Steerpike, a kitchen boy, hasn't yet recounted how he first came into the service of the hulking Mister Swelter. His chance at escape came as the skeletal Mister Flay exited a confrontation with the master chef; Steerpike followed Flay through the dark corridors of Gormenghast until he collapsed of exhaustion. Flay brought him to the area of the Groan living quarters and locked him into a room until he could be returned to Swelter without, somehow, having to speak with him again.
Recovering, Steerpike crawled out of the window of the room and climbed up to the slate roof, hundreds of feet above the ground. Surviving through the night, he woke the next day to try and find a way to the ground, or barring that, a way back into the castle. It took him hours to take in everything he could see; a tree where two ladies were dining on a huge branch; a mare and her colt swimming in collected rainwater; a field of stone where no windows looked upon (Peake writes that nobody had seen it for hundreds of years before Steerpike found it). He creeps carefully until nightfall until he finally comes to an ivy trellis that he climbs until he falls through it, senseless, into Lady Fuchsia's secret attic.
When he comes to, he follows Fuchsia and her nanny to the house doctor's rooms and asks for a job.
Gormenghast is so large that if a war was going on in one part of it, it's likely most of the residents would be unaware. It's so large that people could meet someone they hadn't seen for twenty years, neither party having ever left the castle. It's so large that Steerpike found it easier to wander the castle looking for a new job than to actually leave the place.
It's big.
Kindle says I'm 30% through the book. I remember starting to read this book many years ago, but it's pretty clear I didn't make it far in. That was a mistake. The Gormenghast trilogy is one in which you can get as lost in the books as you would if you were Steerpike, starving to death looking for a way out.
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