The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [607]
As each dazzling influx tip-toed through the mouldering doorways of the Black House, their heads involuntarily turned to the central fire; a careful structure composed of juniper branches which when alight, as now, threw up a scented smoke.
‘Oh my darling,’ said a voice out of the darkness.
‘What is it?’ said a voice out of the light.
‘This is the throb of it. Where are you?’
‘Here, at your dappled side.’
‘O Ursula!’
‘What is it?’
‘To think it is all for that boy!’
‘O no! It is for us. It is for our delectation. It is for the green light on your bosom … and the diamonds in my ears. It is bloom. It is brilliance.’
‘It is primal, darling. Primal.’
Another voice broke in …
‘It is a place for frogs.’
‘Yes, yes, but we’re ahead.’
‘Ahead of what?’
‘The avant-garde. Look at us. If we are not the soul of chic, who is?’
Another voice, a man’s; a poor affair. ‘This is double pneumonia,’ it wheezed.
‘For heaven’s sake be careful of that carpet. It sucked my shoe off,’ said his friend.
With every moment that passed, the crowd thickened. For the most part guests made for the juniper fire. Their scores of faces flickered and leapt to the whim of the flames.
Were it not Cheeta’s party there would undoubtedly have been many more than ready to criticize the lavish display … the heterodoxy of the whole affair would have rankled. As it was, the discomfort of the Black House was more than made up for by the occasion. For that is what it was.
The babble of voices rose, as the guests multiplied. Yet there were many young adventurers who, tired of staring into the flames almost as much as having to listen to the shrill tongues of their partners, had begun to leave the warmth in order to explore the outer reaches of the ruin. There they came across bizarre formations reaching high into the night.
Here, as they moved, and there, as they moved, they came upon peculiar structures hard to understand. But there was nothing hard to fathom about the dusky table, dim-lit by candles, where a great ice-cake glimmered, with ‘Titus, Farewell’ sculpted in its flanks. Behind the cake, there arose tier upon tier, the Banquet, in half-light. A hundred goblets twinkled, and the napkins rose as though in flight.
Six mirrors reflecting one another across the sullen reaches of the Black House focused their light upon something which appeared to contradict itself, for, looked at from one angle, it appeared to resemble a small tower, yet from another it seemed more like a pulpit, or a throne.
Whatever it might be, there was no doubt that it was of some importance, for posted at its corners were four flunkeys who were almost abnormally zealous in keeping any odd guest who had strayed that far, from coming too close.
Meanwhile there was something happening, something – if not of the Farewell Party, yet close to it. Something that strode!
NINETY-NINE
He was not entirely cut out to pattern, this strider. Barbaric to the eye, his silhouette more like something made of ropes and bones, he was nevertheless instantly recognizable as Muzzlehatch.
A little behind him, as he approached were the three one-time Under-River characters. Peculiar as they were, they paled into nothingness beside their eccentric leader whose every movement was a kind of stab in the bosom of the orthodox world.
They had searched for, and found, more by luck than wisdom (though they knew the country well), this Muzzlehatch, and had forced him to rest his long wild bones, and to shut for an hour his haunted eyes.
What they had hoped to do (Crabcalf and the rest) was to find Muzzlehatch, and warn him of Titus’ danger. For they had come to the conclusion that some black force had been unearthed, and that Titus was in real peril.
But what they found, when at last they tracked him down, was not the Muzzlehatch they knew, but a man of the wilds. Of the wilds within himself and the wilds without. Not only this, but a man who had but recently been deep into