Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (51 page)

"But surely, my lord, here in Portugal magic is liable to no such misuse, since I shall be wholly at your service and under your direction."

Lord Wellington gave Strange a sharp look. "What I chiefly need is men. Can you make more?"

"Men? Well, that depends on what your lordship means. It is an interesting question . . ." To Strange's great discomfort, he found he sounded exactly like Mr Norrell.

"Can you make more?" interrupted his lordship.

"No."

"Can you make the bullets fly any quicker to strike the French? They fly very quickly as it is. Can you perhaps upturn the earth and move the stones to build my Redoubts, Lunettes and Other Defensive Works?"

"No, my lord. But, my lord . . ."

"The name of the chaplain to the Headquarters is Mr Briscall. The name of the chief medical officer is Dr McGrigor. Should you decide to stay in Portugal then I suggest you make yourself known to these gentlemen. Perhaps you may be of some use to them. You are none to me." Lord Wellington turned away and immediately shouted for someone named Thornton to get dinner ready. In this way Strange was given to understand that the interview was at an end.

Strange was used to deferential treatment from Government Ministers. He was accustomed to being addressed as an equal by some of the highest in the land. To find himself suddenly classed with the chaplains and doctors of the Army — mere supernumeraries — was very bad indeed.

He spent the night — very uncomfortably — at Pero Negro's only inn and as soon as it was light he rode back to Lisbon. When he arrived back at the hotel in Shoemaker-street, he sat down and wrote a long letter to Arabella describing in great detail the shocking way he was treated. Then, feeling a little better, he decided that it was unmanly to complain and so he tore the letter up.

He next made a list of all the sorts of magic which Norrell and he had done for the Admiralty and tried to decide which would suit Lord Wellington best. After careful consideration he concluded that there were few better ways of adding to the misery of the French Army than by sending it storms of thunder and drenching rain. He immediately determined upon writing his lordship a letter offering to do this magic. A definite course of action is always a cheering thing and Strange's spirits rose immediately — until, that is, he happened to glance out of the window. The skies were black, the rain was coming down in torrents and a fierce wind was blowing. It looked as if it might very well thunder in a short while. He went in search of Mr Prideaux. Prideaux confirmed that it had been raining like this for weeks — that the Portuguese thought it would continue for a good long while — and, yes, the French were indeed very unhappy.

Strange pondered this for a while. He was tempted to send Lord Wellington a note offering to make it
stop
raining, on the principle that it must be very uncomfortable for the British soldiers as well — but in the end he decided that the whole question of weather-magic was too vexed until he understood the war and Lord Wellington better. In the meantime he settled upon a plague of frogs as the best thing to drop on the heads of the French soldiers. It was highly Biblical and what, thought Strange, could be more respectable than that?

The next morning he was sitting gloomily in his hotel room, pretending to read one of Norrell's books but actually watching the rain, when there was a knock at the door. It was a Scottish officer in the uniform of the Hussars who looked inquiringly at Strange and said, "Mr Norrell?"

"I am not . . . Oh, never mind! What can I do for you?"

"Message for you from Headquarters, Mr Norrell." The young officer presented Strange with a piece of paper.

It was his own letter to Wellington. Someone had scrawled over it in thick, blue pencil the single word, "Denied".

"Whose writing is that?" asked Strange.

"Lord Wellington's, Mr Norrell."

"Ah."

The next day Strange wrote Wellington another note, offering to make the waters of the River Tagus rise up and overwhelm the French. This at least provoked Wellington into writing a rather longer reply explaining that at present the entire British Army and most of the Portuguese Army were
between
the Tagus and the French and consequently Mr Strange's suggestion was not found to be at all convenient.

Strange refused to be deterred. He continued to send Well-ington one proposal every day. All were rejected.

On a particularly gloomy day at the end of February he was passing through the hallway of Mr Prideaux's hotel on his way to a solitary dinner when he almost collided with a fresh-faced young man in English clothes. The young man begged his pardon and asked if he knew where Mr Strange was to be found.

"I am Strange. Who are you?"

"My name is Briscall. I am Chaplain to the Headquarters."

"Mr Briscall. Yes. Of course."

"Lord Wellington has asked me to pay you a visit," explained Mr Briscall. "He said something about your aiding me by magic?" Mr Briscall smiled. "But I believe his real reason is that he hopes I may be able to dissuade you from writing to him every day."

"Oh!" said Strange. "I shall not stop until he gives me some-thing to do."

Mr Briscall laughed. "Very well, I shall tell him."

"Thank you. And is there any thing I can do for you? I have never done magic for the Church before. I will be frank with you, Mr Briscall. My knowledge of ecclesiastical magic is very slight, but I should be glad to be of use to someone."

"Hmm. I will be equally frank with you, Mr Strange. My duties are really very simple. I visit the sick and wounded. I read the soldiers the services and try and get them a decent burial when they are killed, poor fellows. I do not see what you could do to help."

"Neither does any one else," said Strange with a sigh. "But come, have dinner with me? At least I shall not have to eat alone."

This was quickly agreed to and the two men sat down in the hotel dining-parlour. Strange found Mr Briscall to be a pleasant dinner companion who was happy to tell all he knew of Lord Wellington and the Army.

"Soldiers are not in general religious men," he said, "but then I never expected that they would be and I have been greatly helped by the circumstance that all the chaplains before me went on leave almost as soon as they arrived. I am the first to stay — and the men are grateful to me for that. They look very kindly on any one who is prepared to share their hard life."

Strange said he was sure of it.

"And what of you, Mr Strange? How do you get on?"

"I? I do not get on at all. No one wants me here. I am addressed — on the rare occasions when any one speaks to me at all — quite indiscriminately as Mr Strange or Mr Norrell. No one seems to have any notion that these might be
distinct
persons."

Briscall laughed.

"And Lord Wellington rejects all my offers of help as soon as I make them."

"Why? What have you offered him?"

Strange told him about his first proposal to send a plague of frogs to fall on the French from the sky.

"Well, I am really not at all surprized he refused
that
!" said Briscall, contemptuously. "The French cook frogs and eat them, do they not? It is a vital part of Lord Wellington's plan that the French should starve. You might as well have offered to drop roast chickens on their heads or pork pies!"

"It is not my fault," said Strange, a little stung. "I would be only too glad to take Lord Wellington's plans into consideration — only I do not know what they are. In London the Admiralty told us their intentions and we shaped our magic accordingly."

"I see," said Briscall. "Forgive me, Mr Strange — perhaps I have not understood very well — but it seems to me that you have a great advantage here. In London you were obliged to rely upon the Admiralty's opinion as to what might be happening hundreds of miles away — and I dare say the Admiralty was quite often mistaken. Here you can go and see for yourself. Your experience is no different from my own. When I first arrived no one took the least notice of me either. I drifted from one regiment to another. No one wanted me."

"And yet now you are a part of Wellington's Staff. How did you do it?"

"It took time, but in the end I was able to prove my usefulness to his lordship — and I am sure you will do the same."

Strange sighed. "I try. But all I seem to do is demonstrate my superfluousness. Over and over again!"

"Nonsense! As far as I can see you have only made one real mistake — and that is in remaining here in Lisbon. If you take my advice, you will leave as soon as you can. Go and sleep on the mountains with the men and the officers! You will not understand them until you do. Talk to them. Spend your days with them in the deserted villages beyond the Lines. They will soon love you for it. They are the best fellows in the world."

"Really? It was reported in London that Wellington had called them the scum of the earth."

Briscall laughed as if being the scum of the earth were a very minor sort of indiscretion and indeed a large part of the Army's charm. This was, thought Strange, an odd position for a clergy-man to take.

"Which are they?" he asked.

"They are both, Mr Strange. They are both. Well, what do you say? Will you go?"

Strange frowned. "I do not know. It is not that I fear hardship and discomfort, you understand. I believe I can endure as much of that sort of thing as most men. But I know no one there. I seem to have been in every body's way since I arrived and without friends to go to . . ."

"Oh! That is easily remedied! This is not London or Bath where one needs letters of introduction. Take a barrel of brandy — and a case or two of Champagne if your servant can carry them. You will soon have a very wide acquaintance among the officers if you have brandy and Champagne to spare."

"Really? It is as simple as that, is it?"

"Oh, to be sure! But do not trouble to take any red wine. They have plenty of that already."

A few days later Strange and Jeremy Johns left Lisbon for the country beyond the Lines. The British officers and men were a little surprized to find a magician in their midst. They wrote letters home to their friends describing him in a variety of uncomplimentary ways and wondering what in the world he was doing there. But Strange did as Mr Briscall had advised. Every officer he met was invited to come and drink Champagne with him that evening after dinner. They soon excused him the eccentricity of his profession. What mattered was that one could always meet with some very jolly fellows at Strange's bivouack and something decent to drink.

Strange also took up smoking. It had never really appealed to him as a pastime before, but he discovered that a ready supply of tobacco was quite invaluable for striking up conversations with the enlisted men.

It was an odd sort of life and an eerie sort of landscape. The villages beyond the Lines had all been emptied of inhabitants on Lord Wellington's instructions and the crops burnt. The soldiers of both armies went down to the deserted villages and helped themselves to whatever looked useful. On the British side it was not unusual to come upon sophas, wardrobes, beds, chairs and tables standing on a hillside or in a woodland glade. Occasionally one would find whole bed-chambers or drawing-rooms, complete with shaving equipment, books and lamps, but minus the impediment of walls and ceiling.

But if the British Army suffered inconvenience from the wind and the rain, then the plight of the French Army was far, far worse. Their clothes were in rags and they had nothing to eat. They had been staring at Lord Wellington's Lines since the previous October. They could not attack the British Army — it had three lines of impregnable forts behind which to retreat at any moment it chose. Nor did Lord Wellington trouble to attack the French. Why should he, when Hunger and Disease were killing his enemies faster than he could? On the 5th of March the French struck camp and turned north. Within a very few hours Lord Wellington and the British Army were in pursuit. Jonathan Strange went with them.

One very rainy morning about the middle of the month Strange was riding at the side of a road along which the 95th Rifles were marching. He happened to spy some particular friends of his a little way ahead. Urging his horse to a canter, he soon caught up with them.

"Good morning, Ned," he said, addressing a man he had reason to regard as a thoughtful, sensible sort of person.

"Good morning, sir," said Ned, cheerfully.

"Ned?"

"Yes, sir?"

"What is it that you chiefly desire? I know it is an odd question, Ned, and you will excuse my asking it. But I really need to know."

Ned did not answer immediately. He sucked in his breath and furrowed his brow and exhibited other signs of deep thinking. Meanwhile his comrades helpfully told Strange what they chiefly desired — things such as magic pots of gold that would never be empty and houses carved out of a single diamond. One, a Welsh-man, sang out dolefully, "Toasted cheese! Toasted cheese!" several times — which caused the others to laugh a good deal, Welshmen being naturally humorous.

Meanwhile Ned had got to the end of his ruminations. "New boots," he said.

"Really?" said Strange in surprize.

"Yes, sir," answered Ned. "New boots. It is these d—d Portuguese roads." He gestured ahead at the collection of stones and pot-holes that the Portuguese were pleased to call a road. "They tear a man's boots to ribbons and at night his bones ache from walking over them. But if I had new boots, oh! wouldn't I be fresh after a day's march? Couldn't I just fight the French then? Couldn't I just make Johnny sweat for it?"

"Your appetite for the fray does you great credit, Ned," said Strange. "Thank you. You have given me an excellent answer." He rode off, followed by a great many shouts of "When will Ned be getting his boots, then?" and "Where's Ned's boots?"

That evening Lord Wellington's headquarters were set up in a once-splendid mansion in the village of Lousá o. The house had once belonged to a wealthy and patriotic Portuguese nobleman, José Estoril, but he and his sons had all been tortured and killed by the French. His wife had died of a fever, and various stories were in circulation concerning the sad fate of his daughters. For many months it had been a very melancholy place, but now Wellington's Staff had arrived to fill it with the sound of their noisy jokes and arguments, and the gloomy rooms were made almost cheerful by the officers in their coats of red and blue passing in and out.