The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

She smiled, her mature, compassionate lips hardly parting. Her eyes moved over his face – over the dark mop of his hair, his powerful jutting brow, and the shadows of his eyes that stared as though fixed in their sockets, at her own. She saw his high cheekbones and the sides of his face that tapered to his chin. His mouth was drawn finely and his shoulders were powerful. Her breast rose and fell, and she was both weak and strong. She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion that she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life of which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centred love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love.

He moved forward in the light so that his face was darkened to her and only the top of his ruffled hair shone like wire.

‘Keda,’ he whispered.

She took his hand. ‘I have come back.’

He felt her nearness; he held her shoulders in his hands.

‘You have come back,’ he said as though repeating a lesson. ‘Ah, Keda – is this you? You went away. Every night I have watched for you.’ His hands shook on her shoulders. ‘You went away,’ he said.

‘You have followed me?’ said Keda. ‘Why did you not speak to me by the rocks?’

‘I wanted to,’ he said, ‘but I could not.’

‘Oh, why not?’

‘We will move from the lamp and then I will tell you,’ he said at last. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Where? To where should I go but to where I lived – to my house?’

They walked slowly. ‘I will tell you,’ he said suddenly. ‘I followed you to know where you would go. When I knew it was not to Braigon I overtook you.’

‘To Braigon?’ she said. ‘Oh Rantel, you are still as unhappy.’

‘I cannot alter, Keda; I cannot change.’

They had reached the square.

‘We have come here for nothing,’ said Rantel, coming to a halt in the darkness. ‘For nothing, do you hear me, Keda? I must tell you now. Oh, it is bitterness to tell you.’

Nothing that he might say could stop a voice within her that kept crying: ‘I am with you, Keda! I am life! I am life! Oh, Keda, Keda, I am with you!’ But her voice asked him as though something separate from her real self were speaking:

‘Why have we come for nothing?’

‘I followed you and then I let you continue here with me, but your house, Keda, where your husband carved, has been taken from you. You can do nothing. When you left us the Ancients met, the Old Carvers, and they have given your house to one who is of their company, for they say that now that your husband is dead you are not worthy to live in the Square of the Black Rider.’

‘And my husband’s carvings,’ said Keda, ‘what has become of them?’

While she waited for him to answer she heard his breathing quicken and could dimly see him dragging his forearm over his brow.

‘I will tell you,’ he said. ‘O fire! why was I so slow – so slow! While I was watching for you, watching from the rocks, as I have done every night since you left, Braigon broke into your house and found the Ancients dividing up your own carvings among themselves. “She will not come back,” they said of you. “She is worthless. The carvings will be left untended”, they said, “and the grain-worm will attack them.” But Braigon drew his knife and sent them into a room below the stairs and made twelve journeys and carried the carvings to his own house, where he has hidden them, he says, until you come.

‘Keda, Keda, what can I do for you? Oh Keda, what can I do?’

‘Hold me close to you,’ she said. ‘Where is that music?’

In the silence they could hear the voice of an instrument.

‘Keda …’

His arms were about her body and his face was deep in her hair.

She could hear the beating of his heart, for her head was lying close to him. The music had suddenly ended and silence, as unbroken as the darkness about them, returned.

Rantel spoke at last. ‘I will not live until I take you, Keda. Then I will live, I am a Sculptor. I will create a glory out of wood, I will hack for you a symbol of my love. It will curve in flight. It will leap. It shall be of crimson and have hands as tender as flowers and feet that merge into the roughness of earth, for it shall be its body that leaps. And it shall have eyes that see all things and be violet like the edge of the spring lightning, and upon the breast I shall carve your name – Keda, Keda, Keda – three times, for I am ill with love.’

She put up her hand and her cool fingers felt the bones of his brow and his high cheekbones, and came to his mouth where they touched his lips.

After a little while Rantel said softly: ‘You have been crying?’

‘With joy,’ she said.

‘Keda …’

‘Yes …’

‘Can you bear cruel news?’

‘Nothing can pain me any more,’ said Keda. ‘I am no longer the one you knew. I am alive.’