by Mervyn Peake
‘We’re going now,’ said Cora, getting up.
‘Yes, we’ve been here too long. Much too long. We’ve got a lot of sewing to do. We sew beautifully, both of us.’
‘I am sure you do,’ said Steerpike. ‘May I have the privilege of appreciating your craft at some future date when it is convenient for you?’
‘We do embroidery as well,’ said Cora, who had risen and had approached Steerpike.
Clarice came up to her sister’s side and they both looked at him. ‘We do a lot of needlework, but nobody sees it. Nobody is interested in us, you see. We only have two servants. We used –’
‘That’s all,’ said Cora. ‘We used to have hundreds when we were younger. Our father gave us hundreds of servants, We were of great – of great –’
‘Consequence,’ volunteered her sister. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it was that we were. Sepulchrave was always so dreamy and miserable, but he did play with us sometimes; so we did what we liked. But now he doesn’t ever want to see us.’
‘He thinks he’s so wise,’ said Cora.
‘But he’s no cleverer than we are.’
‘He’s not as clever,’ said Clarice.
‘Nor is Gertrude,’ they said almost at the same moment.
‘She stole your birds, didn’t she?’ said Steerpike, winking at Prunesquallor.
‘How did you know?’ they said, advancing on him a step further.
‘Everyone knows, your Ladyships. Everyone in the castle knows,’ replied Steerpike, winking this time at Irma.
The twins held hands at once and drew close together. What Steerpike had said had sunk in and was making a serious impression on them. They had thought it was only a private grievance, that Gertrude had lured away their birds from the Room of Roots which they had taken so long preparing. But everyone knew! Everyone knew!
They turned to leave the room, and the Doctor opened his eyes, for he had almost fallen asleep with one elbow on the central table and his hand propping his head. He arose to his feet but could do nothing more elegant than to crook a finger, for he was too tired. His sister stood beside him creaking a little, and it was Steerpike who opened the door for them and offered to accompany them to their room. As they passed through the hall he removed his cape from a hook. Flinging it over his shoulders with a flourish he buttoned it at the neck. The cloak accentuated the highness of his shoulders, and as he drew its folds about him, the spareness of his body.
The aunts seemed to accept the fact that he was leaving the house with them, although they had not replied when he had asked their permission to escort them to their rooms.
With an extraordinary gallantry he shepherded them across the quadrangle.
‘Everybody knows, you said.’ Cora’s voice was so empty of feeling and yet so plaintive that it must have awakened a sympathetic response in anyone with a more kindly heart than Steerpike’s.
‘That’s what you said,’ repeated Clarice.
‘But what can we do? We can’t do anything to show what we could do if only we had the power we haven’t got,’ said Clarice lucidly. ‘We used to have hundreds of servants.’
‘You shall have them back,’ said Steerpike. ‘You shall have them all back. New ones. Better ones. Obedient ones. I shall arrange it. They shall work for you, through me. Your floor of the castle shall be alive again. You shall be supreme. Give me the administration to handle, your Ladyships, and I will have them dancing to your tune – whatever it is – they’ll dance to it.’
‘But what about Gertrude?’
‘Yes, what about Gertrude,’ came their flat voices.
‘Leave everything to me, I will secure your rights for you. You are Lady Cora and Lady Clarice, Lady Clarice and Lady Cora. You must not forget that. No one must be allowed to forget it.’
‘Yes, that’s what must happen,’ said Cora.
‘Everyone must think of who we are,’ said Clarice.
‘And never stop thinking about it,’ said Cora.
‘Or we will use our power,’ said Clarice.
‘Meanwhile, I will take you to your rooms, dear ladies. You must trust me. You must not tell anyone what we’ve said. Do you both understand?’
‘And we’ll get our birds back from Gertrude.’
Steerpike took them by the elbows as they climbed the stairs.
‘Lady Cora,’ he said, ‘you must try to concentrate on what I am saying to you. If you pay attention to me I will restore you to your places of eminence in Gormenghast from which Lady Gertrude has dethroned you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
The voices showed no animation, but Steerpike realized that only by what they said, not by how they said it, could he judge whether their brains reacted to his probing.
He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master. He knew that when he reached their door he would itch to get inside and to see what sort of appointments they had and what on earth they meant by their Room of Roots. But he also knew to a nicety the time to slacken rein. Such creatures as the aunts for all their slowness of intellect had within them the Groan blood which might at any moment, were a false step to be made, flare up and undo a month of strategy. So Steerpike left them at the door of their apartments and bowed almost to the ground. Then as he retired along the oak passage, and was turning a corner to the left he glanced back at the door where he had left the twins. They were still looking after him, as motionless as a pair of waxen images.
He would not visit them tomorrow, for it would do them good to spend a day of apprehension and of silly discussion between themselves. In the evening they would begin to get nervous and need consoling, but he would not knock at the door until the following morning. Meanwhile he would pick up as much information as he could about them and their tendencies.
Instead of crossing over to the Doctor’s house when he had reached the quadrangle he decided he would take a stroll across the lawns and perhaps around by the terraces to the moat, for the sky had emptied itself of cloud and was glittering fiercely with a hundred thousand stars.
‘THE FIR-CONES’
The wind had dropped, but the air was bitterly cold and Steerpike was glad of his cape. He had turned the collar up and it stood stiffly above the level of his ears. He seemed to be bound for somewhere in particular, and was not simply out for a nocturnal stroll. That peculiar half-walking, half-running gait was always with him. It appeared that he was eternally upon some secret mission, as indeed from his own viewpoint he generally was.
He passed into deep shadows beneath the arch, and then as though he were a portion of that inky darkness that had awakened and disengaged itself from the main body, he reappeared beyond the archway in the half light.
For a long time he kept close to the castle walls, moving eastwards continually. His first project of making a détour by way of the lawns and the terraces where the Countess walked before breakfast had been put aside, for now that he had started walking he felt an enjoyment in moving alone, absolutely alone, under the starlight. The Prunesquallors would not wait up for him. He had his own key to the front door and, as on previous nights, after late wanderings he would pour himself out a nightcap and perhaps enjoy some of the Doctor’s tobacco in his little stubby pipe before he retired.
Or he might, as he had so often done before during the night, resort to the dispensary and amuse himself by compounding potions with lethal possibilities. It was always to the shelf of poisons that he turned at once when he entered and to the dangerous powders.
He had filled four small glass tubes with the most virulent of these concoctions, and had removed them to his own room. He had soon absorbed all that the Doctor, whose knowledge was considerable, had divulged on the subject. Under his initial guidance he had, from poisonous weeds found in the vicinity, distilled a number of original and death-dealing pastes. To the Doctor these experiments were academically amusing.
Or on retiri
ng to the Prunesquallors he might take down one of the Doctor’s many books and read, for these days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from. He imagined to himself occasions when the conversation of one from whom he foresaw advancement might turn to astronomy, metaphysics, history, chemistry, or literature, and he realized that to be able to drop into the argument a lucid and exact thought, an opinion based on what might appear to be a life-time study, would instantaneously gain more for him than an hour of beating about the bush and waiting until the conversation turned upon what lay within his scope of experience.
He foresaw himself in control of men. He had, along with his faculty for making swift and bold decisions, an unending patience. As he read in the evenings after the Doctor and Irma had retired for the night, he would polish the long, narrow steel of the swordstick blade which he had glimpsed and which he had, a week later, retrieved from the pile of ancient weapons in the chill hall. When he had first drawn it from the pile it had been badly tarnished, but with the skilful industry and patience with which he applied himself to whatever he undertook, it had now become a slim length of white steel. He had after an hour’s hunting found the hollow stick which was screwed into the innocent-looking hilt by a single turn of the wrist.
Whether on his return he would apply himself to the steel of his swordstick, and to the book on heraldry which he had nearly completed, or whether in the dispensary he would grind in the mortar, with the red oil, that feathery green powder with which he was experimenting, or whether he would be too tired to do anything but empty a glass of cognac and climb the stairs to his bedroom, he did not know, nor, for that matter, was he looking so short a way ahead. He was turning over in his mind as he walked briskly onwards not only every remark which he could remember the twins having let fall during the evening, but the trend of the questions which he proposed to put to them on the evening of the day after tomorrow.
With his mind working like an efficient machine, he thought out probable moves and parries, although he knew that in any dealings with the aunts the illogical condition of their brains made any surmise or scheming on his part extraordinarily difficult. He was working with a low-grade material, but one which contained an element which natures more elevated lack – the incalculable.
By now he had reached the most eastern corner of the central body of the castle. Away to his left he could distinguish the high walls of the west wing as they emerged from the ivy-blackened, sunset-facing precipice of masonry that shut off the northern halls of Gormenghast from the evening’s light. The Tower of Flints could only be recognized as a narrow section of the sky the shape of a long black ruler standing upon its end, the sky about it was crowded with the stars.
It occurred to him as he saw the Tower that he had never investigated the buildings which were, he had heard, continued on its further side. It was too late now for such an expedition and he was thinking of making a wide circle on the withered lawns which made good walking at this corner of the castle, when he saw a dim light approaching him. Glancing about, he saw within a few yards the black shapes of stunted bushes. Behind one of these he squatted and watched the light, which he recognized now as a lantern, coming nearer and nearer. It seemed that the figure would pass within a few feet of him, and peering over his shoulder to see in what direction the lantern was moving, he realized that he was immediately between the light and the Tower of Flints. What on earth could anyone want at the Tower of Flints on a cold night? Steerpike was intrigued. He dragged his cape well over himself so that only his eyes were exposed to the night air. Then, remaining as still as a crouching cat, he listened to the feet approaching.
As yet the body of whoever it was that carried the lantern had not detached itself from the darkness, but Steerpike, listening intently, heard now not only the long footsteps but the regular sound of a dry stick being broken. ‘Flay’, said Steerpike to himself. But what was that other noise? Between the regular sounds of the paces and the click of the knee joints a third, a quicker, less positive sound, came to his ears.
Almost at the same moment as he recognized it to be the pattering of tiny feet, he saw, emerging from the night, the unmistakable silhouettes of Flay and Mrs Slagg.
Soon the crunching of Flay’s footsteps appeared to be almost on top of him, and Steerpike, motionless as the shrub he crouched beneath, saw the straggling height of Lord Sepulchrave’s servant hastily pass above him, and as he did so a cry broke out. A tremor ran down Steerpike’s spine, for if there was anything that worried him it was the supernatural. The cry, it seemed, was that of some bird, perhaps of a seagull, but was so close as to disprove that explanation. There were no birds about that night nor, indeed, were they ever to be heard at that hour, and it was with some relief that he heard Nannie Slagg whisper nervously in the darkness:
‘There, there, my only … It won’t be long, my little Lordship dear … it won’t be long now. Oh, my poor heart! why must it be at night?’ She seemed to raise her head from the little burden she carried and to gaze up at the lofty figure who strode mechanically beside her; but there was no answer.
‘Things become interesting,’ said Steerpike to himself. ‘Lordships, Flays and Slaggs, all heading for the Tower of Flints.’
When they were almost swallowed into the darkness, Steerpike rose to his feet and flexed his cape-shrouded legs to get the stiffness from them, and then, keeping the sound of Mr Flay’s knees safely within earshot, he followed them silently.
Poor Mrs Slagg was utterly exhausted by the time they arrived at the library, for she had consistently refused to allow Flay to carry Titus, for he had, much against his better judgement, offered to do so when he saw how she was continually stumbling over the irregularities of the ground, and when, among the conifers how she caught her feet in the pine roots and ground creepers.
The cold air had thoroughly wakened Titus, and although he did not cry it was obvious that he was disconcerted by this unusual adventure in the dark. When Flay knocked at the door and they entered the library, he began to whimper and struggle in the nurse’s arms.
Flay retired to the darkness of his corner, where there was presumably some chair for him to sit on. All he said was: ‘I’ve brought them, Lordship.’ He usually left out the ‘your’ as being unnecessary for him as Lord Sepulchrave’s primary attendant.
‘So I see,’ said the Earl of Groan, advancing down the room, ‘I have disturbed you, nurse, have I not? It is cold outside. I have just been out to get these for him.’
He led Nannie to the far side of the table. On the carpet in the lamplight lay scattered a score of fir cones, each one with its wooden petals undercut with the cast shadow of the petal above it.
Mrs Slagg turned her tired face to Lord Sepulchrave. For once she said the right thing. ‘Are they for his little Lordship, sir?’ she queried. ‘Oh, he will love them, won’t you, my only?’
‘Put him among them. I want to talk to you,’ said the Earl. ‘Sit down.’
Mrs Slagg looked around for a chair and seeing none turned her eyes pathetically towards his Lordship, who was now pointing at the floor in a tired way. Titus, whom she had placed amongst the cones, was alternately turning them over in his fingers and sucking them.
‘It’s all right, I’ve washed them in rainwater,’ said Lord Groan. ‘Sit on the floor, nurse, sit on the floor.’ Without waiting, he himself sat upon the edge of the table, his feet crossed before him, his hands upon the marble surface at his side.
‘Firstly,’ he said, ‘I have had you come this way to tell you that I have decided upon a family gathering here in a week’s time. I want you to inform those concerned. They will be surprised. That does not matter. They will come. You will tell the Countess. You will tell Fuchsia. You will also inform their Ladyships Cora and Clarice.’
Steerpike, who had opened the door inch by inch, had
crept up a stairway he had found immediately to his left. He had shut the door quietly behind him and tip-toed up to a stone gallery which ran around the building. Conveniently for him it was in the darkest shadow, and as he leaned against the bookshelves which lined the walls and watched the proceedings below, he rubbed the palms of his hands together silently.
He wondered where Flay had got to, for as far as he could see there was no other way out save by the main doorway, which was barred and bolted. It seemed to him that he must, like himself, be standing or sitting quietly in the shadows, and not knowing in what part of the building that might be, he kept absolute silence.
‘At eight o’clock in the evening, I shall be awaiting him and them, for you must tell them I have in my mind a breakfast that shall be in honour of my son.’
As he said these words, in his rich, melancholy voice, poor Mrs Slagg, unable to bear the insufferable depression of his spirit, began to clutch her wrinkled hands together. Even Titus seemed to sense the sadness which flowed through the slow, precise words of his father. He forgot the fir cones and began to cry.
‘You will bring my son Titus in his christening robes and will have with you the crown of the direct heir to Gormenghast. Without Titus the castle would have no future when I am gone. As his nurse, I must ask you to remember to instil into his veins, from the very first, a love for his birthplace and his heritage, and a respect for all of the written and unwritten laws of the place of his fathers.
‘I will speak to them, much against my own peace of spirit: I will speak to them of this and of much more that is in my mind. At the Breakfast, of which the details will be discussed on this same evening of next week, he shall be honoured and toasted. It shall be held in the Refectory.’
‘But he is only two months old, the little thing,’ broke in Nannie in a tear-choked voice.