The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

‘They had two legs each, your Worship, and when they sang they opened their mouths and when they cried the water fell out of their eyes. Forgive me, your Worship, I do not wish to be facetious. But what can I say? I am in a foreign city; in a foreign land; let me go free. I could not bear that prison any more.

‘Gormenghast was a kind of jail. A place of ritual. But suddenly and under my breath I had to say good-bye.’

‘Yes, my boy. Please go on.’

‘There had been a flood, your Worship. A great flood. So that the castle seemed to float upon it. When the sun at last came out the whole place dripped and shone … I had a horse, your Worship … I dug my heels into her flank and I galloped into perdition. I wanted to know, you see.’

‘What did you want to know, my young friend?’

‘I wanted to know,’ said Titus, ‘whether there was any other place.’

‘Any other place …?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you written to your mother?’

‘I have written to her. But every time my letters are returned. Address unknown.’

‘What was this address?’

‘I have only one address,’ said Titus.

‘It is odd that you should have recovered your letters.’

‘Why?’ said Titus.

‘Because your name is hardly probable. Now is it?’

‘It is my name,’ said Titus.

‘What, Titus Groan, Seventy-Seventh Lord?’

‘Why not?’

‘It is unlikely. That sort of title belongs to another age. Do you dream at night? Have you lapses of memory? Are you a poet? Or is it all, in fact, an elaborate joke?’

‘A joke? O God!’ said Titus.

So passionate was his outcry that the Court fell silent. That was not the voice of a hoaxer. It was the voice of someone quite convinced of his own truth – the truth in his head.

FORTY

Muzzlehatch watched the boy and wondered why he had felt a compulsion to attend the Court. Why should he be interested in the comings and goings of this young vagabond? He had never from the first supposed the boy to be insane: though there were some in the Court who were convinced that Titus was mad as a bird, and had come for no other reason than to indulge a morbid curiosity.

No; Muzzlehatch had attended the Court because, although he would never have admitted it, he had become interested in the fate and future of the enigmatic creature he had found half drowned on the water-steps. That he was interested annoyed him for he knew, as he sat there, that his small brown bear would be pining for him and that every one of his animals was at that moment peering through the bars, fretful for his approach.

While such thoughts were in his head, a voice broke the stillness of the Court, asking permission to address the Magistrate.

Wearily, his Worship nodded his head, and then seeing who it was who had addressed him, he sat up and adjusted his wig. For it was Juno.

‘Let me take him,’ she said, her eloquent and engulfing eyes fixed upon his Worship’s face. ‘He is alone and resentful. Perhaps I could find out how best he could be helped. In the meantime, your Worship, he is hungry, travel-stained, and tired.’

‘I object, your Worship,’ said Inspector Acreblade. ‘All that this lady says is true. But he is here on account of serious infringement of the Law. We cannot afford to be sentimental.’

‘Why not?’ said the Magistrate. ‘His sins are not serious.’

He turned to her with a note almost of excitement in his tired old voice. ‘Do you wish to be responsible,’ he said, ‘both to me and for him?’

‘I take full responsibility,’ said Juno.

‘And you will keep in touch with me?’

‘Certainly, your Worship – but there’s another thing.’

‘What is that, madam?’

‘The young man’s attitude. I will not take him with me unless he wishes it. Indeed I cannot.’

The Magistrate turned to Titus and was about to speak when he seemed to change his mind. He returned his gaze to her.

‘Are you married, madam?’

‘I am not,’ said Juno.

There was a pause before the Magistrate spoke again.

‘Young man,’ he said, ‘this lady has offered to act as your guardian until you are well again … what do you say?’

All that was weak in Titus rose like oil to the surface of deep water. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, madam. Thank you.’

FORTY-ONE

At first what was it but an apprehension sweet as far birdsong – a tremulous thing – an awareness that fate had thrown them together; a world had been brought into being – had been discovered? A world, a universe over whose boundaries and into whose forests they had not dared to venture. A world to be glimpsed, not from some crest of the imagination, but through simple words, empty in themselves as air, and sentences quite colourless and void; save that they set their pulses racing.