Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

And for a long time everything continued to develop in the way he had foreseen, the intimacy of their secret meetings leading them ever more deeply into, as Fuchsia thought, each other's confidence.

But, with the evil knowledge of the power that was now his, Steerpike, indulging himself in the anticipation of final conquest, made no rash attempt to seduce Fuchsia. He knew that with Fuchsia no longer a virgin, he would have her, if for no other reason than that of simple blackmail, in the palm of his hand. But he was not ready yet. There was a lot to be considered.

As for Fuchsia, it was all so new and tremendous to her that her emotions had enough on which to feed. She was happier than she had ever been in her life.

FIFTY-FOUR

The disappearance of the Earl, Sepulchrave, Titus' father, and of his sisters, the Twins, and of their terrible and secret ends; the death of Sourdust by burning, and of his son Barquentine by fire and water, what of all this mystery and violence in the eyes of the castle? They had spread themselves, these horrors, over a period of twelve or more years, and although the minds, active in their different ways, of the Countess, the Doctor, and Flay, had, from their different angles, made periodic efforts to discover in the tragedies some common ground, yet no proof of foul play had yet been found which could support their suspicions.

Flay alone knew the grizzly truth about the secret death of his master, Lord Sepulchrave, and of his enemy the gross Swelter whom he had killed. This knowledge he had never divulged.

But his own banishment had been the result of Steerpike's gesture of disloyalty to his mad master, when the skewbald man was a youth of seventeen or eighteen years, and this disloyalty had remained rooted in Flay's mind. But of the incarceration and death of the Twins he knew nothing, although, witless of its origins and significance, he had heard their terrible laughter as they died in the hollow halls.

He had strained his brain and memory, as had the Doctor and the Countess, to draw some significant conclusion from the common deaths by fire of the father and son - Sourdust and Barquentine - and from the fact that Steerpike had been the hero of both occasions. Try as they would they were unable to rationalize their suspicions.

And yet there were, over the course of the years, small concrete although disconnected reasons for apprehension. As yet they fitted into no pattern, but they were there, and they were not forgotten.

The Doctor had always been anxious to discover Steerpike's reason for leaving his service and establishing himself as confidant and retainer of the vacant Twins. His was no mind to find pleasure in such surroundings. His only reason must have been for social advancement or for some darker motive. The identical Twins had disappeared. Their note which Steerpike had found on their table had told of their intention to kill themselves. Prunesquallor had got hold of this note and compared its calligraphy with a letter Irma had once received from them. He compared them in mirrors - he devoted an entire evening to their scrutiny. It seemed that they were by the same hand, the formation of letters big and round and uncertain as a child's.

But the Doctor had known these retarded women for many years and he did not believe, for all the oddness of their thwarted natures, that they would ever take their own lives.

Nor did the Countess believe that they were capable of making an end to themselves. Their puerile ambition and vanity - and their only too obvious longing to assume, one day, the rôles in which they were always seeing themselves, the rôles of ladies, great and splendid, bedecked with jewels, precluded any such idea as suicide. But there was no proof either way.

The Doctor had told the Countess of Steerpike's delirious cry 'And the twins will make it five!' She had stared out of the window of her room.

'Five what?' she had said.

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'Five what?'

'Five enigmas,' she answered heavily, without a change of expression.

'And what are they, your ladyship? Do you mean five...?'

She interrupted him heavily. 'The Earl, my husband,' she said. 'Vanished. One. His sisters, vanished: two. Swelter, vanished: three. Sourdust and Barquentine, burned: five...'

'But the deaths of Sourdust and Barquentine were hardly enigmatic...'

'One wouldn't be. Two would,' said the Countess. 'And the youth at them both.'

'The youth?' queried the Doctor.

'Steerpike,' said the Countess.

'Ah,' said the Doctor, 'we have the same fears.'

'We have,' said the Countess. 'I am waiting.'

The Doctor thought of Fuchsia's poem:

How white and scarlet is that face!

Who knows in some unusual place

The coloured heroes are alight

With faces made of red and white.

'But your ladyship,' he said - she was still staring through the window. 'The words "And the Twins will make it five" suggest to me that their ladyships Cora and Clarice would make two of the group he had in his delirious mind. He was making a list of individuals, in his fever, I will stake my brightest penny.'

'And so...'

'And so, your ladyship, the deaths and disappearances would be six, not five.'

'Who knows?' said the Countess. 'It is too early. Give him rope. We have no proof. But by the black tap-root of the very castle, if my fear is founded, the towers themselves will sicken at his death: the oldest stones will spew.'

Her heavy face flushed. She lowered her hand into a wide pocket, and drawing forth some grain she extended her arm. A small mottled bird appeared out of nowhere and running along her outstretched arm, perched with its claws about her index finger and with a sideways movement began to peck from her palm.

FIFTY-FIVE

'But he can't help giving you your ritual for each day, can he?' said Fuchsia. 'And instructing you. It's not his fault, it's the law. Father had to do it when he was alive - and his father had to - and they've all had to. It isn't possible for him to do any different. He has to tell you what's in the books, however trying it is for you.'

'I hate him,' said Titus.

'Why? Why?' cried Fuchsia. 'What's the good of hating him because he's doing what he has to do? You don't expect that he can make an exception, do you, after thousands of years? I suppose you'd rather have Barquentine. Can't you see how bigoted you are? I think he does his work wonderfully.'

'I hate him!' said Titus.

'You're becoming a 'bore!' said Fuchsia, with heat. 'Can't you say anything except "I hate him"? What's wrong with him? Do you hold his appearance against him? Do you? If so, you're mean and damnable.'

She shook her thick black hair away from her eyes. Her chin trembled.

'Oh God! God Do you think I want to quarrel with you, Titus, my darling?

You know how I love you. But you're unfair. 'Unfair'. You know nothing about him.'

'I hate him,' said Titus. 'I hate the cheap and stinking guts of him.'

FIFTY-SIX

As the months passed the tensions increased. Titus and Steerpike were at daggers drawn, although Steerpike, the soul of bland discretion, showed nothing of his feelings, and gave no sign to Titus or the outside world of his loathing of this forward boy - the boy who unconsciously stood between him and the zenith of his ambition.

Titus, who ever since that day when, little more than a child, he had defied Steerpike in the classroom silence, and had fallen fainting from his desk, had held on grimly to the dangerous ascendancy he had gained by that curious and childish victory.

Every day the details of his after-school duties were read out to Titus in the Library, Steerpike flicking through the pages of cross-reference, and explaining the obscurer passages with clarity and precision. Up till now the Master of Ceremonies had kept rigidly to the letter of the Law. But now, in the all but invulnerable position of being the only one who had access to the tomes of reference and procedure, he was making a list of duties which he would insert among the ancient papers. He had been able to unearth some of the original paper, and it was only for him to forge the copper-plate writing, and the archaic spelling and invent a series of duties for Titus which would be both galling and, on occasion, sufficiently hazardous for there to be always the outside chance of the young Earl coming to grief. There were for instance stairways that were no longer safe - there were the rotten beams and crumbling masonry. Beyond this there would always be the possibility of deliberately weakening and undermining certain cat-walks that stretched along the upper walls of the castle, or in some way or another of making sure that in following out the forged procedures, Titus would sooner or later fall 'accidentally' to his death.