by Mervyn Peake
She put up her hand and her cool fingers felt the bones of his brow and his high cheekbones, and came to his mouth where they touched his lips.
After a little while Rantel said softly: ‘You have been crying?’
‘With joy,’ she said.
‘Keda …’
‘Yes …’
‘Can you bear cruel news?’
‘Nothing can pain me any more,’ said Keda. ‘I am no longer the one you knew. I am alive.’
‘The law that forced you in your marriage, Keda, may bind you again. There is another. I have been told he has been waiting for you, Keda, waiting for you to return. But I could slay him, Keda, if you wish.’ His body toughened in her arms and his voice grew harsher. ‘Shall I slay him?’
‘You shall not speak of death,’ said Keda. ‘He shall not have me. Take me with you to your house.’ Keda heard her own voice sounding like that of another woman, it was so different and clear. ‘Take me with you – he will not take me after we have loved. They have my house, where else should I sleep tonight but with you? For I am happy for the first time. All things are clear to me. The right and the wrong, the true and the untrue. I have lost my fear. Are you afraid?’
‘I am not afraid!’ cried Rantel into the darkness, ‘if we love one another.’
‘I love all, all,’ said Keda. ‘Let us not talk.’
Dazed, he took her with him away from the square, and threading their way through the less frequented lanes found themselves at last at the door of a dwelling at the base of the castle wall.
The room they entered was cold, but within a minute Rantel had sent the light from an open fire on the earth dancing across the walls. On the mud floor was the usual grass matting common to all the dwellings.
‘Our youth will pass from us soon,’ said Keda. ‘But we are young this moment and tonight we are together. The bane of our people will fall on us, next year or the year after, but now – NOW, Rantel; it is NOW that fills us. How quickly you have made the fire! Oh, Rantel, how beautifully you have made it! Hold me again.’
As he held her there was a tapping at the window; they did not move, but only listened as it increased until the coarse slab of glass sunk in the mud walls vibrated with an incessant drumming. The increasing volume of the sudden rain was joined by the first howls of a young wind.
The hours moved on. On the low wooden boards, Rantel and Keda lay in the warmth of the fire, defenceless before each other’s love.
When Keda wakened she lay for some while motionless. Rantel’s arm was flung over her body and his hand was at her breast like a child’s. Lifting his arm she moved slowly from him, lowered his hand again softly to the floor. Then she rose and walked to the door. And as she took the first steps, there flashed through her the joyous realization that the mood of invulnerability before the world was still with her. She unlatched the door and flung it open. She had known that the outer wall of Gormenghast would face her as she did so. Its rough base within a stone’s throw would rise like a sheer cliff. And there it was, but there was more. Ever since she could remember anything the face of the outer wall had been like the symbol of endlessness, of changelessness, of power, of austerity and of protection. She had known it in so many moods. Baked to dusty whiteness, and alive with basking lizards, she could remember how it flaked in the sun. She had seen it flowering with the tiny pink and blue creeper flowers that spread like fields of coloured smoke in April across acres of its temperate surface. She had seen its every protruding ledge of stone, its every jutting irregularity furred with frost, or hanging with icicles. She had seen the snow sitting plumply on those juttings, so that in the darkness when the wall had vanished into the night these patches of snow had seemed to her like huge stars suspended.
And now this sunlit morning of late autumn gave to it a mood which she responded to. But as she watched its sunny surface sparkling after a night of heavy rain, she saw at the same moment a man sitting at its base, his shadow on the wall behind him. He was whittling at a branch in his hand. But although it was Braigon who sat there and who lifted his eyes as she opened the door, she did not cry in alarm or feel afraid or ashamed, but only looked at him quietly, happily, and saw him as a figure beneath a sparkling wall, a man whittling at a branch; someone she had longed to see again.
He did not get to his feet, so she walked over to him and sat down at his side.
His head was massive and his body also; squarely built, he gave the impression of compact energy and strength. His hair covered his head closely with tangled curls.
‘How long have you been here, Braigon, sitting in the sun carving?’
‘Not long.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘To see you.’
‘How did you know that I had come back?’
‘Because I could carve no more.’
‘You stopped carving?’ said Keda.
‘I could not see what I was doing. I could only see your face where my carving had been.’
Keda gave vent to a sigh of such tremulous depth that she clasped her hands at her breast with the pain that it engendered.
‘And so you came here?’
‘I did not come at once. I knew that Rantel would find you as you left the gate in the Outer Wall, for he hides each night among the rocks waiting for you. I knew that he would be with you. But this morning I came here to ask him where he had found you a dwelling for the night, and where you were, for I knew your house had been taken from you by the law of the Mud Square. But when I arrived here an hour ago I saw the ghost of your face on the door, and you were happy; so I waited here. You are happy, Keda?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You were afraid in the castle to come back; but now you are here you are not afraid. I can see what it is,’ he said. ‘You have found that you are in love. Do you love him?’
‘I do not know. I do not understand. I am walking on air, Braigon. I cannot tell whether I love him or no, or whether it is the world I love so much and the air and the rain last night, and the passions that opened like flowers from their tight buds. Oh, Braigon, I do not know. If I love Rantel, then I love you also. As I watch you now, your hand at your forehead and your lips moving such a little, it is you I love. I love the way you have not wept with anger and torn yourself to shreds to find me here. The way you have sat here all by yourself, oh Braigon, whittling a branch, and waiting, unafraid and understanding everything, I do not know how, for I have not told you of what has transformed me, suddenly?’
She leaned back against the wall and the morning sun lay whitely upon her face. ‘Have I changed so much?’ she said.
‘You have broken free,’ he said.
‘Braigon,’ she cried, ‘it is you – it is you whom I love.’ And she clenched her hands together. ‘I am in pain because of you and him, but my pain makes me happy. I must tell you the truth, Braigon. I am in love with all things – pain and all things, because I can now watch them from above, for something has happened and I am clear – clear. But I love you, Braigon, more than all things. It is you I love.’
He turned the branch over in his hand as though he had not heard, and then he turned to her.
His heavy head had been reclining upon the wall and now he turned it slightly towards her, his eyes half closed.
‘Keda,’ he said, ‘I will meet you tonight. The grass hollow where the Twisted Woods descend. Do you remember?’
‘I will meet you there,’ she said. While she spoke the air became shrill between their heads and the steel point of a long knife struck the stones between them and snapped with the impact.
Rantel stood before them, he was shaking.
‘I have another knife,’ he said in a whisper which they could only just hear. ‘It is a little longer. It will be sharper by this evening when I meet you at the hollow. There is a full moon tonight. Keda! Oh Keda! Have you forgotten?’
Braigon got to his feet. He had moved only to place himself before Keda’s body. She had closed her eyes and
she was quite expressionless.
‘I cannot help it,’ she said, ‘I cannot help it I am happy.’
Braigon stood immediately before his rival. He spoke over his shoulder, but kept his eyes on his enemy.
‘He is right,’ he said. ‘I shall meet him at sunset. One of us will come back to you.’
Then Keda raised her hands to her head. ‘No, no, no, no!’ she cried. But she knew that it must be so, and became calm, leaning back against the wall, her head bowed and the locks of her hair falling over her face.
The two men left her, for they knew that they could never be with her that unhappy day. They must prepare their weapons. Rantel re-entered his hut and a few moments later returned with a cape drawn about him. He approached Keda.
‘I do not understand your love,’ he said.
She looked up and saw his head upright upon his neck. His hair was like a bush of blackness.
She did not answer. She only saw his strength and his high cheekbones and fiery eyes. She only saw his youth.
‘I am the cause,’ she said. ‘It is I who should die. And I will die,’ she said quickly. ‘Before very long – but now, now what is it? I cannot enter into fear or hate, or even agony and death. Forgive me, forgive me.’
She turned and held his hand with the dagger in it.
‘I do not know. I do not understand,’ she said, ‘I do not think that we have any power.’
She released his hand and he moved away along the base of the high wall until it curved to the right and she lost him.
Braigon was already gone. Her eyes clouded.
‘Keda,’ she said to herself, ‘Keda, this is tragedy.’ But as her words hung emptily in the morning air, she clenched her hands for she could feel no anguish and the bright bird that had filled her breast was still singing … was still singing.
THE ROOM OF ROOTS
‘That’s quite enough for today,’ said Lady Cora, laying down her embroidery on a table beside her chair.
‘But you’ve only sewn three stitches, Cora,’ said Lady Clarice, drawing out a thread to arm’s length.
Cora turned her eyes suspiciously. ‘You have been watching me,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘It wasn’t private,’ replied her sister. ‘Sewing isn’t private.’ She tossed her head.
Cora was not convinced and sat rubbing her knees together, sullenly.
‘And now I’ve finished as well,’ said Clarice, breaking the silence. ‘Half a petal, and quite enough, too, for a day like this. Is it tea time?’
‘Why do you always want to know the time?’ said Cora, “Is it breakfast time, Cora?” … “Is it dinner time, Cora?” … “Is it tea time, Cora?” – on and on and on. You know that it doesn’t make any difference what the time is.’
‘It does if you’re hungry,’ said Clarice.
‘No, it doesn’t. Nothing matters very much; even if you’re hungry.’
‘Yes, it does,’ her sister contested, ‘I know it does.’
‘Clarice Groan,’ said Cora sternly, rising from her chair, ‘you know too much.’
Clarice did not answer, but bit her thin, loose lower lip.
‘We usually go on much longer with our sewing, don’t we, Cora?’ she said at last. ‘We sometimes go on for hours and hours, and we nearly always talk a lot, but we haven’t today, have we, Cora?’
‘No,’ said Cora.
‘Why haven’t we?’
‘I don’t know. Because we haven’t needed to, I suppose, you silly thing.’
Clarice got up from her chair and smoothed her purple satin, and then looked archly at her sister. ‘I know why we haven’t been talking,’ she said.
‘Oh no, you don’t.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Clarice. ‘I know.’
Cora sniffed, and after walking to a long mirror in the wall with a swishing of her skirts, she readjusted a pin in her hair. When she felt she had been silent long enough:
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said, and peered at her sister in the mirror over the reflection of her own shoulder. Had she not had forty-nine years in which to get accustomed to the phenomenon she must surely have been frightened to behold in the glass, next to her own face, another, smaller, it is true, for her sister was some distance behind her, but of such startling similarity.
She saw her sister’s mouth opening in the mirror.
‘I do,’ came the voice from behind her, ‘because I know what you’ve been thinking. It’s easy.’
‘You think you do,’ said Cora, ‘but I know you don’t, because I know exactly what you’ve been thinking all day that I’ve been thinking and that’s why.’
The logic of this answer made no lasting impression upon Clarice, for although it silenced her for a moment she continued: ‘Shall I tell you what you’ve been brooding on?’ she asked.
‘You can if you like, I suppose. I don’t mind. What, then? I might as well incline my ear. Go on.’
‘I don’t know that I want to now,’ said Clarice. ‘I think I’ll keep it to myself, although it’s obvious.’ Clarice gave great emphasis to this word ‘obvious’. ‘Isn’t it tea time yet? Shall I ring the bell, Cora? What a pity it’s too windy for the tree.’
‘You were thinking of that Steerpike boy,’ said Cora, who had sidled up to her sister and was staring at her from very close quarters. She felt she had rather turned the tables on poor Clarice by her sudden renewal of the subject.
‘So were you,’ said Clarice. ‘I knew that long ago. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Cora. ‘Very long ago. Now we both know.’
A freshly burning fire flung their shadows disrespectfully to and fro across the ceiling and over the walls where samples of their embroidery were hung. The room was a fair size, some thirty feet by twenty. Opposite the entrance from the corridor was a small door. This gave upon the Room of Roots, in the shape of a half circle. On either side of this smaller opening were two large windows with diamond panes of thick glass, and on the two end walls of the room, in one of which was the small fireplace, were narrow doorways, one leading to the kitchen and the rooms of the two servants, and the other to the dining-room and the dark yellow bedroom of the twins.
‘He said he would exalt us,’ said Clarice. ‘You heard him, didn’t you?’
‘I’m not deaf,’ said Cora.
‘He said we weren’t being honoured enough and we must remember who we are. We’re Lady Clarice and Cora Groan; that’s who we are.’
‘Cora and Clarice’, her sister corrected her, ‘of Gormenghast.’
‘But no one is awed when they see us. He said he’d make them be.’
‘Make them be what, dear?’ Cora had begun to unbend now that she found their thoughts had been identical.
‘Make them be awed,’ said Clarice. ‘That’s what they ought to be. Oughtn’t they, Cora?’
‘Yes; but they won’t do it,’
‘No. That’s what it is,’ said Clarice, ‘although I tried this morning.’
‘What, dear?’ said Cora.
‘I tried this morning, though,’ repeated Clarice.
‘Tried what?’ asked Cora in a rather patronizing voice.
‘You know when I said “I’ll go for a saunter”?’
‘Yes.’ Cora sat down and produced a minute but heavily scented handkerchief from her flat bosom. ‘What about it?’
‘I didn’t go to the bathroom at all.’ Clarice sat down suddenly and stiffly, ‘I took some ink instead – black ink.’
‘What for?’
‘I won’t tell you yet, for the time isn’t ripe,’ said Clarice importantly; and her nostrils quivered like a mustang’s. ‘I took the black ink, and I poured it into a jug. There was lots of it. Then I said to myself, what you tell me such a lot, and what I tell you as well, which is that Gertrude is no better than us – in fact, she’s not as good because she hasn’t got a speck of Groan blood in her veins like we have, but only the common sort that’s no use. So I took the ink and I knew what I wo
uld do. I didn’t tell you because you might have told me not to, and I don’t know why I’m telling you now because you may think I was wrong to do it; but it’s all over now so it doesn’t matter what you think, dear, does it?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Cora rather peevishly.
‘Well, I knew that Gertrude had to be in the Central Hall to receive the seven most hideous beggars of the Outer Dwellings and pour a lot of oil on them at nine o’clock, so I went through the door of the Central Hall at nine o’clock with my jug full of ink, and I walked up to her at nine o’clock, but it was not what I wanted because she had a black dress on.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Cora.
‘Well, I was going to pour the ink all over her dress.’
‘That would be good, very good,’ said Cora. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes,’ said Clarice, ‘but it didn’t show because her dress was black, and she didn’t see me pouring it, anyway, because she was talking to a starling.’
‘One of our birds,’ said Cora.
‘Yes,’ said Clarice. ‘One of the stolen birds. But the others saw me. They had their mouths open. They saw my decision. But Gertrude didn’t, so my decision was no use. I hadn’t anything else to do and I felt frightened, so I ran all the way back; and now I think I’ll wash out the jug.’
She got up to put her idea into operation when there was a discreet tapping at their door. Visitors were very few and far between and they were too excited for a moment to say ‘Come in.’
Cora was the first to open her mouth and her blank voice was raised more loudly than she had intended:
‘Come in.’
Clarice was at her side. Their shoulders touched. Their heads were thrust forward as though they were peering out of a window.
The door opened and Steerpike entered, an elegant stick with a shiny metal handle under his arm. Now that he had renovated and polished the pilfered swordstick to his satisfaction, he carried it about with him wherever he went. He was dressed in his habitual black and had acquired a gold chain which he wore about his neck. His meagre quota of sandy-coloured hair was darkened with grease, and had been brushed down over his pale forehead in a wide curve.
