The small-skull’d man with his long spindly limbs, cocked his head on one side and ran his tongue to and fro along his fleshless lips with a deliberate stropping motion. This tongue was like the tongue of a boot, as long, as broad and as thin.
Then as though he had come to a decision he picked the Black Rose up in his arms and took a dozen steps to where the darkness was thickest, and there he dropped her as though she were a sack, to the ground. But as he turned to retrace his steps, he saw that someone was waiting for him.
FIFTY-SEVEN
For as long as a man can hold his breath, there was no sound; not one. Their eyes were fixed upon one another, until at last the voice of Veil broke the wet silence.
‘Who are you?’ he said, ‘and what do you want?’
He drew back his leather lips as he spoke, but the newcomer instead of answering took a step forward, and peered through the gloom on every side as though he were looking for something.
‘I questioned you I think! Who are you? You do not belong here. This is not your quarter. You are trespassing. Get to the north with you or I will …’
‘I heard a cry,’ said Titus. ‘What was it?’
‘A cry? There are always cries.’
‘What are you doing here in the dark? What are you hiding?’
‘Hiding, you pup? Hiding? Who are you to cross-question me? By God, who are you anyway? Where do you come from?’
‘Why?’
The mantis man was suddenly upon the youth and though he did not actually
‘I will ask you again,’ said the man. ‘Where do you come from?’
Titus, his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched, felt his mouth go suddenly dry.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he whispered.
At this Mr Veil threw back his bony head to laugh. The sound was intolerably cold and cruel.
The man was deadly enough without his laugh but with it he became deadly in another way. For there was no humour in it. It was a noise that came out of a hole in the man’s face. A sound that left Titus under no illusion as to the man’s intrinsic evil. His body, limbs and organs and even his head could hardly be said to be any fault of his, for this was the way in which he had been made; but his laughter was of his own making.
As the blood ran into Titus’ face there was a movement in the darkness, and the boy turned his head at once.
‘Who’s there?’ he cried, and as he cried, the thin man Veil took a spidery step towards him.
‘Come back, pup!’
The menace in the voice was so horrible that Titus jumped ahead into the darkness, and immediately his foot struck something that yielded, and at the same time there was a sob from immediately below him.
As he knelt down he could see the faint pattern of a human face in the gloom. The eyes were open.
‘Who are you?’ whispered Titus. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘No … no,’ said the voice.
‘Raise your head,’ said Titus, but as he began to lift the vague body, a hand fixed its fingers, like pincers, into his shoulder, and with one movement, not only jerked Titus to his feet, but sent him spinning against the wall, where a slant of pale, wet light illumined his face.
Written across his young features was something not so young; something as ancient as the stones of his home. Something uncompromising. The gaze of civility was torn from his face as the shrouding flesh can be torn from the bone. A primordial love for his birth-place, a love which survived and grew, for all that he had left his home, for all that he was a traitor, burned in him with a ferocity that he could not understand. All he knew was that as he stared at the spider-man, he, Titus, began to age. A cloud had passed over his heart. He was not so much in the thick of an adventure as alone with something that smelt of death.
Where Titus leaned against the wall the cold brick ran with moisture. It ran through his hair and spread out over his brows and cheekbones. It gathered about his lips and chin and then fell to the ground in a string of water-beads.
His heart pounded. His hands and knees shook, and then, out of the gloom the Black Rose re-appeared.
‘No, no, no! Keep to the darkness, whoever you are!’
At these words the Black Rose swayed and sank again to the floor, and then with a great effort she raised herself on her elbow and whispered, ‘Kill the beast.’
The spider had turned his small, bony head in her direction and in an instant Titus (with no weapons to slice or stab, and with no scruples, for he knew that within a minute he would be fighting for his life) brought up his knee with all the force he could muster. As he did this the spider leaned forward so that the full force of the blow was driven immediately below the ribs; but the only sound to be heard was that of a rush of air as it sped hissing from between his jaws. This was the only sound. He made no kind of groan: he merely brought his hands together, the fingers making a kind of grid to protect the solar plexus, as he bent himself double.
