Mervyn Peake - Ghormenghast 01 - Titus Groan

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TITUS GROAN

by Mervyn Peake

First published in 1946 by Eyre & Spottiswoode

by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage

and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher,

except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for

inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

The Overlook Press, Lewis Hollow Road, Woodstock, NY 12498

ISBN: 0-87951-628-3

For information about the Mervyn Peake Society, write to Secretary Frank H. Surry, 2 Mount Park

Road, Ealing, London W5 2RP England.

For information about _Peake Studies_, write to Peter Winnington, Les 3 Chasseurs, 1413 Orzens,

Switzerland.

This electronic edition differs from the published source in the numbering of chapters and the

restoration of international typography conventions.

TITUS GROAN

Dost thou love picking meat? Or would'st thou see

A man in the clouds, and have him speak to thee?

BUNYAN

1

THE HALL OF THE BRIGHT CARVINGS

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Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have

displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the

circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They

sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the

castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves

thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy

with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the

seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of

all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a

mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At

night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

Very little communication passed between the denizens of these outer quarters and those

who lived _within_ the walls, save when, on the first June morning of each year, the entire

population of the clay dwellings had sanction to enter the Grounds in order to display the wooden

carvings on which they had been working during the year. These carvings, blazoned in strange

colour, were generally of animals or figures and were treated in a highly stylized manner peculiar

to themselves. The competition among them to display the finest object of the year was bitter and

rabid. Their sole passion was directed, once their days of love had guttered, on the production of

this wooden sculpture, and among the muddle of huts at the foot of the outer wall, existed a score

of creative craftsmen whose position as leading carvers gave them pride of place among the

shadows.

At one point _within_ the Outer Wall, a few feet from the earth, the great stones of which

the wall itself was constructed, jutted forward in the form of a massive shelf stretching from

east to west for about two hundred to three hundred feet. These protruding stones were painted

white, and it was upon this shelf that on the first morning of June the carvings were ranged every

year for judgement by the Earl of Groan. Those works judged to be the most consummate, and there

were never more than three chosen, were subsequently relegated to the Hall of the Bright Carvings.

Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on

the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun's rotation, exuded a kind

of darkness for all their colour. The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy. The

craftsmen stood about like beggars, their families clustered in silent groups. They were uncouth

and prematurely aged. All radiance gone.

The carvings that were left unselected were burned the same evening in the courtyard below

Lord Groan's western balcony, and it was customary for him to stand there at the time of the

burning and to bow his head silently as if in pain, and then as a gong beat thrice from within,

the three carvings to escape the flames would be brought forth in the moonlight. They were stood

upon the balustrade of the balcony in full view of the crowd below, and the Earl of Groan would

call for their authors to come forward. When they had stationed themselves immediately beneath

where he was standing, the Earl would throw down to them the traditional scrolls of vellum, which,

as the writings upon them verified, permitted these men to walk the battlements above their

cantonment at the full moon of each alternate month. On these particular nights, from a window in

the southern wall of Gormenghast, an observer might watch the minute moonlit figures whose skill

had won for them this honour which they so coveted, moving to and fro along the battlements.

Saving this exception of the day of carvings, and the latitude permitted to the most

peerless, there was no other opportunity for those who lived within the walls to know of these

"outer" folk, nor in fact were they of interest to the "inner" world, being submerged within the

shadows of the great walls.

They were all-but forgotten people: the breed that was remembered with a start, or with

the unreality of a recrudescent dream. The day of carvings alone brought them into the sunlight

and reawakened the memory of former times. For as far back as even Nettel, the octogenarian who

lived in the tower above the rusting armoury, could remember, the ceremony had been held.

Innumerable carvings had smouldered to ashes in obedience to the law, but the choicest were still

housed in the Hall of the Bright Carvings.

This hall which ran along the top storey of the north wing was presided over by the

curator, Rottcodd, who, as no one ever visited the room, slept during most of his life in the

hammock he had erected at the far end. For all his dozing, he had never been known to relinquish

the feather duster from his grasp; the duster with which he would perform one of the only two

regular tasks which appeared to be necessary in that long and silent hall, namely to flick the

dust from the Bright Carvings.

As objects of beauty, these works held little interest to him and yet in spite of himself

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he had become attached in a propinquital way to a few of the carvings. He would be more than

thorough when dusting the Emerald Horse. The black-and-olive Head which faced it across the boards

and the Piebald Shark were also his especial care. Not that there were any on which the dust was

allowed to settle.

Entering at seven o'clock, winter and summer, year in and year out, Rottcodd would

disengage himself of his jacket and draw over his head a long grey overall which descended

shapelessly to his ankles. With his feather duster tucked beneath his arm, it was his habit to

peer sagaciously over his glasses down-the length of the hall. His skull was dark and small like a

corroded musket bullet and his eyes behind the gleaming of his glasses were the twin miniatures of

his head. All three were constantly on the move, as though to make up for the time they spent

asleep, the head wobbling in a mechanical way from side to side when Mr. Rottcodd walked, and the

eyes, as though taking their cue from the parent sphere to which they were attached, peering here,

there, and everywhere at nothing in particular. Having peered quickly over his glasses on entering

and having repeated the performance along the length of the north wing after enveloping himself in

his overall, it was the custom of Rottcodd to relieve his left armpit of the feather duster, and

with that weapon raised, to advance towards the first of the carvings on his right hand side,

without more ado. Being at the top floor of the north wing, this hall was not in any real sense a

hall at all, but was more in the nature of a loft. The only window was at its far end, and

opposite the door through which Rottcodd would enter from the upper body of the building. It gave

little light. The shutters were invariably lowered. The Hall of the Bright Carvings was

illuminated night and day by seven great candelabra suspended from the ceiling at intervals of

nine feet. The candles were never allowed to fail or even to gutter, Rottcodd himself seeing to

their replenishment before retiring at nine o'clock in the evening. There was a stock of white

candles in the small dark ante-room beyond the door of the hail, where also were kept ready for

use Rottcodd's overall, a huge visitors' book, white with dust, and a stepladder. There were no

chairs or tables, nor indecd any furniture save the hammock at the window end where Mr. Rottcodd

slept. The boarded floor was white with dust which, so assiduously kept from the carvings, had no

alternative resting place and had collected deep and ash-like, accumulating especially in the four

corners of the hall.

Having flicked at the first carving on his right, Rottcodd would move mechanically down

the long phalanx of colour standing a moment before each carving, his eyes running up and down it

and all over it, and his head wobbling knowingly on his neck before he introduced his feather

duster. Rottcodd was unmarried. An aloofness and even a nervousness was apparent on first

acquaintance and the ladies held a peculiar horror for him. His, then, was an ideal existence,

living alone day and night in a long loft. Yet occasionally, for one reason or another, a servant

or a member of the household would make an unexpected appearance and startle him with some

question appertaining to ritual, and then the dust would settle once more in the hall and on the

soul of Mr. Rottcodd.

What were his reveries as he lay in his hammock with his dark bullet head tucked in the

crook of his arm? What would he be dreaming of, hour after hour, year after year? It is not easy

to feel that any great thoughts haunted his mind nor -- in spite of the sculpture whose bright

files surged over the dust in narrowing perspective like the highway for an emperor -- that

Rottcodd made any attempt to avail himself of his isolation, but rather that he was enjoying the

solitude for its Own Sake, with, at the back of his mind, the dread of an intruder.

One humid afternoon a visitor _did_ arrive to disturb Rottcodd as he lay deeply hammocked,

for his siesta was broken sharply by a rattling of the door handle which was apparently performed

in lieu of the more popular practice of knocking at the panels. The sound echoed down the long

room and then settled into the fine dust on the boarded floor. The sunlight squeezed itself

between the thin cracks of the window blind. Even on a hot, stifling, unhealthy afternoon such as

this, the blinds were down and the candlelight filled the room with an incongruous radiance. At

the sound of the door handle being rattled Rottcodd sat up suddenly. The thin bands of moted light

edging their way through the shutters barred his dark head with the brilliance of the outer world.

As he lowered himself over the hammock, it wobbled on his shoulders, and his eyes darted up and

down the door returning again and again after their rapid and precipitous journeys to the

agitations of the door handle. Gripping his feather duster in his right hand, Rottcodd began to

advance down the bright avenue, his feet giving rise at each step to little clouds of dust. When

he had at last reached the door the handle had ceased to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his

knees he placed his right eye at the keyhole, and controlling the oscillation of his head and the

vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of

the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed

eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble but

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being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. This third eye which was going

through the same performance as the one belonging to Rottcodd, belonged to Flay, the taciturn

servant of Sepuichrave, Earl of Gormenghast. For Flay to be four rooms horizontally or one floor

vertically away from his lordship was a rare enough thing in the castle. For him to be absent at

all from his master's side was abnormal, yet here apparently on this stifling summer afternoon was

the eye of Mr. Flay at the outer keyhole of the Hall of the Bright Carvings, and presumably the

rest of Mr. Flay was joined on behind it. On mutual recognition the eyes withdrew simultaneously

and the brass doorknob rattled again in the grip of the visitor's hand. Rottcodd turned the key in

the lock and the door opened slowly.

Mr. Flay appeared to clutter up the doorway as he stood revealed, his arms folded,

surveying the smaller man before him in an expressionless way. It did not look as though such a

bony face as his could give normal utterance, but rather that instead of sounds, something more

brittle, more ancient, something dryer would emerge, something perhaps more in the nature of a

splinter or a fragment of stone. Nevertheless, the harsh lips parted. "It's me," he said, and took

a step forward into the room, his knee joints cracking as he did so. His passage across a room --

in fact his passage through life -- was accompanied by these cracking sounds, one per step, which

might be likened to the breaking of dry twigs.

Rottcodd, seeing that it was indeed he, motioned him to advance by an irritable gesture of

the hand, and closed the door behind him.

Conversation was never one of Mr. Flay's accomplishments and for some time he gazed

mirthlessly ahead of him, and then, after what seemed an eternity to Rottcodd he raised a bony

hand and scratched himself behind the ear. Then he made his second remark, "Still here, eh?" he

said, his voice forcing its way out of his face.

Rottcodd, feeling presumably that there was little need to answer such a question,

shrugged his shoulders and gave his eyes the run of the ceiling.

Mr. Flay pulled himself together and continued: "I said still here, eh, Rottcodd?" He

stared bitterly at the carving of the Emerald Horse. "You're still here, eh?"

"I'm invariably here," said Rottcodd, lowering his gleaming glasses and running his eyes

all over Mr. Flay's visage. "Day in, day out, invariably. Very hot weather. Extremely stifling.

Did you want anything?"

"Nothing," said Flay and he turned towards Rottcodd with something menacing in his

attitude. "I want _nothing_." He wiped the palms of his hands on his hips where the dark cloth

shone like silk.

Rottcodd flicked ash from his shoes with the feather duster and tilted his bullet head.

"Ah," he said in a non-committal way.

"You say 'ah',". said Flay, turning his back on Rottcodd and beginning to walk down the

coloured avenue, "but I tell you, it is more than 'ah'."

"Of course," said Rottcodd. "Much more, I dare say. But I fail to understand. I am a

Curator." At this he drew his body up to full height and stood on the tips of his toes in the

dust.

"A what?" said Flay, straggling above him for he had returned. "A curator?"

"That is so," said Rottcodd, shaking his head.

Flay made a hard noise in his throat. To Rottcodd it signified a complete lack of

understanding and it annoyed him that the man should invade his province.

"Curator," said Flay, after a ghastly silence, "I will tell you something. I know

something. Eh?"

"Well?" said Rottcodd.

"I'll tell you," said Flay. "But first, what day is it? What month, and what year is it?

Answer me."

Rottcodd was puzzled at this question, but he was becoming a little intrigued. It was so

obvious that the bony man had something on his mind, and he replied, "It is the eighth day of the

eighth month, I am uncertain about the year. But why?"

In a voice almost inaudible Flay repeated "The eighth day of the eighth month." His eyes

were almost transparent as though in a country of ugly hills one were to find among the harsh

rocks two sky-reflecting lakes. "Come here," he said, "come closer, Rottcodd, I will tell you. You

don't understand Gormenghast, what happens in Gormenghast -- the things that happen -- no, no.

Below you, that's where it all is, under this north wing. What are these things up here? These

wooden things? No use now. Keep them, but no use now. Everything is moving. The castle is moving.

Today, first time for years he's alone, his Lordship. Not in my sight." Flay bit at his knuckle.

"Bedchamber of Ladyship, that's where he is. Lordship is beside himself: won't have me, won't let

me in to see the New One. The New One. He's come. He's downstairs. I haven't seen him." Flay bit

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at the corresponding knuckle on the other hand as though to balance the sensation. "No one's been

in. Of course not. I'll be next. The birds are lined along the bedrail. Ravens, starlings, all the

perishers, and the white rook. There's a kestrel; claws through the pillow. My lady feeds them

with crusts. Grain and crusts. Hardly seen her new-born. Heir to Gormenghast. Doesn't look at him.

But my lord keeps staring. Seen him through the grating. Needs me. Won't let me in. Are you

listening?"

Mr. Rottcodd certainly was listening. In the first place he had never heard Mr. Flay talk

so much in his life before, and in the second place the news that a son had been born at long last

to the ancient and historic house of Groan was, after all, an interesting tit-bit for a curator

living alone on the upper storey of the desolate north wing. Here was something with which he

could occupy his mind for some time to come. It was true, as Mr. Flay pointed out, that he,

Rottcodd, could not possibly feel the pulse of the castle as he lay in his hammock, for in point

of fact Rottcodd had not even suspected that an heir was on its way. His meals came up in a

miniature lift through darkness from the servants' quarters many floors below and he slept in the

ante-room at night and consequently he was completely cut off from the world and all its

happenings. Flay had brought him real news. All the same he disliked being disturbed even when

information of this magnitude was brought. What was passing through the bullet-shaped head was a

question concerning Mr. Flay's entry. Why had Flay, who never in the normal course of events would

have raised an eyebrow to acknowledge his presence -- why had he now gone to the trouble of

climbing to a part of the castle so foreign to him? And to force a conversation on a personality

as unexpansive as his own. He ran his eyes over Mr. Flay in his own peculiarly rapid way and

surprised himself by saying suddenly, "To what may I attribute your presence, Mr. Flay?"

"What?" said Flay. "What's that?" He looked down on Rottcodd and his eyes became glassy.

In truth Mr. Flay had surprised himself. Why, indeed, he thought to himself, had he

troubled to tell Rottcodd the news which meant so much to him? Why Rottcodd, of all people? He

continued staring at the curator for some while, and the more he stood and pondered the clearer it

became to him that the question he had been asked was, to say the very least, uncomfortably

pertinent.

The little man in front of him had asked a simple and forthright question. It had been

rather a poser. He took a couple of shambling steps towards Mr. Rottcodd and then, forcing his

hands into his trouser pockets, turned round very slowly on one heel.

"Ah," he said at last, "I see what you mean, Rottcodd -- I see what you mean."

Rottcodd was longing to get back to his hammock and enjoy the luxury of being quite alone

again, but his eye travelled even more speedily towards the visitor's face when he heard the

remark. Mr. Flay had said that he saw what Rottcodd had meant. Had he really? Very interesting.

What, by the way, _had_ he meant? What precisely was it that Mr. Flay had seen? He flicked an

imaginary speck of dust from the gilded head of a dryad.

"You are interested in the birth below?" he inquired.

Flay stood for a while as though he had heard nothing, but after a few minutes it became

obvious he was thunderstruck. "Interested!" he cried in a deep, husky voice, "Interested! The

child is a Groan. An authentic male Groan. Challenge to Change! No _Change_, Rottcodd. No Change!"

"Ah," said Rottcodd. "I see your point, Mr. Flay. But his lordship was not dying?"

"No," said Mr. Flay, "he was not dying, but _teeth lengthen_!" and he strode to the wooden

shutters with long, slow heron-like paces, and the dust rose behind him. When it had settled

Rottcodd could see his angular parchment-coloured head leaning itself against the lintel of the

window.

Mr. Flay could not feel entirely satisfied with his answer to Rottcodd's question covering

the reason for his appearance in the Hall of the Bright Carvings. As he stood there by the window

the question repeated itself to him again and again. Why Rottcodd? Why on earth Rottcodd? And yet

he knew that directly he heard of the birth of the heir, when his dour nature had been stirred so

violently that he had found himself itching to communicate his enthusiasm to another being -- from

that moment Rottcodd had leapt to his mind. Never of a communicative or enthusiastic nature he had

found it difficult even under the emotional stress of the advent to inform Rottcodd of the facts.

And, as has been remarked, he had surprised even himself not only for having unburdened himself at

all, but for having done so in so short a time.

He turned, and saw that the Curator was standing wearily by the Piebald Shark, his small

cropped round head moving to and fro like a bird"s, and his hands clasped before him with the

feather duster between his fingers. He could see that Rottcodd was politely waiting for him to go.

Altogether Mr. Flay was in a peculiar state of mind. He was surprised at Mr. Rottcodd for being so

unimpressed at the news, and he was surprised at himself for having brought it. He took from his

pocket a vast watch of silver and held it horizontally on the flat of his palm. "Must go," he said

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awkwardly. "Do you hear me, Rottcodd, I must go?"

"Good of you to call," said Rottcodd. "Will you sign your name in the visitors' book as

you go out?"

"No! Not a visitor." Flay brought his shoulders up to his ears. "Been with lordship thirty-

seven years. Sign a _book_," he added contemptuously, and he spat into a far corner of the room.

"As you wish," said Mr. Rottcodd. "It was to the section of the visitors' book devoted to

the staff that I was referring."

"No!" said Flay.

As he passed the curator on his way to the door he looked carefully at him as he came

abreast, and the question rankled. Why? The castle was filled with the excitement of the nativity.

All was alive with conjecture. There was no control. Rumour swept through the stronghold.

Everywhere, in passage, archway, cloister, refectory, kitchen, dormitory, and hall it was the

same. Why had he chosen the unenthusiastic Rottcodd? And then, in a flash he realized. He must

have subconsciously known that the news would be new tono one else; that Rottcodd was virgin soil

for his message, Rottcodd the curator who lived alone among the Bright Carvings was the only one

on whom he could vent the tidings without jeopardizing his sullen dignity, and to whom although

the knowledge would give rise to but little enthusiasm it would at least be new.

Having solved the problem in his mind and having realized in a dullish way that the

conclusion was particularly mundane and uninspired, and that there was no question of his soul

calling along the corridors and up the stairs to the soul of Rottcodd, Mr. Flay in a thin

straddling manner moved along the passages of the north wing and down the curve of stone steps

that led to the stone quadrangle, feeling the while a curious disillusion, a sense of having

suffered a loss of dignity, and a feeling of being thankful that his visit to Rottcodd had been

unobserved and that Rottcodd himself was well hidden from the world in the Hall of the Bright

Carvings.

2

THE GREAT KITCHEN

As Flay passed through the servants' archway and descended the twelve steps that led into

the main corridor of the kitchen quarters, he became aware of an acute transformation of mood. The

solitude of Mr. Rottcodd's sanctum, which had been lingering in his mind, was violated. Here among

the stone passages were all the symptoms of ribald excitement. Mr. Flay hunched his bony shoulders

and with his hands in his jacket pockets dragged them to the front so that only the black cloth

divided his clenched fists. The material was stretched as though it would split at the small of

his back. He stared mirthlessly to right and left and then advanced, his long spidery legs

cracking as he shouldered his way through a heaving group of menials. They were guffawing to each

other coarsely and one of them, evidently the wit, was contorting his face, as pliable as putty,

into shapes that appeared to be independent of the skull, if indeed he had a skull beneath that

elastic flesh. Mr. Flay pushed past.

The corridor was alive. Clusters of aproned figures mixed and disengaged. Some were

singing. Some were arguing and some were draped against the wall, quite silent from exhaustion,

their hands dangling from their wrists or flapping stupidly to the beat of some kitchen catch-

song. The clamour was pitiless. Technically this was more the spirit which Flay liked to see, or

at all events thought to be more appropriate to the occasion. Rottcodd's lack of enthusiasm had

shocked him and here, at any rate, the traditional observance of felicity at the birth of an heir

to Gormenghast was being observed. But it would have been impossible for him to show any signs of

enthusiasm himself when surrounded by it in others. As he moved along the crowded corridor and

passed in turn the dark passages that led to the slaughter-house with its stench of fresh blood,

the bakeries with their sweet loaves and the stairs that led down to the wine vaults and the

underground network of the castle cellars, he felt a certain satisfaction at seing how many of the

roysterers staggered aside to let him pass, for his station as retainer-in-chief to his Lordship

was commanding and his sour mouth and the frown that had made a permanent nest upon his jutting

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forehead were a warning.

It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds

of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. But on an occasion such as this it was

different, for the spirit of convention was being rigorously adhered to, and in between his ribs

Mr. Flay experienced twinges of pleasure.

He had come to where, on his left, and halfway along the servants' corridor, the heavy

wooden doors of the Great Kitchen stood ajar. Ahead of him, narrowing in dark perspective, for

there were no windows, the rest of the corridor stretched silently away. It had no doors on either

side and at the far end it was terminated by a wall of flints. This useless passage was, as might

be supposed, usually deserted, but Mr. Flay noticed that several figures were lying stretched in

the shadows. At the same time he was momentarily deafened by a great bellowing and clattering and

stamping.

As Mr. Flay entered the Great Kitchen the steaming, airless concentration of a ghastly

heat struck him. He felt that his body had received a blow. Not only was the normal sickening

atmosphere of the kitchen augmented by the sun's rays streaming into the room at various points

through the high windows, but, in the riot of the festivities, the fires had been banked

dangerously. But Mr. Flay realized that it was _right_ that this should be as insufferable as it

was. He even realized that the four grillers who were forcing joint after joint between the metal

doors with their clumsy boots, until the oven began to give under the immoderate strain, were in

key with the legitimate temper of the occasion. The fact that they had no idea what they were

doing nor why they were doing it was irrelevant. The Countess had given birth; was this a moment

for rational behaviour?

The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were built with grey

slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the "Grey

Scrubbers". It had been their privilege on reaching adolescence to discover that, being the sons

of their fathers, their careers had been arranged for them and that stretching ahead of them lay

their identical lives consisting of an unimaginative if praiseworthy duty. This was to restore,

each morning, to the great grey floor and the lofty walls of the kitchen a stainless complexion.

On every day of the year from three hours before daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the

scaffolding and ladders became a hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their

hereditary calling. Through the character of their trade, their arms had become unusually

powerful, and when they let their huge hands hang loosely at their sides, there was more than an

echo of the simian. Coarse as these men appeared, they were an integral part of the Great Kitchen.

Without the Grey Scrubbers something very earthy, very heavy, very real would be missing to any

sociologist searching in that steaming room, for the completion of a circle of temperaments, a

gamut of the lower human values.

Through daily proximity to the great slabs of stone, the faces of the Grey Scrubbers had

become like slabs themselves. There was no expression whatever upon the eighteen faces, unless the

lack of expression is in itself an expression. They were simply slabs that the Grey Scrubbers

spoke from occasionally, stared from incessantly, heard with, hardly ever. They were traditionally

deaf. The eyes were there, small and flat as coins, and the colour of the walls themselves, as

though during the long hours of professional staring the grey stone had at last reflected itself

indelibly once and for all. Yes, the eyes were there, thirty-six of them and the eighteen noses

were there, and the lines of the mouths that resembled the harsh cracks that divided the stone

slabs, they were there too. Although nothing physical was missing from any one of their eighteen

faces yet it would be impossible to perceive the faintest sign of animation and, even if a

basinful of their features had been shaken together and if each feature had been picked out at

random and stuck upon some dummy-head of wax at any capricious spot or angle, it would have made

no difference, for even the most fantastic, the most ingenious of arrangements could not have

tempted into life a design whose component parts were dead. In all, counting the ears, which on

occasion may be monstrously expressive, the one hundred and eight features were unable, at the

best of times, to muster between them, individually or taken _en masse_, the faintest shadow of

anything that might hint at the workings of what lay beneath.

Having watched the excitement developing around them in the Great Kitchen, and being

unable to comprehend what it was all about for lack of hearing, they had up to the last hour or

two been unable to enter into that festive spirit which had attacked the very heart and bowels of

the kitchen staff.

But here and now, on this day of days, cognizant at last of the arrival of the new Lord,

the eighteen Grey Scrubbers were lying side by side upon the flagstones beneath a great table,

dead drunk to a man. They had done honour to the occasion and were out of the picture, having been

rolled under the table one by one like so many barrels of ale, as indeed they were.

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Through the clamour of the voices in the Great Kitchen that rose and fell, that changed

tempo, and lingered, until a strident rush or a wheezy slide of sound came to a new pause, only to

be shattered by a hideous croak of laughter or a thrilled whisper, or a clearing of some coarse

throat -- through all this thick and interwoven skein of bedlam, the ponderous snoring of the Grey

Scrubbers had continued as a recognizable theme of dolorous persistence.

In favour of the Grey Scrubbers it must be said that it was not until the walls and floor

of the kitchen were shining from their exertions that they attacked the bungs as though unweaned.

But it was not only they who had succumbed. The same unquestionable proof of loyalty could be

observed in no less than forty members of the kitchen, who, like the Grey Scrubbers, recognizing

the bottle as the true medium through which to externalize their affection for the family of

Groan, were seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

Mr. Flay, wiping away with the back of his claw-like hand the perspiration that had

already gathered on his brow, allowed his eyes to remain a moment on the inert and foreshortened

bodies of the inebriate Grey Scrubbers. Their heads were towards him, and were cropped to a gun-

grey stubble. Beneath the table a shadow had roosted, and the rest of their bodies, receding in

parallel lines, were soon devoured in the darkness. At first glance he had been reminded of

nothing so much as a row of curled-up hedgehogs, and it was some time before he realized that he

was regarding a line of prickly skulls. When he had satisfied himself on this point his eyes

travelled sourly around the Great Kitchen. Everything was confusion, but behind the flux of the

shifting figures and the temporary chaos of overturned mixing tables, of the floor littered with

stock-pots, basting pans, broken bowls and dishes, and oddments of food, Mr. Flay could see the

main fixtures in the room and keep them in his mind as a means of reference, for the kitchen swam

before his eyes in a clammy mist. Divided by the heavy stone wall in which was situated a hatch of

strong timber, was the _garde-manger_ with its stacks of cold meat and hanging carcases and on the

inside of the wall the spit. On a fixed table running along a length of the wall were huge bowls

capable of holding fifty portions. The stock-pots were perpetually simmering, having boiled over,

and the floor about them was a mess of sepia fluid and egg-shells that had been floating in the

pots for the purpose of clearing the soup. The sawdust that was spread neatly over the floor each

morning was by now kicked into heaps and soaked in the splashings of wine. And where scattered

about the floor little blobs of fat had been rolled or trodden in, the sawdust stuck to them

giving them the appearance of rissoles. Hanging along the dripping walls were rows of sticking

knives and steels, boning knives, skinning knives and two-handed cleavers, and beneath them a

twelve-foot by nine-foot chopping block, cross-hatched and hollowed by decades of long wounds.

On the other side of the room, to Mr. Flay's left, a capacious enormous copper, a row of

ovens and a narrow doorway acted as his landmarks. The doors of the ovens were flying wide and

acid flames were leaping dangerously, as the fat that had been thrown into the fires bubbled and

stank.

Mr. Flay was in two minds. He hated what he saw, for of all the rooms in the castle, it

was the kitchen he detested most, and for a very real reason; and yet a thrill in his scarecrow

body made him aware of how right it all was. He could not, of course, analyse his feelings nor

would the idea have occurred to him, but he was so much a part and parcel of Gormenghast that he

could instinctively tell when the essence of its tradition was running in a true channel,

powerfully and with no deviation.

But the fact that Mr. Flay appreciated, as from the profoundest of motives, the vulgarity

of the Great Kitchen in no way mitigated his contempt for the figures he saw before him as

individuals. As he looked from one to another the satisfaction which he had at first experienced

in seeing them collectively gave way to a detestation as he observed them piecemeal.

A prodigious twisted beam, warped into a spiral, floated, or so it seemed in the haze,

across the breadth of the Great Kitchen. Here and there along its undersurface, iron hooks were

screwed into its grain. Slung over it like sacks half filled with sawdust, so absolutely lifeless

they appeared, were two pastry-cooks, an ancient _poissonnier_, a _rôtier_ with legs so bandy as

to describe a rugged circle, a red-headed _légumier_, and five _sauciers_ with their green scarves

around their necks. One of them near the far end from where Flay stood twitched a little, but

apart from this all was stillness. They were very happy.

Mr. Flay took a few paces and the atmosphere closed around him. He had stood by the door

unobserved, but now as he came forward a roysterer leaping suddenly into the air caught hold of

one of the hooks in the dark beam above them. He was suspended by one arm, a cretinous little man

with a face of concentrated impudence. He must have possessed a strength out of all proportions to

his size, for with the weight of his body hanging on the end of one arm he yet drew himself up so

that his head reached the level of the iron hook. As Mr. Flay passed beneath, the dwarf, twisting

himself upside down with incredible speed, coiled his legs around the twisted beam and dropping

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the rest of himself vertically with his face a few inches from that of Mr. Flay, grinned at him

grotesquely with his head upside down, before Flay could do anything save come to an abrupt halt.

The dwarf had then swung himself on to the beam again and was running along it on all fours with

an agility more likely to be found in jungles than in kitchens.

A prodigious bellow outvoicing all cacophony caused him to turn his head away from the

dwarf. Away to his left in the shade of a supporting pillar he could make out the vague

unmistakable shape of what had really been at the back of his brain like a tumour, ever since he

had entered the great kitchen.

3

SWELTER

The chef of Gormenghast, balancing his body with difficulty upon a cask of wine, was

addressing a group of apprentices in their striped and sodden jackets and small white caps. They

clasped each other's shoulders for their support. Their adolescent faces steaming with the heat of

the adjacent ovens were quite stupefied, and when they laughed or applauded the enormity above

them, it was with a crazed and sycophantic fervour. As Mr. Flay approached to within a few yards

of the cluster, another roar, such as he had heard a moment or two earlier, rolled into the heat

above the wine-barrel.

The young scullions had heard this roar many times before but had never associated it with

anything other than anger. At first, consequently, it had frightened them, but they had soon

perceived that there was no irritation in its note today.

The chef, as he loomed over them, drunken, arrogant and pedantic, was enjoying himself.

As the apprentices swayed tipsily around the wine cask, their faces catching and losing

the light that streamed through a high window, they also, in a delirious fashion -- were enjoying

themselves. The echoes died from the apparently reasonless bellow of the chief chef and the

sagging circle about the barrel stamped its feet feverishly and gave high shrill cries of delight,

for they had seen an inane smile evolving from the blur of the huge head above them. Never before

had they enjoyed such latitude in the presence of the chef. They struggled to outdo one another in

the taking of liberties unheard of hitherto. They vied for favours, screaming his name at the tops

of their voices. They tried to catch his eye. They were very tired, very heavy and sick with the

drink and the heat, but were living fiercely on their fuddled reserves of nervous energy. All

saving one high-shouldered boy, who throughout the scene had preserved a moody silence. He loathed

the figure above him and he despised his fellow-apprentices. He leaned against the shadowy side of

the pillar, out of the chef's line of vision.

Mr. Flay was annoyed, even on such a day, by the scene. Although approving in theory, in

practice it seemed to him that the spectacle was unpleasant. He remembered, when he had first come

across Swelter, how he and the chef had instantaneously entertained a mutual dislike, and how this

antipathy festered. To Swelter it was irksome to see the bony straggly figure of Lord

Sepulchrave's first servant in his kitchen at all, the only palliative to this annoyance being the

opportunity which if afforded for the display of his superior wit at Mr. Flay's expense.

Mr. Flay entered Swelter's steaming province for one purpose only. To prove to himself as

much as to others, that he, as Lord Groan's personal attendant, would on no account be intimidated

by any member of the staff.

To keep this fact well in front of his own mind, he made a tour of the servants' quarters

every so often, never entering the kitchen, however, without a queasiness of stomach, never

departing from it without a renewal of spleen.

The long beams of sunlight, which were reflected from the moist walls in a shimmering

haze, had pranked the chef's body with blotches of ghost-light. The effect from below was that of

a dappled volume of warm vague whiteness and of a grey that dissolved into swamps of midnight --

of a volume that towered and dissolved among the rafters. As occasion merited he supported himself

against the stone pillar at his side and as he did so the patches of light shifted across the

degraded whiteness of the stretched uniform he wore. When Mr. Flay had first eyed him, the cook's

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head had been entirely in shadow. Upon it the tall cap of office rose coldly, a vague topsail half

lost in a fitful sky. In the total effect there was indeed something of the galleon.

One of the blotches of reflected sunlight swayed to and fro across the paunch. This

particular pool of light moving in a mesmeric manner backwards and forwards picked out from time

to time a long red island of spilt wine. It seemed to leap forward from the mottled cloth when the

light fastened upon it in startling contrast to the chiaroscuro and to defy the laws of tone. This

ungarnished sign of Swelter's debauche, taking the swollen curve of linen, had somehow, to Mr.

Flay's surprise, a fascination. For a minute he watched it appear, and disappear to reappear again

-- a lozenge of crimson, as the body behind it swayed.

Another senseless bout of foot-stamping and screaming broke the spell, and lifting his

eyes he scowled about him. Suddenly, for a moment, the memory of Mr. Rottcodd in his dusty

deserted hall stole into his consciousness and he was shocked to realize how much he had really

preferred -- to this inferno of time-hallowed revelry -- the limp and seemingly disloyal self-

sufficiency of the curator. He straddled his way to a vantage point, from where he could see and

remain unseen, and from there he noticed that Swelter was steadying himself on his legs and with a

huge soft hand making signs to the adolescents below him to hold their voices. Flay noticed how

the habitual truculence of his tone and manner had today altered to something mealy, to a

conviviality weighted with lead and sugar, a ghastly intimacy more dreadful than his most dreaded

rages. His voice came down from the shadows in huge wads of sound, or like the warm, sick notes of

some prodigious mouldering bell of felt.

His soft hand had silenced the seething of the apprentices and he allowed his thick voice

to drop out of his face.

"Gallstones!" and in the dimness he flung his arms apart so that the buttons of his tunic

were torn away, one of them whizzing across the room and stunning a cockroach on the opposite

wall. "Close your ranks and close your ranks and listen mosht attentivesome. Come closer then, my

little sea of faces, come ever closer in, my little ones."

The apprentices edged themselves forward, tripping and treading upon each other's feet,

the foremost of them being wedged against the wine-barrel itself.

"Thatsh the way. Thatsh jusht the way," said Swelter, leering down at them. "Now we're

quite a happly little family. Mosht shelect and advanced."

He then slid a fat hand through a slit in his white garment of office and removed from a

deep pocket a bottle. Plucking out the cork with his lips, that had gripped it with an uncanny

muscularity, he poured half a pint down his throat without displacing the cork, for he laid a

finger at the mouth of the bottle, so dividing the rush of wine into two separate spurts that shot

adroitly into either cheek, and so, making contact at the back of his mouth, down his throat in

one dull gurgle to those unmentionable gulches that lay below.

The apprentices screamed and stamped and tore at each other in an access of delight and of

admiration.

The chef removed the cork and twisted it around between his thumb and forefinger and

satisfying himself that it had remained perfectly dry during the operation, recorked the bottle

and returned it through the slit into his pocket.

Again he put up his hand and silence was restored save for the heavy, excited breathing.

"Now tell me thish, my stenching cherubs. Tell me thish and tell me exshtra quickly, who

am _I_? Now tell me exshtra quickly."

"Swelter," they cried, "Swelter, sir! Swelter!"

"Is that _all_ you know?" came the voice. "Is that _all_ you know, my little sea of faces?

Silence now! and lishen well to me, chief chef of Gormenghast, man and boy forty years, fair and

foul, rain or shine, sand and sawdust, hags and stags and all the resht of them done to a turn and

spread with sauce of aloes and a dash of prickling pepper."

"With a dash of prickling pepper," yelled the apprentices hugging themselves and each

other in turn. "Shall we cook it, sir? We"ll do it now, sir, and slosh it in the copper, sir, and

stir it up. Oh! what a tasty dish, sir, oh! what a tasty dish!"

"Shilence," roared the chef. "Silensh, my fairy boys. Silence, my belching angels. Come

closer here, come closer with your little creamy faces and I'll tell you who I am."

The high-shouldered boy, who had taken no part in the excitement, pulled out a small pipe

of knotted worm-wood and filled it deliberately. His mouth was quite expressionless, curving

neither up nor down, but his eyes were dark and hot with a mature hatred. They were half closed

but their eloquence smouldered through the lashes as he watched the figure on the barrel lean

forward precariously.

"Now lishen well," continued the voice, "and I'll tell you exactly who I am and then I'll

shing to you a shong and you will know who's shinging to you, my ghastly little ineffectual

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Mervyn Peake - Ghormenghast 01 - Titus Groan

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