by Mervyn Peake
‘What’s the holiday for?’ said Fuchsia with her eyes still on the water which was now swaying to and fro across the tank.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Titus. ‘Something to do with Mother, I think. Birthday or something.’
‘Oh,’ said Fuchsia and then after a pause, ‘it’s funny how one has to be told everything. I don’t remember her having birthdays before. It’s all so inhuman.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Titus.
‘No,’ said Fuchsia. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose. It’s not your fault and you’re lucky in a way. But I’ve read quite a lot and I know that most children see a good deal of their parents – more than we do anyway.’
‘Well, I don’t remember father at all,’ said Titus.
‘I do,’ said Fuchsia. ‘But he was difficult too. I hardly ever spoke to him. I think he wanted me to be a boy.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh … I wonder why.’
‘To be the next Earl of course.’
‘Oh … but I am … so it’s all right, I suppose.’
‘But he didn’t know you were going to be born, when I was a child, did he? He couldn’t have. I was about fourteen when you were born.’
‘Were you really …’
‘Of course I was. And for all that time he wished I was you, I suppose.’
‘That’s funny, isn’t it?’ said Titus.
‘It wasn’t funny at all – and it isn’t funny now – is it? Not that it’s your fault …’
At that moment there was a knock at the door and a messenger entered.
‘What do you want?’ said Fuchsia.
‘I have a message, my lady.’
‘What is it?’
‘Her ladyship, the Countess, your mother, wishes Lord Titus to accompany me back to her room. She is going to take him for a walk.’
Titus and Fuchsia stared at the messenger and then at one another. Several times they opened their mouths to speak but closed them again. Then Fuchsia turned her eyes back to the melting snow – and Titus walked out through the half open door, the messenger following him closely.
II
The Countess was waiting for them on the landing. She gestured the messenger to be gone with a single, lazy movement to her head.
She gazed at Titus with a curious lack of expression. It was as though what she saw interested her, but in the way that a stone would interest a geologist, or a plant, a botanist. Her expression was neither kindly nor unkindly. It was simply absent. She appeared to be unconscious of having a face at all. Her features made no effort to communicate anything.
‘I am taking them for a walk,’ she said in her heavy, abstracted, millstone voice.
‘Yes, mother,’ said Titus. He supposed she was talking of her cats.
A shadow settled for a moment on her broad brow. The word mother had perplexed her. But the boy was quite right, of course.
Her massive bulk had always impressed Titus. The hanging draperies and scollop’d shadows, the swathes of musty darkness – all this he found most awesome.
He was fascinated by her but he had no point of contact. When she spoke it was in order to make a statement. She had no conversation.
She turned her head and, pursing her lips, she whistled with a peculiar ululation. Titus gazed up at the sartorial mass above him. Why had she wanted him to accompany her? he wondered. Did she want him to tell her anything? Had she anything to tell him? Was it just a whim?
But she had started to descend the stairs and Titus followed her.
From a hundred dim recesses, from favourite ledges, from shelves and draught-proof corners, from among the tattered entrails of old sofas, from the scarred plush of chairs, from under clock-stands, from immemorial sun-traps, and from nests of claw-torn paper – from the inside of lost hats, from among rafters, from rusty casques, and from drawers half-open, the cats poured forth, converged, foamed, and with a rapid pattering of their milk-white feet filled up the corridors, and a few moments later had reached the landing and were on their way, in the wake of their great mistress, down the stairway they obscured.
When they were in the open and had passed through an archway in the outer wall and were able to see Gormenghast Mountain clear before them, with dark grey snow on its cruel heights, the Countess waved her ponderous arm, as though she were scattering grain, and the cats on the instant, fanning out, sped in every direction, and leapt, twisting in the air, curvetting for the very joy of their only release from the castle since first the snow came down. And though a number of them sported together, rolling over one another, or sitting up straight with their heads bridled back, tapped at each other sparring like fighters, only to lose all interest of a sudden, their eyes unfocusing, their thoughts turning – yet for the main the white creatures behaved as though each one were utterly alone, utterly content to be alone, conscious only of its own behaviour, its own leap into the air, its own agility, self-possessed, solitary, enviable and legendary in a beauty both heraldic and fluent as water.
Titus walked by his mother’s side. For all the interest in the scene before him he could not help turning his eyes to his mother’s face. Its vague, almost mask-like character was something which he was beginning to suspect of being no index to her state of mind. For more than once she had gripped his shoulder in her big hand and led him from the path and without a word she had shown him, all but shrouded by the ivy on a tree stem, a cushion of black star-moss. She had turned off a rough track, and then pointed down a small snow-filled gully to where a fox had rested. Every now and again she would pause and gaze at the ground, or into the branches of a tree, but Titus, stare as he would, could see nothing remarkable.
For all that the birds had died in their thousands, yet as Titus and his mother drew near to a strip of woodland where the snow had melted from the boughs, and small streams were running over the stones and snow-flattened grass, they could see that the trees were far from empty.
The Countess paused, and holding Titus by his elbow, they stood motionless. A bird whistled and then another, and then suddenly the small kingfisher, like a blue legend, streaked along a stream.
The cats were leagues away. They breathed the sharp air into their lungs. They roamed to the four quarters. They powdered the horizons.
The Countess whistled with a shrill sweet note, and first one bird and then another flew to her. She examined them, holding them cupped in her hands. They were very thin and weak. She whistled their various calls and they responded as they hopped about her or sat perched upon her shoulders, and then, all at once a fresh voice from the wood silenced the birds. At every whistle of the Countess, this new answer came, quick as an echo.
Its effect on the Countess seemed out of all reason.
She turned her head. She whistled again and her whistle was answered, quick as an echo. She gave the calls of a dozen birds and a dozen voices echoed her with an insolent precision. The birds about her feet and on her shoulders had stiffened.
Her hand was gripping Titus’ shoulder like an iron clamp. It was all he could do not to cry out. He turned his head with difficulty and saw his mother’s face – the face that had been so calm as the snow itself. It had darkened.
It was no bird that was answering her; that much she knew. Clever as it was, the mimicry could not deceive her. Nor did it seem that whatever gave vent to the varying calls was anxious to deceive. There had been something taunting about the rapidity with which each whistle of the Countess had been flung back from the wood.
What was it all about? Why was his arm being gripped? Titus, who had been fascinated by his mother’s power over the birds, could not understand why the calls from the wood should have so angered her. For she trembled as she held him. It seemed as though she were holding him back from something, as though the wood was hiding something that might hurt him – or draw him away from her.
And then she lifted her face to the tree tops, her eyes blazing.
‘Beware!’ sh
e cried and a strange voice answered her.
‘Beware!’ it called and the silence came down again.
From a dizzy perch in a tall pine, the Thing peered through the cold needles and watched the big woman and the boy as they returned to the distant castle.
FIFTY
I
It was not until close upon the Day, that Titus learned how something quite unusual was being prepared for his Tenth birthday. He was by now so used to ceremonies of one kind or another that the idea of having to spend his birthday either performing or watching others perform some time-hardened ritual made no appeal to his imagination. But Fuchsia had told him that there was something quite different about what happened when a child of the line reached the age of ten. She knew, for it had happened to her, although in her case the festivities had been rather spoiled by the rain.
‘I won’t tell you, Titus,’ she had said, ‘it will spoil it if I do. O it’s so lovely.’
‘What kind of lovely?’ said Titus, suspiciously.
‘Wait and see,’ said Fuchsia. ‘You’ll be glad I haven’t told you when the time comes. If only things were always like that.’
When the Day arrived Titus learned to his surprise that he was to be confined for the entire twelve hours in a great playroom quite unknown to him.
The custodian of the Outer Keys, a surly old man with a cast of the left eye, had opened up the room as soon as dawn had broken over the towers. Apart from the occasion of Fuchsia’s tenth birthday, the door had been locked since her father, Sepulchrave, was a child. But now, again, the key had turned with a grinding of rust and iron, and the hinges had creaked, and the great playroom opened up again its dusty glories.
This was a strange way to treat a boy on his tenth anniversary; to immure him for the entire day in a strange land, however full of marvels it might be. It was true that there were toys of weird and ingenious mechanism; ropes on which he would swing from wall to wall, and ladders leading to dizzy balconies – but what of all this, if the door was locked and the only window was high in the wall?
And yet, long as the day seemed, Titus was buoyed up by the knowledge that he was there not only because of some obsolete tradition but for the very good reason that he must not be allowed to see what was going on. Had he been abroad he could not fail to have gained some inkling, if not of what lay in store for him that evening, at least of the scale on which the preparations were being conducted.
And the activity of the castle was fantastic. For Titus to have seen a tenth of it must have taken the edge, not off his wonder or speculation, but off the shock of pleasure that he was finally to receive when evening came. For he had no idea what kind of activities were taking place. Fuchsia had refused to be drawn. She remembered her own pleasure too keenly to jeopardize a hundredth part of his.
And so he spent the day alone and save for those times when his meals were brought in on the golden trays of the occasion, he saw no one until an hour before sunset. At that hour four men came in. One of them carried a box, which when it was opened revealed a few garments which Titus was invited to put on. Another carried a light basketwork palanquin, or mountain-chair that rested on two long poles. Of the other two, one carried a long green scarf, and the other a few cakes and glass of water on a tray.
They retired while Titus got into his ceremonial clothes. They were very simple. A small red velvet skull-cap and a seamless robe of some grey material that reached to his ankles. A fine chain of gold links clasped the garment at his waist. These, with a pair of sandals, were all that had been brought and while he strapped the sandals he called to the men to re-enter.
They came in at once and one of them approached Titus with the scarf in his hand.
‘Your lordship,’ he said.
‘What’s that for?’ said Titus, eyeing the scarf.
‘It’s part of the ceremony, lordship. You have to be blindfolded.’
‘No!’ shouted Titus. ‘Why should I be?’
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said the man. ‘It’s the law.’
‘The law! the law! the law – how I hate the law,’ cried the boy. ‘Why does it want me blindfolded – after keeping me in prison all day? Where are you going to take me? What’s it all about? Can’t you talk? Can’t you talk?’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ said the man; it was his favourite phrase. ‘You see,’ he added, ‘if we don’t blindfold you it won’t be such a surprise when you get there and when we undo the scarf. And you see’ (he continued as though he had suddenly become interested in what he was talking about) ‘you see – with your eyes blindfolded you won’t have any idea of where you are going – and then, you know, the crowds are going to be deathly silent and …’
‘Quiet!’ said another voice – it was the man who had the mountain-chair. ‘You have overreached yourself! Enough sir, for me to say’ (he continued, turning to the boy) ‘that it will be for your pleasure and your good.’
‘It had better be,’ said Titus, ‘after all this!’
His longing to get out of the playroom mitigated his distaste for the blindfolding, and after taking a drink of water and cramming a small cake in his mouth, he took a step forward.
‘All right,’ he said and standing before the scarf-man, he suffered himself to be bandaged. At the second turn of the scarf he was in total blackness. After the fourth he felt the cloth being knotted at the base of his head.
‘We are going to lift you into the chair, your lordship.’
‘All right,’ said Titus.
Almost immediately after he was seated in the basket-work chair he found himself rising from the ground, and then after a word from one of the men, he felt himself moving forward through black space and the slight swaying of the men beneath him. Without a word, or a pause, each man with an end of the long bamboo poles resting upon his shoulder, they began to move ever more rapidly.
Titus had had no sensation of their leaving the room, although he knew that by now they must have left it far behind. It was obvious that they were still within the walls of the castle for he could both feel the frequent changes of direction which the tortuous corridors made necessary, and also he could hear the hollow echoing of the bearers’ feet – an echoing which seemed so loud to Titus in his blindness that he could not help feeling that the castle was empty. There was not a sound, not a whisper in the whole labyrinthine place to compete with the hollow footfalls of the men, with the sound of their breathing or with the regular creaking of the bamboo poles.
It seemed that it would never end – this darkness, and these sounds, but suddenly a breath of fresh air against his face told him that he was in the open. At the same time he could feel that he was being borne down a flight of steps, and when they had reached the level ground he felt for the first time that airborne jogging, as the four men began to trot through an empty landscape.
And it was as utterly deserted as the castle. All the feverish activity of the day had been brought to a close. The gentry, the dignitaries, the officials, the workmen, the performers, the populace, man, woman and child – there was not one who had not arrived at his appointed station.
And the bearers ran on over the darkening ground. Above their heads and reaching down into the west was a great tongue of yellow light.
But with every movement that passed the lustre faded and the moon began to slide up through the darkness of the east so that the light on Titus’ upturned face grew sharper and colder.
And the bearers ran on, over the dark ground.
There were no echoes now. Only the isolated sounds of the night – the scurry of some small animal through the undergrowth, or the distant barking of a fox. From time to time Titus could feel the cool sweet gusts of a night breeze blowing across his forehead, lifting the strands of his hair.
‘How much further?’ he called. It seemed that he had been floating in the basket chair for ever.
‘How much further? how much further?’ he called again, but there was no reply.
It
was impossible to carry so rare a burden as the seventy-seventh earl – to carry him shoulder-high along forest tracks, across precarious fords and over stony slopes of mountains and to have at the same time, while they kept running, any room in their minds for anything else besides. All their awareness was focused upon his safety and the measured smoothness of their rhythmic running. Had he called to them ten times as loudly they would not have heard him.
But Titus was near to the end of his blind journey. He did not know it but the four bearers who had, for the last mile or more, been loping through pinewoods, had come suddenly upon an open shoulder of land. The ground swept downwards and away before them in swathes of moon-chilled ferns and at the base of this slope lay what seemed like a natural amphitheatre, for the land rose on all sides. The floor of this gigantic basin appeared at first sight to be entirely forested and yet the eyes of the bearers had already caught sight of innumerable and microscopic points of light no bigger than pinpricks, that flashed, now here, now there among the branches of the distant trees. And they saw more than this. They saw that in the air above the basin’d forest there was a change of hue. In the darkness that brooded over the branches there was a subtle warmth, a kind of smouldering dusk that in contrast to the cold moon, or to the glints of light among the trees, was almost roseate.
But Titus knew nothing of this swarthy light. Nor that he was being taken down a steep track through the ferns to a district where the great chestnuts far from forming a solid forest, as it falsely appeared from the surrounding slopes, were marshalled a furlong deep about the margin of a wide expanse of water. The points of light that had caught the bearers’ attention were all that they had been able to see of the moonlit lake when for a moment they had paused on a high open shoulder.
But what of the glow? It was not long before Titus knew all about it. He was by now among the deep moon-dappled chestnut groves. His exhausted bearers, the sweat pouring down their bodies and running into their eyes, were turning into a ride of ancient trees that led to the centre of the southern bank.