The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

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