Titus Awakes

10

Away from the Mountains

AS HE LEFT the hut he heard breathing behind him – it was a mixture of the dog, and the hiss of hatred from the men and women with whom he had lived for nearly a year.

Knowing he would leave when the time was ready, he had concealed a little way down the mountain provisions that would go some way to relieve his hunger pangs. He had not anticipated having a companion, so he would have to ration the supplies, but to think of another winter like the last one was anathema to him.

It was dusk as he made his way down the path to the clearing where his child had been conceived. He put all feelings of conscience behind him. His life lay ahead. He now knew that any permanent relationship was not for him. His desires would be peremptorily fulfilled and he would hide consciousness of the pain he might inflict deep in the well of his mind.

With the provisions he had hidden a skin that would not be missed. They were buried in the earth so that the weather could not touch them. As the snow fell, he was glad of his secret precautions. Now, after a year hemmed in by the mountains, he longed for the sight and the sound of water. His objective was to reach a sea and the mysterious outline of islands, whether inhabited or not. He yearned to see those porpoise-shaped islands emerging from the sea mist. His youth urged him on to conquest. He knew himself to be selfish, to have turned his back on the people who cried to him for help. He lived only for himself. He thought back to his other worlds, where he had cared, and been cared for, and given his strength to kill the most heinous of villains – Steerpike – and the man from the Under River.

‘I am not wholly despicable,’ he said out loud to himself and to the dog who warmed his freezing body. ‘Perhaps one day I may prove again that I am not wholly selfish – where and when will it be?’

The dog opened its jaws and howled in sympathy.

As the day broke, they nursed their frozen limbs, and saw through the mist the pale pink path Titus knew would lead him to a sea. They broke the sullen bread and scooped the frozen snow for sustenance before they left the hollow and began to make their way. Titus followed the unworn path through thorn bushes, hearing the frightened screeches of birds. On the ground a grass snake twisted, curving away from him like a femme fatale.

‘You beast, you are alone, with a man who is searching, but I don’t know for what I am searching. I have forsaken love, companionship, community. And you, faithful beast, you are alone and, when the time comes, I will forsake you too. Why so pitiless?’

His words echoed up and down the mountains, as he and the dog were scourged by icy wind. ‘I was not always selfish. I loved Fuchsia. I loved Dr Prune – I loved Bellgrove. I revered but feared my mother. But I was only at one with the ‘‘Thing’’, who was nothing but a dream, appearing and disappearing, and then gone for ever, and the man who wore faithfulness like a garment, alone like me, in the woods of Gormenghast. What was his name . . . ?’

Titus pulled at brambles, pushing aside overhanging bushes. ‘What was his name? May? Day? Clay? Hay? Say? Jay? Pray – pray, pray – oh, Mr Flay – yes, Mr Flay with the creaking knee-joints. How you would despise me. Titus the traitor – but also a traitor to himself. And now I want to live, as I have never lived before. I want to see everything this new world has to offer me.’

Titus relished the freedom that was his – not looking further ahead than the next step. As he rounded a corner in the downward path he spied a hut, built from hacked-down trees, primitive but inviting. He sang and he ran. The dog bounded joyfully beside him.

The signs of a human activity hung outside the hut. Animal skins stretched pathetically, their lives stripped from them. Small flowers clung to life as the winter advanced.

He could not pass the hut without his curiosity being assuaged – he called out ‘Hello’ in every pitch of voice he could manage, from the deep bassoon to the shrill shriek of a cockatoo. From inside the hut he heard movements and he smelled the richness of some animal cooking. The door of the hut was suddenly opened.

What Titus saw was not what he expected. He had thought to see a figure unkempt and old, a shadow, but he saw a youngish man, in clothes that were particularly clean with the well-washed, scrubbed paleness of sun and water. The man had shoulder-length hair, beard, moustache; he was hirsute but immaculate.

At the door to his hut he bowed to Titus with the delicacy of one who had lived in another world. He bade him enter, and with added grace bowed to Titus’s companion, the titanic canine. Titus had expected confusion. He had expected distaste for a stranger, but what he saw was something of infinite charm. A room, whitewashed and rich in what it had to offer. Sitting cross-legged on a floor covered by reed matting was a girl. Then she stood as eminently as any hostess in a palace holding in her arms a baby, with the same flaxen hair that was hers. The baby cried at the sight of his dog. Titus felt ungainly and ugly, but he took the girl’s hand and kissed it with a courtesy that he had long since forsaken. There was no awkward silence. The warmth of fulfilled love permeated the hut.

‘I am Titus, 77th Earl of Gormenghast,’ he said, ‘and this is the companion of my wanderings.’

‘I am Elystan and this is my wife Meirag, and this is my son, John Donne.’

The child was put down on the floor, and it crawled across the room to where the giant dog lay, with its tail hitting rhythmically the rush matting. It made no move as the infant came nearer, but looked on curiously. Titus was frightened as the little creature put its hand out to caress, but he need not have been, as the huge tongue emerged from its cream-furry mouth, and licked the baby’s hand, then its face, and the mutual delight cast all fear from the adults.