years of repression were finding vent. She was no

longer a lady. She could never be a lady again. Her pure white feet were indeed

composed of clay and now with all the advantages of a long throat she renewed

her screaming, but it was weaker than before, for the smoke which had coiled

around her vocal cords had taken their edge away, and they were now more in the

nature of wool than gut. Something had to be done with her, and quickly.

Steerpike swarmed down the top half of the pole and dropped to the library

floor. Then, at his suggestion, he and the Doctor began to strip away lengths of

her dress with which they bound her arms and legs, stuffing the remainder in her

mouth. Together, with the help of Flay and Fuchsia, they heaved the writhing

Irma by degrees up the ladder, until Steerpike, climbing through the window, was

able to drag her through into the night air. Once through, she was treated with

still less decorum, and her descent of the wall was abrupt, the boy with the

high shoulders merely seeing to it that she should not break more bones than was

necessary. In point of fact she broke none, her peerless flesh sustaining only a

few purple bruises.

      Steerpike had now three figures in a row among the cold ferns. While he

was swarming back, Fuchsia was saying, "No, I don't want to. _You_ go now.

Please, _you_ go now."

      "Silence, you child," answered the Countess. "Don't waste time. As I tell

you, girl! as I tell you! At once."

      "No, Mother, no --"

      "Fuchsia dear," said Prunesquallor, "you will be out in a brace of shakes

and ladders! ha, ha, ha! It will save time, gipsy! Hurry now."

      "Don't stand there gawping, girl!"

      Fuchsia glanced at the Doctor. How unlike himself he looked, the sweat

pouring from his forehead and running between his eyes.

      "Up you go! up you go," said Prunesquallor.

      Fuchsia turned to the ladder and after missing her foothold once or twice

disappeared above them.

      "Good girl!" shouted the Doctor. "Find your Nannie Slagg! Now, then, now,

then, your Ladyship, up you go."

      The Countess began to climb, and although the sound of the wooden stubs

being broken on either side of the pole accompanied her, yet her progress

towards the window held a prodigious inevitability in every step she took and in

every heave of her body. Like something far larger than life, her dark dress

shot with the red of the fire, she ploughed her way upwards to the window. There

was no one on the other side to help her, for Steerpike was in the library, and

yet for all the contortions of her great frame, for all the ungainliness of her

egress, a slow dignity pervaded her which gave even to the penultimate view --

that of her rear disappearing hugely into the night -- a feeling rather of the

awesome than the ludicrous.

      There remained only Lord Sepulchrave, Prunesquallor, Flay and Steerpike.

      Prunesquallor and Steerpike turned to Sepulchrave quickly in order to

motion him to follow his wife, but he had disappeared. There was not a moment to

lose. The flames were crackling around them. Mixed with the smell of the smoke

was the smell of burning leather. There were few places where he could be,

unless he had walked into the flames. They found him in an alcove a few feet

from the ladder, a recess still hidden to some extent from the enveloping heat.

He was smoothing the backs of a set of the Martrovian dramatists bound in gold

fibre and there was a smile upon his face that sent a sick pang through the

bodies of the three who found him. Even Steerpike watched that smile uneasily

from beneath his sandy eyebrows. Saliva was beginning to dribble from the corner

of his Lordship's sensitive mouth as the corners curved upwards and the teeth

were bared. It was the smile one sees in the mouth of a dead animal when the

loose lips are drawn back and the teeth are discovered curving towards the ears.

      "Take them, take your books, your Lordship, and come, come quickly!" said

Steerpike fiercely. "Which do you want?"

      Sepulchrave turned about sharply and with a superhuman effort forced his

hands stiffly to his sides and walked at once to the pine ladder. "I am sorry to

have kept you," he said, and began to climb swiftly.

      As he was lowering himself on the far side of the window they heard him

repeat as though to himself: "I am sorry to have kept you." And then there was a

thin laugh like the laugh of a ghost.

      There was no longer any time for deciding who was to follow whom; no time

for chivalry. The hot breath of the fire was upon them. The room was rising

around them, and yet Steerpike managed to keep himself back.

      Directly Flay and the Doctor had disappeared he ran up the pine-bole like

a cat, and sat astride the window ledge a moment before he descended on the far

side. With the black autumn night behind him he crouched there, a lurid carving,

his eyes no longer black holes in his head but glittering in the blood-red light

like garnets.

      "Nice work," he said to himself for the second time that night. "Very nice

work." And then he swung his other leg over the high sill.

      "There is no one left," he shouted down into the darkness.

      "Sourdust," said Prunesquallor, his thin voice sounding singularly flat.

"Sourdust has been left."

      Steerpike slid down the pole.

      "Dead?" he queried.

      "He is," said Prunesquallor.

      No one spoke.

      As Steerpike's eyes became accustomed to the darkness he noticed that the

earth surrounding the Countess was a dusky white, and that it was moving, and it

was a few moments before he realized that white cats were interweaving about her

feet.

      Fuchsia, directly her mother had followed her down the ladder, began to

run, stumbling and falling over the roots of trees and moaning with exhaustion

as she staggered on. When after an eternity she had reached the main body of the

Castle she made her way to the stables, and at last had found and ordered three

grooms to saddle the horses and proceed to the library. Each groom led a horse

by the side of the one he rode. On one of these, Fuchsia was seated, her body

doubled forward. Broken by the shock she was weeping, her tears threading their

brackish paths over the coarse mane of her mount.

      By the time they had reached the library the party had covered some

distance of the return journey. Flay was carrying Irma over his shoulder.

Prunesquallor had Mrs. Slagg in his arms and Titus was sharing the warbler's

nest in the Countess's bosom. Steerpike, watching Lord Sepulchrave very closely,

was guiding him in the wake of the others, deferentially holding his Lordship's

elbow.

      When the horses arrived the procession had practically come to a

standstill. The beasts were mounted, the grooms walking at their sides holding

the bridles, and staring over their shoulders with wide, startled eyes at the

raw patch of light that danced in the darkness like a pulsating wound between

the straight black bones of the pine trees.

      During their slow progress they were met by indistinguishable crowds of

servants who stood to the side of the track in horrified silence. The fire had

not been visible from the Castle, for the roof had not fallen and the only

window was shielded by the trees, but the news had spread with Fuchsia's

arrival. The night which had so dreadful a birth continued to heave and sweat

until the slow dawn opened like an icy flower in the east, and showed the

smoking shell of Sepulchrave's only home. The shelves that still stood were

wrinkled charcoal, and the books were standing side by side upon them, black,

grey, and ash-white, the corpses of thought. In the centre of the room the

discoloured marble table still stood among a heap of charred timber and ashes,

and upon the table was the skeleton of Sourdust. The flesh was gone, with all

its wrinkles. The coughing had ceased for ever.

43

SWELTER LEAVES HIS CARD

      The winds of the drear interim that lies between the last of autumn and

the first of winter had torn the few remaining leaves from even the most

sheltered of the branches that swung in the Twisted Woods. Elsewhere the trees

had been skeletons for many weeks. The melancholy of decay had given place to a

less mournful humour. In dying, the chill season had ceased to weep, and arising

from its pyre of coloured leaves had cried out with such a voice as had no hint

of tears -- and something fierce began to move the air and pace across the

tracts of Gormenghast. From the death of the sap, of the bird-song, of the sun,

this other life-indeath arose to fill the vacuum of Nature.

      The whine was yet in the wind; the November whine. But as night followed

night its long trailing note became less and less a part of the mounting music

which among the battlements was by now an almost nightly background to those who

slept or tried to sleep in the castle of the Groans. More and more in the

darkness the notes of grimmer passions could be discerned. Hatred and anger and

pain and the hounding voices of vengeance.

      One evening, several weeks after the burning, at about an hour before

midnight, Flay lowered himself to the ground outside Lord Sepulchrave's bedroom

door. Inured though he was to the cold floor boards, for they had been his only

bed for many years, yet on this November evening they struck a chill into his

flinty bones and his shanks began to ache. The wind whistled and screamed about

the Castle and gelid draughts skidded along the landing, and Flay heard the

sound of doors opening and shutting at varying distances from him. He was able

to follow the course of a draught as it approached from the northern fastnesses

of the Castle, for he recognized the sound that was peculiar to each distant

door as it creaked and slammed, the noises becoming louder and louder until the

heavy mildewy curtains which hung at the end of the passage, forty feet away,

lifted and muttered and the door which lay immediately beyond them grated and

strained at its only hinge, and Flay knew that the icy spearhead of a fresh

draught was close upon him.

      "Getting old," he muttered to himself, rubbing his thighs and folding

himself up like a stick-insect at the foot of the door.

      He had slept soundly enough last winter when the snow had lain deeply over

Gormenghast. He remembered with distaste how it had coated the windows, clinging

to the panes, and how when the sun sank over the Mountain the snow had appeared

to bulge inwards through the window panes in a lather of blood.

      This memory disturbed him, and he dimly knew that the reason why the cold

was affecting him more and more during these desolate nights had nothing to do

with his age. For his body was hardened to the point of being more like some

inanimate substance than flesh and blood. It was true that it was a particularly

bad night, rough and loud, but he remembered that four nights ago there had been

no wind and yet he had shivered as he was shivering now.

      "Getting old," he muttered grittily to himself again between his long

discoloured teeth; but he knew that he lied. No cold on earth could make his

hairs stand up like tiny wires, stiffly, almost painfully along his thighs and

forearms, and at the nape of his neck. Was he afraid? Yes, as any reasonable man

would be. He was very afraid, although the sensation was rather different in him

from that which would have been experienced in other men. He was not afraid of

the darkness, of the opening and shutting of distant doors, of the screaming

wind. He had lived all his life in a forbidding, half-lit world.

      He turned over, so as to command a view of the stairhead, although it was

almost too dark to see it. He cracked the five knuckles of his left hand, one by

one, but he could hardly hear the reports for a new wave of the gale rattled

every window and the darkness was alive with the slamming of doors. He was

afraid; he had been afraid for weeks. But Flay was not a coward. There was

something tenacious and hard in his centre; something obstinate which precluded

panic.

      All of a sudden the gale seemed to hurl itself to a climax and then to

cease utterly, but the interim of dead silence was over as soon as it had

started, for a few seconds later, as though from a different quarter, the storm

unleashed another of its armies of solid rain and hail, pouring its broadsides

against the Castle from the belly of a yet more riotous tempest.

      During the few moments of what seemed to be an absolute silence between

the two storms, Flay had jerked his body forward from the ground, and had sat

bolt upright, every muscle frozen. He had forced a knuckle between his teeth to

stop them from chattering, and with his eyes focused upon the dark stairhead he

had heard, quite plainly, a sound that was both near and far away, a sound

hideously distinct. In that lacuna of stillness the stray sounds of the Castle

had become wayward, ungaugeable. A mouse nibbling beneath floor boards might

equally have been within a few feet or several halls away.

      The sound that Flay heard was of a knife being deliberately whetted. How

far away he had no means of telling. It was a sound in vacuo, an abstract thing,

yet so enormously it sounded, it might well have been within an inch of his

craning ear.

      The number of times the blade moved across the hone had no relation to the

actual length of time which Flay experienced as he listened. To him the

mechanical forward and backward movement of steel against stone lasted the night

itself. Had the dawn broken as he listened he would not have been surprised. In

reality it was but a few moments, and when the second tempest flung itself

roaring against the Castle walls, Flay was on his hands and knees with his head

thrust forward towards the sound, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

      For the rest of the night the storm was unabated. He crouched there at his

master's door, hour after hour, but he heard no more of that hideous scraping.

      The dawn, when it came, powdering with slow and inexorable purpose the

earthy blackness with grey seeds, found the servant openeyed, his hands hanging

like dead weights over his drawn-up knees, his defiant chin between his wrists.

Slowly the air cleared, and stretching his cramped limbs one by one he reared up

stiffly to his feet, shrugging his shoulders to his ears. Then he took the iron

key from between his teeth and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

      In seven slow paces he had reached the stairhead and was staring down into

a well of cold. The stairs descended as though for ever. As his eyes moved from

step to step they noticed a small object in the centre of one of the landings

about forty feet below. It was in the shape of a rough oval. Flay turned his

head to Lord Sepulchrave's door.

      The sky was drained of its fury and there was silence.

      He descended, his hand on the banisters. Each step awoke echoes from below

him, and fainter echoes from above him, away to the east.

      As he reached the landing a ray of light ran like a slender spear through

an eastern window and quivered in a little patch on the wall, a few feet from

where he stood. This thread of light intensified the shadows below and above it,

and it was only after some groping that Flay came across the object. In his

harsh hands it felt disgustingly soft. He brought it close to his eyes and

became aware of a sickly, penetrating smell; but he could not see what it was

that he held. Then, lifting it into the sunbeam so that his hand cast a shadow

over the lozenge of light upon the wall, he saw, as though it were something

supernaturally illumined, a very small, richly and exquisitely sculpted gateau.

At the perimeter of this delicacy, a frail coral-like substance had been worked

into the links of a chain, leaving in the centre a minute arena ofjadegreen

icing, across whose glacid surface the letter "S" lay coiled like a worm of

cream.

44

THE UN-EARTHING OF BARQUENTINE

      The Earl, tired from a day of ritual (during part of which it was required

of him to ascend and descend the Tower of Flints three times by the stone

staircase, leaving on each occasion a glass of wine on a box of wormwood placed

there for the purpose on a blue turret) had retired to his room as soon as he

was able to get away from the last performance of the day and had taken a more

powerful dose of laudanum than he had previously needed. It was noticed that he

now brought to his work during the day a fervour quite unprecedented. His

concentration upon detail and his thoroughness in the execution and

understanding of the minutiae involved in the monotonous ceremonies were

evidence of a new phase in his life.

      The loss of his library had been a blow so pulverizing that he had not yet

begun to suffer the torment that was later to come to him. He was still dazed

and bewildered, but he sensed instinctively that his only hope lay in turning

his mind as often as possible from the tragedy and in applying himself

unstintingly to the routine of the day. As the weeks passed by, however, he

found it more and more difficult to keep the horror of that night from his mind.

Books which he loved not only for their burden, but intrinsically, for varying

qualities of paper and print, kept reminding him that they were no longer to be

fingered and read. Not only were the books lost and the thoughts in the books,

but what was to him, perhaps, the most searching loss of all, the hours of

rumination which lifted him above himself and bore him upon their muffled and

enormous wings. Not a day passed but he was reminded of some single volume, or

of a series of works, whose very positions on the walls was so clearly indented

in his mind. He had taken refuge from this raw emptiness in a superhuman effort

to concentrate his mind exclusively upon the string of ceremonies which he had

daily to perform. He had not tried to rescue a single volume from the shelves,

for even while the flames leapt around him he knew that every sentence that

escaped the fire would be unreadable and bitter as gall, something to taunt him

endlessly. It was better to have the cavity in his heart yawning and completely

empty than mocked by a single volume. Yet not a day passed but he knew his grip

had weakened.

      Shortly after the death of Sourdust in the library it was remembered that

the old librarian had had a son, and a search was made at once. It was a long

time before they discovered a figure asleep in the corner of a room with a very

low ceiling. It was necessary to stoop, in order to enter the apartment through

the filthy walnut door. After having stooped under the decaying lintel there was

no relief from the cramped position and no straightening of the back, for the

ceiling sagged across the room for the most part at the level of the door-head,

but at the centre, like a mouldering belly, it bulged still further earthwards,

black with flies. Ill lit by a long horizontal strip of window near the

floorboards, it was difficult for the servants who had been sent on this mission

to see at first whether there was anyone in the room or not. A table near the

centre with its legs sawn off halfway down, into which they stumbled, had, as

they soon discovered, been obscuring from their view Barquentine, old Sourdust's

son. He lay upon a straw-filled mattress. At first sight the servants were

appalled at a similarity between the son and the dead father, but when they saw

that the old man lying on his back with his eyes closed had only one leg, and

that a withered one, they were relieved, and straightening themselves were dazed

by striking their heads against the ceiling.

      When they had recovered they found that they were kneeling, side by side,

on all fours. Barquentine was watching them. Lifting the stump of his withered

leg he rapped it irritably on the mattress, sending up a cloud of dust.

      "What do you want?" he said. His voice was dry like his father"s, but

stronger than the mere twenty years that lay between their ages could have

accounted for. Barquentine was seventy-four.

      The servant nearest him rose to a stooping position, rubbed his

shoulder-blades on the ceiling and with his head forced down to the level of his

nipples stared at Barquentine with his loose mouth hanging open. The companion,

a squat, indelicate creature, replied obtusely from the shadows behind his

loose-lipped friend:

      "He's dead."

      "Whom are you talking of, you oaf?" said the septuagenarian irritably,

levering himself on his elbow and raising another cloud of dust with his stump.

      "Your father," said the loose-mouthed man in the eager tone of one

bringing good tidings.

      "How?" shouted Barquentine, who was becoming more and more irritable.

"How? When? Don't stand there staring at me like stenching mules."

      "Yesterday," they replied. "Burned in the library. Only bones left."

      "Details!" yelled Barquentine, thrashing about with his stump and knotting

his beard furiously as his father had done. "Details, you bladder heads! Out!

Out of my way! Out of the room, curse you!"

      Foraging about in the darkness he found his crutch and struggled onto his

withered leg. Such was the shortness of this leg that when he was on his foot it

was possible for him to move grotesquely to the door without having to lower his

head to avoid the ceiling. He was about half the height of the crouching

servants, but he passed between their bulks like a small, savage cloud of

material, ragged to the extent of being filigree, and swept them to either side.

      He passed through the low door in the way that infants will walk clean

under a table, head in air, and emerge triumphantly on the other side.

      The servants heard his crutch striking the floor of the passage and the

alternate stamp of the withered leg. Of the many things that Barquentine had to

do during the next few hours, the most immediate were to take command of his

father's apartments: to procure the many keys: to find, and don, the crimson

sacking that had always been in readiness for him against the day of his

father's death: and to acquaint the Earl that he was cognizant of his duties,

for he had studied them, with and without his father, for the last fifty-four

years, in between his alternative relaxations of sleep and of staring at a patch

of mildew on the bulge-bellied ceiling of his room.

      From the outset he proved himself to be uncompromisingly efficient. The

sound of his approaching crutch became a sign for feverish activity, and

trepidation. It was as though a hard, intractible letter of the Groan law were

approaching -- the iron letter of tradition.

      This was, for the Earl, a great blessing, for with a man of so strict and

unswerving a discipline it was impossible to carry through the day's work

without a thorough rehearsal every morning -- Barquentine insisting upon his

Lordship learning by heart whatever speeches were to be made during the day and

all the minutiae that pertained to the involved ceremonies.

      This took up a great deal of the Earl's time, and kept his mind, to a

certain degree, from introspection; nevertheless, the shock he had sustained

was, as the weeks drew on, beginning to have its effect. His sleeplessness was

making of each night a hell more dreadful than the last.

      His narcotics were powerless to aid him, for when after a prodigious dose

he sank into a grey slumber, it was filled with shapes that haunted him when he

awoke, and waved enormous sickly-smelling wings above his head, and filled his

room with the hot breath of rotting plumes. His habitual melancholy was changing

day by day into something more sinister. There were moments when he would

desecrate the crumbling and mournful mask of his face with a smile more horrible

than the darkest lineaments of pain.

      Across the stoniness of his eyes a strange light would pass for a moment,

as though the moon were flaring on the gristle, and his lips would open and the

gash of his mouth would widen in a dead, climbing, curve.

      Steerpike had foreseen that madness would sooner or later come to the

Earl, and it was with a shock of annoyance that he heard of Barquentine and of

his ruthless efficiency. It had been part of his plan to take over the duties of

old Sourdust, for he felt himself to be the only person in the Castle capable of

dealing with the multifarious details that the work would involve -- and he knew

that, with the authority which could hardly have been denied him had there been

no one already versed in the laws of the Castle, he would have been brought not

only into direct and potent contact with Sepulchrave, but would have had opened

up to him by degrees the innermost secrets of Gormenghast. His power would have

been multiplied a hundred-fold; but he had not reckoned with the ancientry of

the tenets that bound the anatomy of the place together. For every key position

in the Castle there was the apprentice, either the son or the student, bound to

secrecy. Centuries of experience had seen to it that there should be no gap in

the steady, intricate stream of immemorial behaviour.

      No one had thought or heard of Barquentine for over sixty years, but when

old Sourdust died Barquentine appeared like a well-versed actor on the

mouldering stage, and the slow drama ofGormenghast continued among shadows.

      Despite this setback in his plans, Steerpike had managed to make even more

capital out of his rescue work than he had anticipated. Flay was inclined to

treat him with a kind of taciturn respect. He had never quite known what he

ought to do about Steerpike. When they had coincided a month previously at the

garden gate of the Prunesquallors", Flay had retired as from a ghost, sullenly,

glancing over his shoulder at the dapper enigma, losing his chance of

castigating the urchin. In Mr. Flay's mind the boy Steerpike was something of an

apparition. Most fathomless of all, the lives of the Earl, the Countess, Titus

and Fuchsia had been saved by the whelp, and there was a kind of awe, not to say

admiration, mixed with his distaste.

      Not that Flay unbent to the boy, for he felt it a grievance that he should

in any way admit equality with someone who had come originally from Swelter's

kitchen.

      Barquentine, also, was a bitter pill to swallow, but Flay realized at once

the traditional rightness and integrity of the old man.

      Fuchsia, for whom the fine art of procedure held less lure, found in old

Barquentine a creature to hide from and to hate -- not for any specific reason,

but with the hatred of the young for the authority vested in age.

      She found that as the days went on she began to listen for the sound of

his crutch striking on the floor, like the blows of a weapon.

45

FIRST REPERCUSSIONS

      Unable to reconcile the heroism of Steerpike's rescue with his face as she

had seen it beyond the window before she fell, Fuchsia began to treat the youth

with less and less assurance. She began to admire his ingenuity, his devilry,

his gift of speech which she found so difficult but which was for him so simple.

She admired his cold efficiency and she hated it. She wondered at his quickness,

his self-assurance. The more she saw of him the more she felt impelled to

recognize in him a nature at once more astute and swift than her own. At night

his pale face with its closely-set eyes would keep appearing before her. And

when she awoke she would remember with a start how he had saved their lives.

      Fuchsia could not make him out. She watched him carefully. Somehow he had

become one of the personalities of the Castle's central life. He had been

insinuating his presence on all who mattered with such subtlety, that when he

leapt dramatically to the fore by rescuing the family from the burning library,

it was as though that deed of valour were all that had been needed to propel him

to the forefront of the picture.

      He still lived at the Prunesquallors' but was making secret plans for

moving into a long, spacious room with a window that let in the morning sun. It

lay on the same floor as the aunts in the South Wing. There was really very

little reason for him to stay with the Doctor, who did not seem sufficiently

aware of the new status he had acquired and whose questions regarding the way he

(Steerpike) had found the pine tree, already felled and lopped for the Rescue,

and various other details, though not difficult to answer -- for he had prepared

his replies to any of the possible questions he might be faced with -- were,

nevertheless, pertinent. The Doctor had had his uses. He had proved a valuable

stepping-stone, but it was time to take up a room, or a suite of rooms, in the

Castle proper, where knowledge of what was going on would come more easily.

      Prunesquallor, ever since the burning, had been, for him, strangely

voiceless. When he spoke it was in the same high, thin, rapid way, but for a

great part of each day he would lie back in his chair in the sittingroom,

smiling incessantly at everyone who caught his eye, his teeth displayed as

uncompromisingly as ever before, but with something more cogitative about the

great magnified eyes that swam beneath the thick lenses of his spectacles. Irma,

who since the fire had been strapped in her bed, and who was having about half a

pint of blood removed on alternate Tuesdays, was now allowed downstairs in the

afternoons, where she sat dejectedly and tore up sheets of calico which were

brought to her chair-side every morning. For hours on end she would continue

with this noisy, wasteful and monotonous soporific, brooding the while upon the

fact that she was no lady.

      Mrs. Slagg was still very ill. Fuchsia did all she could for her, moving

the nurse's bed into her own room, for the old woman had become very frightened

of the dark, which she now associated with smoke.

      Titus seemed to be the one least affected by the burning. His eyes

remained bloodshot for some time afterwards, but the only other result was a

severe cold, and Prunesquallor took the infant over to his own house for its

duration.

      Old Sourdust's bones had been removed from the marble table among the

charred remains of the woodwork and books.

      Flay, who had been assigned the mission of collecting the dead librarian's

remains and of returning with them to the servants' quadrangle, where a coffin

was being constructed from old boxes, found it difficult to handle the charred

skeleton. The head had become a bit loose, and Flay after scratching his own

skull for a long while at last decided that the only thing to do would be to

carry the rattling relics in his arms as though he were carrying a baby. This

was both more respectful and lessened the danger of disarticulation or breakage.

      On that particular evening as he returned through the woods the rain had

fallen heavily before he reached the fringe of the trees, and by the time he was

halfway across the wasteland which divided the pines from Gormenghast, the rain

was streaming over the bones and skull in his arms and bubbling in the eye

sockets. Flay's clothes were soaking, and the water squelched in his boots. As

he neared the Castle the light had become so obscured by the downpour that he

could not see more than a few paces ahead. Suddenly a sound immediately behind

him caused him to start, but before he was able to turn, a sharp pain at the

back of his head filled him with sickness, and sinking gradually to his knees he

loosed the skeleton from his arms and sank in a stupor upon the bubbling ground.

How many hours or minutes he had been lying there he could not know, but when he

recovered consciousness the rain was still falling heavily. He raised his great

rough hand to the back of his head where he discovered a swelling the size of a

duck's egg. Swift jabs of pain darted through his brain from side to side.

      All at once he remembered the skeleton and got dizzily to his knees. His

eyes were still misted, but he saw the wavering outline of the bones; but when a

few moments later his eyes had cleared, he found that the head was missing.

46

SOURDUST IS BURIED

      Barquentine officiated at his father's funeral. To his way of thinking it

was impossible for the bones to be buried without a skull. It was a pity that

the skull could not be the one which belonged, but that there should be some

sort of termination to the body before it was delivered to the earth was

apparently imperative. Flay had recounted his story and the bruise above his

left ear testified to its veracity. There seemed to be no clue to who the

cowardly assailant might be, nor could any motive be imagined that could prompt

so callous, so purposeless an action. Two days were spent in a fruitless search

for the missing ornament, Steerpike leading a gang of stable hands on a tour of

the wine vaults which according to his own theory would afford, so he argued,

many an ideal niche or corner in which the criminal might hide the skull. He had

always had a desire to discover the extent of the vaults. The candle-lit search

through a damp labyrinth of cellars and passages, lined with dusty bottles,

disproved his theory, however; and when on the same evening the search parties,

one and all, reported that their quests had been abortive, it was decided that

on the following evening the bones were to be buried whether the head were found

or not.

      It being considered a desecration to unearth any bodies from the servants'

graveyard, Barquentine decided that the skull of a small calf would prove

equally effective. One was procured from Swelter, and after it had been boiled

and was free of the last vestige of flesh, it was dried and varnished, and as

the hour of the burial approached and there was no sign of the original skull

being found, Barquentine sent Flay to Mrs. Slagg's room to procure some blue

ribbon. The calf's skull was all but perfect, it being on the small side and

dwarfing the rest of the remains far less than might have been feared. At all

events, the old man would be complete if not homogeneous. He would not be

headless, and his funeral would be no slipshod, bury-as-you-please affair.

      It was only when the coffin stood near the graveside in the Cemetery of

the Esteemed, and only when the crowd was standing silently about the small,

rectangular trench, that Barquentine motioned Sepulchrave forward, and indicated

that the moment had come for the Earl to attach the calf skull to the last of

old Sourdust's vertebrae with the aid of the blue ribbon which Mrs. Slagg had

found at the bottom of one of her shuttered baskets of material. Here was honour

for the old man. Barquentine knotted his beard ruminatively and was well

pleased. Whether it were some obscure tenet of the Groan lore which Barquentine

was rigorously adhering to, or whether it was that he found comfort of some kind

in ribbons, it is impossible to say, but whatever the reason might be,

Barquentine had procured from somewhere or other several extra lengths of

varying colours and his father's skeleton boasted a variety of silk bows which

were neatly tied about such bones as seemed to offer themselves to this

decorative treatment.

      When the Earl had finished with the calf-skull, Barquentine bent over the

coffin and peered at the effect. He was, on the whole, satisfied. The calf's

head was rather too big, but it was adequate. The late evening light lit it

admirably and the grain of the bone was particularly effective.

      The Earl was standing silently a little in front of the crowd, and

Barquentine, digging his crutch into the earth, hopped around it until he was

facing the men who had carried the coffin. One glint of his cold eyes brought

them to the graveside.

      "Nail the lid on," he shouted, and hopped around his crutch again on his

withered leg, the ferrule of his support swivelling in the soft ground and

raising the mud in gurgling wedges as it twisted.

      Fuchsia, standing at her mother's mountainous side, loathed him with her

whole body. She was beginning to hate everything that was old. What was that

word which Steerpike kept denouncing whenever he met her? He was always saying

it was dreadful -- "Authority": that was it. She looked away from the one-legged

man and her eyes moved absently along the line of gaping faces. They were

staring at the coffinmen who were nailing down the planks. Everyone seemed

horrible to Fuchsia. Her mother was gazing over the heads of the crowd with her

characteristic sightlessness. Upon her father's face a smile was beginning to

appear, as though it were something inevitable, uncontrollable -- something

Fuchsia had never seen before on his face. She covered her eyes with her hands

for a moment and felt a surge of unreality rising in her. Perhaps the whole

thing was a dream. Perhaps everyone was really kind and beautiful, and she had

seen them only through the black net of a dream she was suffering. She lowered

her hands and found herself gazing into Steerpike's eyes. He was on the other

side of the grave and his arms were folded. As he stared at her, with his head a

little on one side, like a bird"s, he raised his eyebrows to her, quizzically,

his mouth twisted up on one side. Fuchsia involuntarily made a little gesture

with her hand, a motion of recognition, of friendliness, but there was about the

gesture something so subtle, so tender, as to be indescribable. For herself, she

did not know that her hand had moved -- she only knew that the figure across the

grave was young.

      He was strange and unappealing, with his high shoulders and his large

swollen forehead; but he was slender, and young. Oh, that was what it was! He

did not belong to the old, heavy, intolerant world of Barquentine: he belonged

to the lightness of life. There was nothing about him that drew her, nothing she

loved except his youth and his bravery. He had saved Nannie Slagg from the fire.

He had saved Dr. Prune from the fire -- and oh! he had saved her, too. Where was

his swordstick? What had he done with it? He was so silly about it, carrying it

with him wherever he went.

      The earth was being shovelled into the grave for the ramshackle coffin had

been lowered. When the cavity was filled, Barquentine inspected the rectangular

patch of disturbed earth. The shovelling had been messy work, the mud clinging

to the spades, and Barquentine had shouted at the grave-hands irritably. Now, he

scraped some of the unevenly distributed earth into the shallower patches with

his foot, balancing at an angle upon his crutch. The mourners were dispersing,

and Fuchsia, shambling away from her parents, found herself to the extreme right

of the crowd as it moved towards the castle.

      "May I walk with you?" said Steerpike, sidling up.

      "Yes," said Fuchsia. "Oh, yes; why shouldn't you?" She had never wanted

him before, and was surprised at her own words.

      Steerpike shot a glance at her as he pulled out his small pipe. When he

had lit it, he said:

      "Not much in my line, Lady Fuchsia."

      "What isn't?"

      "Earth to earth; ashes to ashes, and all that sort of excitement."

      "Not much in anyone's line, I shouldn't think," she replied. "I don't like

the idea of dying."

      "Not when one's young, anyway," said the youth. "It's all right for our

friend rattle-ribs: not much life left inside him, anyway."

      "I like you being disrespectful, sometimes," said Fuchsia in a rush. "Why

must one try and be respectful to old people when they aren't considerate?"

      "It's their idea," said Steerpike. "They like to keep this reverence

business going. Without it where'd they be? Sunk. Forgotten. Over the side: for

they've nothing except their age, and they're jealous of our youth."

      "Is that what it is?" said Fuchsia, her eyes widening. "Is it because they

are jealous? Do you really think it's that?"

      "Undoubtedly," said Steerpike. "They want to imprison us and make us fit

into their schemes, and taunt us, and make us work for them. All the old are

like that."

      "Mrs. Slagg isn't like that," said Fuchsia.

      "She is the exception," said Steerpike, coughing in a strange way with his

hand over his mouth. "She is the exception that proves the rule."

      They walked on in silence for a few paces. The Castle was looming overhead

and they were treading into the shadow of a tower.

      "Where's your swordstick?" said Fuchsia. "How can you be without it? You

don't know what to do with your hands."

      Steerpike grinned. This was a new Fuchsia. More animated -- yet was it

animation, or a nervous, tired excitement which gave the unusual lift to her

voice?

      "My swordstick," said Steerpike, rubbing his chin, "my dear little

swordstick. I must have left it behind in the rack."

      "Why?" said Fuchsia. "Don't you adore it any more?"

      "I _do_, oh yes! I _do_," Steerpike replied in a comically emphatic voice.

"I adore it just as much, but I felt it would be safer to leave it behind,

because do you know what I should probably have _done_ with it?"

      "What would you have done?" said Fuchsia.

      "I would have pricked Barquentine's guts with it," said Steerpike; "most

delicately, here and there, and everywhere, until the old scarecrow was yelling

like a cat; and when he had yelled all the breath from his black lungs, I'd have

tied him by his one leg to a branch and set fire to his beard. So you see what a

good thing it was that I didn't have my swordstick, don't you?"

      But when he turned to her Fuchsia was gone from his side.

      He could see her running through the misty air in a strange, bounding

manner; but whether she was running for enjoyment, or in order to rid herself of

him, he could not know.

47

THE TWINS ARE RESTIVE

      About a week after Sourdust's burial, or to be precise, about a week after

the burial of all that was left of what had once been Sourdust, along with the

calf skull and the ribbons, Steerpike revisited the Aunts for the purpose of

selecting a set of rooms on the same floor as their own apartments in the south

wing. Since the burning they had become not only very vain, but troublesome.

They wished to know when, now that they had carried out the task according to

plan, they were to come into their own. Why was not the south wing already alive

with pageantry and splendour? Why were its corridors still so dusty and

deserted? Had they set fire to their brother's library for nothing? Where were

the thrones they had been promised? Where were the crowns of gold? At each fresh

appearance of Steerpike in their apartments these questions were renewed, and on

every occasion it became more difficult to leave them mollified and convinced

that their days of grievance were drawing to a close.

      They were as outwardly impassive, their faces showing no sign at all of

what was going on inside their identical bodies, but Steerpike had learned to

descry from the almost imperceptible movements which they made with their limp

fingers, roughly what was happening in their minds, or to what height their

emotions were aroused. There was an uncanniness about the way their white

fingers would move simultaneously, indicating that their brains were at that

precise moment travelling along the same narrow strip of thought, at the same

pace, with the same gait.

      The glittering promises with which Steerpike had baited his cruel hook had

produced an effect upon them more fundamental than he had anticipated. This

concept of themselves as rulers of the south wing, was now uppermost in their

minds, and in fact it filled their minds leaving no room for any other notion.

Outwardly it showed itself in their conversation which harped upon nothing else.

With the flush of success upon them, their fingers became looser, although their

faces remained as expressionless as powdered slabs. Steerpike was now reaping

the consequences of having persuaded them of their bravery and ingenuity, and of

the masterly way in which they, and they alone, could set the library alight. It

had been necessary at the time to blow them into tumours of conceit and

self-assurance, but now, their usefulness for the moment at an end, it was

becoming more and more difficult to deal with their inflation. However, with one

excuse or another he managed to persuade them of the inadvisability of rushing a

matter of such magnitude as that of raising them to their twin summits. Such

things must be achieved with deliberation, cunning and foresight. Their position

must improve progressively through a sequence of minor victories, which although

each in itself attracted no notice, would build up insidiously, until before the

castle was aware of it the South wing would blazon forth in rightful glory. The

twins, who had expected the change in their status to be brought about

overnight, were bitterly disappointed, and although Steerpike's arguments to the

effect that their power when it came must be something of sure foundation

convinced them as he spoke, yet no sooner were they alone than they reverted at

once to a condition of chagrin, and Steerpike's every appearance was the sign

for them to air their grievances anew.

      On this particular afternoon, as soon as he had entered their room and

their childish clamour had started, he cut them short by crying: "We shall

begin!"

      He had lifted his left hand high into the air to silence them, as he

shouted. In his right hand he held a scroll of paper. They were standing with

their shoulders and hips touching, side by side, their heads forced a little

forward. When their loud, flat voices ceased, he continued:

      "I have ordered your thrones. They are being made in secret, but as I have

insisted that they are to be beaten from the purest gold they will take some

time to complete. I have been sent these designs by the goldsmith, a craftsman

without a peer. It is for you, my Ladyships, to choose. I have no doubt which

you will choose, for although they are all three the most consummate works of

art, yet with your taste, your flair for proportion, your grasp of minutiae, I

feel confident you will select the one which I believe has no rival among the

thrones of the world."

      Steerpike had, of course, made the drawings himself, spending several

hours longer on them than he had intended, for once he had started he had become

interested, and had the Doctor or his sister opened his door in the small hours

of this same morning they would have found the high-shouldered boy bending over

a table in his room, absorbed; the compasses, protractors and set square neatly

placed in a row at the side of the table, the beautifully sharpened pencil

travelling along the ruler with cold precision.

      Now, as he unrolled the drawings before the wide eyes of the Aunts he

handled them deftly, for it pleased him to take care of the fruits of his

labours. His hands were clean, the fingers being curiously pointed, and the

nails rather longer than is normal.

      Cora and Clarice were at his side in an instant. There was no expression

in their faces at all. All that could be found there was uncompromisingly

anatomical. The thrones stared at the Aunts and the Aunts stared back at the

thrones.

      "I have no doubt which one you will prefer, for it is unique in the

history of golden thrones. Choose, your Ladyships -- choose!" said Steerpike.

      Cora and Clarice pointed simultaneously at the biggest of the three

drawings. It almost filled the page.

      "How _right_ you are!" said Steerpike. "How _right_ you are! It was the

only choice. I shall be seeing the goldsmith tomorrow and shall advise him of

your selection."

      "I want mine soon," said Clarice.

      "So do I," said Cora, "very soon."

      "I thought I had explained to you," said Steerpike, taking them by their

elbows and bringing them towards him -- "I thought I had explained to you that a

throne of hammered gold is not a thing which can be wrought overnight. This man

is a craftsman, an artist. Do you want your glory ruined by a makeshift and

ridiculous pair of bright yellow sit-upons? Do you want to be the laughing-stock

of the Castle, all over again, because you were too impatient? Or are you

anxious for Gertrude and the rest of them to stare, open-mouthed with jealousy,

at you as you sit aloft like the two purple queens you undoubtedly are?.

Everything must be of the best. You have entrusted me to raise you to the status

that is your due and right. You must leave it to me. When the hour comes, we

shall strike. In the meanwhile it is for us to make of these apartments

something unknown to Gormenghast."

      "Yes," said Cora. "That's what I think. They must be wondrous. The rooms

must be wondrous."

      "Yes," said Clarice. "Because _we_ are. The rooms must be just like us."

Her mouth fell open, as though the lower jaw had died.

      "But we are the only ones who _are_ worthy. No one must forget that, must

they, Cora?"

      "No one," said Cora. "No one at all."

      "Exactly," said Steerpike, "and your first duty will be to recondition the

Room of Roots." He had glanced at them shrewdly. "The roots must be repainted.

Even the smallest must be repainted, because there is no other room in

Gormenghast that is so wonderful as to be full of roots. _Your_ roots. The roots

of _your_ tree."

      To his surprise the twins were not listening to him. They were holding

each other about their long barrel-like chests.

      "He made us do it," they were saying. "He made us burn dear Sepulchrave's

books. Dear Sepulchrave's books."

48

"HALF-LIGHT"

      Meanwhile, the Earl and Fuchsia were sitting together two hundred feet

below and over a mile away from Steerpike and the Aunts. His lordship, with his

back to a pine tree and his knees drawn up to his chin, was gazing at his

daughter with a slithery smile upon his mouth that had once been so finely

drawn. Covering his feet and heaped about his slender body on all sides was a

cold, dark, undulating palliasse of pine needles, broken here and there with

heavy, weary-headed ferns and grey fungi, their ashen surfaces exuding a winter

sweat.

      A kind of lambent darkness filled the dell. The roof was skyproof, the

branches interlacing so thickly that even the heaviest downpour was stayed from

striking through; the methodical drip . . . drip . . . drip of the

branch-captured rain only fell to the floor of needles several hours after the

start of the heaviest storm. And yet a certain amount of reflected daylight

filtered through into the clearing, mainly from the East, in which direction lay

the shell of the lbrary. Between the clearing and the path that ran in front of

the ruin, the trees, although as thick, were not more than thirty to forty yards

in depth.

      "How many shelves have you built for your father?" said the Earl to his

daughter with a ghastly smile.

      "Seven shelves, father," said Fuchsia. Her eyes were very wide and her

hands trembled as they hung at her sides.

      "Three more shelves, my daughter -- three more shelves, and then we will

put the volumes back."

      "Yes, father."

      Fuchsia, picking up a short branch, scored across the needled ground three

long lines, adding them to the seven which already lay between her father and

herself.

      "That's it, that's it," came the melancholy voice. "Now we have space for

the Sonian Poets. Have you the books ready -- little daughter?"

      Fuchsia swung her head up, and her eyes fastened upon her father. He had

never spoken to her in that way -- she had never before heard that tone of love

in his voice. Chilled by the horror of his growing madness, she had yet been

filled with a compassion she had never known, but now there was more than

compassion within her, there was released, of a sudden, a warm jet of love for

the huddled figure whose long pale hand rested upon his knees, whose voice

sounded so quiet and so thoughtful. "Yes, father, I've got the books ready," she

replied; "do you want me to put them on the shelves?"

      She turned to a heap of pine cones which had been gathered.

      "Yes, I am ready," he replied after a pause that was filled with the

silence of the wood. "But one by one. One by one. We shall stock three shelves

tonight. Three of my long, rare shelves."

      "Yes, father."

      The silence of the high pines drugged the air.

      "Fuchsia."

      "What, father?"

      "You are my daughter."

      "Yes."

      "And there is Titus. He will be the Earl of Gormenghast. Is that so?"

      "Yes, father."

      "When I am dead. But do I know you, Fuchsia? Do I know you?"

      "I don't know -- very well," she replied; but her voice became more

certain now that she perceived his weakness. "I suppose we don't know each other

very much."

      Again she was affected by an uprising of love. The mad smile making

incongruous every remark which the Earl ventured, for he spoke with tenderness

and moderation, had for the moment ceased to frighten her. In her short life she

had been brought face to face with so many forms of weirdness that although the

uncanny horror of the sliding smile distressed her, yet the sudden breaking of

the barriers that had lain between them for so long as she could remember

overpowered her fear. For the first time in her life she felt that she was a

daughter -- that she had a father -- of her own. What did she care if he was

going mad -- saving for his own dear sake? He was hers.

      "My books . . ." he said.

      "I have them here, father. Shall I fill up the first long shelf for you?"

      "With the Sonian Poets, Fuchsia."

      "Yes."

      She picked up a cone from the heap at her side and placed it on the end of

the line she had scored in the ground. The Earl watched her very carefully.

      "That is Andrema, the lyricist -- the lover -- he whose quill would pulse

as he wrote and fill with a blush of blue, like a bruised nail. His verses,

Fuchsia, his verses open out like flowers of glass, and at their centre, between

the brittle petals lies a pool of indigo, translucent and as huge as doom. His

voice is unmuffled -- it is like a bell, clearly ringing in the night ofour

confusion; but the clarity is the clarity ofimponderable depth -- depth -- so

that his lines float on for evermore, Fuchsia -- on and on and on, for evermore.

That is Andrema . . . Andrema."

      The Earl, with his eyes on the cone which Fuchsia had placed at the end of

the first line, opened his mouth more widely, and suddenly the pines vibrated

with the echoes of a dreadful cry, half scream, half laughter.

      Fuchsia stiffened, the blood draining from her face. Her father, his mouth

still open, even after the scream had died out of the forest, was now upon his

hands and knees. Fuchsia tried to force her voice from the dryness of her

throat. Her father's eyes were on her as she struggled, and at last his lips

came together and his eyes recovered the melancholy sweetness that she had so

lately discovered in them. She was able to say, as she picked up another cone

and made as if to place it at the side of"Andrema": "Shall I go on with the

library, father?"

      But the Earl could not hear her. His eyes had lost focus. Fuchsia dropped

the cone from her hand and came to his side.

      "What is it," she said. "Oh father! father! what is it?"

      "I am not your father," he replied. "Have you no knowledge of me?" And as

he grinned his black eyes widened and in either eye there burned a star, and as

the stars grew greater his fingers curled. "I live in the Tower of Flints," he

cried. "I am the death-owl."

49

A ROOF OF REEDS

      To her left, as she moved slowly along the broken and overgrown track,

Keda was conscious the while of that blasphemous finger of rock which had

dominated the western skyline for seven weary days. It had been like a presence,

something which, however the sunlight or moonlight played upon it, was always

sinister; in essence, wicked.

      Between the path she walked and the range of mountains was a region of

marshland which reflected the voluptuous sky in rich pools, or with a duller

glow where choked swamps sucked at the colour and breathed it out again in

sluggish vapour. A tract of rushes glimmered, for each long sword-shaped leaf

was edged with a thread of crimson. One of the larger poois of almost unbroken

surface not only reflected the burning sky, but the gruesome, pointing finger of

the rock, which plunged through breathless water.

      On her right the land sloped upwards and was forested with misshapen

trees. Although their outermost branches were still lit, the violence of the

sunset was failing, and the light was crumbling momently from the boughs.

      Keda's shadow stretched to her right, growing, as she proceeded, less and

less intense as the raddled ground dulled from a reddish tint to a nondescript

ochre, and then from ochre to a warm grey which moment by moment grew more

chill, until she found herself moving down a track of ash-grey light.

      For the last two days the great shoulder of hill with the dreadful

monotony of its squat, fibrous trees which covered it, had lain on Keda's right

hand, breathing, as it were, over her shoulder; groping for her with stunted

arms. It seemed that for all her life the oppressive presence of trees, of

stultified trees, had been with her, leering at her, breathing over her right

shoulder, each one gesticulating with its hairy hands, each one with a peculiar

menace of its own, and yet every one monotonously the same in the endlessness of

her journey.

      For the monotony began to have the quality of a dream, both uneventful and

yet terrifying, and it seemed that her body and her brain were flanked by a wall

of growth that would never end. But the last two days had at least opened up to

her the wintry flats upon her left, where for so long her eyes had been attested

and wearied by a canyon face of herbless rock upon whose high grey surface the

only sign of life had been when an occasional ledge afforded purchase for the

carrion crow. But Keda, stumbling exhaustedly in the ravine, had no thought for

them as they peered at her, following her with their eyes, their naked necks

protruding from the level of their scraggy bellies, their shoulders hunched

above their heads, their murderous claws curled about their scant supports.

      Snow had lain before her like a long grey carpet, for the winter sun was

never to be seen from that canyon's track, and when at last the path had veered

to the right and the daylight had rushed in upon her, she had stumbled forward

for a few paces and dropped upon her knees in a kind of thanksgiving. As she

raised her head the blonde light had been like a benison.

      But she was indescribably weary, dropping her aching feet before her as

she continued on her way without knowledge of what she was doing. Her hair fell

across her face raggedly; her heavy cloak was flecked with mud and matted with

burrs and clinging brambles.

      Her right hand clung on mechanically to a strap over her shoulder which

supported a satchel, now empty of food, but weighted with a stranger cargo.

      Before she had left the Mud Dwellings on the night when her lovers had

killed each other beneath the all-seeing circle of that never-to-be-forgotten,

spawning moon, she had, as in a trance, found her way back to her dwelling,

collected together what food she could find, and then, like a somnambulist, made

her way first to Braigon's and then to Rantel's workshop and taken from each a

small carving. Then, moving out into the emptiness of the morning, three hours

before the dawn, she had walked, her brain dilated with a blank and zoneless

pain, until, as the dawn like a wound in the sky welled into her consciousness,

she fell among the salt grasses where the meres began, and with the carvings in

her arms, slept unseen throughout a day of sunshine. That was very long ago. How

long ago? Keda had lost all sense of time. She had journeyed through many

regions -- had received her meals from many hands in return for many kinds of

labour. For a long while she tended the flocks of one whose shepherd had been

taken ill with fold-fever and had died with a lamb in his arms. She had worked

on a long barge with a woman who, at night, would mew like an otter as she swam

among the reeds. She had woven the hazel hurdles and had made great nets for the

fresh-water fish. She had moved from province to province.

      But a weariness had come, and the sickness at dawn; and yet she was forced

to be continually moving. But always with her were her burning trophies, her

white eagle; her yellow stag.

      And now it was beyond her strength to work, and a power she did not

question was inexorably driving her back towards the Dwellings.

      Under the high, ragged and horrible bosom of the hill, she stumbled on.

All colour was stifled from the sky and the profane finger of rock was no longer

visible save as a narrow hint of dark on dark. The sunset had flamed and faded

-- every moment seeming permanent -- and yet the crumbling from crimson to ash

had taken no longer than a few demoniac moments.

      Keda was now walking through darkness, all but the few yards immediately

in front of her feet, obscured. She knew that she must sleep: that what strength

remained in her was fast ebbing, and it was not because she was unused to

spending the night hours alone among unfriendly shapes that she was stayed from

coiling herself at the foot of the hill. The last few nights had been pain, for

there was no mercy in the air that pressed its frozen hands to her body; but it

was not for this reason that her feet still fell heavily before her, one after

the other, the forward tilt of her body forcing them onwards.

      It was not even that the trees that sucked at her right shoulder had

filled her with horror, for now she was too tired for her imagination to fill

her mind with the macabre. She moved on because a voice had spoken to her that

morning as she walked. She had not realized that it was her own voice crying out

to her, for she was too exhausted to know that her lips were giving vent to the

occult.

      She had turned, for the voice had seemed to be immediately beside her. "Do

not stop," it had said; "not tonight, for you shall have a roof of reeds."

Startled, she had continued for not more than a few paces when the voice within

her said: "The old man, Keda, the old brown man. You must not stay your feet."

      She had not been frightened, for the reality of the supernatural was taken

for granted among the Dwellers. And as she staggered, ten hours later, through

the night the words wavered in her mind, and when a torch flared suddenly in the

road ahead of her, scattering its red embers, she moaned with exhaustion and

relief to have been found, and fell forward into the arms of the brown father.

      What happened to her from that moment she did not know; but when she awoke

she was lying upon a mattress of pine-needles, smelling of a hot, dry sweetness,

and around her were the wooden walls of a cabin. For a moment she did not lift

her eyes, although the words which she had heard upon the road were in her ears:

for she knew what she would see, and when she at last lifted her head to see the

thatching of the river-reeds above her she remembered the old man, and her eyes

turned to a door in the wall. It opened softly as she lay, half drowsed with the

perfume of the pine, and she saw a figure. It was as though Autumn was standing

beside her, or an oak, heavy with its crisp, tenacious leaves. He was of brown,

but lambent, as of sepia-black glass held before a flame. His shaggy hair and

beard were like pampas grass; his skin the colour of sand; his clothes festooned

about him like foliage along a hanging branch. All was brown, a symphony of

brown, a brown tree, a brown landscape, a brown man.

      He came across the room to her, his naked feet making no sound upon the

earth of the cabin floor, where the creepers sent green tributaries questing.

      Keda raised herself upon her elbow.

      The rough summit of the oak tree moved, and then one of its branches

motioned her back, so that she lay still again upon the pine-needles. Peace like

a cloud enveloped her as she gazed at him and she knew that she was in the

presence of a strange selflessness.

      He left her side and, moving across the earth floor with that slow,

drifting tread, unfastened some shutters and the rayless light of the north sky

poured through a square window. He left the room, and she lay quietly, her mind

becoming clearer as the minutes passed. The trestle bed that she lay upon was

wide and low, being raised only a foot from the ground by two logs which

supported the long planks. Her tired body seemed to float with every muscle

relaxed among the billowing needles. Even the pain in her feet, the bruises she

had sustained in her wanderings, were floating -- a kind of floating pain,

impersonal, and almost pleasurable. Across her the brown father had spread three

rough blankets, and her right hand moving under them, as though to test the

pleasure of moving itself independently from the tired mass of her body, struck

upon something hard. She was too weary to wonder what it was; but sometime later

she drew it forth -- the white eagle. "Braigon", she murmured, and with the word

a hundred haunting thoughts returned. Again she felt about her and found the

wooden stag. She brought them against her warm sides, and after the pain of

memory a new emotion, kindred to that which she had felt on the night she had

lain with Rantel, suffused her, and her heart, faintly at first and then more

loud, and louder still, began to sing like a wild bird; and though her body

heaved suddenly with sickness, the wild bird went on singing.

50

"FEVER"

      White and cool as was the light of the north window, Keda could tell that

the sun was alone in the sky and that the winter day was cloudless and

temperate. She could not tell how late it was, nor whether it was morning or

evening. The old man brought a bowl of soup to her bedside. She wished to speak

to him, but not yet, for the spell of silence was still so richly about her and

so eloquent that she knew that with him there was no need to say anything at

all. Her floating body felt strangely clear and sweet, lying as though it were a

lily of pain.

      She lay now holding the carvings at her side, her fingers spread over

their smooth wooden contours, while she experienced the slow ebbing of fatigue

from her limbs. Minute after minute passed, the steady light filling the room

with whiteness. Every now and again she would raise herself up and dip the

earthenware spoon into the pottage; and as she drank her strength came back in

little thick leaps. When she had at last emptied the bowl she turned over upon

her side, and a tingling of strength rose in her with every moment that passed.

      Again she was conscious of the cleanness of her body. For some time the

effort was too great to be made, but when at last she pulled away the blankets

she found that she was washed free of all the dust of her last days of

wandering. She was unstained, and there was no trace of the nightmare upon her

-- only the sweet bruises, the long threads where thorns had torn her.

      She tried to stand, and nearly fell; but drawing in a deep breath steadied

herself and moved slowly to the window. Before her was a clearing, where greyish

grass grew thickly, the shadow of a tree falling across it. Half in this shadow

and half out of it a white goat was standing, and moving its sensitive narrow

head side to side. A little beyond, to the left, was the mouth of a well. The

clearing ended where a derelict stone building, roofless and black with

spreading moss, held back a grove of leafless elms, where a murmuration of

starlings was gathered. Beyond this grove Keda could catch a glimpse of a stony

field, and beyond this field a forest climbing to a rounded summit of boulders.

She turned her eyes again. There stood the white goat. It had moved out of the

shadow and was like an exquisite toy, so white it was, with such curls of hair,

such a beard of snow, such horns, such great and yellow eyes.

      Keda stood for a long while gazing upon the scene, and although she saw

with perfect clarity -- the roofless house, the pine-shadow, the hillocks, the

trellis-work vine, yet these were no part of her immediate consciousness, but

figments of the half-dream languor of her awakening. More real to her was the

bird-song at her breast, defying the memory of her lovers and the weight of her

womb.

      The age that was her heritage and the inexorable fate of the Dwellers had

already begun to ravage her head, a despoliation which had begun before the

birth of her first little child who was buried beyond the great wall, and her

face had now lost all but the shadow of her beauty.

      Keda left the window and, taking a blanket, wrapped it about her, and then

opened the door of the room. She found herself facing another of roughly the

same size but with a great table monopolizing the centre of the floor, a table

with a dark-red cloth drawn across it. Beyond the table the earth descended by

three steps, and in the further and lower portion of the floor were the old

man's garden tools, flower pots and pieces of painted and unpainted wood. The

room was empty and Keda passed slowly through a doorway into the clearing of

sunlight.

      The white goat watched her as she approached and took a few slender-legged

steps towards her, lifting its head high into the air. She moved onwards and

became conscious of the sound of water. The sun was about halfway between the

zenith and the horizon, but Keda could not at first tell whether it was morning

or afternoon, for there was no way of knowing whether the sun were climbing

through the high east or sinking in the high west. All was stillness; the sun

seemed to be fixed for ever as though it were a disc of yellow paper pasted

against the paleblue wintry sky.

      She went forward slowly through the unknown time of day towards the sound

of water. She passed the long roofless building on her left and for a moment was

chilled by the shadow it cast.

      Descending a steep bank of ferns, she came across the brook almost

immediately. It ran between dark, leafless brambles. A little to Keda's left,

where she stood among the thorny bushes at the water's edge, there was a

crossing of boulders -- old and smooth and hollowed into shallow basins by the

passage of what must have been centuries of footfall. Beyond the ford a grey

mare drank from the stream. Her mane fell over her eyes and floated on the

surface of the water as she drank. Beyond the grey mare stood another of dappled

skin, and beyond the dappled mare, at a point where the brook changed direction

and bore to the right under a wall of evergreens, was a third -- a horse whose

coat was like black velvet. The three were quite still and absorbed, their manes

trailing the water, their legs knee-deep in the sounding stream. Keda knew that

if she walked a little way along the bank to her -left until she gained a view

of the next reach of the river, she would see the drinking horses one after

another receding across the flats, each one an echo of the one before it --

echoes of changing colour, but all knee-deep in water, all with their hanging

manes, their drinking throats.

      Suddenly she began to feel cold. The horses all lifted their heads and

stared at her. The stream seemed to stand still; and then she heard herself

talking.

      "Keda," she was saying, "your life is over. Your lovers have died. Your

child and her father are buried. And you also are dead. Only your bird sings on.

What is the bright bird saying? That all is complete? Beauty will die away

suddenly and at any time. At any time now -- from sky and earth and limb and eye

and breast and the strength of men and the seed and the sap and the bud and the

foam and the flower -- all will crumble for you, Keda, for all is over -- only

the child to be born, and then you will know what to do."

      She stood upon the boulders of the ford and saw below her the image of her

face in the clear water. It had become very old; the scourge of the Dwellers had

descended; only the eyes, like the eyes of a gazelle, defied the bane which now

gave to her face the quality of a ruin. She stared; and then she put her hands

below her heart, for the bird was crying, crying with joy. "It is over!"

screamed the beaked voice. "It is only for the child that you are waiting. All

else fulfilled, and then there is no longer any need."

      Keda lifted her head, and her eyes opened to the sky where a kestrel hung.

Her heart beat and beat, and the air thickened until darkness muffled her eyes,

while the gay cry of the bird went on and on: "_It is over! it is over! it is

over!_"

      The sky cleared before her. Beside her stood the brown father. When she

turned to him he raised his head and then led her back to the cabin, where she

lay exhausted upon her bed.

      The sun and the moon had forced themselves behind her eyes and filled her

head. A crowd of images circled about them; the cactus trees of the Mud

Dwellings revolved about the towers of Gormenghast, which swam about the moon.

Heads ran forward towards her, starting as mere pin points on an infinitely far

horizon, enlarging unbearably as they approached, they burst over her face --

her dead husband's face, Mrs. Slagg's and Fuchsia"s, Braigon"s, Flay"s, the

Countess"s, Rantel's and the Doctor's with his devouring smile. Something was

being put into her mouth. It was the lip of a cup. She was being told to drink.

      "Oh, father!" she cried.

      He pressed her gently back against the pillow.

      "There is a bird crying," she said.

      "What does it cry?" said the old man.

      "It cries with joy, for me. It is happy for me, for soon it will all be

over -- when I am light again -- and I can do it, oh, father, when I am light

again."

      "What is it you will do?"

      Keda stared at the reeds above her. "That is what shall happen," she

murmured, "with a rope, or with deep water, or a blade . . . or with a blade."

51

FAREWELL

      It was a long while before Keda was well enough to set forth on horseback

for the Mud Dwellings. Her fever had raged, and but for the care with which the

old man watched over her she must surely have died. For many long nights in her

delirium she unburdened herself of a torrent of words, her natural reticence

shattered by the power of her heightened imaginings.

      The old man sat by her, his bearded chin resting on a gnarled fist, his

brown eyes upon her vibrant face. He listened to her words and pieced together

the story of her loves and fears from the wrack of her outpouring. Removing a

great damp leaf from her forehead he would replace it with another, ice-cold and

shoe-shaped, from the store he had collected for her brow. Within a few minutes

it would be warm from her burning forehead. Whenever he could leave her he

prepared the herbs with which he fed her and concocted the potions which

eventually stilled the nightmare in her brain, and quietened her blood.

      As the days passed he began to know her better, in the great, inarticulate

way of guardian trees. No word was spoken. Whatever passed between them of any

significance travelled in silence, and taking his hand she would lie and receive

great joy from gazing at his august and heavy head, his beard and his brown

eyes, and the rustic bulk of his body beside her.

      Yet in spite of the peace that filled her in his presence, the feeling she

should be among her own people began to grow more powerful with every day that

passed.

      It was a long while after her fever had abated that the old man allowed

Keda to get to her feet, although he could see that she was fretting. At last

she was strong enough to go for short walks in the enclosure, and he led her,

supporting her with his arm to the hillocks of pale hair, or among the elms.

      From the beginning, their relationship had been baptized with silence, and

even now, several months after that first afternoon when she had awakened

beneath his roof, whatever words they spoke were only to facilitate the domestic

tasks of the day. Their communion of silence which from the first they had

recognized to be a common language was with them perpetually flowering in a kind

of absolute trust in the other's receptivity.

      Keda knew that the brown father realized she must go, and the old man knew

that Keda understood why he could not let her go, for she was still too weak,

and they moved together through the spring days, Keda watching him milking his

white goat, and the brown father leaning like an oak against the wall of the

cabin while Keda stirred the broth above the stone range, or scraped the loam

from the spade and placed it among the few crude garden tools when daylight

failed.

      One evening when they were returning home after the longest walk which

Keda had managed, they stopped for a moment upon the brow of one of the

hillocks, and turned to the west before descending into the shadows that lay

about the cabin.

      There was a greenish light in the sky with a surface like alabaster. As

they watched, the evening star sang out in a sudden point of light.

      The ragged horizon of trees brought back to Keda's mind the long and

agonizing journey that had brought her to this haven, to the cabin of the

hermit, to this evening walk, to this moment of light, and she remembered the

clawing of the branches at her right shoulder and how, upon her left, all the

while there had stood the blasphemous finger of rock. Her eyes seemed to be

drawn along the line of the dark trees until they rested upon a minute area of

sky framed by the black and distant foliage. This fragment of sky was so small

that it could never have been pointed out or even located again by Keda had she

taken her eyes from it for a second.

      The skyline of trees was, near its outline, perforated with a myriad of

microscopic glints of light, and it was beyond coincidence that Keda's eyes were

drawn towards the particular opening in the foliage that was divided into two

equal parts by a vertical splinter of green fire. Even at that distance, fringed

and imprisoned with blackness, Keda recognized instantaneously the finger of

rock.

      "What does it mean, father, that thin and dreadful crag?"

      "If it is dreadful to you, Keda, it means that your death is near; which

is as you wish and what you have foreseen. For me it is not yet dreadful,

although it has changed. When I was young it was for me the steeple of all love.

As the days die, it alters."

      "But I am not afraid," said Keda.

      They turned and began to descend among the hillocks towards the cabin.

Darkness had settled before they opened the door. When Keda had lit the lamp

they sat at the table opposite one another, conversing for a long while before

her lips moved and she began to speak aloud:

      "No, I am not afraid," she said. "It is I who am choosing what I shall

do."

      The old man lifted his rough head. His eyes in the lamplight appeared as

wells of brown light.

      "The child will come to me when she is ready," he said. "I will always be

here."

      "It is the Dwellers," said Keda. "It is they." Her left hand drew

involuntarily to beneath her heart, and her fingers wavered there a moment as

though lost. "Two men have died for me; and I bring back to the Bright Carvers

their blood, on my hands, and the unlawful child. They will reject me -- but I

shall not mind, for still . . . still . . . my bird is singing -- and in the

graveyard of the outcasts I will have my reward -- oh father -- my reward, the

deep, deep silence which they cannot break."

      The lamp trembled and shadows moved across the room, returning stealthily

as the flame steadied.

      "It will not be long," he said. "In a few days' time you shall begin your

journey."

      "Your dark-grey mare," said Keda, "how shall I return her to you, father?"

      "She will return," he replied, "alone. When you are near to the Dwellings,

set her free and she will turn and leave you."

      She took her hand from his arm and walked to her room. All night long the

voice of a little wind among the reeds cried: "_Soon, soon, soon._"

      On the fifth day he helped her to the rough blanket saddle. Upon the

mare's broad back were slung two baskets of loaves and other provender. Her path

lay to the north of the cabin, and she turned for a moment before the mare moved

away to take a last look at the scene before her. The stony field beyond the

high trees. The roofless house, and to her west, the hillocks of pale hair, and

beyond the hillocks the distant woods. She looked her last upon the rough grass

enclosure; the well, and the tree which cast its long shadow. She looked her

last at the white goat with its head of snow. It was sitting with one frail

white foreleg curled to its heart.

      "No harm will come to you. You are beyond the power of harm. You will not

hear their voices. You will bear your child, and when the time has come you will

make an end of all things."

      Keda turned her eyes to him. "I am happy, father. I am happy. I know what

to do."

      The grey mare stepped forward into darkness beneath trees, and pacing with

a strange deliberation turned eastwards along a green path between banks of

fern. Keda sat very still and very upright with her hands in her lap while they

drew nearer with every pace to Gormenghast and the homes of the Bright Carvers.

52

EARLY ONE MORNING

      Spring has come and gone, and the summer is at its height.

      It is the morning of the Breakfast, of the ceremonial Breakfast. Prepared

in honour of Titus, who is one year old today, it piles itself magnificently

across the surface of a table at the northern end of the refectory. The

servants' tables and benches have been removed so that a cold stone desert

spreads southwards unbroken save by the regular pillars on either side which

lead away in dwindling perspective. It is the same dining-hall in which the Earl

nibbles his frail toast at eight o'clock every morning -- the hall whose ceiling

is riotous with flaking cherubs, trumpets and clouds, whose high walls trickle

with the damp, whose flagstones sigh at every step.

      At the northern extremity of this chill province the gold plate of the

Groans, pranked across the shining black of the long table, smoulders as though

it contains fire; the cutlery glitters with a bluish note; the napkins, twisted

into the shape of doves, detach themselves from their surroundings for very

whiteness, and appear to be unsupported. The great hall is empty and there is no

sound save the regular dripping of rainwater from a dark patch in the cavernous

ceiling. It has been raining since the early hours of the morning and by now a

small lake is gathered halfway down the long stone avenue between the pillars,

reflecting dimly an irregular section of the welkin where a faded cluster of

cherubs lie asleep in the bosom of a mildew'd cloud. It is to this cloud,

darkened with _real_ rain, that the drops cling sluggishly and fall at intervals

through the half-lit air to the glaze of water below.

      Swelter has just retired to his clammy quarters after casting his

professional eye for the last time over the breakfast table. He is pleased with

his work and as he arrives at the kitchen there is a certain satisfaction in the

twist of his fat lips. There are still two hours to run before the dawn.

      Before he pushes open the door of the main kitchen he pauses and listens

with his ear to the panels. He is hoping to hear the voice of one of his

apprentices, of _any_ one of his apprentices -- it would not matter which -- for

he has ordered silence until his return. The little uniformed creatures had been

lined up in two rows. Two of them are squabbling in thin, high whispers.

      Swelter is in his best uniform, a habit of exceptional splendour, the high

cap and tunic being of virgin silk. Doubling his body he opens the door the

merest fraction of an inch and applies his eye to the fissure. As he bends, the

shimmering folds of the silk about his belly hiss and whisper like the voice of

far and sinister waters or like some vast, earthless ghost-cat sucking its own

breath. His eye, moving around the panel of the door, is like something

detached, self-sufficient, and having no need of the voluminous head that

follows it nor for that matter of the mountainous masses undulating to the

crutch, and the soft, trunk-like legs. So alive is it, this eye, quick as an

adder, veined like a blood-alley. What need is there for all the cumulus ofdull,

surrounding clay -- the slow white hinterland that weighs behind it as it

swivels among the doughy, circumscribing wodges like a marble ofraddled ice? As

the eye rounds the corner of the door it devours the long double line of skinny

apprentices as a squid might engulfand devour some long-shaped creature of the

depths. As it sucks in the line of boys through the pupil, the knowledge of his

power over them spreads sensuously across his trunk like a delicious gooseflesh.

He has seen and heard the two shrill-whispering youths, now threatening one

another with little raw fists. They have disobeyed him. He wipes his hot hands

together, and his tongue travels along his lips. The eye watches them, Flycrake

and Wrenpatch. They would do very nicely. So they were annoyed with one another,

were they, the little dungflies? How diverting! And how thoughtful of them! They

will save him the trouble of having to invent some reason or another for

punishing a brace of their ridiculous little brothers.

      The chef opens the door and the double line freezes.

      He approaches them, wiping his hands upon his silken buttocks as he moves

forward. He impends above them like a dome of cloud.

      "Flycrake," he says, and the word issues from his lips as though it were

drawn through a filter of sedge, "there is room for you, Flycrake, in the shadow

of my paunch, and bring your hairy friend with you -- there is room for him as

well I shouldn't wonder."

      The two boys creep forward, their eyes very wide, their teeth chattering.

      "You were talking, were you not? You were talking even more garrulously

than your teeth are now chattering. Am I wrong? No? Then come a little nearer; I

should hate to have any trouble in reaching you. You wouldn't like to cause me

any trouble, would you? Am I right in saying that you would not like to give me

trouble, Master Flycrake? Master Wrenpatch?" He does not listen for an answer,

but yawns, his face opening lewdly upon regions compared with which nudity

becomes a milliner's invention. As the yawn ends and without a suspicion of

warning, his two hands swing forward simultaneously and he catches the two

little wretches by their ears and lifts them high into the air. What he would

have done with them will never be known, for at the very moment when the hanging

apprentices are lifted about the level of Swelter's throat, a bell begins

tojangle discordantly through the steamy air. It is very seldom that this bell

is heard, for the rope from which it is suspended, after disappearing through a

hole in the ceiling of the Great Kitchen, moves secretly among rafters, winding

to and fro in the obscure, dust-smelling regions that brood between the ceiling

of the ground rooms and the floor boards of the first storey. After having been

re-knotted many times, it finally emerges through a wall in Lord Sepulchrave's

bedroom. It is very rarely that his Lordship has any need to interview his chef,

and the bell as it swings wildly above the heads of the apprentices can be seen

throwing from off its iron body the dust of four seasons.

      Swelter's face changes at the first iron clang of the forgotten bell. The

gloating and self-indulgent folds of face-fat redistribute themselves and a

sycophantism oozes from his every pore. But only for a moment is he thus, his

ears gulping at the sound of iron; for all at once he drops Flycrake and

Wrenpatch to the stone slabs, surges from the room, his flat feet sucking at the

stones like porridge.

      Without abating the speed of his succulent paces, and sweeping with his

hands whoever appears in his path as though he were doing breaststroke, he

pursues his way to Lord Sepulchrave's bedroom, the sweat beginning to stand out

more and more on his cheeks and forehead as he nears the sacred door.

      Before he knocks he wipes the sweat from his face with his sleeve, and

then listens with his ear at the panels. He can hear nothing. He lifts his hand

and strikes his folded fingers against the door with great force. He does this

because he knows from experience that it is only with great difficulty that his

knuckles can make any sound, the bones lying so deeply embedded within their

stalls of pulp. As he half expected, all to be heard is a soft plop, and he

resorts unwillingly to the expedient of extracting a coin from a pocket and

striking it tentatively on the panel. To his horror, instead of the slow, sad,

authoritative voice of his master ordering him to enter, he hears the hooting of

an owl. After a few moments, during which he is forced to dab at his face, for

he has been unnerved by the melancholy cry, he strikes again with the coin. This

time there is no question that the high, long-drawn hoot which answers the

tapping is an order for him to enter.

      Swelter glances about him, turning his head this way and that, and he is

on the point of making away from the door, for fear has made his body as cold as

jelly, when he hears the regular crk, crk, crk, crk, of Flay's knee-joints

approaching him from the shadows to his rear. And then he hears another sound.

It is of someone running heavily, impetuously. As the sound approaches it drowns

the regular staccato of Mr. Flay's knee-joints. A moment later as Swelter turns

his head the shadows break apart and the sultry crimson of Fuchsia's dress burns

as it rushes forward. Her hand is on the handle of the door at once and she

flings it open without a moment's hesitation or a glance at Swelter. The chef, a

mixture of emotions competing within him as might a group of worms make battle

for sovereignty in the belly of an ox, peers over Fuchsia's shoulder. Not until

he has recoiled from what meets his eye can the secondary, yet impelling impulse

to watch for the approach of Flay appease itself. Dragging his eyes from the

spectacle before him he is in time to shift his bulk a little to the right and

so to impede the thin man's progress, for Flay is now immediately behind him.

Swelter's hatred of Lord Sepulchrave's servant has now ripened into a

festerpatch, and his one desire is to stop the breathing for once and for all of

a creature so fleshless, and of one who raised the welts upon his face on the

Christening day.

      Mr. Flay, presented with the doming back and the splay-acred rear of the

chef, is on edge to see his master who has rung his bell for him, and is in no

mood to be thwarted, nor to be terrified at the white mass before him, and

although for many a long stony night he has been unable to rest -- for he is

well aware of the chef's determination to kill him during his sleep -- yet now,

presented with the materialization of his nocturnal horror, he finds himself as

hard as ironwood, and he jerks his dark, sour, osseous head forward out of his

collar like a turtle and hisses from between his sand-coloured teeth.

      Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never was there held between

four globes of gristle so sinister a hell of hatred. Had the flesh, the fibres,

and the bones of the chef and those of Mr. Flay been conjured away and away down

that dark corridor leaving only their four eyes suspended in mid-air outside the

Earl's door, then, surely, they must have reddened to the hue of Mars, reddened

and smouldered, and at last broken into flame, so intense was their hatred --

broken into flame and circled about one another in ever-narrowing gyres and in

swifter and yet swifter flight until, merged into one sizzling globe of ire they

must surely have fled, the four in one, leaving a trail of blood behind them in

the cold grey air of the corridor, until, screaming as they fly beneath

innumerable arches and down the endless passageways of Gormenghast, they found

their eyeless bodies once again, and reentrenched themselves in startled

sockets.

      For a moment the two men are quite still, for Flay has not yet drawn

breath after hissing through his teeth. Then, itching to get to his master he

brings his sharp, splintery knee up suddenly beneath the balloonlike overhang of

the chef's abdomen. Swelter, his face contracting with pain and whitening so

that his blanched uniform becomes grey against his neck, raises his great arms

in a clawing motion as his body doubles involuntarily for relief. As he

straightens himself, and as Flay makes an effort to get past him to the door,

with a jabbing movement of his shoulder, they are both frozen to the spot with a

cry more dreadful than before, the long, dolorous cry of the death-owl, and the

voice of Fuchsia, a voice that seems to be fighting through tears and terror,

cries loudly:

      "My father! My father! Be silent and it will be better, and I will take

care of you. Look at me, father! Oh, look at me! I know what you want because I

_do_ know, father -- I _do_ know, and I will take you there when it is dark and

then you will be better. -- But look at me, father -- look at me."

      But the Earl will not look at her. He is sitting huddled in the centre of

the broad carven mantelpiece, his head below the level of his shoulders.

Fuchsia, standing below him with her hands shaking as they grip the marble of

the mantel, tilts herself towards him. Her strong back is hollowed, her head is

thrown back and her throat taut. Yet she dare not touch him. The austerity of

the many years that lay behind them -- the chill of the mutual reserve they had

always shown to one another, is like a wall between them even now. It seemed as

though that wall were crumbling and that their frozen love was beginning to thaw

and percolate through the crevices, but now, when it is most needed and most

felt, the wall has closed again and Fuchsia dares not touch him. Nor dare she

admit to herself that her father has become possessed.

      He makes no answer, and Fuchsia, sinking to her knees, begins to cry, but

there are no tears. Her body heaves as she crouches below Lord Sepulchrave as he

squats on the mantelpiece, and her throat croaks, but no tears relieve her. It

is dry anguish and she becomes older during these long moments, older than many

a man or woman could ever understand.

      Flay, clenching his hands, moves into the room, the hair standing out

rigidly like little wires all over his scanty flesh. Something had crumpled up

inside him. His undeviating loyalty to the House of Groan and to his Lordship is

fighting with the horror of what he sees. Something of the same feeling must

have been going on inside Swelter for as he and Flay gaze at the Earl there is

upon their faces the same emotion translated, as it were, into two very

different languages.

      His Lordship is dressed in black. His knees are drawn up almost to his

chin. His long, fine white hands are curled slightly inwards as they hang over

his knees, between which, and his supported chin, the wrists are wedged. But it

is the eyes which strike a chill to the centre of those who watch, for they have

become circular. The smile which played across his lips when Fuchsia had been

with him in the pine wood is gone forever. His mouth is entirely expressionless.

      Suddenly a voice comes from the mouth. It is very quiet:

      "Chef."

      "Your Lordship?" says Swelter trembling.

      "How many traps have you in the Great Kitchen?"

      Swelter's eyes shift to left and right and his mouth opens, but he can

make no sound.

      "Come, Chef, you must know how many traps are set every night -- or have

you become slovenly?"

      Swelter holds his podgy hands together. They tremble before him as he

works his fingers between one another.

      "Sir," says Swelter . . . "there must be forty traps in the Great Kitchen

. . . forty traps, your gracious Lordship."

      "How many were found in the traps at five o'clock today? Answer me."

      "They were all full, your Lordship -- all except one, sir."

      "Have the cats had them?"

      "The . . . the cats, your --"

      "I said, have the cats had them?" repeats Lord Sepulchrave sadly.

      "Not yet," says the Chef. "Not yet."

      "Then bring me one . . . bring me a plump one. . . immediately. What are

you waiting for, Mr. Chef? . . . What are you waiting for?"

      Swelter's lips move wetly. "A plump one," he says. "Yes, my Lord . . . a .

. . plump . . . one."

      As soon as he has disappeared the voice goes on: "Some twigs, Mr. Flay,

some twigs at once. Twigs of all sizes, do you understand? From small branches

downwards in size -- every kind of shape, Flay, every kind of shape, for I shall

study each in turn and understand the twigs I build with, for I must be as

clever as the others with my twigs, though we are careless workmen. What are you

waiting for, Mr. Flay? . . ."

      Flay looks up. He has been unable to keep his eyes on the transformed

aspect of his master, but now he lifts them again. He can recognize no

expression. The mouth might as well not be there. The fine aquiline nose appears

to be more forceful and the saucerlike shape of the eyes hold within either sky

a vacant moon.

      With a sudden awkward movement Flay plucks Fuchsia from the floor and

flings her over his high shoulder and, turning, he staggers to the door and is

soon among the passages.

      "I must go back, I must go back to him!" Fuchsia gasps.

      Flay only makes a noise in his throat and strides on.

      At first Fuchsia begins to struggle, but she has no strength left for the

dreadful scene has unnerved her and she subsides over his shoulder, not knowing

where she is being taken. Nor does Flay know where he is taking her. They have

reached the east quadrangle and have come out into the early morning when

Fuchsia lifts her head.

      "Flay," she says, "we must find Doctor Prune at once. I can walk, please,

now. Thank you, Flay, but be quick. Be quick. Put me down."

      Flay eases her off his shoulder and she drops to the ground. Fuchsia has

seen the Doctor's house in the corner of the quadrangle and she cannot

understand why she had not thought of him before. Fuchsia begins to run, and

directly she is at the Doctor's front door she beats it violently with the

knocker. The sun is beginning to rise above the marshes and picks out a long

gutter and a cornice of the Doctor's house, and presently, after Fuchsia has

slammed at the door again, it picks out the extraordinary headpiece of

Prunesquallor himself as it emerges sleepily through a high window. He cannot

see what is below him in the shadows, but calls out:

      "In the name of modesty and of all who slumber, go easy with that knocker!

What in the world is it? . . . Answer me. What is it, I repeat?. . . Is it the

plague that has descended on Gormenghast -- or a forceps case? Is it a return of

midnight-mange, or merely flesh-death? Does the patient rave? . . . Is he fat or

thin? . . . Is he drunk or mad? . . . Is he . . ." The Doctor yawns and it is

then that Fuchsia has her first chance to speak:

      "Yes, oh yes! Come quickly, Doctor Prune! Let me tell you. Oh, please, let

me tell you!"

      The high voice at the sill cries: "Fuchsia!" as though to itself.

"Fuchsia!" And the window comes down with a crash.

      Flay moves to the girl and almost before he has done so the front door is

flung open and Doctor Prunesquallor in his flowered pyjamas is facing them.

      Taking Fuchsia by the hand and motioning Flay to follow he minces rapidly

to the living room.

      "Sit down, sit down, my frantic one!" cries Prunesquallor. "What the devil

is it? Tell the old Prune all about it."

      "It's father," says Fuchsia, the tears finding release at long last.

"Father's become wrong, Doctor Prune; Father's become all wrong. Oh, Doctor

Prune, he is a black owl now . . . Oh, Doctor, help him! Help him!"

      The Doctor does not speak. He turns his pink, over-sensitive, intelligent

head sharply in the direction of Flay, who nods and comes forward a step, with

the report of a knee-joint. Then he nods again, his jaw working. "Owl," he says.

"Wants mice! . . . Wants twigs: on mantelpiece! Hooting! Lordship's mad."

      "No!" shouts Fuchsia. "He's ill, Doctor Prune. That's all. His library's

been burned. His beautiful library; and he's become ill. But he's not mad. He

talks so quietly. Oh, Doctor Prune, what are you going to do?"

      "Did you leave him in his room?" says the Doctor, and it does not seem to

be the same man speaking.

      Fuchsia nods her tear-wet head.

      "Stay here," says the Doctor quietly; as he speaks he is away and within a

few moments has returned in a lime-green dressing gown with lime-green slippers

to match, and in his hand, a bag.

      "Fuchsia dear, send Steerpike to me, in your father's room. He is

quick-witted and may be of help. Flay, get about your duties. The Breakfast must

proceed, as you know. Now then, my gipsy-child; death or glory." And with the

highest and most irresponsible of trills he vanishes through the door.

53

A CHANGE OF COLOUR

      The morning light is strengthening, and the hour of the Great Breakfast

approaches. Flay, utterly distraught, is wandering up and down the candle-lit

stone lanes where he knows he will be alone. He had gathered the twigs and he

had flung them away in disgust only to re-gather them, for the very thought of

disobeying his master is almost as dreadful to him as the memory of the creature

he has seen on the mantelpiece. Finally, and in despair, he has crunched the

twigs between his own stick-like fingers, the simultaneous crackling of the

twigs and of his knuckles creating for a moment a miniature storm of brittle

thunder in the shadow of the trees. Then, striding back to the Castle he has

descended uneasily to the Stone Lanes. It is very cold, yet there are great

pearls upon his forehead, and in each pearl is the reflection of a candle flame.

      Mrs. Slagg is in the bedroom of the Countess, who is piling her

rustcoloured hair above her head as though she were building a castle. Every now

and again Mrs. Slagg peers furtively at the bulk before the mirror, but her

attention is chiefly centred upon an object on the bed. It is wrapped in a

length of lavender-coloured velvet, and little porcelain bells are pinned here

and there all over it. One end of a golden chain is attached to the velvet near

the centre of what has become, through process of winding, a small velvet

cylinder, or mummy, measuring some three and a half feet in length and with a

diameter of about eighteen inches. At the other end of the chain and lying on

the bed beside the lavender roll is a sword with a heavy blade of blue-black

steel and a hilt embossed with the letter "G". This sword is attached to the

gold chain with a piece of string.

      Mrs. Slagg dabs a little powder upon something that moves in the shadow at

one end of the roll, and then peers about her, for it is hard for her to see

what she is doing, the shadows in the bedroom of the Countess are of so dark a

breed. Between their red rims her eyes wander here and there before she bends

over Titus and plucks at her underlip. Again her eyes peer up at the Countess,

who seems to have grown tired of her hair, the edifice being left unfinished as

though some fitful architect had died before the completion of a bizarre edifice

which no one else knew how to complete. Mrs. Slagg moves from the bedside in

little half-running, half-walking steps, and from the table beneath the

candelabra plucks a candle that is waxed to the wood among the birdseed, and,

lighting it from a guttering torso of tallow that stands by, she returns to the

lavender cylinder which has begun to twist and turn.

      Her hand is unsteady as she lifts the wax above the head of Titus, and the

wavering flame makes it leap. His eyes are very wide open. As he sees the light

his mouth puckers and works, and the heart of the earth contracts with love as

he totters at the wellhead of tears. His little body writhes in its dreadful

bolster and one of the porcelain bells chimes sweetly.

      "Slagg," said the Countess in a voice of husk.

      Nannie, who is as light as a feather, starts into the air an inch or two

at the sudden sound, and comes to earth again with a painful jarring of her

little arid ankles; but she does not cry out, for she is biting her lower lip

while her eyes cloud over. She does not know what she has done wrong and she has

done nothing wrong, but there is always a feeling of guilt about her when she

shares a room with the Countess. This is partly due to the fact that she

irritates the Countess, and the nurse can sense this all the while. So it is in

a thin and tremulous voice that she stammers:

      "Yes, oh yes, Ladyship? Yes . . . yes, your Ladyship?"

      The Countess does not turn her head to speak, but stares past herself in

the cracked mirror, her elbows resting on the table, her head supported in the

cups of her hands.

      "Is the child ready?"

      "Yes, yes, just ready, just ready. Ready now, your Ladyship, bless his

little smallness . . . yes . . . yes . . ."

      "Is the sword fixed?"

      "Yes, yes, the sword, the --"

      She is about to say "the horrid, black sword", but she checks herself

nervously, for who is she to express her feeling when ritual is involved? "But

it's so _hot_ for him," she continues hurriedly, "so hot for his little body in

all this velvet -- though, of course," she adds, a stupid little smile working

in and out of the wrinkles of her lips, "it's very pretty."

      The Countess turns slowly in her chair. "Slagg," she says, "come over

here, Slagg."

      The old woman, her heart beating wildly, patters her way around the bed

and stands by the dressing-table. She clasps her hands together on her flat

chest and her eyes are wide open.

      "Have you still no idea of how to answer even simple questions?" asks the

Countess very slowly.

      Nannie shakes her head, but suddenly a red spot appears in either cheek.

"I _can_ answer questions, I _can_!" she cries, startling herself with her own

ineffectual vehemence.

      The Countess does not seem to have heard her. "Try and answer _this_ one,"

she murmurs.

      Mrs. Slagg cocks her head on one side and listens like a grey bird.

      "Are you attending, Slagg?"

      Nannie nods her head as though suffering from palsy.

      "Where did you meet that youth?" There is a moment's silence.

      "That Steerpike?" the Countess adds.

      "Long ago," says Nannie, and closes her eyes as she waits for the next

question. She feels pleased with herself.

      "_Where_ is what I said: _where_, not _when_," booms the voice.

      Mrs. Slagg tries to gather her thoughts together. Where? Oh, where was it?

she wondered. It was long ago . . . And then she recalled how he had appeared

with Fuchsia suddenly at the door of her room.

      "With Fuchsia . . . Oh, yis . . . yis, it was with my Fuchsia, your

Ladyship."

      "Where does he come from? Answer me, Slagg, and then finish my hair."

      "I never do know . . . No, not ever . . . I have never been told. Oh, my

poor heart, no. Where _could_ the boy come from?" She peers at the dark bulk

above her.

      Lady Gertrude wipes the palm of her hand slowly across her brow. "You are

the same Slagg," she says, "the same brilliant Slagg."

      Nannie begins to cry, wishing desperately that she were clever.

      "No use crying," says the Countess. "No use. No use. My birds don't cry.

Not very often. Were you at the fire?"

      The word "fire" is terrible to Mrs. Slagg. She clutches her hands

together. Her bleary eyes grow wild. Her lips tremble, for in her imagination

she can see the great flames rising about her.

      "Finish my hair, Nannie Slagg. Stand on a chair and do it."

      Nannie turns to find a chair. The room is like a shipwreck. The red walls

glower in the candle-light. The old woman patters her way between stalactites of

tallow, boxes and old sofas. The Countess whistles and a moment later the room

is alive with wings. By the time Mrs. Slagg has dragged a chair to the

dressing-table and climbed upon it, the Countess is deep in conversation with a

magpie. Nannie disapproves of birds altogether and cannot reconcile the habits

of the Countess with the House of Groan, but she is used to such things, not

being over seventy years old for nothing. Bending a little over her ladyship's

locks she works with difficulty to complete the hirsute cornice, for the light

is bad.

      "Now then, darling, now then," says the heavy voice below her, and her old

body thrills, for she has never known the Countess speak to her in such a way

before; but glancing over the mountainous shoulder she sees that the Countess is

talking to a bedraggled finch and Nannie Slagg is desolate.

      "So Fuchsia was the first to find him, was she?" says the Countess,

rubbing her finger along the finch's throat.

      Mrs. Slagg, startled, as she always is when anyone speaks, fumbles with

the red hank in her hand. "Who? Oh, who do you mean . . . your Ladyship? . . .

Oh, she's always a good girl, Fuchsia is, yis, yis, _always_."

      The Countess gets to her feet in a monumental way, brushing several

objects from the dressing-table to the floor with her elbow. As she rises she

hears the sound of sobbing and turns her head to the lavender roll. "Go away,

Slagg-- go away, and take him with you. Is Fuchsia dressed?"

      "Yis. . . oh, my poor heart, yis. . . Fuchsia is all ready, yis, quite

ready, and waiting in her room. Oh yis, she is . . ."

      "His Breakfast will soon be beginning," says the Countess, turning her

eyes from a brass clock to her infant son. "Very soon."

      Nannie, who has recovered Titus from the fastnesses of the bed, stops at

the door before pattering out into the dawn-lit corridor. Her eyes stare back

almost triumphantly and a little pathetic smile works at the crinkled corners of

her mouth. "_His_ Breakfast," she whispers. "Oh, my weak heart, his _first_

Breakfast."

      Steerpike has been found at last, Fuchsia colliding with him as he rounds

a corner of the staircase on his way down from the aunts. He is very sprucely

dressed, his high shoulders without a speck of dust upon them, his finger-nails

pared, his hair smoothed down over his pastycoloured forehead. He is surprised

to see Fuchsia, but he does not show it, merely raising his eyebrows in an

expression both inquiring and deferential at the same time.

      "You are up very early, Lady Fuchsia."

      Fuchsia, her breast heaving from her long run up the stairs, cannot speak

for a moment or two; then she says: "Doctor Prune wants you."

      "Why me?" says the youth to himself; but aloud he said: "Where is he?"

      "In my father's room."

      Steerpike licks his lips slowly. "Is your father ill?"

      "Yes, oh yes, very ill."

      Steerpike turns his head away from Fuchsia, for the muscles of his face

cry out to relax. He gives them a free rein and then, straightening his face and

turning to Fuchsia, he says: "Everything I can do I will do." Suddenly, with the

utmost nimbleness, he skips past her, jumping the first four steps together, and

races down the stone flight on his way to the Earl's bedroom.

      He has not seen the Doctor for some time. Having left his service their

relationship is a little strained, but this morning as he enters at the Earl's

door he can see there will be neither space nor time for reminiscences in his

own or the Doctor's brain.

      Prunesquallor, in his lime-green dressing-gown, is pacing to and fro

before the mantelpiece with the stealth of some kind of vertical cat. Not for a

moment does he take his eyes off the Earl, who, still upon the mantelpiece,

watches the physician with great eyes.

      At the sound of Steerpike at the door the round eyes move for a moment and

stare over the Doctor's shoulder. But Prunesquallor has not shifted his steady,

magnified gaze. The roguish look is quite absent from his long, bizarre face.

      The Doctor has been waiting for this moment. Prancing forward he reaches

up with his white hands and pins the Earl's arms to his sides, dragging him from

his perch. Steerpike is at the Doctor's side in a moment and together they carry

the sacrosanct body to the bed and turn it over upon its face. Sepulchrave has

not struggled, only emitting a short stifled cry.

      Steerpike holds the dark figure down with one hand, for there is no

attempt to escape, and the Doctor flicks a slim needle into his Lordship's wrist

and injects a drug of such weird potency that when they turn the patient over

Steerpike is startled to see that the face has changed to a kind of chalky

green. But the eyes have altered also and are once more the sober, thoughtful,

human eyes which the Castle knew so well. His fingers have uncurled; the claws

are gone.

      "Be so good as to draw the blind," says the Doctor, raising himself to his

full height beside the bed, and returning his needle to its little silver case.

This done, he taps the points of his long white fingers together thoughtfully.

With the blinds drawn across the sunrise the colour of his lordship's face is

mercifully modified.

      "That was quick work, Doctor."

      Steerpike is balancing upon his heels. "What happens next?" He clicks his

tongue ruminatively as he waits for Prunesquallor's answer. "What was the drug

you used, Doctor?"

      "I am not in the mood to answer questions, dear boy," replies

Prunesquallor, showing Steerpike the whole range of his teeth, but in a

mirthless way. "Not at all in the mood."

      "What about the Breakfast?" says Steerpike, unabashed.

      "His Lordship will _be_ at the Breakfast."

      "Will he, though?" says the youth, peering at the face. "What about his

colour?"

      "In half an hour his skin will have returned to normal. He will be there .

. . Now, fetch me Flay and some boiling water, a towel. He must be washed and

dressed. Quickly now."

      Before Steerpike leaves the room he bends over Lord Sepulchrave, whistling

tunelessly between his teeth. The Earl's eyes are closed and there is a

tranquillity about his face which has been absent for many years.

54

A BLOODY CHEEKBONE

      Steerpike has some difficulty in finding Flay, but he comes across him at

last in the blue-carpeted Room of Cats, whose sunlit pile they had trodden

together under very different circumstances a year ago. Flay has just reappeared

from the Stone Lanes and looks very bedraggled, a long dirty hank of cobweb

hanging over his shoulder. When he sees Steerpike his lips curl back like a

wolf"s.

      "What you want?" he says.

      "How's Flay?" says Steerpike.

      The cats are crowded upon one enormous ottoman with its carven head and

footpiece rising into the air in a tangle of gilded tracery as though two

toppling waves at sunset were suspended in mid-air, the hollow between them

filled with foam. There is no sound from them and they do not move.

      "The Earl wants you," continues Steerpike, enjoying Flay's discomfort. He

does not know whether Flay has any knowledge of what is happening to his master.

      Flay involuntarily propels his gawky body forwards as he hears that his

Lordship wants him, but he pulls himself up at the end of his first long step

towards the door, and peers even more suspiciously and acidly at the youth in

his immaculate black cloth.

      Steerpike on a sudden, without considering the consequences of his action

with the same thoroughness that is typical of him, forces his eyes open with the

forefinger and thumb of either hand. He wishes to see whether the thin creature

before him has seen the Earl during his madness. He is really banking on the

assumption that Flay will not have done so, in which case the forcing of his

eyes into owlish circles will have no meaning. But he has made this early

morning one of his rare mistakes.

      With a hoarse, broken cry, Flay, his head reddening with wrath at this

insult to his master, staggers to the divan and, shooting out a gaunt hand,

plucks a cat by its head from the snowy hill and hurls it at his tormentor. As

this happens a cloaked and heavy woman enters the room. The living missile,

hurtling at Steerpike's face, reaches out one of its white legs and as the youth

jerks his head to one side, five claws rip out a crimson wedge from his cheek

immediately below the right eye.

      The air is filled at once with the screaming of a hundred cats which,

swarming the walls and furniture, leaping and circling the blue carpet with the

speed of light, give the room the appearance of a white maelstrom. The blood,

streaming down Steerpike's neck, feels as warm as tea as it slides to his belly.

His hand, which he has raised automatically to his face in a vain attempt to

ward off the blow, moves to his cheek as he drops back a pace, and the tips of

his fingers become wet. The cat itself has ended its flight against the wall,

near the door through which the third figure has just entered. As it falls in a

huddle to the floor, half stunned, and with the wedge of Steerpike's sallow skin

between the claws of its left forefoot, it sees the figure above it; it crawls

with a moan to within a pace of the visitor, and then, with a superfeline

effort, springs to the height of her great breasts where it lies coiled with its

eyes like yellow moons appearing above the whiteness of its haunches.

      Flay turns his eyes from Steerpike. It has done him good to watch the red

blood bubbling from the upstart's cheek, but now his satisfaction is at an end,

for he is gazing stupefied into the hard eyes of the Countess of Groan.

      Her big head has coloured to a dim and dreadful madder. Her eyes are

completely remorseless. She has no interest in the cause of the quarrel between

Flay and the Steerpike youth. All she knows is that one of her white cats had

been dashed against the wall and has suffered pain.

      Flay waits as she approaches. His bony head is quite still. His loose

hands hang gawkily at his sides. He realizes the crime he has committed, and as

he waits his world of Gormenghast -- his security, his love, his faith in the

House, his devotion -- is all crumbling into fragmen ts.

      She is standing within a foot of him. The air is heavy with her presence.

      Her voice is very husky when she speaks. "I was going to strike him down,"

she says heavily. "That is what I intended to do with him. To break him."

      He lifts his eyes. The white cat is within a few inches of him. He watches

the hairs of its back; each one has become a bristle and the back is a hummock

of sharp white grass.

      The Countess begins to talk again in a louder voice, but it has become so

choked that Flay cannot understand what she is saying. At last he can make out

the words: "You are no more, no more at all. You are ended."

      Her hand, as it moves gently over the body of the white cat, is trembling

uncontrollably. "I have finished with you," she says. "Gormenghast has finished

with you." It is hard for her to draw the words from her great throat. "You are

over.., over." Suddenly she raises her voice. "Crude fool!" she cries. "Crude,

broken fool and brute! Out! Out! The Castle throws you. _Go!_" she roars, her

hands upon the cat's breast. "Your long bones sicken me."

      Flay lifts his small bony head higher into the air. He cannot comprehend

what has happened. All he knows is that it is more dreadful than he can feel,

for a kind of numbness is closing in on his horror like a padding. There is a

greenish sheen across the shoulders of his greasy black suit, for the morning

light has of a sudden begun to dance through the bay window. Steerpike, with a

blood-drenched handkerchief wound about his face, is staring at him and tapping

the top of a table with his nails. He cannot help but feel that there is

something very fine about the old creature's head. And he had been very quick.

Very quick indeed. Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.

      Flay moved his little eyes around the room. The floor is alive and white

behind the Countess, around whose feet lies the stilled froth of a tropic tide,

the azure carpet showing now here and now there. He feels he is looking at it

for the last time and turns to go, but as he turns he thinks of the Breakfast.

He is surprised to hear his own mirthless voice saying: "Breakfast."

      The Countess knows that her husband's first servant must be at the

Breakfast. Had he killed every white cat in the world he must still be at the

Breakfast in honour of Titus, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, to be. Such things

are cardinal.

      The Countess turns herself about and moves to the bay window after making

a slow detour of the room and picking up from a rack near the fireplace a heavy

iron poker. As she reaches the window her right arm swings slowly back and

forward with the deliberation of a shire-mare's bearded hoof as it falls into a

rainpool. There is a startling split and crash, a loud cascading of glass upon

the flagstones outside the window, and then silence.

      With her back to the room she stares through the star-shaped gap in the

glass. Before her spreads the green lawn. She is watching the sun breaking

through the distant cedars. It is the day of her son's Breakfast. She turns her

head. "You have a week," she says, "and then you leave these walls. A servant

shall be found for the Earl."

      Steerpike lifts his head, and for a moment he ceases to drum on the

woodwork with his finger-nails. As he starts tapping again, a kestrel, sweeping

through the star of the shattered pane, alights on the shoulder of the Countess.

She winces as its talons for a moment close, but her eyes soften.

      Flay approaches a door in three slow, spidery slides. It is the door that

opens into the Stone Lanes. He fumbles for his key, and turns it in the lock. He

must rest in his own region before he returns to the Earl, and he lets himself

into the long darkness.

      The Countess, for the first time, remembers Steerpike. She moves her eyes

slowly in the direction where she had last seen him, but he is no longer there

nor in any part of the room.

      A bell chimes from the corridor beyond the Room of Cats and she knows that

there is but a short while before the Breakfast.

      She feels a splash of water on her hand, and, turning, sees that the sky

has become overcast with a blanket of ominous dark rose-coloured cloud, and of a

sudden the light fades from the lawn and the cedars.

      Steerpike, who is on his way back to the Earl's bedroom, stops a moment at

a staircase window to see the first descent of the rain. It is falling from the

sky in long, upright and seemingly motionless lines of rosy silver that stand

rigidly upon the ground as though there were a million harp strings strung

vertically between the solids of earth and sky. As he leaves the window he hears

the first roar of the summer thunder.

      The Countess hears it as she stares through the jagged star in the bay

window. Prunesquallor hears it as he balances the Earl upon his feet at the side

of the bed. The Earl must have heard it, too, for he takes a step of his own

volition towards the centre of the room. His own face has returned.

      "Was that thunder, Doctor?" he says.

      The Doctor watches him very carefully, watches his every movement, though

few would have guessed how intently he was studying his patient had they seen

his long ingenious mouth open with customary gaiety.

      "Thunder it was, your Lordship. A most prodigious peal. I am waiting for

the martial chords which must surely follow such an opening, what? Ha, ha, ha,

ha, ha!"

      "What has brought you to my bedroom, Doctor? I do not remember sending for

you."

      "That is not unnatural, your Lordship. You did not send for me. I was

summoned a few minutes ago, to find that you had fainted, an unfortunate, but by

no means rare thing to happen to anyone. Now, I wonder why you should have

fainted?" The Doctor stroked his chin. "Why? Was the room very hot?"

      The Earl comes across to the Doctor. "Prunesquallor," he says, "I don't

faint."

      "Your Lordship," says the Doctor, "when I arrived in this bedroom you were

in a faint."

      "Why should I have fainted? I do not faint, Prunesquallor."

      "Can you remember what you were doing before you lost consciousness?"

      The Earl moves his eyes from the Doctor. All at once he feels very tired

and sits down on the edge of the bed.

      "I can remember nothing, Prunesquallor. Absolutely nothing. I can only

recall that I was hankering for something, but for what I do not know. It seems

a month ago."

      "I can tell you," says Prunesquallor. "You are making ready to go to your

son's Breakfast Gathering. You were pressed for time and were anxious not to be

late. You are, in any event, overstrained, and in your anticipation of the

occasion you became overwrought. Your 'hankering' was to be with your

one-year-old son. That is what you vaguely remember."

      "When is my son's Breakfast?"

      "It is in half an hour's time, or to be precise, it is in twenty-eight

minutes' time."

      "Do you mean _this morning_?" A look of alarm has appeared on Lord

Sepulchrave's face.

      "This morning as ever was, as ever is, and as ever will or won't be, bless

its thunderous heart. No, no, my lord, do not get up yet." (Lord Sepulchrave has

made an attempt to stand.) "In a moment or two and you will be as fit as the

most expensive of fiddles. The Breakfast will not be delayed. No, no, not at all

-- You have twenty-seven long, sixty-second-apiece minutes, and Flay should be

on his way to get your garments laid out for you -- yes, indeed."

      Flay is not only on his way, but he is at the door, having been unable to

remain in the Stone Lanes any longer than it took him to tear his way through

them and up to his master's room by an obscure passage which he alone knew. Even

so he is only a moment or two in advance of Steerpike, who slides under Flay's

arm and through the bedroom door as Flay opens it.

      Steerpike and the servant are amazed to find that Lord Sepulchrave is

seemingly his own melancholy self again, and Flay shambles towards his master

and drops upon his knees before him with a sudden, uncontrollable, clumsy

movement, his knees striking the floor with a crash. The Earl's sensitive pale

hand rests for a moment on the shoulders of the scarecrow, but all he says is:

"My ceremonial velvet, Flay. Be as quick as you can. My velvet and the

bird-brooch of opals."

      Flay scrambles to his feet. He is his master's first servant. He is to lay

out his master's clothes and to prepare him for the Great Breakfast in honour of

his only son. This is no time or place for the wretched youth to be in his

Lordship's bedroom. Nor for that matter need the Doctor stay.

      With his hand on the wardrobe door he turns his head creakily. "_I_

manage, Doctor," he says. His eyes move from Prunesquallor to Steerpike, and he

draws back his lips in an expression of contempt and disgust.

      The Doctor notices this expression. "Quite right. Quite, quite right! His

Lordship will improve with every minute that passes, and there is no need for us

any longer, most assuredly not, by all that's tactful I should definitely think

not, ha, ha, ha! Oh, dear me, no. Come along, Steerpike. Come along. And, by the

way, what's all that blood on your face? Are you playing at being a pirate or

have you had a tiger in bed with you? Ha, ha, ha! But tell me afterwards, dear

boy, tell me afterwards." And the Doctor proceeds to shepherd Steerpike out of

the room.

      But Steerpike dislikes being shepherded and "After you, Doctor," he says,

and insists on Prunesquallor's preceding him through the door. Before he closes

it he turns and, speaking to the Earl in a confidential tone: "I will see that

everything is in readiness," he says. "Leave it to me, your Lordship. I will see

you later, Flay. Now then, Doctor, let us be on our way."

      The door closes.

55

THE TWINS AGAIN

      The Aunts have been sitting opposite one another for well over an hour

with hardly a movement. Surely only vanity could account for so long a scrutiny

of a human face, and as it so happens it _is_ Vanity and nothing but Vanity, for

knowing that their features are identical and that they have administered the

identical amount of powder and have spent the identical length of time in

brushing their hair, they have no doubt at all that in scrutinizing one another

they are virtually gazing at themselves. They are garbed in their best purple, a

hue so violent as to give physical discomfort to any normally sensitive eye.

      "Now, Clarice," says Cora at last, "you turn your lovely head to the

right, so that I can see what I look like from the _side_."

      "Why?" says Clarice. "Why should I?"

      "Why shouldn't you? I've got a right to _know_."

      "So have I, if it comes to that."

      "Well, it will come to that, won't it? Stupid!"

      "Yes, but . . ."

      "You do what I say and then I'll do it for you."

      "Then I'll see what my profile's like, won't I?"

      "We both will, not just you."

      "I _said_ we both will."

      "Well? What's the matter, then?"

      "Nothing."

      "Well?"

      "Well, what?"

      "Well, go on, then -- turn your lovely head."

      "Shall I do it now?"

      "Yes. There's nothing to wait for, is there?"

      "Only the Breakfast. It won't be just yet."

      "Why not?"

      "Because I heard the bell go in the corridor."

      "So did I. That means there's a lot of time."

      "I want to look at my profile, Cora. Turn it now."

      "All right. How long shall I be, Clarice?"

      "Be a long time."

      "Only if I have a long time, too."

      "We can't both have a long time, silly."

      "Why not?"

      "Because there isn't one."

      "Isn't one what, dear?"

      "Isn't one long time, is there?"

      "No, there's lots of them."

      "Yes, lots and lots of beautiful long times."

      "Ahead of us, you mean, Clarice?"

      "Yes, ahead of us."

      "After we're on our thrones, isn't it?"

      "How do you know?"

      "Well, that's what you were thinking. Why do you try to deceive me?"

      "I wasn't. I only wanted to know."

      "Well, now you _do_ know."

      "Do know what?"

      "You _do_ know, that's all. I'm not going any deeper for you."

      "Why not?"

      "Because you can't go as deep as I can. You never could."

      "I've never _tried_, I don't suppose. It's not worth it, I shouldn't

think. I know when things are worth it."

      "Well, when _are_ they, then?"

      "When are they what?"

      "When are they worth something?"

      "When you've bought something wonderful with your wealth, then it's always

worth it."

      "Unless you don't _want_ it, Clarice, you always forget that. Why can't

you be less forgetful?"

      There is a long silence while they study each other's faces.

      "They"ll look at us, you know," says Cora flatly. "We're going to be

looked at at the Breakfast."

      "Because we're of the original blood," says Chance. "That's why."

      "And that's why we're important, too."

      "Two what?"

      To everyone, of course."

      "Well, we're not yet, not to everyone."

      "But we will be soon."

      "When the clever boy makes us. He can do anything."

      "Anything. Anything at all. He told me so."

      "Me, too. Don't think he only tells you, because he doesn't."

      "I didn't say he did, did I?"

      "You were going to."

      "Two what?"

      "To exalt yourself."

      "Oh, yes, yes. We will be exalted when the time is ripe."

      "Ripe and rich."

      "Yes, of course."

      "Of course."

      There is another silence. Their voices have been so flat and

expressionless that when they cease talking the silence seems no new thing in

the room, but rather a continuation of flatness in another colour.

      "Turn your head now, Cora. When I'm looked at at the Breakfast I want to

know how they see me from the side and what exactly they are looking at; so turn

your head for me and I will for you afterwards."

      Cora twists her white neck to the left.

      "More," says Chance.

      "More what?"

      "I can still see your other eye."

      Cora twists her head a fraction more, dislodging some of the powder from

her neck.

      "That's right, Cora. Stay like that. Just like that. Oh, Cora!" (the voice

is still as flat), "I am _perfect_."

      She claps her hands mirthlessly, and even her palms meet with a dead

sound.

      Almost as though this noise were a summons the door opens and Steerpike

moves rapidly across the room. There is a fresh piece of plaster across his

cheek. The twins rise and edge towards him, their shoulders touching as they

advance.

      He runs his eyes over them, takes his pipe out of his pocket and strikes a

light. For a moment he holds the flame in his hand, but only for a moment, for

Cora has raised her arm with the slow gesture of a somnambulist and has let it

fall upon the flame, extinguishing it.

      "What in plague's name are you up to?" shouts Steerpike, for once losing

his control. Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one's

face removed by a cat, both on the same morning, can temporarily undermine the

self-control of any man.

      "No fire," says Cora. "We don't have fires any more."

      "We don't like them any more. No. Not any more."

      "Not after we --"

      Steerpike breaks in, for he knows how their minds have turned, and this is

no moment just before the Breakfast for them to start reminiscing. "You are

awaited! Breakfast table is agog for you. They all want to know where you are.

Come along, my lovely brace of ladies. Let me escort you some of the way, at

least. You are looking most alluring -- but what can have been keeping you? Are

you ready?"

      The twins nod their heads.

      "May I be so honoured as to give you my right arm, Lady Cora? And, Lady

Clarice, my dear, if you will take my left . . ."

      Steerpike, bending his elbows, waits for the Aunts to split apart to take

his either arm.

      "The right's more important than the left," says Clarice. "Why should you

have it?"

      "Why shouldn't I?"

      "Because I'm as good as you."

      "But not as clever, are you, dear?"

      "Yes, I am, only you're favoured."

      "That's because I'm alluring, like he says I am."

      "He said we both were."

      "That was just to please you. Didn't you know?"

      "Dear ladies," says Steerpike, breaking in, "will you please be quiet! Who

is in command of your destinies? Who is it you promised you would trust and

obey?"

      "You." They speak together.

      "I think of you as co-equals, and I want you to think of yourselves as of

similar status, for when your thrones arrive they will be of equal glory. Now,

will you take my arms, if you please?"

      Cora and Clarice take an arm each. The door of their room had been left

open and the three of them make their exit, the youth's thin black figure

walking between the stiff purple bodies of the Aunts, who are gazing over his

head at each other, so that as they recede down the halflit corridor and

diminish in size as they move into the long perspective, the last that can be

seen, long after Steerpike in his black and the purple of the twins has become

swallowed in the depths, are the tiny, pallid patterns of the two identical

profiles facing one another and floating, as it were, in the mid-air shadows,

diminishing and diminishing as they drift away, until the last mote of light has

crumbled from them.

56

THE DARK BREAKFAST

      Barquentine is unaware that there have been grave and sinister happenings

in the Castle on this historic morning. He knows, of course, that the Earl has,

since the burning of the library, been in a critical state of health, but of his

dreadful transformation upon the mantelpiece he is ignorant. Since the early

hours he has been studying the finer points of ritual to be observed at the

Breakfast. Now, as he stumps his way to the dining-hall, his crutch clanking

ominously on the flagstones, he sucks at a hank of his beard, which curls up and

into his mouth through long training, and mutters irritably.

      He still lives in the dusty, low-ceilinged room which he has had for over

sixty years. With his new responsibilities bringing with them the necessity for

interviewing numerous servants and officials has come no desire to establish

himself in any of the numerous suites of rooms which are his to occupy if he so

desires. The fact that those who are obliged to come either to consult him or

for orders are forced to contort themselves painfully in order to negotiate a

passage through his rabbit hutch doorway, and when inside to move about in a

doubled-up condition, has no effect on him at all. Barquentine is not interested

in the comfort of others.

      Fuchsia, approaching the dining-hall in company with Mrs. Slagg, who is

carrying Titus, hears the rattle of Barquentine's crutch following them down the

corridor. At a normal time she would have shuddered at the sound, but the

horrifying and tragic minutes which she had spent with her father have filled

her with so violent an alarm and so nameless a foreboding as to expel all other

fears. She has on the immemorial crimson which is worn by the first daughter of

the House of Groan at the christening of a brother, and around her neck are the

so-called Daughter's Doves, a necklace of white sandstone doves carved by the

17th Earl of Gormenghast, strung together on a cord of plaited grass.

      There is no sound from the infant, who is encased in the lilac roll.

Fuchsia carries the black sword at one side, although the golden chain is still

attached to Titus. Nannie Slagg, beside herself with trepidation and excitement,

peers now at her bundle and now at Fuchsia, sucking at her wrinkled lips as her

little feet shuffle along below her best sepiacoloured skirt.

      "We won't be late, my caution, will we? Oh no, because we mustn't, must

we?" She peers into one end of the lilac roll. "Bless him that he's so good,

with all this horrible thunder; yis, he's been as good as good."

      Fuchsia does not hear; she is moving in a nightmare world of her own. Who

can she turn to? Who can she ask? "Doctor Prune, Doctor Prune," she says to

herself, ". . . he will tell me; he will know that I can make him well again.

Only I can make him well again."

      Before them, as they turn a corner, the door of the dining-hall looms up

and, obliterating most of it, with his hand on the brass handle, is Swelter. He

swings open the door for them and they enter the Dining Hall. They are the last

to arrive and more through coincidence than design this is as it should be --

Titus being the guest of honour, or perhaps the _host_ of honour, for it is

today that, as the Heir of Gormenghast, he Enters upon the Realms, having braved

the cycle of four seasons.

      Fuchsia climbs the seven wooden steps which lead up to the rostrum and the

long table. Away to her right spreads the cold, echoing hall, with the pooi of

rain-drips spreading on the stone floor. The drumming of the thick vertical rain

on the roof is a background to everything that happens. Reaching down with her

right hand Fuchsia helps Mrs. Slagg up the last two steps. The assemblage,

perfectly silent at the long table, have turned their heads towards Nannie with

her momentous bundle, and when both her feet are well established upon the level

of the rostrum the company rises and there is a scraping of chair-legs on the

boards. It seems to Fuchsia that high, impenetrable forests have risen before

her, great half-lit forms of a nature foreign to her own -- belonging to some

other kingdom. But though for a moment she thinks of this, she is not feeling

it, for she is subjugated beneath the weight of her fear for her father.

      It is with a shock of indefinable emotion that she sees him as she lifts

her head. She had never for a moment contemplated his being able to attend the

Breakfast, imagining that the Doctor would be with him in his bedroom. So vivid

in her mind is the picture of her father in his room as she had last seen him,

that to find him in this so different atmosphere gives her for a moment a gush

of hope -- hope that she had been dreaming -- that she had not been to his room

-- that he had not been upon the mantelpiece with his round, loveless eyes; for

now as she stares at him he is so gentle and sad and thin and she can see that

there is a weak smile of welcome upon his lips.

      Swelter, who has followed them in, is now ushering Mrs. Slagg into a chair

on whose back-rest is painted the words: "FOR A SERVANT". There is a space

cleared before her on the table in the shape of a halfcircle, in which has been

laid a long cushion. When Mrs. Slagg sits down she finds that her chin is on a

level with the table-edge, and it is with difficulty that she lifts the lilac

bundle high enough to place it on the cushion. On her left is Gertrude Groan.

Mrs. Slagg glances at her apprehensively. She is gazing at an expanse of

darkness, for the black clothes of the Countess seem to have no ending. She

lifts her eyes a little and there is still darkness. She lifts them more, and

still the darkness climbs. Raising her whole head and staring almost vertically

above her she imagines that, near the zenith of her vision, she can descry a

warmth of colour in the night. To think that an hour earlier she had been

helping to plait those locks that now appear to be brushing the flaking cherubs

of the ceiling.

      On her right is the Earl. He leans back in his chair, very listless and

weak, but he still smiles wanly at his daughter, who is on the opposite side of

the table and facing her mother. On Fuchsia's right and left sit Irma

Prunesquallor and her brother respectively. The Doctor and Fuchsia have their

little fingers interlocked under the table. Cora is sitting opposite to the Earl

her brother, and on the left of the Countess, and facing Irma, is Clarice. A

fine, succulent ham, lit by a candle, takes up most of the space at the Earl's

and Cora's end of the table, where Swelter presides and has now taken up his

official duties armed with carving-knife and steel. At the other end of the

table Barquentine smoulders on a high chair.

      The eating is done spasmodically whenever a gap of time appears between

the endless formalities and ornate procedures which Barquentine sets in motion

at the correct time-honoured moments. Tiresome in the extreme for all those

present, it would be hardly less tedious for the reader to be obliged to suffer

the long catalogue of Breakfast ritual, starting with the smashing of the

central Vase, whose shattered fragments are gathered together in two heaps, one

at the head and the other at the feet of Titus, and ending with the

extraordinary spectacle of Barquentine trampling (apparently as a symbol of the

power invested in his hands as warder of the unbroken laws of Gorrnenghast), up

and down the length of the Breakfast table seven times amidst the _debris_ of

the meal, his wooden leg striking at the dark oak.

      Unknown to any who sit there at the long table there are not nine of them

upon the dais -- but ten. All through the meal there have been ten.

      The tenth is Steerpike. In the late afternoon of the previous day, when

the dining-hall had swum in a warm haze of motes and every movement had bred its

hollow echo through the silence, he had moved swiftly up to the platform from

the doorway with a black, stumpy roll of cloth and what appeared to be a bundle

of netting under his arm. After satisfying himself that he was quite alone, he

half unrolled the cloth, slipped up the wooden steps of the dais, and in a flash

has slithered under the table

      For a few moments there were only some scrabbling sounds and the

occasional clinking of metal, but the noise mounted, and for two minutes there

was intense activity. Steerpike believed in working fast, especially in

nefarious matters. When at last he emerged he dusted himself carefully and it

might have been noticed, had there been anyone there to notice it, that although

he still carried the lumpy roll of cloth, the netting was no longer with him.

Had this same hypothetical watcher glanced under the table from any part of the

room he would have noticed nothing extraordinary, for there would have been

nothing to see; but had he taken the trouble to have crawled between the table

legs and then gazed upwards, he would have noticed that, stretching down the

centre of the low "roof" was a very comfortable hammock.

      And it is in this hammock that Steerpike is now reclining at full length,

in semi-darkness, hedged in with a close-up panorama of seventeen legs and one

wooden stump, or to be exact with sixteen, for Fuchsia is sitting with one of

hers curled up under her. He had left the Twins hurriedly on his way down with

them and had managed to be the first to slip into the hall. The oak of the table

is within a few inches of his face. He has had very little satisfaction, so much

of the time having been spent above him in fantastic dumb shows invisible to

him. There is, in fact, no conversation and all he has heard during the

seemingly interminable meal is the loveless, didactic voice of Barquentine,

reeling out the time-worn, legendary phrases; the irritating, and apologetic

coughing of Irma, and the slight creaking of Fuchsia's chair every time she

moves. Occasionally the Countess mutters something which no one can hear, which

is invariably followed by Nannie rubbing her ankles nervously together. Her feet

are at least twenty inches from the floor and it is a great temptation to

Steerpike to give them a twitch.

      Finding he is going to gain no advantage at all by having secreted himself

so cunningly, and yet seeing also that it is impossible to get away, he begins

to think like a machine, overhauling in his mind his position in the Castle.

      Saving Sepulchrave and Titus, whose cardinal interests are still limited

to the worlds of whiteness and blackness -- of milk and sleep -- there is very

little for the remainder of the company to do other than to brood, for there is

no conversation, and there is very little chance of eating the breakfast so

lavishly spread before them, for no one passes anything along the table. And so

the company brood through the wasted meal. The dry, ancient voice at the end of

the table has had an almost hypnotic effect, even at this early hour, and as

their minds move to and fro and in and out the rain continues to beat upon the

high roof overhead, and to drip, drip, drip, into the pool in the far centre of

the long dining-hall.

      No one is listening to Barquentine. The rain has drummed for ever. His

voice is in the darkness -- and the darkness in his voice, and there is no end

at all.

57

THE REVERIES

            THE REVERIE OF CORA

      . . . and it's so cold, hands and cold feet but nice ones mine are nicer

than Clarice's which she pricks with her embroidery clumsy thing but hers are

also cold I hope but I want Gertrude's to be colder than the ice in dreadful

places she's so fat and proud and far too big and I desire her frozen with her

stupid bosom and when we're stronger in power we will tell her so Clarice and I

when he lets us with his cleverness which is more clever than all the Castle and

our thrones will make us regal but I'm the one to sit highest and I wonder where

he is and stupid Gertrude thinks I'm frightened and I am but she doesn't know

and I wish she would die and I'd see her big ugly body in a coffin because I'm

of the blood and poor Sepulchrave looks different which she's done to him ugly

woman with fat bosom and carrots hair the vegetable thing so cold here cold and

my hands and feet which is what Clarice is feeling like I suppose she's so slow

compared with me she looks so silly with her mouth open not like me my mouth

isn't open yes it is I've left it open but now I've shut it and it's closed up

and my face must be perfect like I'll be when I get my power and the West Wing

is raging with glory why was the fire so big when I don't understand and we are

made to be in darkness and one day perhaps I will banish Steerpike when he's

done everything for us and perhaps I won't for it's not time to know yet and

I'll wait and see because he isn't really of good stock like us and ought to be

a servant but he's so clever and sometimes treats me with reverence which is due

to me of course for I'm Lady Cora of Gormenghast I am and there's only me and my

sister who are like that and she's not got the character I have and must take

advice from me it is so cold and Barquentine is so long and he is so nasty but I

will bow a little to him not too much but about an inch to show that he's done

his work adequately not well but adequately with his voice and his wooden crutch

which is so unnecessarily stupid to have instead of a leg and perhaps I'll look

at it so that he sees me while I look just for a little moment to show him I am

me and he mustn't forget my blood and what is poor Sepulchrave looking like that

for with his mouth slipping down on one side and upon the other while he looks

at her and she looks so frightened poor stupid Fuchsia who is still too young to

understand anything yet she never comes to visit us when she could be taught but

her cruel mother has turned her against us with her evil I feel hungry but

nobody will pass me anything for the narrow squeaky Doctor is asleep or very

nearly and Swelter never notices nor does anyone except the clever boy.

      There is a thud on the table beyond the Doctor, to her right.

            REVERIE OF ALFRED PRUNESQUALLOR

      . . . and although it is patent that he hasn't very long I can't keep

pumping hydrophondoramischromatica of ash into him every five hours or so and

he"ll need it even more frequently than that his mouth is slipping already devil

take it which is too near the mark by all that's gruesome it is but the stuff

will wipe him out unless I go easy and what will happen god knows if the owl

crops up again but we or rather I must be prepared for anything and make

tentative plans to meet contingencies for the others have no responsibilities

except to the ritual of the place and never have had a case of this transference

kind so unpleasantly actual for though the depersonalization has set in for good

that is the lesser thing for the hooting is outside the range of science yet

what started the whole thing was the burning undoubtedly oh yes undoubtedly for

it was only melancholia up till then but thanks and praise be to all the bottle

gods and powder princes that I had the drugs and that I guessed the strength

well enough for the moment but he must go back to bed immediately the breakfast

is over and have someone in the room with him whenever I have to go for meals

but they might be brought to me in his room better idea still and perhaps

Fuchsia might do it though the sight of her father might be too much for her but

we cannot tell yet and must be careful bless her dear heart poor girl she looks

so mournful and she is holding my finger so sadly I would rather she gripped it

desperately it would be more symptomatic of an honest panic in her. I must

comfort her if I can though what in the name of tact can I say to calm an

intelligent and sensitive child who has seen her father hooting from a

mantelpiece but care must be taken great care and perhaps Irma will get a room

ready for her in the house but the next few hours will tell and I must be on the

alert for the Countess is no help with her mind in the clouds, and Irma is of

course Irma and nothing but undiluted Irma for now and ever and must be left

where she is, and Steerpike remains who is an enigma to me and of whom I have

doubts very definitely and in whose presence I find less and less amusement and

more and more a sense of evil which I can base upon no power of rational

reasoning save that he is obviously out for himself and himself alone but who

isn't? and I will bear him in mind and dispense with him if I can but a brain is

a brain and he has one and it may be necessary to borrow it at short notice but

no no I will not by all that's instinctive I will not and that settles it I'll

handle whatever needs to be handled myself well well I don't remember quite such

a strong presentiment in my old carcase for a long time we must wait and see and

the waiting won't be long and we"ll hope the seeing won't be long either for

there is something very unhealthy about all this by all that's bursting into

flower in an April dell there most undeniably is and my languorous days seem to

be over for the time being but bless me the gipsy girl is squeezing a bit harder

and what on earth is she staring at his mouth is slipping and it's coming on

again . . .

      There is a thud on the table beside him . . .

            REVERIE OF FUCHSIA

      . . . what can I do oh what can I do he is so ill and pale like the thin

face that he has got that is broken all alone but he is better better than he

was oh no the sickness in me no I mustn't think of eyes oh who will help me who

will you must look now Fuchsia be brave you must look Fuchsia look how he is

better now while he is here at table he is quite close to me my father and so

sad why does he smile smile oh who will save him who will save me who will be

the power to help us father who will not let me be near and let me understand

which I could and he is better remember he is better than oh Fuchsia be brave

for the roundness of his eyes is gone gone but oh no I mustn't why were they

round round and yellow I do not understand oh tell me my trees and rocks for

Nannie won't know oh doctor dear you must tell me and I will ask you when we're

alone oh quick quick this horrible breakfast quickly go and I will take care of

him for I understand because the tower was there the tower was over his long

lines of books his books and its shadow fell across his library at morning

always always father dear the Tower of Flints that the owls live in oh no I do

not understand but I know dear father let me comfort you and you must never be

like that again never never never and I will be your sentry for always always

your sentry and will never talk to other people never only you my dear pale man

and none will come near you only perhaps the doctor when you want him but only

when you do and I will bring you flowers of every kind of colour and shape and

speckled stones that look like frogs and ferns and all the beautiful things I

can find and I will find books for you and will read to you all day and all

night and never let you know I'm tired and we shall go for walks when you are

better and you will become happy happy if only you could be if only sad thin

broken face so pale and none else would be there not my mother nor anyone not

Steerpike no no not him, he is too hard and clever not like you who are more

clever but with kindness and not quick with clever words. I can see his mouth

his mouth oh Dr. Prune quick quick the blackness and he's going far away and the

voice Dr. Prune quick the voice is going far away of Barquentine is going far

away I cannot see no no oh black my Dr. Prune the black is swaying . . . swaying

. . .

      A darkness is closing its midnight curtains across her mind and the shapes

before her of her mother, Nannie, Clarice and the Earl recede into floating

fragments, while like the echo of an echo the voice of Barquentine stammers on

and on. Fuchsia cannot feel the Doctor's finger any longer in her palm except as

an infinitely far away sensation, as though she were holding a thin tube of air.

In a final wave the blackness descends once and for all, and her dark head,

falling forward, strikes the table with a thud.

            REVERIE OF IRMA PRUNESQUALLOR

      . . . and I'd very much like to know what advantage I am getting out of

having spent so long a time in the bath and preparing myself for them so

exquisitely for my swan-white throat is the most perfect one in Gormenghast

though I wish my nose weren't quite so pointed, but it is velvet white like the

rest of my skin and it's a pity I wear spectacles with black lenses too I

suppose but I am positive my skin is snow white not only because I can see it

dimly in the mirror when I take my spectacles off although it hurts my eyes but

also because my writing paper is perfectly white when I've got my glasses on and

look at my face and throat in the mirror and then hold a piece of my white

writing paper next to my face I can see that my skin and the stationery are

exactly the same tone of grey and everything else in the mirror all around me is

darken and very often black but what's the use of writing-paper with crinkled

edges to me for there's no one to write to us there used to be when I was

younger not that I was more attractive then for after all I am still a virgin

but there was Spogfrawne who had had so many beautiful adventures among the

people he redeemed from sin and he appreciated me and wrote me three letters on

tissue paper although it was a pity that his pen-nib used to go right through it

so often and make it difficult for me to read the passionate parts where he told

me of his love in fact I couldn't read them at all and when I wrote and asked

him to try and remember them and write me a fourth letter just putting in only

the passionate sentences which I couldn't read in the first three of his

beautiful letters he wouldn't answer me and I think it was because I asked him

in my last message to him to either write more carefully on the tissue paper or

to use ordinary paper that he became shy poor silly stupid glamorous Mr.

Spogfrawne who I will always remember but he hasn't been heard of since and I am

still a virgin and who is there to make love to me tenderly and to touch the tip

of my snowy hands and perhaps just a tiny touch on my hip bone which juts out so

magnificently as Steerpike mentioned that evening when Alfred was called away to

get a fly out of that Slagg woman's eye for Steerpike bless the boy has always

been most observant and I know how it broke my heart to see him so miserable on

the day he left us and now I never see him and it is a pity that he is not a

little older and taller but once he speaks to me and fastens his eye on me in

that respectful way he has noticing the beauty of my skin and hair and the way

my hips come out so excitingly then I do not wish him any different but feel a

little queer and realize how impelling he is for what is age anyway but years

and years are nothing if not silly and ridiculous man made things which do not

understand the way of delicate women with the years coming so unkindly and how

could they be so many in my case all forty of them that have never had their due

or why I am unmarried I do not know when I take so much care over my cleanliness

but who is there who is there oh my emptiness is all alone and with Alfred who

can be so silly though he's really clever but doesn't listen to me and falls

asleep like he is doing now and I wish he wouldn't keep looking at the Earl who

after all isn't someone to be stared at although there is something very strange

about him tonight and how chilly it is in this big and empty and horrible hall

which is so famous but what use is it if we don't talk to each other and there

are no men to watch every gracious movement of my throat and I will be glad to

be back in my house again where I will go on reading my book, and it won't be so

cold and perhaps I can write a note to Steerpike and ask him to supper yes I

will do that Alfred said he won't be in tomorrow evening and . . .

      Her thoughts are broken by a thud to her left.

            THE REVERIE OF LADY CLARICE

      Her thoughts have been identical with those of her sister in every way

save only in one respect, and this cleavage can best be appreciated by the

simple process of substituting Cora's name for her own wherever it appears in

the reverie of the former.

            REVERIE OF GERTRUDE THE COUNTESS OF GORMENGHAST

      . . . at any rate the old Sourdust would have taken longer over this job

than this one and it won't be long before I can have my white cat who is crying

at my heart again may the fiends wrack the long servant's bones and I've left

enough water in the basin for the ravens' bath and can see to the sandpipers'

wing directly I get away from here and my white cat is comforted but the stupid

man has about fourteen pages to get through yet thank heaven I don't have many

of these things to attend and there won't be another child if I know anything

about it but now here is a son for Gormenghast which is what the Castle needed

and when he is older I will teach him how he can take care of himself and how to

live his own life as far as it is possible for one who will find the grey stones

across his heart from day to day and the secret is to be able to freeze the

outsider off completely and then he will be able to live within himself which

Sepulchrave does in the wrong way for what use are books to anyone whose days

are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty and I shall teach the boy to

whistle birds out of the sky to his wrist which I have never taught Fuchsia

because I have kept my knowledge for the boy and if I have the time before he is

twelve years old and if it's a pleasant evening I might take him to the pooi

that is as green as my malachite ring with the silver setting and let him watch

the lesser-fly-spotted-wag-catchers building their soft grey nests out of

moth-wings and dew-twine but how do I know he will be observant and careful with

birds for Fuchsia disappointed me before she was five with her clumsiness for

she used to ram the flowers into the glass vases and bruise the stalks although

she loved them but it is my son I wish to teach for there is no use in my

revealing my secrets to a girl but he will be so useless for a long time and

must be kept away from my room until he is about five at least when he will be

able to absorb what I tell him about the skies' birds and how he can keep his

head quite clear of the duties he must perform day after day until he dies here

as his fathers have done and be buried in the sepulchre of the Groans and he

must learn the secret of silence and go his own way among the birds and the

white cats and all the animals so that he is not aware of men but performs his

legendary duties faithfully as his father has always done whose library was

burned away along with old Sourdust and how it started I have very little idea

except that the Steerpike youth was very quickly upon the scene and though he

was the means of our escape I do not like him and never shall with his

ridiculous little body and slimy manners he must be sent away for I have a

feeling he will do harm and Fuchsia must not be with him for she is not to mix

with so cheap and ignoble a thing as that sharp youth she converses too often

with Prunesquallor with whom I saw her talking twice last month for he is not of

the blood and as for the murderous and devilish Flay who has hurt my poor

defenceless cat so much that all the other white glories will be uneasy through

the black hours of night and feel the pains which he feels as he is curled in my

arms for Flay has broken himself with his ghastly folly and shall be banished

whatever Sepulchrave may say whose face has changed tonight and has been changed

on the three occasions on which I have seen him since the burning of his books

and I will tell the Doctor to attend him constantly for I have a presentiment of

his death and it is good that Titus is born for the line of the Groans must

never be broken through me and there must be no ending at all and no ending and

I shall tell him of his heritage and honour and of how to keep his head above

the interwoven nest and watch the seasons move by and the sounds of the

feathered throats.

      A thud upon the table immediately opposite her causes the Countess to lift

her eyes slowly from the table cloth.

            REVERIE OF NANNIE SLAGG

      . . . yees yees yees it's all so big and wonderful I suppose it is oh my

poor heart this lovely rich breakfast which nobody eats and the little precious

boy in the middle of the cutlery bless his little heart for he hasn't cried once

not once the tiny morsel and with everybody around him too and thinking about

him for it's his breakfast my pretty precious and Nannie will tell you all about

it when you're a big boy oh my poor heart how old I'll be by then and how cold

it is a good thing I wrapped the little boy in his wrap which is under all the

lilac windings yees yees and he mustn't sneeze oh no but be still though I am so

cold and his great heavy mother beside me so that I feel I don't matter at all

and I suppose I don't matter at all for nobody takes any notice of me and nobody

loves me except my darling caution but even she sometimes forgets but not the

others who never think of me except when they want me to do something for them

for I have to do everything and oh my poor heart I'm not young any more and

strong and I get tired and even Fuchsia never remembers how tired I get even now

I'm tired for having to sit so long in the cold so far beneath the huge Countess

who doesn't even look at her little boy who's being so good and I don't think

she could ever love him like I love him but oh my poor heart it's a good thing

the Countess can't hear me thinking about her like this though sometimes I think

she can tell when I think against her because she's so silent and when she looks

at me I don't know what to do or where to go and I feel so little and weak and I

feel like that now but how cold it is and I'd rather have my own simple kind of

breakfast by the fire in my own small room than look at all this food on the

table getting cold although it's all here for the little boy bless him and I

will look after him as long as I have any strength in my poor bones and make him

a good boy and teach Fuchsia to take care of him and she is loving him more than

ever she did before though she doesn't like to hold him like I do and I am glad

because she might drop him the clumsy caution and oh my poor heart if he should

ever fall and be killed oh no no never she must never hold him for she is so

ignorant of how to be careful of a little baby she doesn't look at him now in

the middle of the table any more than her mother or any of the others do but

just stares at her father with her naughty dark face so sad what can it be for

she must tell me and tell me everything leaving nothing out about why she looks

so mournful the silly girl who can have no trouble at her age and hasn't got all

the work to do and the trials which I have on my old shoulders all the time and

it is silly for her to be so sad when she is only a child and doesn't know

anything bless her.

      Nannie is startled by a thud upon the table nearly opposite her.

            REVERIE OF SEPULCHRAVE, 76th EARL OF GORMENGHAST

      . . . and there will be a darkness always and no other colour and the

lights will be stifled away and the noises of my mind strangled among the thick

soft plumes which deaden all my thoughts in a shroud of numberless feathers for

they have been there so long and so long in the cold hollow throat of the Tower

and they will be there for ever for there can be no ending to the owls whose

child I am to the great owls whose infant and disciple I shall be so that I am

forgetting all things and will be taken into the immemorial darkness far away

among the shadows of the Groans and my heartache will be no more and my dreams

and thoughts no more and even memory will be no longer so that my volumes will

die away from me and the poets be gone for I know the great tower stood above my

cogitations day and night through all the hours and they will all go the great

writers and all that lay between the fingered covers all that slept or walked

between the vellum lids where for the centuries they haunted and no longer are

and my remorse is over now and forever for desire and dream has gone and I am

complete and longing only for the talons of the tower and suddenness and

clangour among the plumes and an end and a death and the sweet oblivion for the

last tides are mounting momently and my throat is growing taut and round round

like the Tower of Flints and my fingers curl and I crave the dusk and sharpness

like a needle in the velvet and I shall be claimed by the powers and the

fretting ended . . . ended . . . and in my annihilation there shall be a

consummation for he has come into the long line and is moving forward and the

long dead branch of the Groans has broken into the bright leaf of Titus who is

the fruit of me and there shall be no ending and the grey stones will stand for

always and the high towers for always where the raindrifts weave and the laws of

my own people will go on for ever while among my great dusk haunters in the

tower my ghost will hover and my blood-stream ebb for ever and the striding

fever over who are these and these so far from me and yet so vast and so remote

and vast my Fuchsia dusky daughter bring me branches and a fieldmouse from an

acre of grey pastures . . .

58

HERE AND THERE

      Swelter's thoughts were glued upon Flay's death at his own hand. The time

was ripe. He had practised the art of silent and stealthy movement until he

could no longer hear even the breath-note of his own footstep which over the

stretch of the last fortnight he had striven to stifle. He now moved his bulk

across the earth as silently as the passing of a cloud through the dusk. His

two-handed cleaver had an edge to it which sang with the voice of a gnat when he

held it to his fungus of an ear. Tonight he would leave a small pink wafer at

the top of the last flight of stairs, within a bare twenty feet of the thin man.

It would be a dark night. He listened to the thrumming rain and his eyes turned

to the lake on the cold floor, far down the dining hall. He stared at but did

not see the bleared reflection of the flanking cherubs a hundred feet above the

steel-grey veneer of water. His eyes were unfocused. He would do the work he had

waited to do tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. As his tongue emerged from between

his lips like a carrot and moved from side to side, his eyes moved from the

water to Flay, and the vagueness was at once gone from them. In his stare was

the whole story; and Flay, lifting his eyes from the top of his master's head,

interpreted the vile expression.

      He had known that the attack upon his life was imminent. The coloured

cakes when he had found them on the three preceding occasions had been

successively closer to him. Swelter was trying to wreck him by torturing his

mind and twisting his nerves and he had not slept for many nights but he was

ready. He had not forgotten the twohanded cleaver in the green light and had

found in the armoury an old sword, from which he had removed the rust and had

sharpened to a point and an edge in the stone lanes. Compared to the edge which

Swelter had given to the cleaver the sword was blunt but it was murderous

enough. In Swelter's expression he could read the nearness of the night

encounter. It would be within a week. He could not tell which day. It might be

this very night. It might be any night of the next seven.

      He knew that Swelter could not see him until he was practically upon him

at his Master's door. He knew that the Chef could not know that he had read his

eyes so clearly. He also knew that he was banished from the Castle grounds.

Swelter must not know this. Gertrude would see that he, Flay, was not at Lord

Sepulchrave's door from now onwards, but he could return in the night and follow

the monster as he crept upwards to the passageway on his lethal mission.

      That is what he would do. He would wait every night in the cloisters until

the huge body stole by him and up the stairs. Not till then would he decide

where and when to strike. He only knew that he must lead his foe away from his

sick master's door and that the death must take place in some remote part of the

castle, perhaps in the room of spiders . . or under the attic arches, or even

among the battlements themselves. His thoughts were broken by the thud of

Fuchsia falling forward and he saw the Doctor rise to his feet and stretch

across the table for a glass, his left hand moving around Fuchsia's shoulder as

he did so.

      On the table itself young Titus began to kick and struggle and then with a

high thin cry poor Mrs. Slagg watches him kick the vase of flowers over, and

tear at the lilac-coloured velvet with his hands.

      Steerpike hears the thud above him and taking his cue from the varying

contortions of the legs which hem him in is able to guess pretty accurately what

is happening. There are only two legs which do not move at all and they are both

Gertrude"s. Fuchsia's only visible leg (for her right is still curled beneath

her) has slipped sideways on the boards as she slumps forward. Nannie's are

struggling frantically to reach the floor. Lord Sepulchrave's are swinging idly

to and fro and are close together like a single pendulum. Cora and Clarice are

going through the motions of treading water. The Doctor's have straightened out

into unbroken lengths and his sister's have entered upon the last stages of a

suicide pact, each one strangling the other in an ivy-like embrace.

      Swelter is shifting the soft, dace-like areas of his feet backwards and

forwards, a deliberate and stroking motion, as of something succulent wiping

itself on a mat.

      Flay is rubbing the cracked toe-cap of one of his boots rapidly up and

down his shin bone immediately above the ankle, and, this done, Steerpike

notices that his legs begin to make their way round the long table towards

Fuchsia's chair detonating as they go.

      During this short space of time while the screaming of Titus is drowning

the barking of Barquentine, Prunesquallor has dabbed a quantity of water over

Fuchsia's face with a napkin and has then placed her head gently between her

knees.

      Barquentine has not ceased a moment in the administration of his duties as

the occasional lulls in Titus's howling testify, fbr during the short intervals

of what might have been rain-filled silence the dry, acid tongue of the

Librarian stutters on and on.

      But it is nearly over. He is laying his tomes aside. His withered stump

which, since Fuchsia's faint and the howling of Titus has been scratching at the

boards with an irritability such as might suggest that its ugly termination was

possessed of teeth instead of toes and was doing its best to gnaw its way

through the oak boarding below it -- this stump is now setting about another

business, that of getting itself and the rest of Barquentine upon the seat of

the chair.

      Once aboard the long, narrow table it is for him to march up and down it

from end to end seven times regardless of the china and golden cutlery,

regardless of the glassware, the wine and the repast in general, regardless of

everything in fact save that he must be regardless. Mrs. Slagg snatches the

year-old baby from before the approaching crutch and withered leg, for

Barquentine has lost no time in complying with tradition and the ferrule of his

crutch strikes jarringly upon the polished oak, or cracks among the china plates

or splinters the cut glass. A dull soggy note followed by a squelch betrays the

fact that his withered leg has descended ankle deep in a tureen of tepid

porridge, but it was not for him to turn aside in the promulgation of his duty.

      Doctor Prunesquallor has staggered away with Fuchsia in his arms, having

instructed Flay to escort Lord Sepulchrave to his room. The Countess strangely

enough has taken Titus from Nannie Slagg and having descended from the platform

to the stone slabs below is walking heavily to and fro with the little boy half

over her shoulder. "Now then, now then," she says. "No use crying; no use at

all; not when you're two; wait till you're three. Now then, now then, wait till

you're bigger and I'll show you where the birds live, there's a good child,

there's a . . . Slagg . . . Slagg," she bellows suddenly, interrupting herself.

"Take it away." The Earl and Flay have gone and so has Swelter after casting a

baffled eye over the table and at the wizened Barquentine as he stamps into the

exquisitely prepared and despoiled breakfast.

      Cora and Clarice are left watching Barquentine with their mouths and the

pupils of their eyes so wide open as to cause these caverns to monopolize their

faces to the extent of giving to their countenances an appearance of darkness or

of absence. They are still seated and their bodies beneath their straight

dresses are perfectly rigid while their eyes follow the ancient's every

movement, leaving him only momently when a louder sound than usual forces them

to turn their eyes to the table to observe what the latest ornament to be broken

may be.

      The darkness in the great hall has deepened in defiance of the climbing of

the sun. It can afford to be defiant with such a pall of inky cloud lying over

the castle, over the cracked toothed mountain, over the entire and drenching

regions of Gormenghast from horizon to horizon.

      Barquentine and the Twins trapped in the shadows of the hall which is

itself trapped within the shadows of the passing clouds are lit by one lone

candle, the others having guttered away. In this vast, over-arching refectory

these three -- the vitriolic marionette in his crimson rags and the two stiff

purple puppets, one at either end of the table -- look incredibly minute, tiny

fierce ribs of colour glinting on their clothes as the candleflame moves. The

broken glass on the long table darting forth a sudden diamond from time to time.

From the far end of the Hall near the servants' door, and looking down the inky

perspective of stone pillars, the spectacle of the three at the table would seem

to be taking place in an area the size of a domino.

      As Barquentine completes his seventh journey, the flame of the last candle

stumbles, recovers, and then sinks suddenly into a swamp of tallow and the Hall

is plunged into a complete obscurity, save where the lake in the middle of the

Hall is a pattern of darkness surrounded by depths of another nature. Near the

margin of this inner rain-fed darkness an ant is swimming for its life, its

strength failing momently for there are a merciless two inches of water beneath

it. From far away near the high table comes a scream, and then another and the

sound of a chair falling to the stone slabs seven feet below the platform, and

the sound of Barquentine cursing.

      Steerpike, having observed the legs disappearing out of the door, and to

whom they belonged, has wriggled from his hammock under the table. He is groping

his way to the door. When he reaches it, and has found the handle, he slams it

violently and then, as though he has just _entered_ the room he shouts:

      "Hello there; what's happening there? What's the trouble?"

      On hearing his voice the twins begin to scream for help, while Barquentine

yells, "Light! light! fetch a light you dotard. What are you waiting for?" His

strident voice rises to a shriek and his crutch grinds itself on the table.

"Light! scumcat! light! curse and split you!"

      Steerpike, whose last hour and a half has been a dire disappointment and

boring in the extreme, hugs himself for joy at their shouts.

      "Right away, sir. Right away," he dances out of the door and down the

passage. He is back in less than a minute with a lantern and helps Barquentine

off the table who, once on the ground, batters his way without a word of thanks

down the steps and to the door, cursing as he goes, his red rags glowing dully

in the lantern light. Steerpike watches his horrid body disappear and then

raising his high sharp shoulders still higher he yawns and grins at the same

time. Cora and Clarice are on either side of him and are both breathing very

loudly, their flat bosoms rising and falling rapidly like hatchways. Their eyes

are glued upon him as he escorts them through the door, down the corridor and

all the way to their apartments, which he enters. The windows are streaming with

the rain. The roof is loud with it.

      My dear ladies," says Steerpike, "I feel that some hot coffee is

indicated, but what do _you_ feel?"

59

PRESAGE

      Towards evening the heavy sky began to disintegrate and a short time

before sundown a wind from the west carried the clouds away in dense and shambly

masses and the rain with them. Most of the day had been spent in ceremonial

observance of multifarious kinds, both in the castle and in the downpour

culminating in the pilgrim-like procession of the forty-three Gardeners headed

by Pentecost, to Gormenghast mountain and back, during which time it was their

duty to meditate upon the glory of the House of Groan and especially on the fact

that its latest member was twelve months old, a subject (however momentous) they

must surely have exhausted after the first mile or so of the soaking and

rock-strewn paths that led them over the foothills.

      Be that as it may, Barquentine, lying exhausted on his dirty mattress at

eight o'clock in the evening and coughing horribly as his father had done so

convincingly before him, was able to look back with sour satisfaction on a day

of almost undiluted ritual. It had been an irritating thing that Lord

Sepulchrave had been unable to attend the last three ceremonies, but there was a

tenet in the law which exonerated his absence in the case of dire illness. He

sucked his beard and his withered leg lay quite still. A few feet above his head

a spider scrawled itself across the ceiling. He disliked it, but it did not

anger him.

      Fuchsia had regained consciousness within a short while and with Mrs.

Slagg had bravely taken her part in the day's observances, carrying her small

brother whenever the old nurse grew weary. Prunesquallor, until late in the

evening when he left Flay with his Lordship, had kept a strict watch upon his

patient.

      An indescribable atmosphere of expectancy filled Gormenghast. Instead of

Titus's birthday bringing with it a feeling of completion or climax as it should

have done, there was, conversely, a sense of something beginning. Obscure forces

were, through the media of the inhabitants of the castle, coming to a head. For

some, this sensation was extremely acute although unrecognizable and was no

doubt sharpened and conditioned by their own personal problems. Flay and Swelter

were on the edge of violence. Sepulchrave was moving at the margin of climax and

Fuchsia hardly less so, being consumed with fear and anguish at the parental

tragedy. She also was waiting; they were all waiting. Prunesquallor was

suffering no little strain and was eternally on the watch and the Countess

having held interview with him and having heard as much as Prunesquallor dared

tell her, and having guessed a good deal more, was remaining in her room and

receiving hourly bulletins as to her husband's condition. Even Cora and Clarice

could tell that the normal monotonous life of the castle was not as heretofore

and in their room they sat silently -- waiting also. Irma spent most of her time

in her bath and her thoughts were constantly returning to a notion new to her

and shocking to her, and even terrifying. It was that the House of Groan was

different. Different. Yet, how could it be different? "Impossible! I said

Impossible!" she repeated to herself, through a lather of fragrant suds, but she

could not convince herself. This idea of hers was creeping about Gormenghast

insidiously, remaining for the most part unrecognized save as a sensation of

uneasiness.

      It was only Irma who put her finger on the spot. The others were involved

with counting the portentous minutes before their own particular clouds broke

over them, yet at the back of their personal troubles, hopes and fears, this

less immediate trepidation grew, this intangible suggestion of change, that most

unforgivable of all heresies.

      A few minutes before sunset the sky over the castle was a flood of light

and the wind having dropped, and the clouds vanished, it was difficult to

believe that the mild and gilded atmosphere could ever have hallowed such a day

as began so darkly and continued with such consistent violence. But it was still

Titus's birthday. The crags of the mountain for all their jaggedness were draped

in so innocent a veil of milk and rose as to wholly belie their nature. The

marshlands spread to the North in tranquil stretches of rush-pricked water. The

castle had become a great pallid carving, swarmed here and there by acres of

glittering ivy whose leaves dripped diamonds.

      Beyond the great walls of Gormenghast the mud-huts were gradually

regaining the whitish colour of their natural earth as the late sunlight drew

out the moisture. The old cactus trees steamed imperceptibly and beneath the

greatest of these and lit by the slanting rays of the sun was a woman on

horseback.

      For a long while there seemed to be no movement either in her or her

mount. Her face was dark and her hair had fallen about her shoulders. The pale

light was on her face, and there was a mournful triumph and an extreme

loneliness. She bent forward a little and whispered to the horse who raised his

forefoot on hearing her and beat it back into the soft earth. Then she began to

dismount and it was not easy for her, but she lowered herself carefully down the

wet grey flank. Then she took the basket from where it had been fastened to the

rope bridle and stepped slowly forward to the horse's head. Running her fingers

through the tangled and dripping forelock, she moved them over the hard brow

beneath. You must go back now," she said slowly, "to the Brown Father, so that

he may know that I am safe." Then she pushed the long wet, grey head away from

her with a slow and deliberate movement. The horse turned itself away, the rain

bubbling up in the hoofmarks and forming little gold pools of sky. It turned

back to her once, after a few paces. Then lifting its head very high it shook

its long mane from side to side and the air became filled with a swarm of

pearls. Then suddenly it began to pace along the track of its own hoofmarks and

without a moment's abatement in its pace or the least deviation from its

homeward course, it sped from her. She watched it as it appeared, disappeared,

only to reappear again, as the undulations of the region gave cause, until it

was almost too small to observe. At last she saw that it was about to reach the

ridge of the last stretch of upland before its descent to the invisible plain.

As she watched, it suddenly came to a dead halt, and her heart beat rapidly, for

it turned about and stood for a moment motionless. Then lifting its head very

high as it had done before, it began to move backwards step by step. They were

facing one another over that vast distance as the grey horse was at last

swallowed beneath the horizon.

      She turned towards the mud-huts lying below her in a rose red light. A

crowd had begun to gather and she saw that she was being pointed out.

      With the warm glow of the dying light upon them, the mud dwellings for all

their meanness and congestion had something ethereal about them, and her heart

went out to them as a hundred re-awakened memories flew to her mind. She knew

that bitterness was harboured in the narrow streets, that pride and jealousy

leaned like ghosts against the posts of every carver's doorway, but for a

fleeting moment she saw only the evening light falling across the scenes of her

childhood, and it was with a start that she awakened from this momentary reverie

to notice how the crowd had grown. She had known that this moment would be like

this. She had foreseen such an evening of soft light. She had foreseen that the

earth would be glassed with rain and she had the overpowering sensation of

living through a scene she had already enacted. She had no fear although she

knew she would be met by hostility, prejudice and perhaps violence. Whatever

they did with her it would not matter. She had suffered it already. All this was

far wan history and an archaism.

      Her hand moved to her brow and pushed away a cold lock of hair that clung

blackly to her cheek. "I must bear my child," she said to herself, her lips

framing the soundless words, "and then I shall be complete and only myself and

all will be over." Her pupils grew vast. "You shall be free. From the very

beginning you shall be free of me, as I shall be free of you; and I shall follow

my knowledge -- ah, so soon, so soon into the julip darkness."

      She folded her hands and moved slowly towards the dwellings. High on her

right hand the great outer wall had become colder; its inner face was draped

with shadow and in the depths of the castle Titus sending forth a great

tear-filled cry began to struggle with an unnatural strength in the old nurse's

arms. All at once an eyelid of the rich dusk lifted and Hesper burned over

Gormenghast as under Keda's heart her burden struggled.

60

IN PREPARATION FOR VIOLENCE

      The twelve-month cycle was ended. Titus had begun his second year -- a

year which, though hardly fledged, was so soon to bring forth violence. There

was a sickness in the atmosphere.

      Of all this suspicion and restlessness, he knew nothing, and he will have

no memories of these days. Yet the aftermath of all that was happening in his

infancy will soon be upon him.

      Mrs. Slagg watched him querulously as he tottered in his efforts to keep

balance, for Titus had almost learned to walk. "Why won't he smile?" she

whimpered. "Why won't his little Lordship ever smile?"

      The sound of Barquentine's crutch echoed down the hollow corridors. His

withered leg padded beside it and the red sacking flapped its tatters in hot

gusts. His edicts went forth like oaths.

      Drear ritual turned its wheel. The ferment of the heart, within these

walls, was mocked by every length of sleeping shadow. The passions, no greater

than candle flames, flickered in Time's yawn, for Gormenghast, huge and

adumbrate, out-crumbles all. The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue

weight in the sky -- yet not _in_ the sky, for it was as though there were no

sky, but only air, an impalpable greyblue substance, drugged with the weight of

its own heat and hue. The sun, however brilliantly the earth reflected it from

stone or field or water, was never more than a rayless disc this summer -- in

the thick, hot air -- a sick circle, unrefreshing and aloof.

      The autumn and winter winds and the lashing rain storms and the very cold

of those seasons, for all their barbarism, were of a spleen that voiced the

heart. Their passions were allied to human passions -- their cries to human

cries.

      But it was otherwise with this slow pulp of summer, this drag of heat,

with the incurious yellow eye within it, floating monotonously, day after day.

      At the river's edge the shallow water stank and mists of insects drifted

over the scum, spinning their cry of far forgotten worlds, thinner than needles.

      Toads in the green ooze belched. In the river's bosom the reflection of

the topmost crags of Gormenghast Mountain hung like stalactites, and in the

scarcely perceptible motion of the water appeared to crumble momently -- yet

never to diminish or to disintegrate for all their crumbling. Across the river a

long field of sparse grey-green grasses and dove-grey dust lay stretched as

though stunned between its low flint walls.

      Little clouds of the fine dust were rising at the every footfall of a

small mottled horse, on whose back sat a man in a cape.

      At every fifth step forward of his mount's left leg the rider stood up in

his stirrups and placed his head between the horse's ears. The river wound

beside them, the fields undulating and fading in a blur of heat. The mottled

horse and the caped rider moved on. They were very small. In the haze to the

extreme north the tower of Flints arose like a celluloid ruler set floating upon

its end, or like a water-colour drawing of a tower that has been left in the

open and whose pigment has been all but washed away by a flirt of rain.

      Distance was everywhere -- the sense of far-away -- of detachment. What

might have been touched with an outstretched arm was equally removed, withdrawn

in the grey-blue polliniferous body of the air, while overhead the inhuman

circle swam. Summer was on the roofs of Gormenghast. It lay inert, like a sick

thing. Its limbs spread. It took the shape of what it smothered. The masonry

sweated and was horribly silent. The chestnuts whitened with dust and hung their

myriads of great hands with every wrist broken.

      What was left of the water in the moat was like soup. A rat floundered

across it, part swimming, part walking. Thick sepia patches of water were left

in the unhealthy scum where its legs had broken through the green surface.

      The quadrangles were soft with dust. It had settled along the branches of

the nearby trees. Footmarks were left deeply until the dry gusts came again. The

varying lengths of stride -- the Doctor"s, Fuchsia"s, the Countess"s, Swelter"s,

could all be measured here, crossing and recrossing one another as though at the

same time, yet hours, days and weeks divided them.

      In the evening the bats, those fabulous winged mice, veered, tacked and

slid through the hot gloom.

      Titus was growing older.

      It was four days since the Dark Breakfast. It was one year and four days

since he was born in the room of wax and birdseed. The Countess would see no

one. From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She

set them in long lines. She rearranged their order as she cogitated upon the

Burning. She watched from her window as figures passed below. She turned her

impressions over heavily. She was pondering all who passed by. From time to time

Steerpike passed, as she sat at her window. Her husband was going mad. She had

never loved him and she did not love him now, her heart being awakened to

tenderness only by her birds and her white cats. But though she did not love him

for himself, her unthinking and rooted respect for the heritage which he

personified and her dumb pride in the line of his descent had filled her since

her discovery of his illness.

      Flay had gone, at her orders, to what lay beyond the great walls. He had

gone, and though she would no more have thought of recalling him than of ceasing

to tend the cat which he had bruised, yet she was aware of having uprooted a

part of Gormenghast, as though from an accustomed skyline of towers one had been

broken down. He had gone -- but not altogether. Not for a little while,

completely.

      On the five nights following the day of his banishment -- Titus's first

birthday -- he had returned unobserved when light had fallen.

      He had moved like a stick-insect through the grey star-pricked, summer

night, and knowing every bay, inlet and headland of the great stone island of

the Groans, of its sheer cliffs, of its crumbling outcrops, he had pursued his

way without hesitation on a zig-zag course. He had only to lean against the

cliff face and he was absorbed. For the five last nights he had come, after

long, sultry days of waiting among the skirting trees of the twisted woods,

through a gap in the castle walls to the western wing. In his banishment he had

felt the isolation of a severed hand, which realizes that it is no more part of

the arm and body it was formed to serve and where the heart still beats. As yet,

for him, the horror of his ostracization was too close for him to grasp -- only

the crater-like emptiness. The stinging-nettles had not had time to fill the

yawning hollow. It was loneliness without pain.

      His loyalty to the castle, too deep for him to question, was his heart's

background: to all that was implied by the broken line of the towers. With his

knees drawn up to his chin he pored upon that skyline as he sat at the base of

an outcrop of rock among the trees. At his side lay the long sword he had

sharpened. The sun was going down. In another three hours he would be on his

way, for the sixth time since his banishment, to the cloisters he had known

since his youth. To the cloisters in whose northern shadows was an entrance to

the stairhead of the wine vaults and the Kitchens. A thousand recollections

attached themselves to these cloisters alone. Sudden happenings -- the awakening

of ideas that had borne fruit or had withered at his touch -- the memories of

his youth -- of his infancy even, for a brightly coloured vignette at the back

of his dark skull recurred from time to time, a vignette of crimson, gold and

grey. He had had no recollection of who it was who led him by the hand, but he

recalled how, between two of the southerly arches, he and his guardian were

stopped -- how the air had been filled with sunshine -- how a giant, for so he

must then have appeared to the child, a giant in gold had given him an apple --

the globe of crimson which he had never released from his mind's empyric grasp,

nor the grey of the long hair that fell across the brow and over the shoulders

of his first memory.

      Few of Flay's memories were as colourful. His early years had been hard,

grinding and monotonous. His recollections were associated with fears and

troubles and hardships. He could remember how beneath the very cloister arches

to which he was so soon to make his way he had received in grim silence, insult

and even violence, no less than twinges of pleasure. He had leaned there,

against the fourth pillar, on the afternoon following his unexpected summons to

Lord Sepulchrave's study, where he had been told of his advancement -- of his

being chosen as the Earl's first servant; of how the Earl had noticed and

approved of his silent and taciturn bearing, and of his reward. He had leaned

there, his heart thumping; and he recalled how he had for a moment weakened,

wishing he had a friend to whom he might speak of his happiness. But that was

long ago. Clicking his tongue he dismissed recollections from his mind.

      A gibbous moon was rising and the earth and the trees about him were

dappled and striped with slowly shifting blotches of black and pearlish white.

Radiance, in the shape of an oyster, moved across his head. He turned his eye to

the moon among the trees and scowled at it. This was no night for a moon. He

cursed it, but in a childlike way for all the grim formation of his bones,

stretching out his legs, on whose knees his chin had been supported.

      He moved his thumb along the edge of his sword, and then unrolled a

misshapen parcel at his side. He had not forgotten to bring some food with him

from the castle, and now, five nights later, he made a meal upon all that was

left of it. The bread had gone dry, but it tasted sweet to him after a day's

abstinence, with the cheese and the wild blackberries he had gathered in the

woods. He left nothing but a few crumbs on his black trousers. There was no

rational reason why he should feel, as he finished the berries, that horror lay

between his last mouthful and his next meal -- whenever it might be, and however

he might acquire it.

      Perhaps it was the moon. On his five previous nocturnal journeys to the

castle there had been no light. Thick rainless clouds had provided a perfect

cover. Schooled to adversity he took it as a sign that the hour was approaching.

Indeed, it seemed more natural that Nature should be his enemy.

      He rose slowly, and from beneath a heap of ferns he drew forth into the

moonlight great lengths of cloth -- and then began a most peculiar operation.

Squatting down, he began, with the concentration of a child, to bind the cloth

about his knees, around and around endlessly, until they were swathed to a depth

of five thick inches, loosely at the joint and more tightly as they wound below

and above it and as the binding thickened. This business took him the best part

of an hour, for he was very scrupulous and had several times to unwind long

swathes to adjust and ease the genuflexions of his knees.

      Finally, however, all was ready and he got to his feet. He took a step

forward; then another, and it seemed as though he was listening for something.

Was there no sound? He took three more paces, his head lowered and the muscles

behind his ears working. What was that that he heard? It was like a muffled

clock that ticked three times, and stopped. It sounded very far away. There were

a few lengths of cloth left over and he bound his knees to another half inch of

thickness. When he next stepped forward the silence was absolute.

      It was still possible for him to move with comparative freedom. His legs

were so long that he had become accustomed to use them as stilts, and it was

only with the slightest bending of the knee that they were wont to detonate.

      The moonlight lay in a gauze-like sheet of whiteness over the roof of the

Twisted Woods. The air was hot and thick, and the hour was late when he began to

move towards the castle. To reach the cloisters would take him an hour of rapid

walking. The long sword gleamed in his hand. At the corners of his lipless mouth

was the red stain of blackberries.

      The trees were left behind and the long slopes where the juniper bushes

crouched like animals or deformed figures in the darkness. He had skirted the

river and had found a clammy mist lying like a lover along its length, taking

its curves and hugging its croaking body, for the bull-frogs had made the night

air loud. The moon behind the miasmic wreaths swam and bulged as though in a

distorting mirror. The air was sickly with an aftermath of the day's heat, as

lifeless as though it had been breathed before, thrice exhaled and stale. Only

his feet felt cold as they sank ankle-deep in the dew. It was as though he trod

through his own sweat.

      With every step he became more conscious that he was narrowing the

distance between himself and something horrible. With every step the cloisters

leapt forward to meet him and his heart pounded. The skin was puckered between

his eyes. He strode on.

      The outer wall of the castle was above him. It mouldered in the moon.

Where colonies of lizards clung to its flaking surfaces it shone.

      He passed through an arch. The unchecked growth of ivy which clung about

it had almost met at the centre of the aperture, and Flay, bending his head,

forced his way through a mere fissure. Once through and the grounds of

Gormenghast opened balefully out with an alien intimacy as though an accustomed

face should, after confining itself for years to a score of cardinal

expressions, take on an aspect never known before.

      Keeping as much in the shadows as he could, Flay made rapid progress over

the uneven ground towards the servants' wing. He was treading on forbidden

ground. Excommunicated by the Countess, each footfall was a crime committed.

      During the final stages of his progress to the cloisters he moved with a

kind of angular stealth. At times he would come to a halt and genuflect in rapid

succession, but he could hear no sound; then he would move on again, the sword

in his hand. And then, suddenly, before he realized it, he was in the servants'

quadrangle and skirting the wall to the cloisters. Within a minute and he was

part of the charcoaled shadow of the third pillar where he had waited so

patiently for the last five moonless nights.

61

BLOOD AT MIDNIGHT

      Tonight the atmosphere was alive -- a kind of life made even more palpable

by the torpor of the air -- the ghastly summer air of Gormenghast. By day, the

heat of the dead light; by darkness, the vomitings of the sick room. There was

no escaping. The season had come down.

      As Mr. Flay waited, his shoulder-blades against the stone pillars, his

thoughts flowed back to the day of the Christening when he had slashed at the

great soft face -- to the night when he had watched the rehearsal of his murder

-- to that horrible sack that had been _he_ -- to the day of the debauchery of

the Great Kitchens -- to the horrors of the hooting Earl -- to a hundred

memories of his tormentor, whose face in his imagination opened out before him

in the darkness like something septic.

      His ears were strained with listening and his muscles ached. He had not

moved for over an hour, save to turn his head upon his neck. And then, suddenly,

what was it that had changed? He had shut his eyes for a moment and on opening

them the air had altered. Was the heat even more horrible? His torn shirt was

stuck to his shoulders and belly. It was more than that -- it was that the

darkness was omnipresent. The quadrangle was as inky as the shadows in which he

had been shrouded. Clouds had moved over the moon. Not even the bright sword in

his hand could be seen as he moved it out into what had been moonlight.

      And then it came. A light more brilliant than the sun's -- a light like

razors. It not only showed to the least minutiae the anatomy of masonry, pillars

and towers, trees, grass-blades and pebbles, it conjured these things, it

constructed them from nothing. They were not there before -- only the void, the

abactinal absences of all things -- and then a creation reigned in a blinding

and ghastly glory as a torrent of electric fire coursed across heaven.

      To Flay it seemed an eternity of nakedness; but the hot black eyelid of

the entire sky closed down again and the stifling atmosphere rocked

uncontrollably to such a yell of thunder as lifted the hairs on his neck. From

the belly of a mammoth it broke and regurgitated, dying finally with a

long-drawn growl of spleen. And then the enormous midnight gave up all control,

opening out her cumulous body from horizon to horizon, so that the air became

solid with so great a weight of falling water that Flay could hear the limbs of

trees breaking through a roar of foam.

      There was no longer any necessity for Flay, shielded from the rain by the

roof of the cloisters, to hold his body in so cramped a manner. What little

sound he made would be inaudible now that the falling rain hissed and drummed,

beat across the massive back of Gormenghast and swarmed down its sides, bubbling

and spurting in every cranny of stone, and swilling every niche where had lain

for so long the white dust.

      Even more so now had he to listen for the sound of approaching paces, and

it is doubtful whether he would have been able to disengage the sound of the

chef's feet from the drumming background. What he had never expected happened

and his heart broke into an erratic hammering, for the impalpable darkness to

his left was disturbed by a faint light, and, immediately after, the source of

this hazy aura moved through the midnight. It was a strip of vertical light that

appeared to float on end of its own volition. The invisible bearer of the

octagonal lantern had closed all but one of the shutters.

      As Flay edged his fingers more firmly along the butt of his sword, the

glow of the lantern came abreast of him and a moment later had passed, and at

this same moment, against the pale yellow glow could be distinguished the

silhouette of Swelter's upper volume. It was quite simple. It curved up and over

in one black dome. There seemed to be no head. It must have been thrust down and

forward, an attitude that might have been imagined impossible in one whose rolls

of lardcoloured fat filled in the space between the chin and the clavicles.

      When Flay judged the silhouette a good twelve paces distant he began to

follow, and then there began the first of the episodes -- that of the stalk. If

ever man stalked man, Flay stalked Swelter. It is to be doubted whether, when

compared with the angular motions of Mr. Flay, any man on earth could claim to

stalk at all. He would have to do it with another word.

      The very length and shape of his limbs and joints, the very formation of

his head, and hands and feet were constructed as though for this process alone.

Quite unconscious of the stick-insect action, which his frame was undergoing, he

followed the creeping dome. For Mr. Swelter was himself -- at all events in his

own opinion -- on the tail of his victim. The tail did not happen to be where he

supposed it, two floors above, but he was moving with all possible stealth,

nevertheless. At the top of the first flight he would place his lantern

carefully by the wall, for it was then that the candles began and continued at

roughly equal distances, to cast their pale circles of light from niches in the

walls. He began to climb.

      If Mr. Flay stalked, Mr. Swelter _insinuated_. He insinuated himself

through space. His body encroached, sleuth-like, from air-volume to air-volume,

entering, filling and edging out of each in turn, the slow and vile belly

preceding the horribly deliberate and potentially nimble progress of his fallen

arches.

      Flay could not see Swelter's feet, only the silhouetted dome, but by the

way it ascended he could tell that the chef was moving one step at a time, his

right foot always preceding his left, which he brought to the side of its

dace-like companion. He went up in slow, silent jerks in the way of children,

invalids or obese women. Flay waited until he had rounded the curve of the

stairs and was on the first landing before he followed, taking five stone steps

at a time.

      On reaching the top of the first flight he moved his head around the

corner of the wall and he no longer saw the silhouette of his enemy. He saw the

whole thing glowing by the light of two candles. The passageway was narrow at

this point, broadening about forty to fifty feet further down the corridor to

the dimensions of a hall, whence the second flight led up to Lord Sepulchrave's

corridor.

      Swelter was standing quite still, but his arms were moving and he appeared

to be talking to someone. It was difficult for Flay to see exactly what he was

doing until, a moment after he had heard the voice saying: "And I'll make you

red and wet, my pretty thing," he saw the dim bulk half turn with difficulty in

the constricted space of the passageway and he caught the gleam of steel, and a

moment later a portion of the shaft and the entire murderous head of the

double-handed cleaver. Mr. Swelter was nursing it in his arms as though he was

suckling it.

      "Oh, so red and wet," came the moss-soft voice again, "and then we"ll wipe

you dry with a nice clean handkerchief. Would you like a silk one, my pretty?

Would you? Before we polish you and tuck you up? What, no answer? But you know

what Papa's saying, don't you now? Of course, you do -- after all that he has

taught you. And why? Because you're such a quick, sharp baby -- oh, such a sharp

baby."

      And then Mr. Flay was forced to hear the most disgusting sound -- as of

some kind of low animal with gastric trouble. Mr. Swelter was laughing.

      Flay, with a fair knowledge of low life, was nevertheless unable to

withhold himself and, kneeling down quickly upon the great pads at his knees, he

was silently sick.

      Wiping the sweat from his brow as he rose to his feet he peered again

about the angle of wall and saw that Swelter had reached the foot of the second

staircase where the corridor widened. The sound of the rain, though less

intense, was perpetually there. In the very sound of it, though distant, could

be felt an unnatural weight. It was as though the castle were but the size of a

skull over which a cistern of water was being rapidly emptied. Already the

depressions and valley-like hollows in the castle grounds were filled with dark

lakes that mounted momently, doubling and trebling their areas as their creeping

edges met. The terrain was awash.

      A closer degree of intimacy had been established in the castle between

whatever stood, lay, knelt, was propped, shelved, hidden or exposed, or left

ready for use, animate or inanimate, within the castle walls. A kind of

unwilling knowledge of the nearness of one thing to another -- of one human, to

another, though great walls might divide them -- of _nearness_ to a clock, or a

banister, or a pillar or a book, or a sleeve. For Flay the horrible nearness to

_himself_ -- to his own shoulder and hand. The outpouring of a continent of sky

had incarcerated and given a weird hyper-reality of _closeness_ to those who

were shielded from all but the sound of the storm.

      Lying awake, for none could hope to sleep, there was not one in all the

dark and rattling place who had not cogitated, if only for a moment, on the fact

that the entire castle was awake also. In every bed there lay, with his or her

lids apart, a figure. They saw each other. This consciousness of each other's

solid and individual presences had not only been engendered by the imprisoning

downpour but by the general atmosphere of suspicion that had been mounting -- a

suspicion of they knew not exactly what -- only that something was changing --

changing in a world where change was crime.

      It was lucky for Flay that what he had relied on, the uncommunicative

character of the Countess, held true, for she had not mentioned his banishment

to a soul, although its cause still smarted in her prodigious bosom.

      Hence Swelter's ignorance of the fact that, as he made his first few

porridge-like paces along Lord Sepulchrave's ill-lit corridor, he was

approaching a Flay-less darkness, for immediately before the door there was

impenetrable shadow. A high window on the left had been blown in and glass lay

scattered and, at the stairhead, glittered faintly by the light of a candle.

      Mr. Flay, in spite of the almost unbearable tension, experienced a twinge

of ironic pleasure when, having mounted the second flight, he watched the rear

of his enemy wavering into the darkness, in search of his own stalker.

      There was a shallow alcove across the passageway from the top of the

stairs -- and with two strides Mr. Flay had reached it. From there he could

watch the darkness to his left. It was purposeless to follow his enemy to the

door of his master's room. He would wait for his return. How would the chef be

able to aim his blow in the darkness? He would prod forward with the cleaver

until it touched the panels of the door. He would take a soft pace backwards.

Then, as he raised the great instrument above his head, a worm, wriggling its

bliss through his brain, would bring the double-handed cleaver down, like a

guillotine, the great blade whetted to a screaming edge. And as this picture of

Mr. Swelter's methods illumined the inside of Mr. Flay's darkened skull, those

very movements were proceeding. Concurrently with Flay's visualization of the

cleaver falling -- the cleaver fell.

      The floorboard beneath Mr. Flay's feet lifted, and a wooden ripple ran

from one end of the passageway to the other, where it broke upon a cliff of

plaster. Curiously enough, it was only through the movement of the boards

beneath his feet that Mr. Flay knew that the chef had struck, for at the same

moment a peal of thunder killed all other sound.

      Swelter had brought the cold edge downwards with such a concentration of

relish that the excruciating sense of consummation had dulled his wits for a

moment, and it was only when he attempted to work the steel away from what

gripped its edge that he realized that something was amiss. It is true that he

had expected the blade to slide through the "prostrate" beneath him as through

butter, for all the thin man's osseous character -- but not, surely -- not with

_such_ ease -- such _liquid_ ease. Could it be that he had given to the

double-handed cleaver such an edge as set up a new sensation -- that of killing,

as it were, without knowing it -- as lazes through long grass the lethal scythe.

He had not prodded forward with his toe to make doubly sure -- for it had never

occurred to him that he who had lain there, night after night, for over twelve

years, could be elsewhere. In any event he might have wakened the long scrag by

so doing. What had gone wrong? The orgasmic moment he had so long awaited was

over. The cleaver was difficult to shift. Perhaps it was caught among the ribs.

He began to run his hands down the shaft inch by inch, bending his knees and

trunk as he did so, hot tracts of hairless clay redistributing their undulations

the while. Inexorably downwards moved his fingers until they itched for contact

with the corpse. Surely his hands must by now be almost at the boards

themselves, yet he knew how deceptive the sense of distances can be when

darkness is complete. And then he came upon the steel. Sliding his palms

greedily along either edge he gave a sudden loud, murderous hiss, and loosing

his fingers from the edge of the cleaver he swung his bulk about as though his

foe were close behind him -- and he peered back along the passage at the faint

light at the stairhead. There seemed to be no one there, and after a few moments

of scrutiny he wiped his hands across his thighs, and turning to the cleaver,

wrenched it from the boards.

      For a short while he stood fingering his misused weapon, and during this

space Mr. Flay had conceived and acted, moving a few yards further down the

corridor where an even more favourable ambush presented itself in the shape of a

sagging tapestry. As he moved out into the darkness, for he was beyond the orbit

of the candles' influence, the lightning struck again and flared bluishly

through the broken window so that at one and the same moment both Swelter and

Flay caught sight of one another. The bluish light had flattened them out like

cardboard figures which had, in the case of the chef, an extraordinary effect.

Someone with an unpleasant mind had cut him out of an enormous area of

electric-blue paper the size of a sheet. For the few moments that the lightning

lasted his fingers and thumbs were like bright blue sausages clasped about the

cleaver's handle.

      Flay, presenting no less the illusion of having no bulk, struck not so

much a sense of horror into Mr. Swelter as a fresh surge of malice. That he

should have dulled the exquisite edge of his cleaver upon Flay-less boards, and

that he who should now be lying in two pieces was standing there in one,

standing there insolently in a kind of stage lighting as a tangible criticism of

his error, affected him to the extreme of control, and a horrid sweat broke from

his pores.

      No sooner had they seen one another than the darkness closed again. It was

as though the curtain had come down on the first act. All was altered. Stealth

was no longer enough. Cunning was paramount and their wits were under test. Both

had felt that theirs was the initiative and the power to surprise -- but now,

for a few moments at least, they were equated.

      Flay had, from the beginning, planned to draw the chef from Lord

Sepulchrave's doorway and passage, and if possible to lure him to the storey

above, where, interspaced with wooden supports, for the roof was rotten, and

with many a fallen beam, mouldered the Hall of Spiders, at whose far end a

window lay open to a great area of roof, terraced with stone and turreted about

its sheer edges. It had occurred to him that if he were to snatch the candle

from the stairhead he might lure his enemy there, and as the darkness fell he

was about to put this idea into operation when the door of Lord Sepulchrave's

bedroom opened and the Earl, with a lamp in his hand, moved out into the

corridor. He moved as though floating. A long cloak, reaching to his ankles,

gave no hint of legs beneath it. Turning his head neither to left nor right, he

moved like the symbol of sorrow.

      Swelter, flattening himself as much as he was able against the wall, could

see that his lordship was asleep. For a moment Mr. Flay had the advantage of

seeing both the Earl and the chef without being seen himself. Where was his

master going? Swelter was for a few moments at a loss to know what to do and by

that time the Earl was almost abreast of Mr. Flay. Here was an opportunity of

drawing the chef after him without the fear of being overtaken or slashed at

from behind, and Flay, stepping in front of the Earl, began to precede him down

the passage, walking backwards all the while so that he could see the chef over

his Lordship's shoulder as the dim figure followed. Mr. Flay was well aware that

his own head would be lit by the Earl's lamp whereas Swelter would be in

semi-darkness, but there was no great advantage to the chef in that -- for the

creature could not get at him for fear of waking the Earl of Gormenghast.

      As Flay receded step by step he could not, though he tried to, keep his

eyes continually upon the great cook. The proximity of his Lordship's lamp-lit

face left him no option but to turn his eyes to it, rapidly, from time to time.

The round, open eyes were glazed. At the corners of the mouth there was a little

blood, and the skin was deadly white.

      Meanwhile, Swelter had narrowed the distance between the Earl and himself.

Flay and the chef were staring at one another over their master's shoulder. The

three of them seemed to be moving as one piece. Individually so much at

variance, they were, collectively, so compact.

      Darting an eye over his shoulder, as though without reference to the head

that held it, Flay could see that he was within a few feet of the stairway, and

the procession began the slow ascent of the third flight. The leader, his body

facing down the stairs, the while, kept his left hand on the iron banister. In

his right the sword glimmered -- for, as with all the stairways of Gormenghast,

there were candles burning at every landing.

      As Flay reached the last step he saw that the Earl had stopped and that

inevitably the great volume of snail-flesh had come to a halt behind him.

      It was so gentle that it seemed as though a voice were evolving from the

half-light -- a voice of unutterable mournfulness. The lamp in the shadowy hand

was failing for lack of oil. The eyes stared through Mr. Flay and through the

dark wall beyond and on and on through a world of endless rain.

      "Good-bye," said the voice. "It is all one. Why break the heart that never

beat from love? We do not know, sweet girl; the arras hangs: it is so far; so

far away, dark daughter. Ah no -- not that long shelf -- not that long shelf: it

is his lifework that the fires are eating. All's one. Goodbye . . . good-bye."

      The Earl climbed a further step upwards. His eyes had become more

circular.

      "But they will take me in. Their home is cold; but they will take me in.

And it may be their tower is lined with love -- each flint a cold blue stanza of

delight, each feather, terrible; quills, ink and flax, each talon, glory!" His

accents were infinitely melancholy as he whispered: "Blood, blood, and blood and

blood, for you, the muffled, all, all for you and I am on my way, with broken

branches. She was not mine. Her hair as red as ferns. She was not mine. Mice,

mice; the towers crumble -- flames are swarmers. There is no swarmer like the

nimble flame; and all is over. Good-bye . . . Good-bye. It is all one, for ever,

ice and fever. Oh, weariest lover -- it will not come again. Be quiet now. Hush,

then, and do your will. The moon is always; and you will find them at the mouths

of warrens. Great wings shall come, great silent, silent wings . . . Goodbye.

All's one. All's one. All's one."

      He was now on the landing, and for a moment Mr. Flay imagined he was about

to move across the corridor to a room opposite, where a door was swinging, but

he turned to the left. It would have been possible, indeed it would have been

easier and more to Flay's advantage to have turned about and sped to the Hall of

Spiders, for Lord Sepulchrave, floating like a slow dream, barred Swelter's way;

but at the very idea Mr. Flay recoiled. To leave his sleeping master with a

prowling chef at his shoulder horrified him, and he continued his fantastic

retreat as before.

      They were about halfway to the Hall of Spiders when, to both Flay's and

Swelter's surprise, the Earl moved off to the left down a narrow artery of

midnight stone. He was immediately lost, for the defile wound to the left after

the first few paces and the guttering of the lamp was quenched. His

disappearance had been so sudden and unexpected that neither party was prepared

to leap into the vacuum left between them and to strike out in the faint light.

It was in this region that the Grey Scrubbers slept and some distance down there

was suspended from the ceiling a broken chandelier. Towards this light Mr. Flay

suddenly turned and ran, while Swelter, whose frustrated blood-lust was ripe as

a persimmon, thinking the thin man to have panicked, pursued him with horribly

nimble steps for all the archless suction of his soles.

      Covering the flagstones with a raking stride, Mr. Flay was for all his

speed little more than nine feet in advance of Swelter as he broke his way into

the Hall of Spiders. Without losing a moment, he scrambled over three fallen

beams, his long limbs jerking out fantastically as he did so, and turned when he

had reached the centre of the room to discover that the door he had entered by

was already filled with his enemy. So intent had they been on their game of wits

and death that it had not occurred to them to wonder how it was that they were

able to see one another in what was normally a lightless hall. They found no

time for surprise. They did not even realize that the fury had died out of the

storm and that the only sound was of a heavy, lugubrious droning. A third of the

sky was clear of cloud and in this third was the humpbacked moon, very close and

very white. Its radiance poured through the open wall at the far end of the Hall

of Spiders. Beyond the opening it danced and glittered on the hissing water that

had formed great walled-in lakes among the roofs. The rain slanted its silver

threads and raised spurts of quicksilver on striking water. The Hall itself had

the effect of a drawing in black, dove-grey and silver ink. It had long been

derelict. Fallen and half-fallen beams were leaning or lying at all angles and

between these beams, joining one to another, hanging from the ceiling of the

floor above (for most of the immediate welkin had fallen in), spreading in every

direction taut or sagging, plunged in black shadow, glimmering in half-light, or

flaming exquisitely with a kind of filigree and leprous brilliance where the

moon fell unopposed upon them, the innumerable webs of the spiders filled the

air.

      Flay had broken through a liana of shadowy webs, and now, in the centre of

the room -- watching the cook in the doorway, he clawed away the misty threads

from his eyes and mouth with his left hand. Even in those areas of the hall

where the moonbeams could not penetrate and where the great glooms brooded, the

darkness was intersected here and there by glittering strands that seemed to

shift their position momently. The slightest deflection of the head drew forth

against the darkness a new phenomenon of glittering twine, detached from its

web, disarticulated, miraculous and transient.

      What eyes had they for such ephemera? Those webs to them were screens to

aid or hinder. To snare with or be snared by. These were the features of Death's

battleground. Swelter's shadowy moonless body at the door was intersected by the

brilliant radii and jerking perimeters of a web that hung about halfway between

himself and Mr. Flay. The centre of the web coincided with his left nipple. The

spacial depths between the glittering threads of the web and the chef seemed

abysmic and prodigious. He might have belonged to another realm. The Hall of

Spiders yawned and shrank, the threads deceiving the eye, the distances,

shifting, surging forward or crumbling away, to the illusory reflectings of the

moon.

      Swelter did not stay by the door longer than it took him to gain a general

impression of the kind of hovel in which the thin man chose to protect his long

bones. Seeping with malice, yet the chef was not inclined to under-rate the

guile of his antagonist. He had been lured here for some reason. The arena had

not been of his choosing. He swivelled his eyes to left and right, his cleaver

poised before him. He noted the encumbrances -- the haphazard beams, dusty and

half-decayed, and the omnipresent awnings of the spiders. He could not see why

these should be more to his disadvantage than to the man he intended to sever.

      Flay had never had a concrete reason for his choice of the Hall of

Spiders. Perhaps it was because he imagined that he would prove more agile among

the webs and beams; but this he now doubted, having found how swiftly the chef

had followed him. But that he had fulfilled his intention of inveigling his

enemy to the place of his own choosing must surely infer that the initiative

once again lay with him. He felt himself to be a _thought_ ahead of the cook.

      He held the long sword ahead of him as he watched the great creature

approach. Swelter was sweeping aside the webs that impeded him with his cleaver,

keeping his eyes upon Mr. Flay and shifting his head on his neck from side to

side in order to improve his view. He came to a halt and with his eyes

perpetually fixed on Mr. Flay began to drag away the clinging cobwebs from the

blade and handle of his weapon.

      He came forward again, sweeping the cleaver in great arcs before him and

treading gingerly over the slanting timbers, and then seemed about to halt once

more in order to repeat the unwebbing process when, with an obvious change of

purpose, he moved forward as though no obstacles were in his path. He seemed to

have decided that to be continually reconditioning himself and his weapon during

the bloodencounter was ill-advised and untimely, not to say an insult to the

occasion.

      As pirates in the hot brine-shallows wading, make, face to face, their

comber-hindered lunges, sun-blind, fly-agonied, and browed with pearls, so here

the timbers leaned, moonlight misled and the rank webs impeded. It was necessary

to ignore them -- to ignore them as they tickled the face and fastened

themselves about the mouth and eyes. To realize that although between the sword

and the hand, the hand and the elbow, the elbow and the body, the silvery

threads hung like tropical festoons, and although the naked steel was as though

delivered in its caul, that the limbs were free to move, as free as ever before.

The speed of the swung cleaver would in no way be retarded. The secret was to

_ignore_.

      So Swelter moved forward, growing at each soft, deft pace more and more

like something from the deeps where the grey twine-weed coils the sidling

sea-cow. Suddenly stepping into a shaft of moonlight he flamed in a network of

threads. He peered through a shimmering mesh. He was gossamer.

      He concentrated his entire sentience on the killing. He banished all

irrelevancies from his canalized mind. His great ham of a face was tickling as

though aswarm with insects, but there was no room left in his brain to receive

the messages which his nerve endings were presumably delivering -- his brain was

full. It was full of death.

      Flay watched his every step. His long back was inclined forwards like the

bole of a sloping conifer. His head was lowered as though he was about to use it

as a battering ram. His padded knees were slightly bent. The yards of cloth were

now redundant, but there was no opportunity for him to unwind them. The cook was

within seven feet of him. Between them lay a fallen beam. About two yards to

Swelter's left its extremity had settled into the dust, but to the right, the

relic of an old iron box supporting it roughly at its centre, it terminated

about three feet up in the air, spilth'd with fly-choked webs.

      It was towards the support of this beam that Swelter made his way, beating

the filigreed moonlight to his knees where it sagged and flared. His path could

be traced. He had left behind him from the door, to where he stood, the

web-walled canyon of a dream. Standing now, immediately behind the broken box,

he had narrowed the distance between them to just over the measure of his arm

and cleaver. The air between them was a little clearer. They were closer now

than they had ever been this raining night. That dreadful, palpable closeness

that can only be felt when there is mutual hatred. Their separate and immediate

purposes were identical. What else had they in common? Nothing but the Spider's

Hall about them, the webs, the beams, the by-play of the spangling moon and the

drumming of the rain in their ears.

      At any other time the chef would have made play with his superior wit. He

would have taunted the long, half-crouching figure before him. But now, with

blood to be spilt, what did it matter whether or not he incensed his foe? His

wit would fall in a more concrete way. It would flash -- but in steel. And let

his final insult be that Flay could no longer tell an insult from a lamb-chop --

unless with his body in two pieces he were still able to differentiate.

      For a moment they stood, moving a little up and down on their toes. With

his sword before him Mr. Flay began to move along his side of the fallen beam,

to the left, in order presumably to come to closer grips. As Swelter moved his

little eyes to the right following every movement of the other's body, he found

that his vision was being impeded by so heavy an interfusion of ancient webbing

that it would be unwise for him to remain where he was. In a flash he had both

taken a sideways pace to his left and switched his eyes in the same direction.

Flay at once crept in upon him, his face half shrouded by the thick webs through

which he peered. His head was immediately above the lower end of the beam.

Swelter's rapid glance to his left had been fruitful. He had seen the lifted end

of the beam as his first true friend in a hail of hindrances, and when his eyes

returned to his thin foe his fat lips twisted. Whether such a muscular obscenity

could be termed a "smile" he neither knew nor cared. Mr. Flay was crouching

exactly where he had hoped that he might lure him. His chin was,

characteristically, jutting forwards -- as though this habit had been formed for

Mr. Swelter's convenience alone. There was no time to lose. Swelter was three

feet from the raised terminal of the long beam when he sprang. For a moment

there was so much flesh and blood in the air that a star changed colour under

Saturn's shoulder. He did not land on his feet. He had not intended to. To bring

the entire weight of his body down upon the beam-head was all that mattered. He

brought it down; and as his under-belly struck, the far end of the beam leapt

like a living thing, and, striking Mr. Flay beneath his outstretched jaw, lifted

him to his full height before he collapsed, a dead weight, to the floor.

      The chef, heaving himself grotesquely to his feet, could hardly get to the

body of his victim quickly enough. There he lay, his coat rucked up at the level

of his arm-pits, his lean flank exposed. Mr. Swelter raised the cleaver. He had

waited so long for this. Many, many months. He turned his eyes to the

web-shrouded weapon in his hands, and as he did so Mr. Flay's left eyelid

fluttered, and a moment later he had focused the chef and was watching him

through his lashes. He had not the strength to move at that horrifying moment.

He could only watch. The cleaver was lifted, but he now saw that Swelter was

peering quizzically at the blade, his eyebrows raised. And then he heard the

sponge-like voice for the second time that night.

      "Would you like to be wiped, my pretty one?" it said, as though certain

that a reply would be forthcoming from the brutal head of steel. "You would,

wouldn't you -- before you have your supper? Of course. And how could you ever

enjoy a nice warm bath with all your clothes on, eh? But I'll soon be washing

you, little blossom. And I must wipe your face, dear; wipe it blue as ink, then

you can start drinking, can't you?" He held the lean metal head at his bosom.

"It's just the thing for thirsty ones, my darling.Just the very nightcap." There

followed a few moments of low gastric chuckling before he began to drag the

webbing from the cleaver's blade. He was standing about two feet away from the

prostrate figure of Flay, who was half in and half out of moonlight. The

demarcation line lay across his bare flank. Luckily for him it was his upper

half that was in shadow and his head was all but lost. As he watched the

overhang above him and noted that the chef had all but cleared the blade of

cobwebs, his attention became focused upon the upper segment of the face of his

foe. It was veiled, as indeed was the rest of the face and body, with the

ubiquitous webs, but it seemed that above the left ear there was something

additional. So accustomed had Swelter become to the tickling of the webs across

his face and to the hundred minor irritations of the skin, that he had not

noticed that upon his right eye there sat a spider. So thickly had his head been

draped that he had accepted this impediment to his vision as being part of the

general nuisance. Flay could see the spider quite clearly from where he lay, but

what he now saw was something fateful. It was the spider's mate. She had emerged

from the grey muddle above the left ear and was taking, leg by leg, the long,

thin paces. Was she in search of her husband? If so, her sense of direction was

sound, for she made towards him.

      Swelter was running the flat of his hand along the steel face of his

weapon. It was naked for use. Putting his blubber lips to the moonlit steel he

kissed it, and then, falling a short step back, he lifted the cleaver with both

hands, grasping the long handle high above his lowered head. He stood upon

tip-toe, and, poised for a moment thus, went suddenly blind. His left eye had

become involved with a female spider. She sat upon it squarely, enjoying the

rolling movement of the orb she covered. It was for this precise instant that

Flay had been waiting ever since he had caught sight of the insect a few seconds

previously. It seemed that he had lain there stretched vulnerably beneath the

murderous cleaver for an hour at least. Now was his moment, and gripping his

sword which had fallen beside him when he fell, he rolled himself with great

rapidity from beneath the belly of the cook and from the cleaver's range.

      Swelter, sweating with irritation at being baulked for the second time in

this business of climax, imagined nevertheless that Flay was still below him.

Had he struck downwards in spite of the spiders on his eyes it may be that Flay

could not have escaped. But Mr. Swelter would have considered it a very sorry

ending after all his pains to find he had made slaughter without having been

able to see the effect. Outside Lord Sepulchrave's door it was different. There

was no light, anyway. But here with a beautiful moon to illumine the work it was

surely neither the time nor the place to be at the mercy of a spider's whim.

      And so he lowered the cleaver to his bosom and, freeing his right hand,

plucked the insects from his eyes, and he had started to raise the weapon again

before he saw that his victim had gone. He wheeled about, and as he did so he

experienced a white-hot pain in his left buttock and a searing sensation at the

side of his head. Screaming like a pig, he wheeled about, raising his finger to

where his ear should have been. It had gone. Flay had swiped it off, and it

swung to and fro in a spider-made hammock a foot above the floor-boards at the

far end of the room. And what voluptuary ever lolled with half the languor of

that boneless thing!

      A moonbeam, falling on the raddled lobe, withdrew itself discreetly and

the ear disappeared into tactful darkness. Flay had, in rapid succession, jabbed

and struck. The second blow had missed the skull, but he had drawn first blood;

in fact, first and second, for Swelter's left rump bled magnificently. There

was, in point of fact, an island growing gradually -- a red island that had

seeped through to the white vastness of his cloth rear. This island was changing

its contours momentarily, but as the echo of Swelter's scream subsided, it very

much resembled in its main outline the inverted wing of an angel.

      The blows had no more than gored him. Of Swelter's acreage, only a perch

or two here and there might, if broken, prove vulnerable loam. That he bled

profusely could prove little. There was blood in him to revitalize an anaemic

army, with enough left over to cool the guns. Placed end to end his blood

vessels might have coiled up the Tower of Flints and half way down again like a

Virginia creeper -- a vampire's home from home.

      Be that as it may, he was blooded, and the cold, calculating malice had

given way to a convulsive hatred that had no relation to the past. It was on the

boil of now, and heading into the webs that divided them, he let loose a long

scything blow at Mr. Flay. He had moved very rapidly and but for the fact that

the moonlit webs deceived him as to the distance between them, so that he struck

too soon, it is probable that all would have been over bar the disposal of the

body. As it was, the wind of the blow and the hiss of the steel were enough to

lift the hairs on Mr. Flay's head and to set up a horrible vibration in his

ears. Recovering almost at once from the surprise, however, Flay struck in

return at the cook, who was for a moment off his balance, catching him across

the bolster-like swelling of his shoulder.

      And then things happened very rapidly, as though all that had gone before

was a mere preamble. Recovering from the flounder of his abortive blow, and with

the fresh pain at his shoulder, Swelter, knowing he had, with his cleaver

extended, the longer reach, gripped the weapon at the extreme end of the handle

and began to gyrate, his feet moving with horrifying rapidity beneath his belly,

not only with the kind of complicated dance movement which swivels the body

around and around at great speed, but in a manner which brought him nearer every

moment to Mr. Flay. Meanwhile, his cleaver, outstretched before him, sang on its

circular path. What remained of the webs in the centre of the room fell away

before this gross, moon-dappled cyclone. Flay, nonpiussed for the moment,

watched in fascinated horror the rapid succession of faces which the swivelling

of Swelter conduced; faces of which he had hundreds; appearing and reappearing

at high speed (with an equal number of rear-views of the huge head, interlarded,

in all literalness). The whirr of steel was approaching rapidly. The rotation

was too speedy for him to strike between the cycles, nor was his reach long

enough were he to stand his ground.

      Moving backwards he found that he was being forced gradually into a corner

at the far end of the room. Swelter was bearing down on him with a kind of

nightmare quality. His mind was working, but the physical perfection of his

footwork and the revolving of the steel had something of the trance about them

-- something that had become through their very perfection detached and on their

own. It was difficult to imagine how the great white top could stop itself.

      And then Mr. Flay had an idea. As though cowering from the oncoming steel,

he moved back further and further into the corner until his bent backbone came

into contact with the junction of the two walls. Cornered of his own choosing,

for he would have had time to leap for the rain-filled opening of moonlight had

he wished, he raised himself to his full height, prising his spine into the

right-angle of the walls, his sword lowered to his feet -- and waited.

      The scything cleaver spun nearer momently. At every glimpse of the chef's

rotating head he could see the little blood-shot eyes focused upon him. They

were like lumps of loathing, so concentrated was his every thought and fibre

upon the death of Flay that, as he whirred closer and closer, his normal wits

were in abeyance, and what Flay had hoped for happened. The arc of the long

weapon was of such amplitude that at its left and right extremes it became all

of a sudden within a few inches of the adjacent walls and at the next revolution

had nicked away the plaster before, finally, as the walls -- so it seemed to

Swelter -- leapt forward to meet him, the chef discovered the palms of his hands

and forearms stinging with the shock of having taken a great section of the

mouldering wall away. Flay, with his sword still held along his leg, its point

beside his toe-cap, was in no position to receive the impact of Swelter's body

as it fell forward upon him. So sudden and so jarring had been the stoppage of

his murderous spinning, that, like a broken engine, its rhythm and motivation

lost, its body out of control, Swelter collapsed, as it were, within his own

skin, as he slumped forwards. If Flay had not been so thin and had not forced

himself so far into the corner, he would have been asphyxiated. As it was, the

clammy, webbedraggled pressure of Swelter's garments over his face forced him to

take short, painful breaths. He could do nothing, his arms pinned at his sides,

his visage crushed. But the effects of the shock were passing, and Swelter, as

though suddenly regaining his memory, heaved himself partially from the corner

in a tipsy way, and although Mr. Flay at such close range was unable to use his

sword, he edged rapidly along the lefthand wall and, turning, was within an ace

of darting a thrust at Swelter's ribs when his foe staggered out of range in a

series of great drunken curves. The giddiness with which his gyrations had

filled him were for the moment standing him in good stead, for reeling as he did

about the Hall of Spiders he was an impossible target for all but mere

blood-letting.

      And so Flay waited. He was acutely aware of a sickening pain at the back

of his neck. It had grown as the immediate shock of the blow to his jaw had

subsided. He longed desperately for all to be over. A terrible fatigue had

entered him.

      Swelter, once the room no longer span around him and his sense of balance

was restored, moved with horrible purpose across the Hall, the cleaver trembling

with frustration in his hand. The sound of his feet on the boards was quite

distinct, and startled Flay into glancing over his shoulder into the moonlight.

The rain had ceased and, save for the dolorous whispering of Gormenghast a-drip,

there was a great hush.

      Flay had felt all of a sudden that there could be no finality, no

decision, no death-blow in the Hall of Spiders. Save for this conviction he

would have attacked Swelter as he leaned, recovering from his giddiness, by the

door at the far end of the room. But he only stood by the moon-filled opening, a

gaunt silhouette, the great cloth rolls like malformations at his knees, and

waited for the chef's advance, while he worked at the vertebrae of his aching

neck with his long bony fingers. And then had come the onrush. Swelter was upon

him, his cleaver raised, the left side of his head and his left shoulder shiny

with blood, and a trail of it behind him as he came. Immediately before the

opening to the outer air was a six-inch step upwards which terminated the

flooring. Beyond this there was normally a three-foot drop to a rectangular

walled-in area of roof. Tonight there was no such drop, for a great lake of

rain-water lapped at the dusty boards of the Hall. To a stranger the lake gave

the appearance of profound depth as it basked in the moon. Flay, stepping

backwards over the raised strip of boarding, sent up a fountain of lemon-yellow

spray as his foot descended. In a moment he was spidering his legs backwards

through water as warm as tea. The air, for all the downpour, was as oppressive

as ever. The horrible weight of heat was undispersed.

      And then the horror happened. Swelter, following at high speed, had caught

his toe at the raised lip of the opening, and unable to check his momentum, had

avalanched himself into warm water. The cleaver sailed from his grasp and,

circling in the moonlight, fell with a fluke of flame in the far, golden silence

of the lake. As Swelter, face down and floundering like a sea-monster, struggled

to find his feet, Flay reached him. As he did so, with a primeval effort the

cook, twisting his trunk about, found, and then lost again, a temporary foothold

and, writhing, fell back again, this time upon his back, where he floated,

lashing, great washes of water spreading on all sides to the furthermost

reaches. For a moment he was able to breathe, but whether this advantage was

outbalanced by his having to see, towering above him, the dark, unpreaching body

of his foe -- with the hilt of the sword raised high over his head, both hands

grasping it and the point directed at the base of his ribs, only he could know.

The water about him was reddening and his eyes, like marbles of gristle, rolled

in the moonlight as the sword plunged steeply. Flay did not trouble to withdraw

it. It remained like a mast of steel whose sails had fallen to the decks where,

as though with a life of their own, unconnected with wind or tide, they leapt

and shook in ghastly turbulence. At the masthead, the circular sword hilt, like

a crow's nest, boasted no inch-high pirate. Flay, leaning against the outer wall

of the Hall of Spiders, the water up to his knees and watching with his eyes

half-closed, the last death throes, heard a sound above him, and in a shudder of

gooseflesh turned his eyes and found them staring into a face -- a face that

smiled in silver light from the depths of the Hall beyond. Its eyes were

circular and its mouth was opening, and as the lunar silence came down as though

for ever in a vast white sheet, the long-drawn screech of a death-owl tore it,

as though it had been calico, from end to end.

62

GONE

      In after years Mr. Flay was almost daily startled to remembrance of what

now ensued. It returned in the way that dreams recur, suddenly and unsolicited.

The memory was always unearthly, but no less so than the hours themselves which

followed upon Swelter's death -- hours as it were from a monstrous clock across

whose face, like the face of a drum, was stretched the skin of the dead chef --

a clock whose hands trailed blood across and through the long minutes as they

moved in a circular trance. Mr. Flay moved with them.

      He would remember how the Earl at the window was awake; how he had held

his rod with the jade knob in his hand, and how he had stepped down in the lake

of rain. He had prodded the body and it had twisted for a minute and then

righted itself, as though it were alive and had a positive wish to remain

staring at the moon. The Earl then closed the cook's eyes, moving the two petals

of pulp over their respective blood-alleys.

      "Mr. Flay," Lord Sepulchrave had said.

      "Lordship?" queried his servant, hoarsely.

      "You did not reply to me when I saluted you."

      Flay did not know what his master could mean. Saluted him? He had not been

spoken to. And then he remembered the cry of the owl. He shuddered.

      Lord Sepulchrave tapped the hilt of the sword-mast with his rod. "Do you

think that they will enjoy him?" he said. He parted his lips slowly. "We can but

proffer him. That is the least we can do."

      Of the nightmare that followed it is needful to say only that the long

hours of toil which followed culminated at the Tower of Flints to which they had

dragged the body, after having steered it between a gap in the battlements

through which the lake was emptying itself. Swelter had descended in the

two-hundred-foot cascade of moon-sparkling water and they had found his body,

spread to the size of a sheet and bubbling on the drenched gravel. A rope had

been procured and a hook attached and the long drag had at last been effected.

      The white silence was terrible, The moonlight like a hoar frost on the

Tower of Flints. The shell of the library glimmered in the distance far down the

long line of halls and pavilions, and of domed, forsaken structures. To their

right the lit pinewoods were split with lines of midnight. About their feet a

few cones, like ivory carvings, were scattered, anchored to the pale earth by

their shadows.

      What was once Swelter glistened.

      And the Earl had said: "This is my hour, Flay. You must go from here, Mr.

Flay. You must go away. This is the hour of my reincarnation. I must be alone

with him. That you killed him is your glory. That I can take him to _them_ is

mine. Good-bye, for my life is beginning. Goodbye . . . good-bye." And he had

turned away, one hand still holding the rope, and Flay half ran and half walked

for a short distance towards the Castle, his head turned over his shoulder, his

body shuddering. When he stopped, the Earl was dragging the glistening thing

behind him and was at the time-eaten opening at the base of the Tower.

      A moment later and he was gone, the flattened weight undulating as it

slithered up and over the three steps that led into the corroded entrance, the

form of the steps showing in blurred contour.

      Everything was moving round and round -- the Tower, the pines, the corpse,

the moon, and even the inhuman cry of pain that leapt from the Tower's throat

into the night -- the cry, not of an owl, but of a man about to die. As it

echoed and echoed, the lank and exhausted servant fell fainting in his tracks,

while the sky about the Tower became white with the lit bodies of circling owls,

and the entrance to the Tower filled with a great weight of feathers, beaks and

talons as the devouring of the two incongruous remains proceeded.

63

THE ROSES WERE STONES

      Alone among the Twisted Woods -- like a branch himself, restless among the

rooted trees, he moved rapidly, the sound of his knees becoming day by day

familiar to the birds, and hares.

      Ribbed with the sunlight where the woodlands thinned, dark as shadows

themselves where no sun came, he moved as though pursued. For so long a time had

he slept in the cold, lightless corridor that waking, as it were, with no

protection from the dawn, or stretching himself for sleep, defenceless before

the twilight and sundown, he was at first unable to feel other than nakedness

and awe. Nature, it seemed, was huge as Gormenghast. But as time went on he

learned to find the shortest and most secret ways of hill and woodland, of

escarpment and marshland, to trace the winding of the river and its weed-bound

tributaries.

      He realized that though the raw ache for the life he had lost was no less

with him, yet the exertions he was obliged to make for his own preservation and

the call that such a life made upon his ingenuity, had their compensations. He

learned, day by day, the ways of this new world. He felt proud of the two caves

which he had found in the slopes of Gormenghast mountain. He had cleared them of

rocks and hanging weeds. He had built the stone ovens and the rock tables, the

hurdling across their walls to discourage the foxes, and the beds of foliage.

One lay to the south at the fringe of the unexplored country. It was remote and

very thrilling to his bones -- for the mountain lay between him and the far

Castle. The second cave was in the northern slope, smaller, but one which on

rainy nights was more likely to prove accessible. In a glade of the Twisted

Woods he had constructed a shack as his primary and especial home. He was proud

of his growing skill at snaring rabbits: and of his successes with the net he

had so patiently knotted with lengths of tough root fibre; and it was sweet to

taste the fish he prepared and ate alone in the shadow of his shack. The long

evenings were like blond eternities -- stifling and silent save for the

occasional flutter of a wing or the scream of a passing bird. A stream which had

all but dried moved past his doorway and disappeared in the shadows of the

undergrowth to the south. His love of this lost glade he had selected grew with

the development of a woodland instinct which must have been latent in his blood,

and with the feeling that he possessed something of his own -- a hut he had made

with his own hands. Was this rebellion? He did not know. The day over, he would

sit at the door of his cabin, his knees beneath his chin, his bony hands

clasping his elbows, and stare ruminatively (a stranger would have thought

sullenly) before him as the shadows lengthened inch by inch. He had started to

turn over in his mind the whole story of Gormenghast as it had affected him. Of

Fuchsia, now that he could see her no longer, he found it painful to reminisce,

for he missed her more than he could have imagined possible.

      The weeks went by and his skill grew, so that he had no longer to lie in

wait for half a day at a time at the mouths of warrens, a club in his hand; nor

waste long hours by the river, fishing the less hopeful reaches for lack of

lore. He could devote more and more of his time to conditioning his shack

against the approaching autumn and inevitable winter; to exploring further

afield, and to brooding in the evening sunlight. It was then that the vile,

nightmare memory would most often return. The shape of a cloud in the sky -- the

sight of a red beetle -- anything might suddenly awake the horror; and he would

dig his nails into the palms of his hands as the recollection of the murder and

of the subsequent death of his master discoloured his brain.

      There were few days in which he did not climb the foothills of the

Mountain, or pick his way to the edge of the Twisted Woods, in order to see the

long broken line of Gormenghast's backbone. Hours of solitude in the woods were

apt to detach him from the reality of any other life, and he would at times find

that he was running gawkily through the boles in a sudden fear that there was no

Gormenghast: that he had dreamed it all: that he belonged to nowhere, to

nothing: that he was the only man alive in a dream of endless branches.

      The sight of that broken skyline so interwoven with his earliest

recollections reassured him that though he was himself ejected and abandoned,

yet all that had given him purpose and pride in life was there, and was no dream

or fable, but as real as the hand which shielded his eyes, a reality of

immemorial stone, where lived, where died, and where was born again the lit line

of the Groans.

      On one such evening, after scanning the Castle for some while, and moving

his eyes at last across the corruscation of the mud huts, he rose to his feet

and began his return journey to the glade, when suddenly changing his mind, he

retraced a hundred or so of his steps and set off to his left, penetrating with

astonishing speed a seemingly impenetrable valley of thorns. These stunted trees

gave way at length to sparser shrub, the leaves, which had all but fallen with

drought, hanging to the brittled branches only by reason of the belated

refreshment which the sudden storm had given to their roots on the night of the

murder. The incline on either side could now be seen more clearly, and as Flay

picked his way through the last barrier of shrubs, ash-coloured slopes lifted

unbroken on his either hand, the grass as sleek and limp as hair, with not a

pale blade upright. There was not a breath of wind. He rested himself, lying out

upon his back on a hot slope to his right. His knees were drawn up (for angles

were intrinsic to his frame in action or repose) and he gazed abstractedly over

the small of his outstretched arm at the sheen on the grasses.

      He did not rest for long, for he wished to arrive at his northern cave

before dusk. He had not been there for some while, and it was with a kind of

swart enjoyment that he surrendered to the sudden whim. The sun was already a

far cry from its zenith, hanging in haze, a few degrees above the horizon.

      The prospect from the northern cave was unusual. It gave Mr. Flay what he

imagined must be pleasure. He was discovering more and more in this new and

strange existence, this vastness so far removed from corridors and halls, burned

libraries and humid kitchens, that gave rise in him to a new sensation, this

interest in phenomena beyond ritual and obedience -- something which he hoped

was not heretical in him -- the multiformity of the plants and the varying

textures in the barks of trees, the varieties of fish and bird and stone. It was

not in his temperament to react excitedly to beauty, for, as such, it had never

occurred to him. It was not in him to think in terms. His pleasure was of a dour

and practical breed; and yet, not altogether. When a shaft of light fell across

a dark area his eyes would turn to the sky to discover the rift through which

the rays had broken. Then they would return with a sense of accomplishment to

the play of the beams. But he would keep his eye upon them. Not that he supposed

them to be worth looking at -- imagining there was something wrong in himself

for wasting his time in such a fruitless way. As the days went by he had found

that he was moving to and fro through the region in order to be at one place or

another in time to watch the squirrels among the oaks at noon, the homecoming of

the rooks, or the death of the day from some vantage point of his finding.

      And so it was this night that he wished to watch the crags as they

blackened against the falling sun.

      It took him another hour of walking to reach the northern cave, and he was

tired when he stripped himself of his ragged shirt and rested his back against

the cool outer wall. He was only just in time, for the circle, like a golden

plate, was balancing upon its rim on the point of the northernmost of the main

crags of Gormenghast Mountain. The sky about it was old-rose, translucent as

alabaster, yet sumptuous as flesh. And mature. Mature as a soft skin or heavy

fruit, for this was no callow experiment in zoneless splendour -- this

impalpable sundown was consummate and the child of all the globes' archaic

sundowns since first the red eye winked.

      As the thin man's gaze travelled down the steep sides of this crag to the

great heart-shaped gulch beneath it where what vegetation there was lay sunk in

a sea of shade, he felt rather than saw, for his thoughts were still in the

darkness, a quickening of the air about him and lifting his head he noticed how,

with a deepening of the rose in the sky, all things were tinted, as though they

had awaited the particular concentration of hue which the sky now held, before

admitting the opinions of their separate colours to be altered or modified. As

at the stroke of a warlock's wand the world was suffused -- all things saving

the sun, which, in contradiction to the colour of the vapours and the forms that

it had raddled, remained golden.

      Flay began to untie his boots. Behind him his swept cave yawned, a million

prawn-coloured motes swaying against the darkness at the entrance. He noticed,

as he worked his heel free of the leather, that the crag was biting its way into

the sun and had all but reached its centre. He leant his bony head backwards

against the stone, and his face became lit and the stubble of his first beard

shone, its every hair a thread of copper wire, as he followed the course of the

crag's crest in its seemingly upward and arrow-headed journey, its black barbs

eating outwards as it climbed.

      Inexorable as was its course, there was, that summer evening, more destiny

in the progress of another moving form, so infinitesimal in the capacious

mountain dusk, than in the vast sun's ample, spellbound cycle.

      Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in

her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast

climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing,

so ardent for those climes where all things end.

      To Flay, it was as though the silence of his solitude had been broken, the

senses invading each other's provinces, for on seeing the movement of something

the size of the letter "i", that moved in silhouette against the gigantic yellow

plate, he had the sensation of waking from a dream which took hold of him.

Distant as it was, he could tell it for a human form. That it was Keda it was

not in his power to realize. He knew himself for witness. He could not stop

himself. He knelt forward on his knees, while the moments melted, one into the

next. He grew more rigid. The tiny, infinitely remote figure was moving across

the sun towards the crag's black edge. Impotently, he watched, his jaw thrust

forwards and a cold sweat broke across his bony brow, for he knew himself to be

in the presence of Sorrow -- and an interloper upon something more personal and

secret than he had the right to watch. And yet impersonal. For in the figurette

was the personification of all pain, taking, through sliding time, its final

paces.

      She moved slowly, for the climb had tired her and it had not been long

since she had borne the child of clay, like alabaster, the earthless daughter

who had startled all. It was as though Keda was detached from the world, exalted

and magnificently alone in the rose-red haze of the upper air. At the edge of

the naked drop to the shades below she came to a standstill, and, after a little

while, turned her head to Gormenghast and the Dwellings, afloat in the warm

haze. They were unreal. They were so far, so remote. No longer of her, they were

over. Yet she turned her head for the child's sake.

      Her head, turning, was dimensionless. A thong about her neck supported the

proud carvings of her lovers. They hung across her breasts. At the edge of age,

there was a perilous beauty in her face as of the crag's edge that she stood

upon. The last of footholds; such a little space. The colour fading on the

seven-foot strip. It lay behind her like a carpet of dark roses. The roses were

stones. There was one fern growing. It was beside her feet. How tall? . . . A

thousand feet? Then she must have her head among far stars. How far all was! Too

far for Flay to see her head had turned -- a speck of life against that falling

sun.

      Upon his knees he knew that he was witness.

      About her and below lay the world. All things were ebbing. A moon that

climbed suddenly above the eastern skyline, chilling the rose, waned through her

as it waxed, and she was ready.

      She moved her hair from her eyes and cheekbones. It hung deep and still as

the shadow in a well; it hung down her straight back like midnight. Her brown

hands pressed the carvings inwards to her breast, and as a smile began to grow,

the eyebrows raised a little, she stepped outwards into the dim atmosphere, and

falling, was most fabulously lit by the moon and the sun.

64

"BARQUENTINE AND STEERPIKE"

      The inexplicable disappearance of both Lord Sepulchrave and Swelter was,

of course, the burden of Gormenghast -- its thoughts' fibre -- from the meanest

of the latter's scullions to the former's mate. The enigma was absolute, for the

whereabouts of Flay was equally obscure.

      There was no end to the problem. The long corridors were susurrous with

rumour. It was unthinkable that so ill-matched a pair should have gone together.

Gone? Gone where? There was nowhere to go. It was equally unthinkable that they

should have gone singly, and for the same reason.

      The illness of the Earl had, of course, been uppermost in the minds of the

Countess, Fuchsia and the Doctor, and an exhaustive search had been organized

under the direction of Steerpike. It revealed no vestige of a clue, although

from Steerpike's point of view it had been well worth while, for it gave him

occasion to force an entry into rooms and halls which he had for a long while

hoped to investigate with a view to his own re-establishment.

      It was on the ninth day of the search that Barquentine decided to call a

halt to exertions which were going not only against his grain, but the grain of

every rooted denizen of the stone forest -- that terraced labyrinth of broken

rides.

      The idea of the head of the House being away from his duties for an hour

was sufficiently blasphemous: that he should have _disappeared_ was beyond

speech. It was beyond anger. Whatever had happened to him, whatever had been the

cause of his desertion, there could be no two ways about it -- his Lordship was

a renegade, not only in the eyes of Barquentine, but (dimly or acutely

perceived) in the eyes of all.

      That a search had to be made was obvious, but it was also in everyone's

thoughts that to find the Earl would cause so painful, so frantically delicate a

situation that there would be advantages were his disappearance to remain a

mystery.

      The horror with which Barquentine had received the news had now, at the

end of the ninth day, given place to a stony and intractable loathing for all

that he associated with the personality of his former master, his veneration for

the Earl (as a descendant of the original line) disassociating itself from his

feelings about the man himself. Sepulchrave had behaved as a traitor. There

could be no excuses. His illness? What was that to him? Even in illness he was

of the Groans.

      During those first days after the fateful news he had become a monster as

he scoured the building, cursing all who crossed his path, probing into room

after room, and thrashing out with his crutch at any whom he considered tardy.

      That Titus should from the very beginning be under his control and

tutelage was his only sop. He turned it over on his withered tongue.

      He had been impressed by Steerpike's arrangements for the search, during

which he had been forced to come into closer contact with the youth than

formerly. There was no love lost between them, but the ancient began to have a

grudging respect for the methodical and quickly moving youth. Steerpike was not

slow to observe the obscurest signs of this and he played upon them. On the day

when, at Barquentine's orders, the searchings ceased, the youth was ordered to

the Room of Documents. There he found the ragged Barquentine seated on a

highbacked chair, a variety of books anu papers on a stone table before him. It

was as though his knotted beard was sitting on the stone between his wrinkled

hands. His chin was thrust forward, so that his stretched throat appeared to be

composed of a couple of lengths of rope, several cords and a quantity of string.

Like his father"s, his head was wrinkled to the brink of belief, his eyes and

mouth when closed disappearing altogether. Propped against the stone table was

his crutch.

      "You called for me?" queried Steerpike from the door.

      Barquentine raised his hot-looking, irritable eyes and dropped the

cross-hatched corners of his mouth.

      "Come here, you," he rasped.

      Steerpike moved to the table, approaching in a curious, swift and sideways

manner. There was no carpet on the floor and his footsteps sounded crisply.

      When he reached the table and stood opposite the old man, he inclined his

head to one side.

      "Search over," said Barquentine. "Call the dogs off. Do you hear?"

      He spat over his shoulder.

      Steerpike bowed.

      "No more nonsense!" barked the old voice. "Body of me, we've seen enough

of it."

      He started to scratch himself through a horrible-looking tear in his

scarlet rags. There was a period of silence while this operation proceeded.

Steerpike began to shift the weight of his body to his other leg.

      "Where do you think you're going to? Stand still, you rat-damned misery,

will you? By the lights of the mother I buried rump-end up, hold your clod, boy,

hold your clod." The hairs about his mouth were stuck with spittle as he

fingered his crutch on the stone table.

      Steerpike sucked at his teeth. He watched every move of the old man in

front of him, and waited for a loophole in the armour.

      Sitting at the table, Barquentine might have been mistaken for a normally

constructed elder, but it came as a shock even to Steerpike to see him clamber

off the seat of the high-backed chair, raise his arm for the crutch and strike a

path of wood and leather around the circumference of the table, his chin on a

level with its surface.

      Steerpike, who was himself on the small side, even for his seventeen

years, found that the Master of Ritual, were he to have brought his head forward

for a few inches, would have buried his bristling nose a hand's breadth above

the navel, that pivot for a draughtsman's eye, that relic whose potentiality

appears to have been appreciated only by the dead Swelter, who saw in it a

reliable salt-cellar, when that gentleman decided upon eggs for his breakfast in

bed.

      Be that as it irrelevantly may, Steerpike found himself staring down into

an upturned patch of wrinkles. In this corrugated terrain two eyes burned. In

contrast to the dry sand-coloured skin they appeared grotesquely liquid, and to

watch them was ordeal by water; all innocence was drowned. They lapped at the

dry rims of the infected well-heads. There were no lashes.

      He had made so rapid and nimble a detour of the stone table that he

surprised Steerpike, appearing with such inexpectation beneath the boy's nose.

The alternate thud, and crack of sole and crutch came suddenly to silence. Into

this silence a small belated sound, all upon its own, was enormous and

disconnected. It was Barquentine's foot, shifting its position as the crutch

remained in place. He had improved his balance. The concentration in the

ancient's face was too naked to be studied for more than a moment at a time.

Steerpike, after a rapid survey, could only think that either the flesh and the

passion of the head below him was fused into a substance of the old man's

compounding; or that all the other heads he had ever seen were masks -- masks of

matter _per se_, with no admixture of the incorporeal. This old tyrant's head

_was_ his feeling. It was modelled from it, and of it.

      Steerpike was too near it -- the nakedness of it. Naked and dry with those

wet well-heads under the time-raked brow.

      But he could not move away -- not without calling down, or rather calling

_up_, the wrath of his wizened god. He shut his eyes and worked his tongue into

a tooth-crater. Then there was a sound, for Barquentine, having exhausted,

apparently, what diversion there was to be found in the youth's face as seen

from below, had spat twice and very rapidly, each expectoration finding a

temporary lodging on the bulges of Steerpike's lowered lids.

      "Open them!" cried the cracked voice. "Open them up, bastard whelp of a

whore-rat!"

      Steerpike with wonder beheld the septuagenarian balancing upon his only

leg with the crutch raised above his head. It was not directed at himself,

however, but with its grasper swivelled in the direction of the table, seemed

about to descend. It did, and a thick dusty mist arose from the books on which

it landed. A moth flapped through the dust.

      When it had settled, the youth, his head turned over his shoulder, his

small dark-red eyes half closed, heard Barquentine say:

      "So you can call the dogs offi Body of me, if it isn't time! Time and

enough. Nine days wasted! Wasted! -- by the stones, wasted! Do you hear me,

stoat's lug? Do you hear me?"

      Steerpike began to bow, with his eyebrows raised by way of indicating that

his ear drums had proved themselves equal to the call made upon them. If the art

of gesture had been more acutely develc-?ed in him he might have implied by some

hyper-subtle inclination of his body that what aural inconvenience he

experienced lay not so much in his having to strain his ears, as in having them

strained for him.

      As it was, it proved unnecessary for him to ever complete the bow he had

begun, for Barquentine was delivering yet another blow to the books and papers

on the table, and a fresh cloud of dust had arisen. His eyes had left the youth

-- and Steerpike was stranded -- in one sense only -- in that the flood-water of

the eyes no longer engulfed him, the stone table as though it were a moon,

drawing away the dangerous tide.

      He wiped the spittle from his eyelids with one of Dr. Prunesquallor's

handkerchiefs.

      "What are those books, boy?" shouted Barquentine, returning the handle of

his crutch to his armpit. "By my head of skin, boy, what are they?"

      "They are the Law," said Steerpike.

      With four stumps of the crutch the old man was below him again and

sluicing him with his hot wet eyes.

      "By the blind powers, it's the truth," he said. He cleared his throat.

"Don't stand there staring. What is Law? Answer me, curse you!"

      Steerpike replied without a moment's consideration but with the worm of

his guile like a bait on the hook of his brain: "Destiny, sir. Destiny."

      Vacant, trite and nebulous as was the reply, it was of the right _kind_.

Steerpike knew this. The old man was aware of only one virtue -- Obedience to

Tradition. The destiny of the Groans. The law of Gormenghast.

      No individual Groan of flesh and blood could awake in him this loyalty he

felt for "_Groan_" the abstraction -- the symbol. That the course of this great

dark family river should flow on and on, obeying the contours of hallowed

ground, was his sole regard.

      The seventy-sixth Earl should be ever be found, dead or alive, had

forfeited his right to burial among the Tombs. Barquentine had spent the day

among volumes of ritual and precedent. So exhaustive was the compilation of

relevant and tabulated procedure to be adopted in unorthodox and unforeseen

circumstances that a parallel to Lord Sepulchrave's disappearance was at last

rooted out by the old man -- the fourteenth Earl of Groan having disappeared

leaving an infant heir. Nine days only had been allowed for the search, after

which the child was to be proclaimed the rightful Earl, standing the while upon

a raft of chestnut boughs afloat on the lake, a stone in the right hand, an

ivy-branch in the left, and a necklace of snail-shells about the neck; while

shrouded in foliage the next of kin and all who were invited to the "Earling"

stood, sat, crouched or lay among the branches of the marginal trees.

      All this had now, once again, hundreds of years later, to be put in hand,

for the nine days were over and it was in Barquentine that all power in matters

of procedure was vested. It was for him to give the orders. In his little old

body was Gormenghast in microcosm.

      "Ferret," he said, still staring up at Steerpike, "your answer's good.

Body of me, Destiny it is. What is your bastard name, child?"

      "Steerpike, sir."

      "Age?"

      "Seventeen."

      "Buds and fledglings? So they still spawn "em so! Seventeen." He put a

withered tongue between his dry, wrinkled lips. It might have been the tongue of

a boot. "Seventeen," he repeated in a voice of such ruminative incredulity as

startled the youth, for he had never before heard any such intonation emerge

from that old throat. "Bloody wrinkles! say it again, chicken."

      "Seventeen," said Steerpike.

      Barquentine went off into a form of trance, the well-heads of his eyes

appearing to cloud over and become opaque like miniature sargassos, of dull

chalky-blue -- the cataract veil -- for it seemed that he was trying to remember

the daedal days of his adolescence. The birth of the world; of spring on the rim

of Time.

      Suddenly he came-to, and cursed; and as though to shake off something

noxious he worked his shoulder-blades to and fro, as he pad-hopped irritably

around his crutch, the ferrule squeaking as it swivelled on the carpetless

floor.

      "See here, boy," he said, when he had come to a halt, "there is work to

do. There is a raft to be built, body of me, a raft of chestnut boughs and no

other. The procession. The bareback racing for the bagful. The barbecue in the

Stone Hall. Hell slice me up, boy! call the hounds off."

      "Yes, sir," said Steerpike. "Shall I send them back to their quarters?"

      "Eh?" muttered Barquentine, "what's that?"

      "I said shall I return them to their quarters?" said Steerpike. An

affirmative noise from the throat of strings was the reply.

      But as Steerpike began to move off, "Not yet, you dotard! Not yet!" And

then: "Who's your master?"

      Steerpike reflected a moment. "I have no immediate master," he said. "I

attempt to make myself useful -- here and there."

      "You do, do you, my sprig? 'Here and there,' do you? I can see through

you. Right the way through you, suckling, bones and brain. You can't fool me, by

the stones you can't. You're a neat little rat but there"ll be no more 'here and

there' for you. It will be only 'here', do you understand?" The old man ground

his crutch into the floor. "_Here_," he added, with an access of vehemence;

"beside _me_. You may be useful. Very useful." He scratched himself through a

tear at his armpit.

      "What will my salary amount to?" said Steerpike, putting his hands in his

pockets.

      "Your _keep_, you insolent bastard! your _keep_! What more do you want?

Hell fire child! have you no pride? A roof, your food, and the honour of

studying the Ritual. Your _keep_, curse you, and the secrets of the Groans. How

else could you serve me but by learning the iron Trade? Body of me -- I have no

son. Are you ready?"

      "I have never been more so," said the high-shouldered boy.

65

BY GORMENGHAST LAKE

      Little gusts of fresh, white air blew fitfully through the high trees that

surrounded the lake. In the dense heat of the season it seemed they had no part;

so distinct they were from the sterile body of the air. How could such thick air

open to shafts so foreign and so aqueous? The humid season was split open for

their every gush. It closed as they died like a hot blanket, only to be torn

again by a blue quill, only to close again; only to open.

      The sickness was relieved, the sickness and the staleness of the summer

day. The scorched leaves pattered one against the next, and the tares screaked

thinly together, the tufted heads nodding, and upon the lake was the stippled

commotion of a million pin-pricks and the sliding of gooseflesh shadows that

released or shrouded momently the dancing of diamonds.

      Through the trees of the southern hanger that sloped steeply to the water

could be seen, through an open cradle of high branches, a portion of Gormenghast

Castle, sun-blistered and pale in its dark frame of leaves; a remote façade.

      A bird swept down across the water, brushing it with her breastfeathers

and leaving a trail as of glow-worms across the still lake. A spilth of water

fell from the bird as it climbed through the hot air to clear the lakeside

trees, and a drop of lake water clung for a moment to the leaf of an ilex. And

as it clung its body was titanic. It burgeoned the vast summer. Leaves, lake and

sky reflected. The hanger was stretched across it and the heat swayed in the

pendant. Each bough, each leaf -- and as the blue quills ran, the motion of

minutiae shivered, hanging. Plumply it slid and gathered, and as it lengthened,

the distorted reflection of high crumbling acres of masonry beyond them, pocked

with nameless windows, and of the ivy that lay across the face of that southern

wing like a black hand, trembled in the long pearl as it began to lose its grip

on the edge of the ilex leaf.

      Yet even as it fell the leaves of the far ivy lay fluttering in the belly

of the tear, and, microscopic, from a thorn-prick window a face gazed out into

the summer.

      In the lake the reflections of the trees wavered with a concertina motion

when the waters ruffled and between the gusts slowed themselves into a crisp

stillness. But there was one small area of lake to which the gusts could not

penetrate, for a high crumbling wall, backed by a coppice, shielded a shallow

creek where the water steamed and was blotched with swarms of tadpoles.

      It lay at the opposite end of the lake to the steep hanger and the castle,

from which direction the little breeze blew. It basked in the northerly corner

of the lake's eastern extremity. From west to east (from the hanger to the

creek) stretched the lake's attenuate length, but the north and south shores

were comparatively close to one another, the southern being for the main part

embattled with dark ranks of conifers, some of the cedars and pines growing out

of the water itself. Along the north shore there was fine grey sand which

petered out among the spinneys of birch and elder.

      On the sand, at the water's edge, and roughly in the centre of the

northern shore, was spread an enormous rust-coloured rug, and in the centre of

the rug sat Nannie Slagg. Fuchsia lay upon her back, close by her, with her head

upon one side and her forearm across her eyes to protect them from the sun.

Tottering to and fro across the hot drab sand was Titus in a yellow shift. His

hair had grown and darkened. It was quite straight, but made up for its lack of

curls by its thickness and weight. It reached his shoulders, a dark umber, and

over his forehead it hung in a heavy fringe.

      Stopping for a moment (as though something very important had occurred to

him) in the middle of a tiny, drunken totter, he turned his head to Mrs. Slagg.

His eyebrows were drawn down over the unique violet of his eyes, and there was a

mixture of the pathetic, the ludicrous, and the sage in the expression of his

pippin face. Even a suspicion of the pompous for a moment as he swayed and sat

down suddenly having lost his balance -- and then, having collapsed, a touch of

the august. But, suddenly, in a sideways crawl, one leg thrusting him forward,

his arms paddling wrist-deep through the sand and his other leg making no effort

to play its part, content only to trail itself beneath and behind its energetic

counterpart, he forsook the phlegmatic and was all impetuousness; but not a

smile crossed his lips.

      When he had reached the rust-coloured rug he sat quite still a few feet

from Mrs. Slagg and scrutinized the old lady's shoe, his elbow on his knee and

his chin sunk in his hand, an attitude startlingly adult and inappropriate in a

child of less than eighteen months.

      "Oh, my poor heart! how he _does_ look," came Mrs. Slagg's thin voice. "As

though I haven't loved him and toiled to make him joyous. Worn myself out to the

marrow for his little Lordship, I have, day after day, night after night, with

this after this and that after that piling ag"ny on ag"ny until you'd think he

would be glad of love; but he just goes on as though he's wiser than his old

Nannie, who knows all about the vacancies of babies' ("vagaries", she must have

meant), "and all I get is naughtiness from his sister -- oh, my weak heart,

naughtiness and spleen."

      Fuchsia raised herself on her elbow and gazed at the brooding conifers on

the far side of the lake. Her eyes were not red from crying: she had cried so

much lately that she had drained herself of salt for a little. They had the look

of eyes in which hosts of tears had been fought back and had triumphed.

      "What did you say?"

      "That's it! that's it!" Mrs. Slagg became petulant. "Never listens. Too

wise now to listen, I suppose, to an old woman who hasn't long to live."

      "I didn't hear you," said Fuchsia.

      "You never _try_," replied Nannie. "That's what it is -- you never _try_.

I might as well not be here."

      Fuchsia had grown tired of the old nurse's querulous and tearful

admonishments. She shifted her gaze from the pines to her brother, who had begun

to struggle with the buckle of one of her shoes. "Well, there's a lovely breeze,

anyway," she said.

      The old nurse, who had forgotten she was in the middle of chastening

Fuchsia, jerked her wizened face towards the girl in a startled way. "What, my

caution dear?" she said. And then remembering that her "caution" had been in her

disfavour for some reason which she had forgotten, she pursed her face up with a

ridiculous and puny haughtiness, as much as to say: "I may have called you 'my

caution dear', but that doesn't mean that we're on speaking terms."

      Fuchsia gazed at her in a sullen sadness. "I said there's a lovely

breeze," she repeated.

      Mrs. Slagg could never keep up her sham dignity for long, and she smacked

out at Fuchsia, as a final gesture, and misjudging the distance, her blow fell

short and she toppled over on her side. Fuchsia, leaning across the rug,

re-established the midget as though she were setting an ornament and left her

arm purposely within range, for she knew her old nurse. Sure enough, once Nannie

Slagg had recovered and had smoothed out her skirt in front of her and reset her

hat with the glassgrapes, she delivered a weak blow at Fuchsia's arm.

      "What did you say about the breezes, dear? Nothing worth hearing, I

expect, as usual."

      "I said they were lovely," said Fuchsia.

      "Yes, they _are_," said Nannie, after reflection. "Yes, they _are_, my

only -- but they don't make me any younger. They just go round the edge of me

and make my skin feel nicer."

      "Well, that's better than nothing, I suppose," said Fuchsia.

      "But it's not _enough_, you argumentary _thing_. It's not _enough_ when

there's so much to do. What with your big mother being so cross with me as

though I could help your poor father's disappearance and all the trouble of the

food in the kitchen; as though _I_ could help."

      At the mention of her father Fuchsia closed her eyes.

      She had herself searched -- searched. She had grown far older during the

last few weeks -- older in that her heart had been taxed by greater strains of

passion than it had ever felt before. Fear of the unearthly, the ghastly -- for

she had been face to face with it -- the fear of madness and of a violence she

suspected. It had made her older, stiller, more apprehensive. She had known pain

-- the pain of desolation -- of having been forsaken and of losing what little

love there was. She had begun to fight back within herself and had stiffened,

and she began to be conscious of a vague pride; of an awakening realization of

her heritage. Her father in disappearing had completed a link in the immemorial

chain. She grieved his loss, her breast heavy and aching with the pain of it;

but beyond it and at her back she felt for the first time the mountain-range of

the Groans, and that she was no longer free, no longer just Fuchsia, but of the

blood. All this was cloud in her. Ominous, magnificent and indeterminate,

Something she did not understand. Something which she recoiled from -- so

incomprehensible in her were its workings. Suddenly she had ceased to be a girl

in all save in habits of speech and action. Her mind and heart were older and

all things, once so clear, were filled with mist -- all was tangled. Nannie

repeated again, her dim eyes gazing over the lake: "As though _I_ could help all

the troubles and the badness of people here and there doing what they shouldn't.

Oh, my weak heart! as though it were all my fault."

      "No one says it's your fault," said Fuchsia. "You think people are

thinking what they don't. It hasn't been anything to do with you."

      "It hasn't, _has_ it -- oh, my caution dear, it hasn't, _has_ it?" Then

her eyes became focused again (as far as they were able). "_What_ hasn't,

darling?"

      "Never mind," said Fuchsia. "Look at Titus."

      Nannie turned her head, disapproving of Fuchsia's answer as she did so,

and saw the little creature in his yellow shift rise to his feet and walk

solemnly away, from the great rust-coloured rug and over the hot drab sand, his

hands clasped before him.

      "Don't you go and leave us, too!" cried Nannie Slagg. "We can do without

that horrid, fat Mr. Swelter, but we can't do without our little Lordship. We

can do without Mr. Flay and --"

      Fuchsia rose to her knees, "We can't! we can't! Don't talk like that -- so

horribly. Don't talk of it -- you never must. Dear Flay and -- but you don't

understand; it's no good. Oh, what has happened to them?" She sank back on her

heels, her lower lip quivering, knowing that she must not let the old nurse's

thoughtless remarks touch on her open wounds.

      As Mrs. Slagg stared open-eyed, both she and Fuchsia were startled by a

voice, and, turning, they saw two tall figures approaching them through the

trees -- a man -- and, could it be? -- yes, it was -- a woman. It had a parasol.

Not that there would have been anything masculine about this second figure, even

were it to have left the parasol at home. Far from it. The swaying motion was

prodigiously feminine. Her long neck was similar to her brother"s, tactlessly

so, as would have been her face had not a fair portion of it been mercifully

obscured by her black glasses: but their major dissimilarity was manifest in

their pelvic zone. The Doctor (for it was Prunesquallor) showed about as much

sign of having a pair of hips as an eel set upon its end, while Irma, in white

silk, had gone out of her way, it appeared, to exhibit to their worst advantage

(her waist being ridiculously tight) a pair of hips capable of balancing upon

their osseous shelves enough bric-a-brac to clutter up a kleptomaniac's

cupboard.

      "The top of the morning to you, my dears," trilled the Doctor; "and when I

say 'top' I mean the last cubic inch of it that sits, all limpidlike on a crest

of ether, ha, ha, ha."

      Fuchsia was glad to see the Doctor. She liked him, for all his windy

verbiage.

      Irma, who had hardly been out of doors since that dreadful day when she

disgraced herself at the Burning, was making every effort to reestablish herself

as a lady -- a lady, it is true, who had lapsed, but a lady nevertheless, and

this effort at re-establishment was pathetically ostentatious. Her dresses were

cut still lower across her bosom; her peerless, milky skin appearing to cover a

couple of perches at least. She made even more play with her hips which swayed

when she talked as though, like a great bell, they were regulated and motivated

by a desire to sound, for they did all but chime as her sharp, unpleasant voice

(so contrasted to the knell her pelvis might have uttered) dictated their

figure-of-eight (bird"s-eye view, cross section) patternations.

      Her long, sharp nose was directed at Fuchsia.

      "Dear child," said Irma, "are you enjoying the delicious breeze, then,

dear child? I said are you enjoying the delicious breeze? Of course. Irrefutably

and more so, I have no doubt whatever." She smiled, but there was no mirth in

her smile, the muscles of her face complying only so far as to move in the

directions dictated, but refusing to enter into the spirit of the thing -- not

that there was any.

      "Tut tut!" said her brother in a tone which implied that it was

unnecessary to answer his sister's conventional openings; and he sat down at

Fuchsia's side and flashed her a crocodile smile with gold S toppings.

      "I'm glad you've come," said Fuchsia.

      He patted her on the knee in a friendly staccato way, and then turned to

Nannie.

      "_Mrs_. Slagg," he said, laying great emphasis upon the "Mrs" as though it

was some unique prefix, "and how are _you_? How's the blood-stream, my dear,

invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream? Come, come, let your doctor

know."

      Nannie edged a little closer to Fuchsia, who sat between them, and peered

at the Doctor around her shoulder.

      "It's quite comfortable, sir . . . I think, sir, thank you," she said,

      "Aha!" said Prunesquallor, stroking his smooth chin, "a comfortable

stream, is it? Aha! v-e-r-y good. V-e-r-y good. Dawdling lazily "twixt hill and

hill, no doubt. Meandering through groves of bone, threading the tissues and

giving what sustenance it can to your dear old body. Mrs. Slagg, I am so glad.

But in your_self_ -- right deep down in yourself -- how do you feel? Carnally

speaking, are you at peace -- from the dear grey hairs of your head to the

patter of your little feet -- are you at peace?"

      "What does he mean, dear?" said poor Mrs. Slagg, clutching Fuchsia's arm.

"Oh, my poor heart, what does the Doctor mean?"

      "He wants to know if you feel well or not," said Fuchsia.

      Nannie turned her red-rimmed eyes to the shock-headed, smooth-skinned man,

whose eyes behind their magnifying spectacles swam and bulged.

      "Come, come, my dear Mrs. Slagg, I'm not going to eat you. Oh, dear no.

Not even with some toast to pop you on, and a little pepper and salt. Not a bit

of it. You have been unwell, oh dear, yes -- since the conflagration. My dear

woman, you have been unwell -- most unwell, and most naturally. But are you

_better_ -- that's what your doctor wants to know -- are you _better_?"

      Nannie opened her puckered little mouth. "I ebbs and I flows, sir," she

said, "and I falls away like." Then she turned her head to Fuchsia very quickly

as though to make sure she was still there, the glass grapes tinkling on her

hat.

      Doctor Prunesquallor brought forth a large silk handkerchief and began to

dab his forehead. Irma, after a good deal of difficulty, presumably with

whalebones and such like, had managed to sit down on the rug amid a good deal of

creaking as of pulleys, cranks, hawsers and fish-hooks. She did not approve of

sitting on the ground, but she was tired of looking down on their heads and

decided to risk a brief interlude of unladyness. She was staring at Titus and

saying to herself: "If that were my child I should cut his hair, especially with

his position to keep up."

      "And what does your 'ebbing' consist of?" said the Doctor, returning his

silk handkerchief to his pocket. "Is it your heart that's tidal -- or your

nerves -- or your liver, bless you -- or a general weariness of the flesh?"

      "I get tired," said Mrs. Slagg. "I get so tired, sir. I have _everything_

to do." The poor old lady began to tremble.

      "Fuchsia," said the Doctor, "come along this evening and I'll give you a

tonic which you must make her take every day. By all that's amaranthine you

really must. Balsam and swansdown, Fuchsia dear, cygnets and the eider bird, she

must take it every day -- syrup on the nerves, dear, and fingers cool as tombs

for her old, old brow."

      "Nonsense," said his sister. "I said nonsense, Bernard."

      "And here," continued Doctor Prunesquallor, taking no notice of his

sister's interjection, "is Titus. Apparisoned in a rag torn from the sun itself,

ha, ha, ha! How vast he is getting! But how solemn." He made clucking noises in

his cheek. "The great day draws near, doesn't it?"

      "Do you mean the 'Earling'?" said Fuchsia.

      "No less," said Prunesquallor, his head on one side.

      "Yes," she answered, "it is in four days' time. They are making the raft."

Then suddenly, as though she could hold back the burden of her thoughts no

longer: "Oh, Doctor Prune, I must talk to you! May I see you soon? Soon? Don't

use long words with me when we're alone, dear Doctor, like you sometimes do,

because I'm so . . . well . . . because I've got -- I've got worries. Doctor

Prune."

      Prunesquallor languidly began to make marks in the sand with his long

white forefinger. Fuchsia, wondering why he did not reply, dropped her eyes and

saw that he had written:

            "9 o'clock tonight Cool Room."

      Then the long hand brushed away the message and at the same moment they

were conscious of presences behind them and, turning, they saw the twins,

Fuchsia's identical aunts, standing like purple carvings in the heat.

      The Doctor sprang nimbly to his feet and inclined his reedy body in their

direction.

      They took no notice of his gallantry, staring past him in the direction of

Titus, who was sitting quietly at the lake's edge.

      From the sky's zenith to where he sat upon the strip of sand it seemed

that a great backcloth had been let down, for the heat had flattened out the

lake, lifted it upright on its sandy rim; lifted the sloping bank where the

conifers, with their shadows, made patterns in three shades of green, sun-struck

and enormous; and balanced in a jig-saw way upon the ragged edge of this painted

wood was a heavy, dead, blue sky, towering to the proscenium arch of the

vision's limit -- the curved eyelid. At the base of this staring drop-cloth of

raw phenomena he sat, incredibly minute; Titus in a yellow shift, his chin once

more in his hand.

      Fuchsia felt uncomfortable with her aunts standing immediately behind her.

She looked up sideways at them and it was hard to conceive that they would ever

be able to move again. Effigies, white-faced, whitehanded, and hung with

imperial purple. Mrs. Slagg was still unaware of their presence, and in the

silence a silly impulse to chatter gripped her, and, forgetting her nervousness,

she perked her head up at the standing Doctor.

      "You see, excuse me, Doctor sir," she said, startling herself by her own

bravery, "you see, I've always been of the energetic system, sir. That's how I

always was since I was a little girl, doing this and that by turns. 'What _will_

she do next?' they always said. Always."

      "I am sure they did," answered the Doctor, reseating himself on the rug

and turning to Nannie Slagg, his eyebrows raised, and a look of incredulous

absorption on his pink face.

      Mrs. Slagg was encouraged. No one had ever before appeared to be so

interested in anything she said. Prunesquallor had decided that there was a fair

chance of the twins remaining transfixed as they were, for a good half-hour yet,

and that to hang around on his elegant legs was neither in his interests,

physically, nor in accord with his self-respect, which, although of peculiar

brand was nevertheless deep-rooted. They had not acknowledged his gesture. It is

true they had not noticed it -- but that was not his fault.

      "To hell with the old trouts," he trilled to himself. "Breastless as

wallpaper. By all that's sentient, my last post-mortem had more go in it than

the pair of"em, turning somersaults."

      As he held forth, inwardly, he was paying, outwardly, the most passionate

attention to Mrs. Slagg's every syllable.

      "And it's always been the same," she was quavering, "always the same.

Responserverity all the time, Doctor; and I'm not a little thing any more."

      "Of course not, of course not, tut, tut; by all that's shrewd you speak

nobly, Mrs. Slagg -- very nobly," said Prunesquallor, considering at the same

time whether there would have been enough room for her in his black bag, without

removing the bottles.

      "Because we're not as young as we _were_, are we, sir?"

      Prunesquallor considered this point very carefully. Then he shook his

head. "What you say has the ring of truth in it," he said. "In fact, it has

every possible kind of ring in it. Ring-ting, my heart's on the wing, as it

were. But tell me, Mrs. Slagg -- tell me in your own concise way -- of Mr. Slagg

-- or am I being indelicate? No -- no -- it couldn't be. Do _you_ know, Fuchsia?

Do you? For myself, I am at sea over Mr. Slagg. He is under my keel -- utterly

under. That's queer! Utterly under. Or isn't it? No matter. To put it brutally:

was there a -- No, no! Finesse, _please_. Who was -- No, no! Crude; crude.

Forgive me. Of Mr. Slagg, dear lady, have you any . . . kind of-- Good gracious

me! and I've known you all this long while and then _this_ teaser comes -- crops

up like a dove on tenderhooks. There's a 'ring' in that -- ha, ha, ha! And what

a teaser! Don't you think so, dear?"

      He turned to Fuchsia.

      She could not help smiling, but held the old nurse's hand.

      "When did you marry Mr. Slagg, Nannie?" she asked.

      Prunesquallor heaved a sigh. "The direct approach," he murmured. "The apt

angle. God bless my circuitous soul, we learn . . . we learn."

      Mrs. Slagg became very proud and rigid from the glass grapes on her hat to

her little seat.

      "Mr. Slagg," she said in a thin, high voice, "married _me_." She paused,

having delivered, as it seemed to her, the main blow; and then, as an

afterthought: "He died the same night -- and no wonder."

      "Good heavens -- alive and dead and half way between. By all that's

enigmatic, my dear, dear Mrs. Slagg, what can you possibly _mean_?" cried the

Doctor, in so high a treble that a bird rattled its way through the leaves of a

tree behind them and sped to the west.

      "He had a stroke," said Mrs. Slagg.

      "We've -- had -- strokes -- too," said a voice.

      They had forgotten the twins and all three turned their startled heads,

but they were not in time to see which mouth had opened.

      But as they stared Clarice intoned: "Both of us, at the same time. It was

lovely."

      "No, it wasn't," said Cora. "You forget what a nuisance it became."

      "Oh, _that_!" replied her sister. "I didn't mind _that_. It's when we

couldn't do things with the left side of us that I didn't like it much."

      "That's what I said, didn't I?"

      "Oh no, you didn't."

      "Clarice Groan," said Cora, "don't be above yourself."

      "How do you mean?" said Clarice, raising her eyes nervously.

      Cora turned to the Doctor for the first time. "She's ignorant," she said

blankly. "She doesn't understand figures of eight."

      Nannie could not resist correcting the Lady Cora, for the Doctor's

attention had infected her with an eagerness to go on talking. A little nervous

smile appeared on her lips, however, when she said: "You don't mean 'figures of

eight', Lady Cora; you mean 'figures of speech'."

      Nannie was so pleased at knowing the expression that the smile remained

shuddering in the wrinkles of her lips until she realized that she was being

stared at by the aunts.

      "Servant," said Cora. "Servant . . ."

      "Yes, my lady. Yes, yes, my lady," said Nannie Slagg, struggling to her

feet.

      "Servant," echoed Clarice, who had rather enjoyed what had happened.

      Cora turned to her sister. "There's no need foryou to say anything."

      "Why not?" said Clarice.

      "Because it wasn't you that she was disobedient with, stupid."

      "But I want to give her some punishment, too," said Clarice.

      "Why?"

      "Because I haven't given any for such a long time. . . . Have you?"

      "You've _never_ given any at all," said Cora.

      "Oh yes, I have."

      "Who to?"

      "It doesn't matter _who_ it was. I've given it, and that's that."

      "That's what?"

      "That's the punishment."

      "Do you mean like our brother"s?"

      "I don't know. But we mustn't burn _her_, must we?"

      Fuchsia had risen to her feet. To strike her aunts, or even to touch them,

would have made her quite ill and it is difficult to know what she was about to

do. Her hands were shaking at her sides.

      The phrase, "But we mustn't burn _her_, must we?" had found itself a long

shelf at the back of Doctor Prunesquallor's brain that was nearly empty, and the

ridiculous little phrase found squatting drowsily at one end was soon thrown out

by the lanky newcomer, which stretched its body along the shelf from the "B" of

its head to the "e" of its tail, and turning over had twenty-four winks (in

defiance of the usual convention) -- deciding upon one per letter and two over

for luck; for there was not much time for slumber, the owner of this shelf -- of

the whole bone house, in fact -- being liable to pluck from the most obscure of

his greycell caves and crannies, let alone the shelves, the drowsy phrases at

any odd moment. There was no real peace. Nannie Slagg, with her knuckles between

her teeth, was trying to keep her tears back.

      Irma was staring in the opposite direction. Ladies did not participate in

"situations". They did not apprehend them. She remembered that perfectly. It was

Lesson Seven. She arched her nostrils until they were positively triumphal and

convinced herself that she was not listening very hard.

      Dr. Prunesquallor, imagining the time to be ripe, leapt to his feet and,

swaying like a willow wand that had been stuck in the ground and twanged at its

so exquisitely peeled head -- uttered a strangely bizarre cry, followed by a

series of trills, which can only be stylized by the

"Haha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha- ha- ha- ha - haha, of

literary convention, and wound up with:

      "Titus! By all that's infinitesimal. Lord-bless-my-soul, if he hasn't been

eaten by a shark!"

      Which of the five heads turned itself the most rapidly would be difficult

to assess. Possibly Nannie was a fraction of a second behind the others, for the

double reason that the condition of her neck was far from plastic and because

any ejaculation, however dramatic and however much it touched on her immediate

concerns, took time to percolate to the correct area of her confused little

brain.

      However, the word "Titus" was different in that it had before now

discovered a short cut through the cells. Her heart had leapt more quickly than

her brain and, obeying it involuntarily, before her body knew that it had

received any orders through the usual channels, she was upon her feet and had

begun to totter to the shore.

      She did not trouble to consider whether there could possibly be a shark in

the fresh water that stretched before her; nor whether the Doctor would have

spoken so flippantly about the death of the only male heir; nor whether, if he

_had_ been swallowed she could do anything about it. All she knew was that she

must run to where he used to be.

      With her weak old eyes it was only after she had travelled half the

distance that she saw him. But this in no way retarded what speed she had. He

was still _about_ to be eaten by a shark, if he hadn't already been; and when at

last she had him in her arms, Titus was subjected to a bath of tears.

      Tottering with her burden, she cast a last apprehensive glance at the

glittering reach of water, her heart pounding.

      Prunesquallor had begun to take a few loping, toe-pointed paces after her,

not having realized how shattering his little joke would be. He had stopped,

however, reflecting that since there _was_ to be a shark, it would be best for

Mrs. Slagg to frustrate its evil plans for the sake of her future satisfaction.

His only anxiety was that her heart would not be overtaxed. What he had hoped to

achieve by his fanciful outcry had materialized, namely the cessation of the

ridiculous quarrel and the freeing of Nannie Slagg from further mortification.

      The twins were quite at a loss for some while. "I saw it," said Cora.

      Clarice, not to be outdone, had seen it as well. Neither of them was very

interested.

      Fuchsia turned to the Doctor as Nannie sat down, breathless, on the

rust-coloured rug, Titus sliding from her arms.

      "You shouldn't have done that, Doctor Prune," she said. "But, oh, Lord,

how funny! Did you see Miss Prunesquallor's face?" She began to giggle, without

mirth in her eyes. And then: "Oh, Doctor Prune, I shouldn't have said that --

she's your sister."

      "Only just," said the Doctor; and putting his teeth near Fuchsia's ear he

whispered: "She thinks she's a lady." And then he grinned until the very lake

seemed to be in danger of engulfment. "Oh, dear! the poor thing. Tries _so_

hard, and the more she tries the less she _is_. Ha! ha! ha! Take it from me,

Fuchsia dear, the only ladies are those to whom the idea of whether they are or

not never occurs. Her blood's all right -- Irma's -- same as mine, ha, ha, ha!

but it doesn't go by blood. It's equipoise, my Gipsy, equipoise that does it --

with a bucketful of tolerance thrown in. Why, bless my inappropriate soul, if

I'm not treading on the skirts of the serious. Tut, tut, if I'm not."

      By now they were all sitting upon the rug and between them creating a

monumental group of unusual grandeur. The little gusts of air were still leaping

through the wood and ruffling the lake. The branches of the trees behind them

chafed one another, and their leaves, like a million conspiring tongues, were

husky with heresy.

      Fuchsia was about to ask what "equipoise" meant when her eye was caught by

a movement among the trees on the farther side of the lake, and a moment later

she was surprised to see a column of figures threading their way down to the

shore, along which they began to move to the north, appearing and disappearing

as the great water-growing cedars shrouded or revealed them.

      Saving for the foremost figure, they carried loops of rope and the boughs

of trees across their shoulders, and excepting the leader they appeared to be

oldish men, for they moved heavily.

      They were the Raft-makers, and were on their way by the traditional

footpath, on the traditional day, to the traditional creek -- that heat-hazy

indentation of water backed by the crumbling wall and the coppice where the

minnows and the tadpoles and the myriad microscopic smallfry of the warm,

shallow water were so soon to be disturbed.

      It was quite obvious who the leading figure was. There could be no

mistaking that nimble, yet shuffling and edgeways-on -- that horribly deliberate

motivation that was neither walking nor running -- both close to the ground as

though on the scent, and yet loosely and nimbly above it.

      Fuchsia watched him, fascinated. It was not often that Steerpike was to be

seen without his knowing it. The Doctor, following Fuchsia's eyes, was equally

able to recognize the youth. His pink brow clouded. He had been cogitating a

great deal lately on this and that -- _this_ being in the main the inscrutable

and somehow "foreign" youth, and _that_ centring for the most part on the

mysterious Burning. There had been so strange a crop of enigmas of late. If they

had not been of so serious a character Doctor Prunesquallor would have found in

them nothing but diversion. The unexpected did so much to relieve the monotony

of the Castle's endless rounds of unwavering procedure; but Death and

Disappearance were no tit-bits for a jaded palate. They were too huge to be

swallowed, and tasted like bile.

      Although the Doctor, with a mind of his own, had positively heterodox

opinions regarding certain aspects of the Castle's life -- opinions too free to

be expressed in an atmosphere where the woof and warp of the dark place and its

past were synonymous with the mesh of veins in the bodies of its denizens -- yet

he was _of_ the place and was a freak only in that his mind worked in a wide

way, relating and correlating his thoughts so that his conclusions were often

clear and accurate and nothing short of heresy. But this did not mean that he

considered himself to be superior. Oh no. He was not. The blind faith was the

pure faith, however muddy the brain. His gem-like conclusions may have been of

the first water, but his essence and his spirit were warped in proportion to his

disbelief in the value of even the most footling observance. He was no outsider

-- and the tragedies that had occurred touched him upon the raw. His airy and

fatuous manner was deceptive. As he trilled, as he prattled, as he indulged in

his spontaneous "conceits", as he gestured, fop-like and grotesque, his

magnified eyes skidding to and fro behind the lenses of his glasses, like soap

at the bottom of a bath, his brain was often other-where, and these days it was

well occupied. He was marshalling the facts at his disposal -- his odds and ends

of information, and peering at them with the eye of his brain, now from this

direction, now from that; now from below, now from above, as he talked, or

seemed to listen, by day and by night, or in the evening with his feet on the

mantelpiece, a liqueur at his elbow and his sister in the opposite chair.

      He glanced at Fuchsia to make sure that she had recognized the distant

boy, and was surprised to see a look of puzzled absorption on her dark face, her

lips parted a little as though from a faint excitement. By now the crocodile of

figures was rounding the bend of the lake away to their left. And then it

stopped. Steerpike was moving away from the retainers, to the shore. He had

apparently given them an order, for they all sat down among the shore-side pines

and watched him as he stripped himself of his clothes and thrust his

sword-stick, point down, into the muddy bank. Even from so great a distance it

could be seen that his shoulders were very hunched and high.

      "By all that's public," said Prunesquallor, "so we have a new official,

have we? The lakeside augury of things to come -- fresh blood in summertime with

forty years to go. The curtains part -- precocity advances, ha, ha, ha! And

what's he doing now?"

      Fuchsia had given a little gasp of surprise, for Steerpike had dived into

the lake. A moment before he dived he had waved to them, although as far as they

had been able to judge he had not so much as moved his eyes in their direction.

      "What was _that_?" said Irma, swivelling her neck about in a most

lubricated way. "I said, 'what was _that_?', Bernard. It sounded like a splash;

do you hear me, Bernard? I say it sounded like a _splash_."

      "That's why," said her brother.

      "'That's why?' What do you mean, Bernard, by 'that's why'? You are so

tiresome. I said, you are so tiresome. That's why _what_?"

      "That's why it was like a splash, my butterfly."

      "But _why_? Oh, my conscience for a normal brother! Why, Bernard,

was-it-like-a-splash?"

      "Only because it happened to be one, peahen," he said. "It was an

authentic, undiluted splash. Ha! ha! ha! An undiluted splash."

      "Oh!" cried Mrs. Slagg, her fingers plucking at her nether lip, "it wasn't

the shark, was it, Doctor sir? Oh, my weak heart, sir! Was it the shark?"

      "Nonsense!" said Irma. "Nonsense, you silly woman! Sharks in Gormenghast

Lake! The very idea!"

      Fuchsia's eyes were on Steerpike. He was a strong swimmer and was by now

halfway across the lake, the thin white arms obtusely angled at the elbows

methodically dipping and emerging.

      Cora's voice said: "I can see somebody."

      "Where?" said Clarice.

      "In the water."

      "What? In the lake?"

      "Yes, that's the only water there is, stupid."

      "No, it isn't."

      "Well, it's the only water there is that's near us now."

      "Oh yes, it's the only water of _that_ sort."

      "Can you see him?"

      "I haven't looked yet."

      "Well, look now."

      "Shall I?"

      "Yes. Now."

      "Oh . . . I see a man. Do you see a man?"

      "I told _you_ about him. Of course I do."

      "He's swimming to me."

      "Why to you? It might as well be to me."

      "Why?"

      "Because we're just the same."

      "That's our glory."

      "_And_ our pride. Don't forget that."

      "No, I won't."

      They stared at the approaching swimmer. His face was most of the time

either under water or lying sideways along it to draw breath, and they had no

idea that it was Steerpike.

      "Clarice," said Cora.

      "Yes."

      "We are the only ladies present, aren't we?"

      "Yes. What about it?"

      "Well, we"ll go down to the shore, so that when he arrives we can unbend

to him."

      "Will it hurt?" said Clarice.

      "Why are you so ignorant of phrases?" Cora turned her face to her sister's

profile.

      "I don't know what you mean," muttered Clarice.

      "I haven't time to explain about language," said Cora. "It doesn't

matter."

      "Doesn't it?"

      "No. But this is what does."

      "Oh."

      "We are being swum to."

      "Yes."

      "So we must receive his homage on the shore."

      "Yes . . . yes."

      "So we must go and patronize him now."

      "Now?"

      "Yes, now. Are you ready?"

      "When I get up I'll be."

      "Have you finished?"

      "Nearly. Have you?"

      "Yes."

      "Come on, then."

      "Where?"

      "Don't bother me with ignorance. Just walk where I do."

      "Yes."

      "Look!"

      "Look!"

      Steerpike had found himself in his depth and was standing upright. The

water lapped at the base of his ribs, the mud of the lake's floor oozing between

his toes, while he waved his arms over his head to the group, the bright drops

falling from them in sparkling strings.

      Fuchsia was excited. She loved what he had done. To suddenly see them, to

throw off his clothes, to plunge into the deep water and to strike out across

the lake to them, and then finally to stand, panting, with the water curling at

his narrow wiry waist -- was fine; all upon the spur of the moment.

      Irma Prunesquallor, who had not seen her "admirer" for several weeks, gave

a shriek as she saw his naked body rising from the lake, and covering her face

with her hands she peered between her fingers.

      Nannie still couldn't make out who it was, and months afterwards was still

in doubt.

      Steerpike's voice sounded over the shallow water.

      "Well met!" he shouted. "Only just saw you! Lady Fuchsia! good day. It's

delightful to see you again. How is your health? Miss Irma? Excuse my skin.

Arid, Doctor, how's yours?"

      Then he gazed with his dark-red, close-together eyes at the twins, who

were paddling out to meet him, quite unconscious of the water up to their

ankles.

      "You're getting your legs wet, your ladyships. Be careful! Go back!" cried

the youth, in mock alarm. "You do me too much honour. For God's sake, go back!"

      It was necessary for him to shout in such a manner as gave no indication

that he held authority over them. Indeed, he did not care two straws whether

they marched on until they were up to their necks. It was a quaint situation. In

the interests of modesty he could move no farther shorewards.

      As he intended, they were unable to recognize the authority in his voice

which they had learned to obey. The twins moved deeper in the water, and the

Doctor, Fuchsia, and Nannie Slagg were amazed to see that they were up to their

hips in the lake, the voluminous skirts of their purple dresses floating out

magnificently.

      Steerpike stared past them for a moment arid indicated by a helpless

shrugging of his shoulders and a display of the palms of his hands that he was

powerless to cope with the situation. They had become very near him. Near enough

for him to speak to them without being heard by the group which had by now

gathered at the fringe of the lake.

      In a low, quick voice, and one which he knew by experience would find an

immediate response, he said: "Stand where you are. Not one more step, do you

hear me? I have something to tell you. Unless you stand still and listen to me

you will forfeit the golden thrones which are now complete and are on their way

to your apartment. Go back now. Go back to the Castle -- to your room, or there

will be trouble."

      While he spoke he made signs to those on the shore; he shrugged his

shoulders impotently. The while, his quick voice ran on, mesmerizing the twins,

hip-deep among the sparkling ripples.

      "You will not speak of the Fire -- and you will keep to yourselves and not

go out and meet people as you are doing today against my orders. You have

disobeyed. I shall arrive at your rooms at ten o'clock tonight. I am displeased,

for you have broken your promise. Yet you shall have your glory; but only if you

never speak of the Fire. Sit down at once!" This peremptory order was one which

Steerpike could not resist. Their eyes had been fixed on him as he spoke, and he

wished to convince himself that they were powerless to disobey him at such

moments as this -- that they were unable to think of anything save what he was

driving into their consciousness by the peculiar low voice which he adopted and

by the constant repetition of a few simple maxims. A twist of his lips suggested

the vile, overweening satisfaction he experienced as he watched the two purple

creatures sink upon their rears in the lukewarm lake. Only their long necks and

saucer-like faces remained above the surface. Surrounding each of them was the

wavering fringe of a purple skirt.

      Directly he had seen, tasted and absorbed the delicious essence of the

situation, his voice rapped out: "Go back! Back to your rooms and wait for me.

Back at once -- no talking on the shore."

      As they sank into the lake, automatically, at his orders, he had, for the

benefit of the watchers, clasped his head in his hands as though in desperation.

      Then the aunts arose, all stuck about with purple and made their way, hand

in hand, to the amazed gathering on the sands.

      Steerpike's lesson had been well digested, and they walked solemnly past

the Doctor, Fuchsia, Irma and Nannie Slagg and into the trees; and, turning to

their left along a hazel ride, proceeded, in a kind of sodden trance, in the

direction of the Castle.

      "It beats me, Doctor! Beats me completely!" shouted the youth in the

water.

      "You surprise me, dear boy!" cried the Doctor. "By all that's amphibious,

you surprise me. Have a heart, dear child, have a heart, and swim away -- we're

so tired of the sight of your stomach."

      "Forgive its magnetism!" replied Steerpike, who dived back under water and

was next to be seen some distance off, swimming steadily in the direction of the

Raft-makers.

      Fuchsia, watching the sunlight flashing on the wet arms of the now distant

boy, found that her heart was pounding. She mistrusted his eyes. She was

repelled by his high, round forehead and the height of his shoulders. He did not

belong to the Castle as she knew it. But her heart beat, for he was alive -- oh,

so alive! and adventurous; and no one seemed to be able to make him feel humble.

As he had answered the Doctor his eyes had been on her. She did not understand.

Her melancholy was like a darkness in her; but when she thought of him it seemed

that through the darkness a forked lightning ran.

      "I'm going back now," she said to the Doctor. "Tonight we will meet, thank

you. Come on, Nannie. Good-bye, Miss Prunesquallor."

      Irma made a kind of curling movement with her body and smiled woodenly.

      "Good day," she said. "It has been delightful. Most. Bernard, your arm. I

said -- your _arm_."

      "You did, and there's no doubt about it, snow-blossom. I heard you," said

her brother. "Ha! ha! ha! And here it is. An arm of trembling beauty, its every

pore agog for the touch of your limp fingers. You wish to take it? You shall.

You shall take it -- but seriously, ha! ha! ha! Take it seriously, I pray you,

sweet frog; but do let me have it back some time. Let us away. Fuchsia, for now,

good-bye. We part, only to meet."

      Ostentatiously he raised his left elbow and Irma, lifting her parasol over

her head, her hips gyrating and her nose like a needle pointing the way, took

his arm and they moved into the shadows of the trees.

      Fuchsia lifted Titus and placed him over her shoulder, while Nannie folded

up the rust-coloured rug, and they in their turn began the homeward journey.

      Steerpike had reached the further shore and the party of men had resumed

their _détour_ of the lake, the chestnut boughs across their shoulders. The

youth moved jauntily ahead of them, spinning the sword-stick.

66

COUNTESS GERTRUDE

      Long after the drop of lake water had fallen from the ilex leaf and the

myriad reflections that had floated on its surface had become a part of the

abactina of what had gone for ever, the head at the thorn-prick window had

remained gazing out into the summer.

      It belonged to the Countess. She was standing on a ladder, for only in

such a way could she obtain a view through that high, ivy-cluttered opening.

Behind her the shadowy room was full of birds.

      Blobs of flame on the dark crimson wallpaper smouldered, for a few

sunbeams shredded their way past her head and struck the wall with silent

violence. They were entirely motionless in the half light and burned without a

flicker, forcing the rest of the room into still deeper shade, and into a kind

of subjugated motion, a counter-play of volumes of many shades between the hues

of deep ash-grey and black.

      It was difficult to see the birds, for there were no candles lighted. The

summer burned beyond the small high window.

      At last the Countess descended the ladder, step after mammoth step, until

both feet on the ground she turned about, and began to move to the shadowy bed.

When she reached its head she ignited the wick of a half-melted candle and,

seating herself at the base of the pillows, emitted a peculiarly sweet, low,

whistling note from between her great lips.

      For all her bulk it was as though she had, from a great winter tree,

become a summer one. Not with leaves was she decked, but, thick as foliage, with

birds. Their hundred eyes twinkled like glass beads in the candlelight.

      "Listen," she said. "We're alone. Things are bad. Things are going wrong.

There's evil afoot. I know it."

      Her eyes narrowed. "But let "em try. We can bide our time. We"ll hold our

horses. Let them rear their ugly hands, and by the Doom, we"ll crack "em

chine-ways. Within four days the Earling -- and then I'll take him, babe and boy

-- Titus the Seventy-seventh."

      She rose to her feet. "God shrive my soul, for it"ll need it!" she boomed,

as the wings fluttered about her and the little claws shifted for balance. "God

shrive it when I find the evil thing! For absolution, or no absolution --

there"ll be _satisfaction_ found." She gathered some cake crumbs from a nearby

crate, and placed them between her lips. At the trotting sound of her tongue a

warbler pecked from her mouth, but her eyes had remained half closed, and what

could be seen of her iris was as hard and glittering as a wet flint.

      "Satisfaction," she repeated huskily, with something purr-like in the

heavy-sounding syllables. "In Titus it's all centred. Stone and mountain -- the

Blood and the Observance. Let them touch him. For every hair that's hurt I'll

stop a heart. If grace I have when turbulence is over -- so be it; and if not --

what then?"

67

THE APPARITION

      Something in a white shroud was moving towards the door of the twins'

apartment. The Castle was asleep. The silence like space. The Thing was

inhumanly tall and appeared to have no arms.

      In their room the aunts sat holding each other by the empty grate. They

had been waiting so long for the handle of the door to turn. This is now what it

began to do. The twins had their eyes on it. They had been watching it for over

an hour -- the room ill lit -- their brass clock ticking. And then, suddenly,

through the gradually yawning fissure of the door the Thing entered, its head

scraping the lintel -- its head grinning and frozen, was the head of a skull.

      They could not scream. The twins could not scream. Their throats were

contracted; their limbs had stiffened. The bulging of their four identical eyes

was ghastly to see, and as they stood there, paralysed, a voice from just below

the grinning skull cried:

      "Terror! terror! terror! pure; naked; and bloody!"

      And the nine-foot length of sheet moved into the room.

      Old Sourdust's skull had come in useful. Balanced on the end of the

sword-stick, and dusted with phosphorus, the sheet hanging vertically down its

either side, and kept in place by a tack through the top of the cranium,

Steerpike was able to hold it three feet above his own head and peer through a

slit he had made in the sheet at his eye level. The white linen fell in long

sculptural folds to the floor of the room.

      The twins were the colour of the sheet. Their mouths were wide open and

their screams tore inwards at their bowels for lack of natural vent. They had

become congealed with an icy horror, their hair, disentangling from knot and

coil, had risen like pampas grass that lifts in a dark light when gusts prowl

shuddering and presage storm. They could not even cling more closely together,

for their limbs were weighted with cold stone. It was the end. The Thing scraped

the ceiling with its head and moved forward noiselessly in one piece. Having no

human possibility of height, it had no height. It was not a tall ghost -- it was

immeasurable; Death walking like an element.

      Steerpike had realized that unless something was done it would be only a

matter of time before the twins, through the loose meshwork of their vacant

brains, divulged the secret of the Burning. However much they were in his power

he could not feel sure that the obedience which had become automatic in his

presence would necessarily hold when they were among others. As he now saw it,

it seemed that he had been at the mercy of their tongues ever since the Fire --

and he could only feel relief that he had escaped detection -- for until now he

had had hopes that, vacuous as they were, they would be able to understand the

peril in which, were any suspicion to be attached to them, they would stand. But

he now realized that through terrorism and victimization alone could loose lips

be sealed. And so he had lain awake and planned a little episode. Phosphorus,

which along with the poisons he had concocted in Prunesquallor's dispensary, and

which as yet he had found no use for -- his sword-stick, as yet unsheathed, save

when alone he polished the slim blade, and a sheet. These were his media for the

concoction of a walking death.

      And now he was in their room. He could watch them perfectly through the

slit in the sheet. If he did not speak now, before the hysterics began, then

they would hear nothing, let alone grasp his meaning. He lifted his voice to a

weird and horrible pitch.

      "I am Death!" he cried. "I am all who have died. I am the death of Twins.

Behold! Look at my face. It is naked. It is bone. It is Revenge. _Listen_. I am

the One who strangles."

      He took a further pace towards them. Their mouths were still open and

their throats strained to loose the clawing cry.

      "I come as Warning! Warning! Your throats are long and white and ripe for

strangling. My bony hands can squeeze all breath away . . . I come as Warning!

_Listen!_"

      There was no alternative for them. They had no power.

      "I am Death -- and I will talk to you -- the Burners. Upon that night you

lit a crimson fire. You burned your brother's heart away! Oh, horror!"

      Steerpike drew breath. The eyes of the twins were well nigh upon their

cheekbones. He must speak very simply.

      "But there is yet a still more bloody crime. The crime of speech. The

crime of Mentioning, Mentioning. For this, I murder in a darkened room. _I_

shall be watching. Each time you move your mouths _I_ shall be watching.

Watching. Watching with my enormous eyes of bone. I shall be listening.

Listening, with my fleshless ears: and my long fingers will be itching . . .

itching. Not even to each other shall you speak. Not of your crime. Oh, horror!

Not of the crimson Fire.

      "My cold grave calls me back, but shall I answer it? No! For I shall be

beside _you_ for ever. Listening, listening; with my fingers itching. You will

not see me . . . but I shall be here . . . there . . . and wherever you go . . .

for evermore. Speak not of Fire . . . or Steerpike . . . Fire -- or Steerpike,

your protector, for the sake of your long throats. . . Your long white throats."

      Steerpike turned majestically. The skull had tilted a little on the point

of the sword-stick, but it did not matter. The twins were icebound in an arctic

sea.

      As he moved solemnly through the doorway, something grotesque, terrifying,

ludicrous in the slanting angle of the skull -- as though it were listening . .

. gave emphasis to all that had gone before.

      As soon as he had closed the door behind him he shed himself of the sheet,

and, wrapping the skull in its folds, hid it from view among some lumber that

lay along the wall of the passage.

      There was still no sound from the room. He knew that it would be fruitless

to appear the same evening. Whatever he said would be lost. He waited a few

moments, however, expecting the hysteria to find a voice, but at length began

his return journey. As he turned the corner of a distant passageway, he suddenly

stopped dead. It had begun. Dulled as it was by the distance and the closed

doors, it was yet horrifying enough -- the remote, flat, endless screaming of

naked panic.

      When, on the evening of the next day, he visited them he found them in

bed. The old woman who smelt so badly had brought them their meals. They lay

close together and were obviously very ill. They were so white that it was

difficult to tell where their faces ended and the long pillow began.

      The room was brightly lit. Steerpike was glad to notice this. He

remembered that, as "Death", he had mentioned his preference for "strangling in

a _darkened_ room". The strong lights indicated that the twins were able to

remember at least a part of what he had said that night.

      But even now he was taking no chances.

      "Your Ladyships," he said, "you look seedy. Very seedy. But believe me,

you don't look as bad as I feel. I have come for your advice and perhaps for

your help. I must tell you. Be prepared." He coughed. "I have had a visitor. A

visitor from Beyond. Do not be startled, ladies. But his name was Death. He came

to me and he said: 'Their Ladyships have done foul murder. I shall go to them

now and squeeze the breath from their old bodies.' But I said: 'No! hold back, I

pray you. For they have promised never to divulge a word.' And Death said: 'How

can I be sure? How can I have proof?' I answered: 'I am your witness. If their

Ladyships so much as mention the word FIRE or STEERPIKE, you shall take them

with you under wormy ground.'

      Cora and Clarice were trying to speak, but they were very weak. At last

Cora said:

      "He . . . came . . . here . . . too. He's still here. Oh, save us! save

us!"

      "He came here!" said Steerpike, jumping to his feet. "Death came here,

too?"

      "Yes."

      "How strange that you are still alive! Did he give you orders?"

      "Yes," said Clarice.

      "And you remember them all?"

      "Yes. . . yes!" said Cora, fingering her throat. "We can remember

everything. Oh, save us."

      "It is for you to save yourselves with silence. You wish to live?"

      They nodded pathetically.

      "Then never a word."

      "Never a word," echoed Clarice in the hush of the bright room.

      Steerpike bowed and retired, and returned by an alternative staircase

flanked by a long, steep curve of banister, down which he slid at high speed,

landing nimbly at the foot of the stairs with a kind of pounce.

      He had commandeered a fresh suite of rooms whose windows gave upon the

cedar lawns. It was more in keeping with the position which his present duties

commanded.

      Glancing along the corridor before he entered his apartments, he could see

in the distance -- too far for the sound of their footsteps -- the figures of

Fuchsia and the Doctor.

      He entered his room. The window was a smoke-blue rectangle, intersected by

black branches. He lit a lamp. The walls flared, and the window became black.

The branches had disappeared. He drew the blinds. He kicked off his shoes and,

springing on the bed, twisted himself onto his back and, for a moment, discarded

his dignity and became, at least physically, a little more in keeping with his

seventeen years; for he wriggled, arched his spine and stretched out his arms

and legs with a terrible glee. Then he began to laugh and laugh, the tears

pouring from his dark-red eyes until, utterly exhausted and helpless, he fell

back upon the pillows and slept, his thin lips twisted.

      An hour earlier, Fuchsia had met the Doctor at their rendezvous, the Cool

Room. He had not been flippant. He had helped her with words well chosen and

thoughts simple and direct that touched deftly on the areas of her sorrow.

Together they had covered in their conversation, the whole range of lamentable

and melancholy experiences which it had been their lot to encounter. They had

spoken of all connected with them, of Fuchsia's brooding mother; of the uncanny

disappearance of her father, and whether he was dead or alive; of the Doctor's

sister and of the Twins: of the enigma of Swelter and Flay and of little Nannie

Slagg; of Barquentine and of Steerpike.

      "Be careful of him, Fuchsia," said the Doctor. "Will you remember that?"

      "I will," said Fuchsia. "Yes, I will, Doctor Prune."

      Dusk was beyond the bay window . . . a great, crumbling dusk that wavered

and descended like a fog of ashes.

      Fuchsia unfastened the two top buttons of her blouse and folded the

corners back. She had turned away from the Doctor as she did so. Then she held

her hands cupped over her breast bone. It seemed as though she were hiding

something.

      "Yes, I _will_ be careful, Doctor Prune," she repeated, "and I'll remember

all you have said -- and tonight I had to wear it -- I had to."

      "You had to wear what, my little mushroom?" said Prunesquallor, lightening

his voice for the first time, for the serious session was over and they could

relax. "Bless my dull wits if I haven't lost the thread -- if there _was_ one!

Say it again, my Swarthy-sweet."

      "Look! -- look! -- for you and for me, because I wanted to."

      She dropped her hands to her side, where they hung heavily. Her eyes

shone. She was a mixture of the clumsy and the magnificent -- her head bridled

up -- her throat gleaming, her feet apart and the toes turned in a little.

"LOOK!"

      The Doctor at her command looked very hard indeed. The ruby he had given

her that night, when for the first time he had met Steerpike, burned against her

breast.

      And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, she had fled, her feet pounding on the

stone floors, while the door of the Cool Room swung to and fro . . . to and fro.

68

THE EARLING

      The day of the "Earling" was a day of rain. Monotonous, sullen, grey rain

with no life in it. It had not even the power to stop. There were always a

hundred heads at the windows of the North wing that stared into the sky, into

the rain. A hundred figures leant across the sills of the Southern wall, and

stared. They would disappear back into the darkness, one by one, but others

would have appeared at other windows. There would always be about a hundred

starers. Rain. The slow rain. The East and the West of the Castle watched the

rain. It was to be a day of rain . . . There could be no stopping it.

      Even before the dawn, hours before, when the Grey Scrubbers were polishing

the walls of the stone kitchen, and the Raft-Makers were putting the finishing

touches to the raft of chestnut boughs, and the stable boys, by the light of

lanterns, were grooming the horses, it was obvious that there was a change in

the Castle. It was the Greatest Day. And it rained. It was obvious, this change,

in many ways, most superficially of all, in the visual realm, for all wore

sacking. Every mortal one. Sacking dyed in the hot blood of eagles. On this day

there could be no one, no one save Titus, exempted from the immemorial decree --

"_That the Castle shall wear sacking on the Earling day._"

      Steerpike had officiated at the distribution of the garments under the

direction of Barquentine. He was getting to know a great deal about the more

obscure and legendary rites. It was in his mind to find himself on Barquentine's

decease the leading, if not the sole authority in matters of ritual and

observance. In any event, the subject fascinated him. It was potential.

      "Curse!" he muttered, as he woke to the sound of rain. But still, what did

it matter? It was the future that he had his eyes on. A year ahead. Five years

ahead. In the meantime, "all aboard for glory!"

      Mrs. Slagg was up early and had put her sacking garment on at once in

deference to the sacrosanct convention. It was a pity that she could not wear

her hat with the glass grapes, but of course, on the day of the Earling, no one

wore hats. A servant had brought in, the night before, the stone which Titus was

to hold in his left hand, the ivy branch which he was to carry in his right, and

the necklace of snail-shells for his little neck. He was still asleep, and

Nannie was ironing the white linen smock which would reach his ankles. It was

blanched to a quality as of white light. Nannie fingered it as though it were

gossamer.

      "So it's come to this." Nannie was talking to herself. "So it's come to

this. The tiniest thing in the world to be an Earl today. _Today!_ Oh, my weak

heart, how cruel they are to make a tiny thing have such responsiverity! Cruel.

Cruel. It isn't righteousness! No, it isn't. But he _is_. He _is_ the Earl, the

naughty mite. The only one -- and no one can say he isn't. Oh, my poor heart!

they've never been to see him. It's only _now_ they want to see him because the

day has come."

      Her miniature screwed-up face was skirmishing with tears. Her mouth worked

itself in and out of its own dry wrinkles between every sentence. "They expect

him to come, the new little Earl, for their homage and everything, but it's me

who baths him and gets him ready, and irons out his white smock, and gives him

his breakfast. But they won't think of all that -- and then. . . and then. .."

(Nannie suddenly sat down on the edge of a chair and began to cry) "they"ll take

him away from me. Oh, justlessness -- and I'll be all alone -- all alone to die

. . . and --"

      "I'll be with you," said Fuchsia from the door. "And they won't take him

away from you. Of course, they won't."

      Nannie Slagg ran up to her and clung to her arm. "They _will_!" she cried.

"Your huge mother said she would. She _said_ she would."

      "Well, they haven't taken _me_ away, have they?" said Fuchsia.

      "But you're only a girl!" cried Nannie Slagg louder than ever. "You don't

matter. You're not going to be anything."

      Fuchsia dislodged the old woman's hand and walked heavily to the window.

The rain poured down. It poured down.

      The voice behind her went on: "As though I haven't poured my love out

every day -- every day. I've poured it all away until I'm hollowed out. It's

always me. It always has been. Toil after toil. Moil after moil; with no one to

say 'God bless you'. No one to understand."

      Fuchsia could stand it no longer. Much as she loved her nurse, she could

not hear that melancholy, peevish voice and watch the doleful rain and keep

herself calm. Unless she left the room she would break something -- the nearest

breakable thing. She turned and ran, and in her own rooni once more, fell upon

her bed, the skirt of a sacking costume rucked up about her thighs.

      Of the Castle's countless breakfasts that dark morning there were few that

tasted well. The steady monotone of the pattering rain was depressing enough,

but for it to descend on such a day was sheer gloom. It was as though it defied

the Castle's inmost faith; taunted it with a dull, ignorant descent of

blasphemy, as though the undrainable clouds were muttering: "What is an Earling

to us? It is immaterial."

      It was well that there was much to do before the hour of twelve, and there

were few who were not occupied with some task or another relevant to the Day.

The great kitchen was in an uproar of activity before eight o'clock had struck.

      The new chef was in great contrast to the old; a bow-legged, mulefaced

veteran of the ovens, with a mouthful of brass teeth and tough, dirty grey hair.

His head appeared to sprout the stuff rather than grow it. There was something

ferocious about it. In the kitchen it was said that he had his head cropped

every other day -- indeed, there were some who held that they had seen it on the

move at the speed of the minute hand of a great clock.

      Out of his mule face and from between the glintings of his teeth a slow,

resonant voice would make its way from time to time. But he was not

communicative, and for the most part gave his orders by means of gesturing with

his heavy hands.

      The activities in the great kitchen, where everything relating to the

preparation of food in all its aspects seemed to be going on at the same moment,

and where the heat was beginning to make the stone hall sweat, were not, in

fact, being pursued in readiness for this Day of Earling, but for the morrow;

for, alongside the sartorial beggary went a mendicant's diet, the figures of

sacking having only crusts to eat until the next day dawned, when, once more in

their own clothes, the symbolic humility in the presence of the new Earl of

Gormenghast over, they were able to indulge in a barbecue that rivalled that on

the day of Titus's birth.

      The kitchen staff, man and boy, and the entire servantage in all its forms

and both its sexes, were to be ready at half-past eleven to troop down to

Gormenghast Lake, where the trees would be in readiness for them.

      The carpenters had been working at the lakeside and among the branches for

the last three days. In the cedars had been erected the wooden platforms which

had for twenty-two years been leaning against a midnight wall in the depths of

the ale vaults. Strangely shaped areas of battened planking, like fragments from

an immense jig-saw pattern. They had had to be strengthened, for twenty-two

years in the unhealthy cellars had not improved them, and they had, of course,

to be repainted -- white. Each weirdly outlined platform was so shaped that it

might fit perfectly in place among the cedar branches. The varying

eccentricities of the trees had many hundreds of years ago been the subject of

careful study, so that at all the future Earlings the stages, so ingeniously

devised, might be slipped into place with the minimum of difficulty. On the back

of each wooden stage was written the name of the tree for which it was

constructed and the height of the platform from the ground, so that there would

be no confusion.

      There were four of these wooden inventions, and they were now in place.

The four cedars to which they belonged were all thigh deep in the lake, and

against the great boles of these trees ladders were erected which sloped across

the shallow water from the shore to a foot or so below the level of the

platforms. Similar but ruder structures were wedged in among the branches of ash

and beech, and where possible among the closely growing larches and pines. On

the opposite side of the lake, where the aunts had paddled from the sand to the

dripping Steerpike, the trees were set too far back from the water's edge to

afford the necessary vantage; but in the densely wooded hanger were a thousand

boughs among the convolutions of which the menials could find themselves some

kind of purchase or another.

      A yew tree in a clearing, rather farther back from the water than the rest

of the inhabited trees, had the wedge-faced poet as its guest. A great piece had

been torn from its side, and in the cleft the rain bubbled and the naked flesh

of the tree was crimson. The rain fell almost vertically in the breathless air,

stippling the grey lake. It was as though its white, glass texture of yesterday

was now composed of a different substance -- of grey sandpaper -- a vast

granulated sheet of it. The platforms ran with films of the rain. The leaves

dripped and splashed in the films. The sand on the opposite shore was sodden.

The Castle was too far to be seen through the veil of endless water. There was

no individual cloud to be seen. It was a grey sky, unbroken, from which the

melancholy strings descended.

      The day drew on, minute after raining minute; hour after raining hour,

until the trees of the steep hanger were filled with figures. They were to be

found on practically every branch that was strong enough to support them. A

great oak was filled with the kitchen staff. A beech, with the gardeners,

Pentecost sitting majestically in the main dividing fork of the slippery trunk.

The stable lads were perching themselves precariously among the branches of a

dead walnut and, cat-calling and whistling, were pulling each other's hair at

every opportunity or kicking out with their feet. For every tree or group of

trees, its trade or status.

      Only a few officials moved about at the water's edge, awaiting the arrival

of the principal figures. Only a few _officials_ among the trees, but on the

further shore, and along the strip of dark sand, there was gathered a great

congregation. It stood in complete silence. Old men, old women, and clusters of

strange striplings. There was about them a complete silence. They were apart.

They were the Mud Dwellers -- the denizens of the Outer Wall -- the forgotten

people -- the Bright Carvers.

      There was a woman by the shore. She stood a little apart from a group. Her

face was young and it was old: the structure youthful, the expression, broken by

time -- the bane of the Dwellers. In her arms was an infant with flesh like

alabaster.

      The rain came down on all. It was warm rain. Warm, melancholy and

perpetual. It laved the little alabaster body of the child and still it laved

it. There was no ending, and the great lake swelled. In the high branches of the

dead walnut tree the whistling and scuffling had ceased, for horses were moving

through the conifers of the adjacent shore. They had reached the water's edge

and were being tethered to the low sweeping arms of the cedars.

      On the first horse, a great grey hunter by any normal standard, was

seated, side-saddle, the Countess. She had been hidden among leaves, only the

horse showing itself; but immediately she became exposed to view her mount

became a pony.

      The symbolic sacking hung about her in vast, dripping folds. Behind her, a

roan bore Fuchsia, with her legs astride. She was patting its neck as she came

through the trees. It was like patting soaked velvet. Its black mane was like a

repetition of Fuchsia's hair. Lank with the rain, it clung to the forehead and

the throat.

      The aunts were in a pony trap. That they were not in purple seemed

extraordinary. Their dresses had always been as indigenous and inevitable a part

of them as their faces. They seemed uncomfortable in the sacking and kept

plucking at it with their limp hands. The thin man who led the pony brought it

to a halt at the lake side, and at the same moment another trap, of similar

design but painted a dark and unpleasant orange, trundled through the pines, and

there was Mrs. Slagg, sitting as upright as she could, her proud attitude (as

she supposed it) nullified by the terrified look of her face, which protruded

like some kind of wizened fruit from the coarse folds of the garment. She could

remember the Earling of Sepulchrave. He had been in his teens. He had swum out

to the raft, and there had been no rain. But -- oh, her poor heart! -- this was

so different. It would never have rained at an "Earling" when she was a young

girl. Things were so different then.

      On her lap was Titus -- drenched. Even so the smock she had been so

carefully ironing looked miraculously white, as though it gave forth light

instead of receiving it. He sucked his thumb as he stared about him. He saw the

figures peering down at him from the trees. He did not smile: he simply stared,

turning his face from one to another. Then he became interested in a golden

bangle which the Countess had sent him the same morning, pulling it as far up

his arm as he could, then down to his plump, wrinkled wrist, studying it

seriously all the while.

      The Doctor and his sister had a sycamore to themselves. Irma took some

time being hoisted, and was not at all happy about the whole business. She

disliked having her hips wedged between rough branches even in the cause of

symbolism. The Doctor, seated a little above her, looked like some form of bird,

possibly a plucked crane.

      Steerpike had followed Nannie Slagg in order to impress the crowd.

Although he should have been in a pine-for-four, he now selected a small ash,

where he could both be seen and could see with equal advantage to himself and

the rest of Gormenghast.

      The Twins were keeping their mouths tightly shut. They repeated to

themselves every thought as it occurred to them, to find whether the word "fire"

could possibly have crept into it, and when they found it hadn't, they decided

in any event to keep it to themselves, in order to be on the safe side. Thus it

was that they had not spoken a word since Steerpike left them in their bedroom.

They were still white, but not so horribly so. The breath of a yellow reflection

had infiltrated itself into their skin and this was nasty enough. Nothing could

have been more truly spoke than when Steerpike (as Death) had cried that he

would be forever with them. They held each other tightly as they waited to be

helped from the trap, for Death had not left them since that curdling night and

his livid skull was before their eyes.

      By well-proportioned mixtures of brute-strength and obsequious delicacy

the officials had at last established the Countess Gertrude upon her stage in

the enormous swarthy boughs of the cedar tree. A red carpet had been spread over

the woodwork of the platform. The waders and lakeside birds of many breeds which

had been disturbed by the activities of the Day, after flying distractedly

hither and thither over the forest in swarms, had, as soon as the Countess was

seated in the enormous wickerwork chair, flocked to her tree, in which they

settled. Angling and disputing for positions at her feet and over various parts

of her accommodating body were a whitethroat, a fieldfare, a willowwren, a

nuthatch, a tree-pipit, a sand martin, a red-backed shrike, a goldfinch, a

yellow bunting, two jays, a greater spotted woodpecker, three moorhens (on her

lap with a mallard, a woodcock, and a curlew), a wagtail, four missel thrushes,

six blackbirds, a nightingale and twentyseven sparrows.

      They fluttered themselves, sending sprays of varying dimensions according

to their wing-spans through the dripping air. There was more shelter beneath the

cedars with their great out-stretched hands spread one above the other in

dark-green, dripping terraces, than was the case for those in alternative

vegetation.

      At this extreme the stable boys in the top branches of the walnut might as

well have been sitting in the lake, they could not have been wetter.

      It was the same for the Dwellers on the shore -- that proud, inpoverished

congregation. They cast no reflection in the water at their feet -- it was too

triturated by the pricking of the rain.

      Getting Barquentine established on his stage was the trickiest and most

unpleasant task which fell to the lot of the officials. It took place to the

accompaniment of such hideous swearing as caused his withered leg to blush

beneath the sacking. It must have been hardened by many years of oaths, but this

morning an awakened sense of shame at what the upper part of the body could

descend to, raddled it from hip to toe. Its only consolation was that the

contaminating influence had not descended lower than the lungs, and what

diseases the withered leg experienced were entirely physical.

      When he was seated on the high-backed "Earling" chair he pushed his crutch

irritably beneath it and then began to wring out his beard. Fuchsia was by now

in her cedar. She had one to herself and it was comparatively dry, a thick

foliage spreading immediately above the stage -- and she was gazing across the

water at the Dwellers. What was it about them that quickened her -- those people

of the Outer Wall? Why did she feel ill at ease? It was as though they held a

dark secret of which, one day, they would make use; something which would

jeopardize the security of the Castle. But they were powerless. They depended

upon the grace of Gormenghast. What could they do? Fuchsia noticed a woman

standing a little apart from a group. Her feet were in the lake. In her arms she

held a child. It seemed, as Fuchsia watched, that she could see for a quick

moment the dark strands of rain through the limbs of the child. She rubbed her

eyes and again she stared. It was so far. She could not tell.

      Even the officials had climbed into the ivy-throttled elm with its broken

limb that hung by a sapless tendon.

      The Aunts, on the fourth of the cedar stages, shivered, their mouths

tightly closed. Death sat with them and they could not concentrate on the

procedure.

      Barquentine had started, his old voice grating its way through the warm

downpour. It could be heard everywhere, for no one noticed the sound of the rain

any more. It had been so monotonous for so long that it had become inaudible.

Had it stopped suddenly the silence would have been like a blow.

      Steerpike was watching Fuchsia through the branches. She would be

difficult, but it was only a matter of careful planning. He must not hurry it.

Step by step. He knew her temperament. Simple -- painfully simple; inclined to

be passionate over ridiculous things; headstrong -- but a girl, nevertheless,

and easy to frighten or to flatter; absurdly loyal to the few friends she had;

but mistrust could always be sown quite easily. Oh, so painfully simple! That

was the crux of it. There was Titus, of course -- but what were problems for if

not to be solved. He sucked at his hollow tooth.

      Prunesquallor had wiped his glasses for the twentieth time and was

watching Steerpike watching Fuchsia. He was not listening to Barquentine, who

was rattling off the catechismic monody as fast as he could, for he was

suffering the first twinges of rheumatism.

      ". . . and will forever hold in sacred trust the castle of his fathers and

the domain adhering thereto. That he will in letter and in spirit defend it in

every way against the incursions of alien worlds. That he will observe its

sacred rites, honour its crest, and in due time instil into the first male of

his loins, reverence for its every stone until among his fathers he has added,

in the tomb, his link to the unending chain of Groans. So be it."

      Barquentine wiped the water from his face with the flat of his hand and

wrung out his beard again. Then he fumbled for his crutch and hoisted himself on

to his leg. With his free arm he pushed aside a branch and screamed down through

the branches:

      "Are you skulks ready?"

      The two Raftmen were ready. They had taken Titus from Nannie Slagg and

were standing on the raft of chestnut boughs at the lake's edge. Titus was

sitting at their feet in the middle of the raft, the size of a doll. His sepia

hair was stuck to his face and neck. His violet eyes were a little startled. His

white smock clung to him so that the form of his little body was divulged.

      The clinging cloth was luminous.

      "Push off, curse you! Push off!" yelled Barquentine. His voice raked the

water's surface east to west.

      With a long, gradual shoving of their poles the two men propelled the raft

into deeper water. Moving up either side of the raft and plunging their poles a

dozen or so times brought them near the centre of the lake. In a leather bag

hung at his waist the older of the two Raftmen had the symbolic stone, ivy

branch and necklace of snail-shells. The water was now too deep for them to

strike bottom and they dived over the side and, turning, clasped the edge of the

raft. Then, striking out, frog-like with their legs, they had soon brought the

raft to the approximate position.

      "More to the west!" screamed Barquentine from the shore. "More to the

west, idiots!"

      The swimmers splashed themselves around to the adjacent edge of the raft

and once more began to kick out. Then they lifted their heads from the

rain-prodded water and stared in the direction ofBarquentine's voice.

      "Hold!" yelled the unpleasant voice. "And hide your damned selves!"

      The two men worked their way around until their heads were very nearly

obscured by the thick chestnut rim of the raft on the far side from the trees.

      With only their faces bobbing above the surface they trod water. Titus was

alone. He stared about him, bewildered. Where was everybody? The rain streamed

over him. His features began to pucker and his lips to tremble, and he was about

to burst into tears when he changed his mind and decided to stand up instead.

The raft had become quite still and he kept his balance.

      Barquentine grunted to himself. This was good. Ideally speaking, the

prospective Earl should be on his feet while being named. In the case of Titus

this tenet would naturally have had to be waived if the infant had decided to

keep seated or to crawl about.

      "Titus Groan," cried the ancient voice from the shore, "the Day has come!

The Castle awaits your sovereignty. From horizon to horizon all is yours, to

hold in trust -- animal, vegetable and mineral, time without end, save for your

single death that cannot stem a tide of such illustrious Blood."

      This was the Raftmen's cue, and clambering over the side they placed the

necklace of snails around the little wet neck, and as the voice from the shore

cried, "Now!" attempted to place in Titus's hands the stone and the ivy branch.

      But he would not hold them.

      "Hell's blood and gallstones!" screamed Barquentine, "what's the matter?

Rot your hides! what's the matter? Give him his stone and ivy, curse you!"

      They opened his little fingers with difficulty and placed the symbols

against his palms, but he snatched his hands away from them. He would not hold

the things.

      Barquentine was beside himself. It was as though the child had a mind of

its own. He smote the stage with his crutch and spat with fury. There was not

one, either, among the dripping trees or along the strip of bubbling sand -- not

one whose eyes were not fixed on Titus.

      The men on the raft were helpless.

      "Fools! fools! fools!" came the hideous voice through the rain. "Leave

them at his feet, curse your black guts! Leave them at his feet! Oh, body of me,

take your damned heads away!"

      The two men slipped back into the water, cursing the old man. They had

left the stone and the ivy branch on the raft at the child's feet.

      Barquentine knew that the Earling was to be completed by noon: it was

decreed in the old tomes and was Law. There was barely a minute to go.

      He swung his bearded head to left and right. "Your Ladyship, the Countess

Gertrude of Gormenghast! Your Ladyship Fuchsia of Gormenghast! Their Ladyships

Cora and Clarice Groan of Gormenghast! Arise!"

      Barquentine crutched himself forward on the slippery stage until he was

within a few inches of the edge. There was no time to lose.

      "Gormenghast will now watch! And listen! It is the Moment!"

      He cleared his throat and began and could not stop, for there was no time

left. But as he cried the traditional words, his finger-nails were splintering

into the oakwood of his crutch and his face had become purple. The huge beads of

sweat on his brow were lilac, for the colour of his congested head burned

through them.

      "In the sight of all! In the sight of the Castle's Southern wing, in the

sight of Gormenghast mountain, and in the sacred sight of your forefathers of

the Blood, I, Warden of the Immemorial Rites proclaim you, on this day of

Earling, to be the Earl, the only legitimate Earl between heaven and earth, from

skyline to skyline -- Titus, the Seventy-seventh Lord of Gormenghast."

      A hush most terrible and unearthly had spread and settled over the lake,

over the woods and towers and over the world. Stillness had come like a shock,

and now that the shock was dying, only the white emptiness of silence remained.

For while the concluding words were being cried in a black anger, two things had

occurred. The rain had ceased and Titus had sunk to his knees and had begun to

crawl to the raft's edge with a stone in one hand and an ivy branch in the

other. And then, to the horror of all, had dropped the sacrosanct symbols into

the depths of the lake.

      In the brittle, pricking silence that followed, a section of delicate blue

sky broke free from the murk of the clouds above him, and he rose to his feet

and, turning to the dark multitude of the Dwellers, approached in little careful

paces to the edge of the raft that faced the side of the lake where they were

gathered. His back was turned to Barquentine, to the Countess his mother, and to

all who stared transfixed at the only moving thing in the porcelain silence.

      Had a branch broken in any one of the thousand trees that surrounded the

water, or had a cone fallen from a pine, the excruciating tension would have

snapped. Not a branch broke. Not a cone fell.

      In the arms of the woman by the shore the strange child she held began to

struggle with a strength that she could not understand. It had reached outward

from her breast, outward, over the lake; and as it did so the sky began to

blossom in azure and Titus, at the edge of the raft, tore at his necklace with

such force that he found it loose in his hands. Then he lifted his head and his

single cry froze the multitude that watched him on every side, for it was

neither a cry of tears nor of joy; nor was it fear, or even pain -- it was a cry

that for all its shrillness was unlike the voice of a child. And as he cried he

swung the necklace across the sparkling water; and as it sank a rainbow curved

over Gormenghast and a voice answered him.

      A tiny voice. In the absolute stillness it filled the universe -- a cry

like the single note of a bird. It floated over the water from the Dwellers,

from where the woman stood apart from her kind; from the throat of the little

child of Keda's womb -- the bastard babe, and Titus's foster-sister, lambent

with ghost-light.

69

MR. ROTTCODD AGAIN

      The while, beneath the downpour and the sunbeams, the Castle hollow as a

tongueless bell, its corroded shell dripping or gleaming with the ephemeral

weather, arose in immemorial defiance of the changing airs, and skies. These

were but films of altering light and hue: sunbeam shifting into moonbeam; the

wafted leaf into the wafted snow; the musk into a tooth of icicle. These but the

transient changes on its skin: each hour a pulse the more -- a shade the less: a

lizard basking and a robin frozen.

      Stone after grey stone climbed. Windows yawned: shields, scrolls and

legendary mottoes, melancholy in their ruin, protruded in worn relief over

arches or doorways; along the sills of casements, in the walls of towers or

carved in buttresses. Storm-nibbled heads, their shallow faces striated with bad

green and draped with creepers, stared blindly through the four quarters, from

between broken eyelids.

      Stone after grey stone; and a sense of the heaving skywards of great

blocks, one upon another in a climbing weight, ponderous and yet alive with the

labour of dead days. Yet, at the same time, _still_; while sparrows, like

insects, flickered in wastes of ivy. Still, as though paralysed by its own

weight, while about it the momentary motions fluttered and died: a leaf falling:

a bull frog croaking from the moat, or an owl on wings of wool floating

earthwards in slow gyres.

      Was there something about these vertical acres of stone that mouthed of a

stillness that was more complete, a silence that lay _within_, and drummed?

Small winds rustled on the castle's outer shell; leaves dropped away or were

brushed by a bird's wing; the rain ceased and creepers dripped -- but _within_

the walls not even the light changed, save when the sun broke through in a

series of dusty halls in the southern wing. Remoteness.

      For _all_ were at the "Earling". Around the lakeside was the Castle's

breath. Only the old stone lung remained. Not a footfall. Not a voice. Only

wood, and stone, and doorway, bannister, corridor and alcove, room after room,

hall after hall, province after province.

      It was as though, at any moment some inanimate Thing must surely move; a

door open upon its own, or a clock start whirling its hands: the stillness was

too vast and charged to be content to remain in this titanic atrophy -- the

tension must surely find a vent -- and burst suddenly, violently, like a

reservoir of water from a smashed dam -- and the shields fall from their rusty

hooks, the mirrors crack, the boards lift and open and the very castle tremble,

shake its walls like wings; yawn, split and crumble with a roar.

      But nothing happened. Each hall a mouth that gaped and could not close.

The stone jaws prised and aching. The doors like eye-teeth missing from the

bone! There was no sound and nothing human happened.

      What moved in these great caves? A shifting shadow? Only where sunlight

through the south wing wandered. What else? No other movement?

      Only the deathly padding of the cats. Only the soundlessness of the dazed

cats -- the line of them -- the undulating line as blanched as linen, and lorn

as the long gesture of a hand.

      Where, in the wastes of the forsaken castle, spellbound with stone lacunas

-- where could they find their way? From hush to hush. All was unrooted. Life,

bone and breath; echo and movement gone...

      They flowed. Noiselessly and deliberately they flowed. Through doors ajar

they flowed on little feet. The stream of them. The cats.

      Under the welkin of the flaking cherubs doming through shade, they ran.

The pillars narrowing in chill perspective formed them their mammoth highway.

The refectory opened up its tracts of silence. Over the stones they ran. Along a

corridor of fissured plaster. Room after hollow room -- hall after hall, gallery

after gallery, depth after depth, until the acres of grey kitchen opened. The

chopping blocks, the ovens and grills, stood motionless as altars to the dead.

Far below the warped beams they flowed in a white band. There was no hesitation

in their drift. The tail of the white line had disappeared, and the kitchen was

as barren as a cave in a lunar hillside. They were swarming up cold stairs to

other lands.

      Where has she gone? Through the drear sub-light of a thousand yawns, they

ran, their eyes like moons, Up winding stairs to other worlds again, threading

the noonday dusk. And they could find no pulse and she was gone.

      Yet there was no cessation. League after league, the swift, unhurried

padding. The pewter room slid by, the bronze room and the iron. The armoury slid

by on either side -- the passageways slid by -- on either side -- and they could

find no breath in Gormenghast.

      The doorway in the Hall of the Bright Carvings was ajar. As they slid

through the opening it was as though a long, snow-soft serpent had appeared, its

rippling body sown with yellow eyes. Without a pause it streamed among the

carvings lifting hundreds of little dust clouds from the floor. It reached the

hammock at the shuttered end, where, like a continuation of silence and

stillness in a physical form, dozed the curator, the only living thing in the

castle apart from the feline snake that was flooding past him and was even now

on its way back to the door. Above it, the coloured carvings smouldered. The

golden mule -- the storm-grey child -- the wounded head with locks of chasmic

purple.

      Rottcodd dozed on, entirely unaware, not only that his sanctum had been

invaded by her ladyship's cats, but unaware also that the castle was empty below

him and that it was the day of the Earling. No one had told him of the Earl's

disappearance for no one had climbed to the dusty Hall since Mr. Flay's last

visit.

      When he awoke, he felt hungry. Hauling up the shutters of the window he

noticed that the rain had stopped, and as far as he could judge from the

position of the sun it was well into the afternoon. Yet nothing had been sent up

for him in the miniature lift from the Kitchen, forty fathoms below. This was

unheard of. It was so new an idea that his food should not be awaiting him that

for the moment he could not be certain that he was awake. Perhaps he was

dreaming that he had left his hammock.

      He shook the cord that disappeared into the black well, Faintly he could

hear the bell jangling far beneath. Remote as was the thin, metal sound, it

seemed that it was much clearer today, than he ever remembered it to have been

before. It was as though it were the only thing in motion. As though it had no

other sound to contend with, not so much as the buzzing of a fly upon a pane --

it jangled in so solitary a way, so distinct and so infinitely far. He waited,

but nothing happened. He lifted the end of the cord for the second time and let

it fall. Once more, as though from a city of forsaken tombs, a bell rang. Again

he waited. Again nothing happened.

      In deep and agitated thought he returned to the window which was so seldom

open, passing beneath the glimmering chandeliers. Accustomed as he was to

silence, there was something unique today about the emptiness. Something both

close and insistent. And as he pondered he became aware of a sense of

instability -- a sensation almost of fear -- as though some ethic he had never

questioned, something on which whatever he believed was founded and through

which his every concept filtered was now threatened. As though, somewhere, there

was _treason_. Something unhallowed, menacing, and ruthless in its disregard for

the fundamental premises of _loyalty_ itself. What could be thought to count, or

have even the meanest kind of value in action or thought if the foundations on

which his house of belief was erected was found to be sinking and imperilling

the sacrosanct structure it supported.

      It could not be. For what _could_ change? He fingered his chin and shot a

hard, beady glance out of the window. Behind him the long, adumbrate Hall of the

Bright Carvings glimmered beneath the suspended chandeliers. Here and there, a

shoulder or a cheek bone or a fin or a hoof burned green or indigo, crimson or

lemon in the gloom. His hammock swung a little.

      Something had gone wrong. Even had his dinner been sent up the shaft to

him in the normal way he must still have felt that there was something wrong.

This silence was of another kind. It was portentous.

      He turned his thoughts over, tortuously and his eyes, losing for a moment

their beady look, wandered over the scene below him. A little to his left and

about fifty feet beneath his window was a table-land of drab roof around the

margin of which were turrets grey with moss, set about three feet apart from one

another. There were many scores of them, and as his eyes meandered over the

monotonous outline he jerked his head forwards and his focus was no longer

blurred, for he had suddenly realized that every turret was surmounted by a cat,

and every cat had its head thrust forwards, and that every cat, as white as a

plume, was peering through slit eyes at something moving -- something moving far

below on the narrow, sand-coloured path which led from the castle's outhouses to

the northern woods.

      Mr. Rottcodd, gauging by the converging stares of the turreted cats, what

area of distant earth to scan, for with such motionless and avid concentration

in every snow-lit form and yellow eye, there must surely be a spectacle of

peculiar interest below them, he was able within a few moments to discover,

moving toy-like, from the woods, a cavalcade of the stone castle's core.

      Toy horses led. Mr. Rottcodd, who had long sight but who could hardly tell

how many fingers he held up before his own face save by the apprehension of the

digits themselves, removed his glasses. The blurred figures, so far below his

window, threading their way through sunlight, no longer swam, but, starting into

focus, startled him. What had happened? As he asked himself the question, he

knew the answer. That no one had thought fit to tell him! No one! It was a

bitter pill for him to swallow. He had been forgotten. Yet he had always wished

to be forgotten. He could not have it both ways.

      He stared: and there was no mistaking. Each figure was tiny but crystal

clear in the rain-washed atmosphere. The cradle-saddled horse that led the

throng: the child whom he had never glimpsed before, asleep, one arm along the

cradle's rim. Asleep on the day of his "Earling". Rottcodd winced. It was Titus.

So Sepulchrave had died and he had never known. They had been to the lake; to

the lake; and there below him on a slow grey mare was borne along the path --

the Seventy-seventh.

      Leading the mare by a bridle was a youth he had not seen before. His

shoulders were high and the sun shone on a rounded forehead. Over the back of

the mare, beneath the saddle-cradle, and hanging almost to the ground, there was

hung a gold embroidered carpet riddled with moth holes.

      With Titus in the cradle was tied a cardboard crown, a short sword in a

sky-blue scabbard and a book, the parchment leaves of which he was creasing with

his little sprawling thighs. He was fast asleep.

      Behind him, riding side-saddle, came the Countess, her hair like a

pin-head of fire. She made no movement as her mount paced on. Then Mr. Rottcodd

noticed Fuchsia. Her back very straight and her hands loose upon the rein. Then

the Aunts in their trap, whom Mr. Rottcodd found it difficult to recognize for

all the uniqueness of their posture, shed as they were of their purple. He

noticed Barquentine, whom he took for Sourdust, his dead father, jabbing his

crutch into his horse's flank, and then Nannie Slagg alone in her conveyance,

her hands at her mouth and a stable boy at the pony"s. As vanguard to the

pedestrians came the Prunesquallors, Irma's arm through her brother's followed

by Pentecost and the wedge-faced poet. But who was that mule-headed and stocky

man who slouched between them, and where was Swelter the chef, and where was

Flay? Following Pentecost, but at a respectful distance, ambled the rank and

file -- the innumerable menials which the far forest momently disgorged.

      To see, after so long a while, the figureheads of the castle pass below

him -- distant as they were -- was, to Rottcodd in his Hall of the Bright

Carvings, a thing both of satisfaction and of pain. Satisfaction because the

ritual of Gormenghast was proceeding as sacredly and deliberately as ever

before, and pain because of his new sense of flux, which, inexplicable and

irrational as it appeared on the surface, was, nevertheless, something which

poisoned his mind and quickened his heartbeat. An intuitive sense of danger

which, although in its varying forms and to varying degrees had made itself felt

among those who lived below -- had not, until this morning disturbed the dusty

and sequestered atmosphere in which it had been Mr. Rottcodd's lot to doze away

his life.

      Sepulchrave dead? And a new Earl -- a child not two years. Surely the very

stones of the castle would have passed the message up, or the Bright Carvings

have mouthed the secret to him. From the toyland of figures and horses and paths

and trees and rocks and from the glimpse of a green reflection in the lake the

size of a stamp, arose, of a sudden, the cry of an old voice, cruel, even in its

remoteness, and then the silence of the figures moving on, broken by an

occasional minutiae of sound as of a tin-tack falling on a brick, as a hoof

struck a stone; a bridle creaked with the voice of a gnat, and Rottcodd stared

from his eyrie as the figures moved on and on towards the base of the Castle,

each with a short black shadow sewn to its heels. The terrain about them was as

though freshly painted, or rather, as though like an old landscape that had

grown dead and dull it had been varnished and now shone out anew, each fragment

of the enormous canvas, pristine, the whole, a glory.

      The leading mare with Titus on her back, still fast asleep in the

wickerwork saddle, was by now approaching that vaster shadow, cast by the Castle

itself, which fanned itself out prodigiously, like a lake of morose water from

the base of the stone walls.

      The line of figures was stretched out in an attenuate sweep, for even now

with the head of the procession beneath the walls, the far copses by the lake

were still being emptied. Rottcodd switched his eyes back for a moment to the

white cats -- each on its grey-moss turret. He could see now that they were not

merely staring at the group, as before, but towards a certain section of the

line, towards the head of the line, where rode the silent Countess. Their bodies

were no longer motionless. They were shuddering in the sun; and as Mr. Rottcodd

turned his pebbly eyes away, and peered at the figurettes below (the three

largest of whom might have been fitted into the paw of the most distant of the

cats, who were themselves a good fifty feet below Rottcodd), he was forced to

return his gaze at once to the heraldic malkins, for they had sent forth in

unison from their quivering bodies a siren-like, and most unearthly cry.

      The long, dusty hall behind Mr. Rottcodd seemed to stretch away into the

middle distance, for with its lethal silence reaffirmed by that cry from the

outer world, its area appeared to expand and a desert land was at his shoulder

blades; and beyond the far door, and under the boards in the halls below, and

beneath them stretching on either hand where mute stairs climbed or wound, the

brooding castle yawned.

      The Countess had reined in her horse and lifted her head. For a moment she

moved her eyes across the face of the precipice that overhung her. And then she

pursed her mouth and a note like the note of a reed, shrill and forlorn, escaped

her.

      The turrets of grey moss were suddenly tenantless. Like white streams of

water, like cascades, the cats sped earthwards down the mountainous and

sickening face of stone. Rottcodd, unable to realize how they had so suddenly

melted into nothing like snow in the sun, was amazed to see, when he transferred

his eyes from the empty tableland of roof, to the landscape below him, a small

cloud moving rapidly across a field of tares. The cloud slowed its speed and

swarmed, and as the Countess jogged her slow mount forwards, it was as though it

paddled in a white mist, fetlock deep, that clung about the progress of the

hooves.

      Titus awoke as the mare which bore him entered the Castle's shadow. He

knelt in his basket, his hair black with the morning's rain and clinging

snake-like about his neck and shoulders. His hands clasped the edge of the

saddle-cradle before him. His drenched and glittering smock had become grey as

he passed into the deep, water-like darkness where the mare was wading. One by

one the tiny figures lost their toy-like brilliance and were swallowed. The hair

of the Countess was quenched like an ember in that sullen bay. The feline cloud

at her feet was now a smoke-grey mist. One by one, the bright shapes moved into

the shadow and were drowned.

      Rottcodd turned from the window. The carvings were there. The dust was

there. The chandeliers threw their weak light. The carvings smouldered. But

everything had changed. Was this the hail that Rottcodd had known for so long?

It was ominous.

      And then, as he stood quite still, his hands clasped about the handle of

the feather duster, the air about him quickened, and there was _another_ change,

_another_ presence in the atmosphere. Somewhere, something had been shattered --

something heavy as a great globe and brittle like glass; and it had been

shattered, for the air swam freely and the tense, aching weight of the emptiness

with its insistent drumming had lifted. He had heard nothing but he knew that he

was no longer alone. The castle had drawn breath.

      He returned to his hammock -- strangely glad and strangely perplexed. He

lay down, one hand behind his head, the other trailing over the side of the

hammock in the cords of which he could feel the purring of a sentient Castle. He

closed his eyes. How, he wondered, had Lord Sepulchrave died? Mr. Flay had said

nothing about his being ill. But that was long ago. How long ago? With a start,

which caused him to open his eyes he realized that it was over a year since the

thin man had brought the news of Titus's birth. He could remember it all so

clearly. The way his knees had clicked. His eye at the keyhole. His nervousness.

For Mr. Flay had been his most recent visitor. Could it be that, for more than a

year he had seen no living soul?

      Mr. Rottcodd ran his eyes along the wooden back of a dappled otter.

Anything might have happened during that year. And again he experienced an acute

uneasiness. He shifted his body in the hammock. But what _could_ have happened?

What could have happened? He clicked his tongue.

      The Castle was breathing, and far below the Hall of the Bright Carvings

all that was Gormenghast revolved. After the emptiness it was like tumult

through him; though he had heard no sound. And yet, by now there would be doors

flung open; there would be echoes in the passageways, and quick lights

flickering along the walls.

      Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering the passions in their

clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births

and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and

disenchantment.

      And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry

for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day -- and Titus has entered his

stronghold.