‘No!’
‘Escape with me or rot in lamplight.’
Again he grasped her savagely, so that she cried out in agony. But there was at the same time another sound that went unheard … the sound of light footsteps.
‘Lift up your head! Why all this nicety? You are a whore.’
‘I am no whore, you festering length of bone. I would as much have you touch me as a running sore.’
Then the man with the small skull-like head lifted his fist, and struck her across the mouth. It was a mouth that had once been soft and red: lovely to look upon: thrilling to kiss. But now it seemed to have no shape, for the blood ran all over it. In jerking back her head she struck it on the wall at her back, and immediately her eyes closed with sickness; those eyes of hers, those irises, as black, it seemed, as their pupils so that they merged and became like a great wide well that swallowed what they gazed upon. But before they closed a kind of ghost appeared to hover in the eyes. It was no reflection, but a terrible and mournful thing … the ghost of unbearable disillusion.
The footsteps had stopped at the sound of her cry, but now, as she began to sink to her knees a figure began to run, his steps sounding louder and louder every moment.
The small-skull’d man with his long spindly limbs, cocked his head on one side and ran his tongue to and fro along his fleshless lips with a deliberate stropping motion. This tongue was like the tongue of a boot, as long, as broad and as thin.
Then as though he had come to a decision he picked the Black Rose up in his arms and took a dozen steps to where the darkness was thickest, and there he dropped her as though she were a sack, to the ground. But as he turned to retrace his steps, he saw that someone was waiting for him.
FIFTY-SEVEN
For as long as a man can hold his breath, there was no sound; not one. Their eyes were fixed upon one another, until at last the voice of Veil broke the wet silence.
‘Who are you?’ he said, ‘and what do you want?’
He drew back his leather lips as he spoke, but the newcomer instead of answering took a step forward, and peered through the gloom on every side as though he were looking for something.
‘I questioned you I think! Who are you? You do not belong here. This is not your quarter. You are trespassing. Get to the north with you or I will …’
‘I heard a cry,’ said Titus. ‘What was it?’
‘A cry? There are always cries.’
‘What are you doing here in the dark? What are you hiding?’
‘Hiding, you pup? Hiding? Who are you to cross-question me? By God, who are you anyway? Where do you come from?’
‘Why?’
The mantis man was suddenly upon the youth and though he did not actually
‘I will ask you again,’ said the man. ‘Where do you come from?’
Titus, his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched, felt his mouth go suddenly dry.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he whispered.
At this Mr Veil threw back his bony head to laugh. The sound was intolerably cold and cruel.
The man was deadly enough without his laugh but with it he became deadly in another way. For there was no humour in it. It was a noise that came out of a hole in the man’s face. A sound that left Titus under no illusion as to the man’s intrinsic evil. His body, limbs and organs and even his head could hardly be said to be any fault of his, for this was the way in which he had been made; but his laughter was of his own making.
As the blood ran into Titus’ face there was a movement in the darkness, and the boy turned his head at once.
‘Who’s there?’ he cried, and as he cried, the thin man Veil took a spidery step towards him.
‘Come back, pup!’
The menace in the voice was so horrible that Titus jumped ahead into the darkness, and immediately his foot struck something that yielded, and at the same time there was a sob from immediately below him.
As he knelt down he could see the faint pattern of a human face in the gloom. The eyes were open.
‘Who are you?’ whispered Titus. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘No … no,’ said the voice.
‘Raise your head,’ said Titus, but as he began to lift the vague body, a hand fixed its fingers, like pincers, into his shoulder, and with one movement, not only jerked Titus to his feet, but sent him spinning against the wall, where a slant of pale, wet light illumined his face.
Written across his young features was something not so young; something as ancient as the stones of his home. Something uncompromising. The gaze of civility was torn from his face as the shrouding flesh can be torn from the bone. A primordial love for his birth-place, a love which survived and grew, for all that he had left his home, for all that he was a traitor, burned in him with a ferocity that he could not understand. All he knew was that as he stared at the spider-man, he, Titus, began to age. A cloud had passed over his heart. He was not so much in the thick of an adventure as alone with something that smelt of death.
Where Titus leaned against the wall the cold brick ran with moisture. It ran through his hair and spread out over his brows and cheekbones. It gathered about his lips and chin and then fell to the ground in a string of water- beads.
