The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

one of the few women who ever interested me. O yes. I saw it all. His head lay sidelong on your splendid bosom and for a little while he was Lord of that tropical ravine between your midnight breasts: that home of moss and verdure: that sumptuous cleft. But enough of this. I am too old for gulches. How did you find us? What with our twistings and turnings and doubling back – we should by rights have shaken off the devil himself – but then you wander in as though you’d been a-riding on my tail. How did you find me?’

‘I will tell you, Muzzle-dove, how I found you. There was nothing miraculous about it. My intuition is as non- existent as the smell of marble. It was the boy who gave you both away. His feet were wet and still are. They left a glister down the corridors.’

‘A glister, what’s a glister?’ said Muzzlehatch.

‘It’s what his wet feet left behind them – the merest film. I had only to follow it. Where are your shoes, pilgrim-child?’

‘My shoes?’ said Titus, with a chicken bone in his hand. ‘Why, somewhere in the river, I suppose.’

‘Well then; now that you’ve found us, Juno, my love-trap – what do you want of us? Alone or separately? I, after all, though unpopular, am no fugitive. So there’s no need for me to hide. But young Titus here (Lord of somewhere or other – with an altogether most unlikely name) – he, we must admit, is on the run. Why, I’m not quite sure. As for myself, there is nothing I want more than to wash my two hands of both of you. One reason is the way you haven’t my marrow. I yell for nothing but solitude, Juno, and the beasts I brood on. Another is this young man – the Earl of Gorgon-paste or whatever he calls himself – I must wash my hands of him also, for I have no desire to be involved with yet another human being – especially one in the shape of an enigma. Life is too brief for such diversions and I cannot bring myself to scrape up any interest in the problems of his breast.’

The small ape on Muzzlehatch’s shoulder nodded its head and then began to fish about in the depth of its master’s hair; its wrinkled, yet delicate, fingers probing here and there were as tender yet as inquisitive as any lover’s.

‘You’re almost as rude as I was hungry,’ said Titus. ‘As for the workings of my heart, and my lineage, you are as ignorant as that monkey on your shoulder. As far as I am concerned you will remain so. But get me out of here. It is a swine of a building and smells like a hospital. You have been good to me, Mr Marrow-patch, but I long to see the last of you. Where can I go, where can I hide?’

‘You must come with me,’ said Juno. ‘You must have clean clothes, food, and shelter.’ She turned her splendid head to Muzzlehatch. ‘How are we going to leave without being seen?’

‘One move at a time,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Our first is to find the nearest lift-shaft. The whole place ought to be asleep by now.’ He strode to the door and, opening it quietly, discovered a young man bent double. He had been given no time to rise from the keyhole, let alone escape.

‘But my dearest essence of stoat’ – said Muzzlehatch, gradually drawing the man forward into the room by his lemon-yellow lapels (for he was a flunkey of the household) – ‘you are most welcome. Now, Juno dear, take Gorgon-paste with you and lean with him over the balustrade and stare down into the darkness. It will not be for long.’

Titus and Juno, obeying his curiously authoritative voice, for it had power however ridiculous its burden, heard a peculiar shuffling sound, and then a moment later – ‘Now then, Gorgon-blast, leave the lovely lady in charge of the night and come here.’

Titus turned and saw that the flunkey was practically naked. Muzzlehatch had stripped him as an autumn tree is stripped of its gold leaves.

‘Off with your rags and into the livery,’ said Muzzlehatch to Titus. He turned to the flunkey, ‘I do hope you’re not too chilly. I have nothing against you, friend, but I have no option. This young gentleman must escape, you see.’

‘Hurry, now, “Gorgon”,’ he shouted. ‘I have the car waiting and she is restless.’

He did not know that as he spoke the first strands of dawn were threading their way through the low clouds and lighting not only the few aeroplanes that shone like spectres, but also that monstrous creature, Muzzlehatch’s car. Naked as the flunkey, naked in the early sunbeams, it was like an oath, or a jeer, its nose directed at the elegant planes; its shape, its colour, its skeleton, its tendons, its skull, its muscles of leather – its low and rakish belly, and its general air of blood and mutiny on the high seas. There she waited far below the room where her captain stood.

‘Change clothes,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘We can’t wait all night for you.’

Something began to burn in Titus’ stomach. He could feel the blood draining from his face.

‘So you can’t wait all night for me,’ he said in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. ‘Muzzlehatch, the zoo- man, is in a hurry. But does he know who he is talking to? Do you?’

‘What is it, Titus?’ said Juno, who had turned from the window at the sound of his voice.

‘What is it?’ cried Titus. ‘I will tell you, madam. It is this bully’s ignorance. Does he know who I am?’

‘How can we know about you, dear, if you won’t tell us? There, there, stop shaking.’

‘He wants to run away,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘But you don’t want to be jailed, do you now? Eh? You want to get free of this building, surely.’

‘Not with your help,’ shouted Titus, though he knew as he shouted that he was being mean. He looked up at the big cross-hatched face with its proud rudder of a nose and the living light in its eye and a flicker of recognition seemed to pass between them. But it was too late.

‘Then to hell with you, child,’ said Muzzlehatch.

‘I will take him,’ said Juno.

‘No,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Let him go. He must learn.’

‘Learn, be damned!’ said Titus, all the pent-up emotion breaking through. ‘What do you know of life, of violence and guile? Of madmen and subterfuge and treachery? My treachery. My hands have been sticky with blood. I have loved and I have killed in my kingdom.’

‘Kingdom?’ said Juno. ‘Your kingdom?’