by Gisèle Baxter
As Fuchsia's pregnancy advanced, she withdrew more and more. The frightening anguish of her initial reaction to Titus' departure the month following her marriage gave way to an apparent calm, and she stood (or later on, sat) through the various public ceremonies she was required to attend, with her gaze fixed on nothing in particular, smiling subtly and privately, resting her hand on her increasing bump. In fact, Gertrude's fury at what she could only see as her son's desertion (even though he was still a minor and could not govern) was only mitigated by the extremity of Fuchsia's response. She locked herself in her dressing room and gave herself over to a terrible hysteria. Prunesquallor actually permitted himself to mentally curse Gertrude for banishing her daughter to these distant apartments, as he strode over there in the middle of the night, in the rain, after having been woken up by Fuchsia's lady in waiting.
The doctor had been inside here only once, in his capacity as Fuchsia's physician, since her marriage. He was again struck, despite the circumstances, by the air of terrifying grandeur in these beautifully appointed rooms. There was none of the eccentricity or clutter of the Groan apartments, and certainly none of the dust or moss, but there was also nothing of the antiseptic spartan colourlessness of the secretary's office. Where there was colour here, it was richly jewel-like and regal: red, purple, deep green. The furniture was covered in ornate brocades; the floors covered in intricately woven carpets. Enormous vases were filled with flowers of the more aggressive varieties.
He found Steerpike calmly engaged in dismantling the lock on Fuchsia's dressing room door, trying to do so without making any noise, though Fuchsia was sobbing for her brother so loudly it was doubtful she would have heard it. Don't try to talk to her till we get in, he told the doctor quietly, without looking up: she won't recognize your voice, and she may try to block the door. In another moment, the lock had been breached. Steerpike stood up, brushed his hands lightly over the front of his coat, then eased the latch up, and added, equally quietly: you go in; she won't want me there.
The doctor could read nothing in the young man's expression to suggest why, but nodded and pushed the door open on its hinges. Fuchsia had wedged herself into a corner by the window; she had sobbed herself almost into exhaustion and was gasping for air, but still managed to choke out, I want my brother. Prunesquallor decided this of all times was no time for levity, and dropped to a crouch in front of her.
"Your brother is gone," he said calmly but kindly. "He has not gone forever; and he's not gone because he disapproved of your marriage." Fortunately, the doctor was not a superstitious man, though mentally he cast a glance up to check for bolts of lightning. "Titus wants you to be happy. He's simply gone to see something of the world to try to understand his place in it better. If you were in his position, I think you of all people would understand. Now you have to calm down; he will be back soon. You'll make yourself ill otherwise and you might push yourself into labour long before your baby is due."
This worked, by restoring to Fuchsia her sense of enormous responsibility. She let the doctor help her up and into the bedroom he had not really contemplated on the way in. He got her to lie down on what had to be the largest bed he had ever seen, covered with a velvet counterpane in a purple so dark it was almost black, and guarded at its four corners by tall spired posts in polished dark wood. In depositing Fuchsia on this bed, Prunesquallor felt as if he were launching a very small boat into a large stormy lake. She fell asleep almost instantly, and woke up some time later to find the lights in the room dimmed; she had been covered up with something very soft and warm, and Steerpike sat on the edge of the bed, still in his uniform, watching her.
She opened her eyes fully.
"Do you blame me for your brother leaving?" he asked her seriously. "I know he despises me."
"No," she said. "Of course I don't blame you." And she realized again that Titus was wrong: that he could be hurt. She extended a hand, and let her fingertips touch his, and drew him down to her. He kissed her very lightly on the mouth, then rested his head against her stomach. She stroked his hair, and said, "Do I have to spend all my life convincing you that I don't hate you and I don't find you repulsive?"
He smiled to himself. He had no regret that Titus was gone but had genuinely dreaded her hysteria at his departure. Now the rug was firmly back beneath him and the floor had stopped moving; he was secure. He also felt very pleasantly warm in this proximity.
And so she grew increasingly quiet as her pregnancy progressed, as if the volatile Fuchsia was a skin that had been shed, the last vestige of her childhood eradicated, or as if she had gone dormant in the coming of winter and was waiting, latent somewhere. Something about her private smile was too subtle. Yet she glowed. People who had known her all her life suddenly decided she was beautiful.
Meanwhile, in his spare time, her husband familiarized himself with the various precedents and traditions concerning children born into the royal household. He realized that the general perception was that despite his own origins, the child would be considered gentry of royal blood and so would have two names, though no honorific. If it were a boy, it would be the next secretary of the castle by hereditary right. He would name the child, but since it would have royal blood, there was a list of acceptable names to choose from. He did not particularly care about the gender of the child, since he hoped to redefine his position anyway, and the child was primarily his link to the royal family: his ticket in.
In autumn, Fuchsia took to wandering the castle grounds, trailing her long skirts through the abundant drying leaves. She wore only dark colours now, and increasingly plainer (though no less costly) versions of her abandoned dresses. Her pregnancy had given her very little difficulty and by now she had grown used to herself like this, with her protruding stomach. She no longer thought about the future; she lived entirely in the moment, and now that Dr. Prunesquallor's garden had been raked over and prepared for winter, she wandered along the outer fringes of the forest and as the sky grew dark, made her way back to the castle, often with a handful of leaves that she put in a jar on the mantel in her dressing room, next to the glass owl her brother had given her. The doctor checked on her regularly now; she was invariably happy to sea him, and they sat together on a forest-green brocade sofa in the terrifying parlour. She answered all of his questions, but asked nothing about her condition, except once early on when she asked if she could continue letting her husband sleep with her. At first the doctor misunderstood the question, assuming in her relative innocence she might think she had to follow her parents' example and insist on separate quarters. Then he realized what she meant, and for the first time felt he might understand this odd relationship of apparent opposites. After much nervous laughter, he finally replied he couldn't see why not.
Because she needed increasing amounts of sleep, and because Steerpike tended to stay at his office until late, she was usually (not always) in bed and the apartments dark, when he made his way back through the corridors or across the courtyards, depending on the weather. Depending on the hour, he might have a drink and sit up reading a while in the parlour, or writing out the endless personal memoranda he kept in a book he locked in a drawer in his own dressing room. Then he would undress in the darkness and fall asleep with one arm locked around her, over the increasing mound where he could sometimes feel movement, and with his face either half crushed in his own pillow, according to his own custom of the long years of solitude, or nestled in her hair. Part of him despised this reliance, because with it came a dread that if anything were to deprive him of her, he would never sleep again. Sometimes at this point she would wake up just enough to slide one hand over his; sometimes she would wake up fully, and turn to him, and ask him how his day went, especially by the beginning of winter, when she was excused from most public duties.
For the occasions when she did go out, he had made for her a long, broad black velvet cape, lined with heavy satin. She trailed it over the snow like a wake of ink on fine paper.
There was much snow even early that winter.
The first contraction came at dawn on a day of fierce blizzard. Steerpike woke up as Fuchsia moved, and at her whispered announcement (almost to herself) that it was time, he rang for the principal members of the household staff, then hurriedly dressed and went for the doctor. The day was so vicious he couldn't see across the courtyard, and so he and his assistant made their way through the corridors and arrived at the doctor's house within ten minutes. As it was still dark, Prunesquallor was asleep and responded to the strenuous pounding on his front door with some irritation. When he peered out the window he was hit by a gust of wind and snow and sleet, and could see nothing, could hardly make his "who's there?" heard above the howl. Yet the imperative reply, Doctor could you please hurry, flat as it was, cut the storm like a blade, and Prunesquallor seized his medical bag and put on the first clothes that came to hand, fastening buttons and braces as he dashed down the stairs. When he yanked open the front door, he found Steerpike without overcoat or cape, his black uniform and his hair crusted with wet snow, his hands tucked up under his arms.
"When did the pains start?" the doctor demanded, ushering the young man inside.
"Just now. How long do you suppose it will take?"
Prunesquallor realized that Steerpike was often in his office very early, depending on the amount of preparation the day required, and was weighing whether he might be able to return with the doctor and see the child first. Whatever it was that was so troubling about Fuchsia's silence, and which still mystified the doctor, occured to him again now, along with a realization that much was at stake here: for whatever motives, the secretary wanted this child very badly. He pulled out his pocketwatch, raised his eyebrows, and let out a sharp breath. "You go to your office, Mr. Secretary," he said, with an encouraging levity both knew to be contrived. "Knowing Lady Fuchsia, this won't take any time at all; she's a strong healthy girl. But she won't want to feel she's being timed. If you come by when you get any sort of break in the day, you may see the baby then."
The young man looked at him very hard, then nodded, turned abruptly and disappeared into the storm. Immediately, one of the male servants from the secretary's household appeared and guided the doctor expertly back to the apartments in the east wing. By now the fires had been built up and the rooms illuminated; Fuchsia's maids were lined up ready for direction, and her lady in waiting was mopping at her face with a sponge, while Fuchsia alternately cried out in pain and stared off at nothing in terror. The doctor flung off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and smiled at her; she registered his presence and smiled back, very tightly.
"All right," said Prunesquallor, "we're going to move her into her dressing room." He could not bring Fuchsia's child into the world on this oversized slab of a bed, amidst all this awful black-purple velvet. Her dressing room terrified him less; it had begun to take on something of her character as he remembered it, with its clutter of books and sketch pads on the floor, and the little drawings she stuck in the frame of her mirror, and the leaves in the jar on the mantel.
"How long will it take?" Fuchsia asked, still in a whisper, once he had her settled.
"We cannot predict these things," the doctor said, with an attempted smile. He knew at that instant this would be a battle.
During the crisis following Titus's departure, when Gertrude's regency had been established pending his return, certain procedural changes had to be made regarding the daily functioning of the castle in the absence of the earl. They were summed up by Gertrude herself in the statement, "The various ceremonies will continue, but damned if he's going to watch me eat my breakfast." Consequently, every morning the secretary and the countess met briefly in the throne room to go over the agenda for the day. This particular morning, she arrived to find him staring out the window, which was uncharacteristic; he was usually already seated at the little table that he used for the various books and notes he brought with him, making annotations; when she arrived, he would stand up briefly and bow, she would sit down and they would get on with business. Now he was apparently unaware she had entered the room. The wind whistled around the windowframe.
"I hope there's nothing scheduled outdoors," Gertrude said by way of getting his attention.
Steerpike turned immediately, made his bow and proceeded to the table. Gertrude watched him closely. His hair and clothes were still wet from having been outdoors, and the room was chilly, but he didn't seem cold so much as preoccupied. He spent some time looking for a page he should have marked, and chewed absently on his thumbnail in doing so.
"I often suspect," said Gertrude, "that your mind can manage to be somewhere else in whatever you're doing. You're generally better at concealing it, though. Is something wrong?"
He glanced up at her, wishing profoundly he didn't believe there was something wrong. "I had to summon the doctor on the way in this morning," he said.
Gertrude understood immediately. Remembering her own labours, she sighed deeply. "Why anyone would want voluntarily to go through that is beyond me," she said, sitting down. "At any rate, we're all best far from it: that's Prunesquallor's territory. Now: tell me what I have to do today."
In mid-afternoon, Fuchsia's lady in waiting, Meredith, crossed the courtyard to the great hall of the castle, where Gertrude was inspecting some old frescoes, commissioned by the sixty-third earl as a wedding present to his countess, on this their anniversary. Gertrude had no opinion on them and Steerpike thought they were dreadful, so this exercise in hypocrisy proceeded in silence once the poet had read the dedication written by the then laureate, who had a penchant for the more flowery sort of extended metaphor. Meredith knew she could not interrupt the procession, so she simply lowered her shawl and stood in the line of castle maids, anomalous in her plain black gown and small cap. Finally, they passed the last one, and Gertrude drew a deep sigh and scratched the ears of the cat she carried.
Steerpike immediately noticed the arrival from his household staff and gestured her over. Meredith curtseyed deeply to the countess, who hesitated in her departure on seeing the girl, then more perfunctorily to the secretary.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"The doctor sent me, sir," she replied in her plain steady voice; nothing rattled Meredith. "There may be complications and he may require your presence. With permission, Madam," she continued to Gertrude, "yours may be required as well."
Gertrude had not once entered the apartments she had given her daughter; she firmly believed this marriage had driven Titus away, and only acknowledged it in ways she was required by law. Now she crossed the courtyard deliberately, followed by the secretary and Fuchsia's attendant. The storm had abated, though the sky was still angry and the air full of ice; the day was darkening towards nightfall already.
By the time they entered the parlour, Fuchsia's labour had entered a critical phase although for the moment she was silent, catching her breath, drenched in sweat as was the doctor, who had retreated from her shaking. His entreaties for her to push had finally provoked her admission in the midst of her feral screams, that she could not, she could not do it, and he realized she knew as well as he did that this was a crisis. They were close enough for each to see the colour of the other's eyes, and she stared at him in terror, gasping for air under the pending wave, and finally she managed to say, "Save the baby: not me."
"Fuchsia, it hasn't come to that," the doctor insisted.
"But it will," she sobbed. "It will; I know it will."
What he dreaded was a return of the sort of hysterical fixation she had gone into at the departure of her brother. She could not stop crying, and she cried for her husband and then for her mother, and the doctor was afraid, because if she asked for her brother he would realize she had despaired. He had brusquely directed the lady in waiting to summon Gertrude and Steerpike simply to propitiate Fuchsia; he had no intention of drawing them into this crisis, largely because he knew only too well that if such a circumstance had arisen for the countess, she would have been required by law to sacrifice herself in the interests of the heir, and also because he mistrusted the secretary's ability to see anyone's interests but his own. He also had no intention, however much Fuchsia pleaded, of letting either of them into this delivery room. Finally, he determined he would spare this girl he loved as he could no one else, even if she never forgave him. But he hoped it would not come to that.
Outside the room, Gertrude settled herself on the green brocade sofa and composed herself to wait. Her shrewd eyes took in the cold opulence of the room, and she disapproved: the snow that had resumed against the windowpanes was a relief against this soulless elegance; all the colours were too dark. Steerpike sat down on a small high-backed chair in the darkest part of the room and seemed to turn to stone, with his arms clenched around himself and his hard eyes fixed unseeing on a point on the carpet. Meredith left them and returned to her mistress's dressing room, where she nodded a signal to the doctor that she had done as he'd asked.
The storm grew worse, and periodic lightning illuminated the windows. Fuchsia stopped crying, and her breathing grew alarmingly rapid between the increasingly close contractions that seemed to wrench her apart. Prunesquallor summoned all his strength and looked directly at her, and he said, "Fuchsia, darling, it's going to be now, and you have to trust me, and you have to help me. If you help me, everything will be all right. Your husband and your mother are here, and they're not the most patient people we know, so let's get going, shall we? Now: when I say heave, you're to push just as much as my voice suggests. So, a little "heave" and you just give a gentle little thrust; a big "heave" and you push with enough force to bring down this house and all of Gormenghast crashing around it. All right?"
Fuchsia nodded. "I love you, Dr. Prune," she whispered.
"I love you too, my dear girl. Now breathe evenly."
Shortly thereafter, there was a flash of lightning that momentarily bleached the dark parlour, and with the crash of thunder, the window flew open. And the doctor's voice reverberated throughout the house with an earsplitting "HEAVE!" which was accompanied almost simultaneously by a prolonged animal sound somewhere between a scream and a roar, a sound no one could have imagined Fuchsia capable of making. Involuntarily Gertrude clamped a hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut; Steerpike remained perfectly immobile, though what small colour he possessed drained completely from his face. Then, under the dying echo of the thunder and the doctor and Fuchsia's scream there was a small thin reedlike sound that gained in volume and became the unmistakable sound of tiny lungs exulting in their first gasp of air.
"You have a son," Prunesquallor managed. He kissed Fuchsia and placed the baby in her arms. She regarded it gravely, then looked up at the doctor; thank you, she whispered.
By the time Prunesquallor reentered the parlour, Gertrude had wrestled the window shut and brushed the snow from the inner ledge with the broad sleeve of her gown. She had begun to pace, and immediately upon the doctor's arrival turned on him.
"What in hell is taking so long?" she demanded. "It was born alive; I heard it. Is my daughter all right?"
The doctor had replaced his jacket and waistcoat over his blood- and sweat-stained shirt, had polished his spectacles, and had mopped his face with a dotted silk handkerchief that now draped loosely from a pocket. He spied a decanter of brandy and without waiting for invitation poured himself a glass, and he smiled with something of his old expressiveness and show of teeth.
"Everything is a little disordered for the moment," he replied. "But everything is being put to rights and in the interim, we might as well get started on what is by any definition cause for celebration." He poured out two more glasses of brandy, handed one to Gertrude, and the second to Steerpike, who had uncurled himself from his locked, clenched posture in the chair and approached cautiously. The doctor positively beamed at him. "Congratulations, sir, you have a son."
It was very hard to read Steerpike's expression. He took the glass and downed the brandy in a swallow and stared at the doctor with something that looked very much like disbelief.
"When can I see him?" he asked.
"In a moment," the doctor said, more seriously.
"And my wife? Is she -- "
The doctor cleared his throat and drew a deep breath. "Lady Fuchsia had a very, very hard delivery. She will be fine and she is ecstatic, and the baby is fine, sound and healthy and if I may say so extraordinarily beautiful. But she cannot have another child."
"Why would she want to," said Gertrude. "One will keep her occupied enough. Well, you must be pleased, Steerpike."
This was as close as Gertrude would come to congratulations, and the relative familiarity of it provoked a glance from her son-in-law, who made his perfunctory bow and murmured, yes of course, thank you. Then he abruptly returned his attention to the doctor, and said pointedly, "Do you mean something happened in the course of this difficult delivery that will prevent her from having another child, or are you simply offering speculative professional advice?"
"I shall have to examine her again when she has recovered," said Prunesquallor. "I expect it's the latter. I'm very sorry."
"Well." The secretary had quickly regained something of his professional coldness once assured that his wife and child were fine; the rest could be dealt with later. "And when can I see them?" he asked again.
"Let's go on up now," the doctor suggested.
Fuchsia had been moved back into the master bedroom, and into the enormous bed, where she sat up against several pillows. She had been tidied up, and her hair brushed out; she wore a fresh nightgown and had insisted on wearing the red silk dressing gown her husband had given her for her birthday; it trailed around her like a scarlet lake. In her arms the baby slept peacefully in the blanket and shawl wrapped around him like a cocoon. The doctor suggested Steerpike go in first; Gertrude had no particular interest in seeing the baby and preferred, now that she knew Fuchsia was all right, to finish her drink and resume her slow appraisal of this odd house. She examined a portrait she vaguely remembered from another part of the castle, now restored and reframed and hung in the hall outside the bedroom. However, at the doctor's request, she trailed in after him.
Steerpike remembered having seen Fuchsia's brother as a relatively small infant but otherwise had little idea of what to expect. He was struck first in entering the room by how pale and fragile Fuchsia seemed; her eyes were like great luminous pools in their hollow sockets. She smiled up at him with an infinite tenderness he hardly knew how to respond to; his expression was very grave as he bent and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
"Now you must look at him," said Fuchsia, and she began unwrapping the layers of cotton and velvet chenille.
"Do you suppose I'll frighten him," Steerpike wondered.
"He hasn't learned such judgement," Fuchsia replied.
This child whose age had not yet marked an hour seemed incredibly small, though he already had thick black hair all over his head. Fuchsia coaxed one of his tiny hands out from the wrappings and inserted her fingertip in it; the baby yawned and made some small indeterminable noises, then opened his eyes. His eyes were the colour of darkest garnets, with almost imperceptible flecks of ochre that gave them a slightly opalescent quality. Steerpike was fascinated. In spite of the presence of Gertrude and the doctor, he smiled, and extended a hand the way Fuchsia had, letting the baby curl its own extraordinarily tiny hand around a fingertip. This was his; he saw himself already in its unformed features. But he saw her as well.
The naming took place on the appropriate day, in a somewhat less opulent ceremony than either Fuchsia or Titus had endured shortly after their own births, and with less formidable rituals. Winter had settled over Gormenghast and the sky was an even shade of pale gray and as cold as clear water under ice, so that the ceremony was held indoors. Fuchsia was still fragile and colourless from her ordeal, and sat holding the baby, next to her mother. In accordance with custom and precedent, the child was named, Magnus Steerpike, of the House of Groan. And so Magnus entered his stage of the legend of the place.
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.