The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (177 page)

Out of the silence that followed, the horrible sound of his laughter began to grow, and as it grew in volume, the blood poured out the quicker, until there came the moment when, with a final convulsion of his long bones, he fell upon his dislocated, meaningless face, twitched for the last time, and died.

Titus got to his feet and turned to Muzzlehatch. He saw at once by the distant look in his friend’s eye that he was in no talking mood. He seemed to have forgotten the long shattered man at his feet, and to be brooding on some other matter. When Black Rose came stumbling up, her hands clasped, he took no notice of her. She turned to Titus.

At once, Titus drew back. Not because she repelled him, for even in the drawn and sunken condition she was in, she was still beautiful. But now, she had no option but to arouse pity: she could not help it. It was a beauty to beware of. Her enormous eyes so often big with fear were now big with hope … and Titus knew that he must get away. He could see at once that she was predatory. She did not know it, but she was.

‘She goes through hell,’ muttered Titus. ‘She wades in it, and the thicker and deeper it is, the more I long to escape. Grief can be boring.’ Titus was immediately sickened by his own words. They tasted foul on the tongue.

He turned to her and was held again by the gaping tragedy of her eyes. Whatever she said could be nothing but mere corroboration. It could merely repeat or embroider the reality of her eloquent eyes. The trembling of her hands, and the wetness of her cheekbones. These and other signs were redundant. He knew that were he to let fall the smallest seed of kindness, then that seed would inevitably grow into some kind of weird relationship. A smile might set the avalanche moving.

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ he thought. ‘I can’t sustain her. I can’t comfort her. I can’t love her. Her suffering is far too clear to see. There is no veil across it: no mystery: no romance. Nothing but a factual pain, like the pain of a nagging tooth.’

Again he turned his eyes to her as though to verify what he had been thinking, and at once he was ashamed.

She had become emptied. Pain had emptied her. There was nothing left. What could he do?

He turned to Muzzlehatch: there was something about him that baffled the boy. For the first time it seemed as though his friend had a weakness: some vulnerable spot. Somebody or something had searched it out. As Titus watched, and as Black Rose stood with her eyes fixed upon him, Muzzlehatch turned to the great crowd.

He had heard without knowing it the first murmur, and he now became aware of a widespread stirring, as gradually the crowd began to crumble, grain by grain, making its way to the arena, gradually as though a great hill of sugar were on the move.

But what was more important, the incredulous population appeared to be drifting in the direction of the three. Within a minute, they (the Black Rose, Titus and Muzzlehatch) would, if they stayed where they were, be caught up in an insufferable press.

Before them, inexorably, came spilling out the tide. The tide of the unwanted, the dispossessed: the dross of the Under-River. Among them came Crabcalf and the bird-headed man who fed the hounds; came the old man, and his squirrel: came Crack-Bell: came Sober-Carter.

There was no time to lose. ‘This way,’ said Muzzlehatch, and Titus with the Black Rose clinging to his arm hurried after him, as the gaunt man strode into a blanket of darkness. Not a lantern burned: not a candle even. Only by the sound of his footsteps was Titus able to keep contact with his friend.

After what seemed an hour or more, they turned to the south. He seemed to have eyes like a cat’s, this silent Muzzlehatch; for dark as it was, he never faltered.

Then, after yet an hour or more of walking, this time with the Black Rose slung over his shoulders, Muzzlehatch at last came to a long flight of steps. As they climbed, they became aware, momently, of a percolation of faint light, and then, all at once, of a small white opening in the darkness, the size of a coin. When at last they reached it, they found it to be an entrance, or for themselves an egress. They had reached one of the secret mouths of the under-river world, and Titus was amazed to see, on wriggling himself out into the air, that they were in the silent heart of a forest.

They had to wait until dark before they dared to venture to Juno’s house. What else could they do with the Black Rose but take her there? As they waited the tension became almost unbearable. Nobody spoke. Muzzlehatch’s eyes had a far-away look, which Titus had seldom seen before.

It was a rocky place, and over the rocks the trees spread out their branches. At last Titus walked over to where Muzzlehatch lay on his back on a great grey stone. Black Rose followed him with her eyes.

‘I can’t bear this any longer,’ said Titus, ‘what in hell is it? Why are you so different? Is it because …?’

‘Boy,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘I will tell you. It will keep you quiet.’ He paused for a long while. Then he said, ‘My animals are dead.’

At the end of the forest silence that followed, Titus knelt down beside his friend. All he could say was, ‘What happened?’

‘The dedicated men,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘sometimes known as scientists: they were after me. Someone is always after me. As usual I escaped them. I know many ways of disappearing. But what use are they now, my dear chap? My animals are dead.’

‘But …’

‘Baffled because they could not find me … no, not even with their latest device, that is no bigger than a needle, and threads a keyhole with the speed of light … baffled, I say, they turned from hunting me, and killed my animals.’

‘How?’

Muzzlehatch rose to his feet on the rock, and lifting his arm caught hold of a thick branch that hung above him, and broke it off. A muscle in his jawbone ticked endlessly like a clock.

‘Some kind of ray, it was,’ he said at last. ‘Some kind of ray. A pretty notion, prettily executed.’

‘And yet you had the heart to rescue me,’ said Titus, ‘from the thin man.’

‘Did I?’ muttered Muzzlehatch. ‘I was in a dream. Think no more of it. I had no choice but to make for the Under-River. The scientists were converging. They were after you, boy: they were after us both.’

‘But you remembered me,’ said Titus. ‘You crawled along the beam.’

‘Did I? Good! And so I crushed him? I was far away … I was among my creatures. I saw them die … I saw them roll over. I heard their breath blow bleakly from their ribs. I saw my zoo become an abattoir. My creatures! Vital as fire. Sensuous and terrible. There they lay. There they lay – for ever and ever.’

He turned his face to Titus. The abstracted look had gone and in its place was something as cold and pitiless as ice.

Cursing the moon, for it was full, Titus and his two companions were forced to make a long detour, and to keep as far as possible in the shadows that skirted the woods, or lay beneath the walls of the city. To have taken the shorter path across the moonlit woods would have invited trouble.

As they made their way, their pace conditioned by the weary steps of the Black Rose, Titus, perhaps for reason of his supreme indebtedness to Muzzlehatch felt an almost ungovernable desire to shake this from him as though he were a ponderous weight. He longed for isolation, and in his longing he recognized that same canker of selfishness that had made itself manifest in his attitude towards the Black Rose in her pain.

What kind of brute was he? Was he destined to destroy both love and friendship? What of Juno? Had he not the courage or the loyalty to hold fast to his friends? Or the courage to speak up? Perhaps not. He had, after all, deserted his home.

Forcing himself to frame the words, he turned his head to Muzzlehatch, ‘I want to get away from you,’ he said. ‘From you and everyone. I want to start again, when but for you, I would be dead! Is this vile of me? I cannot help it. You are too vast and craggy. Your features are the mountains of the moon. Lions and tigers lie bleeding in your brain. Revenge is in your belly. You are too vast and remote. Your predicament burns. It makes me hanker for release. I am too near you. I long to be alone. What shall I do?’

‘Do what you like, boy,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘skidaddle to the pole, for all I care, or scorch your bottom on the red equator. As for his lady? She is ill.
Ill
, you numbskull! Ill as they take them on this side of breath.’

The Black Rose turned to Muzzlehatch, and her pupils gaped like well-heads.

‘He wants to get away from me, too,’ she said. ‘He is disgusted by my poverty. I wish you could have seen me years ago, when I was young and fair.’

‘You are still beautiful,’ said Titus.

‘I don’t care, any more,’ said the Black Rose. ‘It no longer matters. All I want is to lie down quietly for ever, on linen. Oh God, white linen, before I die.’

‘You shall have your linen,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘White as a seraph’s underwing. We’re not far away.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To a home by a river, where you can rest.’

‘But Veil will find me.’

‘Veil is dead,’ said Titus. ‘Dead as dead.’

‘His ghost will strike me then. His ghost will twist my arm.’

‘Ghosts are fools,’ said Muzzlehatch, ‘and much overrated. Juno will care for you. As for this young Titus Groan: he can do as he pleases. If I were in his shoes I would cut adrift and vanish. The world is wide. Follow your instinct and get rid of us. That was why you left your so-called Gormenghast, wasn’t it? Eh? To find out what lay beyond the skyline. Eh? And as you once said …’

‘I think you said, “your so-called Gormenghast”. God damn you for that phrase. For
you
to say it! You! For you to be a thing of disbelief!
You
! You’ve been a kind of God to me. A rough-hewn God. I hated you at times, but mostly I loved you. I have told you of my home; of my family; of our ritual; of my childhood; of the flood; of Fuchsia, of Steerpike and how I killed him; of my escape. Do you think I have invented it all? Do you think I have been deceiving you? You have failed me. Let me go!’

‘What are you waiting for,’ said Muzzlehatch, turning his back on the boy. His heart was pounding.

Titus stamped his foot with anger, but he did not move away. A moment later, the Black Rose began to give at the knees, but Muzzlehatch was in time to catch her up in his powerful arms, as though she were a tattered doll.

They had come to an open space, and stopped where the shadows ended.

‘Do you see that cloud?’ said Muzzlehatch, in a curiously loud voice. ‘The one like a curled-up cat. No, there, you chicken, beyond that green dome. Can’t you see it? With the moon on its back.’

‘What about it?’ said Titus in an irritable whisper.

‘That is your direction,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Make for it. Then on and beyond for a month’s march, and you will be in comparative freedom. Freedom from the swarms of pilotless planes: freedom from bureaucracy: freedom from the police. And freedom of movement. It is largely unexplored. They are ill-equipped. No squadron for the water, sea, or sky. It is as it should be. A region where no one can remember who is in power. But there are forests like the Garden of Eden where you can lie on your belly and write bad verse. There will be nymphs for your ravishing, and flutes for your delectation. A land where youths lean backwards in their tracks, and piss the moon, as though to put it out.’

‘I am tired of your words,’ said Titus.

‘I use them as a kind of lattice-work,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘They hide me away from me … let alone from you. Words can be tiresome as a swarm of insects. They can prick and buzz! Words can be no more than a series of farts; or on the other hand they can be adamantine, obdurate, inviolable, stone upon stone. Rather like your “so-called Gormenghast” (you notice that I use the same phrase again. The phrase that makes you cross?). For although you have learned, it seems, the art of making enemies (and this is indeed good for the soul), yet you are blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to another language. Stark: dry: unequivocal: and cryptic: a thing of crusts and water. If you ask for flattery … Remember this in your travels. Now go … for God’s sake … GO!’

Titus lifted his eyes to his companion. Then he took three steps towards him. The scar on his cheekbone shone like silk in the moonlight.

‘Mr Muzzlehatch,’ he said.

‘What is it boy?’

‘I grieve for you.’

‘Grieve for this broken creature,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘She is the weak of the world.’

Out of the silence came the far-away voice of the Black Rose. ‘Linen,’ it cried in a voice both peevish and beautiful. ‘Linen … white linen.’

‘She is as hot as fever can make her,’ muttered Muzzlehatch. ‘It is like holding embers in my arms. But there is Juno for a refuge, and a cat for your bearing; and beyond, to the world’s end.

‘The sleeping cat,’ he muttered with a catch in his throat, ‘did you ever see it … my little civet? They silenced him with all the rest. He moved like a wave of the sea. Next to my wolves, I loved him, Titus child. You have never seen such eyes.’

‘Hit me,’ cried Titus, ‘I’ve been a dog to you.’

‘Globules to that!’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘It’s time the Black Rose was in Juno’s hands.’

‘Ah, Juno; give her my love,’ said Titus.