The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [614]
Again the laughter. The horrible laughter. It sounded like the mirth of hell, hot and derisive.
Were there a ‘Gormenghast’, then surely this mockery of his mother must humble and torture him, reminding him of his Abdication, and of all the ritual he so loved and loathed. If, on the other hand there were no such place, and the whole thing a concoction of his mind, then, mortified by this exposure of his secret love, the boy would surely break.
‘Where is he? Where is my son?’ came the voice of the voluminous impostor. It was slow and thick as gravel. ‘Where is my only son?’
The creature adjusted its shawl with a twitch.
‘Come here my love and be punished. It is I. Your mother. Gertrude of Gormenghast.’
Titus was able to see in a flash that the monster was leading another travesty into the half-light. At that excruciating moment, Cheeta heard what Titus also heard; a shrill whistling. It was not that the sound of the whistle in itself puzzled her, but the fact that there should be anyone at all beyond the walls. It was not part of her plan.
Although he could not at first recall the meaning of the whistle, yet Titus felt some kind of remote affinity with the whistler. While this had been going on, there was at the same instant much else to be seen.
What of the monstrous insult to his mother? As far as that was concerned, his passion for revenge burned fiercely.
The guests, now lit by torchlight, were beginning, under orders, to sort themselves into a great circle. There they stood on the loose, grassy floor, craning their necks like hens to see what it was that followed on the heels of something preternaturally evil.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE
What Titus could not see was the interior of the forgotten room where a dozen ill-tempered monstrosities had been incarcerated. But now there was a stir in the dungeon: the entrance had cleared itself of its first huge character, and close behind her, walking like a duck, was a wicked caricature of Titus’ sister. She wore a tattered dress of diabolical crimson. Her dark dishevelled hair reached to her knees, and when she turned her face to the assemblage there were few who did not catch their breath. Her face was blotched with black and sticky tears, and her cheeks were hectic and raw. She slouched behind her huge mother, but came to a halt as they were about to enter the torch-lit circle, for she stared pathetically this way and that, and then stood grotesquely on her toes as though she were looking for someone. After a few moments she flung her head back so that her black tresses all but touched the ground. Now, with her blotched face turned pitifully to the sky she opened her mouth in a round empty ‘O’ and bayed the moon. Here was madness complete. Here was matter for revenge. It took hold of Titus and it shook him, so that he wrenched this way and that against the grip of the helmeted figures.
So strange and terrible was what he saw that he froze within the grip of his captors. Something began to give way in his brain. Something lost faith in itself.
‘Where is my son?’ came the soft gravel throat, and this time his mother turned her face to his, and he saw her.
In contrast to Fuchsia’s raddled, hectic, tear-drenched face was his mother’s. It was a slab of marble over which false locks of carrot-coloured hair cascaded. This monster spoke, though there was little to be seen in the way of a mouth. Her face was like a great, flat boulder that had been washed and worn smooth by a thousand tides.
With the blank slab out-facing him, Titus let out a cry of his own; an inward cry of desolation.
That is my boy,’ came the gravel voice. ‘Did you not hear him? That was the very accent of the Groans. How grievous, yet how rare that he should have died. What is it like to be dead, my wandering child?’
‘Dead?’ whispered Titus. ‘Dead? No! No!’
It was then that Fuchsia made her gawky way across the rough circle, the perimeter of which was thick with faces.
‘Dear brother,