Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (63 page)

This part of the spell had no effect whatsoever.
²
Nail
my
hand
with
an
iron
nail
so
that
I
shall
not
raise
it
to
do
the
deceiver's
bidding
.

"Aaaghh! Dear God!" screamed Strange. There was an ex-cruciating pain in the palm of his left hand. When it ceased (as suddenly as it had begun) he no longer felt compelled to hurry towards the wood.

Place
my
heart
in
a
secret
place
so
that
all
my
desires
shall
be
my
own
and
the
deceiver
shall
find
no
hold
there
.

He pictured Arabella, as he had seen her a thousand times, prettily dressed and seated in a drawing-room among a crowd of people who were all laughing and talking. He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.

Strange next applied the spell to the King and at the last step he gave the King's heart to Arabella to keep in her pocket. It was interesting to observe the magic from the outside. There had been so many unusual occurrences in the King's poor head that the moon's sudden appearance there seemed to occasion him no surprize. But he did not care for the bees; he was brushing them away for some time afterwards.

When the spell was finished, the flute-player abruptly ceased playing.

"And now, Your Majesty," said Strange, "I think it is time we returned to the Castle. You and I, Your Majesty, are a British King and a British magician. Though Great Britain may desert us, we have no right to desert Great Britain. She may have need of us yet."

"True, true! I swore an oath at my coronation always to serve her! Oh, my poor country!" The King turned and waved in the direction he supposed the mysterious flute-player to be. "Good-bye! Goodbye, dear sir! God bless you for your kindness to George III!"

Revelations
of
Thirty-Six
Other
Worlds
lay half-covered up by the snow
.
Strange picked it up and brushed off the snow. He looked back. The dark wood had gone. In its place was a most innocent clump of five leafless beech trees.

On the ride back to London Strange was deep in thought. He was aware that he ought to have been disturbed by his experience at Windsor, perhaps even frightened. But his curiosity and excitement far exceeded his uneasiness. Besides, whatever, or who-ever, had done the magic, he had defeated them and imposed his will upon theirs. They had been strong, but he had been stronger. The whole adventure had confirmed something he had long suspected: that there was more magic in England than Mr Norrell admitted.

Consider the matter from whichever point of view he would, he continually came back to the silver-haired person whom only the King could see. He tried to recall what exactly the King had said about this person, but he could recall nothing beyond the simple fact of his silver hair.

He reached London at about half past four. The city was growing dark. Lights were glowing in all the shops, and the lamplighters were out in the streets. When he got to the corner of Oxford-street and New Bond-street he turned aside and rode to Hanover-square. He found Mr Norrell in his library, drinking tea.

Mr Norrell was, as ever, delighted to see the other magician and he was eager to hear all about Strange's visit to the King.

Strange told him how the King was kept a solitary prisoner in his own palace, and he listed the spells he had done. But of the drenching of the Willises, the enchanted wood and the invisible flute-player he said not a word.

"I am not at all surprized that you could not help His Majesty," said Mr Norrell. "I do not believe that even the
Aureate
magicians could cure madness. In fact I am not sure that they tried. They seem to have considered madness in quite a different light. They held madmen in a sort of reverence and thought they knew things sane men did not — things which might be useful to a magician. There are stories of both Ralph Stokesey and Catherine of Winchester consulting with madmen."

"But it was not only magicians, surely?" said Strange. "Fairies too had a strong interest in madmen. I am sure I remember reading that somewhere."

"Yes, indeed! Some of our most important writers have re-marked upon the strong resemblance between madmen and fairies. Both are well known for talking without sense or connexion — I dare say you noticed something of the sort with the King. But there are other similarities. Chaston, as I remember, has several things to say upon the subject. He gives the example of a lunatic in Bristol who each morning told his family of his intention to take his walk in company with one of the dining chairs. The man was quite devoted to this article of furniture, considered it one of his closest friends, and held imaginary conversations with it in which they discussed the walk they would take and the likelihood of meeting other tables and chairs. Apparently, the man became quite distressed whenever any one proposed sitting upon the chair. Clearly the man was mad, but Chaston says that fairies would not consider his behaviour as ridiculous as we do. Fairies do not make a strong distinction between the animate and the inanimate. They believe that stones, doors, trees, fire, clouds and so forth all have souls and desires, and are either masculine or feminine. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary sympathy for madness which fairies exhibit. For example, it used to be well known that when fairies hid themselves from general sight, lunatics were often able to perceive them. The most celebrated instance which I can recall was of a mad boy called Duffy in Chesterfield in Derbyshire in the fourteenth century, who was the favourite of a mischievous fairy-spirit which had tormented the town for years. The fairy took a great fancy to this boy and made him extravagant presents — most of which would have scarcely been of any use to him in his right mind and were certainly no use to him in his madness — a sailing boat encrusted with diamonds, a pair of silver boots, a singing pig . . ."

"But why did the fairy pay Duffy all these attentions?"

"Oh! He told Duffy they were brothers in adversity. I do not know why. Chaston wrote that a great many fairies harboured a vague sense of having been treated badly by the English. Though it was a mystery to Chaston — as it is to me — why they should have thought so. In the houses of the great English magicians fairies were the first among the servants and sat in the best places after the magician and his lady. Chaston has a great many interesting things to say upon the subject. His best work is the
Liber
Novus
." Mr Norrell frowned at his pupil. "I am sure I have recommended it to you half a dozen times," he said. "Have you not read it yet?"

Unfortunately, Mr Norrell did not always recall with absolute precision which books he wished Strange to read and which books he had sent to Yorkshire for the express purpose of keeping them out of Strange's reach. The
Liber
Novus
was safe on a shelf in the library at Hurtfew Abbey. Strange sighed and remarked that the moment Mr Norrell put the book into his hand he would be very glad to read it. "But in the meantime, sir, perhaps you would be so good as to finish the tale of the fairy of Chesterfield."

"Oh, yes! Now where was I? Well, for a number of years nothing went wrong for Duffy and nothing went right for the town. A wood grew up in the market square and the townspeople could not conduct their business. Their goats and swine grew wings and flew away. The fairy turned the stones of the half-built parish church into sugar loaves. The sugar grew hot and sticky under the sun and part of the church melted. The town smelt like a giant pastry-cook's. Worse still dogs and cats came and licked at the church, and birds, rats and mice came and nibbled at it. So the towns-people were left with a half-eaten, misshapen church — which was not at all the effect that they had in mind. They were obliged to apply to Duffy and beg him to plead with the fairy on their behalf. But he was sullen and would not help them because he remembered how they had mocked him in the past. So they were obliged to pay the poor, mad wretch all sorts of compliments on his cleverness and handsomeness. So then Duffy pleaded with the fairy and, ah!, what a difference then! The fairy stopped tormenting them and he turned the sugar church back into stone. The townspeople cut down the wood in the market place and bought new animals. But they could never get the church quite right again. Even today there is something odd about the church in Chesterfield. It is not quite like other churches."

Strange was silent a moment. Then he said, "Is it your opinion, Mr Norrell, that fairies have left England completely?"

"I do not know. There are many stories of Englishmen and women meeting with fairies in out-of-the-way places in the last three or four hundred years, but as none of these people were scholars or magicians their evidence cannot be said to be worth a great deal. When you and I summon fairies — I mean," he added hastily, "if we were so ill-advised as to do such a thing — then, providing we cast our spells correctly, the fairies will appear promptly. But where they come from or by what paths they travel is uncertain. In John Uskglass's day very plain roads were built that led out of England into Faerie — wide green roads between high green hedges or stone walls. Those roads still exist, but I do not think fairies use them nowadays any more than Christians. The roads are all overgrown and ruined. They have a lonely look and I am told that people avoid them."

"People believe that fairy roads are unlucky," said Strange.

"They are foolish," said Norrell. "Fairy roads cannot hurt them. Fairy roads lead nowhere at all."
³

"And what of the half-human descendants of fairies? Do they inherit their forefathers' knowledge and powers?" asked Strange.

"Oh! That is quite another question. Many people nowadays have surnames that reveal their ancestors' fairy origins. Other-lander and Fairchild are two. Elfick is another. And Fairey, obviously. I remember there was a Tom Otherlander who worked upon one of our farms when I was a child. But it is quite rare for any of these descendants of fairies to exhibit the least magical talent. Indeed more often than not they have a reputation for malice, pride and laziness — all vices for which their fairy-ancestors were well known."

The next day Strange met with the Royal Dukes and told them how much he regretted that he had been unable to alleviate the King's madness. Their Royal Highnesses were sorry to hear it, but they were not at all surprized. It was the outcome they had expected and they assured Strange that they did not blame him in the least. In fact they were pleased with all he had done and they particularly liked that he had not charged them a fee. As a reward they granted him their Royal Warrants. This meant that he could, if he wished, put gilt and plaster images of all their five coats of arms above his door in Soho-square, and he was at liberty to tell any one he liked that he was Magician to the Royal Dukes by appointment.

Strange did not tell the Dukes that he deserved their gratitude more than they knew. He was quite certain he had saved the King from some horrible fate or other. He simply did not know what it was.

1 Charles James Fox, a radical politician who had died some eight years before. This remark proves how far the King's wits were deranged: Mr Fox was a celebrated atheist who would never upon any inducement have entered a church.

2 When Strange reviewed the morning's events afterwards he could only suppose that the flute-player had made no attempt to deceive him by his sense of taste.

3 Whether Mr Norrell was right to say that fairy roads can do no harm is debatable. They are eerie places and there are dozens of tales of the strange adventures which befell people who attempted to travel along them. The following is one of the better known. It is hard to say what precisely was the fate suffered by the people in the road — certainly it is not a fate you or I would wish to share.

In Yorkshire in the late sixteenth century there was a man who had a farm. Early one morning in summer he went out with two or three of his men to begin the hay-making. A white mist lay upon the land and the air was cool. Along one side of the field there was an ancient fairy road bounded by high hawthorn hedges. Tall grass and young saplings grew in the road and even on the brightest day it was dim and shadowy. The farmer had never seen any one on the fairy road, but that morning he and his men looked up and saw a group of people coming along it. Their faces were strange and they were outlandishly dressed. One among them — a man — strode ahead of the others. He left the road and came into the field. He was dressed in black and was young and handsome; and though they had never seen him before, the farmer and his men knew him immediately — it was the Magician King, John Uskglass. They knelt before him and he raised them up. He told them that he was on a journey and they brought him a horse, and some food and drink. They went and fetched their wives and children, and John Uskglass blessed them and gave them good fortune.

The farmer looked doubtfully at the strange people who remained in the fairy road; but John Uskglass told the farmer not to be afraid. He promised him that the people could do him no harm. Then he rode away.

The strange people in the ancient road lingered a little while, but when the first rays of the strong summer sun touched them they disappeared with the mist.