His filthy hair fell over his eyes. His eyes blazed with an upsurge of defiance, as though a dozen pent up years had at last found outlet. He had gone so far that there was no return. His mother stood before him like a monument. He saw her great outline through the blur of his weakness and his passion. She made no movement at all.
'I will tell you! My reasons were for this. Laugh if you like! He stole my boat! He hurt Fuchsia. He killed Flay. He frightened me. I do not care if it was rebellion against the Stones - most of all it was theft, cruelty and murder. What do I care for the symbolism of it all? What do I care if the castle's heart is sound or not? I don't want to be sound anyway! Anybody can be sound if they're always doing what they're told. I want to live! Can't you see? Oh, can't you see? I want to be myself, and become what I make myself, a person, a real live person and not a symbol any more. That is my reason! He must be caught and slain. He killed Flay. He hurt my sister. He stole my boat. Isn't that enough? To hell with Gormenghast.'
In the unbearable silence the Countess and those present could hear the sound of someone approaching rapidly.
But it was an eternity before the footsteps came to rest and a distraught figure stood before the Countess and waited with head bowed and trembling hands for permission to give his message. Dragging her gaze from the face of her son she turned at last to the messenger.
'Well,' she whispered, 'what is it, man?'
He raised his head. For a few seconds he could not speak. His lips were apart but no sound came, and his jaws shook. In his eyes was such a light that caused Titus to move towards him with sudden fear.
'Not Fuchsia! Not Fuchsia!' he cried with a ghastly knowledge, even as he framed the words, that something had happened to her.
The man, still facing the Countess, said, 'The Lady Fuchsia is drowned.'
At these words something happened to Titus. Something quite unpredictable. He now knew what he must do. He knew what he was. He had no fear left. The death of his sister like the last nail to be driven into his make-up had completed him, as a structure is completed, and becomes ready for use while the sound of the last hammer blow still echoes in the ears.
The death of the Thing had seen the last of his boyhood.
When the lightning killed her he had become a man. The elasticity of childhood had gone. His brain and body had become wound up, like a spring. But the death of Fuchsia had touched the spring. He was now no longer just a man. He was that rarer thing, a man in motion. The wound-up spring of his being recoiled. He was on his way.
And the agent of his purpose was his anger. A blind white rage had transformed him. His egotistic outburst, dramatic enough, and dangerous enough on its own account, was nothing to the fierce loosening of his tongue, that like a vent for the uprush of his rage and grief, amazed his mother, the messenger and the officers who had only known him as a reserved and moody figurehead.
Fuchsia dead! Fuchsia, his dark sister - his dear sister.
'Oh God in Heaven, 'where'?' he cried. 'Where was she found. Where is she now. Where? Where? I must go to her.'
He-turned to his mother. 'It is the skewbald beast,' he said. 'He has killed her. He has killed your daughter. Who else would kill her? Or touch a hair of her head, O braver than you ever knew, who never loved her. Oh, God, mother, get your captains posted. Every weapon'd man. My tiredness has gone. I will come at once. I know the window. It is not yet dark. We can surround him. But by boat, mother. That is the quickest way. There is no need for the North Headstones. Send out the boats. Every one. I saw him, mother, the killer of my sister.'
He turned again to the bearer of the shattering news. 'Where is she now?'
'A special room has been prepared by the Doctor near the hospital. He is with her.'
And then the voice of the Countess, low and deep. She was speaking to the Head Officer present.
'The Carvers must be informed that they are needed, and every watertight boat finished or unfinished. All boats already in the castle to be drawn up alongside the west wall. All weapons to be distributed at once,' and then, to the messenger who had spoken of where Fuchsia lay, 'Lead the way.'
The Countess and Titus followed the man. No word was spoken until they were within a stone's throw of the hospital, when the Countess without turning to Titus said: 'If it were not that you were ill...'
'I am not ill,' said Titus, interrupting.
'Very well, then,' said the Countess. 'It is upon your head.'
'I welcome it,' said Titus.
While he could feel no fear, he was at the same time surprised at his own audacity. But it was so small an emotion compared with the hollow ache with which the knowledge of Fuchsia's death had filled him. To be brave among the living - what was that compared with the bonfire of his rage against Steerpike at whose door he laid the responsibility for Fuchsia's death? And the tides of the loneliness that had surged over him, drowned him in seas that knew no fear of the living, even of a mother such as his own.
When the door was opened they saw the tall thin figure of Dr Prunesquallor standing at an open window, his hands behind his back, very still and unnaturally upright. It was a small room with low rafters and bare boards on the floor, but it was meticulously clean. It was obvious that it had been freshly scrubbed and washed, boards, walls and ceiling.
Against the wall to the left was a stretcher supported at either end upon wooden boxes. On the stretcher lay Fuchsia, a sheet drawn up to her shoulders, her eyes closed. It seemed hardly her.
The Doctor turned. He did not seem to recognize either Titus or the Countess. He stared through them, only touching Titus' arm in a gentle way as he passed, for he had no sooner seen the mother and the brother of his favourite child than he had begun to move to the door.
His cheeks were wet, and his glasses had become so blurred that he stumbled when he reached the door, and could not find the handle. Titus opened the door for him and for a moment caught a glimpse of his friend in the corridor outside as he removed his glasses and began to wipe them with his silk handkerchief, his head bowed, his weak eyes peering at the spectacles in his hand with that kind of concentration that is grief.
Left together in the room the mother and son stood side by side in worlds of their own. Had they not both been moved it might well have been embarrassing. Neither knew nor cared what was going on in the breast of the other.
The face of the Countess showed nothing, but once she drew the corner of the sheet up a little further over Fuchsia's shoulder, with an infinite gentleness, as though she feared her child might feel the cold and so must take the risk of waking her.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Knowing that he had several hours to wait before it would be dark enough for him to venture forth, Steerpike had dropped off to sleep in the canoe. As he slept the canoe began to bob gently on the inky water a few feet from where the flood swam through the window entrance. This entrance, seen from the inside of the 'cavern', was like a square of light. But the breast of the great bay, which, from the dark interior of Steerpike's refuge, appeared luminous was, in reality, as the moments passed, drawing across its nakedness shawl after shawl of shadow.