The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [495]
‘The canoe, man! Does it mean nothing to you that the traitor’s boat is hanging from the ceiling? Let me see your –’
But at that moment a fresh surge swept through the window below and twisted Steerpike’s boat about as though it had been a leaf, and as it rotated the wash and swell of the water turned it so far over upon its side that as it was carried away from the centre of the flooded room the Countess saw a flash of white and scarlet beneath the broad-brimmed hat and at almost the same moment her eyes were attracted away from their prize, for an empty face appeared out of the waves immediately below her; for a moment it bobbed about like a loaf of bread and then it sank again.
The world had gone dead in her, and then with almost unbelievable rapidity the two faces, appearing one after another, had transformed her gloom, her brooding spleen, her hungry malice, her disappointment into a sudden overriding vigour of brain and body. Her anger fell like a whip lash upon the waters below. She had seen, within a moment of each other, the skewbald traitor and the volunteer.
Why the boat was hanging from the ceiling, and a score of other questions were no longer of the remotest interest. They were entirely academic. Nothing mattered at all save the death of the man in the broad-brimmed hat.
For a moment she thought that she would bluff him, for it was unlikely that he had seen the head appear out of the waves, or knew that she had glimpsed his mottled face. But this was no time for games of bluff and blarney – no time to spin it out. It was true that she might have given secret orders to the outer boats to enter the cave in force and to take him at a moment when he was diverted from his scrutiny of the window by some object being thrown into the water from above, but all such niceties were not relevant to her mood, which was for quick and final slaughter in the name of the Stones.
IV
Titus had ceased to struggle and was only waiting for the moment when the two louts, who (no doubt with the most loyal intentions) were saving him from himself, relaxed for a moment and gave him the opportunity to jerk himself clear of them.
They had him by his coat and collar, on either side. His hands which were free had crept gradually together across his chest and he had secretly undone all but one of the jacket buttons.
The scores of boatmen, dizzy with the rising and falling of the water, and drenched with the rain, and tired with the eternal rekindling of the torches, had been unable to understand what was happening within the flooded ‘cave’, or in the room above it. They had heard voices and a few excited shouts but had no idea of the true situation.
But suddenly, the Countess herself appeared at the window and her resonant voice bored its way through the wind and rain.
‘All boatmen will attend! There will be no fumbling! The Volunteer is dead. The traitor who is now wearing his hat and coat is immediately below the window, in the room you are surrounding.’
She paused, and wiped the rain off her face with the flat of her hand, and then her voice again, louder than ever –
‘The four central boats will be sculled by their stern oars. Three armed men will be on the bows of each boat. These boats will move forward when I lift my hand. He will be brought out dead. Draw your knives.’
As these last words were thrust out into the storm the excitement was so great and there was such pressing forward of all the men and boats that it was with difficulty that the four central boats of the cordon freed themselves from one another and manoeuvred into line.
It was then that Titus, noticing how his captors had loosened their grip upon him as they stared spellbound at the window of the fateful room, wrenched himself forward and slipped his arms suddenly out of the sleeves of his jacket, and dodging through a group of boatmen dived into the water, leaving his empty coat behind him, in their hands.
He had had no sleep for many hours. He had had little to eat. He was living upon the raw end of his nerves, as a fanatic will walk upon spikes.