Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (130 page)

"Is Jonathan here?"

"No, madam."

"You are Arabella Strange," said Dr Greysteel in amazement.

"Yes," she said.

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Aunt Greysteel, one hand flying to cover her mouth and the other to her heart. "Oh, my dear!" Then both hands fluttered around Arabella's face and shoulders. "Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed for the third time. She burst into tears and embraced Arabella.

Stephen awoke. He was lying on the frozen ground in a narrow dale. The sunlight was gone. It was grey and cold. The dale was choked with a great wall of millstones and boulders and earth — an eerie tomb. The wall had dammed the beck, but a little water still seeped through and was now spreading across the ground. Stephen's crown, sceptre and orb lay a little distance away in pools of dirty water. Wearily he stood up.

In the distance he could hear someone calling, "Stephen! Stephen!" He thought it was Lady Pole.

"I cast off the name of my captivity," he said. "It is gone." He picked up the crown, the sceptre and orb, and began to walk.

He had no notion of where he was going. He had killed the gentleman and he had allowed the gentleman to kill Vinculus. He could never go home — if home it had been in the first place. What would an English judge and jury say to a black man who was a murderer twice over? Stephen had done with England and Eng- land had done with him. He walked on.

After a while it seemed to him that the landscape was no longer as English as it had been. The trees that now surrounded him were immense, ancient things, their boughs twice the thickness of a man's body and curved into strange, fantastical shapes. Though it was winter and the briars were bare, a few roses still bloomed here, blood-red and snow-white.

England lay behind him. He did not regret it. He did not look back. He walked on.

He came to a long, low hill, and in the middle of the hill was an opening. It was more like a mouth than a door, yet it did not have an evil look. Someone was standing there, just within the opening, waiting for him. "I know this place," he thought. "It is Lost-hope! But how can that be?"

It was not simply that the house had become a hill, everything seemed to have undergone a revolution. The wood was suddenly possessed of a spirit of freshness, of innocence. The trees no longer threatened the traveller. Between their branches were glints of a serene winter sky of coldest blue. Here and there shone the pure light of a star — though whether they were stars of morning or stars of evening he could no longer remember. He looked around for the ancient bones and rusting armour — those ghastly emblems of the gentleman's bloodthirsty nature. To his surprize he found that they were everywhere — beneath his feet, stuffed into hollows of the tree roots, tangled up with briars and brambles. But they were in a far more advanced state of decay than he remembered; they were moss-covered, rust-eaten and crumbling into dust. In a little while nothing would be left of them.

The figure within the opening was a familiar one; he had often attended the balls and processions at Lost-hope. But he too was changed; his features had become more fairy-like; his eyes more glittering; his eye-brows more extravagant. His hair curled tightly like the fleece of a young lamb or like young ferns in spring, and there was a light dusting of fur upon his face. He looked older, yet at the same time more innocent. "Welcome!" he cried.

"Is this truly Lost-hope?" asked the person who had once been Stephen Black.

"Yes, grandfather."

"But I do not understand. Lost-hope was a great mansion. This is . . ." The person who had once been Stephen Black paused. "I do not have a word for what this is."

"This is a
brugh
, grandfather! This is the world beneath the hill. Lost-hope is changing! The old King is dead. The new King approaches! And at his approach the world sheds its sorrow. The sins of the old King dissolve like morning mist! The world assumes the character of the new. His virtues fill up the wood and the wold!"

"The new King?" The person who had once been Stephen Black looked down at his own hands. In one was the sceptre and in the other the orb.

The fairy smiled at him, as if wondering why he should be surprized. "The changes you wrought here far surpass any thing you did in England."

They passed through the opening into a great hall. The new King sat down upon an ancient throne. A crowd of people came and gathered around him. Some faces he knew, others were unfamiliar to him, but he suspected that this was because he had never seen them as they truly were before. For a long time he was silent.

"This house," he told them at last, "is disordered and dirty. Its inhabitants have idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties — things that ought not to be remembered, let alone celebrated. I have often observed it and often regretted it. All these faults, I shall in time set right."
¹

The moment the spell took effect a great wind blew through Hurtfew. Doors banged in the Darkness; black curtains billowed out in black rooms; black papers were swept from black tables and made to dance. A bell — taken from the original Abbey long ago and since forgotten — rang frantically in a little turret above the stables.

In the library, visions appeared in mirrors and clock-faces. The wind blew the curtains apart and visions appeared in the windows too. They followed thick and fast upon one another, almost too rapid to comprehend. Mr Norrell saw some that seemed familiar: the shattered branch of holly in his own library at Hanover- square; a raven flying in front of St Paul's Cathedral so that for a moment it was the living embodiment of the Raven-in-Flight; the great black bed in the inn at Wansford. But others were entirely strange to him: a hawthorn tree; a man crucified upon a thicket; a crude wall of stones in a narrow valley; an unstoppered bottle floating on a wave.

Then all the visions disappeared, except for one. It filled one of the tall library windows, but what it was a vision
of
, Mr Norrell was at a loss to know. It resembled a large, perfectly round, black stone of almost impossible brilliance and glossiness, set into a thin ring of rough stone and mounted upon what appeared to be a black hillside. Mr Norrell thought of it as a hillside because it bore some resemblance to a moor where the heather is all burnt and charred — except that this hillside was not the black of burnt things, it was the black of wet silk or well-shone leather. Suddenly the stone did something — it moved or spun. The movement was almost too quick to grasp but Mr Norrell was left with the sickening impression that it had blinked.

The wind died away. The bell above the stable ceased to ring.

Mr Norrell breathed a long sigh of relief that it was over. Strange was standing with his arms crossed, deep in thought, staring at the floor.

"What did you make of that?" asked Mr Norrell. "The last was by far the worst. I thought for a moment it was an eye."

"It was an eye," said Strange.

"But what could it belong to? Some horror or monster, I suppose! Most unsettling!"

"It was monstrous," agreed Strange. "Though not quite in the way you imagine. It was a raven's eye."

"A raven's eye! But it filled the whole window!"

"Yes. Either the raven was immensely large or . . ."

"Or?" quavered Mr Norrell.

Strange gave a short, uncheerful laugh. "Or we were ridiculously small! Pleasant, is it not, to see oneself as others see one? I said I wanted John Uskglass to look at me and I think, for a moment he did. Or at least one of his lieutenants did. And in that moment you and I were smaller than a raven's eye and presumably as insignificant. Speaking of John Uskglass, I do not suppose that we know where he is?"

Mr Norrell sat down at the silver dish and began to work. After five minutes or so of patient labour, he said, "Mr Strange! There is no sign of John Uskglass — nothing at all. But I have looked for Lady Pole and Mrs Strange. Lady Pole is in Yorkshire and Mrs Strange is in Italy. There is no shadow of their presence in Faerie. Both are completely disenchanted!"

There was a silence. Strange turned away abruptly.

"It is more than a little odd," continued Mr Norrell in a tone of wonder. "We have done everything we set out to do, but
ow
we did it, I do not pretend to understand. I can only suppose that John Uskglass simply saw what was amiss and stretched out his hand to put it right! Unfortunately, his obligingness did not extend to freeing us from the Darkness. That remains."

Mr Norrell paused. This then was his destiny! — a destiny full of fear, horror and desolation! He sat patiently for a few moments in expectation of falling prey to some or all of these terrible emotions, but was forced to conclude that he felt none of them. Indeed, what seemed remarkable to him now were the long years he had spent in London, away from his library, at the beck and call of the Ministers and the Admirals. He wondered how he had borne it.

"I am glad I did not recognize the raven's eye for what it was," he said cheerfully, "or I believe I would have been a good deal frightened!"

"Indeed, sir," said Strange hoarsely. "You were fortunate there! And I believe I am cured of wanting to be looked at! Henceforth John Uskglass is welcome to ignore me for as long as he pleases."

"Oh, indeed!" agreed Mr Norrell. "You know, Mr Strange, you really should try to rid yourself of the habit of wishing for things. It is a dangerous thing in a magician!" He began a long and not particularly interesting story about a fourteenth-century magician in Lancashire who had often made idle wishes and had caused no end of inconvenience in the village where he lived, accidentally turning the cows into clouds and the cooking pots into ships, and causing the villagers to speak in colours rather than words — and other such signs of magical chaos.

At first Strange barely answered him and such replies as he made were random and illogical. But gradually he appeared to listen with more attention, and he spoke in his usual manner.

Mr Norrell had many talents, but penetration into the hearts of men and women was not one of them. Strange did not speak of the restoration of his wife, so Mr Norrell imagined that it could not have affected him very deeply.

1 A surprizing number of kings and princes of Faerie have been human. John Uskglass, Stephen Black and Alessandro Simonelli are just three. Fairies are, by and large, irredeemably indolent. Though they are fond of high rank, honours and riches, they detest the hard work of government.

69
Strangites and Norrellites

February—spring 1817

C
HILDERMASS RODE AND Vinculus walked at his side. All around them was spread the wide expanse of snow- covered moor, appearing, with all its various hummocks and hills, like a vast feather mattress. Something of the sort may have occurred to Vinculus because he was describing in great detail the soft, pillowy bed he intended to sleep in that night and the very large dinner he intended to eat before he retired there. There was no doubt that he expected Childermass to pay for these luxuries, and it would not have been particularly surprizing if Childermass had had a word or two to say about them, but Childermass said nothing. His mind was wholly taken up with the problem of whether or not he ought to shew Vinculus to Strange and Norrell. Certainly there was no one in England better qualified to examine Vinculus; but, on the other hand, Child- ermass could not quite predict how the magicians would act when faced with a man who was also a book. Childermass scratched his cheek. There was a faint, well-healed scar upon it — the merest silvery line upon his brown face.

Vinculus had stopped talking and was standing in the road. His blanket had fallen from him and he was eagerly pushing back the sleeves of his coat.

"What is it?" asked Childermass. "What is the matter?"

"I have changed!" said Vinculus. "Look!" He took off his coat and opened his shirt. "The words are different! On my arms! On my chest! Everywhere! This is not what I said before!" Despite the cold, he began to undress. Then, when he was quite naked again, he celebrated his transformation by dancing about gleefully like a blue-skinned devil.

Childermass dismounted from his horse with feelings of panic and desperation. He had succeeded in preserving John Uskglass's book from death and destruction; and then, just when it seemed secure, the book itself had defeated him by changing.

"We must get to an inn as soon as we can!" he declared. "We must get paper and ink! We must make are cord of exactly what was written upon you before. You must search every corner of your memory!"

Vinculus stared at him as if he thought he must have taken leave of his senses. "Why?" he asked.

"Because it is John Uskglass's magic! John Uskglass's thoughts! The only record any one ever had of them. We must preserve every scrap we can!"

Vinculus remained unenlightened. "Why?" he asked again. "John Uskglass did not think it worth preserving."

"But why should you change all of a sudden? There is no rhyme or reason in it!"

"There is every sort of reason," said Vinculus. "I was a Prophecy before; but the things that I foretold have come to pass. So it is just as well I have changed — or I would have become a History! A dry-as-dust History!"

"So what are you now?"

Vinculus shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps I am a Receipt- Book! Perhaps I am a Novel! Perhaps I am a Collection of Sermons!" He was excessively diverted by these thoughts and cackled to himself and capered about some more.

"I hope you are what you have always been — a Book of Magic. But what are you saying? Vinculus, do you mean to tell me that you never learnt these letters?"

"I am a Book," said Vinculus, stopping in mid-caper. "I am
the
Book. It is the task of the Book to bear the words. Which I do. It is the task of the Reader to know what they say."

"But the last Reader is dead!"

Vinculus shrugged as if that were none of his concern.

"You must know something!" cried Childermass, growing almost wild with exasperation. He seized Vinculus's arm. "What about this? This symbol like a horned circle with a line through it. It occurs over and over again. What does it mean?"