Gormenghast (74 page)

       This was as it should be. The Master of Ritual was, after all, the keystone of the castle's life. But as the months passed Titus realized that he must choose between being a symbol, for ever toeing the immemorial line, or turn traitor in his mother's eyes and in the eyes of the castle. His days were full of meaningless ceremonies whose sacredness appeared to be in inverse ratio to their comprehensibility or usefulness.

       And all the time he was the apple of the castle's eye. He could do no wrong - and there was honey to be tasted on the tongue, when the hierophants drew back from the rocky paths to let him pass and the children screamed his name excitedly from their shacks, or stared in big-eyed wonder at the avenger.

       Steerpike had become an almost legendary monster - but here, alive and breathing, was the young earl who had fought him in the ivy. Here was the dragon-slayer.

       But even this became monotonous. The honey tasted sickly in his mouth.

       His mother had nothing to say to him. She had become even more withdrawn. Her pride in the courage he had shown had emptied her of words. She had reverted to the heavy and formidable figure, with her white cats for ever within range of her whistle and the wild birds upon her massive shoulders.

       She had risen to an occasion. The uprooting of Steerpike and the salvaging of the flooded castle.

       Now she drew back into herself.

       Her brain began to go to sleep again. She had lost interest in it and the things that it could do. It had been brought forth like a machine from the darkness and set in motion - and it had proved itself to be measured and powerful, like the progress of an army on the march. But it now chose to halt. It chose to sleep again. Her white cats and her wild birds had taken the place of the abstract values. She no longer reasoned. She no longer believed that Titus had meant what he had said. She connected it with his delirium. It was impossible to believe that he could have known that his words were heresy. He had craved for a kind of freedom disconnected from the life of his ancient home - his heritage - his birthright. What could that mean? She relapsed into a state of self-imposed darkness, lit only by green eyes and the bright backs of birds.

       But Titus could no longer bear to think of the life that lay ahead of him with its dead repetitions, its moribund ceremonies. With every day that passed he grew more restless. He was like something caged. Some animal that longs to test itself; to try its own strength.

       For Titus had discovered himself. The 'Thing', when she had died in the storm had killed his boyhood. The death of Flay had seasoned him. The drowning of Fuchsia had left a crater beneath his ribs. His victory over Steerpike had given him a kind of touchstone to his own courage.

       The world that he pictured beyond the secret skyline - the world of nowhere and everywhere was necessarily based upon Gormenghast. But he knew that there would be a difference; and that there could be no other place exactly like his home. It was this difference that he longed for. There would be other rivers; and other mountains; other forests and other skies.

       He was hungry for all this. He was hungry to test himself. To travel, not as an Earl but as a stranger with no more shelter than his naked name.

       And he would be free. Free of his loyalties. Free of his home. Free of the maddening forms and ceremonies. Free to become something more than the last of the great Line. His longing to escape had been fanned by his passion for the 'Thing'. Without her he would have never dared to do more than dream of insurrection. She had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different. Her unearthly arrogance and self-sufficiency had exploded at the very centre of his conventions. From the moment when he knew for certain that she was no figment of his fancy, but a creature of Gormenghast Forest, he had been haunted. He was still haunted. Haunted by the thought of this other kind of world which was able to exist without Gormenghast.

       One evening, in the late spring, he climbed the slopes of Gormenghast Mountain and stood by his sister's grave. But he did not remain there for long, gazing down at the small silent mound. He could only think what all men would have thought; that it was pitiful that one so vivid and full of love and breath should be rotting in darkness. To brood upon it would only be to call up horrors.

       A light wind was blowing and the green hair of the grass was combed out all one way from the brow of the mound. A faint coral-coloured light filled the evening, and, like the rocks and the ferns about his feet, his face was lit with it.

       His somewhat lank, pale brown hair was blown across his eyes which, when he lifted them from the mound and fixed them upon the towered massings of the castle, began to glitter with a strange excitement.

       Fuchsia had left. She had finished with Gormenghast. She was in some other climate. The 'Thing' was dead. She also had taught him, by the least twist of her body in mid-air, that the castle was not all. Had he not been shown how wide was life? He was ready.

       He stood there quite silently, but his fists were clenched and he pressed them against one another, knuckle to knuckle, as though to fight down the excitement that was accumulating in his breast.

       His broad, rather pallid face was not that of any romantic youth. It was, in a way, very ordinary. He had no perfect feature. Everything seemed a little too big and subtly uneven. His lower lip was thrust a fraction forward of the upper and they were parted so that his teeth were just visible. His pale eyes, a stoneish blue with a hint of dim and sullen purple, were alone peculiar and even striking in their present animation.

       His loose-limbed body, rather heavy, but strong and agile, was bent a little forward at the shoulders, with a kind of shrug. As a storm gathers its clouds together, so in his chest he felt 'gathering' as his thoughts fell into place and led one way, and his pulse-beat, as though underlining his will to rebel, throbbed at his wrists.

       And all the while the sweet air swam about him, innocent, delicate, and a single cloud, like a slender hand floated over the castle as though to bless the towers. A rabbit emerged from the shadows of a fern and sat quite still upon a rock. Some insects sang thinly in the air, and suddenly close at hand a cricket scraped away on a single bowstring.

       It seemed a strangely gentle atmosphere to surround the turmoil in Titus' heart and mind.

       He knew now that to postpone his act of treachery would make it no easier.

       What was he waiting for? No time would ever come when an atmosphere of sympathy, welling as it were out of the castle, would help him on his way, would say 'Now is the Time to go'. Not a stone of the castle would own him from the moment he turned his back.

       He descended the slopes, threading the trees of the foothills and came at last to the marshland paths and then after crossing the escarpment, approached the gate in the outer walls.

       It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run. He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home. The law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both.

       And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline.

       He ran, in the simple faith that in his disobedience was his inmost proof. He was no callow novice; no flighty child of some romance of sugar. He had no sweet tooth. He had killed and had felt the wide world rustle open from the ribs and the touch of death had set his hair on end.

       He ran because his decision had been made. It had been made for him by the convergence of half-forgotten motives, of desires and reasons, of varied yet congruous impulses. And the convergence of all these to a focus point of 'action'.

       It was this that made him run as though to keep pace with his brain and his excitement.

       He knew that he could not now turn back save in the very teeth of his integrity. His breath came quick and fast, and all at once he was among the shacks.

       The sun was now upon the rim of the skyline. The rose-red light had deepened. The great encampment wore a strange beauty. A populace meandered through the wandering lanes and turned at his approach and made a path for him. The ragged children cried out his name, and ran to tell their mothers that they had seen the scar. Titus, drawn back suddenly into the world of reality, came to a halt. For some time he remained with his hands on his knees and his head dropped forward and then when he had regained his breath and had wiped the sweat from his brow, he walked rapidly to that part of the cantonment where a stockade had been built to surround the long shanty where the Countess lived.

       Before he entered the stockade through the clumsy iron gate he motioned to some passing youths.

       'You will find the Master of the Stables,' he said, in his mother's peremptory manner. 'He should be with the horses in the west enclosure. Tell him to saddle the mare. He will know her. The grey mare with a white foot. He will bring her to the Tower of Flints. I will be there shortly.'

       The youths touched their brows and disappeared into the gathering dusk.

       The moon was beginning to float up and from behind a broken tower.

       As Titus was about to push open the iron gate he paused, turned on his heel, and set off into the heart of a town of looted floor-boards. But he had no need to advance as far as the Professors' quarters nor to turn east to where the Doctor's hospital lifted its raw woodwork to the rising moon. For there ahead of him, and walking in his direction along the foot-worn track was the Headmaster, his wife and his brother-in-law, the Doctor.

       They did not see him until he was close upon them. He knew they would wish to talk to him, but he knew he would not be able to make conversation, or even listen to them. He was out of key with normality. And so, before they knew what had happened, he reached out and simultaneously gripped the Doctor and the old Professor by their hands, and then releasing them he bowed a little awkwardly to Irma, before he turned on his heel and, to their amazement, began to walk rapidly away until he was lost to their sight in the thick of the dusk.

       When he reached the stockade he made no pause but entered and told the man who stood outside the door of the long shanty to announce him.

       He saw her at once as he entered. She was sitting at a table, a candle before her, and was gazing expressionlessly at a picture book.

       'Mother.'

       She looked up slowly.

       'Well?' she said.

       'I am going.'

       She said nothing.

       'Good-bye.'

       She got heavily to her feet and raising the candle and bringing it towards him she held it close to his face and fixed her eyes on his - and then, lifting her other hand, she traced the line of his scar very gently with her forefinger. 'Going where?' she said at last.

       'I am leaving,' said Titus. 'I am leaving Gormenghast. I cannot explain. I do not want to talk. I came to tell you and that is all. Good-bye, mother.'

       He turned and walked quickly to the door. He longed with his whole soul to be able to pass through and into the night without another word being spoken. He knew she was unable to grasp so terrible a confession of perfidy. But out of the silence, that hung at his shoulder blades, he heard her voice. It was not loud. It was not hurried.

       'There is nowhere else,' it said. 'You will only tread a circle, Titus Groan.

       There's not a road, not a track, but it will lead you home. For everything comes to Gormenghast.'

       He shut the door. The moonlight flowed across the cold encampment. It shone on the roofs of the castle and lit the high claw of the Mountain.

       When he came to the Tower of Flints his mare was waiting. He mounted, shook the reins, and moved away at once through the inky shadows that lay beneath the walls.

       After a long while he came out into the brilliant light of the hunter's moon and sometime later he realized that unless he turned about in his saddle there was no cause for him to see his home again. At his back the castle climbed into the night. Before him there was spread a great terrain.

       He brushed a few strands of hair away from his eyes, and jogged the grey mare to a trot and then into a canter, and finally with a moonlit wilderness before him, to a gallop.

       And so, exulting as the moonlit rocks fled by him, exulting as the tears streamed over his face - with his eyes fixed excitedly upon the blurred horizon and the battering of the hoof-beats loud in his ears, Titus rode out of his world.

The End