The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

Titus, as the minutes had passed had grown more and more restless. It was not that the preparation for the storming of the flooded room had not been proceeding swiftly and well, but that far from his anger fading, it was gaining more and more of a grip on him.

Two images kept floating before his eyes, one of a creature, slender and tameless; a creature who, defying him, defying Gormenghast, defying the tempest, was yet innocent as air or the lightning that killed her, and the other of a small empty room with his sister lying alone upon a stretcher, harrowingly human, her eyes closed. And nothing else mattered to him but that these two should be avenged – that he should strike.

And so he had not remained at the window overlooking the bright and heaving water. He had left the room and descended an outer staircase, and had boarded one of the boats, for now that Steerpike’s ‘cave’ was so closely ringed there were scores of craft that bobbed uselessly to and fro on the waves. He ordered the oarsmen to land him where the inner circle of boats was forming an unbroken arc around the window’s mouth. He made his way over the heaving floor of boats until he was facing the window and peering along the water’s surface he could see the room, filled with its bright reflections, so clearly, that a picture hanging on its far wall was perfectly visible.

But the Countess had taken the opposite course – and though they did not see each other they must have crossed in the amber light, for as Titus peered into the flooded room, his mother was climbing the outer staircase. She had also conceived the idea of cutting through the roof immediately above the window, for she could see that it would be difficult for anyone to enter Steerpike’s trap without great danger to himself. It was true that the room looked empty but it had been of course impossible for her to know what lay within the shadows of the nearest corners or against the near walls that flanked the window.

And it would be there that Steerpike would crouch, were he in the room at all.

And so she thought of the room above. When she reached it and saw that what she had planned was already being put into practice, she moved to the window and looked down. The rain which had stopped for a little had returned and a steady, slanting stream was pouring itself against the walls, so that, before she had been a minute at the window she was soaked to the skin. After a little time she turned her head to the left and stared along the adjacent wall. It reached away in wet perspective. She turned her head upwards, and the stone acres rose dripping into the night. But the great façade was anything but blank; for from every window there was a head thrust forth. And every head in the glow of the torchlight was of the colour of the walls from which it protruded, so that it seemed that the watchers were of stone, like gargoyles, each face directed to the brilliant barge-light that weltered on the waves outside the ‘cave’.

But as the Countess continued to stare at ‘carvings’ that studded the walls to the left, a kind of subtraction came into play. It was as though embarrassment spread itself across the stone surfaces. One by one the heads withdrew until there was nothing to the left of the Countess but the emptiness of the streaming walls.

And then she turned her head the other way, where, in reverse, the scores of heads protruded and shone with the torch-lit rain – until, like their counterparts, they also one by one, withdrew themselves.

The Countess turned her eyes again to the scene immediately below her and the numberless wet faces were drawn forth at once, as though by suction, from the castle walls, or in the way that the heads of turtles issue from their shells.

The small craft which had been carried over the back of the boat-cordon was now within a foot of the window. A man sat within and wielded a powerful paddle. A black leather hat, with a broad brim shielded his eyes from the rain. Between his teeth he gripped a long dirk.

It was no easy task for him, this approach through the window, between the flanking barges. The small skiff rolled dangerously, shipping the gold water over her side. The wind was now something that could be heard whining across the bay.

All at once Titus called out to the man to return.

‘Let me go first,’ he cried. ‘Come back you man. Let me have your dagger.’ The face of his sister swam across the window. The Thing danced on the bright water like a sprite and he bared his teeth.

‘Let me kill him! Let me kill him!’ he cried again, losing in that moment his last four years of growth, for he had become like a child, hysterical with the intensity of his imagination – and for a moment the boatman wavered, his head over his shoulder, but a voice from the wall above roared out.

‘No! by the blood of love! Hold the boy down!’

Two men held Titus firmly, for he had made as though to plunge into the water.