by Mervyn Peake
Keda’s trance had fallen from her in a sudden brutal moment and she had started to run towards the Twisted Woods. Through the great phosphorescent night, cloakless, her hair unfastening as she climbed, she came at last to the incline that led to the lip of the hollow. Her pain mounted as she ran. The strange, unworldly strength had died in her, the glory was gone – only an agony of fear was with her now.
As she climbed to the ridge of the hollow she could hear – so small a sound in the enormous night – the panting of the men, and her heart for a moment lifted, for they were alive.
With a bound she reached the brow of the slope and saw them crouching and moving in moonlight below her. The cry in her throat was choked as she saw the blood upon them, and she sank to her knees.
Braigon had seen her and his tired arms rang with a sudden strength. With a flash of his left arm he whirled Rantel’s daggered hand away, and springing after him as swiftly as though he were a part of his foe, he plunged his knife into the shadowy breast.
As he struck he withdrew the dagger, and as Rantel sank to the ground, Braigon flung his weapon away.
He did not turn to Keda. He stood motionless, his hands at his head. Keda could feel no grief. The corners of her mouth lifted. The time for horror was not yet. This was not real – yet. She saw Rantel raise himself upon his left arm. He groped for his dagger and felt it beside him in the dew. His life was pouring from the wound in his breast. Keda watched him as, summoning into his right arm what strength remained in his whole body, he sent the dagger running through the air with a sudden awkward movement of his arm. It found its mark in a statue’s throat. Braigon’s arms fell to his sides like dead weights. He tottered forward, swayed for a little, the bone hilt at his gullet, and then collapsed lifeless across the body of his destroyer.
‘THE SUN GOES DOWN AGAIN’
‘Equality’, said Steerpike, ‘is the thing. It is the only true and central premise from which constructive ideas can radiate freely and be operated without prejudice. Absolute equality of status. Equality of wealth. Equality of power.’
He tapped at a stone that lay among the wet leaves with his swordstick and sent it scurrying through the undergrowth.
He had waylaid Fuchsia with a great show of surprise in the pine woods as she was returning from an evening among the trees. It was the last evening before the fateful day of the burning. There would be no time tomorrow for any dallying of this kind. His plans were laid and the details completed. The Twins were rehearsed in their rôles and Steerpike was reasonably satisfied that he could rely on them. This evening, after having enjoyed a long bath at the Prunesquallors’, he had spent more time than usual dressing himself. He had plastered his sparse tow-coloured hair over his bulging forehead with unusual care, viewing himself as he did so from every angle in the three mirrors he had erected on a table by the window.
As he left the house, he spun the slim swordstick through his fingers. It circled in his hand like the spokes of a wheel. Should he, or should he not pay a quick call on the Twins? On the one hand he must not excite them, for it was as though they had been primed for an examination and might suddenly forget everything they had been taught. On the other hand, if he made no direct reference to tomorrow’s enterprise but encouraged them obliquely it might keep them going through the night. It was essential that they should have a good night’s sleep. He did not want them sitting bolt upright on the edge of their bed all night staring at each other, with their eyes and mouths wide open.
He decided to pay a very short visit and then to take a stroll to the wood, where he thought he might find Fuchsia, for she had made a habit of lying for hours beneath a certain pine in what she fondly imagined was a secret glade.
Steerpike decided he would see them for a few moments, and at once he moved rapidly across the quadrangle. A fitful light was breaking through the clouds, and the arches circumscribing the quadrangle cast pale shadows that weakened or intensified as the clouds stole across the sun. Steerpike shuddered as he entered the sunless castle.
When he came to the door of the aunts’ apartments he knocked, and entered at once. There was a fire burning in the grate and he walked towards it, noticing as he did so the twin heads of Cora and Clarice twisted on their long powdered necks. Their eyes were staring at him over the embroidered back of their couch, which had been pulled up to the fire. They followed him with their heads, their necks unwinding as he took up a position before them with his back to the fire, his legs astride, his hands behind him.
‘My dears,’ he said, fixing them in turn with his magnetic eyes; ‘my dears, how are you? But what need is there to ask? You both look radiant. Lady Clarice, I have seldom seen you look lovelier; and your sister refuses to let you have it all your own way. You refuse utterly, Lady Cora, don’t you? You are about as bridal as I ever remember you. It is a delight to be with you again.’
The twins stared at him and wriggled, but no expression appeared in their faces.
After a long silence during which Steerpike had been warming his hands at the blaze Cora said, ‘Do you mean that I’m glorious?’
‘That’s not what he said,’ came Clarice’s flat voice.
‘Glorious’, said Steerpike, ‘is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you are glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sound that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me. I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.’
‘You could try,’ said Clarice. ‘We aren’t busy.’
She smoothed the shining fabric of her dress with her long, lifeless fingers.
‘Impossible,’ replied the youth, rubbing his chin. ‘Quite impossible. Only believe in my admiration for your beauty that will one day be recognized by the whole castle. Meanwhile, preserve all dignity and silent power in your twin bosoms.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Cora, ‘we’ll preserve it. We’ll preserve it in our bosoms, won’t we, Clarice? Our silent power.’
‘Yes, all the power we’ve got,’ said Clarice. ‘But we haven’t got much.’
‘It is coming to you,’ said Steerpike. ‘It is on its way. You are of the blood; who else but you should wield the sceptre? But alone you cannot succeed. For years you have smarted from the insults you have been forced to endure. Ah, how patiently, you have smarted! How patiently! Those days have gone. Who is it that can help you?’ He took a pace towards them and bent forward. ‘Who is it that can restore you: and who will set you on your glittering thrones?’
The aunts put their arms about one another so that their faces were cheek to cheek, and from this double head they gazed up at Steerpike with a row of four equidistant eyes. There was no reason why there should not have been forty, or four hundred of them. It so happened that only four had been removed from a dead and endless frieze whose inexhaustible and repetitive theme was forever, eyes, eyes, eyes.
‘Stand up,’ said Steerpike. He had raised his voice.
They got to their feet awkwardly and stood before him evil. A sense of power filled Steerpike with an acute enjoyment.
‘Take a step forward,’ he said.
They did so, still holding one another.
Steerpike watched them for some time, his shoulders hunched against the mantelpiece. ‘You heard me speak,’ he said. ‘You heard my question. Who is it that will raise you to your thrones?’
‘Thrones,’ said Cora in a whisper; ‘our thrones.’
‘Golden ones,’ said Clarice. ‘That is what we want.’
‘That is what you shall have. Golden thrones for Lady Cora and Lady Clarice. Who will give them to you?’
He stretched forward his hands and, holding each of them fi
rmly by an elbow, brought them forward in one piece to within a foot of himself. He had never gone so far before, but he could see that they were clay in his hands and the familiarity was safe. The dreadful proximity of the identical faces caused him to draw his own head back.
‘Who will give you the thrones, the glory and the power?’ he said. ‘Who?’
Their mouths opened together. ‘You,’ they said. ‘It’s you who’ll give them to us. Steerpike will give them to us.’
Then Clarice craned her head forward from beside her sister’s and she whispered as though she were telling Steerpike a secret for the first time.
We’re burning Sepulchrave’s books up,’ she said, ‘the whole of his silly library. We’re doing it – Cora and I. Everything is ready.’
‘Yes,’ said Steerpike. ‘Everything is ready.’
Clarice’s head regained its normal position immediately above her neck, where it balanced itself, a dead thing, on a column, but Cora’s came forward as though to take the place of its counterpart and to keep the machinery working. In the same flat whisper she continued from where her sister had left off:
‘All we do is to do what we’ve been told to do.’ Her head came forward another two inches. ‘There isn’t anything difficult. It’s easy to do. We go to the big door and then we find two little pieces of cloth sticking through from the inside, and then –’
‘We set them on fire!’ broke in her sister in so loud a voice that Steerpike closed his eyes. Then with a profound emptiness: ‘We’ll do it now,’ said Clarice. ‘It’s easy.’
‘Now?’ said Steerpike. ‘Oh no, not now. We decided it should be tomorrow, didn’t we? Tomorrow evening.’
‘I want to do it now,’ said Clarice. ‘Don’t you, Cora?’
‘No,’ said Cora.
Clarice bit solemnly at her knuckles. ‘You’re frightened,’ she said; ‘frightened of a little bit of fire. You ought to have more pride than that, Cora. I have, although I’m gently manured.’
‘“Mannered” you mean,’ said her sister. ‘You stupid. How ignorant you are. With our blood, too. I am ashamed of our likenesses and always will be, so there!’
Steerpike brushed an elegant green vase from the mantel with his elbow, which had the effect he had anticipated. The four eyes moved towards the fragments on the floor – the thread of their dialogue was as shattered as the vase.
‘A sign!’ he muttered in a low, vibrant voice. ‘A portent! A symbol! The circle is complete. An angel has spoken.’
The twins stared open-mouthed.
‘Do you see the broken porcelain, dear ladies?’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’
They nodded.
‘What else is that but the Régime, broken for ever – the bullydom of Gertrude – the stony heart of Sepulchrave – the ignorance, malice and brutality of the House of Groan as it now stands – smashed for ever? It is a signal that your hour is at hand. Give praise, my dears; you shall come unto your splendour.’
‘When?’ said Cora. ‘Will it be soon?’
‘What about tonight?’ said Clarice. She raised her flat voice to its second floor, where there was more ventilation. ‘What about tonight?’
‘There is a little matter to be settled first,’ said Steerpike. ‘One little job to be done. Very simple; very, very simple; but it needs clever people to do it.’ He struck a match.
In the four lenses of the four flat eyes, the four reflections of a single flame, danced – danced.
‘Fire!’ they said. ‘We know all about it. All, all, all.’
‘Oh, then, to bed,’ said the youth, speaking rapidly. ‘To bed, to bed, to bed.’
Clarice lifted a limp hand like a slab of putty to her breast and scratched herself abstractedly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Good night.’ And as she moved towards the bedroom door she began to unfasten her dress.
‘I’m going too,’ said Cora. ‘Good night.’ She also, as she retired, could be seen unclasping and unhooking herself. Before the door closed behind her she was half unravelled of imperial purple.
Steerpike filled his pocket with nuts from a china bowl and letting himself out of the room began the descent to the quadrangle. He had had no intention of broaching the subject of the burning, but the aunts had happily proved less excitable than he had anticipated and his confidence in their playing their elementary rôles effectively on the following evening was strengthened.
As he descended the stone stairs he filled his pipe, and on coming into the mild evening light, his tobacco smouldering in the bowl, he felt in an amiable mood, and spinning his swordstick he made for the pine wood, humming to himself as he went.
He had found Fuchsia, and had built up some kind of conversation, although he always found it more difficult to speak to her than to anyone else. First he inquired with a certain sincerity whether she had recovered from the shock. Her cheek was inflamed, and she limped badly from the severe pain in her leg. The Doctor had bandaged her up carefully and had left instructions with Nannie that she must not go out for several days, but she had slipped away when her nurse was out of the room, leaving a scribble on the wall to the effect that she loved her; but as the creature never looked at the wall the message was abortive.
By the time they had come to the edge of the wood Steerpike was talking airily of any subject that came into his head, mainly for the purpose of building up in her mind a picture of himself as someone profoundly brilliant, but also for the enjoyment of talking for its own sake, for he was in a sprightly mood.
She limped beside him as they passed through the outermost trees and into the light of the sinking sun. Steerpike paused to remove a stag-beetle from where it clung to the soft bark of a pine.
Fuchsia went on slowly, wishing she were alone.
‘There should be no rich, no poor, no strong, no weak,’ said Steerpike, methodically pulling the legs off the stag-beetle, one by one, as he spoke. ‘Equality is the great thing, equality is everything.’ He flung the mutilated insect away. ‘Do you agree, Lady Fuchsia?’ he said.
‘I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t care much,’ said Fuchsia.
‘But don’t you think it’s wrong if some people have nothing to eat and others have so much they throw most of it away? Don’t you think it’s wrong if some people have to work all their lives for a little money to exist on while others never do any work and live in luxury? Don’t you think brave men should be recognized and rewarded, and not just treated the same as cowards? The men who climb mountains, or dive under the sea, or explore jungles full of fever, or save people from fires?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fuchsia again. ‘Things ought to be fair,’ I suppose. But I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Steerpike. ‘When you say “Things ought to be fair” it is exactly what I mean. Things ought to be fair, why aren’t they fair? Because of greed and cruelty and lust for power. All that sort of thing must be stopped.
‘Well, why don’t you stop it, then?’ said Fuchsia in a distant voice. She was watching the sun’s blood on the Tower of Flints, and a cloud like a drenched swab, descending, inch by inch, behind the blackening tower.
‘I am going to,’ said Steerpike with such an air of simple confidence that Fuchsia turned her eyes to him.
‘You’re going to stop cruelty?’ she asked. ‘And greediness, and all those things? I don’t think you could. You’re very clever, but, oh no, you couldn’t do anything like that.’
Steerpike was taken aback for a moment by this reply. He had meant his remark to stand on its own – a limpid statement of fact – something that he imagined Fuchsia might often turn over in her mind and cogitate upon.
‘It’s nearly gone,’ said Fuchsia as Steerpike was wondering how to reassert himself. ‘Nearly gone.’
‘What’s nearly gone?’ He followed her eyes to where the circle of the sun was notched with turrets. ‘Oh, you mean the old treacle bun,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will get cold very quickly now.’
&nbs
p; ‘Treacle bun?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Is that what you call it?’ She stopped walking. ‘I don’t think you ought to call it that. It’s not respectful.’ She gazed. As the death-throes weakened in the sky, she watched with big, perplexed eyes. Then she smiled for the first time. ‘Do you give names to other things like that?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Steerpike. ‘I have a disrespectful nature.’
‘Do you give people names?’
‘I have done.’
‘Have you got one for me?’
Steerpike sucked the end of his swordstick and raised his straw-coloured eyebrows. ‘I don’t think I have,’ he said. ‘I usually think of you as Lady Fuchsia.’
‘Do you call my mother anything?’
‘Your mother? Yes.’
‘What do you call my mother?’
‘I call her the old Bunch of Rags,’ said Steerpike.
Fuchsia’s eyes opened wide and she stood still again. ‘Go away,’ she said.
‘That’s not very fair,’ said Steerpike. ‘After all, you asked me.’
‘What do you call my father, then? But I don’t want to know. I think you’re cruel,’ said Fuchsia breathlessly, ‘you who said you’d stop cruelty altogether. Tell me some more names. Are they all unkind – and funny?’
‘Some other time,’ said Steerpike, who had begun to feel chilly. ‘The cold won’t do your injuries any good. You shouldn’t be out walking at all, Prunesquallor thinks you’re in bed. He sounded very worried about you.’
They walked on in silence, and by the time they had reached the castle night had descended.
‘MEANWHILE’
The morning of the next day opened drearily, the sun appearing only after protracted periods of half-light, and then only as a pale paper disc, more like the moon than itself, as, for a few moments at a time it floated across some corridor of cloud. Slow, lack-lustre veils descended with almost imperceptible motion over Gormenghast, blurring its countless windows, as with a dripping smoke. The mountain appeared and disappeared a score of times during the morning as the drifts obscured it or lifted from its sides. As the day advanced the gauzes thinned, and it was in the late afternoon that the clouds finally dispersed to leave in their place an expanse of translucence, that stain, chill and secret, in the throat of a lily, a sky so peerless, that as Fuchsia stared into its glacid depths she began unwittingly to break and re-break the flower-stem in her hands.