The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [436]
The Doctor asked no questions. He knew that this strange business would unfold its meaning as the minutes went by. Titus was in no state to give an explanation now. He had begun breathlessly to tell the Doctor of how Flay would leave a trail of chalk, but had ceased, for there was no time to act and to explain together. Before they opened the front door Dr Prunesquallor drew the blind of the hall window. The quadrangle though still extremely dark was no longer a featureless and inky mass. The buildings on the far side loomed, and a blot of ebony blackness that appeared to float in the gun-grey air showed where the thorn tree grew.
Titus was at the Doctor’s side and peered through the pane.
‘Can you see him, Doctor?’
‘Where ought he to be, my boy?’
‘Under the thorn.’
‘Hard to say … hard to say …’
‘Easy to tell from the other side, Doctor. Shall we go round by the cloisters …? If he’s gone there’s no time to lose, is there?’
‘I take it from you that there isn’t, Titus, though what in the name of guilt we are doing only the screech-owl knows. However, away!’
He stood upon his toes in the hall, and lifting his arms, stretched them before him. Between his outstretched fingertips the brass poker was poised as though it were a mace, or some symbolic rod. His dressing gown was corded tightly at his slender waist. His delicate features were set in an extraordinary expression of speculative determination both impressive and bizarre.
He unlatched the door and the two of them set off down the garden path. The Doctor in his slippers, Titus in his socks, with his shoes slung loosely around his neck, they moved rapidly and silently along the skirting cloisters until Titus, gripping the Doctor’s arm, brought his companion to a halt. There was the thorn, an inky etching against the rising sun, but the silhouette of Steerpike was missing. This was no surprise for Flay had also vanished. Without loss of time they sped across the quadrangle, and in the early light were able at once to see the dim sign of a chalk mark on the ground at their feet. Titus went down on his knees to it at once. That it was a rough arrow pointing to the north was apparent enough, but there were some words scrawled below which were not so easy to decipher, but at last Titus was able to disentangle the roughened phrase ‘every twenty paces’.
‘“Every twenty paces” I think it is,’ Titus whispered.
Together they counted their steps as they moved gingerly to the north, the pokers in their hands, their eyes peering into the darkness ahead of them for the first sign of Flay or of danger.
Sure enough, at roughly the twentieth pace another arrow pointed them their way and showed Titus’ interpretation of Flay’s crude lettering to have been correct. They went forward now with more confidence. It seemed certain that they must come first upon Mr Flay, and that so long as they made no sound they could do no harm by moving swiftly from one arrow to another.
There were times when these arrows were of necessity closer together; when the paths divided, or there was any kind of choice of direction. At other times, when, with high flanking walls on either side, or a mile of doorless passageways ahead, and where there was no alternative direction to confuse his followers, Flay had not troubled to make his chalk marks for long stretches. There were times when the length of these stone arteries was such that, all unknowing, the Doctor and Titus had more than once set forth along a fresh corridor before Steerpike, at the other end, had made his exit. Flay alone could hazard the guess that before him and behind him his friends and his enemy were all at once beneath the same long ceiling.
Rapid as Titus had been in calling the Doctor yet there was a great space between them and Mr Flay, for no sooner had Titus left Flay’s side than Steerpike had yawned and sped into the night.
As the light grew it became easier for the Doctor and Titus to accelerate their pace and to see what