Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

       They had forgotten that the tunnel was so long; so inky dark, so full of vegetable beastliness, of hampering roots, and foul decay. As they neared the castle the water became deeper; for on every side of Gormenghast the landscape shelved gradually downward, the widespread mazes of rambling masonry lying at the centre in a measureless basin.

       When eventually they were able to stand upright and emerged from the tunnel, and began to wade along the corridors that led to the Hollow Halls, the water was up to their waists.

       Their progress was maddeningly slow. Step by step they forced their way through the heavy element, the inky water curling at their waist. Sometimes they would climb steps and would be able to rest for a while, at the top of a flight, but they could not stay for long, for all the while the water was rising. It was a mercy that Titus had become familiar with the one route that took them by degrees to that point behind the giant carving where, so long ago, he had escaped from Barquentine to lose himself in those watery lanes that they were now so slowly wading through.

       It came at last: the halt behind the statue. Titus was in front and he worked his way around the base of the carving and cautiously leaning forward, peered to left and right along the dusky corridor. It was deserted and no wonder. Here as elsewhere the water lay like a dark and slowly moving carpet. It was obvious that the flood had poured in on every side and that the ground level of Gormenghast had been evacuated. His dormitory was upon the floor above, and Fuchsia's room was likewise above flood level. Fuchsia was by now beside him, and they were about to step forward through the water and proceed along their separate paths to their rooms when they heard the sound of a splash, and Titus dragged his sister back. The sound was repeated and repeated again in a regular beat. and then as it grew louder, they saw a glimmer on the water as a soft red light began to approach from the west.

       Holding their breath they waited and a moment later they saw the flat nose of a punt or narrow raft slide into their line of vision. An oldish man sat upon a low seat at its centre. He held in either hand a short pole and these were dipped simultaneously on either side of his craft. They had not far to submerge before they struck the stone beneath and the punt was propelled forward in a smooth and unhurried manner. At the bows was a red lantern. Across the stern lay a firearm, its hammer cocked.

       Both Fuchsia and Titus had seen the man before. He was one of the many watchmen or sentries who had been detailed to patrol these lower corridors. Evidently neither the storm nor Titus' disappearance had caused any relaxation in the daylong, nightlong search for the skewbald beast.

       Directly the light of his lantern and its red reflection had grown small in the distance the brother and sister waded to the nearest of the great stairways.

       As they climbed they became aware, even before they had reached the stairhead of the first of the spreading storeys, that a great change had come about. For looking up they saw, out-topping the stone banisters, high piles of books and furniture, of hangings and crockery, of crate on crate of smaller objects, of carpets and swords, so that the landing was like a great warehouse or emporium.

       And lying across tables, or slouched over chairs, in every kind of attitude of fatigue were numbers of exhausted men. There were few lanterns still alight, but no one seemed awake, and nothing moved.

       Tip-toeing past the sleepers, and leaving trails of water behind them as they went, Titus and Fuchsia came at last to a junction of two corridors. There was no time for them to linger or to talk but they stood still for a moment and looked at one another.

       'This is where we part,' said Fuchsia. 'Don't forget what I told you. You lost your memory and found yourself in the woods. I never found you. We never saw each other.'

       'I won't forget,' said Titus.

       They turned from each other and, following their diverging paths, disappeared into the darkness.

SIXTY-NINE

There was no one alive in Gormenghast who could remember a storm in any way comparable to this black and endless deluge that, flooding the surrounding country, and mounting with every passing minute, was already lapping at the landings of the first storey.

       The thunder was continuous. The lightning went on and off as though a child were playing with a switch. On the vast expanse of water, the heavy branches of riven trees floated and tossed like monsters. The fish of Gormenghast river swam out in every direction, and could be seen steering through the castle's lowest windows.

       Where high ground or an isolated rock or a watch tower broke the surface, these features were crowded with small animals of all kinds, that huddled together in heterogeneous masses, and took no notice of one another. By far the vastest of these natural sanctuaries was, of course, Gormenghast Mountain which had become an island of dramatic beauty, the thick forest trees hanging out of the water at its base, its streaming skull flickering balefully with the reflection of the vibratory lightning.

       By far the greatest proportion of the animals still alive were congregated upon its slopes, and the sky above it, violent and inhospitable as it was, was never free of birds that wheeled and cried.

       The other great sanctuary was the castle itself towards whose walls the tired foxes swam, the hares beside them, the rats in their wake, the badgers, martins, otters and other woodland and river creatures.

       From all the quarters of the compass they converged, their heads alone visible above the surface, their breath coming quick and fast, their shining eyes fixed on the castle walls.

       This gaunt asylum, like the Mountain (that faced it across the rain-lashed lakes, that were so soon to form an inland sea), had become an island. Gormenghast was marooned.

       As soon as it became evident to the inhabitants that it was no ordinary storm that had broken upon them and that the outer ramifications of the castle were already threatened and were liable to be isolated from the main mass, and that the outbuildings, in particular the stables and all structures of wood, were in peril of being washed away, instructions were given for the evacuation of the remote districts, for the immediate recall of the Bright Carvers, and for the driving of all livestock from the stables to within the walls. Bands of men and boys were dispatched for the bringing in and the salvaging of carts, ploughs and all kinds of farm equipment. All this, along with the carriages and harnessings of the horses, was temporarily housed in the armoury on the east side of one of the inner quadrangles. The cattle and the horses were herded into the great stone refectory, the beasts being segregated by means of improvised barriers made largely from the storm-snapped boughs of trees that were piling up continuously beneath the southern windows.

       The Outer Dwellers, already smarting with the insult of the broken Ceremony, were in no mood to return to the castle, but when the rain began to loosen the very foundation of the encampments, they were forced to take advantage of the order they had received, and to make a sullen exodus from their ancient home.

       The magnanimity that was shown them in their time of peril, far from being appreciated, still further embittered them. At a time when they had no other work than to withdraw themselves and to brood over the vile insult they had sustained at the hands of the House of Groan, they were forced to accept the hospitality of its figurehead. Carrying their infants and their few belongings over their shoulders, a horde of sodden malcontents drew in upon the castle, the dark water gurgling about their knees.

       An extensive peninsula of the castle, a thing of rough unpointed masonry, a mile or more in length and several storeys high, had been given over to the Carvers. There they staked their claims, upon the mouldering floorboards, each family circumscribing their 'sites' in thick lines drawn with lumps of chalky plaster.

       In this congested atmosphere their bitterness flourished, and unable to vent their spleen on Gormenghast, the great abstract, they turned upon one another. Old scores were remembered and a kind of 'badness' filled the long sullen promontory. Floor above floor was rancour. Their homes of clay were gone. They had become something which they would never have admitted in the days when they lived in open squalor 'beyond' the castle walls - they had become a dependency.

       From their windows they could see the dark rain pouring. With every day that passed the sky seemed thicker, and fouler in the sagging horror of its black and glutted belly. From the upper halls at the far and straggling limit of the promontory, the prisoners, for so they were in everything but name, were able to obtain a view of Gormenghast Mountain. With the first light of dawn, or by lightning flashes during the night, they noted how the flood had climbed its flanks. The horizontal branch of a far tree, or a peculiarity of some rock-face near the water's edge would be taken as a reference point, and it became their morbid interest to gauge how high and at what speed the flood was rising.

       And then a kind of relief came to them - not from any outside source but through the foresight of an old carver, and this relief to their frustration took the form of boatbuilding. It was not carving in the creative sense in which they excelled, but it was carving. Directly the idea was launched, it sent forth its ripples that spread from one end of the peninsula to the other.

       That they had been unable to carve had been as galling as the insult they had swallowed. Their rasps and chisels, saws and mallets had been the first things that they had gathered together when all hope of remaining in their hovels had disappeared. But they had been unable to carry with them the heavy timber or the jarl roots which they had always used. Now, however, their former media would be useless. Something of a very different nature was needed for the construction of boats or rafts or dug-outs, and it was not long before the redundant beams that spanned the ceilings, the panels from the inner walls, the doors themselves and where possible the joists and floorboards began to disappear. The competition among the families to build up within their chalk-marked sites a pile of board and timber, was deadly and humourless, and was only to be compared with the subsequent rivalry to build not only the most navigable and watertight craft but the most original and beautiful.

       They asked for no permission; they acted spontaneously, ripping away. or prising apart floor-board and panel; they climbed for hours among filthy rafters and sawed through solid pine and timbers of black oak; they stole by night and they denied their thefts by day; they kept watch and set forth on expeditions; they argued over the safety of the floors; over which timbers were dangerous to move and which were ornamental. Great gaps appeared in the floors through which the ragged children flung filth and dust upon the heads of the carvers on the floor below. The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine.

       And the boats began to take shape, and hammering filled the air, as in the semi-darkness, with the rain lashing through the windows and the thunder rolling, a thousand forms of craft grew into beauty.

       Meanwhile in the main body of the castle there was little time for any other activity than that of moving upwards, eternally upwards, the multitudinous effects of Gormenghast.

       The second floor was by now untenable. The flood, finding its own level within the honeycombed interiors, had become more than a threat to property. A growing number of the less agile or intelligent had already been trapped and drowned; doors being unopenable by reason of the weight of pressing water or directions being lost among the unfamiliar waterways.

       There were few who were not engaged upon the back-breaking business of forcing a world of belongings up the scores of stairways.

       The cattle so necessary to the survival of the marooned had changed their quarters time after time. Driving them up the broadest flights it had been difficult to control their panic. The stout banisters had given way like matchsticks - iron railings had been bent by the pressing weight of the climbing herds; masonry had been loosened, a huge stone lion at the head of a stairway falling down the well of the stairs, four cows and a heifer following it to their deaths in the cold water below.

       The horses were led up one by one, their hooves pawing at the treads of the stairs, their nostrils distended, the whites of their eyes shining in the gloom.

       A dozen men were kept busy all day shifting the loads of hay up to the upper halls. The carts and ploughs had had to be abandoned as had a heavy and irreplaceable inventory of machines and bulk of every description.

       On every floor an abandoned conglomeration was left behind, for the climbing water to despoil. The armoury was a red pond of rust. A score of libraries were swamps of pulp. There were pictures floating down long corridors, or being lifted gradually from their hooks. The crevices in wood or brick and tiny caves between the stones of the innumerable walls had been swilled free of the complexity of insect life. Where generations of lizards had lived in secrecy there was only water now. Water that rose like terror, inch by clammy inch.

       The kitchens had been moved to the highest of the suitable areas. The gathering together and transporting of the thousand and one things necessary to the feeding of the castle had been itself an epic undertaking, as also, in another way, had been the frantic packing and dragging from the Central library of the traditional manuscripts, the sacred laws of Ritual and the thousands of ancient volumes of reference but for which the complex machinery of the castle's life could never be revived. These heavy crates of sacrosanct and yellowing papers were dragged at once to the high attics and a couple of sentries were posted before them.

       As every landing filled with salvage, the exhausted men, their shirts stuck to their backs, their brows shining like candlewax, from the sweat that poured into their eyes, cursed the storm, cursed the water, cursed the day they were born. It seemed to have gone on for ever, this shouldering of giant cases up tortuous stairs; of straining upon ropes, only to hear them snap and the burden crash headlong down the flights they had won so dearly; the aching of their bodies and thighs; this ghastly fatigue. There was no end to it; to the mechanics of gear and rigging; to a hundred extempore inventions; to the levering and the cranking; to the winding of home-made pulleys; to the gradual raising of stock and metal; of fuel, grist and treasure; of vintage and hoards of miscellaneous lumber. From storehouse, depository, vault and warehouse, from magazine, dump and coffer, from granary and arsenal; from the splendid rooms of bygone days where the great 'pieces' mouldered; from the private rooms of countless officers; from the communal halls and the dormitories of the hierophants - from all these places everything went up, the furniture, the chattels, the works of vanity and the works of art; from the enormous tables of carved oak, to the least of silver bracelets.