The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [92]
‘I will have you called in the morning, after which I will instruct you in your duties. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?’
‘With great pleasure, madam.’
Her passage to the door was more stilted than ever, for she had not for a very long while made such an effort to walk attractively. The black silk of her dress gleamed in the candlelight and rustled at the knees. She turned her head at the door and Steerpike bowed, keeping his head down until the door was closed and she had gone.
Moving quickly to the window he opened it. Across the courtyard the mountainous outline of Gormenghast Castle rose darkly into the night. The cool air fanned his big protruding forehead. His face remained like a mask, but deep down in his stomach he grinned.
WHILE THE OLD NURSE DOZES
For the time being Steerpike must be left at the Prunesquallors, where in the somewhat elastic capacity of odd-job man, medical assistant, lady’s help and conversationalist, he managed to wedge himself firmly into the structure of the household. His ingratiating manner had, day by day, a more insidious effect, until he was looked upon as part of the ménage, being an alien only with the cook who, as an old retainer, felt no love for an upstart and treated him with undisguised suspicion.
The Doctor found him extremely quick to learn and within a few weeks Steerpike was in control of all the dispensary work. Indeed, the chemicals and drugs had a strong fascination for the youth and he would often be found compiling mixtures of his own invention.
Of the compromising and tragic circumstances that were the outcome of all this, is not yet time to speak.
Within the castle the time-honoured rituals were performed daily. The excitement following upon the birth of Titus had in some degree subsided. The Countess, against the warnings of her medical adviser was, as she had declared she would be, up and about. She was, it is true, very weak at first, but so violent was her irritation at not being able to greet the dawn as was her habit, accompanied by a white tide of cats, that she defied the lassitude of her body.
She had heard the cats crying to her from the lawn sixty feet below her room as she lay in bed those three mornings after little Titus had been delivered, and lying there hugely in her candlelit room she had yearned to be with them, and beads of sweat had stood out upon her skin as in her agony she hankered for strength.
Had not her birds been with her, the frustration of her spirit must surely have done her more than the physical harm of getting up. The constantly changing population of her feathered children were the solace of those few days that seemed to her like months.
The white rook was the most constant in his re-appearances at the ivy-choked window, although up to the moment of her confinement he had been the most fickle of visitors.
In her deep voice she would hold converse with him for an hour at a time, referring to him as ‘Master Chalk’ or her ‘wicked one’. All her companions came. Sometimes the room was alive with song. Sometimes, feeling the need to exercise their pinions in the sky, a crowd of them would follow one another through the window of ivy, around which in the shadowy air as they waited their turn to scramble through, a dozen birds at a time would hover, fall and rise, rattling their many-coloured wings.
Thus it might be that from time to time she would be almost deserted. On one occasion only a stonechat and a bedraggled owl were with her.
Now she was strong enough to walk and watch them circling in the sky or to sit in her arbour at the end of the long lawn, and with the sunlight smouldering in the dark red hair and lying wanly over the area of her face and neck, watch the multiform and snow-white convolutions of her malkins.
Mrs Slagg had found herself becoming more and more dependent upon Keda’s help. She did not like to admit this to herself. There was something so still about Keda which she could not