Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

But the spirit in the old tyrant was something so intense that Steerpike in spite of his two legs, his youth and his weapons was taken aback by the realization that so much passion could be housed in so dry and stunted a thing. He was also taken aback at having been outwitted. It was true that even now the duel was ludicrously one-sided - an ancient cripple with a crutch - an athlete with a sword - but nevertheless, had his first action been to remove the crutch he would now have the old man in as helpless a position as a tortoise upon its back.

For a few moments they faced one another, Barquentine expressing everything in his face, Steerpike nothing. Then the young man began to walk slowly backwards to the door, his eyes all the while on his quarry. He was taking no chances. Barquentine had shown how quick he could be.

When he reached the door he opened it and took a rapid glance along the attenuate corridor. It was enough to show him that there was no one in the neighbourhood. He closed the door behind him and then began to advance towards the chair through the bars of which the dwarf was peering.

As Steerpike advanced with his slender steel in his hand, his eyes were upon his prey but his thoughts were centred upon the candlestick.

His foe could have no idea of how he was within reach of what would burn him up. The three little flames trembled above the melting wax. He had brought them to life, those three dead lumps of tallow. And they were to turn upon him. But not yet.

Steerpike continued his lethal advance. What was there that the cripple could do? For the moment he was partially shielded by the back of the chair. And then, in a voice strangely at variance with the demoniac aspect of his face, for it was as cold as ice, he uttered the one word 'Traitor.'

It was not merely his life he was fighting for. That single word, freezing the air, had revealed what Steerpike had forgotten: that in his adversary he was pitting himself against Gormenghast. Before him he had a living pulse of the immemorial castle.

But what of all this? It merely meant that Steerpike must be careful. That he must keep his distance until the moment in which to make his attack. He continued to advance and then, when another step would have taken him within range of Barquentine's crutch, he side-stepped to the right and speeding to the far end of the table, placed his rapier before him across the littered books and taking his knife from his pocket opened it with a single action and then, as Barquentine turned about in his tracks in order to face his assailant, he sent the sharp thing whipping through the candlelight. As Steerpike had intended it pinned the old man's right hand to the shaft of his crutch. In the moment of Barquentine's surprise and pain, Steerpike leapt on the table and sprang along it. Immediately below him the dwarf plucked at the knife in his blind fury. As he did so, Steerpike, all in a breath, had snatched up the candlestick, and lunging forward, swept the tiny flame across the upturned face. In a moment, the lifeless beard had shone out in sizzling fire and it was but a moment before the rotten rags about the shoulders of the old man were ablaze also.

But again, and this time while in the throes of mortal agony, Barquentine's brain had risen instantaneously to the call which was made upon it. He had no moment to lose. The knife was still in his hand though the crutch had fallen away - but all that was forgotten, as with a superhuman effort, one-legged though he was, he flexed his knee and in a spring caught hold of some portion of Steerpike's clothing. No sooner had he made his first grip, than, with his arms straining themselves to breaking point, and his old heart pounding, he made good his purchase and began to swarm the youth like an ape on fire. By now he had a grip of Steerpike's waist and the flames were beginning to catch the clothing of his young enemy. The searing pain across his face and chest but made him cling the tighter. That he must die, he knew. But the traitor must die with him, and in his agony there was something of joy; joy in the 'rightness' of his revenge.

At the same time, Steerpike was fighting to free himself, clawing at the burning leech, striking upwards with his knees, his face transparent with a deadly mixture of rage, astonishment and desperation.

His clothes, less inflammable than Barquentine's threadbare sacking, were nevertheless alight by now, and across his cheek and throat a flame had scorched his skin to crimson. But the more he struggled to wrench himself away the fiercer seemed the arms that gripped his waist.

Had anyone opened the door they would have seen, at that moment, a young man luminous against the darkness, his feet striking and trampling among the sacred books that littered the table, the body writhing and straining as though demented and they would have seen that his vibrating hands were locked upon the turtle throat of a dwarf on fire: and they would have seen the paroxysm that toppled the combatants off the table's edge so that they fell in a smoking heap to the floor.

Even now in his pain and danger there was room in him for the bitter shame of his failure. Steerpike the arch contriver, the cold and perfect organizer, had bungled the affair. He had been out-generalled by a verminous septuagenarian. But his shame took the form of desperate anger. It whipped him to a feverpitch.

In a kind of spasm, quite diabolical in the access of its ferocity and purpose, he struggled to his knees, and then with a jerk, to his feet. He had let go the throat and he stood swaying a moment, his hands free at his sides, and the pain of his bums so intense that, although he did not know it, he was moaning like something lost. It had nothing to do with his merciless nature, this moaning. It was something quite physical. It was his body crying. His brain knew nothing about it.

The Master of Ritual clung, like a vampire, at his breast. The old arms were clasped about him. Mixed with the pain in the agonized face, there was an unholy glee. He was burning the traitor with his own flame. He was burning an unbeliever.

But the unbeliever was, for all the fiery hugging of his master, by no means ready for sacrifice however right or deserving his death might be. He had paused only to regain strength. He had dropped his arms only through an abnormal degree of control. He knew that he could not free himself from the clutch of the fanatic. And so for a moment he stood there, upright, his coat half burned away, his head thrust back to keep as great a distance as he could between his face and the flames that rose from the blackening creature that clung like a growth. To be able to stand for a moment under so horrific a duress - to be able to stand, to take a deep breath, and to relax the muscles of his arms demanded an almost inhuman control of the will and the passions.

The circumstances having gone so far beyond his control there was no longer any question of choice. It was no longer a case of killing Barquentine. It was a case of saving himself. His plans had gone so wildly astray that there was no recovery. He was ablaze.

There was only one thing he could do. Saddled as he was, his limbs were disencumbered. He knew that he had only a few moments in which to act. His head swam and a darkness filled him, but he began to run, his burned hands spread out like starfish at his sides, to run in a dizzy curve of weakness to the far end of the room - to where the night was a square of darkness. For a moment they were there, against the starless sky, lit like demons with their own conflagration, and then, suddenly they were gone. Steerpike had hurdled the window-sill and had fallen with his virulent burden into the black waters of the moat below. There were no stars but the moon like a nail-paring floated unsubstantially in the low north. It cast no light upon the earth.

Deep in the horrible waters of the moat the protagonists, their consciousness having left them, still moved together as one thing like some foul subaqueous beast of allegory. Above them the surface water through which they had fallen was sizzling and steam drifted up invisible through the darkness.

When after what he could only recall as his death, Steerpike, his head having at last risen above the surface, found that he was not alone but that something clung to him below the water, he vomited and of a sudden, howled. But the nightmare continued and there was no answer to his howl. He did not waken. And then the excruciating pains of his burns racked him, and he knew it was no dream.

And then he realized what he must do. He must keep that charred and hairless head which kept bobbing against his breast, he must keep it below the water. But it was not easy for him to fasten upon the wrinkled throat. The mud had been churned up about them, and the burden he carried was, like his own hands, coated with slime. The vile arms clung about him with the tenacity of tentacles. That he did not sink like a stone was a wonder; perhaps it was the thickness of the water, or the violent stamping of his feet in the stagnant depth which helped him to keep afloat for long enough.

But gradually, inexorably, he fought the old head backwards, his fierce hands clenched on the gullet strings - he fought it downwards, down into the black water, while bubbles rose and the thick and slapping sound of the agitated water filled up the hollow, of the listening night.

There was no knowing how long the old man's face remained under water before Steerpike could feel any loosening of the grip at his waist. To the murderer the act of death was endless. But by degrees the lungs had filled with water and the heart had ceased to beat, and the Hereditary Keeper of the Groan lore and Master of Ritual had slid away into the muddy depths of the ancient moat.

The moon was higher in the sky, was surrounded by a sprinkling of stars. It could not be said that they gave light to the walls and towers that flanked the moat, but a kind of dusk was inlaid upon the inky darkness, a dusk in the shape of walls and towers.

Exhausted and in terrible pain, Steerpike had yet to swim on through the scum and duckweed - to swim on until the slimy walls of the moat gave way on the northern side to a muddy bank. It seemed that the walls on his either side were endless. The foul water got into his throat. The vile weeds clung to his face. It was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead; but all at once he realized that the wall upon his right had given way to a steep and muddy bank.

The water had drawn away what clothes the fire had left. He was naked, covered with burns, half drowned, his body shaking with an icy cold, his brow burning with a feverish heat.

Crawling up the bank, not knowing what he was doing, save that he must find some place of neither fire nor water, he came at last to a patch of level mud where a few rank ferns and mudplants flourished, and there, as though (now that his affairs were concluded) he could afford to faint, he collapsed into darkness.

And there he lay motionless, very small and naked on the mud, like something lifeless that had been discarded, or like a fish thrown up by the sea over whose minute and stranded body the great cliffs tower, for the walls of Gormenghast rose high above the moat, soaring like cliffs themselves into the upper darkness.

FORTY

While the dust that lay upon the gaunt back of the castle became warm in the sun, and the birds grew drowsy in the shadows of the towers, and while there was little to hear but the droning of the bees as they hovered over the wastes of ivy - at the same time, in the green hush of noon, the spirit of Gormenghast forest held its breath like a diver. There was no sound. Hour followed hour and all things were asleep or in a state of trance. The trunks of the great oaks were blotched with honey-coloured shadows and the prodigious boughs were stretched like the arms of bygone kings and appeared to be heavy with the weight of their gold bangles, the bracelets of the sun. There seemed to be no end to the gold afternoon and then something fell from a high branch, and the faint swish of the leaves through which it passed awoke the region. The stillness had been for the moment punctured, but the wound healed over almost at once.