Gormenghast (62 page)

       And then he heard the shrill scream of derision which he was never to forget. He leapt to his feet and ran dizzily to the door of the cave. There he saw her standing in the downpour, knee deep in water, naked as the rain itself. The lightning was playing continuously now, lighting her as though she were a thing of fire herself, now flickering across her in a yellow half light.

       As he stared a kind of ecstasy filled him. He had no sense of losing her - but only the blind and vaunting pride that he had held her in his arms; that naked creature that was now crying again, derisively in a language of her own.

       It was finality. Titus knew in his bones that he could expect no more than this. His teeth had met in the dark core of life. He watched her almost with indifference - for it was all in the past - and even the present was nothing to the pride of his memory.

       But when, out of the heart of the storm that searing flash of flame broke loose, and ripping a path across the dazzled floods, burned up the 'Thing' as though she had been a dry leaf in its path, and when Titus knew that the world was without her for ever, then something fled in him - something fled away or was burned away even as she had been burned away. Something had died as though it had never been.

       At seventeen he stepped into another country. It was his youth that had died away. His boyhood was something for remembrance only. He had become a man.

       He turned and retraced his steps to where Fuchsia leaned against the wall. They could not speak.

       How pitifully human she was. When he parted the long locks that straggled over her face and saw how defenceless she was, and when she pushed his hand away with the tired disillusion of a woman twice her age, then he realized his own strength.

       At a time when he should have been broken by the scene he had just witnessed - by the death of his imagination - he found himself to be emptied of distress. He was himself. He was free for the first time. He had learned that there were other ways of life from the ways of his great home. He had completed an experience. He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor. But with the beauty and the ugliness, the ice and the fire of it on his tongue and in his blood he could begin again.

       The Thing was dead... dead... lightning had killed her, but had Fuchsia not been there he would have shouted with happiness for he had grown up.

IV

It was a long time before a word was exchanged. They sat exhausted side by side. Fuchsia had been persuaded to take off her long red dress, and Titus had wrung it out and it was now spread before the fire he had re-kindled. He longed to leave the cave. It was now so much dead rock. It was over and done with. But Fuchsia, sick with exhaustion, was in no state to start the return journey for an hour or more.

       While he moved about the cave, Titus caught sight of some dead birds on a ledge of rock but his hunger had never returned.

       Then he heard Fuchsia's voice, very low and heavy.

       'I thought perhaps you'd be here. I am better now. We must go back. The flood is rising.'

       Titus walked quickly to the door of the cave. It was true. They were in danger. Far from lessening the rain was heavier than ever with formidable massings of cloud.

       He returned quickly to her side.

       'I told them you had lost your memory,' she said. 'I told them you had been like this before. You must say the same. We'll part near the Castle. Come on.'

       She got to her feet and pulled her damp red dress over her head. Her heart was raw with disappointment. Her fear had been for Titus' safety and she had risked her neck for him, but her hopes had been that he would be proud of her. To struggle all that way, and to find him with... the 'Thing'!

       Clinging fiercely and painfully to her pride, she swore to herself that she would never ask him - would never speak of her. She had thought that there was no one so close to him as herself - or that if there was, he would tell her. She knew that she was only his sister but she had had a blind faith that even though she had defied him over Steerpike, yet she was more necessary to him than Steerpike had ever been to her.

       Titus was gazing at her as he tucked the torn and fateful shirt into his trousers.

       'She is dead, Fuchsia.'

       She lifted her head.

       'Who?' she murmured.

       'The wild girl.'

       'The... wild... girl...? So soon?'

       'The lightning.'

       Fuchsia turned to the cave-mouth and began to move towards the storm. 'Oh God,' she whispered as though to herself. 'Is there nothing but death and beastliness?' and then, not turning as she spoke, but raising her voice. 'Don't tell me, Titus. Don't tell me anything. I would rather know nothing. You live your life and I'll live mine.'

       Titus joined her at the mouth of the cave. It was a frightening sight that lay before them. The landscape was filling up with water. There was not a moment to lose.

       There's only one hope,' said Titus.

       'I know, said Fuchsia. The tunnel.'

       They stepped forward together and received the weight of the cascading sky.

       Thereafter their journey was a nightmare of water. Time after time they saved one another in the treacherous flood as they waded towards the entrance of the long underground passage. A hundred incidents befell them. Their feet were caught in underwater creepers; they stumbled over submerged bushes; the limbs of trees fell headlong into the water at their sides, and all but struck or drowned them. At times they were forced to return and make long detours where the water was too deep, or too marshy. When they came to the high bank on the hill they were all but drowned. But the tunnel was there and although the water had begun to pour down its black throat yet their relief at seeing it was such that they involuntarily clasped each other. For a fleeting moment the years rolled back and they were brother and sister again in a world of no heartburn.

       They had forgotten that the tunnel was so long; so inky dark, so full of vegetable beastliness, of hampering roots, and foul decay. As they neared the castle the water became deeper; for on every side of Gormenghast the landscape shelved gradually downward, the widespread mazes of rambling masonry lying at the centre in a measureless basin.

       When eventually they were able to stand upright and emerged from the tunnel, and began to wade along the corridors that led to the Hollow Halls, the water was up to their waists.

       Their progress was maddeningly slow. Step by step they forced their way through the heavy element, the inky water curling at their waist. Sometimes they would climb steps and would be able to rest for a while, at the top of a flight, but they could not stay for long, for all the while the water was rising. It was a mercy that Titus had become familiar with the one route that took them by degrees to that point behind the giant carving where, so long ago, he had escaped from Barquentine to lose himself in those watery lanes that they were now so slowly wading through.

       It came at last: the halt behind the statue. Titus was in front and he worked his way around the base of the carving and cautiously leaning forward, peered to left and right along the dusky corridor. It was deserted and no wonder. Here as elsewhere the water lay like a dark and slowly moving carpet. It was obvious that the flood had poured in on every side and that the ground level of Gormenghast had been evacuated. His dormitory was upon the floor above, and Fuchsia's room was likewise above flood level. Fuchsia was by now beside him, and they were about to step forward through the water and proceed along their separate paths to their rooms when they heard the sound of a splash, and Titus dragged his sister back. The sound was repeated and repeated again in a regular beat. and then as it grew louder, they saw a glimmer on the water as a soft red light began to approach from the west.

       Holding their breath they waited and a moment later they saw the flat nose of a punt or narrow raft slide into their line of vision. An oldish man sat upon a low seat at its centre. He held in either hand a short pole and these were dipped simultaneously on either side of his craft. They had not far to submerge before they struck the stone beneath and the punt was propelled forward in a smooth and unhurried manner. At the bows was a red lantern. Across the stern lay a firearm, its hammer cocked.

       Both Fuchsia and Titus had seen the man before. He was one of the many watchmen or sentries who had been detailed to patrol these lower corridors. Evidently neither the storm nor Titus' disappearance had caused any relaxation in the daylong, nightlong search for the skewbald beast.

       Directly the light of his lantern and its red reflection had grown small in the distance the brother and sister waded to the nearest of the great stairways.

       As they climbed they became aware, even before they had reached the stairhead of the first of the spreading storeys, that a great change had come about. For looking up they saw, out-topping the stone banisters, high piles of books and furniture, of hangings and crockery, of crate on crate of smaller objects, of carpets and swords, so that the landing was like a great warehouse or emporium.

       And lying across tables, or slouched over chairs, in every kind of attitude of fatigue were numbers of exhausted men. There were few lanterns still alight, but no one seemed awake, and nothing moved.

       Tip-toeing past the sleepers, and leaving trails of water behind them as they went, Titus and Fuchsia came at last to a junction of two corridors. There was no time for them to linger or to talk but they stood still for a moment and looked at one another.

       'This is where we part,' said Fuchsia. 'Don't forget what I told you. You lost your memory and found yourself in the woods. I never found you. We never saw each other.'

       'I won't forget,' said Titus.

       They turned from each other and, following their diverging paths, disappeared into the darkness.

SIXTY-NINE

There was no one alive in Gormenghast who could remember a storm in any way comparable to this black and endless deluge that, flooding the surrounding country, and mounting with every passing minute, was already lapping at the landings of the first storey.

       The thunder was continuous. The lightning went on and off as though a child were playing with a switch. On the vast expanse of water, the heavy branches of riven trees floated and tossed like monsters. The fish of Gormenghast river swam out in every direction, and could be seen steering through the castle's lowest windows.

       Where high ground or an isolated rock or a watch tower broke the surface, these features were crowded with small animals of all kinds, that huddled together in heterogeneous masses, and took no notice of one another. By far the vastest of these natural sanctuaries was, of course, Gormenghast Mountain which had become an island of dramatic beauty, the thick forest trees hanging out of the water at its base, its streaming skull flickering balefully with the reflection of the vibratory lightning.

       By far the greatest proportion of the animals still alive were congregated upon its slopes, and the sky above it, violent and inhospitable as it was, was never free of birds that wheeled and cried.

       The other great sanctuary was the castle itself towards whose walls the tired foxes swam, the hares beside them, the rats in their wake, the badgers, martins, otters and other woodland and river creatures.

       From all the quarters of the compass they converged, their heads alone visible above the surface, their breath coming quick and fast, their shining eyes fixed on the castle walls.

       This gaunt asylum, like the Mountain (that faced it across the rain-lashed lakes, that were so soon to form an inland sea), had become an island. Gormenghast was marooned.

       As soon as it became evident to the inhabitants that it was no ordinary storm that had broken upon them and that the outer ramifications of the castle were already threatened and were liable to be isolated from the main mass, and that the outbuildings, in particular the stables and all structures of wood, were in peril of being washed away, instructions were given for the evacuation of the remote districts, for the immediate recall of the Bright Carvers, and for the driving of all livestock from the stables to within the walls. Bands of men and boys were dispatched for the bringing in and the salvaging of carts, ploughs and all kinds of farm equipment. All this, along with the carriages and harnessings of the horses, was temporarily housed in the armoury on the east side of one of the inner quadrangles. The cattle and the horses were herded into the great stone refectory, the beasts being segregated by means of improvised barriers made largely from the storm-snapped boughs of trees that were piling up continuously beneath the southern windows.

       The Outer Dwellers, already smarting with the insult of the broken Ceremony, were in no mood to return to the castle, but when the rain began to loosen the very foundation of the encampments, they were forced to take advantage of the order they had received, and to make a sullen exodus from their ancient home.

       The magnanimity that was shown them in their time of peril, far from being appreciated, still further embittered them. At a time when they had no other work than to withdraw themselves and to brood over the vile insult they had sustained at the hands of the House of Groan, they were forced to accept the hospitality of its figurehead. Carrying their infants and their few belongings over their shoulders, a horde of sodden malcontents drew in upon the castle, the dark water gurgling about their knees.

       An extensive peninsula of the castle, a thing of rough unpointed masonry, a mile or more in length and several storeys high, had been given over to the Carvers. There they staked their claims, upon the mouldering floorboards, each family circumscribing their 'sites' in thick lines drawn with lumps of chalky plaster.