‘Sir,’ said Anchor, moving up. ‘Let me relieve you of the scientist. Even an arm like yours must tire at times.’

‘Who are you?’ said Muzzlehatch, leaving his arm where it was, like a signpost, for he had lifted it again.

‘Does that matter?’ said Anchor.

‘Matter! Ha, that’s ripe,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Ripe as your copper-coloured mane. How is it you have jumped from the ranks to join us?’

‘We have a lady in common,’ said Anchor.

‘Who would that be?’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Queen of the mermaids?’

‘Do I look it?’ It was Juno who, against Anchor’s instructions, had crept out of the alcove, and now stood at his side.

‘O Titus, my most dear!’ She ran towards him.

At the sight of Juno, the air became electric and through this atmosphere a figure darted, rapid as a weasel. It was Cheeta.

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

So this was Juno; this, the billowy whore. Cheeta bit her underlip until the blood ran over her chin.

She had long ago dismissed from her mind any thought of her own attractions. They had ceased to be of any interest to her, for something a thousand times more important filled her vision as a pit can be filled with fumes. But as the venomous midget slid with a dreadful intensity of purpose towards Juno, her rival, she was brought to an incongruous halt by an explosion.

Not only was Cheeta halted in her progress at the sound of the reverberation, but each in their own way found himself or herself rooted to the floor of the Black House; Juno, Anchor, Titus, and Muzzlehatch himself, the ‘Helmets’, the Three, and a hundred guests. And more than this. The birds and the beasts of the surrounding forests, they also froze along the boughs, until simultaneously taking wing a great volume of birds arose like a fog into the night, thickening the air, and quenching the moon. Where they had perched in their thousands the twigs and boughs lifted themselves a little in the bird-made darkness.

Seeing the others glued to the ground, Cheeta struggled against her own inability to close with them and to fight with the only weapons she possessed; two rows of sharp little teeth and ten fingernails. She had turned from Titus to Juno as the first of her enemies to dispatch, but like them, her head was turned in the direction of the sound, and she could not twist it back.

That her father, the greatest scientist in the world was hanging upside down from the outstretched arm of some kind of brigand did not, in itself, inflame or impress upon her passions, for there was no space left in her tiny tremulous body for such an emotion to find foothold. She could not feel for him. She was consumed already.

The first to speak was Anchor.

‘What would that be?’ he said. Even as he spoke a light appeared in the sky in the direction of the sound.