The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

His features, if described piecemeal, would amount to nothing, and it was hard to believe that the same blood ran through Cheeta’s body. Yet there was something – an emanation that linked the father and daughter. A kind of atmosphere that was entirely their own; although their features had no part in it. For he was nothing: a creature of solitary intellect, unaware of the fact that, humanly speaking, he was a kind of vacuum for all that there was genius in his skull. He thought of nothing but his factory.

Cheeta, following his gaze, could see Titus quite clearly.

‘Pull up,’ she said, in a voice as laconic as a gull’s.

Her father touched a button, and at once the car sighed to a halt.

At the far end of an overhung carriage-way was Titus, apparently talking to himself, but just as Cheeta and her father were about to suppose that he had lost his senses, three beggars emerged out of the distant tangle of leaves, at Titus’ side.

This group of four had apparently not heard or seen the approach of the car.

The long drive was dappled with soft autumnal light.

‘We have been following you,’ said Crack-Bell. ‘Ha, ha, ha! In and out of your footsteps as you might say.’

‘Following me? What for? I don’t even know you,’ said Titus.

‘Don’t you remember, young man?’ said Crabcalf. ‘In the Under-River? When Muzzlehatch saved you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Titus, ‘but I don’t remember you. There were thousands of you … and besides … have you seen him?’

‘Muzzlehatch?’

‘Muzzlehatch.’

‘Not so,’ said Slingshott.

There was a pause.

‘My dear boy,’ said Crack-Bell –

‘Yes?’ said Titus.

‘How elegant you are. Just as I used to be. You were a beggar when we saw you last. Like us, you were. Ha, ha, ha! A mouldering mendicant. But look at you now. O la la!’

‘Shut up,’ said Titus.

He stared at them again. Three failures. Pompous as only failures can be.

‘What do you want with me?’ said Titus. ‘I have nothing to give you.’

‘You have everything,’ said Crabcalf. ‘That’s why we follow you. You are different, my lord.’

‘Who called me that?’ whispered Titus. ‘How did you know?’

‘But everybody knows,’ cried Crack-Bell, in a voice that carried to where Cheeta and her father watched every move.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘We have kept our ears to the ground, and our eyes skinned, and we used what wits God gave us.’

‘After all you have been watched. You are not unknown.’

‘Unknown!’ cried Crack-Bell. ‘Ha, ha, ha! That’s good!’

‘What’s in the sack?’ said Titus, turning away.

‘My lifework,’ said Crabcalf. ‘Books, scores of them, but every one the same.’ He lifted his head in pride, and tossed it to and fro. ‘These are my “remainders”. They are my centre. Please take one, my lord. Take one with you back to Gormenghast. Look. I will dip for you.’

Crabcalf, brushing Slingshott aside from the wheel-chair tore open the sack, and plunging his arm down its throat, drew forth a copy from the darkness. He took a pace towards Titus, and offered him the enigmatic volume.

‘What’s it about?’ said Titus.

‘Everything,’ said Crabcalf. ‘Everything I know of life and death.’

‘I’m not much of a reader,’ said Titus.

‘There’s no hurry,’ said Crabcalf. ‘Read it at your leisure.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Titus. He turned over a few pages at random. ‘There are poems too, are there?’

‘Interlarded,’ said Crabcalf. ‘That is very true; there are poems interlarded. Shall I read you one … my lord?’

‘Well …’

‘Ah, here we are … mm … mm. A thought … just a passing thought. Where are we? Are you ready, sir?’

‘Is it very long?’ said Titus.

‘It is very short,’ said Crabcalf, shutting his eyes. ‘It goes thus …

‘How fly the birds of heaven save by their wings?

How tread the stags, those huge and hairy kings

Save by their feet? How do the fishes turn

In their wet purlieus where the mermaids yearn

Save by their tails? How does the plantain sprout

Save by that root it cannot do without?’

Crabcalf opened his eyes. ‘Do you see what I mean?’ he said.

‘What is your name?’ said Titus.

‘Crabcalf.’

‘And your friends?’

‘Crack-Bell and Slingshott.’

‘You escaped from the Under-River?’

‘We did.’

‘And have you been searching for me a long while?’

‘We have.’

‘For what reason?’

‘Because you need us. You see … we believe you to be what you say you are.’

‘What do I say I am?’

The three took a simultaneous step forward. They lifted their rugged faces to the leaves above them and spoke together …

‘You are Titus, the Seventy-Seventh Earl of Groan, and Lord of Gormenghast. So help us God.’

‘We are your bodyguard,’ said Slingshott in a voice so weak and fatuous that the very tone of it negated whatever confidence the words were intended to convey.

‘I do not want a bodyguard,’ said Titus. ‘Thank you all the same.’