The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

At a given time it was for these scores of isolated men to ignite the great stacks of timber that they had been collecting all day long. With the smoke from these great bonfires to guide him, the least intelligent voyager to the Black House would surely be able to make his way without difficulty, and in any fashion he chose, whether by air or on land.

The workmen, thought Cheeta, as she perused the landscape, must have at least three days’ start, and must return before the first of the guests. They must work to plan and in silence, not one of them knowing the business of his neighbour.

They must come in every kind of vehicle, from great vans loaded with the most unlikely contents, to pony traps: from long cars to wheelbarrows.

At dawn, on the day of the Party … there must be sounded across the land the voice of a gong. And Cheeta would have been prepared to stake a fortune that anyone near Titus at the time of the gong-boom, would see a shadow cross his face … almost as though he were reminded of another world: a world he had deserted.

NINETY-THREE

For all her skill and speed, a time had come when it was impossible for Cheeta to be everywhere at the same time (a characteristic for which she was famous), and within a matter of minutes, she had stepped out of the helicopter and was on her way to the ‘Making Shops’, and within a few minutes more she was in rapid conversation with the more responsible of the ‘makers’.

It was now impossible to carry on without a delegation of duties, for time was hard at their heels. Some part of the secrecy must inevitably be made less stringent for, unless the curtain were raised a little, there would be danger of chaos. As it was it was almost too late. For all the power that Cheeta held in her tiny, bow-string body, there was yet a murmur of discontent in the Workshops that grew louder every day.

Even among the gentry there were murmurings; and Cheeta was forced to take a couple of them into her confidence.

Apart from this there was her father. He had at last been partially won over.

‘It won’t be long, father.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said the hollow wisp.

‘You must do as you’re told, mustn’t you? Is your costume ready? And your mask?’

A fly settled on the horrible egg-shaped head. Twitching the skin of his cranium into a minor convulsion he dislodged the creature, and by the time he was able to answer, his daughter was no longer with him. Cheeta had no time to waste.

NINETY-FOUR

At a muster of the executive, which numbered nine souls including Cheeta (if she can be called a soul) and which had among its numbers representatives of all social grades, it was agreed that everybody should be kept in suspense as to where the party should take place; the chosen nine alone being in some kind of mental half-light.

These nine alone were bribed. These nine alone had some kind of inkling as to what was being made in the shops, the barns, the warehouses, and the private houses.

Yet there was rancour among the nine. It is true that compared with the horde they were privileged, but compared with Cheeta they were in outer darkness, fobbed off with bits and pieces of knowledge; knowing only that out of the miscellaneous chaos, some kind of mammoth invention was at work in Cheeta’s brain.

NINETY-FIVE

‘I’ve got a feeling,’ said Juno, ‘that all is not well with Titus. I dreamed of him last night. He was in danger.’

‘He’s been in danger most of his life,’ said the Anchor. ‘I don’t think he’d know what to do with himself if he wasn’t.’

‘Do you believe in him?’ said Juno, after a long pause. ‘I’ve never asked you before. I’ve always feared the answer, I suppose.’

Anchor raised his eyes, and studied the ceiling of a private lounge on the ninety-ninth floor. Then he leaned back against an indigo cushion. Juno stood by a window. She was as regal as ever. The fullness under her chin, and the tiny crow’s-feet around her eyes in no way impaired her grandeur. The room was full of a pale blue light which gave a strange glint to the Anchor’s mop of red hair. Far away there was a murmuring sound like the sound of the sea.

‘Do I believe in him?’ queried the Anchor. ‘What does that mean? I believe in his existence. Just as I believe that you are shaking. Are you ill?’

Juno turned round and faced him. ‘I am not ill,’ she whispered, ‘but I will be if you don’t answer my question. You know what I mean.’

‘His castle and his lineage? Is that what worries you?’

‘He’s such a boy! Such a golden boy! He was always sweet with me. How is it he could lie to me, and to everyone? What do you feel at the sound of that strange word?’

‘Gormenghast?’

‘Yes, Gormenghast. Oh, Anchor my dear. I have such a pain in my heart.’

Anchor rose to his feet in one quiet movement and moved with a faintly rolling gait towards her. But he did not touch her.

‘He is not mad,’ he said. ‘Whatever else he is, he is not mad. If he were mad then it would be better for madness to thrive in the world. No. Inventive perhaps. He may be for all we know the last word in the realms of imagery, supposition, hypothesis, conjecture, surmise, and all that is clothed in the wild webs of his imagination. But mad? No.’

Anchor looked at her with a wry smile on his lips.

‘Then you don’t believe him, for all your long words,’ cried Juno. ‘You think he’s a liar! Oh my dear Anchor, what has come over me? I feel so frightened.’

‘It was your dream,’ said Anchor. ‘What was it about?’

‘I saw him,’ whispered Juno at last, ‘staggering with a castle on his back. Tall towers were intertwined with locks of dark red hair. He cried out as he stumbled … “Forgive me! Forgive me!” Behind him floated eyes. Nothing but eyes! Swarms of them. They sang as they floated through the air at his side, their pupils expanding or contracting according to the notes they were singing. It was horrible. They were so intent, you see. Like hounds about to tear a fox apart. Yet they sang all the while, so that it was sometimes difficult to hear the voice of Titus calling out, “Forgive me. For pity’s sake, forgive me”.’

Juno turned to the Anchor.

‘You see, he is in danger. Why else should I dream? We must not rest until we find him.’

She turned her head up to his.

‘It isn’t love any more,’ she said, ‘as it used to be. I have lost my jealousy and my bitterness. Nothing of this is any longer a part of me. I want Titus for another reason … just as I want Muzzlehatch and others I have cared for in the past. The past. Yes, that is it. I need my past again. Without it I am nothing. I bob like a cork on deep water. Perhaps I am not brave enough. Perhaps I am frightened. We thought that we could start our lives again. But all this time I brood upon what’s gone. The haze has settled like a golden dust. O my dear friend. My dear Anchor. Where are they? What shall I do?’

‘We will away and find them. We’ll lay their ghosts, my dear. When shall we start?’

‘Now,’ said Juno.

Anchor got to his feet.

‘Now it is,’ he said.

NINETY-SIX

He only knew he was aloft and airborne: that no one answered him when he spoke: that he appeared to be moving: that there was a soft buzz of machinery: that the night air was gentle and balmy: that there were occasional voices from far below, and that there was someone near him, sharing the same machine, who refused to talk.

His hands were carefully tied behind him, so that he should suffer no pain: yet they were firm enough to prevent his escape. So it was with the silk scarf across his eyes. It had been carefully adjusted so that Titus should feel no inconvenience, save that of being sightless.

That he was in such a predicament at all was something to wonder at. Indeed if it were not that Titus was apt to throw in his lot with any hare-brained scheme, he would by now be yelling for release.

He had no sense of fear, for it had been explained to him that, this being the night of the party, he must expect anything. And he must believe that to make it a night of all nights, one element alone was paramount, and that element was the element of surprise. Without it, all would be stillborn, and die before its first wild breath was drawn.

It was for him, at a future moment, to have the silk scarf plucked from his eyes to behold the light of a great bonfire, a hundred bright inventions.

It was for him to await the quintessential instant and to let it flower. Under the star-flecked sky, under the sighing of the leaves and ferns, there lay the Black House. Here was a setting for a dark splendour, a dripping of the night dew. Here was the forlorn decay of centuries, which, were Titus to set his eyes upon it, could not fail to remind him of the dark clime he had thought to toss off like a cloak from his shoulders, but which he now knew he had no power to divest.

Without surprise, all else was doomed to falter, as Cheeta well knew. It mattered not how brilliant the concept, how marvellous the spectacle, all, all would be lost unless the boy, Titus, suffered the supreme degradation.

It was not for nothing that Cheeta had sat at the end of his bed hour after hour, while he raved or whispered in his fever. Over and over again she heard the same names repeated; the same scenes enacted. She knew to the last inch whom he loathed and whom he loved. She knew almost as though it were a map before her eyes, the winding core of Gormenghast. She knew who had died. She knew who were still alive. She knew of those who had stood by Gormenghast. She knew of an Abdicator.

Let him have his surprise. His golden treat. His fantastic party for which no expense was enough. This will be a ‘Farewell’ never to be forgotten.

Cheeta had whispered … ‘It will burn like a torch in the night. The forest will recoil at the sound of it.’

At a weak moment, all in the heat of it, when his brain and senses contradicted one another, and a gap appeared in his armour, he had said, ‘Yes.’

‘Yes,’ that he would agree to it … the idea of going to an unknown district, blindfolded, for the sake of the secret.

And now he was aloft in the evening air, sailing he knew not where, to his Farewell party. Had his eyes been free of the silk scarf he would have seen that he was supported in mid-air by a beautiful white balloon like a giant whale, tinted in the light.

Above the balloon, high up in the sky, were flocks of aircraft of all colours, shapes and sizes.

Below him, flying in formation, were craft like golden darts, and far, far below these, he would have seen, in the north, a great tract of shimmering marshland reaching away to the horizon.

To the south in the forest land he would have caught sight of smoke from the bonfire which gave them their direction.

But he could see nothing of all this – nothing of the play of light upon the silky marshes nor how the shadows of the various aircraft cruised slowly over the tree-tops.

Nor could he see his companion. She sat there, a few feet out of his reach, very upright, tiny and supremely efficient, her hands on the controls.

The workmen were gone from the scene. They had toiled like slaves. Rough country had been cleared for the helicopters, and all types of aircraft to land. The heavy carts were filled with weary men.

The great crater of the Black House that had until recently yawned to the moon was now filled with something other than its mood. Its emptiness gone, it listened as though it had the power of hearing.

There had, in all conscience, been enough to hear. For the last week or more, the forest had echoed to the sound of hammering, sawing and the shouts of foresters.

Close enough to observe without being seen, yet far enough in danger’s name, the scores of small forest animals, squirrels, badgers, mice, shrews, weasels, foxes and birds of every feather, their tribal feuds forgotten, sat silent, their eyes following every movement, their ears pricked. Little knowing that between them they were forming a scattered circle of flesh and blood, they drew their breath into their lungs and stared at the shell of the Black House. The shell and the strange things that filled it.

As the hours passed, this living circumference grew in depth, until the time came when a day of silence settled down upon the district, and in this silence could be heard the breathing of the fauna like the sound of the sea.

Mystified by the silence (for the day had come for the workmen to leave, and the socialites had not yet arrived), they stared (these scores of eyes) at the Black House, which now presented to the world a face so unlikely that it was a long time before the animals and the birds broke silence.

NINETY-SEVEN

Casting their wicked shadows, two wild cats broke free at last from the trance that had descended upon the scores of spellbound creatures, and with almost unbelievable stealth crept forward cheek to cheek.

Watched by silent miscellaneous hordes, they slid their feline way from the listening forest and came at last to the northern wall of the Black House.

For a long time they stayed there, sitting upright, hidden by a wealth of ferns, only their heads showing. It seemed they ran on oil, those loveless heads, so fluidly they turned from side to side.

At last they jumped together as though from a mutual impulse, and found themselves on a broad moss-covered ledge. They had made this jump many times before but not until now had they looked down from their old vantage point upon so unbelievable a metamorphosis.

Everything was changed and yet nothing had changed. For a moment their eyes met. It was a glance of such exquisite subtlety that a shudder of chill pleasure ran down their spines.

The change was entire. Nothing was as it was before. There was a throne where once was a mound of green masonry. There were old crusty suits of armour hanging on the walls. There were lanterns and great carpets and tables knee-deep in hemlock. There was no end to the change.

And yet it was the same in so far as the mood swamped everything. A mood of unutterable desolation that no amount of change could alter.

The two cats, conscious that they were the focus of all eyes, grew progressively bolder until slipping down an ivy-faced wall, they positively grinned with their entire bodies and sprang into the air with a mixture of excitement and anger. Excitement that there were new worlds to conquer, and anger that their secret paths were gone for ever, and the green abodes and favourite haunts were gone. The overgrown ruin which these two had taken for granted as part of their lives, ever since, like little balls of spleen, they nuzzled and fought for the warmth of their mother’s belly … this ruin was now, suddenly, another thing, a thing to be assimilated and explored. A world of new sensations … a world that had once rung with echoes, but which now gave no response, its emptiness departed.

Where was the long shelf gone: the long worn dusty shelf, festooned with hart’s tongue? It had disappeared, and what stood in its place had never felt the impress of a wild cat’s body.

In its place were towering shapes, impossible to understand. As their courage strengthened, the wild cats began to run hither and thither with excitement, yet never losing their poise as they ran, their heads held high in the air in such a sentient and lordly way as to suggest a kind of vibrant wisdom.

What were these great swags of material? What was this intricate canopy of bone-white branches that hung from the roof and over their heads? Was it the ribs of a great whale?

The two cats growing bolder began to behave in a very peculiar way, not only leaping from vantage-point to vantage-point in a weird game of follow-my-leader, but wriggling their ductile bodies into every conceivable position. Sometimes they ran alone along an aisle of hoary carpet: sometimes they clung to one another and fought as though in earnest, only to break off suddenly, as though by common assent, so that one or other might scratch its ear with a hind foot.

And still there was no movement from the ring of watching creatures, until, without warning, a fox suddenly trotted out of the periphery, leapt through a window in one of the walls, and running to the centre of the Black House sat down on an expensive rug, lifted his sharp yellow face, and barked.

This acted like a tocsin, and hundreds of woodland creatures rose to their feet, and a minute later were down in the arena.

But they were not there for long, for immediately after the two cats had arched their backs and snarled at the fox and all the other invaders, something else occurred which sent the birds and beasts back into their hiding places.

The sky above the Black House was, of a sudden, filled with coloured lights. The vanguard of the airborne flotilla was dropping earthwards.

NINETY-EIGHT

Delicately stepping from their various machines, the glittering beauties and the glittering horrors, arrayed like humming birds, passed in and out of the shadows with their escorts, their tongues flickering, their eyes dilated with conjecture, for this was something never known before … the flight by night. The overhanging forests; the sense of exquisite fear; the suspense and the thrill of the unknown; the pools of dark; the pools of brilliance; the fluttering breath drawn in and exhaled with a shudder of relief; relief in every breast that it was not alone, though the stars shone down out of the cold and the small snakes lurked among the ruins.

As each dazzling influx tip-toed through the mouldering doorways of the Black House, their heads involuntarily turned to the central fire; a careful structure composed of juniper branches which when alight, as now, threw up a scented smoke.

‘Oh my darling,’ said a voice out of the darkness.

‘What is it?’ said a voice out of the light.

‘This is the throb of it. Where are you?’

‘Here, at your dappled side.’

‘O Ursula!’

‘What is it?’

‘To think it is all for that boy!’

‘O no! It is for us. It is for our delectation. It is for the green light on your bosom … and the diamonds in my ears. It is bloom. It is brilliance.’

‘It is primal, darling. Primal.’

Another voice broke in …

‘It is a place for frogs.’

‘Yes, yes, but we’re ahead.’

‘Ahead of what?’

‘The avant-garde. Look at us. If we are not the soul of chic, who is?’

Another voice, a man’s; a poor affair. ‘This is double pneumonia,’ it wheezed.

‘For heaven’s sake be careful of that carpet. It sucked my shoe off,’ said his friend.

With every moment that passed, the crowd thickened. For the most part guests made for the juniper fire. Their scores of faces flickered and leapt to the whim of the flames.

Were it not Cheeta’s party there would undoubtedly have been many more than ready to criticize the lavish display … the heterodoxy of the whole affair would have rankled. As it was, the discomfort of the Black House was more than made up for by the occasion. For that is what it was.

The babble of voices rose, as the guests multiplied. Yet there were many young adventurers who, tired of staring into the flames almost as much as having to listen to the shrill tongues of their partners, had begun to leave the warmth in order to explore the outer reaches of the ruin. There they came across bizarre formations reaching high into the night.

Here, as they moved, and there, as they moved, they came upon peculiar structures hard to understand. But there was nothing hard to fathom about the dusky table, dim-lit by candles, where a great ice-cake glimmered, with ‘Titus, Farewell’ sculpted in its flanks. Behind the cake, there arose tier upon tier, the Banquet, in half-light. A hundred goblets twinkled, and the napkins rose as though in flight.

Six mirrors reflecting one another across the sullen reaches of the Black House focused their light upon something which appeared to contradict itself, for, looked at from one angle, it appeared to resemble a small tower, yet from another it seemed more like a pulpit, or a throne.

Whatever it might be, there was no doubt that it was of some importance, for posted at its corners were four flunkeys who were almost abnormally zealous in keeping any odd guest who had strayed that far, from coming too close.

Meanwhile there was something happening, something – if not of the Farewell Party, yet close to it. Something that strode!

NINETY-NINE

He was not entirely cut out to pattern, this strider. Barbaric to the eye, his silhouette more like something made of ropes and bones, he was nevertheless instantly recognizable as Muzzlehatch.

A little behind him, as he approached were the three one-time Under-River characters. Peculiar as they were, they paled into nothingness beside their eccentric leader whose every movement was a kind of stab in the bosom of the orthodox world.

They had searched for, and found, more by luck than wisdom (though they knew the country well), this Muzzlehatch, and had forced him to rest his long wild bones, and to shut for an hour his haunted eyes.

What they had hoped to do (Crabcalf and the rest) was to find Muzzlehatch, and warn him of Titus’ danger. For they had come to the conclusion that some black force had been unearthed, and that Titus was in real peril.

But what they found, when at last they tracked him down, was not the Muzzlehatch they knew, but a man of the wilds. Of the wilds within himself and the wilds without. Not only this, but a man who had but recently been deep into the steel heart of the enemy: a man with a mission half complete. One eye had closed in satisfaction. The other burned like an ember.

Little by little, they drew out his story. Of how he came upon the factory and knew at once that he was at the door of hell. The door he had been searching for. Of how by bluff and guile, and later by force, he had found and forced his way into a less frequented district of this great place where he began to be sickened by the scent of death.

They listened carefully, the three followers, but for all their concentration they could barely make out what he was saying. Had their interpretation of his words been pooled and sifted so that it was possible to evoke a summary of all he whispered (for he was too tired to speak) then in the broadest way he told the three who hovered above him, of the identical faces: of how he slid down endless belts of translucent skin; and how, as he slid, a great hand in a glove of shining black rubber reached out for him so that Muzzlehatch was forced to haul at the creature; to haul it aboard upon the moving belt; a vile thing to touch it was and shrouded in white from head to toe; a thing that lashed out, but could not escape from Muzzlehatch’s clench, and fell back at last, dead.

It seems that Muzzlehatch had ripped away the dead man’s working-shroud before that cipher slid into a glass tunnel, and then, clad in white, had escaped from the belt and the empty hall, and loping away, had soon found himself in another kind of district altogether.

Strange as it seems (when it is remembered how horrible and multifarious are the ways of modern death), yet it is true that a jack-knife at the ribs can cause as terrible a sensation as any lurking gas or lethal ray. His knife was at the ready, and it was very sharp, but before he had any chance to use it, the light turned from a clear cool grey to a murky crimson and at the same moment the entire floor of the factory, like the floor of a lift began to descend.

So much could the three vagrants understand, but then began a long period of confused muttering which, try as they would they could not decipher. It was obvious that they were missing much, for the gaunt man’s arms kept beating the ground as he fought to recover from his terrible experience.

At times the intensity grew less and his words came back again like creatures from their lairs, but almost at once the ‘three’ became aware of how, in spite of the increasing volubility, it spelt no certainty, for their master began more and more to drift away into an almost private language.

But this much they did discover. He must have waited almost to distraction; waited for the one opportunity when at the supreme moment he could single out a hierophant, and with his jack-knife in that creature’s back, demand to be taken to the centre.

It came at last. The victim almost sick with fear leading Muzzlehatch down corridor after corridor. And all the time the gaunt man repeated …

‘To the centre!’

‘Yes,’ said the frightened voice. ‘Yes … yes.’

‘To the centre! Is that where you’re taking me?’

‘Yes, yes. To the centre of it all.’

‘Is that where he hides himself?’

‘Yes, yes …’

As they proceeded, white hordes of faces flowed by like a tide. Then silence and emptiness took over.

ONE HUNDRED

Titus, where are you? Are your eyes still bandaged? Are your arms still tied behind you?

Through a gap in the forest the night looked down upon the roofless shell of the Black House studded with fires and jewels. And above the gap, floating away forever from the branches was a small grass-green balloon, lit faintly on its underside. It must have come adrift from its tree-top mooring. Sitting upright on the upper crown of the truant balloon was a rat. It had climbed a tree to investigate the floating craft; and then, courage mounting, it had climbed to the shadowy top of the globe, never thinking that the mooring cord was about to snap. But snap it did, and away it went, this small balloon, away into the wilds of the mind. And all the while the little rat sat there, helpless in its global sovereignty.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

Titus was no longer in any mood for collaboration, party or no party. Up to an hour or so ago, he had been willing enough to join in what was supposed to be an elaborate game in his honour; but he was beginning to feel otherwise. Now that his feet were on terra firma he began to hanker for release. His blindness had gone on for too long.

‘Undo my bloody eyes,’ he cried, but there was no reply until a voice whispered …

‘Be patient, my lord.’

Titus, who was now being led forward to the great door of the Black House came to a halt. He turned to where the voice had come from.

‘Did you say “my lord”?’

‘Naturally, your lordship.’

‘Undo these scarves at once. Where are you?’

‘Here, my lord.’

‘Why are you waiting? Set me free!’

Then out of the darkness came Cheeta’s voice, dry and crisp as an autumn leaf.

‘O Titus dear; has it been very irksome?’

A group of sophisticates edging up behind Cheeta echoed her …

‘Has it been very irksome?’

‘It won’t be long now, my love, before …’

‘Before what?’ shouted Titus. ‘Why can’t you set me free?’

‘It is not in my hands, my darling.’

Again the echo from the voices, ‘… my hands, my darling.’

Cheeta watched him with her eyes half closed.

‘You promised me, didn’t you,’ she said, ‘that you would make no fuss? That you would walk quietly to the place of your appointment. That you would take three paces up and then turn about. That then, and only then, would the scarf be unknotted, and your eyes be freed. That is the moment of surprise.’

‘The best surprise you could give me would be to rip these rags off! O lord of lords! How did I get mixed up in it all? Where are you? Yes, you in your midget body. O God for help! What’s all the shouting for?’

Cheeta, whose hand had been raised in a signal, now dropped it again and the shouting died away.

‘They want to see you,’ said Cheeta. ‘They are excited.’

‘Me?’ queried Titus. ‘Why me?’

‘Are you not Titus, the Seventy-Seventh Lord of Gormenghast?’

‘Am I? By heaven I don’t feel like it; not with you about.’

‘He must be tired to be so very rude,’ said a treacly voice.

‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ said another.

‘Gormenghast indeed!’ said a third, with a titter. ‘The whole thing’s improbable you know.’

Cheeta’s high heel came down like a hammer on the instep of the last speaker. ‘My dear,’ she said, as though to distract attention from his cry, ‘those who have waited so long for the Party are drawing together. Everything is drawing together. And you will be our focus. A lord! A veritable lord!’

‘Hell gripe all bleeding lords. Give me my home!’ he cried.

The crowds were closing in, for there was something in the air; a chill; a menace; a horrible darkness that seemed to sweat itself out of the walls and the floor of the place. In the shuffling that followed the comparative silence, there was an undertone, almost of apprehension, unformulated as yet in their conscious minds, yet real in the prickle of their nerves. The banqueteers forsook their scented alcoves, and men of all stations withdrew from the outlying sectors, and drawn by an invisible agent, they drew ever closer to the roofless centre of the Black House.

It was not only these who were on the move. Cheeta had ordered a cluster of her personal friends to follow her (excluding her father, for he was in the forgotten room, where sat the star performers, biting their nails).

The band, with an imposing array of instruments swayed forward through the gloom, while Titus was borne forward on a human wave, struggling as he went.

It was a part of Cheeta’s plan that Titus should suffer acute alarm, not to say fear, and her delicate mouth (pursed like a tiny vermilion bud) registered a certain satisfaction as to the way things were going. For she was bent on his discomfiture and shame, and even more. Now was the time for Titus to climb the three steps to the throne … and he stumbled as he climbed. Now was the time for him to turn about; and now, for his wrists to be freed, and for the scarf to be plucked from his eyes and for Cheeta to cry … ‘Now!’

And now it was, for her voice, like a voice in a dungeon, awoke a string of echoes. Everything happened in the same split second. The scarves were whipped from Titus’ wrists and eyes. The band crashed into dreadful martial music. Titus sat down upon a throne. He could see nothing except the vague blur of the juniper fire. The crowds surged forward as lamps blazed out of the surrounding tree-tops. Everything took on another colour … another radiance. A clock struck midnight. The moon came out and so did the first of the apparitions.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Under a light to strangle infants by, the great and horrible flower opened its bulbous petals one by one: a flower whose roots drew sustenance from the grey slime of the pit, and whose vile scent obscured the delicacy of the juniper. This flower was evil, and its bloom satanic, and though it was invisible its manifestations were on every side.

It was not the intrinsic and permanent mood of the Black House, although this alone was frightening enough, with the fungi like plates on the walls, and the sweat of the stones; it was not only this, but was this combined with the sense of a great conspiracy: a conspiracy of darkness, and decay: and yet of a diabolical ingenuity also; a setting against which the characters played out their parts in floodlight, as when predestined creatures are caught in a concentration of light so that they cannot move.

Then came Cheeta’s voice again, and this time it seemed to Titus that there was an edge to it he had never heard before.

‘Flood in the heliotrope.’ At this obscure demand the whole scene shuddered into another world of light; a weird and purplish suffusion, and for the first time, Titus, sitting bolt upright on his throne, felt a kind of palpable fear he had never experienced before.

Titus who had killed Steerpike in a war in deep ivy … Titus who had been lost in the underground tunnels of Gormenghast now trembled in the face of the unknown. He turned his head, but he could see no sign of Cheeta. Only a great throng of heliotrope heads … a world of watchers who stood as though waiting for him to stand and speak.

But where were the heads he knew? Apart from Cheeta, where was her father, the nondescript man with no hair?

It seemed they formed a kind of foreign terrain, as though of all that multitude there was not one who did not know him, yet for Titus there was not one to recognize.

About him, beyond the crowd, the walls were draped with flags. The flags that he half remembered. Torn flags; flags out of limbo. What was he doing here? What, O dearest God, was he doing? What were these shadows? What were these echoes? Where was a friend to grip him by the shoulder? Where was Muzzlehatch? Where was his friend? What was that sound like the purring of the tide? What was it that was purring if not cats?

The voice of Cheeta rose again. It was harsher with every order. The light changed and yet another mood more sinister than ever settled down upon the place, changing the quality of everything down to the least minutiae: down to the smallest frond in acid green.

Titus, his hands trembling, turned his face from the crowd, meaning to rise from the insufferable throne directly his dizziness passed by. Not only did he turn his face but his body also, for the faked green world before him was revolting to the soul.

Having turned he saw what he might never have seen, for perched along the back of the throne were seven owls, and at the same moment that he saw them there came a long-drawn hoot. It came from beyond the throne both near and far away, but as for the birds themselves they were filled with straw. Beyond the owls the darkness was lit and intersected by a filigree of webs as green as flame.

Titus, who was about to have risen to his feet, remained immobile as he stared at the brilliant mesh, and as he stared another wave of fear took hold of him.

Something, somehow, when he saw the owls, began cutting at his heart. At first there had been a quickening of excitement; he knew not why … a kind of thrill … of remembrance or of re-discovery. Was he returning to a realm he could understand? Had he travelled through time or space or both to reach this recrudescence of times gone by? Was he dreaming?

But this did not last long, this quickening of hope. He had not been asleep. He had not dreamed.

The only time he had dreamed was in his fever. It was then that he gave himself unwittingly to Cheeta’s mercy.

Powerless to find satisfaction, though brilliant in her power to organize, Cheeta began to issue orders to a small group of the élite. These gentlemen turned at once to their work, which was to clear a passage from the throne, to where, in a dark hall, there lurked the Twelve.

And then, all at once she was beside him, her inscrutable little head staring up at him. Her perfect mouth quivering as though she wished to be kissed.

‘You have been so quiet and so patient,’ she said. ‘It is almost as though you were alive. I have brought your toys, you see. I haven’t forgotten anything. Look, Titus… look at the floor. It is covered with rusty chains. Look at the coloured roots … and see … O Titus, see the foliage of the trees. Was Gormenghast forest ever so green as these bright branches?’

Titus tried to rise to his feet, but a sickness lay over his heart like a weight.

She lifted her head again as a creature might do as it harkened. But the voice was no longer merely husky; it was grit …

‘Let in the night,’ she cried, in this new voice.

And so the viridian died and the moon came into its own, and a hundred forest creatures crept up to the walls of the Black House, forgetting the horrible colours that had so recently appalled them.

And yet there was a quality about this lunar scene which was more terrible than ever. They were no longer figures in a play. There was no longer any artifice. The stage had vanished. They were no longer actors in a drama of strange light. They were themselves.

‘This is what we planned for you darling! The light no man can alter. Sit still. Why is your face so drawn? Why is it melting? After all, you’ve got your surprise to come. The secret’s on its way. What’s that?’

‘A message, madam, from the look-out tree.’

‘What does he want? Speak up at once!’

‘A great beggar with a group behind him.’

‘What of it?’

‘We thought …’

‘Leave me!’

The break in Cheeta’s monologue had brought Titus to his feet. What had she said to him, that his fear should be redoubled? That terror; not of Cheeta herself nor of any human being, but of doubt. The doubt of his own existence; for where was he? Alone. That’s where he was. Alone with nothing to touch. Even the flint from the tall tower was lost. What was there left to guide him? What did Cheeta mean when she said, ‘It is almost as though you were alive’? What did she mean when she said, ‘I have brought you toys to play with’? What was it that was breaking through the walls of his mind? She had said he was melting. What of the owls? And the purring of the cats? The white cats.

Whatever may have happened to his world one thing was sure: mixed with his homesickness was something else: the beginning beneath his ribs of a conflagration. Whether or not his home was true or false, existent or nonexistent, there was no time for metaphysics. ‘Let them tell me later,’ he thought to himself, ‘whether I am dead or not; sane or not; now is the time for action.’ Action. Yes, but what form should it take? He could jump from his throne, but what good would that be? There she was below him, but he no longer wished to see her. It seemed she had some power when he looked at her; some power to weaken and confuse him.

Yet he must not forget that this party was in his honour. Were the symbols that cluttered the floor of the Black House supposed to be a happy reminder of his home, or were the owls and throne and the tin crown there to taunt him?

Here he stood like a dummy while his limbs ached for action. He was no longer dizzy. He waited for the moment to advance into the heart of it all, and to do something, good or bad. As long as it was something.

But the expression in her eyes was no longer glazed with a deceptive love. The veil had been lifted or drawn aside, and malice, unequivocal and naked, had taken its place. For she hated him so; and hated him all the more when she realized that he was not so easily made to suffer. Yet superficially all had gone well for her. The young man was obviously in a state of grievous bewilderment, for all the affectation of his stance and the contemptuous tilt of his head. He was thus through fear. But the fear was not great enough yet to break him. Nor was it meant to. That was to come, and in assurance of this, she all but lost herself for the moment in a deadly orgy of anticipation. For it was soon to happen: and all Cheeta could do was to clench her tiny hands together at her breast.

A spasm caught hold of her face and for an instant she was no longer Cheeta, the invincible, the impeccable; the exquisite midget, but something foul. The twitch or spasm, short as had been its duration, had fixed itself so fiercely that long after her face had returned to normal it was there … that beastly image … as vivid as ever. What had taken a split moment now spread itself so that it seemed to Titus that her face had been there forever; with that extraordinary contortion of her facial muscles which turned a gelid beauty into something fiendish. Something almost ludicrous.

But what no one expected, least of all Titus or Cheeta herself, was that it should be on the ludicrous and not the terrifying that Titus should fix his attention.

Added to this there was another element that tipped the balance in favour of all that can become uncontrolled; for the spectacle of the sprite with her face turned up to his awoke the image of a dog sitting back on its haunches, waiting to be fed.

The icy Cheeta and the face that she unwittingly let loose were so at variance as to be comic. Horribly, inappropriately comic.

Such a sensation can become too powerful for the human body. It is as easy to control as a sliding avalanche. It takes a sacrosanct convention and snaps it in half as though it were a stick. It lifts up some holy relic and throws it at the sun. It is laughter. Laughter when it stamps its feet; when it sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter with the pips of Eden in it.

Out of his fear and apprehension something green and incredibly young took hold of Titus and sidled across his entrails. It shot up to the breast-bone: it radiated into separate turnings: it converged again, and, capsizing through him in an icy heat, cartwheeled through his loins, only to climb again, leaving no inch of his weakening body unaffected. Titus was half away. But his face was rigid and he made no sound: not a catch of the breath or a tilt of the lip. There was no penultimate stage of choking, or a visible fight for composure. It came with extraordinary suddenness, the release of pressure: and he made no effort once he had started to laugh, to check himself. He heard his voice soar clean out of register. He followed it. He yelled to and fro to himself as though he were two people calling to one another across a valley. In another moment, in a seismic access, he tore the stuffed owls from their perch. He dropped them to the ground. He could hold them no longer. He gripped his sides with his hands and staggered back into the throne.

Opening one eye as his body ached with a fresh gale of uncontrollable laughter he saw her face before him, and on that instant he was no longer the great belly-roarer: the cracker of goblets, the eye-streaming, arm-dangling, cataleptic wreck of a thing half over the throne, and all but crazed with the delirium of another world: he was suddenly turned to stone, for in her face he read pure evil.

Yet listen to the sweetness of her voice. The words like leaves, are fluttering from the tree. The eyes can no longer pretend. Only the tongue. She fixed him with her black eyes.

‘Did you hear that?’ she said.

Titus never having seen such an expression of loathing on any woman’s face before, answered in a voice as flat as wasteland.

‘Did I hear what?’

‘Someone laughing,’ she said. ‘I would have thought it would have wakened you.’

‘I heard the laughter too,’ said another voice. ‘But he was asleep.’

‘Yes,’ said another. ‘Asleep in the throne.’

‘What? Titus Groan, Lord of the Tracts, and heir to Gormenghast?’

‘The same. A heavy sleeper!’

‘See how he stares at us!’

‘He is bewildered.’

‘He needs his mother!’

‘Of course, of course!’

‘How lucky he is!’

‘Why so?

‘Because she’s on her way.’

‘Red hair, white cats, ’n all?’

‘Exactly.’

Cheeta, furious, had had to change her plans. Just as she was about to bring on the phantoms, and by so doing, derange once and for all the boy’s bewildered mind.

And so, with a sweet smile to those at her side, she began again to create an atmosphere most conducive to madness.

It was at this moment that, without knowing what he was doing, he picked up the flimsy throne with both hands and dashed it to the ground. The silence was palpable.

At last there came a voice. It was not hers.

‘He came to us when he was lost, poor child. Lost, or so he thought. But he was no more lost than a homester on the wing. He searches for his home but he has never left it, for this is Gormenghast. It is all about him.’

‘No!’ cried Titus. ‘No!’

‘See how he cries. He is upset, poor thing. He does not realize how much we love him.’

A hundred voices, like an incantation, repeated the words … ‘how much we love him.’

‘He thinks that to move about is to change places. He does not realize that he is treading water.’

And the voices echoed … ‘treading water.’

Then Cheeta’s voice again.

‘Yet this is our farewell. A farewell from his old self to his new. How splendid! To tear one’s throne up by the roots, and fling it to the floor. What was it after all but a symbol? We have too many symbols. We wade in symbols. We are sick of them. It is a pity about your brain.’

Titus wheeled upon her. ‘My brain,’ he cried, ‘what’s wrong with my brain?’

‘It is on the turn,’ said Cheeta.

‘Yes, yes,’ came the chorus from the shadows. ‘That’s what has happened. His brain is on the turn!’

And then the authoritative voice rose again beyond the juniper fire.

‘His head is no longer anything but an emblem. His heart is a cypher. He is a mere token. But we love him, don’t we?’

‘Oh yes, we love him, don’t we?’ came the chorus.

‘But he’s so confused. He thinks he’s lost his home.’

‘… and his sister, Fuchsia.’

‘… and the Doctor.’

‘… and his mother.’

At this moment, hard upon the mention of his mother’s name, Titus, turning a deathly colour, sprang outward from the debris.

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

It might have been Cheeta: but it was not. She had made a sign, and in making it she had moved back a little to obtain a clearer view of the entrance to the forgotten room. Who it was that suffered the agonizing jab in the region of the heart will never be known; but that ornate gentleman collapsed upon the pave-stones of the aisle receiving, as though he were a scapegoat, the fury which Titus, at that moment, would gladly have meted out to all.

Panting, the sweat glistening on his face he suddenly found himself gripped by the elbow. Two men, one on either side, held him. Struggling to free himself he saw, as though through the haze of his anger, that they were the same tall, smooth, ubiquitous helmeted figures who had trailed him for so long.

They backed him up the steps to where the throne once stood, when suddenly, as he struggled and tossed his head, he saw for an instant something in the corner of his eye that caused his heart to stop beating. The helmeted figures loosened their grip upon his arms.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR

Something was emerging from the forgotten room. Something of great bulk and swathing. It moved with exaggerated grandeur, trailing a length of dusty, moth-eaten fustian, and over all else was spattered the constellations of ubiquitous bird-lime. The shoulders of her once black gown were like white mounds, and upon these mounds were perched every kind of bird. As for the phantom’s hair (a most unnatural red), even this was a perch for little birds.

As the Lady moved on with a prodigious authority, one of the birds fell off her shoulder, and broke as it hit the floor.

Again the laughter. The horrible laughter. It sounded like the mirth of hell, hot and derisive.

Were there a ‘Gormenghast’, then surely this mockery of his mother must humble and torture him, reminding him of his Abdication, and of all the ritual he so loved and loathed. If, on the other hand there were no such place, and the whole thing a concoction of his mind, then, mortified by this exposure of his secret love, the boy would surely break.

‘Where is he? Where is my son?’ came the voice of the voluminous impostor. It was slow and thick as gravel. ‘Where is my only son?’

The creature adjusted its shawl with a twitch.

‘Come here my love and be punished. It is I. Your mother. Gertrude of Gormenghast.’

Titus was able to see in a flash that the monster was leading another travesty into the half-light. At that excruciating moment, Cheeta heard what Titus also heard; a shrill whistling. It was not that the sound of the whistle in itself puzzled her, but the fact that there should be anyone at all beyond the walls. It was not part of her plan.

Although he could not at first recall the meaning of the whistle, yet Titus felt some kind of remote affinity with the whistler. While this had been going on, there was at the same instant much else to be seen.

What of the monstrous insult to his mother? As far as that was concerned, his passion for revenge burned fiercely.

The guests, now lit by torchlight, were beginning, under orders, to sort themselves into a great circle. There they stood on the loose, grassy floor, craning their necks like hens to see what it was that followed on the heels of something preternaturally evil.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE

What Titus could not see was the interior of the forgotten room where a dozen ill-tempered monstrosities had been incarcerated. But now there was a stir in the dungeon: the entrance had cleared itself of its first huge character, and close behind her, walking like a duck, was a wicked caricature of Titus’ sister. She wore a tattered dress of diabolical crimson. Her dark dishevelled hair reached to her knees, and when she turned her face to the assemblage there were few who did not catch their breath. Her face was blotched with black and sticky tears, and her cheeks were hectic and raw. She slouched behind her huge mother, but came to a halt as they were about to enter the torch-lit circle, for she stared pathetically this way and that, and then stood grotesquely on her toes as though she were looking for someone. After a few moments she flung her head back so that her black tresses all but touched the ground. Now, with her blotched face turned pitifully to the sky she opened her mouth in a round empty ‘O’ and bayed the moon. Here was madness complete. Here was matter for revenge. It took hold of Titus and it shook him, so that he wrenched this way and that against the grip of the helmeted figures.

So strange and terrible was what he saw that he froze within the grip of his captors. Something began to give way in his brain. Something lost faith in itself.

‘Where is my son?’ came the soft gravel throat, and this time his mother turned her face to his, and he saw her.

In contrast to Fuchsia’s raddled, hectic, tear-drenched face was his mother’s. It was a slab of marble over which false locks of carrot-coloured hair cascaded. This monster spoke, though there was little to be seen in the way of a mouth. Her face was like a great, flat boulder that had been washed and worn smooth by a thousand tides.

With the blank slab out-facing him, Titus let out a cry of his own; an inward cry of desolation.

That is my boy,’ came the gravel voice. ‘Did you not hear him? That was the very accent of the Groans. How grievous, yet how rare that he should have died. What is it like to be dead, my wandering child?’

‘Dead?’ whispered Titus. ‘Dead? No! No!’

It was then that Fuchsia made her gawky way across the rough circle, the perimeter of which was thick with faces.

‘Dear brother,’ she said, when she reached the broken throne. ‘Dear brother, you can trust me, surely?’

She turned her face to Titus.

‘It’s no use pretending; and you’re not alone. I drowned myself, you know. We have death in common. Have you forgotten? Forgotten how I sank beneath the frog-spawn waters of the moat? Is it not glorious to be dead together? I, in my way. You in yours?’

She shook herself and clouds of dust drifted away. Meanwhile Cheeta suddenly appeared at Titus’ side.

‘Let his lordship go,’ she said to the captors. ‘Let him play. Let him play.’

‘Let him play,’ came the chorus.

‘Let him play,’ whispered Cheeta. ‘Let him make believe that he’s alive again.’

ONE HUNDRED AND SIX

The helmeted figures let go their grip upon his arms.

‘We have brought your mother and your sister back again. Who else would you like?’

Titus turned his head to her and saw in her eyes the extent of her bitterness. Why had he been so singled out? What had he done? Was the fact that he had never loved her for herself but only out of lust, was this so dire a thing?

The darkness seemed to concentrate itself. The torchlight burned fitfully, and a thin sprinkling of rain came drifting out of the night.

‘We are bringing your family together,’ whispered Cheeta. ‘They have been too long in Gormenghast. It is for you to greet them, and to bring them into the ring. See how they wait for you. They need you. For did you not desert them? Did you not abdicate? That is why they are here. For one reason only. To forgive you. To forgive your treachery. See how their eyes shine with love.’

While she was speaking, three major things took place. The first (at Cheeta’s instigation) was that a channel was rapidly cleared from the steps of the throne to the ring itself, so that Titus should be able to make his way without hindrance into the heart of the circle.

The second thing was the recurrence of that shrill and reminiscent whistle that Cheeta and Titus had heard some time before. This time it was nearer.

The third was that into the ring, fresh monsters began to arrive.

The forgotten room disgorged them, one by one. There were the aunts, the identical twins, whose faces were lit in such a way that they appeared to be floating in space. The length of their necks; their horribly quill-like noses; the emptiness of their gaze; all this was bad enough, without those dreadful words which they uttered in a flat monotone over and over again.

‘Burn … burn … burn …’

There was Sepulchrave, moving as though in a trance, his tired soul in his eyes, and books beneath his arms. All about were his chains of office, iron and gold. On his head he wore the rust-red crown of the Groans. He took deep sighs with every step; as though each one was the last. Bent forward as though his sorrow weighed him down he mourned with every gesture. As he moved into the centre of the ring he trailed behind him a long line of feathers, while out of his tragic mouth the sound of hooting wandered.

More and more it was becoming a horrible charade. Everything that Cheeta had heard during those bouts of fever when Titus lay and poured out his past, all this had been stored up in her capacious memory.

One of them after another reared or loomed, pranced or took mournful steps; cried, howled or were silent.

A thin wiry creature with high deformed shoulders and a skewbald face leapt to and fro as though trying to get rid of his energy.

On seeing him Titus had recoiled, not out of fear, but out of amazement; for he and Steerpike, long ago, had fought to the death. Knowing that all this was a kind of cruel charade, did not seem to help for in the inmost haunts of the imagination he felt the impact.

Who else was there in the rough ring towards which Titus was involuntarily moving? There was the attenuate Doctor with his whinnying laughter. As Titus looked at him he saw, not the bizarre travesty that faced him with its affected gait and voice, but the original Doctor. The Doctor he loved so much.

When he had reached the ring and was about to enter it he closed his eyes in an effort to free himself of the sight of these monsters, for they reminded him most cruelly of those faraway days when their prototypes were real indeed. But no sooner had he closed his eyes than he heard a third whistle. This time the shrill note was closer than before. So close in fact that it caused Titus not only to open his eyes again, but to look about him, and as he did so he heard once more that reedy note.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN

When Titus saw the three of them, Slingshott, Crabcalf and Crack-Bell, his heart leaped. Their bizarre, outlandish faces fought for his sanity as a doctor fights for the life of his patient. But by not so much as a flicker of an eyelash did they betray the fact that they were Titus’ friends.

But now he had allies, though how they could help he could not tell. Their three heads remained quite still throughout the commotion. Not looking at him but through him, as though like gun dogs they were directing Titus to turn his gaze to where, leaning against a fern-covered wall as rough as himself lolled Muzzlehatch.

As for Cheeta, she was scrutinizing her quarry, waiting for the moment of collapse; tasting the sweet and sour of the whole affair, when suddenly Titus swung his head away with a bout of nausea. She in her turn, followed his gaze and saw a figure who in no way fitted into her plans.

Directly Titus saw him, he began to stumble in his direction, though of course he could not hope to break through the human walls of the ring.

With Titus’ eyes upon him and Cheeta’s also, it was not long before an evergrowing number of guests became aware of Muzzlehatch, who leaned so casually in the shadow of the fern-hung wall.

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT

As the moments passed, less and less attention was paid to the mockers in the ring, and Cheeta, realizing that her plan was miscarrying, turned a face of concentrated fury upon this tall and enigmatic alien.

By now, according to plan, the cause of her heartburn and enmity, Titus, should have been in the last throes of subjugation.

With practically every head turned to the almost legendary Muzzlehatch, a curious silence fell upon the scene. Even the soughing of the leaves in the surrounding forest had died away.

When Titus saw his old friend he could not withhold a cry … ‘Help me for pity’s sake.’

Muzzlehatch appeared to take no notice of his cry. He was staring in turn at the apparitions, but at last his eyes came to rest upon one in particular. This nondescript figure crept in and out of the ring as though it were in search of something important. But whatever it was the glinting eye of Muzzlehatch followed it everywhere. At last the figure came to rest, his bald head shimmering, and Muzzlehatch was no longer in doubt of the man’s identity. The creature was both repulsive and nondescript, in a way that chilled the blood.

Titus again cried out for Muzzlehatch, and again there was no reply. Yet there he stood, leaning in half-light, well within earshot. What was the matter with his old friend? Why, after all this time was he being ignored? Titus beat his fists together. Surely in finding one another again there should have been aroused some kind of emotion? But no. As far as could be seen Muzzlehatch made no response. There he lounged in the shadows of the ferny pillar, a creature who might easily be taken for a mendicant, were it not that there was no beggar alive who could look so ragged and yet, at the same time, so like a king.

Had Titus, or had anyone approached him too closely, he or they would have seen a lethal light in the gaunt man’s eyes. It was no more than a glint, a fleck of fire. Yet, this fleck, a dangerous thing, was not directed at anyone in particular; nor did it come and go. It was a constant. Something that had become a part of him as an arm or leg might be. It seemed by his attitude that Muzzlehatch might be staying there forever, so seemingly listless was his pose. But this illusion was short-lived although it seemed as though the congregation had stood there watching him for hours. They had never before seen anything like it. A giant festooned with rags.

And then, gradually (for it took a longish while for everyone to transfer their gaze from the magnetic interloper to the object of his scrutiny), gradually and finally there was not one of the assemblage who was not staring at the polished head of Cheeta’s father.

One could not help but think of death, so visible was the skull beneath the stretched skin. There was at length only one pair of eyes that were not fixed upon the head; and those eyes belonged to the man himself.

Then, quite gradually Muzzlehatch yawned, stretching his arms to their extremities, as though to touch the sky. He took a pace forward, and then, at last, he spoke, yet not with his voice but more eloquently, with a great scarred index-finger like a crook.

ONE HUNDRED AND NINE

Cheeta’s father, realizing that he had no choice but to obey (for there was something terrible and compelling about Muzzlehatch, with the crumbs of fire in his eyes) began to make his way willy-nilly in the direction of the great vagrant. And still there was no noise in all the world.

Then, suddenly, like something released, Titus beat his fists together, as a man might beat upon a door to let out his soul. Not a head turned at the sound, and the silence surged back and filled the shell of the Black House. But although there was no physical movement save for the progress of the bald man, there passed over the ground a shudder and a chill, where there was no breeze blowing, like the breath of a cold fresco, dank and rotting, filled with figures, so was this nocturnal array equally silent; when all at once, the ring of heads closed in upon the protagonists, and at the same time the two protagonists closed in on one another.

Muzzlehatch had dropped his index finger, and was approaching the scientist at a speed deliberately slow. Two worlds were approaching one another.

What of Cheeta? Where in this forest of legs could she be with her beautiful little face contorted and discoloured? Everything had gone wrong. What had been an ordered plan was nothing now but a humiliating chaos. She had been almost forgotten. She had become lost in a world of limbs. She had, more by instinct than knowledge, been making her way to where she last saw Titus, for to lose him would be for her like losing her revenge.

But she was not the only malcontent. In his own way, Titus was as fierce as she. The grisly charade had left him full of hatred. Not only this; there was Muzzlehatch too. His old friend. Why was he so silent and so deaf to his cries?

In an access of frustration he elbowed his way to the outskirts of the ring, and then, free at last, he ran at Muzzlehatch as though to endanger him.

But when Titus was close enough to strike out in his anger at the great figure, he stopped short in his tracks, for he saw what it was that had subjugated the bald man. It was the embers in the eyes of his friend.

This was not the Muzzlehatch he used to know. This was something quite different. A solitary who had no friends, nor needed any: for he was obsessed.

When Titus closed in upon Muzzlehatch in the semi-darkness he could see all this. He could see the embers, and his anger melted out of him. He could see at a glance how Muzzlehatch was bent upon death: that he was deranged. What was it then, in spite of this horror, that drew Titus to him? For Muzzlehatch had as yet taken no notice of him. What was it that urged Titus forward until he blocked the torn man’s view of Cheeta’s father? It was a kind of love.

‘My old friend,’ said Titus, very softly. ‘Look at me, only look at me. Have you forgotten?’

At long last, Muzzlehatch turned his gaze upon Titus, who was now within arm’s reach.

‘Who is it? Let go my lemurs, boy.’

His face looked as though it were carved out of grey wood.

‘Listen,’ said the wanderer. ‘You remind me of a friend I used to know. His name was Titus. He used to say he lived in a castle. He had a scar across his cheekbones. Ah yes, Titus Groan, Lord of the Tracts.’

‘That man is me!’ cried Titus in his desperation.

‘Boom!’ said Muzzlehatch, in a voice as abstracted as the night air. ‘It won’t be long now. Boom!’

Titus stared at him, and Cheeta also, through a gap in the crowd. He was shaking violently.

‘Give me a clue, for God’s sake. What are these “boom”s of yours? What is it that won’t be long?’ said Titus.

By now the scientist was only a few paces from Muzzlehatch, as though propelled slowly forward by an unseen force.

Yet it was not only the scientist who was inexorably on the move. The crowds, inch by inch, began to shuffle in little steps; their heads closed in upon the protagonists.

Were it not that all eyes were transfixed on the sight of the three, someone would by now have noticed Juno and Anchor.

ONE HUNDRED AND TEN

No one had noticed their arrival. A great bell pounded in Juno’s bosom. Her eyes were fixed on Titus. She trembled. A rush of memories filled her. She longed to run to him and to draw him to her. But Anchor restrained her, his hand holding her trembling elbow.

Unlike Juno, the Anchor, with his mop of red-black hair, stood by her with all the sang-froid in the world. He seemed to have come into his own.

He watched every move and then led Juno away to an inky alcove. She was not to stir until he called for her. He returned to the centre of potential violence. He saw a creature break loose from a wall of legs. It was as slender as a switch. A great blood-coloured stone winked at her breast as though it spelled out some secret code. But it was her face that chilled him. It was terrible because it had given up trying. It no longer cared. All femininity had gone out of it. The features had become merely physical additions to the head. The face had died behind them. It was an empty place through which the winds could blow, now hot, now cold, from hell or heaven.

As for the phlegmatic Anchor, he had noted the long line of aeroplanes that glimmered in the half-darkness. There, if nowhere else, was their escape route.

Now he was ready. Now, before the evening closed in, he must strike when the moment came. Strike when? He had not long to wait for an answer.

Cheeta had by now seen not only Titus, but her father also. She had stopped as a bird stops in the middle of a run; for it was with amazement that she found herself so close to the huge stranger, who was even now picking her father up by the nape of his neck as a dog might lift a rat.

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN

Everything seemed to be happening together. The light shifted like a gauze across the scene, almost as though the moon was making a return journey. Then something shone in the darkness. Something of metal, for there was no other substance that could throw out so strong a glint into the night air.

Titus, his gaze distracted for a moment by these flashes of light, turned his head away from Cheeta and her suspended father, and discovered, at last, what he was looking for. And while he watched, the leaping bonfire sent out a more than usually brilliant tongue, and this tongue, though it was far away, was strong enough to draw out of the darkness an expressionless face, and then another. Now they were gone again, though the light went on flashing above them. Plunged in their caves, their faces were no more, though their crests were alive with light. The helmeted men, even without their helmets they would be tall. But with them, they stood head and shoulder above the crowd.

A shudder passed though Titus’ body. He saw the crowds draw themselves apart so that the ‘helmets’ could pass through. He heard the assembly call out for them to deal with Muzzlehatch.

‘Take him away,’ they cried. ‘Who is he? What does he want? He is frightening the ladies.’

Yet not one of that crowd, save for the ‘helmets’ themselves, and Cheeta, who was trembling in a diabolical rage; not one dared to take a step alone.

As for Muzzlehatch, his arm was outstretched and the scientist was still dangling at the end of it. This was the man whom he intended to slay. But now that he had the bald creature at arm’s length, he could not feel the hatred so strongly.

Titus was appalled at the scene. Appalled at the vileness of it. Appalled that anyone should have thought out such an idea as to mock his family in such a way. Appalled and frightened. He turned his head and saw her, and his blood ran cold.

Revenge filled up her system, and battled with itself in her miniature bosom. Titus had scorned her. And now there was the ragged man as well, for he was holding up her family to scorn. And now Juno, whom she saw out of the tail of her eye. Her hair rose at the nape. There was no forgetting so far as Cheeta was concerned. This was the Juno of his early days. This was she; his one-time mistress.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

The bonfire of juniper branches had been replenished, and again a yellow tongue of fire had fled up into the sky. Its light lit up the nearest of the trees with a wan illumination. The scent of the juniper filled the air. It was the only pleasant thing about the night. But no one noticed.

The animals and the birds, unable to go to sleep, watched from whatever vantage point they could cling to. There was among them an understanding that they left one another alone, until dawn, so that the birds of prey sat side by side with doves and owls, the foxes with the mice.

From where he stood, Titus could see, as though on a stage, the protagonists. Time seemed to draw to a close. The world had lost interest in itself and its positionings. They stood between the coil and the recoil. It was too much. Yet there was no alternative either of the heart or of the head. He could not leave Muzzlehatch. He loved the man. Yes, even now, though the flecks of red burned in his arrogant eyes. Sensing the widespread derangement all about him, Titus was becoming fearful for his own sanity. Yet there is loyalty in dreams, and beauty in madness, and he could not turn from the shaggy side of his friend. Nor could the scores of guests do anything. They were spellbound.

Now Muzzlehatch’s boulder-like rolling of his own voice was repeated, and then immediately followed by a voice that did not seem his own. Something muted: something more menacing took its place.

‘That was a long time ago,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘when I lived another kind of life. I wandered through the dawn and back again. I ate the world up like a serpent devouring itself, tail first. Now I am inside out. The lions roared for me. They roared down my bloodstream. But, as they are dead, their roaring comes to nothing, for you, Bladder-head, have stopped their hearts from beating, and now it’s about time for me to stop yours.’

Muzzlehatch was not looking at the living bundle at the end of his arm. He was looking through it. Then he dropped his hand and trailed the scientist in the dust.

‘So I went for a stroll, and what a stroll it was! It took me to a factory at last. And there I met your friends and your machines, and all that caused the great death of my beasts. O God, my coloured beasts, my burning fauna. And there I lit the blue fuse at the centre. It can’t be long to wait. Boom!’

Muzzlehatch looked about him.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘What a pretty lot we have here! By heaven, Titus boy, the air is full of damnation. Look at ’em. D’you know ’em? Ha, ha! God’s liver, if it ain’t the “Helmeteers”. How they do tread on our tails.’

‘Sir,’ said Anchor, moving up. ‘Let me relieve you of the scientist. Even an arm like yours must tire at times.’

‘Who are you?’ said Muzzlehatch, leaving his arm where it was, like a signpost, for he had lifted it again.

‘Does that matter?’ said Anchor.

‘Matter! Ha, that’s ripe,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Ripe as your copper-coloured mane. How is it you have jumped from the ranks to join us?’

‘We have a lady in common,’ said Anchor.

‘Who would that be?’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Queen of the mermaids?’

‘Do I look it?’ It was Juno who, against Anchor’s instructions, had crept out of the alcove, and now stood at his side.

‘O Titus, my most dear!’ She ran towards him.

At the sight of Juno, the air became electric and through this atmosphere a figure darted, rapid as a weasel. It was Cheeta.

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

So this was Juno; this, the billowy whore. Cheeta bit her underlip until the blood ran over her chin.

She had long ago dismissed from her mind any thought of her own attractions. They had ceased to be of any interest to her, for something a thousand times more important filled her vision as a pit can be filled with fumes. But as the venomous midget slid with a dreadful intensity of purpose towards Juno, her rival, she was brought to an incongruous halt by an explosion.

Not only was Cheeta halted in her progress at the sound of the reverberation, but each in their own way found himself or herself rooted to the floor of the Black House; Juno, Anchor, Titus, and Muzzlehatch himself, the ‘Helmets’, the Three, and a hundred guests. And more than this. The birds and the beasts of the surrounding forests, they also froze along the boughs, until simultaneously taking wing a great volume of birds arose like a fog into the night, thickening the air, and quenching the moon. Where they had perched in their thousands the twigs and boughs lifted themselves a little in the bird-made darkness.

Seeing the others glued to the ground, Cheeta struggled against her own inability to close with them and to fight with the only weapons she possessed; two rows of sharp little teeth and ten fingernails. She had turned from Titus to Juno as the first of her enemies to dispatch, but like them, her head was turned in the direction of the sound, and she could not twist it back.

That her father, the greatest scientist in the world was hanging upside down from the outstretched arm of some kind of brigand did not, in itself, inflame or impress upon her passions, for there was no space left in her tiny tremulous body for such an emotion to find foothold. She could not feel for him. She was consumed already.

The first to speak was Anchor.

‘What would that be?’ he said. Even as he spoke a light appeared in the sky in the direction of the sound.

‘That would be the death of many men,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘That would be the last roar of the golden fauna: the red of the world’s blood: doom is one step closer. It was the fuse that did it. The blue fuse. My dear man,’ he said, turning to Anchor, ‘only look at the sky.’

Sure enough it was taking on a life of its own. Unhealthy as a neglected sore, skeins of transparent fabric wavered across the night sky, peeling off, one after another to reveal yet fouler tissues in a fouler empyrean.

Then the crowd raised its voice, and demanded that it be set free from the ghastly charade that was taking place before its eyes.

But when Muzzlehatch approached them they drew back, for there was something incalculable about the smile that turned his face into something to be avoided.

They all drew back a pace or two, except for the helmeted pair. These two, holding their ground, leaned forward on the air. Now that they were so close it could be seen that their heads were like skulls, beautiful, as though chiselled. What skin they had was stretched tight as silk. There was a sheen over their heads, almost a luminosity. Nor did they speak from those thin mouths of theirs. Nor could they. Only the crowds spoke, while their clothes grew damp as the night fell, despoiling the exquisite gowns, and blackening their hems with dew. So with the medallioned chests of their tongue-tied escorts.

‘I ask you sir, again. What was that noise? Was it thunder?’ said Anchor, knowing full well that it was not. He watched the gaunt man while he spoke but he also watched Titus; and Cheeta. He watched the helmeted men who menaced Muzzlehatch. He watched everything. His eyes, in contrast to the shock of red hair, were grey as pools.

But above all he watched Juno. All eyes had by now been turned away from the direction of the sound and of the sick sky also, and formed between them a pattern in the darkness, and at the same moment the first twinge of sunrise in the forested east.

Juno, her eyes filled with tears, took hold of Titus by the arm at a moment when he longed from the bottom of his soul to get away, to leave for ever. But he did not by an iota tense or withdraw his arm from her, or do anything to hurt her. Yet Juno let go her hand from his arm, and it fell like a weight to her side.

He gazed at her, almost as though she belonged to another world, and his lips, though they formed a smile, had no life in them. Here they stood side by side, these two, with the loveliest section of their past in common. Yet they appeared to have lost their way. All this was in a flash, and the Anchor took it in.

He also took in something of another kind. The impersonal embers in Muzzlehatch’s eyes appeared to have been fanned into life. The small, dull red light had now begun to oscillate to and fro across the pupils.

But in contrast to this grisly phenomenon, was the control he exercised over his own voice. It was perfectly audible though a little more than a whisper. Coming from the great rudder-nosed man it was a double weapon.

‘It was not thunder,’ he said. ‘Thunder is purposeless. But this was the very backbone of purpose. There was no explosion for explosion’s sake.’

Taking advantage of the fact that Muzzlehatch was engaged in his own oratory, Anchor moved around him, unseen, until he stood a little behind Titus, for from this position he was able to command a view of Cheeta and Juno at the same time.

The air was bristling, for they had seen one another. Without her knowing it, the initial advantage lay with Juno, for Cheeta’s ferocity was almost equally divided between her and Titus.

The whole travesty had been planned as something to humiliate Titus. She had been to all lengths to insure its success; yet now it was over, and she stood among the wreckage, her little body vibrating like a bow-string.

‘Dismantle them!’ she screamed, for she saw out-topping the crowd, the battered masks, the hanks of hair; the Countess breaking in half, dusty and ludicrous; the sawdust; and the paint.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

‘Take those things down!’ she screamed, standing on tip-toe, for she saw in the tail of her eye, a great wavering, semi-human bulk, that was even now as she watched it, breaking in half and turning as it collapsed, to show the long filthy hanks of hair, the mask with its dreadful pallor, lit by the flooding of the dawn, sink to the floor. Down came the others, that had so recently been the symbols of mockery and scorn. Some with their grease-paint dripping; the dusty remnants of blotched sawdust.

All at once a woman screamed, and as though this were a signal for release, a general cacophony broke out and a number of ladies grew hysterical, striking out at their husbands or their lovers.

Muzzlehatch, whose peroration had been interrupted, merely cocked an eye at the crowd, and then stared fixedly and for a long time at what was still dangling at the end of his arm. After a while he remembered what it was.

‘I was going to kill you,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘in the way you kill a rabbit. A sharp stroke at the nape of the neck, delivered with the edge of the hand. I was even going to throttle you, but that seemed too good for you. Then there was the idea of drowning you in a bucket, but all these things were too good for you. You would not appreciate them. But I’ll have to do something about you, won’t I? Do you think your daughter wants you? Has she a birthday coming? No? Then I’ll take a chance, my little cockroach. Only look at her. Dishevelled and wicked. Look how she pines for him. Why, you’d take his nut for an onion. I must be rude after all, my sweet dangler, for you killed my animals. Ah, how they slid in their hey-day. How they meandered; how they skidded or leapt in their abandon. Lord, how they cocked their heads. Dear heaven! How they cocked their heads!

‘Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men.’

At the same moment that Muzzlehatch drew breath, Cheeta was seen to speed across the last few steps that divided her from Titus, like an evil thing borne on an evil draught.

Had it not been that with an unexpected agility, Juno leapt in front of Titus, he might well have had his face cut over and over by Cheeta’s long green nails.

Thwarted in her passion to leave her marks on Titus’ face, she howled in an access of evil as tears churned down her cheeks in channels of make-up.

For, no longer than it takes to tell it, Anchor had dragged both Titus and Juno out of reach of the malignant dart. Trembling, she stood and waited the next move, rising and falling on her tiny feet.

The dawn was now beginning to pick out the leaves from the trees of the surrounding forests and glowed softly on the helmets of the agents.

But Titus did not want to be hidden away behind the stalwart Anchor. He was grateful but angry that he should have been plucked backwards. As for Juno who had disobeyed Anchor – she was doing it again. For she also had no wish to remain in the shadow of her friend. They were too restless, too on edge to stand still. Seeing what was happening, Anchor merely shrugged his shoulders.

‘The time has come,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘to do whatever it was we set out to do. This is the time for flight. This is the time for bastards like myself to put an end to it all. What if my eyes are sore and red? What if they burn my sockets up? I’ve bathed in the straits of Actapon with phosphorus in the water, and my limbs like fish. Who cares about that now? Do you?’ he said, tossing the bundle who was Cheeta’s father, from one huge hand to another. ‘Do you? Tell me honestly.’

Muzzlehatch bent down and put his ear to the bundle. ‘It’s beastly,’ he said, ‘and it’s alive.’ Muzzlehatch tossed the little scientist to his daughter, who had no option but to catch him.

He whimpered a little as Cheeta then let him fall to the floor. Getting to his feet, his face was a map of terror.

‘I must go back to my work,’ he said in that thin voice that sent a chill down the spines of all his workmen.

‘It’s no good going there,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘It has exploded. Can you not hear the reverberations? Can you not see how ghastly is the dawn? There’s a lot of ash in the air.’

‘Exploded? No! … No! … It was all I had; my science, all that I had.’

‘And she was a lovely girl, I’m told,’ said Muzzlehatch.

Cheeta’s father, too frightened to answer, now began to turn in the direction of the foul light that was still angry in the sky. ‘Let me go,’ he cried, though no one was touching him. ‘O God! My formula!’ he cried. ‘My formula.’ He began to run.

On and on he ran, over the walls and into the dawn shadows. Immediately upon his words came a thick and curious laughter. It was Muzzlehatch. His eyes were like two red-hot pennies. While the echoes of Muzzlehatch rang out, Cheeta had manoeuvred herself so that she was again within striking distance of Titus, who, now that he was some way from Anchor, had turned for a moment to stare about him at the gaping throng.

It was at that moment, with his head averted, that Cheeta struck, breaking her nails as one might crunch sea-shells. The warm blood ran profusely down his neck. At once Juno was upon her.

How she could have moved with such speed it was impossible to say. But when she leapt forward and lifted her arm to strike, Juno recoiled from touching the febrile thing, for there was something horrible in the discrepancy in their sizes, and something pitiful about Cheeta’s small bedraggled face spotted with blood, however evil.

But that was where the compunction ended, and Juno, trembling as much as her antagonist, was about to be grabbed by Anchor, when the shrillest scream of all tore its way through the body of the sunrise like a knife through tissue; and immediately upon this vent from Cheeta’s lungs, the little creature turned upon them all and spat. This was the once exquisite Cheeta, the queen of ice; the orchid; brilliant of brain and limb. Now with her dignity departed for ever, she bared her teeth.

What was she to do? She darted her glance along the half circle. She saw how Juno was attending to Titus’ wounds as well as she could. Between them and herself, stood Anchor. She looked about her wildly, and saw how the light in Muzzlehatch’s eyes was directed upon her, and how there was no love in them; and how she was irrevocably alone.

She returned her gaze to Titus.

‘I hate you!’ she cried. ‘I hate all that you think you are. I hate your Gormenghast. I will always hate it. If it were true I’d hate it even more. I’m glad your neck is bleeding. You beast! Bloody beast!’

She turned and ran from them crying out words that none of them could understand … ran like a shred of darkness; ran and ran; until only those with the keenest sight could see her as she fled into the deep shadows of the most easterly of the forests. But though she was soon too far away for even the best of eyes, yet her voice carried all the way, until only a far, thin screaming could be heard, and after that no more.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN

Muzzlehatch turned his great hewn face to the sky.

‘Come here Titus. I am suddenly remembering you. What’s the matter? Do you always go round with blood all over you, like a butcher’s shop?’

‘Leave him alone, Muzzle dear. He’s very sick indeed,’ said Juno.

But they were not destined for any slackening of the pressure. Cheeta had gone it is true, and her father also, but danger was now from another quarter. The crowd was beginning to surge towards them. There were cries of anger, for they were very afraid. Everything had gone wrong. They were cold. They were lost. They were hungry. And Cheeta, the centre of it all, had forsaken them. Who could they turn to? In their lost condition, they could do little else but fling abuse at the shadowy figures, and it was only after a particularly ugly bout that a thick voice called out …

‘And look at them,’ it cried. ‘Look at that fool in a bandage. Seventy-Seventh Earl! Ha! ha! There’s Gormenghast for you. Why don’t you come and prove yourself, my lord?’

Why this particular remark should have got under Muzzlehatch’s skin, it is hard to fathom, but it did, and he stalked to the border of the crowd in order to annihilate the man. In order to do so he passed, swaggering in his rags, between the two inscrutable Helmeteers. As he did so there was a kind of hush as they slid aside to let him through. Then, as though it had all been premeditated, they turned and, bringing out their long-bladed knives, they stabbed Muzzlehatch in the back.

He did not die all at once, though the blades were long. He did not make a sound except for a catch in his breath. The red had gone out of his eyes, and in its place was a prodigious sanity. ‘Where’s Titus?’ he said. ‘Bring the young ruffian here.’

There was no need to tell Titus what to do. He flung himself at Muzzlehatch, yet with tenderness, for all his passion, and he clasped his old friend with his hand.

‘Hey! hey!’ whispered Muzzlehatch. ‘Don’t squeeze out what’s left of me, my dear.’

‘Oh my dear Muzzle … my dear friend.’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ whispered Muzzlehatch, as he began to sag at the knees. ‘Mustn’t get morbid … eh? … eh? … Where is your hand, boy?’

What had been diffused throughout the sunrise, had now contracted to a focus. What was atmospheric had become almost solid. As they looked at one another, they saw what some see under the influence of drugs, a peculiar nearness, and a vividness hardly to be borne.

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN

Juno, though knowing herself to be an outsider, in spite of her devotion to them both, yet had no power to keep away from her one-time lover, and it is strange that they needed Muzzlehatch at this last moment more than vengeance. Vengeance was to come, and Anchor was on his way to dispense it.

By now the sun was clear of the eastern forests, and every shape of form and colour would have shone clearly were it not for the omnipresent veil of the foul orange tint, that bastard hue, that was neither red nor yellow, but wavered on the brink of both. The only thing that burned with decision was Anchor.

Within a few strides he was beside them. The Helmeted Men. They were wiping their long steel blades upon the dock leaves that grew profusely on the floor of the Black House. For a moment his stomach turned with revulsion, for there was no expression on their faces. During the moment, too short to be called a pause, Anchor averted his gaze, and he saw on the other side of the two ‘Helmets’, the three characters from the Under-River.

Anchor knew nothing of these three, but he was not left long in doubt as to their intentions. Clumsy in movement, yet working in a crude unison they took the helmeted murderers from behind, snatching their long knives and pinning their arms to their sides. Yet the more they squeezed and pinioned them the stronger the sinister couple grew, and it was only when their helmets fell to the ground that a supernatural strength deserted them, and they were at once overpowered and slain by their own weapons.

Then a great hush came down upon the Black House, and over the wide and tragic scene. Titus could, only with difficulty, help the gaunt man down to his knees, inch by inch. Never for an instant did he cease from the fighting: never for a moment did he murmur. His head was held high; his back was straight as a soldier’s as he slowly sank. With one hand he gripped Titus by the forearm as hard as he could. But the youth could hardly feel it.

‘Something of a holocaust, ain’t it,’ he whispered. ‘God bless you and your Gormenghast, my boy.’

Then came another voice. It was Juno.

‘Let me see you. Let me kneel beside you,’ she said.

But already it was too late. Something had fled from the sunlit bulk on the floor. Muzzlehatch had gone. He had heeled over. His arrogant head lay upon its side, and Juno closed his eyes.

Then Titus stood up. At first he saw nothing, and then it was the swaying of the crowd. He saw a face … white as a sheet: an enormity. It was too big for a human visage. It was surrounded by crude locks of carrot-coloured hair, and there were stuffed birds perched upon the dusty shoulders. It was the last of the monstrosities to fall, Titus’ mother. Turning from Muzzlehatch’s side, Titus, with his eyes fixed upon this pasteboard travesty began to shake, for it reminded him of his own treachery when he left her; and the castle, his heritage.

But he was weak from loss of blood, and there came over him an absolute emptiness. It seemed that nothing mattered any more, so that when Anchor slung him over his shoulder, it was without any kind of argument. Titus had lost all his strength. Again there were cries from the congregation, which were stifled as soon as begun, for an owl the size of a large cat lolled through the air above the Black House, only to return to make sure whether what it had seen was true.

What did it see? It saw the dwindling of the juniper fire. It saw a long corpse lying by itself. Its head was turned on one side. It saw a dormouse under a bunch of couch-grass. It saw the glint of up-turned helmets, and a little to the west, their one-time owners. There they lay, sprawled across one another.

It saw Titus’ bandages and Anchor’s red hair in the foul morning light. It saw a bangle glinting on Juno’s wrist. It saw the living and it saw the dead.

* * *

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

Owl or no owl, it was essential to get Juno and Titus out of this sickening place, where in the full, if beastly light of the risen sun, objects that appeared mysterious and even magnificent during the night appeared now to be tawdry; cheap; a rag-and-bone shop.

Had Anchor been alone he would have experienced no great difficulty in making an escape from what was fast becoming an angry crowd. For he could handle most aircraft and had already selected one.

But Titus was weak with loss of blood, and Juno was trembling, as though she was standing in icy water.

As for Muzzlehatch, sprawled as though to take the curve of the world; what could be done about him? That heavy body. Those prodigious limbs. Even were he to have been alive he would have had great difficulty in manoeuvring himself into the aircraft, built like a flying fish.

But now, a dead-weight with his muscles stiffening, how much more difficult!

It was then that the three vagrants ran from the crowd. Crack-Bell, Crabcalf and Slingshott. They had seen it all, and knew just as well as Anchor knew that their only hope was to jettison the dead giant and make for the planes where they stood in long lines under the cedar branches.

‘Muzzlehatch; where is he?’ whispered Titus. ‘Where is he?’

‘We cannot take him,’ said Anchor. ‘We must leave him where he lies. Come, Titus.’

But it was a little while (in spite of Anchor’s peremptory command) before Juno could tear herself from what had been so much a part of her life. She bent down and kissed the cold craggy forehead.

Then at Anchor’s second shout they left him in the pitiless sunshine, and stumbled towards the voice.

The noise of the crowd had become menacing. Was this Cheeta’s party? The men were furious; the women tired and vicious. Their clothes were ruined. Was it not natural for the company to wish to revenge itself on something or other? What better than the remaining three?

But they had not reckoned with the men from the Under-River who, seeing how dangerously Titus and the others were placed, barred the obvious exits to the outside world.

But first they let slip through their fingers Juno, Titus and Anchor, and at that moment there began a most outrageous din. Those with a reputation as gentlemen were now forced to think otherwise for there was a great deal of scuffling and cursing before they had all fought their way out of the Black House, and into the open, where they began to mill around. Chivalry had apparently lost itself in a swarm of knees and elbows.

The Three were old campaigners and directly they saw how they had created sufficient chaos, they lost themselves in the irritable crowd.

The sky, curdled as it was, had now begun to look less ominous. A clearer, fresher stain was in the sky.

The vagrants, Crabcalf and the rest, joining up as planned in a rendezvous of branches, sat among the leaves like huge grey fowl.

Then Crabcalf lifted his head and whistled. It was the signal for Titus that all was clear as far as the making of their way was concerned, to where the long line of aircraft lay like frigates at anchor.

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN

How beautiful they looked, those dire machines, each of a different colour, each with a different shape. Yet all of them with this in common; that speed was the gist of them.

Though it seemed to Juno, Anchor and Titus that they had been stumbling for ever, it was no more than eight or so minutes before they saw her: a lemon-yellow creature the shape of a tipcat.

As they began to clamber aboard, they could hear the angry voices growing louder every moment, and it was indeed a near thing, for as they rose into the air the first of the forsaken crowd came running into view.

But Muzzlehatch? What of that vast collapse? What of that structure? There it lay so still in the sunlight. What of the way his head lolled over in absolute death? What could they do about it? There was nothing they could do.

The machine rose into the air, and as it rose they saw him dwindle. Now he was the size of a bird: now of an insect on the bright earth. Now he was gone. Gone? Had they forsaken him? Had they lost him forever? Lost him, where he lay, depth below depth, as though fathomed under water; Muzzlehatch … silence forever with him; one arm flung out.

For a long while, as the aircraft rose, and moved at the same time into the south, they took no heed of one another; each of them bemused: each in a wilderness of their own.

Anchor, perhaps, his fingers moving mechanically across the controls, was less far from reality than Titus or Juno, by reason of his watchfulness, but even he was hardly normal, and there was upon his face a shadow that Juno had not seen before.

From time to time, as they sped through the upper atmosphere, and while the world unveiled itself, valley by valley, range by range, ocean by ocean, city by city, it seemed that the earth wandered through his skull … a cosmos in the bone; a universe lit by a hundred lights and thronged by shapes and shadows; alive with endless threads of circumstance … action and event. All futility: disordered; with no end and no beginning.

* * *

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

Juno was motionless. Her profile was like that of an antique coin. A fullness under the chin; her nose straight and short; her face floated it seemed, un attached against the sky. A planet lit a cheekbone and revealed a tear. It hung there. It could not roll. The sweet down of her cheekbone held it where it was.

As Titus turned and saw her, he recoiled from her pathos. He could not bear it. He saw in her a criticism of his own defection. He suddenly hated himself for such a thought and he half rose from his seat in an agony of confusion. He loathed his own existence. He hated the unnatural from whose platter he had supped too often. The face of Muzzlehatch grew large in his mind. It filled him. It spread deeper. It filled the coloured plane. It filled the heavens. Then came a voice to join it. Was it Muzzlehatch with his eyes half closed upon his rocky cheekbone?

Titus shook his head to free his brain. Anchor glanced at the young man and tossed a hank of red hair from his eyes. Then he stared again at Titus.

‘Where are we going?’ he said at last. But there was no reply.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY

The darkness fell and the little craft sped on like an insect in the void. Time seemed to be a meaningless thing; but dawn came at last, its breast a wilderness of feathers.

The red-headed pilot seemed to be slumped over the controls but every now and again he shook himself and adjusted some device. All about him were the intricate entrails of the yellow machine; a creature terrible in its speed; lethal in its line; multitudinous in its secrets; an equation of metal.

Juno was fast asleep with her head on Titus’ shoulders. He sat in stony silence while the slim plane whistled through the air.

Suddenly he sat forward in his seat, and clenched his hands. A dark flush covered his brow. It was as though he had only just heard Anchor’s question.

‘Did someone ask where we were going? Or am I dreaming? Perhaps it is all a figment of my brain.’

‘What is the matter, Titus?’ said Juno, lifting her head.

‘What is the matter? Is that what you said? So you don’t know either? Neither of you know. Is that it? Have we no destination? We are moving, that is all; from one sky to the next. Is that what you think? Or am I mad? I have drowned my birthplace with rant until its name stinks to heaven. Gormenghast! O Gormenghast! How can I prove you?’

Titus banged his head down upon his knees over and over again.

‘Dear God! Dear God!’ he muttered. ‘Don’t make me mad.’

‘You are no more mad than I am,’ said Anchor. ‘Or than any other creature who is lost.’

But Titus went on banging his head on his knees.

‘Oh Titus,’ cried Juno. ‘We will search until we find your heart’s home. Have I ever doubted you?’

‘It is your pity for me. Your damnable pity,’ cried Titus. ‘You do not believe. You are gentle, but you do not believe. Oh God, it is your terrible, ignorant pity. Don’t you see it is the grey towers that I want? It is my Doctor; it is Bellgrove. If I shout will she hear me? Turn off the engine, Mr Anchor, and I will call her out of the air.’ Juno and Anchor exchanged glances, and the engine was switched off. The slithering silence filled them. Titus raised his head to cry, but no sound came. Only within himself could he hear a faraway voice calling out … ‘Mother … mother … mother … mother … where are you? Where … are … you? Where … are … you?’

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE

Never knowing where they were, for they could see nothing but alien hills and a great unheard-of sea, yet, nevertheless, they had no option but to cruise ever deeper into the unknown.

They took it in turn to guide the sleek machine, and it was well that Titus took his share of the responsibility. To some extent it kept him from brooding.

Yet even then his mind was half aware. Childhood and rebellion … disobedience and defiance; the journey; the adventures and now a youth no longer – but the man.

‘Good-bye, my friend. Look after her. She is all heart.’

Before Anchor and Juno knew what was happening he pressed a button, and was a second or two later alone, falling through the wilds of space, his parachute opening like a flower above him.

Gradually the dark silk tent filled up with air, and he swayed as he descended through the darkness, for it was night again. He gave himself up to the sensation of seemingly endless descent.

For a little while he forgot his loneliness, which was strange, for what could have been a lonelier setting than the night through which, suspended, he gradually fell? There was nothing for his feet to touch and it was right for him to be, for the time, so out of touch in every kind of sense. And so it was with composure that he felt and saw the bats surround him.

Now lay the land below him. A vast charcoal drawing of mountains and forests. There was no habitation to be seen, nor anything human, yet the stark geology and the crowding heads of the forest trees were redolent of almost human shapes. It was among the branches of a forest tree that Titus eventually subsided, and he lay there for a little while unharmed, like a child in a cradle.

When he had freed himself of his harness, and had cut away the deflated silk, he lowered himself branch by branch, and by the time he had reached the forest floor the sunshine was threading its way through the trees.

Now he was really alone and in making for the east he had no better reason than that it was out of there that the sunbeams were pouring.

Hungry, weary, he made his solitary way, eating roots and berries and drinking from the streams. Month followed month until one day, as he wandered through the lonely void, his heart jumped into his throat.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO

Why had he stopped to stare at the shape of a rock, as though it were in any way unusual? There it stood, perfectly normal, a great lichened boulder of a thing, pock-marked by time, its northern side somewhat swollen like the sail of a ship. Why was he staring at it as though struck by recognition?

As his eyes raced over the triturated surface of this dead yet evocative thing he took a step backwards. It was as though he was being warned.

There was no getting away from it. He had seen this rock before. He had stood upon its back, a ‘king of the castle’, in his childhood. He now remembered the long scar, a saw-toothed fissure down its crusty flank.

He knew that if he scaled it now and stood, once again, as in the old days, a ‘king of the castle’, he would see the very towers of Gormenghast.

That was why he trembled. The long indented outline of his home was blocked away from his sight by the mere proximity of a boulder. It was, for no reason he could see, a challenge.

A flood of memories returned; and as they spread and inter-spread and deepened, another part of his brain was wide aware of closer manifestations. The recognized existence, the very proof of the stone, there before him, not twenty feet away, argued the no less real existence of a cave that yawned at his right hand. A cave where an infinity ago he had struggled with a nymph.

At first he did not dare to turn his head, but the moment had come when he must do so, and there it was at last, away behind his right shoulder, and he knew for very proof that he was in his own domain once more. He was standing on Gormenghast Mountain.

As he rose to his feet a fox trotted out of the cave. A crow coughed in a nearby spinney and a gun boomed. It boomed again. It boomed seven times.

There it lay behind the boulder; the immemorial ritual of his home. It was the dawn salvo. It boomed for him, for the Seventy-Seventh Earl, Titus Groan, Lord of Gormenghast, wherever he might be.

There burned the ritual; all he had lost; all he had searched for. The concrete fact of it. The proof of his own sanity and love.

‘O God! It’s true! It’s true! I am not mad! I am not mad!’ he cried.

Gormenghast, his home. He could feel it. He could almost see it. He had only to skirt the base of the great rock or climb its crusty crown, for his eyes to become filled with towers. There was a taste in the air of iron. There was a quickening it seemed of the very stones and of the bridgeless spaces. What was he waiting for?

It would have been possible, had he wished it, to have reached the mouth of the cave without a glimpse of his Home. Indeed he took a step or two towards the cave-mouth. But again a sense of impending danger held back his feet, and a moment later he heard his own voice saying …

‘No … no … not now! It is not possible … now.’

His heart beat out more rapidly, for something was growing … some kind of knowledge. A thrill of the brain. A synthesis. For Titus was recognizing in a flash of retrospect that a new phase of which he was only half aware, had been reached. It was a sense of maturity, almost of fulfilment. He had no longer any need for home, for he carried his Gormenghast within him. All that he sought was jostling within himself. He had grown up. What a boy had set out to seek a man had found, found by the act of living.

There he stood: Titus Groan, and he turned upon his heel so that the great boulder was never seen by him ever again. Nor was the cave: nor was the castle that lay beyond, for Titus, as though shaking off his past from his shoulders like a heavy cape began to run down the far side of the mountain, not by the track by which he had ascended, but by another that he had never known before.

With every pace he drew away from Gormenghast Mountain, and from everything that belonged to his home.

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Copyright © The Estate of Mervyn Peake 1992

Introduction copyright © China Miéville 2011

Note on the illustrations © Sebastian Peake 2011

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Titus Groan first published in Great Britain in 1946 by Eyre and Spottiswoode

Gormenghast first published in Great Britain in 1950 by Eyre and Spottiswoode

Titus Alone first published in Great Britain in 1959 by Eyre and Spottiswoode

This edition first published in 1992 by Mandarin Paperbacks

Interior illustrations by Mervyn Peake

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ISBN 9780099528548