by Gisèle Baxter
A few days before the wedding, on a day when relatively little was scheduled, Titus went riding for several hours, and very nearly gave in to an impulse to just keep going, into the mountains, away from Gormenghast. But he was not ready. In the evening he put on a dark jacket and crept down to the cellar and the wine vaults. Picking the lock with a pen knife, he located a dusty bottle of whiskey and took it back up to his room. There was something he had it in his mind to do, and he wasn't sure if he was summoning the courage or trying to divert his attention. He lay on his bed, on his stomach, the book he was reading propped on the pillow before him. From time to time he addressed himself to the bottle, and he found himself thinking about his day in the mountains, the clean scent of pine nettles, the patches of blue spring flowers low to the ground and shaded by the immense trees. But inevitably he found himself mulling over the events of the past several days, and he thought of his sister wandering through the immense cold apartments she had inherited, cast adrift from her attic haven, effectively disinherited, suddenly forced to grow up in what Titus could only imagine was a loveless marriage of convenience. And he would be the one to join her hand to the hand of his enemy and proclaim them husband and wife for the duration of their natural lives.
By midnight he was at a stage of drunkenness that summoned bravado while permitting steadiness. Deliberately, he put back on the dark jacket, corked the bottle and stuck it in his pocket, and left his room. In one of the dustiest and most junk-littered corridors on his route, he hunted around until he found a short metal bar. Clutching this he strode on purposefully, only stopping once, near his destination, to uncork the bottle and take another long pull. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and shifted into a stealthy caution, keeping to shadows for the remainder of his way, peering carefully around corners before rounding them. He paused briefly on a floor he knew only from castle maps, and located the door to Steerpike's room. There was a light visible through the crack at floor level, and in fact Steerpike was lying on his bed reading while drinking the glass of brandy he permitted himself at bedtime. Titus crept by, then at the end of this hall pelted the remaining way, which was still some distance, to the hall housing the secretary's office.
Here everything was silence and shadow. No light was visible between or under the doors. Still, Titus pressed his ear to the heavy wood, fearful that the light in Steerpike's room meant nothing and he might after all be here. But though he could hear his own heartbeat, he could hear nothing else. He took another drink of whiskey and now the world started to sway. However, he took his metal bar, wedged it between the doors under the lock, and began to pry and pull until the lock gave, and the doors swung open. He had never seen this room in darkness, yet it was not particularly dark; the moon shone through the immense window, so that all flat surfaces acquired a phosphorescent bluish-white glow. Titus set his bottle down gravely on the secretary's desk, set his crowbar down equally gravely beside it, picked up a stack of papers on a tray, riffled through them, smiling sardonically, then ripped them straight across and tossed the papers up into the air. As they floated to the floor around him, he began to laugh, and the rest came easily. He ripped every memo from the bulletin boards, he did whatever damage he could, even to smashing the bulbs in every lamp, stopping just short of attacking the ritual book, and then largely because it was locked shut and everything was swaying too much to permit him to pick another lock. Finally, as a snowfall of shredded paper drifted down around him, he sat in the secretary's chair, put his boots up on the desk, finished the bottle of whiskey in one gulp and hurled it with whatever force he could muster by now at the opposite wall. He laughed until his face was wet with tears. The world was spinning. He could only stagger to the doors, which he nevertheless closed carefully behind him. The way back to his room was an ordeal, since by now his legs felt like melting rubber, and once he got there, he crashlanded on his bed into a deep sleep.
The next day Titus had a champion hangover, but spent it at the back of the classroom scrawling away at various assignments owed with apparent diligence. He had avoided his family at breakfast and had spent a long time in his room either with an ice bag clutched to his forehead or his face submerged in a basin of cold water. Late in the afternoon, Professor Bellgrove shook him awake, and he blinked several times before he realized he was still in the classroom, amidst those classmates who had been kept behind to finish uncompleted work, and who now were handing in ink-blotted, creased and dogeared sheets of paper, then gratefully dispersing. It was well past five o'clock.
He realized what he had done had been childish and ineffectual, though his only regret remained that he had not been able to hide himself somewhere and see Steerpike arrive at the office to all that disruptive destruction. Perhaps there would be fear of insurrection and the entire castle would have to be shut down. That would be one way of postponing if not cancelling this wretched wedding. On the other hand, this might mean the arrest and interrogation of innocent people. The mind-numbingly depressing stage of the hangover was kicking in now, and Titus retreated to his room for the evening, locking away everyone and everything. He knew his parents had been married on a dark thundery day, when lightning forked over the lake, putting everyone at great risk. Maybe they would all be struck by lightning. It would be appropriate for this blasphemous ceremony.
In fact, it never occured to Steerpike that the destruction was the work of rebels within Gormenghast. It was too stupidly reckless, and the whiskey bottle was the crowning bit of evidence. He dutifully reported the incident to Gertrude, whose placid reaction implied she would mull it over a long time, in the interim probably blaming a disaffected member of his staff or probably, as he had done, figuring it out immediately. He made vague assurances to her that he would "deal with it." Then he summoned his staff, quickly delegated most of the cleanup, and patiently reproduced the most critical of the paperwork from memory. This required sitting up late yet again until his eyes felt like sandpaper. When he permitted himself to think about it, he was enraged, but there was too much at stake to give in to anger, and no way to indulge it. After the last replacement memorandum was finally tacked to the board on the door, he turned the last of the lamps off and sat at his desk in the darkness. The day after tomorrow he would marry Fuchsia, and he would abandon, for now anyway, the intensely private, solitary life of what seemed like a very long adulthood, even though he was only not much past thirty. He would leave his austere unornamented room for the royal apartments in the east wing, which for the moment were a chaotic nightmare of rolled-up carpets, odds and ends of furniture scavenged from the vaults, and numerous trunks, all labelled Lady Fuchsia Groan and bearing the family crest. His own two trunks, plain and unlabelled, and containing mostly a few items of clothing and some books, were in a corner of his room, and on the day of the wedding would be taken over to his new residence. And he would have Fuchsia at his disposal, could fall asleep at night with his face in her hair, could perhaps at last indulge a desire that had been gnawing at him, and see her divested of all her complicated garments and contemplate at leisure those aspects of her he had only glimpsed in darkness. And he realized she could not possibly have corresponding fantasies about him; he was far too hideous, and clenched-up, and fundamentally reticent. Sometimes he resented her beauty for claiming this much power.
Since the wedding would be at dawn, Fuchsia's maids would arrive very early to start getting her into the dress. Consequently, Fuchsia decided not to sleep, and retreated to her attic. Her brother came to keep watch with her, and they sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands.
"I have a terrible confession to make," he said.
"I know," she replied, and she smiled over at him.
"I felt, I don't know, I don't think I can kill him and I don't believe there's anything inside him that can be hurt, but what I wanted to do was disrupt this dreadful control he has over everything. It's like some sort of religion of organization. Fuchsia, you can't possibly be happy with him. And I can't live here with him having even more power than he has."
Fuchsia stared ahead at the window. She remembered the last night she and Steerpike had visited their secret room, much of which he had already started to dismantle, since some of the paintings and the furniture were designated for the apartments. He had, uncharacteristically, fallen asleep during the aftermath part, with his head under her arm and one hand resting flat on her stomach. She firmly believed there were ways he could be hurt, which he had done his best to crush and suppress but which remained: her pregnancy by him had made him vulnerable. The fact that they had taken each other's virginity made him vulnerable. She could use this; she knew what power she had over him. But she felt only this indescribable tenderness, this immense glow of what she could only call love for this man who had literally put his life on the line to marry her.
She said aloud, "His position doesn't change. He remains Secretary of the Castle, and the job isn't redefined in any way. The only change is in his personal status: he's no longer a servant, though he remains a commoner, and he is a member of the household and by marriage of the family. So if you're worried about the status quo, it stays the same, Titus."
"I don't care about the status quo; you know that. I don't trust him; he's far too rigid and he seems to have absolutely no compassion. Does he love you?" Titus asked bluntly. "Have you managed to find the one flaw in his armour?"
She thought of what the doctor had said. "He's had a very hard life, and up until me, no one has loved him. He can't remember his parents. But Titus: he risked execution to acknowledge himself as the father of my child. He claims he loves me, and I believe him."
"I wish I did," her brother returned earnestly. "I wish I didn't have such fear; that everything in me didn't want to get on my knees and beg you to call this off: it's not too late. But it's your choice; I won't take that from you, Fuchsia. I may go away a while. I finish school this term and I'm still a minor and maybe I want to see something of the outside world before I have to govern this place." And maybe I won't govern it, he thought with a shiver of something like delight at this treasonous thought.
"Don't you want to wait and see the baby? You'll be an uncle."
"I don't want to think about it now. Please. Let's just get through this day." Remembering something, he felt in his jacket and drew out a lump of tissue paper, and handed it to Fuchsia. "Present for you: not really a wedding present. Just something."
The lump was hard at its core, and Fuchsia drew the tissue away to locate a little iridescent glass owl she had long admired on the mantel in the room Titus had acquired after leaving the nursery. He had found it under a dresser; no one knew where it came from or how old it was. She stared at it for a long time, then swiped the back of a hand under each eye, then repeated this gesture, then impulsively turned to her brother and buried her face in his shoulder, and he held her as if departing this night.
The day would not thunder; it would be fine and clear and fresh. Long before sunrise the sky acquired a deep cobalt hue, and the silence over Gormenghast belied the amount of activity in and around the castle. Torchbearers were already lighting the way to the lake shore, where the dais had been constructed, and various areas had been marked and cordoned off: for the royal household, for the most distinguished guests, for the secretarial staff, for the musicians and choir, for the wedding party itself. Inside, the head seamstress had supervised the final adjustments to the fairly tight, long sleeves of Fuchsia's gown, and her principal maid had begun brushing out her hair. Gertrude drank tea and read placidly in her own room, then saw to her various birds, refilling containers with seed and water. She was required to wear a very old gown of royal purple, with a stiff black underskirt beaded and embroidered in various heraldic designs; she had spent no effort on having the thing repaired or on doing much with her masses of dark red hair beyond at the very last moment pinning her crown in place. Yet when she finally had to begin the trek down to the lake shore with her retinue, she made a brief stop in Fuchsia's room. She felt no sentiment in seeing her daughter in the wedding dress she had worn: the colour made her skin look like chalk, and the dead-black hair didn't help. Fuchsia glanced up from her dressing table at her immense and regal mother, who always seemed somehow to smell of feathers and incense.
"How do you feel?" Gertrude asked.
"Very nervous," Fuchsia admitted. "I've never had to read anything in public before. In fact, I've never had to do anything in public except just be there."
"Well, it's all written out and it doesn't much matter what it says. Here's a necklace the previous countess wore with the dress." This was a strand of thin gold rope with a single irregular dark pearl suspended from it; it had been found inadvertantly in one of the periodic hunts through the vaults for something else several years into Gertrude's marriage. Gertrude watched intently as Fuchsia fastened it around her neck, held it out to examine the pearl, then smiled her thanks shyly. Gertrude did not return the smile, but she did say, "The next time we meet, you'll be his wife. And if he betrays you or misuses you, in any way, remember who you are besides that."
For his part, Steerpike made his preparations with perfect outer calm and great inner exultation. He had commissioned an entirely new suit, very much like the uniform he wore every day and in the same sombre black, but with a longer, more elegant coat and a slightly more elaborately tailored shirt. When his hair had been perfectly arranged to a glasslike smoothness and every speck of virtually invisible lint and dust had been brushed from the new cloth, he took a last look around his quarters, tucked his swordstick up under one arm and departed for his office. His staff was already lined up, with the book of ritual and other required documents ready for transportation to the site. Their feelings towards him were mixed. On the one hand, he was hard to work for: he expected everyone to be as tireless as he was, and as dedicated; he had no apparent sense of humour; he accepted no excuses. On the other hand, you knew where you stood with him and he was absolutely fearless (or so they assumed). So they were inclined to be well disposed towards the Master of Ritual on his wedding day, and tolerated the usual inspection and outlining of the day's orders and duties. At the last "do you understand?", the first assistant ventured, "Sir."
"Well, what is it?" Steerpike returned.
"On behalf of all of us, congratulations and good wishes."
He did not smile, but he permitted himself enough generosity to reply, in something like a regular, unofficial voice, "Thank you. And thank you for the amount of effort you have all put into things over the past two weeks. Now let's go."
At the first note of the fanfare, as the horizon brightened to an even clear green, Fuchsia took her brother's arm and they began their procession to the lake. They said nothing to each other, and both stared straight ahead. She was visible from a great distance as a cloud of white, ghostly in the pre-dawn twilight against the dark green lawn. Her diaphanous train billowed up slightly in the breeze. Thousands stood on the incline; they would get their best view of her as she passed now.
The choir began the prelude.
The wedding itself was to take place on a slightly raised platform, where the book was placed on an enormous stand. Here the breeze was stronger, and for one moment Fuchsia's train flew straight up, like a banner or a flare. With one hand she anchored it to her skirt. It was still early in the spring and she shivered. Titus nodded in the direction of the secretarial party, and Steerpike emerged to take his place beside Fuchsia: they would face the lake, while the young earl would face the castle. Hardly able to look at them, Titus placed his sister's hand in Steerpike's and for the first time that morning she turned to the man she was to marry. A great deal of Steerpike simply wanted to see this as the end the means justified: the achievement of a goal. He assumed that with time this obsession with her would shrink to manageable proportions and he could concentrate more fully on his greater aims. Yet when he saw her chalk-white face and huge eyes and vaguely terrified expression, he found himself reminded of the crimes that had brought him where he was and for one moment (but only one moment), he felt somehow this could be added to the list.
It was now light enough to see the book and Titus began the long process of his invocation. It galled him to dedicate his sister to the history and traditions of Gormenghast; to pledge her to this life of duty; to place this ceremony in the context of centuries of ritual; to recite meaningless formulas and analogies. And yet he did so, in his clear schoolboy's voice which had mercifully already gone through its process of change, looking up from his text as little as possible. Fuchsia had to read next; the book was turned first, and the page opened to the ribbon marker that signalled her place. She began so softly that Titus, in spite of himself, leaned across, smiled gently at her, and whispered, "No one can hear you. I can hardly hear you." If it had not been so cold she might have blushed; her eyes widened, but she cleared her throat and began again, more loudly and firmly. Few members of Gormenghast's larger population would have ever heard her voice. She read with little expression but seemed absolutely sincere; the doctor sobbed audibly throughout her invocation and when she got to the part where she pledged her life and strength, he grew so overwrought that Gertrude abruptly turned to shush him, but something in his expression made her simply frown and hand him a large handkerchief, then resume her steady contemplation of the event. Fuchsia's hand grasped Steerpike's so tightly he felt his fingers would never straighten and the circulation in his arm was about to fail.
By the time Fuchsia finished reading her vows, Irma Bellgrove was dabbing delicately under her spectacles with a tiny lace-trimmed square of silk, Gertrude was biting the inside of her mouth, and Fuchsia's maids were sobbing away as enthusiastically as the doctor; even several members of the professoriate and the secretarial staff found themselves staring very deliberately at the lawn. Titus coped with this by forcing his vision onto the page and following the text upside down. Yet when she finished, she drew a deep breath and her radiant smile returned, very briefly. Then the last of the ribbon markers was located, Steerpike cleared his throat, and everyone reflexively shifted into a sort of straightened resignation at the prospect of a long invocation in this gratingly familiar voice. Yet he read well, with a couple of well-timed pauses and hesitations which implied a certain personal sense of the almost overwhelming weight of this honour that had been granted someone of one of the lowest castes in Gormenghast, and behind his back, his staff permitted themselves to smile and bask in their faintly reflected glory. At the end of this speech, Titus read the nine hundred year old act, in its archaic diction, that actually married them; during this, he was required to place his hand over theirs, and afterwards (the part he had been dreading most), he was required to look directly at what was now, officially, legally and for the remainder of their natural lives, his sister's husband, and say, "On behalf of my family and of Gormenghast, I bid you welcome to the household, Mr. Steerpike."
He managed to do it without scowling or having his voice break, and he wondered if all the hypocrisy of his position made it so easy to fake things. Steerpike bowed deeply, acknowledged the welcome without expression, then at last turned to Fuchsia, permitted her an ironic version of his private smile, dislodged her hand from his and raised it briefly to his mouth. Her radiant smile relaxed into place and she took his arm. The doctor started to sob again, and the poet approached the dais to read his ode.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Sequel | Table of Contents
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.