The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [615]
She turned her face to Titus.
‘It’s no use pretending; and you’re not alone. I drowned myself, you know. We have death in common. Have you forgotten? Forgotten how I sank beneath the frog-spawn waters of the moat? Is it not glorious to be dead together? I, in my way. You in yours?’
She shook herself and clouds of dust drifted away. Meanwhile Cheeta suddenly appeared at Titus’ side.
‘Let his lordship go,’ she said to the captors. ‘Let him play. Let him play.’
‘Let him play,’ came the chorus.
‘Let him play,’ whispered Cheeta. ‘Let him make believe that he’s alive again.’
ONE HUNDRED AND SIX
The helmeted figures let go their grip upon his arms.
‘We have brought your mother and your sister back again. Who else would you like?’
Titus turned his head to her and saw in her eyes the extent of her bitterness. Why had he been so singled out? What had he done? Was the fact that he had never loved her for herself but only out of lust, was this so dire a thing?
The darkness seemed to concentrate itself. The torchlight burned fitfully, and a thin sprinkling of rain came drifting out of the night.
‘We are bringing your family together,’ whispered Cheeta. ‘They have been too long in Gormenghast. It is for you to greet them, and to bring them into the ring. See how they wait for you. They need you. For did you not desert them? Did you not abdicate? That is why they are here. For one reason only. To forgive you. To forgive your treachery. See how their eyes shine with love.’
While she was speaking, three major things took place. The first (at Cheeta’s instigation) was that a channel was rapidly cleared from the steps of the throne to the ring itself, so that Titus should be able to make his way without hindrance into the heart of the circle.
The second thing was the recurrence of that shrill and reminiscent whistle that Cheeta and Titus had heard some time before. This time it was nearer.
The third was that into the ring, fresh monsters began to arrive.
The forgotten room disgorged them, one by one. There were the aunts, the identical twins, whose faces were lit in such a way that they appeared to be floating in space. The length of their necks; their horribly quill-like noses; the emptiness of their gaze; all this was bad enough, without those dreadful words which they uttered in a flat monotone over and over again.
‘Burn … burn … burn …’
There was Sepulchrave, moving as though in a trance, his tired soul in his eyes, and books beneath his arms. All about were his chains of office, iron and gold. On his head he wore the rust-red crown of the Groans. He took deep sighs with every step; as though each one was the last. Bent forward as though his sorrow weighed him down he mourned with every gesture. As he moved into the centre of the ring he trailed behind him a long line of feathers, while out of his tragic mouth the sound of hooting wandered.
More and more it was becoming a horrible charade. Everything that Cheeta had heard during those bouts of fever when Titus lay and poured out his past, all this had been stored up in her capacious memory.
One of them after another reared or loomed, pranced or took mournful steps; cried, howled or were silent.
A thin wiry creature with high deformed shoulders and a skewbald face leapt to and fro as though trying to get rid of his energy.
On seeing him Titus had recoiled, not out of fear, but out of amazement; for he and Steerpike, long ago, had fought to the death. Knowing that all this was a kind of cruel charade, did not seem to help for in the inmost haunts of the imagination he felt the impact.
Who else was there in the rough ring towards which Titus was involuntarily moving? There was the attenuate Doctor with his whinnying laughter. As Titus looked at him he saw, not the bizarre travesty that faced him with its affected gait and voice, but the original Doctor. The Doctor he loved so much.
When he had reached the ring and was about to enter it he closed his eyes in an effort to free