by Mervyn Peake
Steerpike’s attention had been so concentrated upon what was happening outside the window where the small exploratory boat had been set upon the water, a few feet away, that he had neither ears nor eyes for what was happening above him.
But in a lull of the waves and the shouting he had suddenly heard it, the deliberate triding of a saw, and looking up he could see the jag-edged thing, shining in the water-reflected light, as though it were of gold, while it plunged and withdrew, plunged and withdrew at the centre of the ceiling.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
I
Titus, as the minutes had passed had grown more and more restless. It was not that the preparation for the storming of the flooded room had not been proceeding swiftly and well, but that far from his anger fading, it was gaining more and more of a grip on him.
Two images kept floating before his eyes, one of a creature, slender and tameless; a creature who, defying him, defying Gormenghast, defying the tempest, was yet innocent as air or the lightning that killed her, and the other of a small empty room with his sister lying alone upon a stretcher, harrowingly human, her eyes closed. And nothing else mattered to him but that these two should be avenged – that he should strike.
And so he had not remained at the window overlooking the bright and heaving water. He had left the room and descended an outer staircase, and had boarded one of the boats, for now that Steerpike’s ‘cave’ was so closely ringed there were scores of craft that bobbed uselessly to and fro on the waves. He ordered the oarsmen to land him where the inner circle of boats was forming an unbroken arc around the window’s mouth. He made his way over the heaving floor of boats until he was facing the window and peering along the water’s surface he could see the room, filled with its bright reflections, so clearly, that a picture hanging on its far wall was perfectly visible.
But the Countess had taken the opposite course – and though they did not see each other they must have crossed in the amber light, for as Titus peered into the flooded room, his mother was climbing the outer staircase. She had also conceived the idea of cutting through the roof immediately above the window, for she could see that it would be difficult for anyone to enter Steerpike’s trap without great danger to himself. It was true that the room looked empty but it had been of course impossible for her to know what lay within the shadows of the nearest corners or against the near walls that flanked the window.
And it would be there that Steerpike would crouch, were he in the room at all.
And so she thought of the room above. When she reached it and saw that what she had planned was already being put into practice, she moved to the window and looked down. The rain which had stopped for a little had returned and a steady, slanting stream was pouring itself against the walls, so that, before she had been a minute at the window she was soaked to the skin. After a little time she turned her head to the left and stared along the adjacent wall. It reached away in wet perspective. She turned her head upwards, and the stone acres rose dripping into the night. But the great façade was anything but blank; for from every window there was a head thrust forth. And every head in the glow of the torchlight was of the colour of the walls from which it protruded, so that it seemed that the watchers were of stone, like gargoyles, each face directed to the brilliant barge-light that weltered on the waves outside the ‘cave’.
But as the Countess continued to stare at ‘carvings’ that studded the walls to the left, a kind of subtraction came into play. It was as though embarrassment spread itself across the stone surfaces. One by one the heads withdrew until there was nothing to the left of the Countess but the emptiness of the streaming walls.
And then she turned her head the other way, where, in reverse, the scores of heads protruded and shone with the torch-lit rain – until, like their counterparts, they also one by one, withdrew themselves.
The Countess turned her eyes again to the scene immediately below her and the numberless wet faces were drawn forth at once, as though by suction, from the castle walls, or in the way that the heads of turtles issue from their shells.
The small craft which had been carried over the back of the boat-cordon was now within a foot of the window. A man sat within and wielded a powerful paddle. A black leather hat, with a broad brim shielded his eyes from the rain. Between his teeth he gripped a long dirk.
It was no easy task for him, this approach through the window, between the flanking barges. The small skiff rolled dangerously, shipping the gold water over her side. The wind was now something that could be heard whining across the bay.
All at once Titus called out to the man to return.
‘Let me go first,’ he cried. ‘Come back you man. Let me have your dagger.’ The face of his sister swam across the window. The Thing danced on the bright water like a sprite and he bared his teeth.
‘Let me kill him! Let me kill him!’ he cried again, losing in that moment his last four years of growth, for he had become like a child, hysterical with the intensity of his imagination – and for a moment the boatman wavered, his head over his shoulder, but a voice from the wall above roared out.
‘No! by the blood of love! Hold the boy down!’
Two men held Titus firmly, for he had made as though to plunge into the water.
‘Quiet, my lord,’ said the voice of one of the men who held him. ‘He may not be there.’
‘Why not?’ shouted Titus, struggling. ‘I saw him, didn’t I? Let go of me! Do you know who I am? Let go of me!’
II
Steerpike was as motionless as the lintel on which he crouched. Only his eyes moved to and fro, to and fro, from the saw that cut its circular path through the boards above him to the radiant water below him, where at any moment the nose of the skiff might appear. He had heard the roar of the Countess’ ‘No!’ sounding from above, and knew that when the ceiling had been cut through she would be one of the first to peer down for him – and there was no doubt that they would have a perfect view of him where he crouched in the reflected light.
To split each forehead open as it appeared at the gap of the ceiling – to leave his pebbles half protruding like the most eloquent of tombstones in the foreheads of his foes – this might very well be what he would do, but he knew that his enemies had yet no proof positive that he was there. Directly the work of his lethal catapult became evident it would only be a matter of time before his capture.
It was obvious that he could do nothing to stop the regular progress of the man with the saw. Three quarters of a circle had been completed in the rotten planks. Pieces of wood had fallen already into the swirling water.
All depended upon the appearance of the skiff. Within a minute there would be a great round eye in the woodwork above him. Even as he itched for the boat, its bows appeared, bucking like a horse, and then, suddenly, as it leapt forward again, there below him, close enough to touch, was the broad-brimmed hat of the oarsman with the dirk in his mouth.
III
The Countess, satisfied that there was no longer any danger of Titus leaping into the water, returned to where the man with the saw was resting his arm before the last dozen plunges and withdrawals of the hot and grinding blade.
‘The first to put his face through the hole is likely to receive a pebble in his head. You have no doubt of this, gentlemen.’ She spoke slowly. Her hands were on her hips. Her head was held high. Her bosom heaved with a slow sea-like rhythm. She was consumed with the passion of the chase, but her face showed nothing. She was intent upon the death of a traitor.
But what of Titus? The upheaval of his emotions, the bitterness of his tone; his lack of love for her – all this was, whether she wished it or not, mixed up with the cornering of Steerpike. It was no pure and naked contest between the House of Groan and a treacherous rebel, for the seventy-seventh Earl was, by his own confession, something perilously near a traitor himself.
She returned to the window and as she did so, Steerpike in the room below, changing his plan completely with the dawn of a fresh
idea, thrust his catapult back in his pocket and grasping his knife got gradually and noiselessly to his feet, where he poised himself, his head and shoulders bent forward by the proximity of the roof.
The figure in the boat, who had volunteered for this hazardous mission, far from being able to keep his eyes skinned for the enemy, was unable to concentrate upon anything else but the control of the skiff, which with the waves that were now breaking upon the outer wall and sending their surges through the window, had made the flood-room into a wall of tossing water.
Nevertheless, the time came when, with a deceptive lull in the riot of trapped waves, the boatman swung his head over his shoulder, and was able for the first time to focus his eyes upon the window end of the room. At once he saw Steerpike, his face lit from below.
Directly the man saw him he let forth a gasp of excited terror. He was no chicken-heart, having volunteered to enter the cave alone, and he was now prepared to fight as he had never fought before, but there was something so terrible in the poised over-hanging aspect of the young man that it turned his bowels to water. For the moment, the volunteer was out of range of anything but the thrown knife – and it was his intention to put his lips to the whistle which hung by a cord around his neck, and warn them of the discovery of Steerpike by the single blast which had been agreed upon, when he found himself being swung forward on the crest of a wave that had entered a moment before and was following the walls as though to swill the ‘cave’ out. He strained at the paddle but there was no holding back the skiff, and within a matter of moments, he found himself slithering along the western side and into the shadowy corner of the ‘seaward’ wall.
As the boat, running forward and striking its nose upon the stones at Steerpike’s side, was about to make for the window below him, Steerpike sprang outwards, and to the left, and fell with a stunning force, for all his lightness, upon the volunteer. There was no time for any struggle, the knife running between the ribs and through the man’s heart three times within as many seconds.
As Steerpike delivered the third of the lightning stabs, the sweat pouring off his face like wet blood in the reflected torch light, he turned his small hot eyes to the ceiling and found that the saw was within an inch of completing the circle. In another moment he would be exposed to the view of the Countess and the searchers.
The corpse was beside him in the boat, which at the impact of his jumping body had shipped a bucket or two of water. Perhaps it was this that slowed her upon her swirling course. Whatever it was, Steerpike was able to jam his foot against a support of the adjacent window and grasping the paddle to force the boat against the weakening sweep of water, until the last of the whirl had poured itself to ‘sea’ again through the window. In the few seconds of respite as he bobbed in the comparative darkness of the outer corner he plucked the broad-brimmed hat of leather from the corpse’s head and thrust it on his own. Then he ripped the coat off the limp and heavy body and got into it at once. There was no time for more … A sound of hammering above told him that the circle of floor-boards was being knocked through. He caught the corpse beneath its knees and under its arms and with a supreme effort toppled it over the side where it sank beneath the restless surge.
It was now up to him to control the skiff, for he wanted not only to keep it from capsizing but to station it below the hole in the ceiling. As he plunged the heavy paddle into the water and forced the skiff to the centre of the room, the circle of wood fell out of the ceiling and a new light from above made a great pool of radiance at the watery centre of Steerpike’s lair.
But Steerpike did not look up. He fought like a demon to keep his boat immediately below the lamplit circle – and then he began to call in a husky voice which, if it was nothing like his victim’s, was certainly nothing like his own.
‘My lady!’ he called.
‘What’s that?’ muttered the Countess in the room above.
A man edged his way towards the opening.
Again the voice from below. ‘Ahoy there! Is the Countess there!’
‘It’s the volunteer,’ cried the man who had gone so far as to peer over the rim of the circular hole. ‘It’s the volunteer, lady! He’s immediately below.’
‘What does he say?’ cried the Countess in a hollow voice, for a black fear tugged at her heart.
‘What does he say, man! For the love of the stones!’
And then she took a step forward so that she could see the broad-brimmed hat and the heavy coat twelve feet below her. She was about to call down to the figure, although the volunteer made no move to raise his head, but it was his voice that broke the silence. For there was a kind of silence, although the rain hissed, and the wind blew, and the waves slapped against the walls. There was a tension which over-rode the natural sounds. And a terror that the grizzly fowl had flown.
The voice came up from under the rim of the hat.
‘Tell her ladyship there’s nothing here! Only a room full of water. There’s no way out but the window. The doors are water-jammed. Nothing but water, tell her. Nowhere to hide an eyelash! He’s gone, if ever he was here, which I doubt.’
The Countess went down on her knees as though she was going to pray. Her heart had gone dead in her. This was the moment, if ever there was one, for an enemy of Gormenghast to be caught and slain. Now, with the eyes of the world focused upon his capture and his punishment. And yet the man had cried ‘Only a room full of water’.
But something in her would not have it that so great a preparation, so formidable a massing of the castle’s strength should prove abortive – and more than this, there was something in her, at a deeper level, that refused to believe that the certainty, the quite irrational certainty that this was the day of vengeance, was but her wishfulness.
She lowered herself to her elbows and dropped her head below the level of the floor.
At the first glance it was desperately true. There was nowhere to hide. The walls were blank, save for a few mouldering pictures. The floor was nothing but water. She turned to the man below.
It was true that it was difficult for him to contend with the restless swell of the waves in the cave, but at the same time it seemed odd that this volunteer made no effort to dart a single glance towards the roof where he knew his audience lay and watched expectantly.
She had seen him step into his boat some time earlier and paddle his way between the barges. She had gazed down from the window, the rain striking her face, and had wondered what he would find. She had had no doubt that Steerpike would be waiting for him. It was this certainty which still lingered in spite of the emptiness below which prompted her to stare again at the man who had found nothing but water.
When it struck her that he was of slighter build than she had thought her notion brought no suspicion in its trail. But her eyes, which had left the volunteer again and were following the curve of the wall, now came to rest on something which she had previously missed. The shadows were darker to the right of the single window and she had failed to detect that there was something hanging from the ceiling. At first she could make nothing of it, save that it appeared to be suspended from a joist and that it was about six feet in length, but gradually, as her eyes became used to the peculiar vibrations of the reflected light, and as now one part and now another of the object became illuminated by a glancing beam, so she became at last aware that she was looking at Titus’ canoe … the canoe which Steerpike had stolen … and in which he had entered this very room. Then where was he? The room was empty of life, empty of everything save the water, the canoe and the volunteer. And there was no way to escape on foot and no reason why he should have wished to do so with so slight and safe a vessel at his command. Whatever the cause of Steerpike’s disappearance, why should the canoe be hanging from the ceiling?
When she turned her eye back to the broad-brimmed hat below her and noted the shoulders beneath it, and saw the nervous strength and agility with which the man handled the boat, she was affected by the first shadow of a suspicion tha
t this volunteer below her had altered in some subtle and curious way from the solid boatman she had seen from the window. But her suspicion was so tenuous that she had no grasp upon its implications. Yet that a kind of disturbance, a kind of suspicion, had been aroused, however vague, was enough for her to draw a deep breath and then, in a voice of such power and volume that the figure below her started at the sound –
‘Volunteer!’ she roared.
The man beneath her appeared to be in such trouble with his boat that it was impossible for him to keep her from shipping water and to look up at the Countess at the same time.
‘My Lady?’ he cried up, wielding his paddle feverishly, as though to keep immediately below her, ‘Yes, My Lady?’
‘Are you blind?’ came the voice from the ceiling. ‘Have your eyes rotted in your head?’ What could she mean by that? Had she seen …? ‘Why have you made no report on it?’ boomed the voice. ‘Have you not seen it?’