The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

The crowds were closing in, for there was something in the air; a chill; a menace; a horrible darkness that seemed to sweat itself out of the walls and the floor of the place. In the shuffling that followed the comparative silence, there was an undertone, almost of apprehension, unformulated as yet in their conscious minds, yet real in the prickle of their nerves. The banqueteers forsook their scented alcoves, and men of all stations withdrew from the outlying sectors, and drawn by an invisible agent, they drew ever closer to the roofless centre of the Black House.

It was not only these who were on the move. Cheeta had ordered a cluster of her personal friends to follow her (excluding her father, for he was in the forgotten room, where sat the star performers, biting their nails).

The band, with an imposing array of instruments swayed forward through the gloom, while Titus was borne forward on a human wave, struggling as he went.

It was a part of Cheeta’s plan that Titus should suffer acute alarm, not to say fear, and her delicate mouth (pursed like a tiny vermilion bud) registered a certain satisfaction as to the way things were going. For she was bent on his discomfiture and shame, and even more. Now was the time for Titus to climb the three steps to the throne … and he stumbled as he climbed. Now was the time for him to turn about; and now, for his wrists to be freed, and for the scarf to be plucked from his eyes and for Cheeta to cry … ‘Now!’

And now it was, for her voice, like a voice in a dungeon, awoke a string of echoes. Everything happened in the same split second. The scarves were whipped from Titus’ wrists and eyes. The band crashed into dreadful martial music. Titus sat down upon a throne. He could see nothing except the vague blur of the juniper fire. The crowds surged forward as lamps blazed out of the surrounding tree-tops. Everything took on another colour … another radiance. A clock struck midnight. The moon came out and so did the first of the apparitions.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Under a light to strangle infants by, the great and horrible flower opened its bulbous petals one by one: a flower whose roots drew sustenance from the grey slime of the pit, and whose vile scent obscured the delicacy of the juniper. This flower was evil, and its bloom satanic, and though it was invisible its manifestations were on every side.

It was not the intrinsic and permanent mood of the Black House, although this alone was frightening enough, with the fungi like plates on the walls, and the sweat of the stones; it was not only this, but was this combined with the sense of a great conspiracy: a conspiracy of darkness, and decay: and yet of a diabolical ingenuity also; a setting against which the characters played out their parts in floodlight, as when predestined creatures are caught in a concentration of light so that they cannot move.

Then came Cheeta’s voice again, and this time it seemed to Titus that there was an edge to it he had never heard before.

‘Flood in the heliotrope.’ At this obscure demand the whole scene shuddered into another world of light; a weird and purplish suffusion, and for the first time, Titus, sitting bolt upright on his throne, felt a kind of palpable fear he had never experienced before.

Titus who had killed Steerpike in a war in deep ivy … Titus who had been lost in the underground tunnels of Gormenghast now trembled in the face of the unknown. He turned his head, but he could see no sign of Cheeta. Only a great throng of heliotrope heads … a world of watchers who stood as though waiting for him to stand and speak.

But where were the heads he knew? Apart from Cheeta, where was her father, the nondescript man with no hair?

It seemed they formed a kind of foreign terrain, as though of all that multitude there was not one who did not know him, yet for Titus there was not one to recognize.

About him, beyond the crowd, the walls were draped with flags. The flags that he half remembered. Torn flags; flags out of limbo. What was he doing here? What, O dearest God, was he doing? What were these shadows? What were these echoes? Where was a friend to grip him by the shoulder? Where was Muzzlehatch? Where was his friend? What was that sound like the purring of the tide? What was it that was purring if not cats?

The voice of Cheeta rose again. It was harsher with every order. The light changed and yet another mood more sinister than ever settled down upon the place, changing the quality of everything down to the least minutiae: down to the smallest frond in acid green.

Titus, his hands trembling, turned his face from the crowd, meaning to rise from the insufferable throne directly his dizziness passed by. Not only did he turn his face but his body also, for the faked green world before him was revolting to the soul.