In this gouache and bronze leaf painting, Jay Johnstone illuminates the night Steerpike struck down Barquentine, the withered Master of Ritual and keeper of Gormenghast’s ancient laws. The one-legged old man, wielding crutch and candle, fights back with savage spite, and flame leaps between them as they tumble towards the dark waters of the moat. Johnstone treats the scene like a page from a medieval chronicle, the burnished bronze flickering through deep shadow as firelight on stone. Here the castle’s unbending traditions meet the cold cunning that would overturn them, in a single moment of murder, fire and terrible ambition.