by Gisèle Baxter
If I swallow anything evil, put your finger down my throat
But if I shiver please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat -- Pete Townshend, "Behind
Blue Eyes"
Prelude
One day Magnus had wandered far off beyond the outer dwellings, and found himself in the woods approaching the mountains. He had ridden here recently with his mother, but it was much longer as a hike, and so he stopped to rest and look around himself before returning to the castle. He tested a number of fallen branches before finding one that approximated a sturdy lance, and invented some sort of game in which he battled an enemy by repeatedly whacking this weapon against a tree trunk while uttering threats. Suddenly he realized he was being watched, and turned abruptly to see a stranger in road-dusty travelling clothes. The stranger was a young man, maybe around the same age as Mr. Bardock, his father's assistant. He had odd eyes that seemed to be some sort of dark blue but it was hard to tell in the shadows; he had long tousled light-brown hair and a full beard. He regarded Magnus as if trying to place him. Magnus ended his game and returned the stare suspiciously but also curiously.
"Hello," he said. "Who are you?"
The young man shrugged. "Oh, just a traveller. I thought I'd have a look through these woods while resting my horse at the stream up there."
Magnus knew the stream; it was an inevitable stop on rides through this part of the castle environs. "Where are you travelling to," he went on.
"Hmm. Not sure; I'm mostly travelling to see what there is to be seen, and I like to let it surprise me." The young man smiled. "Maybe I'll go over the mountain. Do you suppose there's anything interesting there?"
Magnus shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't been there."
"You're not a traveller. Where do you live?"
"I live over there." Magnus pointed towards the castle. "In Gormenghast. Do you know it? My mum and I come riding here all the time; sometimes my father comes with us but mostly he has to work."
"I've been in the castle. That was a very long time ago. You must be in school now."
"No: I have a tutor."
"And do your parents know you're all the way out here? Do they worry about you?"
"No. Not really. Though I should go back soon."
"I see. Well, let me fetch this notebook you dropped over here." Magnus generally carried some sort of notebook with him; the young stranger bent to pick it up where it lay, dogeared and much scribbled in, under a tree. It had a plain light blue paper cover on which had been scrawled in pencil, Magnus Steerpike, with a detailed sketch of a firebreathing dragon besieging a tower underneath. The young man regarded the name for a moment, and during that moment his smile faded, then returned as he handed the book to Magnus. "I doubt I'll be back in these parts for a while," he said. "Sometimes I almost think I'd like to visit the castle again, but there are some things I have to do first."
Magnus had no idea what any of this meant; his restlessness was not yet of the adult variety that could focus itself in such ways. So he shrugged again, and said, "Well, have a safe trip." And then he turned abruptly and began making his way back home.
Part One
"I want you to do something for me," said Meredith.
Bardock lay on his back on the grass in a sunlit patch near the edge of the woods, which after a couple of unusually cold nights had trees touched with the first red harbingers of autumn. At some point in late spring, Meredith had conceded that she felt what she called something exclusive for him, and had stopped accelerating her pace when he tried to walk beside her. Now they spent whatever odd moments they had available together. Since she had never experienced this degree of attachment for any man she was frightened by the intensity of her feelings, and yet, she told herself, he was fundamentally kind and his innate good humour was a relief in this place. On this warm late summer afternoon, he had both his coat and shirt open, and he had almost fallen asleep, only partly opening his eyes now and smiling up at her as she sat beside him.
"All right, what is it?" he asked.
"I want you to find out what happened to my brother. After we were all arrested."
"The army classified all the reports except yours; you're very lucky you're part of the Governor's household."
"I'm surprised the army doesn't consider us the royal household," said Meredith.
"The army doesn't recognize Magnus's claim. It's a blood issue, of course: needless to say it doesn't endear them to our mutual employer." Bardock extended a hand and began idly tracing circles around the small buttons on Meredith's jacket. "According to the official statement, they're all still in prison. I know: it's been a month. I'll see what I can find out. My father knew Captain Maddox slightly. Otherwise, I'll see what the talk at the Black Swan is." He began to push the buttons back through their buttonholes and Meredith lowered herself into his arms. He smiled at her. "You always look so serious. I suppose I would if I were you. Now: to another matter. As you must know, I'm going to have a pretty good position once things turn around: at least the equivalent of Master of Ritual under the old regime. I'll be entitled to my own household. So we should be married."
"But things haven't turned around yet, and you have a hereditary position," said Meredith. "I can't have children."
"Don't tell me that was a condition of your employment."
"No. I had a miscarriage when I was sixteen. I was working in the laundry and fell down a flight of stairs while carrying a heavy basket. You couldn't imagine the blood. As a result of botched surgery -- well, try to imagine surgery of any sort down there -- I can never have children. I'd spent four months dreaming of a little girl I would name Sophia."
Bardock stroked the sides of her face and her hair with his fingertips. "Let's get married anyway," he said softly. "I keep thinking of a house in the castle with us in it. The household of the Secretary of State for the First Republic of Gormenghast."
Meredith regarded him especially seriously. "Do you really believe in the republic? Do you want it?"
"Yes to both." And very lightly he made the rebel knock against her shoulder.
Part Two
Two developments had marked the summer. The first was the development of the popular rebellion, which was mostly organized below stairs but had a considerable amount of sympathy upstairs, largely for its commitment to the dismantling of Gormenghast's hereditary feudal system. Steerpike knew of this development, even knew that both Bardock and Meredith were involved, but permitted it to continue, realizing the rebels might actually give him the leverage he needed against the army. The second was the discovery by Dr. Prunesquallor that Fuchsia's progressive detachment, melancholy and need for sleep were the result of a progressively degenerative condition of the heart. The irony of this was almost too much for the doctor to bear; when he told Meredith, he could not help sobbing profusely in her presence.
**********
Captain Maddox had, upon his father's death three or four years into Gertrude's regency, inherited an army or perhaps more properly a detachment of guard which for a long time had enjoyed an almost purely ceremonial function. Several motives prompted his massive restructuring. First, he was still far too young at forty-nine to be content with only the occasional search party to justify any training. Second, he disapproved entirely of the marriage of a daughter of the line to someone outside her station, especially someone so completely outside her station as the current Master of Ritual, whom he despised. Maddox had no great love for the Groans, whom he considered congenitally stupid, though he conceded that Titus was young and spirited enough to amount to something with guidance. He approved of the sort of monarchical feudalism that had governed Gormenghast for the past several centuries: in fact, he thought the ceremonies should be performed with the utmost vigour and pageantry, and that the hereditary nature of all significant positions should be maintained. And so, he gradually began to remake the army into something more appropriate as a castle guard: he recruited younger volunteers, developed a stringent system of training, reopened the armouries and refurbished the weapons. He established his offices here. Maddox had spent his long apprenticeship training himself, so that he was an excellent horseman and swordsman; otherwise he had spent his time indulging the tastes he had developed in a prosperous household. He had never married, though he had several mistresses he tended to callously abandon when they showed signs of sentimental attachment. He was of medium height, with sleek pale-brown hair and a small neat moustache, sharp features, and eyes the colour of water under ice. He wore an elegant uniform, and carried a stick with an ornate silver handle set with one perfect sapphire.
The small respect he entertained for Bardock's father, a reasonably efficient minor civil servant, did not extend to Bardock himself, and their interview was cordial but brief: the Governor's office had the military report on the status of the rebels, and nothing more remained to be said. But at some later date, at the Black Swan, Bardock found the edge of his jacket pulled by a little, elderly man with unusually powerful shoulders and arms. A former blacksmith reduced to serving as a warder in the dungeons, this little man had a face of wrinkled tan leather, offset by a thick thatch of steel-gray hair and bright blue eyes. Until recently, the warder business had been ridiculously dull. Now, he could with the plainness of someone who has seen too much in a short time, deliver the information that Meredith's brother had been killed in the course of his interrogation, and that the others had been summarily executed.
A sense of waiting hung over the castle, a palpable if invisible force, unacknowledged yet present. Meredith did not dare to mourn publically; in fact, she did not dare to react except in her lover's arms, and in doing so she also agreed to marry this man she trusted and loved with all her soul. It was not to happen. Bardock was struck cleanly in the back by an assassin's dagger, in a dark alley not ten yards from the Black Swan. But the assassin was not found and the army determined the motive to have been robbery, and Maddox's report made reference to his assumption that the Governor's staff was not supposed to be anywhere near this underground den. The sense of waiting cast its pall over Bardock's funeral, after which, despite its being a day of rain, Meredith simply walked away from the castle without explanation, keeping a hard pace towards the mountains. She had no idea what she was doing; she only wanted to get to some place where first, she could not see even so much as a turret of Gormenghast, and second, she could without witness howl out her anguish. She clambered over rocks, tearing her dress on the thorny brush, scratching her face and hands, until at last, exhausted, she sank to her knees and she had no breath to howl. And like Magnus jousting with his imaginary enemy, she too had a witness; she looked up to see, just above her on a little pile of granite, a gaunt solemn figure regarding her.
Shocked out of caution, she blurted out, "Who the hell are you?"
The old man bent with hard effort in his stiff joints and picked her up. And of course she knew him; she remembered him from her very early days in the Groan household, before Titus was born and when Fuchsia was still an unruly, sullen girl. He stared very hard at her, then nodded and pointed in her face.
"Remember you," he said.
"Well, I certainly remember you, Mr. Flay. I don't believe in ghosts, so I know you're real."
He nodded his head towards some unseen point beyond the pile of granite where he had stood. "Take you to cave: fire there," he said. "Wait for rain to end; eat and drink; tell me everything."
Part Three
The Regency Council made its move abruptly, on an unusually cold autumn morning shortly after Bardock's murder. Captain Maddox's chief lieutenant and an armed escort of ten presented themselves at Steerpike's office, with a notice of his arrest on charges of murder and sedition. He regarded them calmly and asked, on what charges. The lieutenant ignored the question, and directed him to leave his sword and dagger on the desk and accompany this escort to military headquarters for an interview. Steerpike surrendered his weapons with exaggerated deliberation, never letting his hard stare leave the lieutenant, then rose, rounded the broad polished desk, and took his place among the guards. When told to place his hands behind his head he did so, but he resisted any attempts to lay hands on him, stared straight ahead, and kept pace with the guards across the courtyard, where they met a contingent of at least thirty soldiers en route to the Governor's offices: so this was a coup, and the army was establishing its occupation. The guards entered the North Wing of the castle and led him through the labyrinth of corridors and down the winding staircase to the darkest and most isolated of the dungeons.
Captain Maddox finished a working lunch in his office in the refurbished armoury. He set his ornate silver cutlery across a broad plate from a set of crested three-hundred-years old china, then drained the remainder of a glass of excellent honey-coloured wine. As always, his officers forwarded their compliments to his personal cook. Smiling graciously, he dismissed them, then rang for his principal lieutenants: now, and only now, would he see to business he had put off as one sometimes does an indulgent treat, to heighten the sense of indulgence. Collecting his cape and stick, he directed his personal escort towards the dungeons.
One problem with having a broad and specific knowledge of procedures and techniques is the predictability lent to certain situations. This occured to Steerpike as he watched Maddox enter the cell. He did not know exactly how long he had been waiting, not much more than an hour. The room had been completely dark, very damp and very cold, although he was perspiring heavily and while he did not want to characterize what he felt as fear, he supposed there was enough at stake to permit him to feel it. The guards had taken away his coat and shirt, and he had been chained to the wall, with his arms fastened to an iron ring sufficiently high above his head that he was kept constantly tense, and with a broad heavy iron collar bolted around his neck. Presumably they wanted some sort of information that would discredit him and link him to the popular rebellion (a thought which in other circumstances might have made him smile). Yet another contingent of the army would be tearing apart his house, while the occupation forces would be doing the same to his offices. But his admission would be necessary as well, and whether he cooperated now or eventually, he would ultimately be executed. He decided not to cooperate, and suddenly remembered the first thing Meredith had said when he had gone to get her out of custody, her question of how much longer the interrogation would last. The duration of this would depend entirely on what he could withstand. In his forty-five years he had had to draw on considerable resources of courage and endurance and stoicism and sheer physical will. Those resources would probably not be enough here, and yet the interrogators would not let him die until with the last strength in his hand he signed the confession.
At Captain Maddox's entrance, torches were placed in iron sconces set in the stone walls; one was near enough that Steerpike was aware of its warmth along one side of an arm. Maddox approached deliberately, his expression a combination of smug irony and stern appraisal. He halted to one side of his prisoner, and since Steerpike could not turn his head, he could only just see him at the periphery of his vision.
"Well, Mr. Steerpike," said the captain of guard, "your long climb has finally ended, and all your aspirations have only brought you here. You've always struck me as an intelligent man, despite your origins; surely you must have realized that challenging a state which has endured for centuries was a very foolish thing to do. The rather more surprising foolishness of others has played into your hand up to now: the Countess should never have allowed her daughter to marry you, and that brat of yours should never have been acknowledged or brought up in the castle. That she was so hasty to acknowledge her son's death and elevate your position simply confirmed she's become an old fool and the only reason she's not down here herself is that the Earl might on his return harbour some sentiment for his mother. Your idiot wife will die soon anyway so she's not a concern. Magnus is a problem, undoubtedly, since he's a pretender to the throne, but his future is open to negotiation. Of course the difficulty might be that you regard these people as purely functional in your schemes."
"Magnus is the legitimate heir to Gormenghast in the instance of the death without issue or near male relative of the earl," Steerpike said levelly.
"Oh, don't quote castle law to me; I know how well you know it and this is hardly a forum for showing off. In the opinion of far too many of us, he's the half-royal brat of an ambitious servant."
"So what do you want to know, Maddox?" Steerpike wondered.
"I don't want to know anything. I simply want a few things confirmed, especially concerning the death of your predecessor, also concerning one or two other suspicious events over the past several years, and especially concerning the position in your household and your office of two of the leading members of the popular rebellion. One is dead; the other we can't locate."
Steerpike just managed to catch Maddox with his peripheral vision. "So why not just have done with me and say I confessed?"
Maddox had to smile at the sheer brass of this. "Because I not only want you dead, I want you utterly discredited. I don't want you to be a martyr to this movement that I think I know you well enough to realize you hold in considerable contempt, though you do plan to make use of it. Until that happy day when you are utterly forgotten, I want your name to be synonymous with treason and ignominy. I want all of Gormenghast to regret you weren't strangled at birth."
If he did not cooperate, and if no hard evidence could be found, he realized he would be tortured, and he knew the precise number and variety of implements available. Very briefly, he reflected that however much he was discredited, he would after all be dead, but some rational part of his mind that persisted in working reminded him that if by any chance he got out of this, having confessed to anything would be fatal in other ways. He had gambled before: in trading on Flay's hatred of Swelter, in making his access to the castle Fuchsia's attic, in placing himself at Gertrude's mercy over his impregnating Fuchsia. The stakes had always been the only stakes that mattered: his life. But the odds here were impossible to calculate.
Part Four
When Meredith returned to the castle, the old warder signalled to her from a doorway where he was lurking. In the half-light of the dull day, she stared down into his wizened old face with its fringe of iron-grey hair, and listened to his terse message. She put some coins in his hands and pointed him in the direction of the outer dwellings.
She knew she had only a matter of hours to accomplish much. First, she made her way by a circuitous route Magnus had shown her to the Governor's household, where the army had already ripped apart most of the main floor. By a broad ledge, she entered Magnus's bedroom through one of its windows; she found Magnus sitting cross-legged on his bed. He glanced up at her sharply, wide-eyed but calm.
"Do you know what's happening?" he demanded.
Meredith took a deep breath, and replied, "Two things: the army under its Regency Council has staged a coup and is in control of the Governor's office. The popular rebellion has also been launched and a joint force of rebels and the Governor's staff is in occupation of various other parts of the castle. They have the advantage of numbers and castle support, if not weapons, so the army has to move very fast and ruthlessly to solidify its position." Meredith spoke softly but quickly and distinctly. She assessed Magnus's ability to deal with things, then dropped to a crouch by the bed and added, weighing her words as carefully as possible, "Your father is under arrest. He will be treated far worse than I was when I was in prison. I'm not sure I can do anything for him. However, I do need to get into his office and take something from there that could be used as evidence, and I shall have to take a weapon. Then I'm going to get your grandmother to a place of safety, and then I'll come back here. Don't ask me any more questions. Just trust me. Where is your mother?"
"With the doctor," Magnus whispered. "She went to the top of the stairs to tell the army to leave and then she collapsed."
Meredith briefly embraced Magnus. "Stay here until the doctor tells you it's safe," she told him. "Keep the door locked."
Outside the room, she peered over the banister at the activities below, then went into the master bedroom. Fuchsia lay propped against a stack of pillows on the enormous bed. Her skin was the colour of bleached bone. Her eyes were underground lakes. Prunesquallor sat beside her, an arm around her shoulder; he held her hand and could say nothing. However, he rose at Meredith's arrival and approached her until they stood with faces nearly touching. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.
"Let her see Magnus, but tell him she's very ill and needs to rest," Meredith murmured, almost under her breath. "The army has Steerpike in custody. Don't tell her unless she starts pleading for him. Then you might as well tell her he's dead because he likely will be, if he's fortunate."
"She's very concerned about her mother," said Prunesquallor.
"Lady Gertrude will be safe. I can't say more. Keep the army downstairs for five minutes. Trust me."
Meredith forced the lock on Steerpike's office door with a hatpin. Once inside, she made her way first to the wall of swords, and chose one light enough for her to wield and sharp enough to do its job if needed. She affixed the scabbard to her belt, which she used to hitch up her skirt to make running easier, selected a dagger and stuck it in the top of one of her riding boots. With the same hatpin, she breached the desk and yanked open its drawers until she found four plain paper-covered notebooks filled with amazingly microscopic, neat script. She tied them together with a length of string, and deposited them in one of the deep pockets of Bardock's greatcoat. Everything in the office she left exactly as she had found it, and she carefully relocked the door as she departed for her next destination, the West Wing and the Groan apartments.
The Countess sat in near darkness, wearing the rusty black gown she always wore now; she drank tepid tea and murmured gently to a thrush pecking at some torn lace on her sleeve. At Meredith's arrival, she looked up as if perturbed by the interruption, and mildly surprised that the young woman seemed out of breath and was wearing a sword. Meredith did not bow.
"Lady Gertrude," she said firmly, "the structure of the castle as you have known it, as your family has known it for centuries is going to fall. However it falls it won't be a good place for you."
Gertrude arched an eyebrow, and lowered her arm to let the thrush hop onto a little pile of seed on a round, engraved-brass tray. "My son is dead," she replied. "My daughter...."
"Lady Fuchsia collapsed shortly after the army arrived at her house. Steerpike is in prison, and before you even think serves him right, remember that your daughter married him not to save her name or yours, but because she loves him, and he is Magnus's father, and you do love Magnus, I know you do." Meredith was fighting down a strong desire to take Gertrude by her massive shoulders and soundly shake her out of this torpor.
But in fact, Gertrude had looked up abruptly when Meredith had announced Fuchsia's collapse.
"She is very concerned about you," Meredith added.
"And what do you suggest," said Gertrude.
Meredith swallowed, and chose her words carefully. "Could you forgive a very old man who once lost his temper in your presence if he were nearby and could take you to a place of safety?"
**********
She let the cats out after the countess, and watched them swarm towards the forest, and she told them silently, run away from this place, learn to scavenge and to hunt, breed with the marmalades and tabbies, the grays and blacks and calicos, grow strong: let your independent spirit teach you to survive.
Part Five
Late in the evening, snow started falling, large flakes that drifted lazily to earth, like feathers, only just beginning to accumulate as the detachment from the Provisional Government of the First Republic of Gormenghast arrived to break into the dungeons. They were not a promising-looking group: several of the scrubbers and stablehands and kitchen apprentices seemed scarcely into their teens and had no idea how to hold the weapons they had collected from the armoury. Neither did their older colleagues, but they had at least the fierceness learned through their hard lives. The various staff and officials of the now-defunct Protectorate fared best of all: they had been required to learn basic weapons skills. Since many members of this unholy alliance knew each other from the Black Swan, they worked together well. Besides, they all had a motive: for Bardock, for Meredith's brother, for the other rebels, for the little warder who had been their informant and who had, not long after Meredith had seen him, been killed.
Among this group was a lean, angularly bony young man with a thick mane of brown curls; his glasses perpetually rested at the base of his large beaklike nose so that looking through them required some convolutions of the head, and mostly he stared over them with perfectly round watery blue eyes. He wore a grey suit over an ornately patterned silk shirt and had a long fringed cashmere scarf looped around his neck; he carried a small black medical bag.
Captain Maddox was growing frustrated and had begun to pace; by this point Steerpike was probably too worn out for it to occur to him that he should confess. Maybe if he had a little rest, the prospect of resuming the interrogation would in itself be sufficient motivation to write and sign the confession. Then, of course, he could be safely dispatched and that chapter of Gormenghast's history could draw to its overdue close. During his meditations, one of his officers arrived and told him very quietly that a detachment of rebels was on its way. Maddox decided he'd better go assess the situation, but first returned to his prisoner.
"Now, Mr. Steerpike, I'm going to leave you to think things over for a while," he said calmly. "And think very carefully."
"Could I have a glass of water," Steerpike managed.
"When I get back," Maddox replied patiently, "we will sit down, and put together a document that you will sign, and then you may have a glass of water. In fact, then all this will be over. Do you understand?"
Steerpike hesitated, then nodded. Maddox smiled, and left the room. He and his escort of guards just reached the top of the winding staircase when they were met by the rebel detachment. None was to leave the castle dungeons.
When the rebels entered the cell where Steerpike had been held, he was still conscious, and his first thought was that now Maddox would have him sign the confession even if he had to drag his hand across the page to do so. That would make the document illegal, but that hardly mattered. The irony, of course, was that even if Titus Groan were alive and in the vicinity, he would not want to return. Absurdly Steerpike wondered whether he would face a summary or a public execution, and which he would prefer. But then the scarf that had been tied over his eyes was removed, and he realized that the various restraints were being unlocked, and he recognized several members of his staff. Two of them took his arms across their shoulders to support him, and he managed to tell them to take him to his house before he finally permitted himself to pass out.
Some time later, he woke up on the little couch in his dressing room/office. The inside of his mouth was raw but no longer dry and blood-tasting. His wrists and hands and ribs had been bandaged; there were plasters on his jaw and shoulders. Two basins on a nearby table were filled with bloody water and crumpled cloths. Pushing himself up with painful effort, he found himself staring at the odd young medic. At this point he discovered that his voice was mostly gone and he could only manage a quiet but harsh, rasping whisper: who are you?
"Bertram Candlemas; Dr. Prunesquallor's principal assistant," the young man announced. "Please don't move suddenly, sir; you've been very badly injured."
He was in his own house; so why was he in this antechamber (which had after all been thoroughly ransacked) and not in his bedroom? And had the Regency Council spared him for other unimaginably sinister purposes, or had it worn its honours only for a day? "Where is Prunesquallor," he wondered.
Dr. Candlemas swallowed, and blinked his round pale eyes a couple of times. "He has had to attend to your wife. She collapsed shortly after the army arrived. She is in the master bedroom; your son is in his own room. We managed to keep the army out of both places."
Gesturing to the couple of members of his personal staff still in attendance, with the deft unambiguous physical shorthand they had come to know and sometimes dread, Steerpike had one of his spare uniforms brought to him, and though even this fine fabric was almost unbearably abrasive, began to dress himself against the doctor's objections. "Are we under arrest here?" he demanded.
"No. No, of course not." Candlemas was already acquiring some of his master's old irritatingly bland sang-froid. "The Transitional Committee of the Provisional Government of the First Republic of Gormenghast will request your continued service, on the recommendation of our late secretary, although we will require that you term yourself President rather than Governor, that you relinquish your title, and that you permit democratic elections of a governing council. You are, so far, the only one who can trace a path through this labyrinth."
And he had not, Steerpike thought, confessed after all. He reached for a flask of water on the nearby table and took a long drink, then made the incredible amount of effort required to stand fully, gained control of his expression and straightened his shoulders as much as possible. Turning to his assistants, he said, "Go have my office ready; I shall arrive at dawn. Draw up an edict dismantling the Gormenghast army and suspending all ceremonial functions. I want a full list of everyone arrested by the army and everyone in the army currently under arrest, and I want an inventory of whatever you people took from the armoury. Oh: and I want a formal meeting with this transitional committee."
We will, he told himself, see just how many concessions I shall make, and just how desperate these people are to have this place governed by someone who knows its innermost secrets and is willing to do the worst of the work. For the moment, however, he had to defer all this work, and once his staff was dismissed, went promptly to the master bedroom. The room was very dimly lit and quiet, and cold after the little office, and the cold suddenly made the various forms of pain worse, so that he started to shake. Prunesquallor sat by the bed; Fuchsia was apparently asleep. The doctor rose carefully, and he stared very hard at Steerpike, huddled up in his coat, trying to warm his hands under his arms, and the doctor remembered the day of fierce blizzard almost twelve years ago, when a much younger man had come to tell him his wife was in labour. Only this allowed him to soften.
"Tell me the truth," said Steerpike in his ghost of a voice.
"It's a matter of hours, if that."
Steerpike nodded. "Would you leave us, please," he requested. When the doctor was out of the room, he sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Fuchsia gravely. If I had a heart, he reflected, perhaps it would break now. Almost simultaneously he realized he would never again fall asleep with his face in her hair, and he touched the side of her face very lightly with his blistered fingertips. She opened her eyes, and what Prunesquallor had said was confirmed, but she smiled as radiantly as she ever had at him, until she could focus her vision enough to see what had happened to him. The doctor had finally felt he had no choice but to answer her repeated enquiries about her husband, and had said simply, he's been arrested. In a surprisingly reflex, he had actually laughed like his long-ago self from her tumultuous but relatively uncomplicated youth, and had added, but he's so clever I'm sure he'll manage a way out of this. Now Fuchsia did not have the strength to raise a hand to return Steerpike's gesture. He hesitated, then bent forward to kiss her lightly on the mouth.
Her voice was as fragile as his. "When did you -- "
"Not long ago. They gave me a pretty hard time, but I guess I'm all right. I'm going to be President of Gormenghast."
Neither really had the stamina to talk, and yet he felt this was a situation in which something should be said, but all he could manage to say was, I don't want you to die, Fuchsia. She did not quite smile, but she gestured him forward to kiss her again, and when he put his arms around her she felt like air. She drew him down against her, and resting her hands on his back, she could feel the bandages through his coat.
"I'm not going to die," she replied softly. "I'm just very tired; I want to sleep. Remember how we used to fall asleep after, when we were still all wrapped up in each other's arms? It was the only time you ever seemed vulnerable. You have to rest now; you have a lot to do tomorrow."
When he opened his eyes again, he was aware that the room was even colder and Candlemas was drawing him up and back away from the bed. He stood looking down at Fuchsia, breathless, motionless, and he was transfixed by this awful finality until Candlemas drew him firmly out of the room. Outside Prunesquallor sat on an uncomfortably stiff high-backed chair. Without quite meaning to, the two men automatically found themselves staring at each other. Prunesquallor's eyes and nose were red and moist.
"I suppose you blame me," said Steerpike.
Shamelessly, the doctor began weeping again into a huge dotted-silk handkerchief, so profusely that he had to remove his spectacles and put them in a pocket of his coat; he stared at this indistinct image above him in the dimly-lit corridor and he said impulsively, "No. It was one thing even you had no way of knowing. But it's the irony: that her heart couldn't sustain her and she had more heart than any of us." She had, the doctor reflected, such capacity for love that she could love even you, and the dreadful cruelty of the unspoken thought shocked him; he glanced at Candlemas, who took his cue and directed Steerpike back towards his office with a gentle firm warning that if he did not rest he would start bleeding again.
Very late in the night Meredith returned to the house. No fires had been lit, and she shivered in Bardock's coat. Keeping one hand on the hilt of her sword, she crept down the corridor, past the servants' quarters, to the heavy wooden door that led downstairs. She made the rebel knock. After some rustles of whispered hesitation, the door opened, and she found the staff huddled together in the kitchen. On the stairs she towered over them.
"Is it over?" the cook asked her.
Meredith nodded. "Get back to work," she directed. "I want fires in the parlour and master bedroom, and lamps in the master bedroom and main hall. I want the normal operation of this household to resume."
Turning abruptly, hearing to her satisfaction the hushed commencement of work, she proceeded upstairs to continue her reconaissance. She found Magnus asleep in his own room, and she stoked the fire in his little grate and drew a second blanket over him. Smoothing back his hair from his forehead, she bent and very lightly kissed him, then left, turning the handle of his door as quietly as possible. Past the top of the stairs, she saw a faint line of light at the base of Steerpike's office door. She did not knock; she simply drew a deep breath and opened the door, uncertain what she might find, and her fingers tightened on the sword hilt.
He sat at his desk, arms folded, head tilted slightly to one side. He stared at nothing. On the desk, the surface of which seemed remarkably clear against the chaos of the ransacked office, stood an open bottle of brandy, which had been untouched. He was impeccably attired in a clean uniform, hair brushed, nails filed. The only visible scar of the torture he had undergone was the one along his jaw. He did not look around until she said his name in something like her ordinary speaking voice, then he pushed the chair back and directed his gaze at her, and what she saw in his face she had only imagined in childhood dreams of hell. He regarded her torn garments, Bardock's coat, her own scars, the sword whose absence he had noted.
"So have you come to kill me after all?" he asked with remarkable calm.
Meredith carefully replaced the sword against in the wall rack, and withdrew from one of her coat pockets the stack of notebooks she had stolen from his desk, and for the first time he realized why the army had after all been unable to pin Barquentine's murder and various other acts of sedition on him. She held out the books and he extended a hand to take them.
"So now you know," said Steerpike tonelessly, but keeping her in his gaze. "Who contracted you to take them?"
"No one," Meredith replied.
His voice was so hoarse that speaking was an effort that reminded him too much of screaming. But there was much he wanted to know: "Then why?"
"Because you have to govern Gormenghast, for the time being anyway," Meredith said practically, though something of the intensity in her expression that had awed the kitchen staff reached even him. "Because he believed you were the best man for the job, in spite of whatever else you might be, and because I loved him. I am not without my doubts. I fear the extent and cruelty of whatever revenge you'll take will mean that people will come to hate and fear you as much as they respect and obey you. However, I made my decision, and your secrets are as safe with me as mine with you. By the way, where did you find Axforth?"
Steerpike turned the stack of books over in his bandaged hands, but did not undo the string that tied them together. "I have my methods. You realize of course what our greatest threat is."
"Not that Titus is still alive somewhere and might return."
"Right so far: his sister's marriage gave him the excuse he wanted to turn his back on this place. And the rest of it?"
"That Titus might have a son."
"Exactly. So, what will you do now?"
"Dr. Prunesquallor has offered to take me in; so have the Bellgroves. Or I could return to what's left of my family."
"Magnus is only twelve. Your obligations to him -- "
"My obligations? I no longer consider myself a servant. There is not much more I can do in the way of educating Magnus. He really should go to school for the next two or three years then choose his path; I suspect he would rather compose and perform music than govern Gormenghast but he is still very young. He was asleep when I saw him. Have you told him?"
"Look at me, Meredith. Can you even imagine me doing so?"
"You're his father," Meredith said simply.
Steerpike reached for the bottle of brandy; Meredith impulsively took it from him and stoppered it. "You've neither eaten nor slept properly in God alone knows how long. You'll only make yourself ill."
For a long time he said nothing. Then once more he fixed his basilisk's gaze on her, and he said in his jagged whisper, "Why there's that in me which can't destroy myself I have no idea. I think perhaps I'll close up this house for a while, extend my headquarters to include apartments for a reduced household. I would like to maintain the house for Magnus; it is part of his legacy and I doubt the republic will allow him to inherit the Groan apartments. But I spent every night of my married life here."
"She did love you," said Meredith.
To this Steerpike could make no reply. Forcing himself to stand meant a thorough and vivid return of the pain, but he did so anyway, and gestured her to follow him, down the cold hall to Magnus's room. She tapped lightly on the door, then opened it. She lit the lamp on the mantel, then went and sat down on the side of Magnus's bed and very gently touched his shoulder. Rolling over and pushing back the mound he had made of his blankets, he blinked several times through his tousled hair and looked up first at her and then at his father standing nearby. He smiled with some relief upon seeing Steerpike, who decided he could not manage a crouch and lowered himself with some difficulty onto a white wicker chair.
"Are you all right?" Magnus asked. "What happened?"
"Of course I'm all right," said Steerpike. "And as it turns out Gormenghast has become a republic. But we'll talk about the implications of that tomorrow. You do know your mother was very ill; did the doctor let you see her?"
Magnus nodded. "Did you get back on time?" And so he knew. His eyes were very wide and glassy; he said in an odd voice, "I had a dream that I was at the edge of the lake, and she was on the other side; I could see her clearly because she was wearing a bright red dress. And she was waving to me and trying to say something to me but I couldn't hear her, and when I woke up I realized I wouldn't hear her again." He stared at his father's expressionless mask of a face, with its hard dark eyes, and he began to breathe heavily; Meredith shifted herself so that she could put her arms around him, and he clung to her in spite of himself.
From Meredith's Journal
Six months following the establishment of the Republic, I was permitted to meet every other day with a group of girls to teach them basic literacy and mathematical skills. I had three groups that rotated. The first meeting took place on a clear day, mild and perfect summer weather; my group of twenty-five met me in the courtyard and we walked down to the lakeside to get acquainted. Some seemed scarcely five years old; some were at least thirteen. All wore shabby dresses; all had long hair. They were thin and sombre and frightened of me, and they clung to each other in clusters, unused to the light and air and space of the castle grounds. We sat on the grass, and I unrolled some charts with large letters and numbers represented on them, and I told them who I was and that I had been born where they lived now, and had been apprenticed variously as a laundress, a pastry-cook, a tailor, a saucier, and (at a very low point) a scrubber. Then I told them I was going to teach them a code, and if they used it wisely, they could learn what they needed and wanted to know, and they could make choices about their lives.
Mostly we meet in an old dining hall where we listen to the rain drilling outside; it has become an extraordinarily rainy year. On alternate days, I am preparing Magnus to sit the final examinations with the current senior class at the Gormenghast school. He is three years younger than the youngest member of that class. He sings with the Gormenghast choir now, and next year will begin studying advanced piano and composition with a cousin of Dr. Prunesquallor. He is becoming very serious, and has started combing his hair, which is almost to his shoulders, but he made me a silly little drawing for my birthday, of me reading from Irma Bellgrove's etiquette book to my girls.
I am gradually getting ready to move, most likely to the doctor's house, though for the moment I still occupy my room in the servants' hall of what is now the President's household.
Just as I did shortly after my visit to the Gormenghast dungeons, Steerpike became very ill, with a high fever. In spite of myself, I took turns with Dr. Candlemas looking after him, and sat up with him through hours of delerium in his little office, where he now slept, and changed the dressings on what really were quite terrible injuries. He was an awful patient when he did come out of the fever, sullen and bad-tempered, but I have never seen such a tenacious instinct not just for survival but for self-preservation. At one point he ordered me to do something in a tone of voice that made me deliberately ignore him so he hurled a glass of water at me and I marched over to his bedside and took him firmly by the shoulders and glared at him.
"Look, Steerpike," I said. "If you want me to do something, you ask. Politely. You don't tell. And don't threaten to fire me because I'll gladly go and I have places to go now."
He glared right back but he almost smiled. He lost a lot of weight during his illness but was back at work soon, skeletally gaunt yet still fiercely impressive in his austere black suit, and it was a relief to have him back out of the house for several hours a day. I took it upon myself, after he decided to close up most of the upper part of the house, to supervise this task, first in the master bedroom, then in Fuchsia's dressing room. The carpets, draperies, tapestries, counterpanes and linens were all rolled up or folded into trunks, and taken with the furniture, including a large wardrobe containing Fuchsia's dresses, to the Groan vaults. I packed another trunk of baby clothes and jewellery and scarves and shawls; quite unexpectedly and of course utterly without expression, Steerpike told me to keep one item for myself, and I chose (uncharacteristically) a crimson velvet shawl with a rich silk paisley lining and a long satin fringe. I found a little glass owl on the mantel and put it on the mantel in Magnus's room; I also put the portfolio of drawings in Magnus's room, and we chose two to frame and hang there, one to hang in the parlour, and a little sketch to go in my room. I catalogued the drawings, so realized when five went missing; one, a watercolour of that room where Gertrude kept her cats, turned up over the desk in Steerpike's office, and the others had been shoved into an old book of illustrated stories I can't remember as part of Magnus's library, but which stays at one side of Steerpike's bookcase. He refuses to talk about Fuchsia.
Sometimes when he comes in very late, Steerpike simply falls asleep in the parlour on the green brocade sofa; sometimes I fall asleep reading in the big armchair there. I don't trust him. I don't really know if he mourns his losses so much as he simply finds it difficult to adjust to them. But he was right and I really don't despise him. I resent him. We antagonize each other. But the household has in a way resumed its unstructured life that somehow seemed to work for its odd assortment of inhabitants, and even after my work with Magnus ends and I move on, to Prunesquallor's house or to marry Bertram Candlemas or to become a sort of companion to Irma Bellgrove, whom I've grown to quite like, I will probably come back to visit when Magnus is at home.
I believe in the republic though its birth has been very harsh and difficult and Gormenghast has been through three transitional committees by now but is still no closer to a constitution. There are a lot of variables and a lot of potential problems, but still I believe in the process because I know it will lead to something better and because he believed in it, I know he did, I remember him telling me how much he did, and his wonderful clear grey eyes would crinkle at the edges as he looked up at me smiling, the sun on his face, and that's how I remember him and I loved him, I loved him, oh God how I loved him.
Part One | Part Two | Prequel | Table of Contents
Copyright 2001-04 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
About the author: G.M. Baxter makes her living teaching university-level literature and composition courses on a contractual basis; in her spare time she writes fiction, watches movies and designs stuff (she knits and is learning to sew). She currently lives in Vancouver.
Last updated 2 August 2003 by G.M. Baxter.