The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (75 page)

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!’

‘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, interceded 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.

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 room 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, mule-faced 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’ 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.