Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

SIXTY-TWO

When Fuchsia heard the news of Steerpike's treachery and when she realized how her first and only affair of the heart had been with a murderer, an expression of such sickness and horror darkened her face that her aspect was, from that moment, never wholly free of that corrosive stain.

For a long while she spoke to no one, keeping herself to her room, where, unable to cry, she became exhausted with the emotions that fought in her to find some natural outlet. At first there was only the sense of having been physically struck, and the pain of the wound. Her arms gave little jerks and tingled. A depression of utter blackness drowned her. She had no wish to live at all. Her breast pained her. It was as though a great fear filled the cage of her ribs, a globe of pain that grew and grew. For the first week after the crushing news she could not sleep. And then a kind of hardness entered her. Something she had never housed before. It came as a protection. She needed it. It helped her to grow bitter. She began to kill at birth all thoughts of love that were natural to her. She changed and she aged as she wandered to and fro across her solitary room. She began to see no reason why others, as well as Steerpike, should not be double-faced and merciless. She hated the world.

When Titus called to see her he was amazed at the change in her voice, and the sunken look of her eyes. He saw for the first time that she was a woman as well as being his sister.

On her side, she saw a change in him. His restlessness was as real as her disillusion. His longing for freedom as pressing as her longing for love.

But what could he do, and what could she do? The castle was round and about them, widespread and as unchartable as a dark day.

'Thank you for coming,' she said, 'but there's nothing we can talk about!' Titus said nothing but leaned against a wall. She looked so much older. His heel began to work away at a piece of loose plaster above the skirting board until it came away.

'I can't believe he's dead,' said the boy at last.

'Who?'

'Flay, of course. And all the things he did. What about his cave? Empty for ever I suppose. Would you like to...'

'No,' said Fuchsia, anticipating his question. 'Not now. Not any more. I don't want to go anywhere, really. Have you seen Dr Prune?'

'Once or twice. He asked me to tell you that he'd like to see you, whenever you want. He's not very well.'

'None of us are,' said Fuchsia. 'What are you going to do? You look quite different. Was it awful, seeing what happened? But don't tell me. I don't want to dwell on it!'

'There are sentries everywhere: said Titus. 'I know.'

'And a curfew. I have to be in my room by eight o'clock. Who's the man outside the door here?'

'I don't know his name. He's there most of the day and all night. A man in the courtyard too, under the window.'

Titus wandered to the window and looked down. 'What good is he doing there?' And then, turning about, 'They'll never catch 'him',' he said. 'He's too cunning, the bloody beast. Why can't they burn the whole place down, and him with it, and us with it, and the world with it, and finish the whole dirty business, and the rotten ritual and everything and give the green grass a chance?'

'Titus,' she said. 'Come here.' He approached her, his hands shaking.

'I love you, Titus, but I can't feel anything. I've gone dead. Even you are dead in me. I know I love you. You're the only one I love, but I can't feel anything and I don't want to. I've felt too much, I'm sick of feelings... I'm frightened of them.'

Titus took another step towards her. She gazed at him. A year ago they would have kissed. They had needed each other's love. Now, they needed it even more but something had gone wrong. A space had formed between them, and they had no bridge.

But he gripped her arm for a moment before walking quickly to the door and disappearing from her sight.

SIXTY-THREE

The Day of the Bright Carvings was at hand. The Carvers had put the final touches to their creations. The expectancy in the castle was as acute as it was possible for it to be, when at the same time the larger and more horrible awareness that Steerpike might at any moment strike again, took up the larger part of their minds. For the skewbald man had struck four times within the last eight days with accuracy, a small pebble being found, in every case, near the fractured heads of the newly-slain, or lodged in the bone above the eyes. These killings, so wicked in their want of purpose, took place in such widely separated districts as to give no clue as to where the haunt of the homicide might be. His deadly catapult had spread a clammy terror through Gormenghast.

But in spite of this preponderant fear, the imminence of the traditional day of carvings had brought a certain excitement of a less terrible kind to the hearts of the denizens. They turned with relief to this age-old ceremony as though to something on which they could rely - something that had happened every year since they could remember anything at all. They turned to tradition as a child turns to its mother.

The long courtyard where the ceremony was to be held had been scrubbed and double scrubbed. The clanking of buckets, the swilling and hissing of water, the sound of scouring had echoed along the attenuate yard, sunrise after sunrise, for a week past. The high southern wall in particular was immaculate. The scaffolding to which the scrubbers had clung like monkeys while they ferreted among the rough stones, scraping at the interstices and sluicing every vestige of accumulated dust from niche and crack, had been removed. It sailed away, this wall, in a dwindling perspective of gleaming stone - and five feet from the ground along its entire length the Carvers' shelf protruded. The solid shelf or buttress was of so handsome a breadth that even the largest of the coloured carvings stood comfortably upon it. It had already been whitewashed in preparation for the great day, as had also the wall above it, to the height of a dozen feet. What plants and creepers had forced their way through the stones during the past year, were cut down, as usual, flush with the stones.

It was into this courtyard so unnaturally lustrated that the Carvers from the Outer Dwellings were to pour like a dark and ragged tide, bearing their heavy wooden carvings in their arms or upon their shoulders, or when the works were too weighty for a man to sustain he would be aided by his family - the children running alongside, barefooted, their black hair in their eyes their shrill excited voices jabbing the heavy air as though with stilettos.

For the air was full of an oppressive weight. What breath there was moved hotly on its way as though it were fanned by the mouldering wings of huge and sickly birds.

The Steerpike terror had been still further intensified by these stifling conditions, and the ceremony of the Bright Carvings was for this reason all the more eagerly anticipated, for it was a relief for the mind and spirit to be able to turn to something the only purpose of which was beauty.

But, for all the consummate craft and rhythmic loveliness of the carvings there was no love lost between their jealous authors. The inter-family rivalries, the ancient wrongs, a hundred bitter quarrels, were all remembered at this annual ceremony. Old wounds were reopened or kept green. Beauty and bitterness existed side by side. Old claw-like hands, cracked with long years of thankless toil, would hold aloft a delicate bird of wood, its wings, as thin as paper, spread for flight, its breast afire with a crimson stain.

On the penultimate evening all was ready. The Poet, now fully established as Master of Ritual, had made his final tour of inspection with the Countess. On the following morning the gates in the Outer Wall were opened and the Bright Carvers began the three miles trail to the Carver's Courtyard.