Barquentine (Gormenghast) hereditary office of Master of Ritual following the death of his father, and accepts Steerpike as his assistant. In the second book, Gormenghast, he is murdered by Steerpike, who takes over the post of Master of Ritual. Barquentine (Gormenghast) Barquentine is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. He is the son of Sourdust, the Master of Ritual of Gormenghast castle. He is a one-legged, hunchbacked dwarf with a bitter, vicious personality; he never washes, he dresses in filthy rags, and his hair and beard are long, tangled, and dirty. He is frequently taunted by the castle's children, who
Gormenghast (castle) to school. Occupied by the same family for five hundred years, Knole's sprawling layout and varied architecture, added to and modified by successive generations, bear comparison with Gormenghast. (Some of the descriptions of Knole by Vita Sackville-West are also remarkably similar to passages by Peake.) Its massive walls evoke the great Norman castles and keeps of medieval Europe, such as the walled city of Carcassonne (pictured), Rochester Castle in England or Caernarfon Castle in Wales; while the ancient walled Chinese cities of Beijing and Tientsin where Mervyn Peake spent his childhood are a major influence. Another Chinese source may be