Whatever he was to find, whatever lay ahead, however innocent or however bloody, it would be his word alone against the pale man's. It would be the word of an exile against that of the Master of Ritual. In being within the precincts of the castle at all, he was committing a grievous sin. He had been banished by the Countess and it would ill become him to point his finger at an officer unless his accusation was doubly backed with proof.
No sooner had this notion occurred to him than he was on his feet. He judged that he had, at the most, another quarter of an hour in which to waken - whom? He had no choice. Titus and Fuchsia alone knew of his return to the castle and that he lived in secret among the Hollow Halls.
It was of course grotesquely out of the question either that Fuchsia should be disturbed or allowed within Steerpike's range. As for Titus, he was now almost grown to his full height. But he was of an odd highly strung nature - sullen and excitable by turns. Strong as need be for his years, he was more apt to have his energy sapped by the excess of his imagination than of his body. Flay did not understand him, but he trusted him, and he knew of how the boy's loathing of Steerpike had estranged him from Fuchsia. He had no doubt that Titus would join him, but he doubted for a moment his own courage to do so dangerous a thing as to draw the heir of Gormenghast within the circle of expected danger. Yet he knew that above all else it was his duty to unmask if possible his enemy, for upon so doing hung the safety of the young earl and all he symbolized. And what is more, he swore by the iron of his long muscles, and by the strong teeth in his bony head, that whatever danger might menace his own person, no harm would come to the boy.
And so, without a moment to lose, he turned and re-entered the door in the cloisters and set off upon what in saner moments he would have considered an unthinkable mission. For what could be more iniquitous than to jeopardize the safety of his lordship? But now he saw only that by awakening Titus and launching him at dawn upon so dark a game as that of shadowing a suspect, he was perhaps bringing closer the day when the heart of Gormenghast, purged and loyal, would beat again unthreatened.
With every moment the yellow band in the sky was brightening. He sped with the awkward speed of the predatory spider, his long legs eating up the corridors, four feet at a stride and treading the stairways beneath them as though he were on stilts. But when he came to the dormitory he moved with the circumspection of a thief.
He opened the door by degrees. On his right was the janitor's cubicle.
Directly he heard the sound of sand-paper scraping away behind the woodwork he recognized the breathing of the same old man who had held this watch-dog office from the early days and he knew that he was safe enough from that quarter.
But how to recognize the Earl? He had no light. Apart from the breathing of the janitor the dormitory was in absolute silence. There was no time for anything but to put his first notion into operation. There were two rows of beds that stretched away to the south-west. Why he turned to the right hand wall he did not know, but he did so without hesitation. Feeling for the end-rail of the first bed, he leaned over. 'Lordship!' he whispered. 'Lordship!' There was no reply. He turned to the second bed and whispered again. He thought he heard a head turn upon a pillow but that was all. He repeated this quick, harsh whisper at the foot of every bed. 'Lordship... lordship!...' but nothing happened and the time was slipping by. But at the fourteenth bed he repeated the whisper for a third time, for he could feel rather than hear a restlessness in the darkness below him. 'Lordship!...' he whispered again. 'Lord Titus!'
Something sat up in the darkness and he could hear the catch in a boy's breathing.
'Have no fear,' he whispered fiercely and his hand shook on the bedrail.
'Have no fear. Are you Titus, the Earl?'
Immediately there was a reply. 'Mister Flay? What are you doing here?'
'Have you a coat and stockings?'
'Yes.'
'Put them on. Follow me. Explain later, lordship.'
Titus made no reply but slid over the side of his bed and after fumbling for his shoes and garments, clasped them like a bundle in his arms. Together they tiptoed to the dormitory door and, once without, walked rapidly in the darkness, the bearded man with his hand upon the boy's elbow.
At the head of a staircase Titus got into his clothes, his heart beating loudly.
Flay stood beside him and when he was ready they descended the stairs in silence.
As they drew nearer to the quadrangle Flay in short broken phrases was able to give Titus a disjointed idea of why he had been woken and whisked out into the night. Much as Titus sympathized with Flay's suspicions and with his hatred of Steerpike, he was becoming afraid that Flay himself had gone mad. He could see that it was a very odd thing for Steerpike to spend the night leaning against a thorn tree, but equally there was nothing criminal in it. What, he wondered, in any event, was Flay doing to be there himself? and why should the long ragged creature of the woods be so anxious to have him with him? There was no doubt about the excitement of it all and that to be sought out was deeply flattering, but Titus had but a vague idea as to what Flay meant by needing a witness. A witness to what, and to prove what? Deeply as Titus suspected Steerpike of being intrinsically foul, yet he had never suspected him of actually doing other than his duty in the castle. He had never hated him for any understandable reason. He had simply hated him for being alive at all.
But when they reached the cloisters and when he peered along Flay's outstretched arm as they lay upon the cold ground, and saw, all at once, after a long and abortive scrutiny of the thorn, the sharp profile, as angular as broken glass save for the doming forehead, then he knew that the gaunt man lying beside him was no more mad than himself, and that for the first time in his life he was tasting upon his tongue the acid of an intoxicating fear, of a fearful elation.
He also knew that to leave Steerpike where he was and to return to bed would be to deliberately turn away from a climate of sharp and dangerous breath.
He put his lips to his companion's ear.
'It's Doctor's quadrangle,' he whispered.
Flay made no reply for several moments, for the remark made little sense to him.
'What of it?' he replied in an almost inaudible voice.
'Very close - on our side,' whispered Titus, 'just across the quadrangle.'
