But, for all the consummate craft and rhythmic loveliness of the carvings there was no love lost between their jealous authors. The inter-family rivalries, the ancient wrongs, a hundred bitter quarrels, were all remembered at this annual ceremony. Old wounds were reopened or kept green. Beauty and bitterness existed side by side. Old claw-like hands, cracked with long years of thankless toil, would hold aloft a delicate bird of wood, its wings, as thin as paper, spread for flight, its breast afire with a crimson stain.
On the penultimate evening all was ready. The Poet, now fully established as Master of Ritual, had made his final tour of inspection with the Countess. On the following morning the gates in the Outer Wall were opened and the Bright Carvers began the three miles trail to the Carver’s Courtyard.
From then onwards the day blossomed like a rose, with its hundred blooms and its thousand thorns. Grey Gormenghast became blood-shot, became glutted with gold, became chill with blues as various as the blue of the flowers, and the waters became stained with evergreen from the softest olive to veridian, became rich with all the ochres; flamed and smouldered, shuddered with the hues of earth and air.
And holding these solid figures in their arms were the dark and irritable mendicants. By afternoon the long stone shelf had been loaded with its coloured forms, its birds, its beasts, its fantasies, its giant grasshoppers, its reptiles and its rhythms of leaf and flower; its hundred heads that turned upon their necks, that dropped or were raised more proudly from the shoulders than any living head of flesh and blood.
There they stood in a long burning line with their shadows behind them on the southern wall. From all these carvings three were to be chosen as the most original and perfect and these three would be added to those that were displayed in the unfrequented Hall of the Bright Carvings. The rest were to be burned that same evening.
The judging was a long and scrupulous affair. The carvers would eye the judges from a distance as they squatted about the courtyard in families, or leaned against the opposite wall. Hour after hour the fateful business proceeded – the only sound being the shouting and crying of the scores of urchins. At about six o’clock the long tables were carried out by the castle servants and placed end to end in three long lines. These tables were then loaded with loaves, and bowls of thick soup.
When dusk began to fall the judging was all but completed. The sky had become overcast and an unusual darkness brooded over the scene. The air had become intolerably close. The children had ceased to run about, although in other years they had sported tirelessly until midnight. But now they sat near their mothers in a formidable silence. To lift an arm was to become tired and to sweat profusely. Many faces were turned to the sky where a world of cloud was gathering together its gloomy continents, tier behind tier like the foliage of some fabulous cedar.
As a minor Titus was not directly involved in the actual choice of the ‘Three’, but his technical approval had to be obtained when the decisions were finally made. He had wandered restlessly up and down the line of the exhibits, threading his way through the crowds, which parted deferentially at his approach. The weight of the iron chain about his neck and the stone that was strapped to his forehead became almost too much to bear. He had seen Fuchsia but had lost her again in the crowds.
‘There’s going to be an almighty storm, my boy,’ said a voice at his shoulder. ‘By all that’s torrential, there most certainly is!’
It was Prunesquallor.
‘Feels like it, Doctor Prune,’ said Titus.
‘And looks like it, my young stalker of felons!’
Titus turned his gaze to the sky. It seemed to have gone mad. It bulged and shifted itself as though it were not moved by any breeze or current of the air, but only through its own foul impulses.
It was a foul sky, and it was growing. It was accumulating filth from the hot slums of hell. Titus turned his eyes from its indescribable menace and faced the doctor again. His face was gleaming with sweat. ‘Have you seen Fuchsia?’ he said.
‘I saw her,’ answered Titus. ‘But I lost her again. She is somewhere here.’ The Doctor lifted his head high and stared about him, his Adam’s apple very angular, his teeth flashing, but in a smile that Titus could see was empty.
‘I wish you would see her, Doctor Prune … she looks awful, suddenly.’
‘I will certainly see her, Titus, and as soon as I can.’
At that moment a messenger approached. Titus was wanted by the judges.
‘Away with you,’ cried the doctor in this new voice that had lost its ring. ‘Away with you, young fellow!’
‘Good-bye, doctor.’
SIXTY-FOUR
