The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [450]
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, ‘but there’s nothing we can talk about!’
Titus said nothing but leaned against a wall. She looked so much older. His heel began to work away at a piece of loose plaster above the skirting board until it came away.
‘I can’t believe he’s dead,’ said the boy at last.
‘Who?’
‘Flay, of course. And all the things he did. What about his cave? Empty for ever I suppose. Would you like to …’
‘No,’ said Fuchsia, anticipating his question. ‘Not now. Not any more. I don’t want to go anywhere, really. Have you seen Dr Prune?’
‘Once or twice. He asked me to tell you that he’d like to see you, whenever you want. He’s not very well.’
‘None of us are,’ said Fuchsia. ‘What are you going to do? You look quite different. Was it awful, seeing what happened? But don’t tell me. I don’t want to dwell on it!’
‘There are sentries everywhere,’ said Titus.
‘I know.’
‘And a curfew. I have to be in my room by eight o’clock. Who’s the man outside the door here?’
‘I don’t know his name. He’s there most of the day and all night. A man in the courtyard too, under the window.’
Titus wandered to the window and looked down. ‘What good is he doing there?’ And then, turning about. ‘They’ll never catch him,’ he said. ‘He’s too cunning, the bloody beast. Why can’t they burn the whole place down, and him with it, and us with it, and the world with it, and finish the whole dirty business, and the rotten ritual and everything and give the green grass a chance?’
‘Titus,’ she said. ‘Come here.’ He approached her, his hands shaking.
‘I love you, Titus, but I can’t feel anything. I’ve gone dead. Even you are dead in me. I know I love you. You’re the only one I love, but I can’t feel anything and I don’t want to. I’ve felt too much, I’m sick of feelings … I’m frightened of them.’
Titus took another step towards her. She gazed at him. A year ago they would have kissed. They had needed each other’s love. Now, they needed it even more but something had gone wrong. A space had formed between them, and they had no bridge.
But he gripped her arm for a moment before walking quickly to the door and disappearing from her sight.
SIXTY-THREE
The Day of the Bright Carvings was at hand. The Carvers had put the final touches to their creations. The expectancy in the castle was as acute as it was possible for it to be, when at the same time the larger and more horrible awareness that Steerpike might at any moment strike again, took up the larger part of their minds. For the skewbald man had struck four times within the last eight days with accuracy, a small pebble being found, in every case, near the fractured heads of the newly-slain, or lodged in the bone above the eyes. These killings, so wicked in their want of purpose, took place in such widely separated districts as to give no clue as to where the haunt of the homicide might be. His deadly catapult had spread a clammy terror through Gormenghast.
But in spite of this preponderant fear, the imminence of the traditional day of carvings had brought a certain excitement of a less terrible kind to the hearts of the denizens. They turned with relief to this age-old ceremony as though to something on which they could rely – something that had happened every year since they could remember anything at all. They turned to tradition as a child turns to its mother.
The long courtyard where the ceremony was to be held had been scrubbed and double scrubbed. The clanking of buckets, the swilling and hissing of water, the sound of scouring had echoed along the attenuate yard, sunrise after sunrise, for a week past. The high southern wall in particular was immaculate. The scaffolding to which the scrubbers had clung like monkeys while they ferreted among the rough stones, scraping at the interstices and sluicing every vestige of accumulated dust from niche and crack, had been removed. It sailed away, this wall, in a dwindling perspective of gleaming stone – and five feet from the ground along its entire length the Carvers