He turned this head of his to Steerpike.
'To hell fire with your 'good morning', you peeled switch,' he said. 'You shine like a bloody land-eel! What d'you do to yourself, eh? Every poxy sunrise of the year, eh, that you burst out of the decent darkness in that plucked way?'
'I suppose it's this habit of washing I seem to have got into, sir.'
''Washing',' hissed Barquentine, as though he was mentioning something pestilent. ''Washing', you wire-worm. What do you think you 'are', Mister Steerpike? A lily?'
'I'd hardly say that, sir,' said the young man.
'Nor would I,' barked the old man. 'Just skin and bones and hair? That's all you bloody are and nothing more. Dull yourself down. Get the shine off you - and no more of this oiled, paper nonsense, every dawn.'
'Quite so, sir. I am too visible.'
'Not when you're wanted!' snapped Barquentine, as he began to hobble downstairs. 'You can be invisible enough when you want to be, eh? Hags-hell, boy, you can be nowhere when it suits you, eh? By the guts of the great auk! I see through 'you' - my pretty whelp! I see through 'you'!'
'What, when I'm invisible, sir?' asked Steerpike, raising his eyebrows as he trod lightly behind the cripple who was raising echoes on all sides with the stamping of his crutch on the wooden stairs.
'By the piss of Satan, pug, your sauce is dangerous!' shouted Barquentine hoarsely, turning precariously in his tracks, with his withered leg two steps above his crutch.
'Are the north-cloisters done?' He shot the question at Steerpike, in a changed tone of voice - a tone no less vicious, cantankerous, but pleasanter to the young man's ear, being less personally vituperative.
'They were completed last night, sir.'
'Under your guidance, for what it's worth?'
'Under my guidance.'
They were approaching the first landing of the walnut stairs. Steerpike, as he trod behind Barquentine, took a pair of dividers from his pocket, and using them as though they were tongs, lifted up a hank of the old man's hair from the back of his head, to reveal a neck as wry as a turtle's. Amused by his success at being able to raise so thick a bunch of dirty grey hair without the cripple's knowledge, he repeated the performance while the harsh voice continued and the crutch clack-clack-clacked down the long flight.
'I shall inspect them immediately after breakfast.'
'Quite so,' said Steerpike.
'Has it occurred to your suckling-brain that this day is hallowed by the very dirt of the castle. Eh? Eh? That it is only once a year, boy, once a year, that the Poet is honoured? Eh? Why, the lice in my beard alone know, but there it is, by the black souls of the unbelievers, there it is, a law of laws, a rite of the first water, 'dear' child. The cloisters are ready, you say; by the sores on my withered leg, you'll pay for it if they're coloured the wrong red. Eh? Was it the darkest red of all? Eh - the darkest of all the reds?'
'Quite the darkest,' said Steerpike. 'Any darker and it would have been black.'
'By hell, it had better be,' said Barquentine. 'And the rostrum?' he continued after crossing the gnarled landing of black walnut with its handrail missing from the banisters and the banisters themselves leaning in all directions and capped with dust as palings are capped with snow in winter time.
'And the rostrum?'
'It is set and garnished,' said Steerpike. 'The throne for the Countess has been cleaned and mended, and the high chairs for the gentry, polished. The long forms are in place and fill the quadrangle.'
'And the Poet,' cried Barquentine. 'Have you instructed him, as I ordered you? Does he know what is expected of him?'
'His rhetoric is ready, sir.'
'Rhetoric? Cat's teeth! Poetry, you bastard, Poetry.'
'It has been prepared, sir!' Steerpike had re-pocketed his dividers and was now holding a pair of scissors (he seemed to have endless things in his pockets without disturbing the hang of his clothes) and was clipping off strands of Barquentine's hair where it hung below his collar, and was whispering to himself in an absurd undertone, 'Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor' as the matted wisps fell upon the stairs.
They had reached another landing. Barquentine stopped for a moment to scratch himself. 'He may have prepared his poem,' he said turning his time-wasted visage to the slender, high shouldered young man, 'but have you told him about the magpie? Eh?'
'I told him that he must rise to his feet and declaim within twelve seconds of the magpie's release from the wire cage. That while declaiming his left hand must be clasping the beaker of moat-water in which the Countess has previously placed the blue pebble from Gormenghast river.'
'That is so, boy. And that he shall be wearing the Poet's Gown, that his feet shall be bare, did you tell him that?'
'I did,' said Steerpike.
'And the yellow benches for the Professors. Were they found?'
'They were. In the south stables. I have had them re-painted.'
'And the seventy-seventh earl, Lord Titus, does the pup know that he is to stand when the rest are seated, and seat himself when the rest are standing? Does the child know that - eh - eh - he is a scatterbrained thing - have you instructed him, you skinned candle? By the gripes of my seventy years, your forehead shines like a bloody iceberg!'
