Sourdust looked up from his book at Lady Groan’s question. His eyes grew misty for he was pained by the irritation in her voice.

‘The ancient word of the twelfth lord is complete, your ladyship,’ he said, his eyes on the book.

‘Good,’ said Lady Groan. ‘What now?’

‘We turn about, I think, and look out on the garden,’ said Clarice vaguely, ‘don’t we, Cora? You remember just before baby Fuchsia was carried in, we all turned round and looked at the garden through the window. I’m sure we did – long ago.’

‘Where have you been since then?’ said Lady Groan, suddenly addressing her sisters-in-law and staring at them one after the other. Her dark-red hair was beginning to come loose over her neck, and the bird had scarred with its feet the soft inky-black pile of her velvet dress so that it looked ragged and grey at her shoulder.

‘We’ve been in the south wing all the time, Gertrude,’ replied Cora.

‘That’s where we’ve been,’ said Clarice. ‘In the south wing all the time.’

Lady Groan emptied a look of love across her left shoulder, and the grey bird that stood there with its head beneath its wing moved three quick steps nearer to her throat. Then she turned her eyes upon her sisters-in-law: ‘Doing what?’ she said.

‘Thinking,’ said the twins together, ‘that’s what we’ve been doing – thinking a lot.’

A high uncontrolled laugh broke out from slightly behind the Countess. Doctor Prunesquallor had disgraced himself. It was no time for him to emphasize his presence. He was there on sufferance, but a violent rapping on the table saved him and all attention was turned to Sourdust.

‘Your lordship,’ said Sourdust slowly, ‘as the seventy-sixth Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast, it is written in the laws that you do now proceed to the doorway of the Christening Room and call for your son along the empty passage.’

Lord Sepulchrave, who up to this moment, had, like his daughter beside him, remained perfectly still and silent, his melancholy eyes fixed upon the dirty vest of his servant Flay which he could just see over the table, turned towards the door, and on reaching it, coughed to clear his throat.

The Countess followed with her eyes, but her expression was too vague to understand. The twins followed him with their faces – two areas of identical flesh. Fuchsia was sucking her knuckles and seemed to be the only one in the room uninterested in the progress of her father. Flay and Swelter had their eyes fixed upon him, for although their thoughts were still engaged with the violence of half an hour earlier, they were so much a part of the Groan ritual that they followed his lordship’s every movement with a kind of surly fascination.