shall study each in turn and understand the twigs I build with, for I must be as clever as the others with my twigs, though we are careless workmen. What are you waiting for, Mr Flay? …’
Flay looks up. He has been unable to keep his eyes on the transformed aspect of his master, but now he lifts them again. He can recognize no expression. The mouth might as well not be there. The fine aquiline nose appears to be more forceful and the saucer-like shape of the eyes hold within either sky a vacant moon.
With a sudden awkward movement Flay plucks Fuchsia from the floor and flings her high over his shoulder and, turning, he staggers to the door and is soon among the passages.
‘I must go back, I must go back to him!’ Fuschia gasps.
Flay only makes a noise in his throat and strides on.
At first Fuschia begins to struggle, but she has no strength left for the dreadful scene has unnerved her and she subsides over his shoulder, not knowing where she is being taken. Nor does Flay know where he is taking her. They have reached the east quadrangle and have come out into the early morning when Fuchsia lifts her head.
‘Flay,’ she says, ‘we must find Doctor Prune at once. I can walk, please, now. Thank you. Flay, but be quick. Be quick, put me down.’
Flay eases her off his shoulder and she drops to the ground. Fuchsia has seen the Doctor’s house in the corner of the quadrangle and she cannot understand why she had not thought of him before. Fuchsia begins to run, and directly she is at the Doctor’s front door she beats it violently with the knocker. The sun is beginning to rise above the marshes and picks out a long gutter and a cornice of the Doctor’s house, and presently, after Fuchsia has slammed at the door again, it picks out the extraordinary headpiece of Prunesquallor himself as it emerges sleepily through a high window. He cannot see what is below him in the shadows, but calls out:
‘In the name of modesty and of all who slumber, go easy with that knocker! What in the world is it? … Answer me. What is it, I repeat? … Is it the plague that has descended on Gormenghast – or a forceps case? Is it a return of midnight mange, or merely flesh-death? Does the patient rave? … Is he fat or thin? … Is he drunk or mad? … Is he …’ The Doctor yawns and it is then that Fuchsia has her first chance to speak:
‘Yes, oh yes! Come quickly, Doctor Prune! Let me tell you. Oh, please, let me tell you!’
The high voice at the sill cries: ‘Fuchsia!’ as though to itself. ‘Fuchsia!’ And the window comes down with a crash.
Flay moves to the girl and almost before he has done so the front door is flung open and Doctor Prunesquallor in his flowered pyjamas is facing them.
Taking Fuchsia by the hand and motioning Flay to follow he minces rapidly to the living room.
‘Sit down, sit down, my frantic one!’ cries Prunesquallor. ‘What the devil is it? Tell the old Prune all about it.’
‘It’s father,’ says Fuchsia, the tears finding release at long last. ‘Father’s become wrong, Doctor Prune; Father’s become all wrong … Oh, Doctor Prune, he is a black owl now … Oh, Doctor, Help him! Help him!’
The Doctor does not speak. He turns his pink, over-sensitive, intelligent head sharply in the direction of Flay, who nods and comes forward a step, with the report of a knee-joint. Then he nods again, his jaw working. ‘Owl,’ he says. ‘Wants mice! … Wants twigs: on mantelpiece! Hooting! Lordship’s mad.’
‘No!’ shouts Fuchsia. ‘He’s ill, Doctor Prune. That’s all. His library’s been burned. His beautiful library; and he’s become ill. But he’s not mad. He talks so quietly. Oh, Doctor Prune, what are you going to do?’
‘Did you leave him in his room?’ says the Doctor, and it does not seem to be the same man speaking.
Fuchsia nods her tear-wet head.
‘Stay here,’ says the Doctor quietly; as he speaks he is away and within a few moments has returned in a lime-green dressing gown with lime-green slippers to match, and in his hand, a bag.
‘Fuchsia dear, send Steerpike to me, in your father’s room. He is quick-witted and may be of help. Flay, get about your duties. The Breakfast must proceed, as you know. Now then, my gipsy-child; death or glory.’ And with the highest and most irresponsible of trill he vanishes through the door.
A CHANGE OF COLOUR
The morning light is strengthening, and the hour of the Great Breakfast approaches. Flay, utterly distraught, is wandering up and down the candle-lit stone lanes where he knows he will be alone. He had gathered the twigs and he had flung them away in disgust only to re-gather them, for the very thought of disobeying his master is almost as dreadful to him as the memory of the creature he has seen on the mantelpiece. Finally, and in despair, he has crunched the twigs between his own stick like fingers, the simultaneous crackling of the twigs and of his knuckles creating for a moment a miniature storm of brittle thunder in the shadow of the trees. Then, striding back to the Castle he has descended uneasily to the Stone Lanes. It is very cold, yet there are great pearls upon his forehead, and in each pearl is the reflection of a candle flame.
Mrs Slagg is in the bedroom of the Countess, who is piling her rust-coloured hair above her head as though she were building a castle. Every now and again Mrs Slagg peers furtively at the bulk before the mirror, but her attention is chiefly centred upon an object on the bed. It is wrapped in a length of lavender coloured velvet, and little porcelain bells are pinned here and there all over it. One end of a golden chain is attached to the velvet near the centre of what has become, through process of winding, a small velvet cylinder, or mummy, measuring some three and a half feet in length and with a diameter of about eighteen inches. At the other end of the chain and lying on the bed beside the lavender roll is a sword with a heavy blade of blue-black steel and a hilt embossed with the letter ‘G’. This sword is attached to the gold chain with a piece of string.
Mrs Slagg dabs a little powder upon something that moves in the shadow at one end of the roll, and then peers about her, for it is hard for her to see what she is doing, the shadows in the bedroom of the Countess are of so dark a breed. Between their red rims her eyes wander here and there before she bends over Titus and plucks at her underlip. Again her eyes peer up at the Countess, who seems to have grown tired of her hair, the edifice being left unfinished as though some fitful architect had died before the completion of a bizarre edifice which no one else knew how to complete. Mrs Slagg moves from the bedside in little half-running, half-walking steps, and from the table beneath the candelabra plucks a candle that is waxed to the wood among the birdseed, and, lighting it from a guttering torso of tallow that stands by, she returns to the lavender cylinder which has begun to twist and turn.
Her hand is unsteady as she lifts the wax above the head of Titus, and the wavering flame makes it leap. His eyes are very wide open. As he sees the light his mouth puckers and works, and the heart of the earth contracts with love as he totters at the wellhead of tears. His little body writhes in its dreadful bolster and one of the porcelain bells chimes sweetly.
‘Slagg,’ said the Countess in a voice of husk.
