He turned to his mother. ‘It is the skewbald beast,’ he said. ‘He has killed her. He has killed your daughter. Who else would kill her? Or touch a hair of her head, O braver than
He turned again to the bearer of the shattering news.
‘Where is she now?’
‘A special room has been prepared by the Doctor near the hospital. He is with her.’
And then the voice of the Countess, low and deep. She was speaking to the Head Officer present.
‘The Carvers must be informed that they are needed, and every watertight boat finished or unfinished. All boats already in the castle to be drawn up alongside the west wall. All weapons to be distributed at once,’ and then, to the messenger who had spoken of where Fuchsia lay, ‘Lead the way.’
The Countess and Titus followed the man. No word was spoken until they were within a stone’s throw of the hospital, when the Countess without turning to Titus said:
‘If it were not that you were ill …’
‘I am not ill,’ said Titus, interrupting.
‘Very well, then,’ said the Countess. ‘It is upon your head.’
‘I welcome it,’ said Titus.
While he could feel no fear, he was at the same time surprised at his own audacity. But it was so small an emotion compared with the hollow ache with which the knowledge of Fuchsia’s death had filled him. To be brave among the living – what was that compared with the bonfire of his rage against Steerpike at whose door he laid the responsibility for Fuchsia’s death? And the tides of the loneliness that had surged over him, drowned him in seas that knew no fear of the living, even of a mother such as his own.
When the door was opened they saw the tall thin figure of Dr Prunesquallor standing at an open window, his hands behind his back, very still and unnaturally upright. It was a small room with low rafters and bare boards on the floor, but it was meticulously clean. It was obvious that it had been freshly scrubbed and washed, boards, walls and ceiling.
Against the wall to the left was a stretcher supported at either end upon wooden boxes. On the stretcher lay Fuchsia, a sheet drawn up to her shoulders, her eyes closed. It seemed hardly her.
The Doctor turned. He did not seem to recognize either Titus or the Countess. He stared through them, only touching Titus’ arm in a gentle way as he passed, for he had no sooner seen the mother and the brother of his favourite child than he had begun to move to the door.
His cheeks were wet, and his glasses had become so blurred that he stumbled when he reached the door, and could not find the handle. Titus opened the door for him and for a moment caught a glimpse of his friend in the corridor outside as he removed his glasses and began to wipe them with his silk handkerchief, his head bowed, his weak eyes peering at the spectacles in his hand with that kind of concentration that is grief.
Left together in the room the mother and son stood side by side in worlds of their own. Had they not both been moved it might well have been embarrassing. Neither knew nor cared what was going on in the breast of the other.
The face of the Countess showed nothing, but once she drew the corner of the sheet up a little further over Fuchsia’s shoulder, with an infinite gentleness, as though she feared her child might feel the cold and so must take the risk of waking her.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Knowing that he had several hours to wait before it would be dark enough for him to venture forth, Steerpike had dropped off to sleep in the canoe. As he slept the canoe began to bob gently on the inky water a few feet from where the flood swam through the window entrance. This entrance, seen from the inside of the ‘cavern’, was like a square of light. But the breast of the great bay, which, from the dark interior of Steerpike’s refuge, appeared luminous was, in reality, as the moments passed, drawing across its nakedness shawl after shawl of shadow.
When Steerpike had slid from the outer world, and through the brimming window, seven hours earlier, he had of course been able to see exactly what kind of a room he had entered. The light striking through the window had glanced upwards off the water and lit the interior.
His first reaction had been one of intense irritation for there were no corridors leading from the room and no stairways to the floor above. The doors had been closed when the flood had filled the room so that they were immovable with the weight of water. Had the inner doors been open he might have slid through their upper airways into ampler quarters. But no. The place was virtually a cave – a cave with a few mouldering pictures hanging precariously a few inches above high-water mark.
