In the wide, white fields that surrounded the castle, the birds lay dead or leaned sideways stiffening for death. Here and there was the movement of a bird limping, or the last frantic fluttering of a small ice-gummed wing.
From the castle windows it seemed that the dazzling snow had been scattered with small coals, or that the fields had become smallpox'd with the winter-murder'd hosts. There was no clear stretch of snow untriturated by this widespread death; no drift without its graveyard.
Against the blind brilliance of their background, the birds, whatever their natural plumage, appeared as black as jet, and differed only in their silhouette, whose meticulous contours might have been scored with a needle so exquisite was the drawing of their beaks, like thorns, the hairs of their feathers, their delicate claws and heads.
It seemed that, upon the vast funeral linen of the snowscape, each bird of all these hosts had signed, with an exquisite and tragic artistry, the proof of its own death, had signed it in a language at once undecipherable and eloquent - a hieroglyphic of fantastic beauty.
And the snow that had killed them, covered them; covered them with a touch that was the more terrible for its very tenderness. But for all its layer on layer of blinding powder, there were always birds upon the point of death - always this scattered, jet-black multitude. And on every side there were still those that limped, or stood shivering, or pushed their agonizing way, breast deep through the voluminous and lethal pall, leaving behind them their little trenches in the snow to show where they had been.
And yet, for all this mortality, the castle was full of birds. The Countess, her heart heavy in the knowledge of so much thirst and pain, had taken every opportunity to encourage the wildfowl to enter. No sooner had the ice formed in the hundreds of baths and basins set about the castle than it was broken again. Meat, bread crumbs and grain were laid in trails to encourage the birds to enter the warmer air within the castle. And yet, in spite of these enticements (and, fearless with hunger, thousands of birds, including owls, heron and even birds of prey were to be found within the walls), the castle was yet surrounded with the dead and dying. The severity of the weather had made of the castle a focal point. Not only had the bird-life of the immediate region been drawn to Gormenghast, but the forests and moors of far distant places had become empty. The sheer numbers of these migratory birds, descending snow-blind, famished and deadly weary upon the castle - descending hourly, out of the snow-thick sky, was sufficient for so great a death-roll, even though Gormenghast was open sanctuary.
The Countess had proclaimed (to the great inconvenience of those concerned) the dining hall to be their hospital. There, huge, red-haired and solitary, she moved among them, nursing them back to strength. Branches of trees were brought in and propped against the walls. The tables were turned upside down so that those birds that cared to, could perch upon the upturned legs. After some while the place was loud with birdsong, with the strident shouting of crows and jackdaws, and with a hundred various thin or mellow voices.
What birds could be saved from the snow were saved, but it lay too deep and soft for it to be possible for any rescuing beyond the reach of an outstretched hand from a low window.
For a month or more the castle was snowbound. A number of the doors opened on the outside world had been broken by the piled up weight. Of those that stood the strain, none were usable. Lights burned everywhere within the walls of Gormenghast, for every window was either boarded up or heavily coated.
What Mr Flay would have done had the underground tunnel never been discovered, or had Titus never told him of it, it is hard to say. The drifts about his cave were of such dangerous and voluminous dimensions, that it is doubtful whether he could have escaped being drawn sooner or later out of his depth. Apart from this, his chances of surviving the cruel cold, and of keeping himself from starving, would have been slender, for all his knowledge.
But all these problems were solved by the existence of the tunnel. It was now a commonplace for him to make his way, a candle in his hand, along its earth-smelling length, with its miles of roots and its floor littered with the skulls and bones of small animals. For many parts of the tunnel had been the retreat of foxes, rodents and vermin of all kinds. It had been used both as a refuge from such weather as they were now experiencing and from their foes. His candle, held at arm's length before him, would light up familiar root formations that told him of a spinney overhead, or would disclose the secret cities of the ants.
Free of snow and invaluable as it was as a means of gaining access to the castle, yet the darkness was foul with death and decay, and there was no cause for Flay to linger on those long and friendless journeys below ground.
On the first occasion that he had emerged at the castle end of the tunnel and had followed the passageway and had come upon the outskirts of that region of lifeless halls and corridors, and when he had moved further into the silence, as Titus had done, he had felt something of the awe that had so terrified the boy and he had lifted his bony shoulders up to his ears and thrust his jaw forward as his eyes turned this way and that as though he were being threatened by some invisible foe.
But when after a dozen daylight journeys he had explored a section of the deserted tract to his satisfaction, he retained no vestige of the apprehension that first affected him.
On the contrary, he began to make the silent halls peculiarly his own, in the way that he had unconsciously identified himself with the mood of Gormenghast forest.
It was not in his nature to proceed hot-foot upon his quest for the castle's evil. These things could not be hurried. He must establish his position as he went along.
And so (after he had found the few steps that led up to the rear of the monument in the corridors of carvings), he confined his midnight journeys, for the first few weeks, to discovering what changes had taken place since he was last in Gormenghast, in the nocturnal habits of the populace. His life in the woods had taught him patience and had made even more remarkable that power, which he had always had, of losing himself against his background. Saving for broad daylight he had no need to hide; he had only to stand still and he was absorbed into a wall, into a shadow or into rotten wood-work. When he lowered his head, his hair and beard were but another cobweb in the gloom, and his rags the sunless hart's-tongue that flourished in the dank grey corridors.
It was a strange experience for him to watch, from one point of vantage or another, the familiar faces he had once known so well. Sometimes they would pass within a few feet of him, some a little older, some a little younger, some a little different from what he remembered; others, who were youths or boys when he was exiled, now hardly recognizable.
But for all his ability to conceal himself, he took no risks, and it was a long time before he made his long midnight journeys of reconnaissance and began to discover where almost everyone of interest to him was likely to be found at various hours of the day or night.
His late master's room had never been opened since his death. Flay had noticed this with grim approval. He had gazed down at the floor outside Sepulchrave's door, where, for over twenty years, he stretched himself for sleep. And he had looked along the corridor and the dreadful night returned to his mind - the night
