Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake Read Free Book Online Page B

and what little light there was showed me its eyes were positively imploring me to free it from some agony or other. Now agony is an agonizing thing to happen to anyone, your Ladyship, but to locate the seat of the agony in a mule in the darkness of a mountainous and fever-dripping night is - er... not easy (Lytotis), ha, ha, ha! But 'do' something I must. It was already upon its side in the darkness - the great thing. I had leapt from its collapsing spine and at once my faculties began to do their damndest. The brute's eyes, still fixed on mine, were like lamps that were running out of oil. I put a couple of questions to myself - pertinent ones, I felt at the time - and still do; and the first was: IS the agony spiritual or physical? If the former, the darkness wouldn't matter, but the treatment would be tricky. If the latter, the darkness would be hell: but the problem was in my province - or very nearly. I plumped for the latter, and more by good fortune or that curious sixth sense one has when alone with a mule, among tufted mountains, I found almost at once it to have been a happy guess: for directly I had decided to work on a carnal basis I got hold of the mule's head, heaved it up, and swivelled it to such an angle that by the glow of its eyes I was able to illumine - faintly, of course, but to illumine, none the less - with a dull glow, the 'rest' of its body. At once I was rewarded. It was a pure case of "foreign body". Coiled - I couldn't tell you how many times - round the beast's hind leg, was a python! Even at that ghastly and critical moment I could see what a beautiful thing it was. Far more beautiful than my old brute of a mule. But did it enter my head that 1 should transfer my allegiance to the reptile? No. After all, there is such a thing as loyalty as well as beauty. Besides, I hate walking, and the python would have taken some riding, your Ladyship: the very saddling would tax a man's patience. And besides...'
           The doctor glanced at his guest and immediately wished he hadn't. Taking out his silk handkerchief, he wiped his brow. Then he flashed his teeth, and with somewhat less ebullience in his voice... 'It was then that I thought of my bread-knife,' he added.
           For a moment there was silence. And then, as the doctor filled his lungs and was ready to continue - 'How old are you?' said the Countess. But before Doctor Prunesquallor could readjust himself there was a knock at the door and the servant entered with a goat.
           'Wrong sex, you idiot!' As the Countess spoke she rose heavily from her chair and, approaching the goat, she fondled its head with her big hands. It strained towards her on the rope leash and licked her arm.
           'You amaze me,' said the doctor to the servant. 'No wonder you cook badly.
           Away, my man, away! Unearth yet another, and get the gender right, for the love of mammals! Sometimes one wonders what kind of a world one is living in - by all things fundamental, one really does.'
           The servant disappeared.
           'Prunesquallor,' said the Countess, who had moved to the window and was staring out across the quadrangle.
           'Madam?' queried the doctor.
           'I am not easy in my heart, Prunesquallor.'
           'Your heart, madam?'
           'My heart and my mind.'
           She returned to her chair, where she seated herself again and laid her arms along the padded sides as before.
           'In what way, your Ladyship?' Prunesquallor's voice had lost its facetious vapidity.
           'There is mischief in the castle,' she replied. 'Where it is I do not know. But there is mischief.' She stared at the doctor.
           'Mischief?' he said at last. 'Some influence, do you mean - some bad influence, madam?'
           'I do not know for sure. But something has changed. My bones know it.
           There is someone.'
           'Someone?'
           'An enemy.