‘Verence. Likewise.’ He peered down at the old king’s features and added, ‘Don’t seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery . . .’
‘Oh, all that was after my time,’ said Champot dismissively.
‘How long have you been here, then?’
Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. ‘About a thousand years,’ he said, his voice tinged with pride. ‘Man and ghost.’
‘A thousand years!’
‘I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can’t tell you how much that upset me.’
‘But . . . a thousand years . . .’ Verence repeated, weakly.
Champot took his arm. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. ‘Better than being alive, in many ways.’
‘They must be bloody strange ways, then!’ snapped Verence. ‘I liked being alive!’
Champot grinned reassuringly. ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to get used to it!’
‘You’ve got a strong morphogenic field,’ said Champot. ‘I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I was never very good with words, you know,’ said Champot. ‘I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—’ he paused – ‘animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred per cent alive, when you were alive,’ he added.
Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. ‘I tried to keep myself busy,’ he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.
‘How do we go about getting breakfast?’ he said.
Champot’s head looked surprised.
‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘We’re ghosts.’
‘But I’m hungry!’
‘You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.’
There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.
Verence sniffed.
‘Sausages,’ he said dreamily. ‘Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.’ He stared at Champot. ‘Black pudding,’ he whispered.
‘You haven’t actually got a stomach,’ the old ghost pointed out. ‘It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.’
‘I think I’m ravenous.’
‘Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,’ Champot explained gently. ‘Nothing at all.’
Verence lowered himself gently on to a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realised how bad.
He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.
A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
‘Indeed, my love,’ he said.
The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilised man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organised climate.
On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he’d have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . .
‘Yes, my precious,’ he said.
Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ he said.
‘What?’ said the duchess.
The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once.
‘I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,’ he said.
Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it.
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.[2] Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
Provided that all he surveyed was trees. He sighed.
‘Cut what down?’ said Lady Felmet, icily.
‘Oh, the trees,’ said the duke.
‘What have trees got to do with it?’
‘Well. . . there are such a lot of them,’ said the duke, with feeling.
‘Don’t change the subject!’
‘Sorry, my sweet.’
‘What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can’t trust someone like that.’
‘No, my love.’
‘You didn’t by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?’
‘Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.’
‘Oh.’ The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke’s personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.
‘He wouldn’t have needed to go out at all, if only you’d listened to me. But you never do.’
‘Do what, my passion?’
The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.
It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.
It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king’s own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.
The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.
He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn’t much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.
If only they could find it.
Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower.
The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.
Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.
The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.