Then Titus stood up. At first he saw nothing, and then it was the swaying of the crowd. He saw a face … white as a sheet: an enormity. It was too big for a human visage. It was surrounded by crude locks of carrot-coloured hair, and there were stuffed birds perched upon the dusty shoulders. It was the last of the monstrosities to fall, Titus’ mother. Turning from Muzzlehatch’s side, Titus, with his eyes fixed upon this pasteboard travesty began to shake, for it reminded him of his own treachery when he left her; and the castle, his heritage.

But he was weak from loss of blood, and there came over him an absolute emptiness. It seemed that nothing mattered any more, so that when Anchor slung him over his shoulder, it was without any kind of argument. Titus had lost all his strength. Again there were cries from the congregation, which were stifled as soon as begun, for an owl the size of a large cat lolled through the air above the Black House, only to return to make sure whether what it had seen was true.

What did it see? It saw the dwindling of the juniper fire. It saw a long corpse lying by itself. Its head was turned on one side. It saw a dormouse under a bunch of couch-grass. It saw the glint of up-turned helmets, and a little to the west, their one-time owners. There they lay, sprawled across one another.

It saw Titus’ bandages and Anchor’s red hair in the foul morning light. It saw a bangle glinting on Juno’s wrist. It saw the living and it saw the dead.

* * *

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

Owl or no owl, it was essential to get Juno and Titus out of this sickening place, where in the full, if beastly light of the risen sun, objects that appeared mysterious and even magnificent during the night appeared now to be tawdry; cheap; a rag-and-bone shop.

Had Anchor been alone he would have experienced no great difficulty in making an escape from what was fast becoming an angry crowd. For he could handle most aircraft and had already selected one.

But Titus was weak with loss of blood, and Juno was trembling, as though she was standing in icy water.

As for Muzzlehatch, sprawled as though to take the curve of the world; what could be done about him? That heavy body. Those prodigious limbs. Even were he to have been alive he would have had great difficulty in manoeuvring himself into the aircraft, built like a flying fish.

But now, a dead-weight with his muscles stiffening, how much more difficult!

It was then that the three vagrants ran from the crowd. Crack-Bell, Crabcalf and Slingshott. They had seen it all, and knew just as well as Anchor knew that their only hope was to jettison the dead giant and make for the planes where they stood in long lines under the cedar branches.