by Mervyn Peake
It was later, and at an indeterminate hour of the same night, or inky morning, that Mr Flay, long after passing the door in the passage, came to an involuntary halt as he was about to cross a small cloistered quadrangle.
There was no reason why he should have been startled by the single band of livid yellow in the sky. He must have known that the dawn could not have been much longer delayed. He was certainly not held by its beauty. He did not think in that way.
In the centre of the quadrangle was a thorn tree, and his eyes turned to the pitchy silhouette of that part of it that cut across the yellow of the sunrise. His familiarity with the shape of the old tree caused him to stare more intently at the rough and branching stem. It seemed thicker than usual. He could only see with any clarity that portion of its bole that crossed the sunrise. It appeared to have changed its outline. It was as though something were leaning against it and adding a little to its bulk. He crouched so that still more of the unfamiliar shape came into view, for the upper part was criss-crossed with branches. As his vision was lowered and he commanded a clearer view beneath the overhanging boughs his muscles became tense for it seemed that against the livid strip of sky – which threw everything else both on the earth and in the air into yet richer blackness – it seemed – that against this livid strip the unfamiliar outline on the left of the stem was narrowing to something the shape of a neck. He got silently to his knee and then, lowering his head and lifting his eyes, he obtained an uninterrupted view of Steerpike’s profile. His body and the back of the head were glued together as though he and the tree had grown up as one thing from the ground.
And that was all there was. The universal darkness above and below. The horizontal stream of saffron yellow and, like a rough black bridge that joined the upper darkness to the lower, the silhouette of the ragged thorn stem, with the profile of a face among the stems.
What was he doing there in the darkness alone and motionless?
Flay raised himself and leaned against the nearest of the cloistered pillars. The cut-out face of his enemy was immediately obscured by branches. But what had caught his eye – the unfamiliar outline of the bole he now recognized as being formed by an angle of the young man’s elbow and the line of his hip and thigh.
Without wasting a moment in trying to rationalize his instinctive belief that some fresh act of evil was afoot, Mr Flay prepared himself for, if necessary, a protracted vigil. There was nothing evil in leaning against a thorn tree as the first light broke in a yellow band – even though the leaning form was Steerpike’s. There was no reason why he should not return at any moment to his room and sleep or indulge in some other equally innocent occupation.
He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive.
Steerpike, while he leaned there, rigid with the cold and flexible steel of his own conspirings, eyed the yellow light. He now knew that whatever steps were to be taken for his own advancement should be taken now. However much he may have wished to delay his designs there was no gainsaying the sense of urgency – the sense that time was not, for all the logic of his mind, upon his side.
It was true that there was still no evidence of his guilt. But there was something almost as bad. An indescribable sensation that his power was somehow crumbling away; that the earth was slippery beneath his feet; that in spite of his formidable position, there was that in Gormenghast that, with a puff, could blow him into darkness. However much he told himself that he had made no fundamental error – that the few slips he had made had been invariably in minor matters, maddening as they might be, yet this sensation remained. It had come upon him with the shutting of the door – when Fuchsia had left him and he was alone in his room. It was new to him. He had believed in nothing that could not be proven one way or another, in the cells of his agile brain. Apart from the inconvenience that his carelessness would, for a short time, cause him, what else was there for him to rack his brains about in regard to the incident of a few hours earlier? What was there for Fuchsia to hold against him – or even to give as evidence, save that he, the Master of Ceremonies, had been rude to her?
And yet all this was beside the point of his apprehension. If it was Fuchsia’s resentment that had uncovered, witlessly, the dark pit into which he was now staring, what then was this pit, wherefore was its depth, and why its darkness?
It was the first time that he had ever known that sleep, though he craved it, was beyond him. But his habit of making good use of every moment was deeply rooted – and especially when the time at his disposal was that in which the castle lay abed.
And Flay knew this. He knew that it was hardly a part of Steerpike’s nature to lean against a tree for the sake of watching the sun rise. Nor was it characteristic of him to brood. He was no romantic. He lived too much upon the edge of instancy for introspection. No. It was for some other reason that he leaned there, biding his time – for what?
Mister Flay knelt down again and with his chin almost touching the ground and his small eyes swivelled upwards he stared once more at that sharp profile, its edges razor-keen against the yellow band. And then, while on his knees, two things occurred to him almost simultaneously. The first, that it was more than possible that Steerpike was waiting for sufficient light to enable him to make his way to unfamiliar ground. That he wished to go secretly and yet not lose his way, for even now the darkness was intense, the bar of light that lay like a livid ruler across the black east in no way lightening the earth or the sky about it. It kept its brilliance to itself; saffron inlaid on ebony. And this was Flay’s guess: that the silhouette was waiting for the first diffusion of the light – that the line of the elbow and the hip would alter – that a profile would detach itself from a thorn tree and that a figure, lithe as a lynx, would steer into the gloom. But not alone. Flay would be following and it was when Flay, still upon his bony knees, his head near the ground, his beard spread, was turning this over in his mind that the need for some confederate not for reason of companionship or safety, but in order to bear witness, occurred to him. Whatever he was to find, whatever lay ahead, however innocent or however bloody, it would be his word alone against the pale man’s. It would be the word of an exile against that of the Master of Ritual. In being within the precincts of the castle at all, he was committing a grievous sin. He had been banished by the Countess and it would ill become him to point his finger at an officer unless his accusation was doubly backed with proof.
No sooner had this notion occurred to him than he was on his feet. He judged that he had, at the most, another quarter of an hour in which to waken – whom? He had no choice. Titus and Fuchsia alone knew of his return to the castle and that he lived in secret among the Hollow Halls.
It was of course grotesquely out of the question either that Fuchsia should be disturbed or allowed within Steerpike’s range. As for Titus, he was now almost grown to his full height. But he was of an odd highly strung nature – sullen and excitable by turns. Strong as need be for his years, he was more apt to have his energy sapped by the excess of his imagination than of his body. Flay did not understand him, but he trusted him, and he knew of how the boy’s loathing of Steerpike had estranged him from Fuchsia. He had no doubt that Titus would join him, but he doubted for a moment his own courage to do so dangerous a thing as to draw the heir of Gormenghast within the circle of expected danger. Yet he knew that above all else it was his duty to unmask if possible his enemy, for upon so doing hung the safety of the young earl and all he symbolized. And what is more, he swore by the iron of his long muscles, and by the strong teeth in his bony head, that whatever danger might menace his own person, no harm would come to the boy.
And so, without a moment to lose, he turned and re-entered the door in the cloisters and set off upon what in saner moments he would have considered an unthinkable mission. For what could be more iniquitous than to jeopardize the safety of h
is lordship? But now he saw only that by awakening Titus and launching him at dawn upon so dark a game as that of shadowing a suspect, he was perhaps bringing closer the day when the heart of Gormenghast, purged and loyal, would beat again unthreatened.
With every moment the yellow band in the sky was brightening. He sped with the awkward speed of the predatory spider, his long legs eating up the corridors, four feet at a stride and treading the stairways beneath them as though he were on stilts. But when he came to the dormitory he moved with the circumspection of a thief.
He opened the door by degrees. On his right was the janitor’s cubicle. Directly he heard the sound of sand-paper scraping away behind the woodwork he recognized the breathing of the same old man who had held this watch-dog office from the early days and he knew that he was safe enough from that quarter.
But how to recognize the Earl? He had no light. Apart from the breathing of the janitor the dormitory was in absolute silence. There was no time for anything but to put his first notion into operation. There were two rows of beds that stretched away to the south-west. Why he turned to the right hand wall he did not know, but he did so without hesitation. Feeling for the end-rail of the first bed, he leaned over. ‘Lordship!’ he whispered. ‘Lordship!’ There was no reply. He turned to the second bed and whispered again. He thought he heard a head turn upon a pillow but that was all. He repeated this quick, harsh whisper at the foot of every bed. ‘Lordship … lordship! …’ but nothing happened and the time was slipping by. But at the fourteenth bed he repeated the whisper for a third time, for he could feel rather than hear a restlessness in the darkness below him. ‘Lordship! …’ he whispered again. ‘Lord Titus!’
Something sat up in the darkness and he could hear the catch in a boy’s breathing.
‘Have no fear,’ he whispered fiercely and his hand shook on the bedrail.
‘Have no fear. Are you Titus, the Earl?’
Immediately there was a reply. ‘Mister Flay? What are you doing here?’
‘Have you a coat and stockings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Put them on. Follow me. Explain later, lordship.’
Titus made no reply but slid over the side of his bed and after fumbling for his shoes and garments, clasped them like a bundle in his arms. Together they tip-toed to the dormitory door and, once without, walked rapidly in the darkness, the bearded man with his hand upon the boy’s elbow.
At the head of a staircase Titus got into his clothes, his heart beating loudly. Flay stood beside him and when he was ready they descended the stairs in silence.
As they drew nearer to the quadrangle Flay in short broken phrases was able to give Titus a disjointed idea of why he had been woken and whisked out into the night. Much as Titus sympathized with Flay’s suspicions and with his hatred of Steerpike, he was becoming afraid that Flay himself had gone mad. He could see that it was a very odd thing for Steerpike to spend the night leaning against a thorn tree, but equally there was nothing criminal in it. What, he wondered, in any event, was Flay doing to be there himself? and why should the long ragged creature of the woods be so anxious to have him with him? There was no doubt about the excitement of it all and that to be sought out was deeply flattering, but Titus had but a vague idea as to what Flay meant by needing a witness. A witness to what, and to prove what? Deeply as Titus suspected Steerpike of being intrinsically foul, yet he had never suspected him of actually doing other than his duty in the castle. He had never hated him for any understandable reason. He had simply hated him for being alive at all.
But when they reached the cloisters and when he peered along Flay’s outstretched arm as they lay upon the cold ground, and saw, all at once, after a long and abortive scrutiny of the thorn, the sharp profile, as angular as broken glass save for the doming forehead, then he knew that the gaunt man lying beside him was no more mad than himself, and that for the first time in his life he was tasting upon his tongue the acid of an intoxicating fear, of a fearful elation.
He also knew that to leave Steerpike where he was and to return to bed would be to deliberately turn away from a climate of sharp and dangerous breath.
He put his lips to his companion’s ear.
‘It’s Doctor’s quadrangle,’ he whispered.
Flay made no reply for several moments, for the remark made little sense to him.
‘What of it?’ he replied in an almost inaudible voice.
‘Very close – on our side,’ whispered Titus, ‘just across the quadrangle.’
This time there was a longer silence. Flay could see at once the advantage of yet another witness and also of a double bodyguard for the boy. But what would the Doctor think of his reappearance after all these years? Would he countenance this clandestine return to the castle – even in the knowledge that it was for the castle’s sake? Would he be prepared, in the future, to deny all knowledge of his, Mr Flay’s, return?
Again Titus whispered, ‘He is on our side.’
It seemed to Mr Flay that he was now so deeply involved that to argue each problem as it posed itself, to study each move would get him nowhere. Had he behaved in a rational way he would never have left the woods, and he would not now be lying upon his stomach, staring at a man leaning innocently against a tree. That the figure’s profile against the saffron dawn was sharp and cruel was no proof of anything.
No. It was for him to obey the impulse of the moment and to have the courage to risk the future. This was no time for anything but action.
The dawn, although fiercer in the east, was yet withheld. There was no light in the air – only a strip of intense colour. But at any moment a diffusion of the sunrise would begin and the sun would heave itself above the broken towers.
There was no time to lose. In a matter of minutes the quadrangle might become impossible to cross without attracting Steerpike’s attention, or Steerpike, judging himself to have sufficient light for whatever journey he wished to make, might slip away suddenly into the gloom and be irreparably lost among a thousand ways.
The Doctor’s house was on the far side of the quadrangle. To get there would necessitate a détour around the margin of the quadrangle for the thorn tree was at the centre.
Obeying Flay’s instructions Titus took off his shoes, and, like Flay with his boots, tied the laces together and slung them around his neck. It was Flay’s first idea that they should go together, but they had no sooner taken the first few silent paces than the sudden disappearance of Steerpike reminded Flay that it was only from the particular place where they had been lying that they could keep a check upon his movements. From the Doctor’s side of the quadrangle there would be no way of knowing whether or not he were still beneath the tree.
It was a full minute before Flay knew what he ought to do; and then, it was only because one of his hands, thrust deep into a ragged pocket, came upon a piece of chalk that a solution occurred to him. For a piece of white chalk meant only one thing to him. It meant a trail. But who was to blaze it? There was only one answer, and for two reasons.
In the first place, if one of them were to remain where he was and keep Steerpike under observation, and in the event of Steerpike’s moving away from the thorn tree, of following him and leaving chalk marks upon the ground or upon walls – then it were best for Flay to perform this none too simple function, not only because of his experience of stalking in the woods and of the danger of being discovered, but because secondly, in learning of what was afoot the Doctor would more readily and speedily accompany the young Earl than Mr Flay, the long lost exile, with whom a certain amount of time-wasting explanation would be a preliminary necessity.
And so Flay explained to Titus what he must do. He must waken the Doctor, silently. How this was to be done he did not know. He must leave this to the boy’s ingenuity. He must impress upon the Doctor that there was no time to be lost. It was not the moment in which to warn him that the whole venture was based upon guess-work – that in sober fact there was no cause to rouse the Doctor from hi
s bed. That in the open air, there was not a leaf that was not whispering of treachery, not a stone but muttered its warning, was not the kind of argument to impress anyone wakened of a sudden from their sleep. And yet he must impress the Doctor with a sense of urgency. They must return across the quadrangle to where they were now crouching, for only from this position could they tell whether Steerpike were still beneath the tree, unless, as might have happened, the sun had suddenly risen. Had it not done so, and if Steerpike was still there beneath the thorn, then they would find Mr Flay where Titus had left him; but if Steerpike had gone, then Mr Flay would also have disappeared and it was for them to move swiftly to the thorn tree, and if there were enough light, to follow the chalk trail which Flay would have begun to blaze. If, however, it were still too dark to see the marks, they were to follow them directly there was enough light. It was for them to move sufficiently rapidly to be able to overtake Mr Flay, but absolute silence was the prime essential, for the gap between Flay and Steerpike might, for reasons of darkness, be, of necessity, perilously narrow.
Feeling his way from pillar to pillar, Titus began to make a circuit of the quadrangle. His stocking’d feet made no noise at all. Once a button on the sleeve of his coat clicked against an outcrop of masonry and sounded like the snapping of a twig, so that he stopped dead in his tracks and listened for a moment or two anxiously in the silence, but that was all and a little afterwards he was standing beneath the Doctor’s wall.
Meanwhile Flay lay stretched out beneath the pillar on the far side of the square, his bearded chin propped by his bony hands.
Not for a moment did his eyes wander from the silhouette of the head against the dawn. The yellow band had widened and still further intensified so that it was now not so much a thing that might be painted as a radiance beyond the reach of pigment.
As he watched he saw the first movement. The head raised itself and as the face stared up into the branches the mouth opened in a yawn. It was like the yawning of a lizard; the jaws, sharp, soundless, merciless. It was as though all thought was over, and out of some reptilian existence the yawn grew and opened like a reflex. And it was so, for Steerpike, leaning there, had, instead of pitying himself and brooding upon his mistakes, been tabulating and re-grouping in his scheduled brain every aspect of his position, of his plans, of his relationship not only with Fuchsia but with all with whom he had dealings, and making out of the maze, of these relationships and projects a working pattern – something that was a masterpiece of cold-blooded systemization. But the plan of action, condensed and crystallized though it was, was nevertheless, for all its ingenuity, somehow less microscopically careful in its every particular than usual. He was prepared for the first time to take risks. The time had come for drawing together the hundred and one threads that had for so long been stretched from one end of the castle to another. This would need action. For the moment he could relax. This dawn would be his own. Tonight he must bewilder Fuchsia; dazzle her, awake her; and if all failed, seduce her so that, compromised in the highest degree, he would have her at his mercy. In her present mood she was too dangerous.
