The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

He had never before been through that particular door, but he imagined that he would soon find his way into the open and to some spot where he could be on his own. Turning this way and that he found that he was lost in a labyrinth of stone corridors, lit here and there by candles sunk in their own wax and placed in niches in the walls. In desperation he put his hands to his head as he ran, when suddenly, as he rounded the curve of a wall a figure passed rapidly across the passage before him, neither looking to right or left.

As soon as Mr Flay – for it was his lordship’s servant on his way to the residential apartments – as soon as he had passed from sight, Steerpike peered around the corner and followed, keeping as much as possible in step to hide the sound of his own feet. This was almost impossible, as Mr Flay’s spider-like gait besides being particularly long of stride, had like the slow-march, a time-lag before the ultimate descent of the foot. However, young Steerpike, feeling that here at any rate was his one chance of escaping from these endless corridors, followed as best he could in the hope that Mr Flay would eventually turn into some cool quadrangle or open space where get-away could be effected. At times, when the candles were thirty or forty feet apart, Mr Flay would be lost to view and only the sound of his feet on the flagstones would guide his follower. Then slowly, as his erratic shape approached the next guttering aura he would begin by degrees to become a silhouette, until immediately before the candle he would for a moment appear like an inky scarecrow, a mantis of pitch-black cardboard worked with strings. Then the progression of the lighting would be reversed and for a moment immediately after passing the flame Steerpike would see him quite clearly as a lit object against the depths of the still-to-be-trodden avenues of stone. The grease at those moments shone from the threadbare cloth across his shoulders, the twin vertical muscles of his neck rose out of the tattered collar nakedly and sharply. As he moved forward the light would dim upon his back and Steerpike would lose him, only hearing the cracking of his knee-joints and his feet striking the stones, until the ensuing candle carved him anew. Practically exhausted, first by the unendurable atmosphere of the Great Kitchen and now with this seemingly endless journey, the boy, for he was barely seventeen, sank suddenly to the ground with exhaustion, striking the flags with a thud, his boots dragging harshly on the stone. The noise brought Flay to a sudden halt and he turned himself slowly about, drawing his shoulders up to his ears as he did so. ‘What’s that?’ he croaked, peering into the darkness behind him.

There was no answer. Mr Flay began to retrace his steps, his head forward, his eyes peering. As he proceeded he came into the light of one of the candles in the wall. He approached it, still keeping his small eyes directed into the darkness beyond, and wrenched the candle, with a great substratum of ancient tallow with it, from the wall and with this to help him he soon came across the boy in the centre of the corridor several yards further on.

He bent forward and lowered the great lump of lambent wax within a few inches of Steerpike, who had fallen face downwards and peered at the immobile huddle of limbs. The sound of his footsteps and the cracking of his knee-joints had given place to an absolute silence. He drew back his teeth and straightened himself a little. Then he turned the boy over with his foot. This roused Steerpike from his faintness and he raised himself weakly on one elbow.

‘Where am I?’ he said in a whisper. ‘Where am I?’

‘One of Swelter’s little rats’, thought Flay to himself, taking no notice of the question. ‘One of Swelter’s, eh? One of his striped rats.’ ‘Get up,’ said Mr Flay aloud. ‘What you doing here?’ and he put the candle close to the boy’s face.

‘I don’t know where I am’, said young Steerpike. ‘I’m lost here. Lost. Give me daylight.’

‘What you doing here, I said … what you doing here?’ said Flay. ‘I don’t want Swelter’s boys here. Curse them!’

‘I don’t want to be here. Give me daylight and I’ll go away. Far away.’

‘Away? Where?’

Steerpike had recovered control of his mind, although he still felt hot and desperately tired. He had noticed the sneer in Mr Flay’s voice as he had said ‘I don’t want Swelter’s boys here,’ and so, at Mr Flay’s question ‘Away where?’ Steerpike answered quickly, ‘Oh anywhere, anywhere from that dreadful Mr Swelter.’

Flay peered at him for a moment or two, opening his mouth several times to speak, only to close it again.

‘New?’ said Flay looking expressionlessly through the boy.

‘Me?’ said young Steerpike.

‘You,’ said Flay, still looking clean through the top of the boy’s head. ‘New?’

‘Seventeen years old, sir,’ said young Steerpike, ‘but new to that kitchen.’

‘When?’ said Flay, who left out most of every sentence.