by Mervyn Peake
‘It is. Or rather,’ he continued, speaking even more rapidly than usual – ‘it is Prunesquallor, which is, if I may say so, more strictly correct, ha, ha, ha! even in the dark.’
‘Where’s Fuchsia?’ said the Countess. Prunesquallor found that his shoulder was being gripped.
‘By the door,’ said the Doctor, longing to free himself from the weight of her Ladyship’s hand, and wondering, even in the middle of the coughing and the darkness, what on earth the material that fitted around his shoulders so elegantly would look like when the Countess had finished with it. ‘I was on the point of finding her when we met, ha, ha! met, as it were, so palpably, so inevitably.’
‘Quiet, man! quiet!’ said Lady Gertrude, loosening her grasp.
‘Find her for me. Bring her here – and smash a window, ’Squallor, smash a window.’
The Doctor was gone from her in a flash and when he judged himself to be a few feet from the door – ‘Are you there, Fuchsia?’ he trilled.
Fuchsia was just below him, and he was startled to hear her voice come up jerkily through the smoke.
‘She’s ill. Very ill. Quick, Dr Prune, quick! Do something for her.’ The Doctor felt his knees being clutched. ‘She’s down here, Dr Prune. I’m holding her.’
Prunesquallor hitched up his trousers and knelt down at once.
There seemed to be more vibration in the atmosphere in this part of the room, more than could be accounted for by any modicum of air that might have been entering through the keyhole. The coughing was dreadful to hear; Fuchsia’s was heavy and breathless; but the thin, weak, and ceaseless coughing of Mrs Slagg gave the Doctor the more concern. He felt for the old nurse and found her in Fuchsia’s lap. Slipping his hand across her little chicken bosom he found that her heart was the merest flutter. To his left in the darkness there was a mouldy smell, and then the driest series of brick-dust coughs he had ever heard revealed the proximity of Flay, who was fanning the air mechanically with a large book he had clawed out of a nearby shelf. The fissure left in the row of hidden books had filled immediately with the coiling smoke – a tall, narrow niche of choking darkness, a ghastly gap in a row of leather wisdom teeth.
‘Flay,’ said the Doctor, ‘can you hear me, Flay? Where’s the largest window in the room, my man? Quickly now, where is it?’
‘North wall,’ said Flay. ‘High up.’
‘Go and shatter it at once. At once.’
‘No balcony there,’ said Flay. ‘Can’t reach.’
‘Don’t argue! Use what you’ve got in that head of yours. You know the room. Find a missile, my good Flay – find a missile, and break a window. Some oxygen for Mrs Slagg. Don’t you think so? By all the zephyrs, yes! Go and help him, Fuchsia. Find where the window is and break it, even if you have to throw Irma at it, ha, ha, ha! And don’t be alarmed. Smoke, you know, is only smoke: it’s not composed of crocodiles, oh dear no, nothing so tropical. Hurry now. Break the window somehow and let the evening pour itself in – and I will see to dear Mrs Slagg and Titus, ha, ha, ha! Oh dear, yes!’
Flay gripped Fuchsia’s arm, and they moved away into the darkness.
Prunesquallor did what he could to help Mrs Slagg, more by way of assuring her that it would be over in a brace of shakes than through anything scientific. He saw that Titus was able to breathe although wrapped up very tightly. Then he sat back on his heels and turned his head, for an idea had struck him.
‘Fuchsia!’ he shouted, ‘find your father and ask him to sling his jade-cane at the window.’
Lord Sepulchrave, who had just fought down another panic, and had nearly bitten his lower lip in half, spoke in a wonderfully controlled voice immediately after the Doctor had finished piping his message.
‘Where are you, Flay?’ he said.
‘I’m here,’ said Flay from a few feet behind him.
‘Come to the table.’
Flay and Fuchsia moved to the table, feeling for it with their hands.
‘Are you at the table?’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Fuchsia, ‘we’re both here.’
‘Is that you, Fuchsia?’ said a new voice. It was the Countess.
‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Have you seen the warbler?’ answered her mother. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘No,’ said Fuchsia. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the darkness was terror. Like her father, she had choked a score of cries in her throat.
Prunesquallor’s voice rang out again from the far end of the room: ‘Damn the warbler and all its feathered friends! Have you got the missiles, Flay?’
‘Come here, you ’Squallor,’ began the Countess; but she could not continue, for her lungs had filled with black wreaths.
For a few moments there was no one in the room who was capable of speaking and their breathing was becoming momentarily more difficult. At last Sepulchrave’s voice could be distinguished.
‘On the table,’ he whispered – ‘paperweight – brass – on the table. Quick – Flay – Fuchsia – feel for it. Have you found it? – Paperweight – brass.’
Fuchsia’s hands came across the heavy object almost at once, and as they did so the room was lit up with a tongue of flame that sprang into the air among the books on the right of the unused door. It died almost at once, withdrawing itself like the tongue of an adder, but a moment later it shot forth again and climbed in a crimson spiral, curling from left to right as it licked its way across the gilded and studded spines of Sepulchrave’s volumes. This time it did not die away, but gripped the leather with its myriad flickering tentacles while the names of the books shone out in ephemeral glory. They were never forgotten by Fuchsia, those first few vivid titles that seemed to be advertising their own deaths.
For a few moments there was a deadly silence, and then, with a hoarse cry, Flay began to run towards the shelves on the left of the main door. The firelight had lit up a bundle on the floor, and it was not until Flay had picked it up and had carried it to the table that the others were reminded with horror of the forgotten octogenarian – for the bundle was Sourdust. For some time it was difficult for the Doctor to decide whether he were alive or not.
While Prunesquallor was attempting to revive the old man’s breathing as he lay in his crimson rags upon the marble table, Sepulchrave, Fuchsia and Flay took up positions beneath the window, which could be seen with ever growing clarity. Sepulchrave was the first to fling the brass paperweight, but his effort was pitiable, final proof (if any were needed) that he was no man of action, and that his life had not been mis-spent among his books. Flay was the next to try his skill. Although having the advantage of his height, he was no more successful than his Lordship, on account of a superabundance of calcium deposit in his elbow joints.
While this was going on, Fuchsia had begun to climb up the bookshelves, which reached upwards to within about five feet of the window. As she climbed laboriously, her eyes streaming and her heart beating wildly, she scooped the books to the ground in order to find purchase for her hands and feet. It was a difficult climb, the ascent being vertical and the polished shelves too slippery to grip with any certainty.
The Countess had climbed to the balcony, where she had found the woodwarbler fluttering wildly in a dark corner. Plucking out a strand of her dark-red hair she had bound the bird’s wings carefully to its sides, and then after laying its pulsing breast against her cheek, had slipped it between her own neck and the neck of her dress, and allowed it to slide into the capacious midnight regions of her bosom, where it lay quiescent between great breasts, thinking, no doubt, when it had recovered from the terror of the flames, that here, if anywhere, was the nest of nests, softer than moss, inviolate, and warm with drowsy blood.
When Prunesquallor had ascertained beyond doubt that Sourdust was dead, he lifted one of the loose ends of crimson sacking that straggled across the marble table from the ancient shoulders and laid it across the old man’s eyes.
Then he peered over his shoulders at the fl
ames. They had spread in area and now covered about a quarter of the east wall. The heat was fast becoming insufferable. His next glance was directed to the door that had so mysteriously become locked, and he saw that Nannie Slagg, with Titus in her arms, was crouching immediately before the keyhole, the only possible place for them. If the only window could be broken and some form of erection constructed below it, it was just possible that they could climb out in time, though how, in heaven’s name, they were to descend on the far side was another matter. A rope, perhaps. But where was a rope to be found – and for that matter what could the erection be constructed with?
Prunesquallor peered around the room in an effort to catch sight of anything that might be used. He noticed that Irma was full length on the floor, and twitching like a section of conger eel that has been chopped off but which still has ideas of its own. Her beautiful, tightly fitting skirt had become rucked up around her thighs. Her manicured nails were scratching convulsively at the floorboards. ‘Let her twitch,’ he said to himself quickly. ‘We can deal with her later, poor thing.’ Then he turned his eyes again to Fuchsia, who was by now very near the top of the bookcase and was reaching down precariously for her father’s rod with the knob of black jade.
‘Keep steady, my Fuchsia child.’
Fuchsia dimly heard the Doctor’s voice come up to her from below. For a moment everything swam before her eyes, and her right hand which gripped the slippery shelf was shaking. Slowly her eyes cleared. It was not easy for her to swing the rod with her left hand, but she drew her arm back stiffly preparatory to swinging at the window with a single rigid movement.
The Countess, leaning over the balcony, watched her as she coughed heavily, and shifting her gaze between her seismic bouts whistled through her teeth to the bird in her bosom, pulling the neck of her dress forward with a forefinger as she did so.
Sepulchrave was gazing upwards at his daughter halfway up the wall among the books that danced in the crimson light. His hands were fighting each other again, but his delicate chin was jutting forward, and there was mixed with the melancholy of his eyes not more of panic than would be considered reasonable in any normal man under similar conditions. His home of books was on fire. His life was threatened, and he stood quite still. His sensitive mind had ceased to function, for it had played so long in a world of abstract philosophies that this other world of practical and sudden action had deranged its structure. The ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected. He watched Fuchsia with a dream-like fascination, while his locked hands fought on.
Flay and Prunesquallor stood immediately below Fuchsia, for she had been swaying above them. Now, with her arm extended and ready to strike they moved a little to the right in order to escape any glass that might fly inwards.
As Fuchsia began to swing her arm at the high window she focused her eyes upon it and found herself staring at a face – a face framed with darkness within a few feet of her own. It sweated firelight, the crimson shadows shifting across it as the flames leapt in the room below. Only the eyes repelled the lurid air. Close-set as nostrils they were not so much eyes as narrow tunnels through which the Night was pouring.
AND HORSES TOOK THEM HOME
As Fuchsia recognized the head of Steerpike the rod fell from her outstretched arm, her weakened hand loosed its grasp upon the shelf and she fell backwards into space, the dark hair of her head reaching below her as she fell, her body curving backwards as though she had been struck.
The Doctor and Flay, leaping forward, half caught her. A moment later and the glass above them came splintering into the room, and Steerpike’s voice from overhead cried:
‘Hold your horses! I’m letting down a ladder. Don’t panic there. Don’t panic!’
Every eye was turned from Fuchsia to the window, but Prunesquallor as he had heard the glass break above him had shielded the girl by swinging her behind him. It had fallen all about them, one large piece skimming the Doctor’s head and splintering on the floor at his feet. The only one to sustain any injury was Flay, who had a small piece of flesh nicked from his wrist.
‘Hang on there!’ continued Steerpike in an animated voice which sounded singularly unrehearsed. ‘Don’t stand so near, I’m going to crack some more glass out.’
The company below the window drew back and watched him strike off the jagged corners of glass from the sides of the window with a piece of flint. The room behind them was now well ablaze, and the sweat was pouring from their upturned faces, their clothes scorching dangerously, and their flesh smarting with the intense heat.
Steerpike, on the outside of the wall, standing on the short protruding branches of the pine-ladder began to struggle with the other length of pine which he had propped beside him. This was no easy job, and the muscles of his arms and back were strained almost to failing point as he levered the long pole upwards and over his shoulder by degrees, keeping his balance all the while with the greatest difficulty. As well as he could judge the library ought by now to be in perfect condition for a really theatrical piece of rescue work. Slowly but surely he edged and eased the pole across his shoulder and through the broken window. It was not only a heavy and dangerous feat, standing as he was, balanced upon the stubby six-inch off-shoots of pine and hauling the resinous thing over his shoulder, but what added to his difficulty was these lateral stubs themselves which caught in his clothes and on the window ledge at each attempt he made to slide the long monster through the opening and down into the bright library.
At last both difficulties were overcome and the gathering on the inner side of the wall below the window found the fifteen-foot bole of a pine edging its way through the smoky air above them, swaying over their heads and then landing with a crash at their feet. Steerpike had held fast to the upper end of the pole and it would have been possible for one of the lighter members of the party to have climbed it at once, but Prunesquallor moved the base of the tree a little to the left and swivelled it until the most powerful of the stubby, lateral ‘rungs’ were more conveniently situated.
Steerpike’s head and shoulders now appeared fully in view through the broken window. He peered into the crimson smoke. ‘Nice work,’ he said to himself, and then shouted, ‘Glad I found you! I’m just coming!’
Nothing could have gone more deliciously according to plan. But there was no time to waste. No time to crow. He could see that the floorboards had caught and there was a snake of fire slithering its way beneath the table.
Steerpike lifted his voice. ‘The Heir of Gormenghast!’ he shouted. ‘Where is Lord Titus? Where is Lord Titus?’
Prunesquallor had already reached Mrs Slagg, who had collapsed over the child, and he lifted them both together in his arms and ran swiftly back to the ladder. The Countess was there; they were all there at the foot of the pine; all except Sourdust, whose sacking had begun to smoulder. Fuchsia had dragged Irma across the floor by her heels and she lay as though she had been washed ashore by a tempest. Steerpike had crawled through the window and was a third of the way down the bole. Prunesquallor, climbing to the third rung, was able to pass Titus to the youth, who retreated through the window backwards and was down the outer ladder in a flash.
He left the infant among the ferns under the library wall and swarmed up the ladder for the old nurse. The tiny, limp midget was almost as easy to deal with as Titus, and Prunesquallor passed her through the window as though he were handling a doll.
Steerpike laid her next to Titus, and was suddenly back at the window. It was obvious that Irma was the next on the list, but it was with her that the difficulties began. The moment she was touched she began to thrash about with her arms and legs. Thirty years of repression were finding vent. She was no longer a lady. She could never be a lady again. Her pure white feet were indeed composed of clay and now with all the advantages of a long throat she renewed her screaming, but it was weaker than before, for the smoke which had coiled around her vocal cords had taken their edge away,
and they were now more in the nature of wool than gut. Something had to be done with her, and quickly. Steerpike swarmed to the top half of the pole and dropped to the library floor. Then, at his suggestion, he and the Doctor began to strip away lengths of her dress with which they bound her arms and legs, stuffing the remainder in her mouth. Together, with the help of Flay and Fuchsia, they heaved the writhing Irma by degrees up the ladder, until Steerpike, climbing through the window, was able to drag her through into the night air. Once through, she was treated with still less decorum, and her descent of the wall was abrupt, the boy with the high shoulders merely seeing to it that she should not break more bones than was necessary. In point of fact she broke none, her peerless flesh sustaining only a few purple bruises.
Steerpike had now three figures in a row among the cold ferns. While he was swarming back, Fuchsia was saying, ‘No, I don’t want to. You go now, please, you go now.’
‘Silence, you child,’ answered the Countess. ‘Don’t waste time. As I tell you, girl! as I tell you! At once.’
‘No, Mother, no –’
‘Fuchsia dear,’ said Prunesquallor, ‘you will be out in a brace of shakes and ladders! ha, ha, ha! It will save time, gipsy! Hurry now.’
‘Don’t stand there gawping, girl!’
Fuchsia glanced at the Doctor. How unlike himself he looked, the sweat pouring from his forehead and running between his eyes.
‘Up you go! up you go,’ said Prunesquallor.
Fuchsia turned to the ladder and after missing her foothold once or twice disappeared above them.
‘Good girl!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Find your Nannie Slagg! Now, then, now, then, your Ladyship, up you go.’
The Countess began to climb, and although the sound of the wooden stubs being broken on either side of the pole accompanied her, yet her progress towards the window held a prodigious inevitability in every step she took and in every heave of her body. Like something far larger than life, her dark dress shot with the red of the fire, she ploughed her way upwards to the window. There was no one on the other side to help her, for Steerpike was in the library, and yet for all the contortions of her great frame, for all the ungainliness of her egress, a slow dignity pervaded her which gave even to the penultimate view – that of her rear disappearing hugely into the night – a feeling rather of the awesome than the ludicrous.
