The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [388]
The circumstances having gone so far beyond his control there was no longer any question of choice. It was no longer a case of killing Barquentine. It was a case of saving himself. His plans had gone so wildly astray that there was no recovery. He was ablaze.
There was only one thing he could do. Saddled as he was, his limbs were disencumbered. He knew that he had only a few moments in which to act. His head swam and a darkness filled him, but he began to run, his burned hands spread out like starfish at his sides, to run in a dizzy curve of weakness to the far end of the room – to where the night was a square of darkness. For a moment they were there, against the starless sky, lit like demons with their own conflagration, and then, suddenly they were gone. Steerpike had hurdled the window-sill and had fallen with his virulent burden into the black waters of the moat below. There were no stars but the moon like a nail-paring floated unsubstantially in the low north. It cast no light upon the earth.
Deep in the horrible waters of the moat the protagonists, their consciousness having left them, still moved together as one thing like some foul subaqueous beast of allegory. Above them the surface water through which they had fallen was sizzling and steam drifted up invisible through the darkness.
When after what he could only recall as his death, Steerpike, his head having at last risen above the surface, found that he was not alone but that something clung to him below the water, he vomited and of a sudden, howled. But the nightmare continued and there was no answer to his howl. He did not waken. And then the excruciating pains of his burns racked him, and he knew it was no dream.
And then he realized what he must do. He must keep that charred and hairless head which kept bobbing against his breast, he must keep it below the water. But it was not easy for him to fasten upon the wrinkled throat. The mud had been churned up about them, and the burden he carried was, like his own hands, coated with slime. The vile arms clung about him with the tenacity of tentacles. That he did not sink like a stone was a wonder; perhaps it was the thickness of the water, or the violent stamping of his feet in the stagnant depth which helped him to keep afloat for long enough.
But gradually, inexorably, he fought the old head backwards, his fierce hands clenched on the gullet strings – he fought it downwards, down into the black water, while bubbles rose and the thick and slapping sound of the agitated water filled up the hollow of the listening night.
There was no knowing how long the old man’s face remained under water before Steerpike could feel any loosening of the grip at his waist. To the murderer the act of death was endless. But by degrees the lungs had filled with water and the heart had ceased to beat, and the Hereditary Keeper of the Groan lore and Master of Ritual had slid away into the muddy depths of the ancient moat.
The moon was higher in the sky, was surrounded by a sprinkling of stars. It could not be said that they gave light to the walls and towers that flanked the moat, but a kind of dusk was inlaid upon the inky darkness, a dusk in the shape of walls and towers.
Exhausted and in terrible pain, Steerpike had yet to swim on through the scum and duckweed – to swim on until the