BooksBarbecue
Back Gormenghast Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. ABOUT THE BOOK
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. TITLE PAGE
  4. INTRODUCTION
  5. A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
  6. TITUS GROAN
  7. The Hall of the Bright Carvings
  8. The Great Kitchen
  9. Swelter
  10. The Stone Lanes
  11. ‘The Spy-Hole’
  12. Fuchsia
  13. ‘Tallow and Birdseed’
  14. A Gold Ring for Titus
  15. Sepulchrave
  16. Prunesquallor’s Knee-Cap
  17. The Attic
  18. The Frivolous Cake
  19. ‘Mrs Slagg By Moonlight’
  20. Keda
  21. ‘First Blood’
  22. ‘Assemblage’
  23. ‘Titus is Christened’
  24. Means of Escape
  25. ‘A Field of Flagstones’
  26. ‘Over the Roofscape’
  27. ‘Near and Far’
  28. ‘Dust and Ivy’
  29. ‘The Body by the Window’
  30. ‘Ullage of Sunflower’
  31. Soap for Greasepaint
  32. At the Prunesquallors
  33. A Gift of the Gab
  34. While the Old Nurse Dozes
  35. Flay Brings a Message
  36. The Library
  37. In a Lime-Green Light
  38. Reintroducing the Twins
  39. ‘The Fir-Cones’
  40. Keda and Rantel
  41. The Room of Roots
  42. ‘Inklings of Glory’
  43. ‘Preparations for Arson’
  44. The Grotto
  45. Knives in the Moon
  46. ‘The Sun Goes Down Again’
  47. ‘Meanwhile’
  48. ‘The Burning’
  49. And Horses Took Them Home
  50. COVER

Suddenly she began to cry with fatigue and excitement and from the shock she had received when the Countess had bellowed at his little lordship and herself. A shrunken, pathetic creature she looked in the high chair with the crowned doll in her arms. Her green satin gleamed mockingly in the afternoon light. ‘Oh, my weak heart,’ she sobbed, the tears crawling down the dry, pear-skin wrinkles of her miniature face – ‘my poor, poor heart – as though it were a crime to love him.’ She pressed the baby’s face against her wet cheek. Her eyes were clenched and the moisture clung to her lashes, and as her lips quivered; Fuchsia stole back and knelt down, putting her strong arms around her old nurse and her brother.

Mrs Slagg opened her bloodshot eyes and leaned forward, the three of them coming together into a compact volume of sympathy.

‘I love you –,’ whispered Fuchsia, lifting her sullen eyes. ‘I love you, I love you’, then turning her head to the door – ‘you’ve made her cry’, she shouted, as though addressing the string of figures who had so recently passed through – ‘you’ve made her cry, you beasts!’

Means of Escape

MEANS OF ESCAPE

Mr Flay was possessed by two major vexations. The first of these lay in the feud which had arisen between himself and the mountain of pale meat; the feud that had flared up and fructified in his assault upon the chef. He avoided even more scrupulously than before any corridor, quadrangle or cloister where the unmistakable proportions of his enemy might have loomed in sight. As he performed his duties, Mr Flay was perpetually aware that his enemy was in the castle and was haunted by the realization that some devilish plot was being devised, momently, in that dropsical head – some infernal hatching, in a word – revenge. What opportunities the chef would find or make, Flay could not imagine, but he was constantly on the alert and was for ever turning over in his dark skull any possibilities that occurred to him. If Flay was not actually frightened he was at least apprehensive to a point this side of fear.