The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

The seventy-sixth Earl should he ever be found, dead or alive, had forfeited his right to burial among the Tombs. Barquentine had spent the day among volumes of ritual and precedent. So exhaustive was the compilation of relevant and tabulated procedure to be adopted in unorthodox and unforeseen circumstances that a parallel to Lord Sepulchrave’s disappearance was at last rooted out by the old man – the fourteenth Earl of Groan having disappeared leaving an infant heir. Nine days only had been allowed for the search, after which the child was to be proclaimed the rightful Earl, standing the while upon a raft of chestnut boughs afloat on the lake, a stone in the right hand, an ivy-branch in the left, and a necklace of snail-shells about the neck; while shrouded in foliage the next of kin and all who were invited to the ‘Earling’ stood, sat, crouched or lay among the branches of the marginal trees.

All this had now, once again, hundreds of years later, to be put in hand, for the nine days were over and it was in Barquentine that all power in matters of procedure was vested. It was for him to give the orders. In his little old body was Gormenghast in microcosm.

‘Ferret,’ he said, still staring up at Steerpike, ‘your answer’s good. Body of me, Destiny it is. What is your bastard name, child?’

‘Steerpike, sir.’

‘Age?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Buds and fledglings? So they still spawn ’em so! Seventeen.’ He put a withered tongue between his dry, wrinkled lips. It might have been the tongue of a boot. ‘Seventeen,’ he repeated in a voice of such ruminative incredulity as startled the youth, for he had never before heard any such intonation emerge from that old throat. ‘Bloody wrinkles! say it again, chicken.’

‘Seventeen,’ said Steerpike.

Barquentine went off into a form of trance, the well-heads of his eyes appearing to cloud over and become opaque like miniature sargassos, of dull chalky-blue – the cataract veil – for it seemed that he was trying to remember the daedal days of his adolescence. The birth of the world; of spring on the rim of Time.

Suddenly he came-to, and cursed; and as though to shake off something noxious he worked his shoulder-blades to and fro, as he pad-hopped irritably around his crutch, the ferrule squeaking as it swivelled on the carpetless floor.

‘See here, boy,’ he said, when he had come to a halt, ‘there is work to do. There is a raft to be built, body of me, a raft of chestnut boughs and no other. The procession. The bareback racing for the bagful. The barbecue in the Stone Hall. Hell slice me up, boy! call the hounds off.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Steerpike. ‘Shall I send them back to their quarters?’

‘Eh?’ muttered Barquentine, ‘what’s that?’

‘I said shall I return them to their quarters?’ said Steerpike. An affirmative noise from the throat of strings was the reply.

But as Steerpike began to move off, ‘Not yet, you dotard! Not yet!’ And then: ‘Who’s your master?’

Steerpike reflected a moment. ‘I have no immediate master,’ he said. ‘I attempt to make myself useful – here and there.’

‘You do, do you, my sprig? “Here and there,” do you? I can see through you. Right the way through you, suckling, bones and brain. You can’t fool me, by the stones you can’t. You’re a great little rat but there’ll be no more “here and there” for you. It will be only “here”, do you understand?’ The old man ground his crutch into the floor. ‘Here,’ he added, with an access of vehemence; ‘beside me. You may be useful. Very useful.’ He scratched himself through a tear at his armpit.

‘What will my salary amount to?’ said Steerpike, putting his hands in his pockets.

‘Your keep, you insolent bastard! your keep! What more do you want? Hell fire child! have you no pride? A roof, your food, and the honour of studying the Ritual. Your keep, curse you, and the secrets of the Groans. How else could you serve me but by learning the iron Trade? Body of me – I have no son. Are you ready?’

‘I have never been more so,’ said the high shouldered boy.

BY GORMENGHAST LAKE

Little gusts of fresh, white air blew fitfully through the high trees that surrounded the lake. In the dense heat of the season it seemed they had no part; so distinct they were from the sterile body of the air. How could such thick air open to shafts so foreign and so aqueous? The humid season was split open for their every gush. It closed as they died like a hot blanket, only to be torn again by a blue quill, only to close again; only to open.

The sickness was relieved, the sickness and the staleness of the summer day. The scorched leaves pattered one against the next, and the tares screaked thinly together, the tufted heads nodding, and upon the lake was the stippled commotion of a million pin-pricks and the sliding of gooseflesh shadows that released or shrouded momently the dancing of diamonds.