The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [416]
These four, with their heads as big as doors, yet appearing almost small in proportion to the awe-inspiring loftiness of the bodies, these four had not stood at the margin of the reflecting lake for more than a minute before, with startling unanimity of purpose, they set forth upon the waters.
Titus, crying with excitement, gripped the rotten upholstery of the chair on either side, his fingers working their way into the ancient horse-hair.
The Four ahead of him appeared to be moving upon the surface across the lake. Their strange, spidery strides took them far from the shore, but the hem of their skirts were still dry! Titus could in no way understand it, until suddenly he realized that in spite of the clear reflections that seemed to plunge into fathomless water, the great lake was in reality but a few inches deep. It was a film.
For a moment he was disappointed. There is danger in deep water, and danger is more real than beauty in a boy’s mind. But this disappointment was immediately forgotten for there could have been nothing of all this had the lake not been the merest glaze of water.
The masque of the Four upon the lake was designed, many hundreds of years ago, for this setting among the nocturnal chestnuts. The gestures of the Lion, grandiloquent, absurd yet impressive – the shaking of its purple mane, from which tremendous operation the other three invariably drew back – the terrible, side-long progress of the Wolf with the poison bottle as he manoeuvred himself ever nearer the golden lamb, and the outlandish gait of the Horse with its garnished hat, as it straddled from one end of the lake to the other, reading from its book of poems, while with its parasol it beat time in upper air to the rhythm of the verses – all this was a formula as ancient as the walls of the castle itself.
And all the while this masked drama, played upon stilts as tall as trees and upon a lake that reflected not only the progress of the performers, but the moon over whose liquid image the monstrous Horse would invariably stumble as though he had been tripped – all the while the silence continued unbroken. For although a strong strain of the ridiculous ran through everything, this was not the dominant impression. When the Horse-creature tripped or waved its parasol; when the Wolf was thwarted and its lower jaw fell open like a drawbridge; when the Lamb cast its eyes to the moon, only to be distracted in the throes of its sanctity by the whisking of the Lion’s mane – when these things happened there was no laughter but only a kind of relief, for the grandeur of the spectacle, and the godlike rhythms of each sequence were of such a nature that there were few present who were not affected as by some painful memory of childhood.
At last, the time-hallowed ritual drew to its end, and the lofty creatures stepped from the shallow lake, and turning before they disappeared into the deep woods, bowed across the shallows to Titus, as might the gods of Poetry and Battle bow to one another, as equals across enchanted water.
The Four, as they departed, took the silence with them. The rest of the night was by way of being a release from perfection, and was given over to every kind of scattered activity.
Between the bonfires that surrounded the lake and warmed the air above the chestnut forest, fresh fires were being lit, and under the lake-ward boughs hampers and baskets of provisions were being unpacked.
The Countess of Groan, who had remained throughout the masque as immovable as the log on which she sat, now turned her head