The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

quietly: ‘At the end of the month I shall return to my home. Titus is strong and well and he will be able to do without me.’

Nannie, whose head had been nodding a little, for she was always either dropping off for a nap or waking up from one, opened her eyes when Keda’s words had soaked into her brain. Then she sat up very suddenly and in a frightened voice called out: ‘No! no! you mustn’t go. You mustn’t! You mustn’t! Oh, Keda, you know how old I am.’ And she ran across the room to hold Keda’s arm. Then for the sake of her dignity: ‘I’ve told you not to call him Titus,’ she cried in a rush. ‘“Lord Titus” or “his Lordship,” is what you should say.’ And then, as though with relief, she fell back upon her trouble. ‘Oh, you can’t go! you can’t go!’

‘I must go,’ said Keda. ‘There are reasons why I must go.’

‘Why? why? why?’ Nannie cried out through the tears that were beginning to run jerkily down her foolish wrinkled face. ‘Why must you go?’ Then she stamped a tiny slippered foot that made very little noise. ‘You must answer me! You must! Why are you going away from me?’ Then, clenching her hands – ‘I’ll tell the Countess,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell her.’

Keda took no notice at all, but lifted Titus from one shoulder to another where his crying ceased.

‘He will be safe in your care,’ said Keda. ‘You must find another helper when he grows older for he will be too much for you.’

‘But they won’t be like you,’ shrilled Nannie Slagg, as though she were abusing Keda for her suitability. ‘They won’t be like you. They’ll bully me. Some of them bully old women when they are like me. Oh, my weak heart! my poor weak heart! what can I do?’

‘Come,’ said Keda. ‘It is not as difficult as that.’

‘It is. It is!’ cried Mrs Slagg, renewing her authority. ‘It’s worse than that, much worse. Everyone deserts me, because I’m old.’

‘You must find someone you can trust. I will try and help you,’ said Keda.

‘Will you? will you?’ cried Nannie, bringing her fingers up to her mouth and staring at Keda through the red rims of her eyelids. ‘Oh, will you? They make me do everything. Fuchsia’s mother leaves everything to me. She has hardly seen his little Lordship, has she? Has she?’

‘No,’ said Keda. ‘Not once. But he is happy.’

She lifted the infant away from her and laid him between the blankets in his cot, where after a spell of whimpering he sucked contentedly at his fist.

Nannie Slagg suddenly gripped Keda’s arm again. ‘You haven’t told me why; you haven’t told me why,’ she said. ‘I want to know why you’re going away from me. You never tell me anything. Never, I suppose I’m not worth telling. I suppose you think I don’t matter. Why don’t you tell me things? Oh, my poor heart, I suppose I’m too old to be told anything.’

‘I will tell you why I have to go,’ said Keda. ‘Sit down and listen.’ Nannie sat upon a low chair and clasped her wrinkled hands together. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said.

Why Keda broke the long silence that was so much a part of her nature she could not afterwards imagine, feeling only that in talking to one who would hardly understand her she was virtually talking to herself. There had come to her a sense of relief in unburdening her heart.

Keda sat upon Mrs Slagg’s bed near the wall. She sat very upright and her hands lay in her lap. For a moment or two she gazed out of the window at a cloud that had meandered lazily into view. Then she turned to the old woman.

‘When I returned with you on that first evening,’ said Keda quietly, ‘I was troubled. I was troubled and I am still unhappy because of love, I feared my future; and my past was sorrow, and in my present you had need of me and I had need of refuge, so I came.’ She paused.

‘Two men from our Mud Dwellings loved me. They loved me too much and too violently.’ Her eyes returned to Nannie Slagg, but they hardly saw her, nor noticed that her withered lips were pursed and her head tilted like a sparrow’s. She continued quietly.

‘My husband had died. He was a Bright Carver, and died struggling. I would sit down in the long shadows by our dwelling and watch a dryad’s head from day to day finding its hidden outline. To me it seemed he carved the child of leaves. He would not rest, but fight; and stare – and stare. Always he would stare, cutting the wood away to give his dryad breath. One evening when I felt my unborn moving within me my husband’s heart stopped beating and his weapons fell. I ran to him and knelt beside his body. His chisel lay in the dust. Above us his unfinished dryad gazed over the Twisted Woods, an acorn between its teeth.

‘They buried him, my rough husband, in the long sandy valley, the valley of graves where we are always buried. The two dark men who loved and love me carried his body for me and they lowered it into the sandy hollow that they had scooped. A hundred men were there and a hundred women; for he had been the rarest of the carvers. The sand was heaped upon him and there was only another dusty mound among the mounds of the Valley and all was very silent. They held me in their eyes while he was buried – the two who love me. And I could not think of him whom we were mourning. I could not think of death. Only of life. I could not think of stillness, only of movement. I could not understand the burying, nor that life could cease to be. It was all a dream. I was alive, alive, and two men watched me standing. They stood beyond the grave, on the other side. I saw only their shadows for I dared not lift up my eyes to show my gladness. But I knew that they were watching me and I knew that I was young. They were strong men, their faces still unbroken by the cruel bane we suffer. They were strong and young. While yet my husband lived I had not seen them. Though one brought white flowers from the Twisted Woods and one a dim stone from the Gormen Mountain, yet I saw nothing of them, for I knew temptation.

‘That was long ago. All is changed. My baby has been buried and my lovers are filled with hatred for one another. When you came for me I was in torment. From day to day their jealousy had grown until, to save the shedding of blood, I came to the castle. Oh, long ago with you, that dreadful night.’

She stopped and moved a lock of hair back from her forehead. She did not look at Mrs Slagg, who blinked her eyes as Keda paused and nodded her head wisely.

‘Where are they now? How many, many times have I dreamed of them! How many, many times have I, into my pillow, cried: “Rantel!” whom I first saw gathering the Root, his coarse hair in his eyes … cried “Braigon!” who stood brooding in the grove. Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me. I am not drowned with them in Love’s unkindness. I am unable to do aught but watch them, and fear them and the hunger in