Gormenghast

       The doctor glanced at his guest and immediately wished he hadn't. Taking out his silk handkerchief, he wiped his brow. Then he flashed his teeth, and with somewhat less ebullience in his voice... 'It was then that I thought of my bread-knife,' he added.

       For a moment there was silence. And then, as the doctor filled his lungs and was ready to continue - 'How old are you?' said the Countess. But before Doctor Prunesquallor could readjust himself there was a knock at the door and the servant entered with a goat.

       'Wrong sex, you idiot!' As the Countess spoke she rose heavily from her chair and, approaching the goat, she fondled its head with her big hands. It strained towards her on the rope leash and licked her arm.

       'You amaze me,' said the doctor to the servant. 'No wonder you cook badly.

       Away, my man, away! Unearth yet another, and get the gender right, for the love of mammals! Sometimes one wonders what kind of a world one is living in - by all things fundamental, one really does.'

       The servant disappeared.

       'Prunesquallor,' said the Countess, who had moved to the window and was staring out across the quadrangle.

       'Madam?' queried the doctor.

       'I am not easy in my heart, Prunesquallor.'

       'Your heart, madam?'

       'My heart and my mind.'

       She returned to her chair, where she seated herself again and laid her arms along the padded sides as before.

       'In what way, your Ladyship?' Prunesquallor's voice had lost its facetious vapidity.

       'There is mischief in the castle,' she replied. 'Where it is I do not know. But there is mischief.' She stared at the doctor.

       'Mischief?' he said at last. 'Some influence, do you mean - some bad influence, madam?'

       'I do not know for sure. But something has changed. My bones know it.

       There is someone.'

       'Someone?'

       'An enemy. Whether ghost or human I do not know. But an enemy. Do you understand?'

       'I understand,' said the doctor. Every vestige of his waggery had disappeared. He leaned forward. 'It is not a ghost,' he said. 'Ghosts have no itch for rebellion.'

       'Rebellion!' said the Countess loudly. 'By whom?'

       'I do not know. But what else can it be you sense, as you say, in your bones, madam?'

       'Who would 'dare' to rebel?' she whispered, as though to herself. 'Who would dare?...' And then, after a pause: 'Have you 'your' suspicions?'

       'I have no proof. But I will watch for you. For, by the holy angels, since you have brought the matter up there is evil abroad and no mistake.'

'Worse,' she replied, 'worse than that. There is perfidy.'

       She drew a deep breath and then, very, slowly: '... and I will crush its life out: I will break it: not only for Titus' sake and for his dead father's, but more - for Gormenghast.'

       'You speak of your late husband, madam, the revered Lord Sepulchrave. Where are his remains, madam, if he is truly dead?'

       'And more than that, man, more than that! What of the fire that warped his brilliant brain? What of that fire in which, but for that youth Steerpike...'

       She lapsed into a thick silence.

       'And what of the suicide of his sisters; and the disappearance of the chef on the same night as his Lordship your husband - and all within a year, or little more: and since then a hundred irregularities and strange affairs? What lies at the back of all this? By all that's visionary, madam, your heart has reason to be uneasy.'

       'And there is Titus,' said the Countess.

       'There is Titus,' the doctor repeated as quick as an echo.

       'How old is he now?'

       'He is nearly eight,' Prunesquallor raised his eyebrows. 'Have you not seen him?'

       'From my window,' said the Countess, 'when he rides along the South Wall.'

       'You should be with him, your Ladyship, now and then,' said the doctor. 'By all that's maternal, you really should see more of your son.'

       The Countess stared at the doctor, but what she might have replied was stunned for ever by a rap at the door and the reappearance of the servant with a nannygoat.

       'Let her go!' said the Countess.

       The little white goat ran to her as though she were a magnet. She turned to Prunesquallor. 'Have you a jug?'

       The doctor turned his head to the door. 'Fetch a jug,' he said to the disappearing face.

       'Prunesquallor,' she said, as she knelt down, a prodigious bulk in the lamplight, and stroked the sleek ears of the goat, 'I will not ask you on whom your suspicions lie. No. Not yet. But I expect you to watch, Prunesquallor - to watch everything, as I do. You must be all aware, Prunesquallor, every moment of the day. I expect to be informed of heterodoxy, wherever it may be found. I have a kind of faith in you, man. A kind of faith in you. I don't know why...' she added.

       'Madam,' said Prunesquallor, 'I will be on tip-toe.'

       The servant came in with a jug, and retired.

       The elegant curtains fluttered a little in the night air. The light of the lamp was golden in the room, glimmering on the porcelain bowls, on the squat cut-glass vases and the tall cloisonné ware: on the vellum backs of books and the glazed drawings that hung upon the walls. But its light was reflected most vividly from the countless small white faces of the motionless cats. Their whiteness blanched the room and chilled the mellow light. It was a scene that Prunesquallor never forgot. The Countess on her knees by the dying fire: the goat standing quietly while she milked it with an authority in the deft movement of her fingers that affected him strangely. Was this heavy, brusque, uncompromising Countess, whose maternal instincts were so shockingly absent: who had not spoken to Titus for a year: who was held in awe, and even in fear, by the populace: who was more a legend than a woman - was this indeed 'she', with the half-smile of extraordinary tenderness on her wide lips?

       And then he remembered her voice again, when she had whispered: 'Who would dare to rebel? Who would 'dare'?' and then the full, ruthless organ-chord of her throat: 'And I will crush its life out! I will break it! Not only for Titus' sake...'

EIGHT

Cora and Clarice, although they did not know it, were imprisoned in their apartments. Steerpike had nailed and bolted from the outside all their means of exit. They had been incarcerated for two years, their tongues having loosened to the brink of Steerpike's undoing. Cunning and patient as he was with them, the young man could find no other foolproof way of ensuring their permanent silence on the subject of the library fire. No other way - but one. They believed that they alone among the inhabitants of the castle were free of a hideous disease of Steerpike's invention, and which he referred to as 'Weasel plague'.