Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

       The face of the Countess showed nothing, but once she drew the corner of the sheet up a little further over Fuchsia's shoulder, with an infinite gentleness, as though she feared her child might feel the cold and so must take the risk of waking her.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

Knowing that he had several hours to wait before it would be dark enough for him to venture forth, Steerpike had dropped off to sleep in the canoe. As he slept the canoe began to bob gently on the inky water a few feet from where the flood swam through the window entrance. This entrance, seen from the inside of the 'cavern', was like a square of light. But the breast of the great bay, which, from the dark interior of Steerpike's refuge, appeared luminous was, in reality, as the moments passed, drawing across its nakedness shawl after shawl of shadow.

       When Steerpike had slid from the outer world, and through the brimming window, seven hours earlier, he had of course been able to see exactly what kind of a room he had entered. The light striking through the window had glanced upwards off the water and lit the interior.

       His first reaction had been one of intense irritation for there were no corridors leading from the room and no stairways to the floor above. The doors had been closed when the flood had filled the room so that they were immovable with the weight of water. Had the inner doors been open he might have slid through their upper airways into ampler quarters. But no. The place was virtually a cave - a cave with a few mouldering pictures hanging precariously a few inches above high-water mark.

       As such he suspected it from the first. It was no more than a trap. But to paddle out of its mouth and across the open water seemed to him more dangerous than to remain where he was for the few hours that remained before darkness fell.

       A breeze was stirring the surface of the wide freshwater bay, blowing from the direction of the mountain and a kind of gooseflesh covered the surface of the water. These ripples began to move into the cave, one after another and the canoe rocked with a gentle side-to-side motion.

       On either side of the 'bay' the two identical headlands, with their long lines of windows, had become silhouetted against the dusk.

       Between them the ruffled waters faced the sky with an unusual agitation - a shuffling backwards and forwards of its surface which, though by no means dangerous in itself either to the smallest craft or even to a swimmer, was nevertheless peculiar and menacing.

       Within a minute the breathless quiet of the evening had become something very different. The hush of dusk, the trance of stone-grey light was broken. There was no break in the silence but the air, the water, the castle and the darkness were in conclave.

       A chill breath from the lungs of this conspiracy, stealing across the goose-flesh water must have moved into the cave-like chamber where Steerpike slept, for he sat up suddenly in his canoe and turning his face at once to the window, the small hairs rose along his spine and his mouth became the mouth of a wolf, for as the blood shone behind the lenses of his eyes, his thin and colourless lips parted in a snarl that extended like an open gash a mask of wax.

       As his brain raced, he plucked at the paddle and whisked the boat to within a few feet of the window, where, in absolute darkness himself he could command a view of the bay.

       What he had seen had been the reflections only of what he now stared at in their entirety - for from where the canoe had been stationed the upper section of the window had been hidden by a hanging sail of wallpaper. What he had seen had been the reflections of a string of lights. What he now saw were the lanterns, where they burned at the bows of a hundred boats. They were strung out in a half-circle that even as he watched was drawing in his direction thick as fireflies.

       But worse than all this was a kind of light upon the water immediately outside the window. Not a strong light, but more than he could account for by the last of the day. Nor was it natural in colour. There was something of green in the faint haze from which he now turned his eyes again. For with every moment the boats were narrowing the distance between themselves and the castle walls.

       Whether or not there were other interpretations of the spectacle before him it was not for him at this critical moment to give them the shadow of a thought. It was for him to assume the bloodiest and the worst.

       It was for him to suppose that they were not only ranged across the bay in search of 'him' - that they knew he was in hiding somewhere close at hand between the twin headlands - but more than this, that they knew the very window through which he had passed. He must assume that he had been seen as he entered this trap and that not only were his pursuers fanned out across the water and eager for his blood, but the cold sheen upon the water immediately ahead of him was cast from lanterns or torches that were even now burning from the window above his head.

       Whether or not his only hope was to slip out of the cave and, risking a fusillade from the window above, make all speed across the waters of the bay before the approaching boats not only closed their ranks as they converged, but made the cave-mouth livid with the concentration of their lights - whether he should do this, and by so doing and gaining speed in the dusk, fly like a swallow across the face of the bay and swerving to and fro as only this canoe had power to do - hope to pierce the lanterned ring, and so, running his boat alongside one or other of the creepered headlands, climb the coarse foliage of the walls - whether he should do this or not, it was now, in any event, too late for a brilliant yellow light was shining outside the window and danced on the choppy water.

       A pair of heavy castle-craft, somewhat the shape of barges, creeping in along the lapping walls, from either side of Steerpike's window, were the cause of the yellow light which the murderer had observed to his horror as it danced upon the water, for these heavy boats bristled with torches; sparks flew over the flood and died hissing upon its surface. The scene about the opening of the cave had been transformed from one of dark and anonymous withdrawal to a firelit stage of water, upon which every eye was turned. The stone supports of the window, weather-scarred and ancient as they were had become things of purest gold, and their reflections plunged into the black water as though to ignite it. The stones that surrounded the windows were lit with equal brilliance. Only the mouth of the room, with the firelit water running through and into the swallowing blackness of the throat beyond, broke the glow. For there was something more than black about the intensity of that rough square of darkness.

       It was not for these barges to do more than to remain with their square noses in line with the stone edges of the window. It was for them to make the place as bright as day. It was for the arc of lanterned boats to close in and to form the thickset audience, armed and impenetrable.

       But those that manned the barges and held the torches aloft, and those that rowed or paddled the hundreds of boats that were now within a stone's throw of the 'cave' were not the only witnesses.

       High above the entrances to Steerpike's retreat the scores of irregularly positioned windows were no longer gaping emptily as when Titus stared up at them from the canoe and felt the chill of that forsaken place. They were no longer empty. At every window there was a face: and every face directed downwards to where the illuminated waves rose and fell to such an extent that the shadows of the men upon the barges leapt up and down the firelit walls, and the sound of splashing could be heard below them as combers of rainwater ran and broke upon the castle walls.

       The wind was making, and certain of the boats that formed the chain found it difficult to keep in position. Only the watchers from above were unaffected by the worsening weather. A formidable contingent had travelled by land. There were few who had been that way before and none who had travelled so far afield as the Coupée and the Headstones of Litle Sark, within the last five years.

       The Countess had journeyed by water but it had been necessary for Titus to travel overland at the head of the leading phalanx, for it was no easy itinerary with the dusk falling and the innumerable choices to be made at the junctures of passages and roof tops. With his return journey fresh in his mind he had no choice but to put his knowledge at the disposal of the many hundreds whose duty it would be to scour the Headstones. But he was in no condition to make that long journey again on the same day, without assistance. While the officials were casting about for some appropriate conveyance Titus remembered the chair on poles in which he was carried, blindfolded, on his tenth birthday. A runner was despatched for this, and some time later the 'land army' moved to the north with Titus leaning back in his 'mountain chair', a jug of water in the wooden well at his feet, a flask of brandy in his hand and a loaf of bread and a bag of raisins on the seat beside him. At different times during the journey, when crossing from one roof to another or when climbing difficult stairways, he would descend from the chair and continue on foot - but for most of the way it was possible for him to lean back in the chair, his muscles relaxed, merely giving fierce instructions to the Captain of the land searchers when occasion arose. A dark anger was gaining strength in him.

       What had passed through his mind as he moved through the evening air? A hundred thoughts and shadows of a hundred more. But among all these were those giant themes that overshadowed all else and were continually shouldering themselves back into his consciousness, and making his heart at their every return break out afresh with painful hammering. Within so short a time - within the last few hours - he had thrice been through an emotional turmoil for which he was in no way prepared.

       Out of nowhere, suddenly, the first sight of the elusive Steerpike. Out of nowhere, suddenly, the news of Fuchsia's death. Out of nowhere, and suddenly, the uprush of his rebellion - the danger of it, the shock of it for all about him, the excitement of it, and the thrill of finding himself free of duplicity - a traitor if they liked, but a man who had torn away the brambles from his clothes, the ivy from his limbs. the bindweed from his brain.

       Yet had he? Was it possible at a single jerk to wrench himself free of his responsibility to the home of his fathers?

       As his bearers threaded their way through the upper stories he was sure that he was free. When Steerpike had been dragged like a water-rat from his lair and slain - what then would there be for him to stay for in this only world he knew? Rather would he die upon its borders, wherever they might be, than rot among the rites. Fuchsia was dead. Everything was dead. The Thing was dead and the world had died. He had outgrown his kingdom.

       But behind all this, behind his stumbling thoughts, was this growing anger, an anger such as he had never known before. On the face of it, it might seem that the rage that was eating him was absurd. And the rational part of Titus might have admitted that this was so. For his rage was not that Fuchsia had died and as he thought at Steerpike's hand, nor that he had been thwarted in his love for the Thing by the arbitrary lightning flash - it was not, in his conscious mind, either of these that caused him to tremble with eagerness to close with the skewbald man, and if he could to kill him.

       No. it was because Steerpike had stolen his canoe, his own canoe - so light, so slight: so fleet upon the flood.

       What he did not guess was that the canoe was neither more nor less than the 'Thing'. Deep in the chaos of his heart and his imagination - at the core of his dreamworld it was so - the Canoe had become, perhaps had already been when he had first sent her skimming beneath him into the freedom of an outer world, the very centre of Gormenghast forest, the Thing herself.

       But more than this. For another reason also. A reason of no symbolism: no darkened origin: a reason clear-cut and real as the dagger in his belt.

       He saw in the canoe, now lost to the murderer, the perfect vehicle for sudden and silent attack - in other words for the avenging of his sister. He had lost his 'weapon'.

       Had Titus thought sufficiently he would have realized that Steerpike could not have killed her, for he could not possibly have been so far to the north as the Headstones so soon after Fuchsia's fall. But his brain was not working in that way. Steerpike had killed his sister. And Steerpike had stolen his canoe.

       When at long last the roof-top army had reached the ultimate battlements and saw below them the black waters of the bay, lookouts were posted and given instructions to inform their captains directly the first lights appeared around the nose of the south headland. Meanwhile the hordes which covered the near-by roofs were gradually drawn down by skylights, vents and hatches until they were absorbed into a deserted and melancholy wilderness of room upon room, hall upon hall, a wilderness that had yawned so emptily and for so many years until Steerpike had begun his explorations.

       The torches were lit. It seemed that the advantage of being able to tell at once whether a room were empty or not outweighed the warning that the light would give the fugitive. Nevertheless the work was slow. At last and about the time that the four possible floors had been proved as empty as tongueless bells, a message came down that lights had been seen across the bay.

       At once every window of the West walls became filled with heads, and sure enough the necklace of coloured sparks which Steerpike had seen through the mouth of his flood-room was strung across the darkness.

       That no sign of Steerpike had been found in the scores of upper rooms more than suggested that he was still within his lair at water level. Titus had at once descended to the lowest of the unflooded floors, and leaning through a window, roughly at the centre of the façade, he was able, by reaching out dangerously, with his hand gripping an ivy branch, to recognize the very window through which Steerpike had sped into the castle.

       Now that the light had appeared on the bay there was no time to lose for it was possible that if Steerpike was below, and saw them, he would make a dash for it. In the meantime Titus and the three captains who were with him turned back through the room and gaining the corridor behind, ran for a matter of sixty or seventy feet before they turned again into one of the west rooms and, on reaching its window and looking down, found that they were almost immediately above the flooded window.

       There was no sign of him on the bay. As far as they could judge they gauged him to be directly below the room to their right which they could see through a connecting door, a largish, square-ish room covered with a layer of dust as soft as velvet.