The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [465]
Titus was gazing at her as he tucked the torn and fateful shirt into his trousers.
‘She is dead, Fuchsia.’
She lifted her head.
‘Who?’ she murmured.
‘The wild girl.’
‘The … wild … girl …? So soon?’
‘The lightning.’
Fuchsia turned to the cave-mouth and began to move towards the storm.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered as though to herself. ‘Is there nothing but death and beastliness?’ and then, not turning as she spoke, but raising her voice. ‘Don’t tell me, Titus. Don’t tell me anything. I would rather know nothing. You live your life and I’ll live mine.’
Titus joined her at the mouth of the cave. It was a frightening sight that lay before them. The landscape was filling up with water. There was not a moment to lose.
‘There’s only one hope,’ said Titus.
‘I know,’ said Fuchsia. ‘The tunnel.’
They stepped forward together and received the weight of the cascading sky. Thereafter their journey was a nightmare of water. Time after time they saved one another in the treacherous flood as they waded towards the entrance of the long underground passage. A hundred incidents befell them. Their feet were caught in underwater creepers; they stumbled over submerged bushes; the limbs of trees fell headlong into the water at their sides, and all but struck or drowned them. At times they were forced to return and make long detours where the water was too deep, or too marshy. When they came to the high bank on the hill they were all but drowned. But the tunnel was there and although the water had begun to pour down its black throat yet their relief at seeing it was such that they involuntarily clasped each other. For a fleeting moment the years rolled back and they were brother and sister again in a world of no heartburn.
They had forgotten that the tunnel was so long; so inky dark, so full of vegetable beastliness, of hampering roots, and foul decay. As they neared the castle the water became deeper; for on every side of Gormenghast the landscape shelved gradually downward, the widespread mazes of rambling masonry lying at the centre in a measureless basin.
When eventually they were able to stand upright and emerged from the tunnel, and began to wade along the corridors that led to the Hollow Halls, the water was up to their waists.
Their progress was maddeningly slow. Step by step they forced their way through the heavy element, the inky water curling at their waist. Sometimes they would climb steps and would be able to rest for a while, at the top of a flight, but they could not stay for long, for all the while the water was rising. It was a mercy that Titus had become familiar with the one route that took them by degrees to that point behind the giant carving where, so long ago, he had escaped from Barquentine to lose himself in those watery lanes that they were now so slowly wading through.
It came at last: the halt behind the statue. Titus was in front and he worked his way around the base of the carving and cautiously leaning forward, peered to left and right along the dusky corridor. It was deserted and no wonder. Here as elsewhere the water lay like a dark and slowly moving carpet. It was obvious that the flood had poured in on every side and that the ground level of Gormenghast had been evacuated. His dormitory was upon the floor above, and Fuchsia’s room was likewise above flood level. Fuchsia was by now beside him, and they were about to step forward through the water and proceed along their separate paths to their rooms when they heard the sound of a splash, and Titus dragged his sister back. The sound was repeated and repeated again in a regular beat, and then as it grew louder, they saw a glimmer on the water as a soft red light began to approach from the west.
Holding their breath they waited and a moment later they saw the flat nose of a punt or narrow raft slide into their line of vision. An oldish man sat