The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (168 page)

He had noticed, in spite of his seeming torpor, that in an alcove, half hidden by a pillar, were two figures who sat very still and very upright; with an elasticity of articulation; an imperceptible vibrance of the spine. They were upright to the point of unnaturalness. They did not move. Even the plumes on their helmets were motionless, and were in every way identical.

He, Muzzlehatch, had also picked out Inspector Acreblade (a pleasant change from the tall enigmas), for there could be nothing more earthy than the Inspector, who believed in nothing so much as his hound-like job, the spoor and gristle of it: the dry bones of his trade. Within his head there was always a quarry. Ugly or beautiful; a quarry. High morals took no part in his career. He was a hunter and that was all. His aggressive chin prodded the air. His stocky frame had about it something dauntless.

Muzzlehatch watched him through eyelids that were no more than a thread apart. There were not many people in Court that were
not
being watched by Muzzlehatch. In fact there was only one. She sat quite still and unobserved in the shade of a pillar and watched Titus as he stood in the dock, the Magistrate looming above him, like some kind of a cloud. His forgetful face was quite invisible but the crown of his wig was illumined by the lamp that hung above his head. And as Juno stared, she frowned a little and the frown was as much an expression of kindness as the warm quizzical smile that usually hovered on her lips.

What was it about this stripling at the bar? Why did he touch her so? Why was she frightened for him? ‘My father is dead,’ he had answered. ‘He was eaten by owls.’

A group of elderly men, their legs and arms draped around the backs and elbow-rests of pew-like settees, made between them a noisy corner. The Clerk of the Court had brought them to order more than once but their age had made them impervious to criticism, their old jaws rattling on without a break.

At that moment the paper dart began to loop downward in a gracile curve so that the central figure of the elderly group – the poet himself – jumped to his feet and cried out ‘Armageddon!’ in so loud a voice that the Magistrate opened his eyes.

‘What’s this!’ he muttered, the dart trailing across his line of vision. There was no answer, for at that moment the rain came down. At first it had been the merest patter; but then it had thickened into a throbbing of water, only to give way after a little while to a protracted
hissing
.

This hissing filled the whole Court. The very stones hissed and with the rain came a premature darkness which thickened the already murky Court.

‘More candles!’ someone cried. ‘More lanterns! Brands and torches, electricity, gas and glow-worms!’

By now it was impossible to recognize anyone save by their silhouettes, for what lights had begun to appear were sucked in by the quenching effect of the darkness.

It was then that someone pulled down a small emergency lever at the back of the Court, and the whole pace was jerked into a spasm of naked brilliance.

For a while the Magistrate, the Clerk, the witnesses, the public, sat blinded. Scores of eyelids closed: scores of pupils began to contract. And everything was changed save for the roaring of the rain upon the roof. While this noise made it impossible to be
heard
, yet every detail had become important to the
eye
.

There was nothing mysterious left; all was made naked. The Magistrate had never before suffered such excruciating limelight. The very essence of his vocation was ‘removedness’; how could he be ‘removed’ with the harsh unscrupulous light revealing him as a
particular
man? He was a symbol. He was the Law. He was Justice. He was the wig he wore. Once the wig was gone then he was gone with it. He became a little man among little men. A little man with rather weak eyes; that they were blue and candid argued a quality of magnanimity, when in Court; but they became irritatingly weak and empty directly he removed his wig and returned to his home. But now the unnatural light was upon him, cold and merciless: the kind of light by which vile deeds are done.

With this fierce radiance on his face it was not hard for him to imagine that
he
was the prisoner.

He opened his mouth to speak but not a word could be heard, for the rain was thrashing the roof.

The gaggle of old men, now that their voices were drowned, had gone into their shells, their old tortoise faces turned from the violence of the light.

Following Titus’ gaze, Muzzlehatch could see that he was staring at the Helmeted Pair and that the Helmeted Pair were staring at Titus. The young man’s hands were shaking on the rail of the bar.

One of the group of six had picked up the paper dart and smoothed it out with the flat of his big insensitive hand. He frowned as he read and then shot a glance at the young man at the bar. Spill, the tall deaf gentleman, was peering over the man’s shoulder. His deafness made him wonder at the lack of conversation in the Court. He could not know that a black sky was crashing down upon the roof nor that the light flooding the walnut-panelled Court was so incongruously coinciding with the black downpour of the outer world.

But he could read, and what he read caused him to dart a glance at Titus, who, turning his head at last from the Helmeted Pair, saw Muzzlehatch. The blinding light had plucked him from the shadows. What was he doing? He was making some kind of sign. Then Titus saw Juno, and for a moment he felt a kind of warmth both for and
from
her. Then he saw Spill and Kestrel. Then he saw Mrs Grass and then the poet.

Everything was horribly close and vivid. Muzzlehatch, looking about nine foot high, had reached the middle of the Court, and choosing the right moment he relieved the man of the crinkled note.

As he read, the rain slackened, and by the time he had finished, the black sky, as though it were a solid, had moved away, all in one piece, and could be heard trundling away into another region.

There was a hush in the Court until an anonymous voice cried out – ‘Switch off this fiendish light!’

This peremptory order was obeyed by someone equally anonymous, and the lanterns and the lamps came into their own again: the shadows spread themselves. The Magistrate leaned forward.

‘What are you reading, my friend?’ he said to Muzzlehatch. ‘If the furrow between your eyes spells anything, I should guess it spells news.’

‘Why, yes, your Worship, why, yes, indeed. Dire news,’ said Muzzlehatch.

‘That scrap of paper in your hands,’ continued the Magistrate, ‘looks remarkably like a note I handed down to my Clerk, creased though it is and filthy as it has become. Would it be?’

‘It would,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘and it
is
. But you are wrong; he isn’t. No more than I am.’

‘No?’

‘No!’

‘Isn’t what?’

‘Can you not remember what you wrote, your Worship?’

‘Remind me.’

Muzzlehatch, instead of reading out the contents of the note, slouched up to the Magistrate’s bench and handed him the grubby paper.

‘This is what you wrote,’ he said. ‘It is not for the public. Nor for the young prisoner.’

‘No?’ said the Magistrate.

‘No,’ said Muzzlehatch.

‘Let me see … Let me see …’ said the Magistrate, pursing his mouth as he took the note from Muzzlehatch and read to himself.

Ref.: No. 1721536217

My dear Filby,

I have before me a young man, a vagrant, a trespasser, a quite peculiar youth, hailing from Gorgonblast, or some such improbable place, and bound for nowhere. By name he admits to ‘Titus’, and sometimes to ‘Groan’, though whether Groan is his real name or an invention it is hard to say.

It is quite clear in my mind that this young man is suffering from delusions of grandeur and should be kept under close observation – in other words, Filby, my dear old chap, the boy, to put it bluntly, is
dotty
. Have you room for him? He can, of course, pay nothing, but he may be of interest to you and even find a place in the treatise you are working on. What was it you were calling it? ‘Among the Emperors’?

O dear, what it is to be a Magistrate! Sometimes I wonder what it is all about. The human heart is too much. Things go too far. They become unhealthy. But I’d rather be me than you. You are in the entrails of it all. I asked the young man if his father were alive. ‘No,’ he said, ‘
he was eaten by owls
.’ What do you make of that? I will have him sent over. How is your neuritis? Let me hear from you, old man.

Yours ever,

Willy.

The Magistrate looked up from his note and stared at the boy. ‘That seems to cover it,’ he said. ‘And yet … you look all right. I wish I could help you. I will try once more – because I may be wrong.’

‘In what way?’ said Titus; his eyes were fixed on Acreblade, who had changed his seat in the Court and was now very close indeed.

‘What is wrong with me, your Worship? Why do you peer at me like that?’ said Titus. ‘I am lost – that is all.’

The Magistrate leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Titus – tell me about your home. You have told us of your father’s death. What of your mother?’

‘She was a woman.’

This answer raised a guffaw in the Court.

‘Silence,’ shouted the Clerk of the Court.

‘I would not like to feel that you are showing contempt of Court,’ said the Magistrate, ‘but if this goes on any longer I will have to pass you on to Mr Acreblade. Is your mother alive?’

‘Yes, your Worship,’ said Titus, ‘unless she has died.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Long ago.’

‘Were you not happy with her? – You have told us that you ran away from home.’

‘I would like to see her again,’ said Titus. ‘I did not see very much of her; she was too vast for me. But I did not flee from
her
.’

‘What
did
you flee from?’

‘From my duty.’

‘Your duty?’

‘Yes, your Worship.’

‘What kind of duty?’

‘My hereditary duty. I have told you. I am the last of the Line. I have betrayed my birthright. I have betrayed my home. I have run like a rat from Gormenghast. God have mercy on me.

‘What do you want of me? I am sick of it all! Sick of being followed. What have I done wrong – save to myself? So my papers are out of order, are they? So is my brain and heart. One day I’ll do some shadowing myself!’

Titus, his hands gripping the sides of the box, turned his full face to the Magistrate.

‘Why was I put in jail, your Worship,’ he whispered, ‘as though I were a criminal? Me! Seventy-Seventh Earl and heir to that name.’

‘Gormenghast,’ murmured the Magistrate. ‘Tell us more, dear boy.’

‘What can I tell you? It spreads in all directions. There is no end to it. Yet it seems to me now to have boundaries. It has the sunlight and the moonlight on its walls just like this country. There are rats and moths – and herons. It has bells that chime. It has forests and it has lakes and it is full of people.’

‘What kind of people, dear boy?’

‘They had two legs each, your Worship, and when they sang they opened their mouths and when they cried the water fell out of their eyes. Forgive me, your Worship, I do not wish to be facetious. But what can I say? I am in a foreign city; in a foreign land; let me go free. I could not bear that prison any more.

‘Gormenghast was a kind of jail. A place of ritual. But suddenly and under my breath I had to say good-bye.’

‘Yes, my boy. Please go on.’

‘There had been a flood, your Worship. A great flood. So that the castle seemed to float upon it. When the sun at last came out the whole place dripped and shone … I had a horse, your Worship … I dug my heels into her flank and I galloped into perdition. I wanted to
know
, you see.’

‘What did you want to know, my young friend?’

‘I wanted to know,’ said Titus, ‘whether there was any other place.’

‘Any other place …?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you written to your mother?’

‘I have written to her. But every time my letters are returned. Address unknown.’