dappled chestnut groves. His exhausted bearers, the sweat pouring down their bodies and running into their eyes, were turning into a ride of ancient trees that led to the centre of the southern bank.
Had his vision been free he would have seen upon his left, and tethered to the low branches of the nearby trees, a hundred or more horses. Their harnessings, bridles, halters and saddles were slung across the higher branches. Here and there the moonlight penetrating the upper foliage set a stirrup dazzling in the gloom or gloated upon the leather of long traces. And then, a little further along the track where the trees were not so numerous, there stood ranged in lines, as though for inspection, a great variety of carriages, carts and traps. Here where there was less covering, the moonlight shone almost unimpeded, and was by now so high and was casting so strong a light that the varying colours of the carriages could be distinguished one from another. The wheels of each were decorated with foliage of young trees whose branches were threaded through the spokes, and with sunflowers also; in the long horse-drawn cavalcade which a few hours previously had made its overland journey to the chestnut woods, there had not been one wheel out of the many hundreds, that, in turning had not set the foliage revolving and the heads of sunflowers circling in the dusk.
All this had been lost to the boy – all this and many another flight of fancy which from hour to hour during the day had been set in motion or enacted according to old customs whose origin or significance was long forgotten.
But the bearers were for the first time slackening their pace. Once again he leaned forward, his hands grasping the basket-work rim of his chair. ‘Where are we?’ he shouted. ‘How much longer will it be? Can’t you answer me?’
The silence about him was like something that hummed against his eardrums. This was another kind of silence. This was not the silence of nothing happening – of emptiness, or negation – but was a positive thing – a silence that knew of itself – that was charged, conscious and wide awake.
And now the bearers stopped altogether, and almost at once, across the stillness, Titus heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and then –
‘My lord Titus,’ said a voice, ‘I am here to bid you welcome and to offer you on behalf of your mother, your sister and all who are here gathered, our felicitations on your tenth birthday.
‘It is our desire that what has been prepared for your amusement will give you pleasure; and that you will find the tedium of the long and solitary day that now lies at your back has been worth the suffering; in short, my Lord Titus, your mother the Countess Gertrude of Gormenghast, Lady Fuchsia and every one of your subjects are hoping that what is left of your birthday will be very happy.’
‘Thank you,’ said Titus. ‘I would like to get down.’
‘At once, your lordship,’ said the same voice.
‘And I’d like this scarf off my eyes.’
‘In one moment. Your sister is on her way to you. She will remove it when she has taken you to the south platform.’
‘Fuchsia!’ his voice was sharp and strained. ‘Fuchsia! Where are you?’
‘I’m coming,’ she shouted. ‘Hold his arm, you man, there! How do you think he can stand in the dark like that – give him to me, give him to me. Oh Titus,’ she panted, holding her blind brother tightly in her arms, ‘it won’t be long now – and O, it’s wonderful! wonderful! As wonderful as it was when it was all for me, years ago, and it’s a better night than I had, and absolutely calm with a great white moon on top.’
She led him along as she talked, and all at once the marginal trees were behind them and Fuchsia knew that every step they took and every movement they made was watched by a multitude.
As Titus stumbled at her side he tried to imagine in what kind of place he could be. He could form no picture from Fuchsia’s disjointed comments. That he was to be taken to a platform of some kind, that there was a moon, and that the whole castle seemed resolved to make amends for the long prefatory day he had spent alone was all that he could gather.
‘Twelve steps up,’ said Fuchsia, and he felt her placing his foot upon the first of the rough treads. They climbed together, hand in hand, and when they reached the platform she guided him to where a large horse-hair chair bloated with moonlight, an ugly thing if ever there was one – a heavy beast with a purple skin that had tired out the two cart horses by the time they had covered half the journey.
‘Sit down,’ said Fuchsia, and he sat down gingerly in the darkness, upon the edge of the ugly couch.
Fuchsia stood back from him. Then she raised both her arms above her head. In reply to her signal a voice called out of the darkness. ‘It is time! Let the scarf be unwound from his eyes!’
And another voice – quick as an echo –
‘It is time! Let his birthday begin!’
And another –
‘For his Lordship is ten.’
Titus felt Fuchsia’s fingers undoing the knot and then the freeing of the cloth about his eyes. For a moment he remained with his lids closed, and then he slowly opened them and as he did so he rose involuntarily to his feet with a gasp of wonder.
Before him, as he stood, one hand at his mouth, his eyes round as coins, there was stretched, as it were, across the area of his vision, a canvas – a canvas hushed and unearthly. A canvas of great depth; of width that spread from east to the west and of a height that wandered way above the moon. It was painted with fire and moonlight – upon a dark impalpable surface. The lunar rhythms rose and moved through darkness. A counterpoint of bonfires burned like anchors – anchors that held the sliding woods in check.
And the glaze! The earthless glaze of that midnight lake! And the multitude across the water, motionless in the shadow of the sculptured chestnut trees. And the bonfires burning!
And then a voice out of the paint cried ‘Fire!’ and a cannon roared, recoiled and smoked upon the bank. ‘Fire!’ cried the voice again, and then again, until the gun had bellowed ten times over.
It was the sign, and suddenly the picture, as though at the stroke of a warlock’s wand, came suddenly to life. The canvas shuddered. Fragments detached themselves and fragments came together. From the height to the depths it was that that Titus saw.
