by Gisèle Baxter
Revised Introduction (Spring 2002): This parallel universe version of characters and settings in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels is a hybrid creature; all of my Gormenghast fiction was originally written for the Gormenghast Castle website's discussion group. I've not spent a lot of time in physical description: these are not quite the characters of Peake's prose, nor are they quite the characters of the BBC adaptation: they are, as Fuchsia says at one point of something else, both and neither. To a certain extent, they're also mine, refunctioned in my own imaginings, and two of them, Magnus and Meredith, are wholly original (though they correspond to characters in original fiction of mine, as do some events). I've taken a few liberties with the architecture of the castle and invented some of the rituals. Now, as for where we are: Barquentine has been dead for some time (I've conformed to the novel on that count) and Titus is around sixteen. The point of departure rests in Steerpike's pursuit of Fuchsia, which I have allowed to be successful, and the questions it raises about the nature of desire and the nature of seduction. My argument is that the motives behind a seduction can be disguised but there has to be some element of willingness in a genuine seduction and therein lies the danger for people who consider themselves very rational and in control. All this to say there's a fair amount of implied sex in this, which I've largely left to your imaginations, where you can rate this from PG to NC-17. I did conform to the pop-romance cliché that when people kiss for the first time they immediately have sex afterwards. The challenge I set for myself was to try to come up with a reasonable Titus, though I did end up giving him one scene where he behaves like a total jerk. Anyway, let's begin, and congratulations to whoever gets the song references in the chapter titles.
She had relaxed enough to lean back into her side of the stack of cushions covering her side of the broad velvet sofa, and her magnificent hair spread out like a black silk shawl over the various brocades and silks in their jewel hues. The candles had burnt down; the room was quite dark though they could see like cats, both of them, even in the faint amber glow from the fireplace. It was very late. During this lull in the conversation, he drained the last of his glass of wine, set it aside, rested back into his own end of the stack of cushions, and experimentally extended an arm, then a fingertip to rest against her hand. She returned the gesture, and he took her hand in his. She smiled, and her eyes were wide open and almost luminous.
"I like being here," she said softly, almost a whisper.
"Do you want another glass of wine?" he wondered.
She shook her head. She began to say something, then became shy again, though she did not remove her hand from his.
"What do you want?" he pursued, very gently.
She hesitated. "I want you to kiss me," she said.
"That's not allowed," he reminded her.
"No one can see us," she replied.
And so he moved closer to her, blocking the light though he could still see her face quite clearly, and he cupped her face in his hands and touched his mouth lightly to hers, then more firmly as her eyes closed and her lips parted, then considerably more firmly as her arms went around him and her hands grasped his shoulders.
******
The cold grey predawn light was just beginning to infitrate this room around the edges of the heavy red curtains. Fuchsia was still breathing heavily, fingers clenched around one of the cushions, hair plastered to the perspiration on her face and neck, eyes squeezed shut. She lay curled up like a child, shivering, trying to make sense of something she had participated in, something she had claimed to want and had in fact wanted very much, that now made her feel bruised and aching and incredibly small. For his part, Steerpike lay perfectly still, with one arm under her head, and the other around her waist. His own breathing had calmed. His only bruise was the massive bite she had reflexively inflicted on his shoulder during a moment of crisis. He desperately wanted to take a bath and change his clothes, and even through closed eyes could tell it was getting light so that in a matter of a couple of hours, without sleep, he had to be in his office to commence the day's activities. He eased his arm out from under her head, cleared away some of her hair, and lightly kissed the back of her neck.
"Fuchsia?" He had to test her reaction cautiously.
She turned her head and looked back at him over her shoulder.
"You're all right, aren't you?" he asked. When she made what looked like a nod, he went on, speaking gently but evenly, "I wasn't trying to hurt you, you know that, don't you. I don't think it's always supposed to hurt. Just takes some getting used to."
She rolled over so that she was facing him, and looked at him directly and very seriously; she moved her hand up his arm and drew his collar back from his shoulder so she could see the mark she had inflicted, and she stroked his face as if discovering him in darkness, pressing her fingertips on his eyelids, on the scars, across his mouth. But she said nothing. Involuntarily, his hand had wandered down her back and he was increasingly aware of her nearness where he did not at the moment want to be aware of it.
He cleared his throat and shifted his weight a little. "I have to go to work soon. And you have to get back to your room without anyone being able to know where you've been, because I don't want you to get into any trouble, all right? And honestly, I didn't mean to hurt you."
"I don't want to go," she said in a small voice, and even though she felt more wretched than she could have imagined, it was the truth. She could only imagine feeling safe now in the continued proximity of this other, incredibly warm body. She looked at him with those awful wide-open eyes. "Do you hate me now?"
"Why should I?"
"Because I was so -- "
This was awful, awful, indescribably awful. "Believe me," he said with a levity he did not feel though with much more honesty than he had intended, "I was every bit as scared as you were. Now you have to get your dress on and go back to your room."
He sat on the sofa watching her fasten on her skirt and lace up the front of her gown, and she bent to kiss him, taking his face between her hands. What would happen next, he realized, was up to her.
She was running by the time she reached her room, and she could distantly hear sounds of the castle waking up. She flung her shawl onto the unmade bed and yanked off her dress and corset and crinoline and petticoat, sending clasps and buttons and bits of fabric flying in her furious haste. Don't think, she told herself fiercely: don't think don't think don't think don't think. Pulling up the shapeless mound of bedclothes she burrowed beneath them like a rabbit, and curled herself into the tiniest ball imaginable, squeezing her eyes shut. Don't think. Although she was shivering so violently the bed seemed to shake with her, she quickly grew warm enough to fall into a deep sleep. A couple of hours later she was startled by a crisp feminine cough, then her name being called firmly, as if being repeated: Lady Fuchsia. She made some sort of noise of dismissal, and the voice continued: you have to get up now; the family is assembling for the raising of the flag on the north turret. Fuchsia dragged the blankets more closely around her. Tell them I'm ill, she said, and even though she had directed herself not to think, it occured to her that this might not be a good idea, and finally she threw back enough of the mound to look up blinking at her maid, a dour very proper girl.
"How much time do I have?" Fuchsia asked.
"Ten minutes. I had great difficulty waking you." This one's name was Meredith: she had unusually short, very straight black hair. "Now: which of your dresses do you want?"
Surveying the wreck of her room and the open cupboard, Fuchsia arbitrarily pointed to a crimson velvet frock she had not worn in at least five years. Much of the beadwork needed repair, one end of the front lacing was badly frayed from her old habit of chewing on it, and the hem had been fatally worn from too many rambles in the woods. But it was relatively clean and fit well, and she could wear it with a short brocade jacket and a silk shawl. There was no time to do anything about her hair other than brush it down straight and hold it in place with her crown. Gathering up her skirts (and feeling horribly that whether she ran or walked she would somehow look odd in doing so), Fuchsia caught up with her mother on the courtyard; Gertrude gave her a sideways glance. Titus lagged along behind, making no effort to catch up with them and kicking at every available loose rock. Fuchsia was pale and had dark circles under her wideopen eyes that stared straight and impossibly far ahead. No one noticed this.
Since Gertrude made her way up the spiral staircase to the north turret at her implacable pace, no one was rushing, and Fuchsia found herself panicking, not wanting to be here, even debating turning around and rushing back down and across to her room where she could bolt everyone out and hide under the bedclothes. Up above, she could hear Dr. Prunesquallor and his sister and her husband, even though a harsh wind whistled down the staircase. If she turned now, Titus would let her by. But below she heard the door to the turret stairwell open to admit what seemed like several people, and she heard the slight grunt of whoever was delegated to heave the book up the stairs and realized the secretarial party was following them. Don't think, she told herself again, but she couldn't help it, all the possibilities kept rolling over and over and gathering weight like a snowball down a slope. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly ahead and yet it was all she could do now not to turn around.
When they reached the turret they were hit by a blast of wind so strong Titus reflexively put an arm around his sister to steady her, while her long loose hair and her shawl flew up around them like an immense banner of black and gold. Irma Bellgrove was wrestling with a hat and hatpin, and Bellgrove's scholarly gown flapped around him like enormous wings. Gertrude marched over to the royal dais and sat down, drawing her velvet cloak around her shoulders and glaring at Titus.
"It would have to be a day like this," she said, and it was a fearfully windy day for such an activity.
Fuchsia was sure she could feel the tower sway. Maybe it would collapse and they would all be killed. For some reason this made her want to laugh and she briefly wondered if she was going mad. She sat down between her mother and brother and maintained her expressionless stare. Only Prunesquallor seemed to be enjoying the weather, and while the secretary's men heaved the book into place and clamped and weighted it down, the doctor stood by the wall taking deep breaths and staring out, made poetic comments on the vastness of the surrounding geography.
"Sit down, you idiot," Gertrude directed. "If you fall over God knows where we'll get another physician on short notice. And Titus, don't you dare let the flag go, or someone will have to go get it and we'll have to start all over again and as we're all freezing, let's get on with it and get it done."
Gertrude tended, except in the most formal and obligatory circumstances, to talk to Steerpike in this oblique way. The young Master of Ritual largely ignored her, except when the oblique comments and complaints implied a question, in which case he would politely answer the question, as if it had been asked with the greatest of grace.
There was a brief prelude of music, scarcely audible over the wind, then Steerpike began the invocation, in his clear flat official voice, reading precisely and loudly enough to be heard well, if utterly without expression. Fuchsia closed her eyes at this point and absently knotted her hands in her lap under her shawl. Gertrude immediately let her mind wander, and Titus paid just enough attention to catch his cue to get up and start attaching the flag to the enormous mast.
For his part, Steerpike kept most of his attention on what he was doing, although the small remaining part was aware that he was paler than usual and had his own dark circles under the eyes. He had upon Fuchsia's departure returned immediately to his own rooms and allowed himself half an hour in a steaming hot bath, for most of which time he lay with a wet cloth over his face, mulling over the situation. Then he had hauled over his shaving mirror, carefully scraped away the small amount of beard stubble he was able to produce even now, and inspected the damage to his shoulder. Submerging himself, he scrubbed at his hair and indulged in a long-abandoned youthful habit of seeing how long he could hold his breath underwater, though now it made him panic almost instantly. He put on an impeccably clean, perfectly pressed suit, carefully combed his hair, and proceeded to his office, where he drank a large mug of very strong black coffee while going over the day's agenda. After this ceremony he could permit himself two hours of sleep. Meanwhile, he had to consider seeing Fuchsia again. She might have decided she despised him. This would be dangerous; it would require him to blackmail her, since if her loss of virginity were discovered, he would be the one to pay. On the other hand, she might be counting the seconds until they could be together again. This was in its own way dangerous, since he realized now how difficult it actually was to keep complete conscious control of himself through the act. It was difficult enough to keep from replaying it over and over in his mind, even the less spectacular elements, the warmth of her nearness, her waking up and turning over to slide her hand tentatively up his arm.
He did not want her to agree to be his mistress. He wanted her to agree to marry him, and he had to invent a precedent to allow her to do so.
The invocation finally reached its conclusion. Time to go to work, Titus murmured under his breath to Fuchsia, who was yawning behind one hand. The laureate started reading his poem on the banner of the North Turret of Gormenghast, at which point virtually everyone's mind began to wander, and Irma resumed struggling with her hat as the wind gusts increased in velocity. While the poet read, Titus began unfolding the enormous silk and velvet, fringed heraldic banner against the mast and hooking it onto the pulley. To an extent, he agreed with the doctor: it was bracing weather. But it was not weather to be absurdly assembled up here in ridiculous clothes, huddled up and shivering and listening to grating voices reading long dull texts. It was weather to be riding, or to be hiking in the mountains. By imagining he was hoisting the sail on a boat on a stormy lake much broader than the one by the castle, he kept himself sufficiently interested in his task to get it done with a reasonable amount of public fervour, even though he kept having to wrestle the banner away from him. Finally the job was done and he jumped down, just as what looked like a black dinner plate encased in mesh and feathers sailed by him: Irma's hat. The poet abruptly stopped reading, Gertrude regained some alertness and glanced around with a general scowl, which prompted him to speed up the cadence through the remaining lines of his poem, while Titus struggled to look as serious as possible (and not to look at Fuchsia, who was biting the inside of her mouth and staring down very hard at her lap).
The banner snapped violently in the wind. Irma's hat became a distant speck, still visible on the edge of the woods. Gertrude got up the second the poem was read and Long Live Gormenghast proclaimed, and she heaved a huge audible sigh of relief. She led the way down the spiral staircase, followed by her children, then the doctor's group, then the secretarial party. On the courtyard, the wind was far less strong. Gertrude made straight for the family quarters. Since Bellgrove (and for that matter Titus) were proceeding directly to the school for the remainder of the day's classes, Prunesquallor volunteered to take his sister home and perform the unenviable task of convincing her she had not committed an unforgivable faux pas.
"At least the hat found a way of escape," Titus said to Fuchsia. She looked directly at him, and he realized she had been struggling as hard as he had not to dissolve in hysterical laughter. There was something else in her expression he could not read.
"What are you doing the rest of the day?" he wondered.
"Nothing much," she replied.
"Right then, I'll come bother you after classes," he offered.
"I'll probably be in the attic reading," she told him.
She was acutely aware that the company was dispersing, but that the secretarial party was still here and more or less intact except for the guards and the poet, who had escaped faster than Irma's hat given the chance. Steerpike was explaining something to one of his assistants that involved considerable direction of attention to one of the visible parts of the castle. It involved the preparation of a hall for an upcoming commemoration, but in fact, Steerpike was procrastinating, waiting to create some opportunity in which Fuchsia would be forced to look at him. As soon as Titus and Bellgrove turned towards the school, he brought his explanation quickly to an end and directed his staff back to the office. Since he and the Earl had to cross paths, he bowed with obsequious politeness. Titus nodded, not impolitely, then passed, while Bellgrove made a more deferential nod, and at long last the only one of them left was Fuchsia. The challenge was that his staff could not see him pay any more attention to her than to her brother, so as she approached him on the stairs, he bowed again, just slightly less formally, and as he straightened, she hesitated, looking directly at him, and she smiled a small, radiant, shy smile. Since his back was to his assistants, he returned her smile, then stood aside to let her pass.
For about a month, they met secretly two or three times a week, not wanting to establish any sort of pattern that could be observed. There was less conversation now, although surprisingly enough, she often seemed to want to talk. Mostly they used the secret room; once he made the long climb to the attic and seduced her on the carpet, amidst the dust and storybooks and dolls and stuffed animals and all the assorted flora and fauna of her hiding place. Another time, far against his better judgement, he permitted her to visit his own rooms, and despite her shock at this extremely plain, underfurnished apartment when he had the most prestigious non-royal position in Gormenghast, he managed to seduce her on the exceptionally hard mattress of his bed. Once, on impulse, during a rare occasion when Gertrude had gone riding with Titus and so was somewhere that required neither of their presences, they made a mad dash down the Stone Lanes to the Cat Room, where they had a desperate roll across the floor while cushions went flying and cats hissed in protest. It was a dangerous choice: he in black and she in crimson, covered with white cat hairs, could only give themselves away. And yet they lay there a long time afterwards, breathless, and she arched herself as gracefully as a cat and smiled up at him while he spread out her hair like a black silk web on the blue carpet. With minutes to spare they managed to get to their rooms and change clothes and arrive, separate, formal, apparently unaware of each other, to a dinner function. But they knew now they were deliberately tempting fate.
He had tried to keep his participation in these encounters dispassionate, reminding himself that this was nothing he needed, that desire as something in itself could only be mistrusted. For that matter, the books made it sound grotesque. It was, in fact, terrifying. The only way to deal with it was to keep to strict regulations. He would never meet her before midnight (except for the afternoon in the Cat Room), and they had to part well before dawn. He never removed more than his coat and once or twice his shirt, and never divested her of more than a few layers of her complicated garments. And yet there was always that point where his mind would go black, and he came to want that point, to think about it in incongruous places, so that he learned to indicate to her in public, by a subtle facial gesture, that he wanted to see her that night. Her enthusiasm was terrifying; her innocence and trepidation quickly became the ability, once they were in a room together, to take the lapels of his coat and push it back off his shoulders while locking her mouth on his.
On an unusually warm spring day, at the end of this revelatory month, during an especially long commemorative ceremony on the banks of Gormenghast Lake, Fuchsia fainted while her brother was reading his designated part of an especially boring invocation. She had been standing on the bank, between her mother and the doctor, increasingly losing her concentration as her eyes glazed over, and suddenly she had pitched forward, only prevented from falling in the lake by the doctor's quick reflexes. He eased her down onto the grass and motioned everyone back to give her air. Gertrude, unexpectedly, crouched beside her daughter, who was as pale as chalk. Prunesquallor felt for her pulse, and quickly touched his wrist to her face. He impulsively dipped his broad red dotted silk handkerchief in the lake, wrung it out and pressed it against her neck and temples, then glanced up at his sister and asked for her fan, which he flapped deftly over Fuchsia until she stirred and blinked and regained consciousness.
"It's the heat," she said softly. "I'm all right."
"Take her back to the castle, Squallor," Gertrude directed, frowning at nothing in particular, although she took one of Fuchsia's arms to assist her in getting up. All the way across the lawn and back to the castle, the doctor supported her with one arm, though she walked with relatively little difficulty. He took her to her room and got her settled on the little sofa, then rang for some tea and pulled over a chair to sit down facing her. Fuchsia smiled at him. She looked so fragile.
"I'll admit it's a very close day; feels like thunder," said the doctor brightly. Then he took her hands in his and said, much more gently, "But you've never been bothered by heat. Are you sure you're all right? Eating and sleeping properly and all that?"
"Not really, but that's hardly new," said Fuchsia.
"How did you feel before you fainted?"
She considered this. "Very warm. Quite ill. I suppose I might have a flu of some sort; I've been waking up feeling wretched for the past few days."
This was exactly what Prunesquallor expected her to say, and he realized the next part of this had to be exceedingly cautious. "My dear Lady Fuchsia," he said slowly, very kindly, "do you remember the talk we had several years ago, when you started undergoing some changes that made you feel quite ill for a time?"
Fuchsia nodded.
"And as a professional question, may I ask when you last -- "
"Oh, probably a month ago," she replied. She knew it was a month ago because it had not interrupted her secret life so far, and she could only assume it would constitute a major impediment.
The doctor gained her permission for a brief examination which required him to touch her abdomen, then he took her hands in his again and said with the utmost seriousness, "My dear, I want you to trust me perfectly and thoroughly in this, and to be honest with me, because nothing you tell me will leave this room without your permission and approval. Have you had anything to do with a man?"
"Why do you ask," she replied reflexively, which answered his question, though hardly began to answer hers.
Prunesquallor drew a deep breath and went on, "Because I believe you are expecting a child. Fuchsia: you have to tell me what has happened. Were you coerced? Did someone force himself on you? You have the right to have him named and prosecuted, and you do realize the penalty is execution."
Fuchsia's face drained completely of colour as she attempted to digest even just the first part of this speech. Her already wide eyes grew saucerlike with terror; she began to shake so violently the doctor feared she would scream and automatically gathered her into his arms, a gesture of familiarity he would only attempt in such a crisis, for this was a crisis of immense proportions.
"I - I wasn't coerced," she finally managed in a whisper, and the crisis suddenly exploded, as she admitted her own crime. She was too terrified to cry.
"All right." Prunesquallor held her, stroking her back until the shaking subsided enough that he could take her shoulders and hold her away just enough to let them see each other. He managed a smile. "It's all right. We will think of a solution to this before we leave this room, and remember: you must trust me. So, then, do you have a lover, my dear ladyship? Whoever, and I will say this, the undeniably lucky man is, unfortunately he'd have to be someone outside your rank, which poses all sorts of problems but as I promised solemnly, we'll deal with them. Was this a momentary loss of reason in a situation which should never arisen, or is this something you've been keeping from us for quite some time?"
"Both. Neither." Fuchsia sighed. "I've known him a long time but this only happened quite recently. And then it happened and happened and happened."
Oh dear, thought the doctor, immediately realizing whom she meant: the crisis now blasted out of the room and permeated Gormenghast. However, he continued with his eggshell caution: "If circumstances were different, is this someone you would marry?"
She had never for a moment considered this: it was so far out of the question as to be a waste of time. Beyond a vague occasional fantasy of running away together (but where?), she had not contemplated the question of bringing the secret into daylight.
"But circumstances can't be different," she said. Yet the idea of the child appealed to her strongly, for some reason.
"Fuchsia," said the doctor, "within a few weeks your secret will be obvious. Consequently, whoever comes into daily contact with you will have to know. Your family, at least, will have to know. One option is this: on my advice as your physician, claiming some sort of medical condition, your public duties could be suspended, perhaps for a year. You could live in seclusion and have your child, who could then be fostered and raised in the castle, and while the child could never be recognized as part of the line, he or she could have a good life, be educated, live among the gentry, know you to some extent. I suspect your brother would support you in this. Your mother would be out for blood but might come around. I don't honestly know if there's any precedent for this situation and it might only dictate dire consequences for all involved. Your mother does love you, Fuchsia: she won't see any harm come to you. Am I right in assuming you had no suspicion of this turn of events?"
Fuchsia nodded, and felt an increasing sense that she was losing her grasp on something she wanted very badly.
"Then the father has no idea, and perhaps that's best."
"How shall I tell my family?" Fuchsia asked in a small voice.
"We'll call a private family meeting: not an official one," said the doctor, though he realized the latter would, ironically, involve all concerned. "Just you, your mother and brother, and me. Your mother will probably require you to name the father. Think carefully about deciding to refuse."
"May I have a few days to consider this?"
The doctor nodded. "Of course."
In early evening, Titus paid a brief required visit to the secretary's office to have something concerning an upcoming ceremony explained to him. During the explanation, which mostly seemed to require reading passages out of one of the Gormenghast texts and asking him if he understood (a process even duller than that of an especially dull school day), he idly contemplated the office itself and the way in which stick pins in the memos on the bulletin boards all seemed to be precisely in the top centre of whatever document they were affixing. This, like the visit itself, struck Titus as an immense waste of time: worrying so much about the positioning of papers. He had been through the ceremony in question often enough that he felt explaining it to him again was merely an attempt to aggravate him, and perhaps it was. The day had been warm and the office was still stifling from the afternoon sun, but while he himself had abandoned his school blazer and unbuttoned his waistcoat, everyone here still worked with their uniform jackets fastened to the collar. Outside lowering black clouds had rolled over the mountains and the rumble of thunder could be heard distantly. At last, from some layer of his attention, he realized Steerpike had brought the explanation to its close and with the final enquiry of comprehension had looked up from the book he was examining, so that Titus abruptly shifted his attention from the window and offered his usual affirmative.
"So can I go now?" Titus wondered, trying to be polite.
Steerpike was staring directly at him in a way the boy could not really read; the Master of Ritual carefully closed the book and handed it to an assistant, seemed to come to some decision, cleared his throat and said in his grating official voice, "Lordship: your sister, the Lady Fuchsia, was taken ill this afternoon. I trust she is feeling better."
Titus was so taken aback by this statement of apparent concern that he could say nothing for a moment, during which he rapidly rewound whatever attention he had paid to the explanation, wondering if Fuchsia had some crucial role in the ceremony tomorrow. But he simply replied, in a not unfriendly voice, "I dropped in to see her on the way here. The doctor said she was asleep but that she's all right."
"Well, if I may be permitted to ask such a thing, would you convey my good wishes to her? I'm sure we were all concerned and alarmed."
Titus was so surprised at this he actually smiled, although something that wasn't smiling quietly began to gnaw at him inside. "Of course. Good evening, Mr. Secretary."
Steerpike bowed, and kept his head slightly inclined till Titus was out of the room. Then he sat down and chewed nervously at a thumbnail. He had maintained his mask of calm throughout the afternoon, but had inwardly frozen as she pitched forward, because he knew the stakes, had known them since they had commenced their secret meetings, and had been unable to decide whether this turn of events would spell disaster or allow him to solidify his claim. If his suspicion was correct, he had to see her, before she could tell anyone else, and until then he had to trust that she wouldn't. This would be immensely difficult. He was supposed to see her that night, and hoped she wouldn't be under watch after her faint.
The rain started as Titus ran across the courtyard, so that his shirt and hair were damp by the time he pelted up the stairs to his sister's room. Her maid let him in, and he found her drawing in the margins of a book she was reading. She looked up at him with a broad smile, and he bent to kiss her on the forehead. She rumpled his wet hair affectionately, and shifted herself on the sofa so he could sit beside her.
"How are you?" he asked. "I came by after school but the doctor said you were asleep."
"I'm fine," she said, still smiling. "Must have been the heat. We usually don't get this sort of weather this early. Is it raining hard?"
"Just spitting. Thundering, though."
"So where're you coming from now?"
"Getting harangued about tomorrow." Titus grimaced, and rooted through a candy bowl on a little table near the sofa. "Oh: the secretary asked me to (what was the phrase) convey his good wishes, since everyone must have been concerned and alarmed and well, you get the picture. In short form, I think he was asking after you."
"That's very kind of him," said Fuchsia, "and why shouldn't people be concerned and alarmed. If I'm to faint in public in front of the entire leading citizenry of Gormenghast, they'd better be concerned and alarmed, hadn't they?"
"You're laughing at me."
"I am not. I'm laughing at a picture in my head."
Titus grinned up at her from under his screen of long unkempt hair. "Sometimes I'd like to break into that office and take every paper in it and shred them all into tiny pieces and scatter them all over everything, hurl bottles of ink all over the place."
"You've been in school too long."
"Titus Groan, schoolboy anarchist." He let himself fall back against her arm, stretched out his long legs, and unwrapped the candy he'd chosen.
Only with great effort did Fuchsia manage to stay awake until midnight. She quickly dressed, wrapped herself lightly in a dark silk shawl, and left her room unnoticed. By now she saw well enough even in the dimmest corridors to make her way to her destination without stopping. She only hesitated at the door itself, because she realized things had changed utterly and she had a completely different sense of herself physically, and even wondered if it would translate into desire. At the moment, she felt completely turned inward. Breathless from the pace she had maintained to get here (and the sheer number of corridors and stairwells involved), she knocked very lightly. The door opened so suddenly she had to wonder if Steerpike had been listening for her.
He closed the door behind her, and led her over to the multi-cushioned sofa; she sat down and he dropped to a crouch beside her, touched her hand lightly to his mouth, and regarded her seriously.
"My brother told me you asked after me," said Fuchsia.
"Are you all right?" Steerpike tried not to be too pointed in this enquiry.
She had wondered how she would feel, seeing him now with her new knowledge. She was almost overwhelmingly aware of his vulnerability and hers, and while for the moment she felt nothing like desire, she was suffused by an incredible tenderness, and she rested the hand he had kissed against one side of his face. He closed his eyes briefly.
"I'm going to have your child," she said softly.
He drew in his breath sharply. "You know what it means, for you to consort with someone outside your class, for me to have caused this."
"It doesn't have to mean any of that. I won't let it."
He had to smile at this. "Your powers aren't limitless, Lady Fuchsia. Your brother and mother might prefer in this instance to let the full weight of Gormenghast fall on me."
"I won't name you," she said firmly. She hesitated, stroking her hand lightly along his face then back along his hairline. "Did you expect this to happen? Did you want it to?"
"Those are theoretical questions. We have to be practical."
"I'm not practical. It isn't in my nature. What do you suggest, Mr. Secretary?"
Steerpike appeared to consider this for quite some time, and his eyes glittered in the candlelight with less fear and more cunning. He leaned himself forward, resting his elbows on the cushion she had propped on the arm of the sofa, so that his face was almost touching hers, and he said as if trying to ensure no one would hear them, "If there were a precedent that your family could accept, that you could accept, would you marry me?"
"Yes," she answered, unsure whether this was reflex or impulse or simple sincerity.
"Even given what I am and where I come from?" he pursued.
"Yes again," she said. She was still so drowsy; she eased herself back against the cushions. He shifted himself up and lay down beside her, on his stomach, resting his chin on his forearms and resuming his level gaze.
"And am I right in assuming the good doctor knows?"
"We can trust him," said Fuchsia.
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Copyright 2000-04 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Last updated 2 August 2003, by G.M. Baxter.