The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake Page A

she an inkling?’
    ‘Oh, no, not an inkling. Not an inkling, sir, bless her. She hardly ever leaves her room except at night, sir. She don’t know nothing, sir, and never talks to no one but me.’
    The doctor, removing Nannie Slagg from his knee, rose to his feet. ‘The rest of Gormenghast talks of nothing else, but the western wing is in darkness. Very, very, very strange. The child’s nurse and the child’s sister are in darkness, ha, ha, ha. But not for long, not for long. By all that’s enlightened, very much not so!’
    ‘Sir?’ queried Nannie Slagg as the doctor was about to move away.
    ‘What?’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, scrutinizing his fingernails. ‘What is it my dear Mrs Slagg? Be quick.’
    ‘Er – how is she , sir? How is her ladyship?’
    ‘Tough as behemoth,’ said Prunesquallor, and was around the corner in an instant, and Nannie Slagg, with her mouth and eyes wide open, could, as she lifted up the cold tray, hear his feet in a far passage tapping an elegant tattoo as he moved like a bird towards the bedroom of the Countess of Groan.
    As Mrs Slagg knocked at Fuchsia’s door, her heart was beating very fast. It was always a long time before she realized the import of whatever she were told, and it was only now that the full measure of what the doctor had divulged was having its effect. To be again, after all these years, the nurse of an heir to the house of Groan – to be able to bathe the helpless limbs, to iron out the little garments and to select the wet nurse from the outer dwellings! To have complete authority in anything connected with the care of the precious mite – all this was now weighing with a great load of painful pride across her heart that was beating rapidly.
    So overpowered was she by this emotion that she had knocked twice before she noticed that there was a note pinned upon the outside of the door. Peering at it she at last made out what Fuchsia had scrawled in her invariable charcoal.
    Can’t wait until the doomsday – you’re so SLOW!
    Mrs Slagg tried the door handle although she knew that the door would be locked. Leaving the tray and the apples on the mat outside she retreated to her own room where she might indulge herself in halcyon glimpses of the future. Life, it seemed, was not over for her.

THE ATTIC
    Meanwhile Fuchsia had, after waiting impatiently for her breakfast, gone to a cupboard where she kept an emergency supply of eatables – half an old seed cake and some dandelion wine. There was also a box of dates which Flay had purloined and brought up for her several weeks before, and two wrinkled pears. These she wrapped in a piece of cloth. Next she lit a candle and placed it on the floor near the wall, then hollowing her strong young back she laid hold of the foot-rail of her bed and dragged it back sufficiently for her to squeeze herself between the rail and the wall and to unlatch the cupboard door. Stretching over the head-rail she grasped her bundle of food and then picked up the candle from near her feet, and ducking her head crept through the narrow opening and found herself at the lowermost steps of the flight that led upwards in dark spirals. Closing the door behind her, she dragged a bolt into position and the tremors which she always experienced at this moment of locking herself in, took hold of her and for a moment she shook from head to foot.
    Then, with her candle lighting her face and the three sliding steps before her as she climbed, she ascended into her region.
    As Fuchsia climbed into the winding darkness her body was impregnated and made faint by a qualm as of green April. Her heart beat painfully.
    This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.
    The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath