by Gisèle Baxter
In this life there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it. -- Oscar Wilde
Part One
There was a tavern, a place called the Black Swan, which took a long time to find for the uninitiated. It was on the periphery of a kitchen close to the castle wall, so that on one side there was a terrace overlooking a sheer drop of stone and dead ivy to a muddy part of the moat. This noisy, perpetually overcrowded den was the resort of the numerous below-stairs staff, from the tiniest apprentices to the most wizened old scrubbers, when their shifts concluded. For a couple of hours around dawn it closed down, officially to be cleaned, though frequently proprietor and assistants alike were at this hour sprawled out sound asleep on its sawdust floor. When rumours of its existence filtered above stairs, an edict strictly forbidding residents of the castle proper to go there was made, on pain of fine or demotion. In Steerpike's office, going to the Black Swan was a firing offence. Yet of course people went. Gormenghast's daily life provided too little in the way of satisfying recreation, especially in these troubled times, and while there were other taverns, this one was at the deepest darkest core of the castle's rich underground life.
Most members of the secretarial staff, knowing that their bread was thickly buttered on a good and enviable side, obeyed the edict. Some went in disguise: the persistent pressure of their rigorous lives, the tension of constant requirement to live up to almost impossible standards, demanded release. One of these was the First Assistant Master of Ritual Bardock. Bardock was of a family who had provided minor functionaries to Gormenghast's civil service for centuries. He had been a quiet but likeable boy at school, making pocket change doing other boys' homework, and had known Titus Groan briefly although the earl was a couple of years his junior. They had never exactly been friends but they had gone through the usual process of fighting each other on the schoolyard, swapping stories, and trading the sort of junk boys collect. The day Titus had inadvertantly told the Master of Ritual to shut up then refused to apologize, Bardock had no idea that he himself would one day rise to a position of near authority in the Master of Ritual's office. He realized that as circumstances stood, he could probably rise no higher, and that Magnus Steerpike would inherit his father's position. But he also knew when the Protectorate was formed and Steerpike named Lord Governor of Gormenghast, that seismic shifts were beginning, and whatever would ensue, he would do well, whether in a Republic or a remade monarchy.
His own sentiments leaned towards the republic. Yet he kept those sentiments hidden behind a taciturn efficiency. He was just past thirty by this time, a wiry, athletically built young man with a slightly long face and smooth copper-brown hair. Because he had known Lady Fuchsia's brother, he had on the rare occasion that he had had to present himself at the household been made welcome there by this woman who struck him as charming, even ravishing, but somehow sad; there was something about her that reminded him of his mother after her younger sister died suddenly.
The din of music and a hundred simultaneous conversations, the dim firelight and the fog of smoke from the hearth where the coarse pub fare available was prepared, made it hard to recognize anyone in the Black Swan, which was an asset given its status. Amazingly enough, after somewhat too much to drink and a day spent transcribing lengthy edicts requiring references from ancient faded parchments, Bardock heard a voice, from a room beyond the bar, that he knew well and hardly expected to hear in this place. He sat on a bench with a couple of his colleagues, who were trading notes on servant girls, and he heard a female voice loudly complaining.
"Here: I'm paying your gambling debts now but not again. I promised I would help out but not this."
A dull male voice belonging to one of the proprietor's assistants replied, "Oh well, we can't all insinuate ourselves into the households of the high and mighty, can we?"
"I got where I am by my merits -- " and with this the voices trailed away in their argument. Bardock drained the last of his glass of ale and on pretext of getting another, stood up slightly unsteadily and made his way around the bar into a dark corridor where rain got in. In a moment, a little figure in an enormous shawl emerged, and he cleared his throat to get her attention.
"You're not supposed to be here," said Meredith, taking in the unusual appearance of this man with uncombed hair, wearing a baggy knitted jumper and a coarse overcoat.
"Well, if you don't tell on me, I won't tell on you." Bardock grinned, something he did seldom but quite charmingly.
Meredith almost smiled. They walked out onto the terrace.
"My brother works here," she explained. "I was born not far from this tavern. When I moved above stairs (which incidentally our mutual employer knows, so don't feel I'm confiding anything), I promised I'd help out. But he gambles, and he loses."
"Maybe you and I gamble some other way," Bardock suggested.
At this Meredith did smile, but enigmatically. "Tonight I shall let you see me back to the house, if you think you can find your way to your own apartments afterwards. Perhaps some other time...." and she let her voice trail off, and she also let him place his hand over hers.
Part Two
Theoretically, the army now answered to Steerpike, but even as it remade itself along more modern lines, it grew to resent what it sometimes called the private army of the secretarial staff. He realized that one of his tasks during the Protectorate (and he was racing against time; Magnus would complete his education soon and Gertrude would insist he be earled) was to extend his bureaucracy to cover and subsume the army. He considered the threat of a military coup (although he knew of no one in the ranks who could suggest any sort of inspiring commander) more real than the so-called popular rebellion the army was always trying to convince him of. And yet the rumours of a popular rebellion were not only military. Consequently, one afternoon, between public functions, he summoned Bardock to his office and closed the door.
As usual, he gestured his assistant into a chair but remained standing; since Steerpike was not a tall man, it was a way of maintaining the advantage of height over his staff. The two had an excellent working relationship, and when the Protectorate was established, since Magnus was now in line for the earldom, Bardock had been more or less elevated to Master of Ritual (though Steerpike kept the title, along with his several others), and the assumption was that after the transition, with the elimination of much of the ceremonial nature of Gormenghast's life, he would become something like Secretary of State. Bardock was intelligent enough to recognize in Steerpike one of those people whose own interests are paramount, but respected his consistency and efficiency. At this particular meeting, Steerpike handed him a folder of army memoranda.
"The army plans to raid that miserable den of iniquity on grounds it's a cell of the popular rebellion," he told Bardock.
"When?" Bardock asked evenly.
"They certainly don't plan to tell me. They won't even give me a list of their suspects."
Bardock glanced through the memoranda, which managed to be both strident and vague. He decided to take a calculated risk. "Well, the army would know if they meet at the Black Swan."
"What do you mean?"
"They spend enough time there themselves."
"And how would you know, Mr. Bardock?"
The future secretary permitted his master a small guilty smile. Steerpike was not surprised, so was not disappointed. "I shall overlook your transgression," he announced. "In fact, I want you to continue going, and I want you to report back to me who you see, who they talk to. No one in the office will be disciplined as long as this investigation goes on, and it will go on until I get what I want, which is something to nail the army on. I want this army replaced: at the moment, the law does not permit me to do so, although unfortunately it did permit the changes that occured."
"And what about the popular rebellion?" Bardock wondered, knowing Meredith's brother was part of it, according to people he talked to at the tavern.
"What about it? There's no threat there. These peasants know the consequences of sedition; they'll talk a lot into their drinks but they'll do nothing. However, I don't want the army using them as a challenge to the authority of this office. Is that clear?"
**********
The raid took place two weeks later; Bardock had just arrived at the Black Swan and only just managed to get out of the way of the violent and noisy sweep. Once his way was clear, he bolted back to his apartments, changed into his uniform, and reached the Governor's office just as Steerpike arrived from his own household to meet the military representative with his report. This time, a list of names of those taken in for questioning was provided, seven in all, all but one men, and that one made even the Governor stop in his tracks. Coldly, he directed the military representative to bring him a full and detailed report of the results of all interrogation upon completion, then he directed Bardock towards his office, thrusting the list at him as they strode along. Bardock was not quite so surprised, having feared that Meredith would be on this list along with her brother.
"She's not a traitor, sir," Bardock insisted. "Her brother works there. She pays his gambling debts: that's the only reason she's ever been there. She finds it repellent."
"I would not have permitted her to tutor my son if she did not have such discernment," Steerpike replied, slamming the door shut and hurling the report across the room. Without even bothering to tell his assistant to sit down, he faced him squarely and demanded, "How much haven't you been telling me? Are you protecting her? I had no idea you even knew each other."
Bardock was also intelligent enough to realize that the Governor was one of those resolutely monagamous men who despise all physical weakness in others. So again he took a calculated risk. "I'm not protecting her. It's simply the truth, sir."
Meredith had no idea what part of the castle she was taken to for the interrogation. They removed the rag from her eyes in a small, windowless room, with a heavy door into which a small grate had been set, but this was closed and the door was bolted with iron. The only furniture was a narrow bench, where she was roughly shoved upon arrival, and since her wrists were clamped together, she could only awkwardly push herself up so that she sat with her back to the wall. Even though she could only see blurred outlines without her spectacles, she realized that at least two of the soldiers, who variously interviewed her over a period of hours she could not measure, had been lovers of hers. So they were in the army now. The army was considerably different now; in the uncertain days of transition from Gertrude's long regency to the protectorate, it had become less a standing unit of primarily ceremonial nature, and more an increasingly autonomous force, an indication that dissent was believed to be widespread in the structure of the castle. At any rate, their knowledge of her only meant the terms of their abuse were more explicitly vile, and their treatment of her rougher. Yet she said nothing, no matter what they threatened her with, no matter how hard they hit her, and her only reaction came when one hauled her up and pushed her against the wall, and said, well, we might as well get some use out of her, and yanked up her skirt. She screamed so loudly and repeatedly that the duty captain of guard for the dungeons arrived and ordered the interrogation stopped. Meredith shrank back onto the bench, and the three soldiers stood staring, breathing heavily, as the old captain scowled fiercely at each in turn, and finally said, we can't risk this. And so she was left there for what seemed like another immeasurably long time, during which she sat as if paralysed on the bench. They had left her no light.
Finally, the iron bolt was drawn again and the door opened, admitting a dull glow from the hallway and a solitary arrival. Even in the blurred almost-darkness, Meredith recognized Steerpike, and she began to shake, though she was so determined not to appear to be shaking that she became even more rigid. He affixed a light to a bracket on the wall, then closed the door. Meredith refused to look up. He walked deliberately across the room, assessing her appearance and calculating the severity of the interrogation, and even if he had not read the report, he would have known she had said nothing. He smiled, mostly to himself. Then he cleared his throat softly, but she still refused to look at him. So he set the tip of his swordstick gently under her chin and tilted her head up. She wrenched away, but not before he realized that there was much dried blood around her nose and mouth, one eye had been blackened and one side of her face badly bruised, and her dress had been torn at one shoulder. He frowned at this: things had got out of hand after all, and could have gone irreparably too far. Well, there would be hell to pay for someone.
He draped a rough blanket he had brought over her shoulders, then sat down on the bench beside her, located the appropriate key in a pocket of his coat, and unlocked the metal cuffs. She hardly had the strength left to rub the circulation back into her wrists, so her scarred hands lay limply in the lap of her skirt. He had brought as well a flask of water, adulterated with a little brandy, and realized she would be unable to hold it, so he held it to her mouth, assuring her: it's neither drug nor poison, trust me on that. So she drank greedily because her throat was almost unbearably dry, and then she was able to draw the blanket more closely around herself.
"How much longer is this going to last?" she whispered.
"That depends. My report says you told them nothing. True?"
She nodded, staring down at her hands.
"Good girl. I expected no less of you. I did not authorize them to be quite so enthusiastic, however. My apologies."
She did glance sideways at him at this. "You really do believe we're after the same thing. You're only in this for yourself. You've spent twenty-five years aiming for one thing: absolute control of Gormenghast. The House of Groan is dead; long live the House of Steerpike."
"You're in it for Magnus. Is there really any difference?" All levity had gone from his voice; his mouth had become a hard line.
"I have no objections to Magnus governing if that is what he wants," said Meredith. The mere effort of speaking was beginning to hurt, and she drew a long shaky breath.
"He's my inheritor. I have a line now. And watch what you say to me; I might yet decide you're more dangerous than useful."
Meredith winced at a sudden sharp pain in the side of her head, and she brought one trembling hand up to her bruised and swollen temple and jaw. "So what happens now? Am I made an example of? Do I get off with banishment or will you hang me?"
"No evidence exists to justify either. Yet. I'll finish my enquiry then you'll resume your duties in my household and we will proceed on schedule. So please don't play the willing martyr." Steerpike gave her a handkerchief, then got up and went to the door to gesture someone in from the hallway. "You may stay with the doctor pending the completion of this enquiry," he told Meredith. "I'll have to interview you formally in the interests of completion, but will wait until you've recovered."
He directed his men to be in his office within fifteen minutes, then abruptly left. Bardock was one of them, and was horrified at Meredith's appearance. He crouched down in front of her and insisted, "Tell me who did it. There's a few of us who could make them sorry. Unofficially, of course."
Meredith managed a crooked approximation of a smile. "Come on: official or unofficial, nothing escapes unnoticed here."
He hesitated, then shrugged and nodded, and helped her stand up, mostly supporting her very light frame with one strong arm. The other man led the way and even though she was still shaking, they made fairly good time to the doctor's house, where Prunesquallor was waiting for them. Bardock allowed her arm a brief subtle pressure in releasing her, and she glanced quickly at him and nodded, then followed the doctor into his bright clean parlour. He indicated a comfortable chair, then opened his bag and sat on a broad ottoman facing her.
"I'm terribly sorry," she murmured. "This is an imposition."
"My dear, think nothing of it," Prunesquallor replied gallantly, though he too was horrified, and mystified as well: how had this girl acquired such enemies? And despite the seriousness of the accusation on which she had been taken in, why was Steerpike, of all people, so determined to protect her? For Magnus? Somehow the doctor doubted the motive was sentiment: if the Governor genuinely believed her to be a traitor, he would expect Magnus to accept whatever judgement she earned. Was he protecting himself as well? This thought the doctor firmly filed away: it was treasonous even unspoken. Meanwhile he worked deftly at examining her and treating her injuries: applying antiseptic, bandaging and plastering, making a couple of tiny stitches above one eyebrow. Finally he snapped his bag shut and smiled kindly at her. "There. Within a few days you will be your lovely self again, and as soon as I can I'll have a brand new pair of spectacles for you."
Meredith felt she should say something, but her throat was constricted and her eyes were achingly hot; she was almost surprised, the sensation was so unusual, to feel a stream of wetness that wasn't blood move down her face and over her mouth, salt-tasting. Her face clenched up and for the first time since childhood, she found herself crying, huge ugly sobs that racked her small body. She bent forward, burying her face in her hands, and the doctor put his arms around her, and held her against one shoulder through the long process of releasing years of grief.
"I'm really so sorry," she managed at last.
"No: you needed to do that."
"Sometimes I just want to die; it seems such a long time to live, always alone, never being loved."
"Magnus loves you," the doctor suggested.
"I'm his tutor."
"Meredith, you fear affection too much: you shun it like the plague. But there are people who care about you. I do. Lady Fuchsia certainly does. The Governor evidently respects you, if he would choose to protect you rather than accept the army's word against you. And Magnus loves you. He adores his mother, as who wouldn't, and he respects his father, but you've given the world to him."
Meredith contemplated all this, but was suddenly exhausted, too tired to push her thoughts to any sort of conclusion, so she sighed deeply and said only, "And if I were a rebel?"
"Are you?" the doctor asked carefully.
"I wish I were." She closed her eyes, and wanted very badly to sleep. Prunesquallor had given some thought to this eventuality, and had decided to put her in a little room that had belonged to a very old housekeeper who had been in his service when he first became the Groans' personal physician forty-odd years ago (was it that long?). The opulence of Irma's old room might unnerve her, and he somehow did not want her in Steerpike's long-ago headquarters in his house, and this little room was quietly attractive, with a many-paned window overlooking the garden, a large wooden rocking chair painted a bright lilac blue, and a fine cream linen counterpane embroidered in tiny silk flowers. He decided to loan her a pair of his own pyjamas, and while she had a bath and got into bed, he rang for a tea-tray and brought it up to her, coughing gently outside the slightly ajar door to announce his presence.
He set the tray down beside the bed, where she was already settled, looking incongruous if not quite lost in his chartreuse and beige striped silk sleepwear, with her black hair combed straight back from her damaged face. After pouring her a cup of tea, he sat down and opened a book.
"I shall sit up with you till you fall asleep," he said, knowing she had been confined to a dark cell for hours. "I found this collection of very amusing stories, and perhaps you'll let me read you one or two."
When Meredith opened her eyes again it was daylight; the window had been opened and the pale green curtains billowed slightly in the breeze. After a moment, she remembered where she was, and then she remembered why she was here. Pushing back the blankets, she sat up, and found at the foot of the bed a long burgundy velvet dressing gown; on the little table next to her bed there was a new pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. She put these on, blinked a couple of times to let her vision adjust, then put on the dressing gown and knotted its cord around her waist. Peering into an oval mirror on the wall above the dresser, she saw a pale, dark-haired girl with a battered face, and she seemed to see her for the first time.
She followed the sound of a violin being played, a sweet air like a spring morning after rain, and she thought of a song she used to sing to her little sister, the last of her siblings. Prunesquallor was in his study, but had left the door open and she stood leaning on the frame, hands buried in the large pockets of the robe, watching him. Although she had trained herself not to think of her siblings any more, and had not thought of her little sister in at least twenty years, this music did not make her feel like crying; instead she smiled, and when the doctor brought the piece to its gentle finale, she murmured, that was lovely.
"And there you are," Prunesquallor declared. "I would say good morning, but that would be a falsehood, since it is not quite a quarter to four in the afternoon and I was about to ring for tea. Did you sleep well, my dear?"
"I've never slept into the afternoon in my entire life," Meredith admitted.
"Well, you are certainly young enough to cultivate some such indulgences from time to time. Don't you get a day off?"
"I do. But I don't spend it in bed." This was technically correct, since in recent years, Meredith's clandestine encounters had rarely involved anything as formal as a bed.
"Well. Look on this as a little holiday, then."
She came into the room, and started turning over the sheet music on the doctor's stand. "I thought it was more like house arrest," she said. "I do feel you're being taken advantage of."
"I could have declined," the doctor told her. He watched her turning the pages, and changed the subject by asking her, "Do you like music?"
"Yes. I can sing a little; Magnus has been learning piano and wants me to learn some songs so he can accompany me."
"Magnus has great musical ability."
Meredith considered this. "That's actually one part of his education I've not handled: his father teaches him music. The odd thing is, his father can play long extraordinarily complicated pieces from memory and it just sets my teeth on edge to listen to him. It's like listening to the history of Gormenghast: all detail, all very precise. But Magnus can play a little folk song on the pennywhistle and it's all I can do not to cry."
"How hard you are on yourself," said the doctor. "Perhaps I could teach you some songs while you're here. In fact, here's the tea tray, and you're still looking very pale and worse for wear, so why don't you sit down in this big chair and I will play you a melody or two that would be quite within your abilities."
Part Three
Meredith had been more badly injured than she had suspected, and the hours spent in a damp dungeon quickly generated a flu with a high fever. She spent three days in bed; Prunesquallor sat beside her for hours at a time, and kept a lamp burning in her room all night, since she had grown terrified of darkness. Knowing his was a bachelor's house by now, Fuchsia sent over one of her maids to help out during the day, and the maid dutifully reported back every evening. A dreadful quietness fell over what some called the royal household and others the Governor's household. Steerpike spent long hours in his castle office, painstakingly putting together the details of the rebellion rumours, drawing in loose threads, finding out what he could about the interior organization of the army. Magnus was simply told that there was suspicion of a revolutionary movement within Gormenghast, and that because of her association with certain people, Meredith had been taken in for questioning, and now was very ill and was staying at the doctor's, and he was to continue his studies on his own and could not go see her until her fever had broken. Magnus asked fewer questions aloud now; he kept them inside, realizing they would not be answered, and this frustrated him. He also realized that his father had grown even more distant, and his mother had grown unusually quiet.
On the day Meredith recovered sufficiently to get out of bed, she realized someone had delivered a small satchel containing some of her personal effects, including one of her better jackets and skirts. She owned few clothes: four or five more or less identical suits to wear every day, all very plain though well tailored and fitted, and all in black cloth, of various weights to suit the seasons. There was also a black velvet suit with a slightly fuller skirt and some slight embellishment around the collar, which she wore to the most significant public ceremonies she had to attend with the household. She had asked the doctor not to throw away the dress that had been torn while she was in prison, and after it had been laundered and dried and pressed, she spent some time repairing the broken seams. So they would sit in the parlour or in the garden, he reading aloud and she sewing. In the evening, he worked on teaching her a couple of songs.
He had never heard Meredith sing, and nothing in her flat manner of speaking indicated she could, but she had a clear strong voice and perfect pitch. And he could see why she was hesitant to sing, because she felt every note; she stood with one hand clamped fiercely on the other arm, literally holding down her emotions.
She felt she should do something specifically for him to show her gratitude for his kindness, so one day when he was called out in the afternoon, he returned to his house and was rather surprised at not seeing her in the parlour or the study or the garden or her room. Had she been summoned back to the Governor's household? Had she been summoned to the Governor's office for the last stage of her interrogation? Prunesquallor had explicitly sent word to Fuchsia via her maid that he wanted Meredith to recuperate for at least one full week before she was subjected to any more questioning. He stood in the hallway, listening to two distinct trains of sound: one was strenuous chopping; the other light humming. When he recognized the tune as one of those he had been teaching Meredith, he frowned and went back to the kitchen part of his house; there she was, with an apron over her dress and her sleeves rolled up and her hair pushed back behind her ears, and she was expertly cutting up vegetables while various things bubbled aromatically on the stove and the cook rolled out pastry.
"Well!" said the doctor. "Now this is a talent of yours I would not have suspected."
Meredith almost smiled. "I've not had anything to do with it for a long time, but I guess certain skills once acquired stick with you, so this should be edible."
"And where did you learn the culinary arts? Surely they don't make you do that as well as teach Magnus."
Meredith did smile at this. "'They' certainly don't. This dates back to my first apprenticeship."
It was like a long-sought puzzle piece falling neatly into place. All her reticence, her wariness, her deliberate plainness, her discipline, her heartbreaking dedication and efficiency made sense now. And as it turned out she was an extraordinarily good cook. When they were alone at dinner, after Prunesquallor had finished praising her on this account, he ventured to ask, "And did the Governor know of your previous life when he engaged you to tutor his son? For that matter, did you know of his?"
By now Meredith trusted the doctor and didn't spend quite so long weighing her words as she did with others. "I think he had to find out who I was. I changed my name when I moved above stairs. We were only in the same kitchen for a short while and I was very small then; he was the same age as one of my brothers was then. They knew each other. He was a very solitary child; his parents were both dead by the time he was apprenticed so he'd largely grown up on his own. That in itself was hardly unusual. All of that was a long, long time ago. It's never been an issue in the household: in fact, the past is not much discussed in the household. As for my brother, he died when he was fifteen in an accident. I don't think of him now. I try not to talk about him."
"Then we won't," said the doctor.
Ten days after she was sent to the doctor's house, two men from the Governor's office arrived to escort Meredith there for what was described as an interview. She made herself as presentable as possible, then quickly took leave of Prunesquallor, thanking him for his kindness; he wordlessly took her shoulders in his hands and kissed her forehead and the side of her mouth. He stood in the doorway and watched as she took her place between these two tall and expressionless young men, and she looked very small and fragile as they departed. All the way to the expanding edifice that housed the Governor's headquarters, she said nothing. It was a damp day, overcast if not dark, with a threat of rain in the heavy air. Her hair and her jacket seemed to cling to her; the relative coolness of the great stone hall was a relief.
Steerpike stood before his desk in his vast office, arms folded, waiting; the only other occupant of the room was the designated recorder. Meredith made her perfunctory bow from just inside the doorway; he nodded briefly to the guards to dismiss them, then gestured her to approach and indicated a chair. He remained standing, and collected a large portfolio from his desk; inside seemed to be several sheets of printed paper. Proffering this and a pen to her, he directed her attention to a form at the top of the first page, and a line for her signature, explaining that she had to give formal consent to the terms of the interview, and acknowledge the presence of the recorder and the fact that all she said would be kept on file. Meredith applied her tiny script to the line, capped the pen and laid it firmly on top of the form. He returned the pen to its slot, then turned over this first page.
The questions were straightforward and routine, and they were numerous, although unlike those of the military interrogators, they never demanded she admit to revolutionary activities or accuse others of them. She was asked about her work, her reading, her associations outside of work; she had to provide a detailed description of the tavern, as well as scores of people she knew or had known, and the circumstances in which she had met them. She had to describe the circumstances of her arrest, incarceration and interrogation. In all instances, the amount of detail required was exacting. Yet she never grew confused; her voice remained clear and level and expressionless; her cold stare remained even. Through all of her responses, Steerpike made scrupulous marginal annotations to the questions, and remained expressionless himself, and returned her stare as levelly. Finally, he scrawled something at the base of a page, snapped shut the portfolio and returned it to the desk, where he collected something else: a small notebook with a dull green cover, fairly thick and old and battered, inkstained and much scribbled in, even to writing between lines and sideways on the page. This she instantly recognized as her personal journal, and at this for the first time her eyes widened slightly.
"On my order and as part of our investigation," said Steerpike, "your rooms in my household were searched. On the whole, your possessions are as circumspect as you are, except for this. I have one or two questions concerning it, which for the moment I want left from the official record of this interview."
The recorder took his cue and left the room.
"And have you read it?" Meredith enquired. Her throat was dry and her voice beginning to rasp a little.
"In its entirety. I admire your discretion; one would expect something considerably more vivid from someone of your experience." He rifled through the pages, but carefully, so that the few leaves and petals she had pressed inside in an earlier part of her life remained intact and in place. "You seem considerably more interested in writing about your aspirations and your ideas. Well, we've gone over that: we both know we both want a different Gormenghast, maybe not exactly the same vision, but the same general idea. What does interest me in this book is this list inside the back cover, of eight names. Those names have never figured in this enquiry. Are they code names? Who are they? Who are you protecting? There's only so far I can protect you: I am not the entirety of Gormenghast, and the army, for example, would be very interested in the existence of any sort of revolutionary cell operating by code names. I told you I had insufficient evidence to banish or hang you: don't disappoint me now, Meredith. Just tell me who these people are."
"And if they were revolutionaries known to me?" she asked carefully.
He shrugged. "That might be more useful to me than to the army, and I might ensure that they never gain access to this book of yours, and you might be able to name your reward once the Republic is declared."
"But what would happen to them?" she asked more pointedly.
"Would it matter?"
"It would if I were loyal to them."
"Don't be sentimental now, Meredith."
She glared at him, clenching her hands in her lap, but she said without a break in her voice, "I'm not. I have spent as long as you've spent taking over this place training myself not to be sentimental about those eight names. They were my brothers and sisters. One, at least, you knew. Four I watched die. The others I still support. I only look at those names when I feel I've lulled myself into some sort of acceptance of the way my life has worked out. I want no part of your republic. I remain in your household because I love your wife and son. But I despise you from the depths of my soul and I don't care what you decide to do to me: you have no conscience to settle it on."
For a moment, the shadow of a smile passed over his face, but it was a bitter smile. He eased himself away from his desk and walked deliberately towards one of the room's windows, where he rested his hands on the frame and stared outside at the leaden sky. "You don't despise me," he said quietly. "How could you remain in my household for so long. Even your affection for Fuchsia or Magnus would break under the weight of that much hatred. You despise yourself because your ideals never got you nearly as far out of the kitchen as what you might call my conscienceless pursuit of my own interests. And my own interests have earned me a name, a household, a lineage, all that is Gormenghast, but I have remade Gormenghast for all that. I have accomplished or will accomplish in my lifetime all your frustrated dreams. You've held yourself back by this religion of self-hatred: you had your hair cut off as a punishment when you were thirteen and so you make yourself as ugly as possible. You can't have children and so you decide you deserve to be shoved up behind every wall and stable door by the entire servant population of this place. The point is, Meredith, what is done to any of us can be paid back, but pay it back where it belongs, not to yourself. I have put myself where I am required to be respected and, better still, to be obeyed. Not bad for a kitchen brat, wouldn't you say?" He left the window, crossed the room again, braced his hands on the back of her chair and leaned down so that his mouth almost touched her ear, and he whispered, "So what do you want, Meredith? Whether or not you believe in my republic, you will live in it. But where? What can I give you?" And abruptly he pulled away and resumed his position at the front of the desk, arms folded, enigmatic smile in place.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you," said Meredith.
"To an extent. After that extent your obstinacy simply irritates me. Be more careful of your halfhearted associations and declarations: if I were to find out you were part of any organized revolutionary movement, I would have no difficulty hanging you. As it is, I will tell you this: I believe there is a faction in the army that believes Titus Groan is still alive, and which will refuse to support the new constitution. That might prove a much worse threat than your disorganized rebels ever could."
He touched a button on his desk and the recorder reappeared, with a freshly printed document in a folder bearing the Governor's insignia. Steerpike glanced through this transcript of the official interview, then signed it, then had Meredith sign.
"I have here as well," he said, "a form requesting prosecution of the men who assaulted you in prison. Do you want to have them investigated and charged."
Meredith considered this, then replied quietly, "No."
"May I ask why?"
"Because I know them both from another life."
"I see. Well, that's probably just as well."
He summoned Bardock to escort her to the Governor's household, and at that Meredith realized she had passed this test. She was still weary from her illness, so rose carefully and did not bow but stared very hard at Steerpike as she passed him on the way out of the office; her stare was no longer cold or glaring or fierce: it was simply curious.
Yet she was enraged and deeply hurt, and she started across the courtyard at such a pace that Bardock reminded her he had fifteen minutes to get her to the household and return, not three. At this she took a deep breath and slowed down, though she resisted any attempts at conversation. She resented being called ugly even by one of the very few men in Gormenghast she had never herself found desirable; it had never been her intention to be ugly, only to present herself as plainly and neatly as she could, to belie her origins when noticed and otherwise to be invisible. And she had never considered her secret life degrading: it gave her something to do. It used up her surplus energy. It got her around the castle.
And she dreaded confronting Fucshia and Magnus after her incarceration; she did care what they thought of her. However, as soon as the front door of the house opened to admit her, Magnus appeared and hurled himself at her; he was still small enough to make this gesture without self-consciousness or embarrassment, and Meredith was surprised at herself for locking him in her arms: she had only ever picked him up a few times when he was very small. Even as Fuchsia came out of the parlour, he was already demanding his quota of information: "What happened? The doctor said you were very ill: are you all right? Why did they arrest you? Why did they beat you up? Can they do that? Do you think there'll be an actual rebellion or a military coup? Why can't they just wait for all the changes that are going to happen anyway? Is it true that there's going to be an education reform committee and you're going to teach at the Gormenghast school?" (Oh, Meredith thought: so that's to be the carrot.) "Is it true that you and the doctor practiced some songs for us?"
"Magnus dear," Fuchsia said softly, "I think Meredith has had to cope with enough questions already today and we should let her rest." Then, to Meredith's even greater surprise, she found herself in Fuchsia's arms, being asked even more softly, "Are you all right?"
"Yes, thank you, your ladyship," Meredith murmured.
Fuchsia smiled. "I think when my husband is not at home, since he's a little more precise about protocol, you might simply call me by my name. I hope he wasn't too hard on you. It's appearance more than anything: the army can't think we're protecting you."
"Nothing I can't deal with," said Meredith.
In the afternoon, a servant arrived from the doctor's household, returning Meredith's change of clothes in a carpet bag that also contained the burgundy velvet robe, and a large folder of sheet music. In the evening, Magnus insisted on trying out one of the simpler songs, and after a couple of attempts could play it with sufficient confidence that he invited Meredith to sing her part. Fuchsia was half-asleep on a long divan, so Meredith left the armchair where she had been reading, stood by the piano, absently smoothed her dress and closed her eyes. She had no idea how her audience reacted to her; she only felt the intense sadness of this little ballad of lost love. In fact, both Fuchsia and Magnus were startled by her voice. After the song was repeated, she opened her eyes, and realized Steerpike had arrived, and stood in the doorway waiting for her to finish.
His only visible reaction to her performance was a slightly arched eyebrow; he crossed the room to where Fuchsia sat, and on the way paused to hand Meredith her battered green journal: you left this in my office, he told her expressionlessly.
"It's not needed as evidence?" Meredith asked.
Steerpike shook his head, and Meredith made some brief gesture of excuse to the assembled household, then went to her own room. As soon as her door was closed, impulsively she hurled the book across the room; it hit the wall and fell open on its broken spine on the stone floor. With trembling fingers she unhooked her jacket and skirt and bodice, and as she undressed, she found herself uncharacteristically regarding her reflection in the oval mirror on her wall. She tried to see why anyone would call her ugly. She tried to see herself as her lovers had, and she realized of course that mostly they had seen nothing beyond her gender and her willingness. She felt like crying again, but though her nose and eyes grew hot, she kept herself calm, and once she had put on the dressing gown Prunesquallor had decided to give her, she bent to pick up her journal, and she smoothed its pages carefully.
Part Four
The image had come in a number of ways; this time he was taken from a dark, damp room that seemed to breathe in whispers, at some hour shortly before dawn, by guards so undistinguised as to seem faceless, or perhaps they were faceless or masked. He took his place among them and they started down the long corridor to the spiral staircase that led up to the courtyard. And he thought, I will only go forward now; there is no returning. Although the sky was still a fairly deep cobalt, it seemed to glare after the darkness below. All of Gormenghast, it seemed, was ranged around the courtyard; in the middle of the square were the block, and the executioner. When the guards halted, he took off his coat, and handed it to one, and as protocol and his rank (not just as a traitor, but as a significant traitor) demanded, he nodded to the executioner. (He would always try to discern individuals in the watching crowd, and sometimes in the centre he saw Gertrude and the Captain of Guard, once with Fuchsia and Magnus, and sometimes he saw only the principal officers of the army, and once he saw Bardock, with Meredith behind him.) Then he glanced up very quickly, and was aware of the awful glare of the sky, as if it were fire. His arms were fastened behind his back, and he was made to kneel and his neck was positioned on the block. He took a deep breath. He knew exactly the weight of the axe, and its velocity; he could predict with absolute precision the moment when he heard its approach, and then he sat up abruptly, desperately swallowing air, drenched in cold perspiration, heart pounding, eyes wide open. For a long time he had no idea where he was, and then his vision adjusted enough to trace outlines and he knew he was in his own room, in his own house, and Fuchsia was asleep, a compact mound of velvet and hair on her side of the bed. Yet as always he began shaking so violently the vibration woke her, and she murmured his name, a drowsy question, then extended a hand to move up his back. It's nothing, just a nightmare, he said in a voice that wasn't quite his, but he lay down again and let her put her arms around him, and sometimes he would fall exhaustedly asleep, almost immediately; at others, he would want her so badly that even he would sometimes forget the doctor's schedule and they would end up taking the risk she wanted. He never told her the nature of his nightmares (that he consigned to his locked-up memoranda), but she alone knew he had them, just as she alone (except for Prunesquallor), once she had convinced him she was not afraid and would not be repulsed, knew how badly he was scarred. And again, he felt the terrible power she still possessed, these nights when he would feel his only safety lay in his ability to fall asleep with his face burrowed in the silklike masses of her black hair.
**********
Fuchsia spent increasing time, not so much visiting with the taciturn Gertrude, as occupying the same space, sometimes exploring her old rooms, where the cupboards were full of the fraying yet ornate dresses she had worn through her young womanhood, and sometimes she would take one out and spread it over the table, tracing her finger around the intricate embroidery, feeling the delicacy of the silk.
"What happened to that girl?" she asked her mother once, when Gertrude happened to be with her. "What happened to the girl who wore these dresses?"
Although she was not yet sixty, Gertrude had aged after the announcement of Titus's death. Her dark-red hair began to fade to a dull copper, and she only wore her old mourning gowns. This titular dowager status did not suit her: she saw the life she had married to preserve ending, and the castle becoming a cold, orderly, soulless place. She spent her increasing amount of available time almost exclusively with her cats and birds and stories; even the doctor saw less of her. She could not permit herself to develop the unusual affection she actually felt for Magnus: whatever his lot, it would be a hard one, and he could not be encouraged in sentimental reliances. And yet, on some truly subterranean level, she felt great tenderness for her grandson, and for her daughter, and she smoothed the ruffled hem of the gown Fuchsia was examining.
"She grew up," the Countess said quietly. "She married and had a son, who will now be the next Earl of Gormenghast."
"I never wanted that for Magnus."
"What we want and what is expected of us are generally quite far apart."
Part One | Part Three | Prequel | Table of Contents
Copyright 2001-04 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.