Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (36 page)

“It is too late for the other soldiers to do any thing,” said Major Grant. “They are all dead. Twenty pairs of French boots and twenty French uniforms are, at this very moment, hanging in the shop of an old clothes dealer in Salamanca. The coats all have long slits in the back, such as might be made by an Italian stiletto, and they are all over blood stains.”

“So, the cannon are in the hands of a pack of Italian deserters, are they?” said Strange. “What will they do? Start a war of their own?”

“No, no!” said Grant. “They will sell them to the highest bidder. Either to you, my lord or to General Castanos.” (This was the name of the General in charge of the Spanish Army.)

“Somerset!” said his lordship. “What ought I to give for six French cannon? Four hundred dollars?”

“Oh! It is certainly worth four hundred dollars to make the French feel the consequences of their foolishness, my lord. But what I do not understand is why we have not heard something from the Neapolitans already. What can they be waiting for?”

“I believe I know the answer to that,” said Major Grant. “Four nights ago two men met secretly in a little graveyard upon a hillside not far from Castrejon. They wore ragged French uniforms and spoke a sort of Italian. They conferred a while and when they parted one went south towards the French Army at Cantalapiedra, the other went north towards the Duero. My lord, it is my belief that the Neapolitan deserters are sending messages to their countrymen to come and join them. I dare say they believe that with the money that you or General Castanos will give them for the guns, they will all be able to sail back to Naples in a golden ship. There is probably not a man among them who does not have a brother or cousin in some other French regiment. They do not wish to return home and face their mothers and grandmothers without bringing their relations with them.”

“I have always heard that Italian women are rather fierce,” agreed Colonel De Lancey.

“All we need to do, my lord,” continued Major Grant, “is find some Neapolitans and question them. I am certain we will find that they know where the thieves are and where the guns are.”

“Are there any Neapolitans among yesterday’s prisoners?” asked Wellington.

Colonel De Lancey sent a man to find out.

“Of course,” continued Wellington, thoughtfully, “it would suit me much better to pay nothing at all. Merlin!” (This was his name for Jonathan Strange.) “If you will be so good as to conjure up a vision of the Neapolitans, perhaps we will gain some clue as to where they and the guns are to be found and then we can simply go and get them!”

“Perhaps,” said Strange.

“I dare say there will be an oddly shaped mountain in the background,” said his lordship cheerfully, “or a village with a distinctive church tower. One of the Spanish guides will soon recognize the place.”

“I dare say,” said Strange.

“You do not seem very sure of it.”

“Forgive me, my lord, but — as I think I have said before — visions are precisely the wrong sort of magic for this sort of thing.”
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“Well, have you any thing better to suggest?” asked his lordship.

“No, my lord. Not at present.”

“Then it is decided!” said Lord Wellington. “Mr Strange, Colonel De Lancey and Major Grant can turn their attention to the discovery of these guns. Somerset and I will go and annoy the French.” The brisk manner in which his lordship spoke suggested that he expected all of these things to start happening very soon. Strange and the gentlemen of the Staff swallowed the rest of their breakfast and went to their various tasks.

At about midday Lord Wellington and Fitzroy Somerset were seated upon their horses on a slight ridge near the village of Garcia Hernandez. On the stony plain below several brigades of British Dragoons were preparing to charge some squadrons of cavalry which formed the rearguard of the French Army.

Just then Colonel De Lancey rode up.

“Ah, Colonel!” said Lord Wellington. “Have you found me any Neapolitans?”

“There are no Neapolitans among the prisoners, my lord,” said De Lancey. “But Mr Strange suggested we look among the dead upon yesterday’s battlefield. By magical means he has identified seventeen corpses as Neapolitan.”

“Corpses!” said Lord Wellington, putting down his telescope in surprize. “What in the world does he want corpses for?”

“We asked him that, my lord, but he grew evasive and would not answer. However he has asked that the dead men be put somewhere safe where they will be neither lost nor molested.”

“Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people,” said Wellington.

At that moment an officer standing close by cried out that the Dragoons had increased their pace to a gallop and would soon be upon the French. Instantly the eccentricities of the magician were forgotten; Lord Wellington put his telescope to his eye and every man present turned his attention to the battle.

Strange meanwhile had returned from the battlefield to the castle at Alba de Tormes. In the Armoury Tower (the only part of the castle still standing) he had found a room that no one was using and had appropriated it. Scattered about the room were Norrell’s forty books. They were all still more or less in one piece, though some were decidedly battered-looking. The floor was covered with Strange’s notebooks and pieces of paper with scraps of spells and magical calculations scribbled on them. On a table in the centre of the room stood a wide and shallow silver bowl, filled with water. The shutters had been pulled tight and the only light in the room came from the silver bowl. All in all it was a veritable magician’s cave and the pretty Spanish maid who brought coffee and almond biscuits at regular intervals was quite terrified and ran out again as soon as she had put down her trays.

An officer of the 18th Hussars called Whyte had arrived to assist Strange. Captain Whyte had lived for a time at the house of the British Envoy in Naples. He was adept at languages and understood the Neapolitan dialect perfectly.

Strange had no difficulty in conjuring up the visions but, just as he had predicted, the visions gave very little clue as to where the men were. The guns, he discovered, were half hidden behind some pale yellow rocks — the sort of rocks which were scattered liberally throughout the Peninsula — and the men were camped in a sparse woodland of olive and pine trees — the sort of woodland in fact that one might discover by casting one’s glance in any direction.

Captain Whyte stood at Strange’s side and translated everything the Neapolitans said into clear, concise English. But, though they stared into the silver bowl all day they learnt very little. When a man has been hungry for eighteen months, when he has not seen his wife or sweetheart for two years, when he has spent the last four months sleeping upon mud and stones his powers of conversation tend to be somewhat dulled. The Neapolitans had very little to say to each other and what they did say chiefly concerned the food they wished they were eating, the charms of the absent wives and sweethearts they wished they were enjoying, and the soft feather mattresses they wished they were sleeping upon.

For half the night and most of the following day Strange and Captain Whyte remained in the Armoury Tower, engaged in the dull work of watching the Neapolitans. Towards the evening of the second day an
aide-de-camp
brought a message from Wellington. His lordship had set up his Headquarters at a place called Flores de Avila and Strange and Captain Whyte were summoned to attend him there. So they packed up Strange’s books and the silver bowl and gathered their other possessions and set off along the hot, dusty roads.

Flores de Avila proved to be rather an obscure place; none of the Spanish men and women whom Captain Whyte accosted had heard of it. But when two of Europe’s greatest armies have recently travelled along a road, they cannot help but leave some signs of their passing; Strange and Captain Whyte found that their best plan was to follow the trail of discarded baggage, broken carts, corpses and feasting black birds. Against a background of empty, stone-strewn plains these sights resembled nothing so much as images from a mediaeval painting of Hell and they provoked Strange to make a great many gloomy remarks upon the Horror and Futility of War. Ordinarily Captain Whyte, a professional soldier, would have felt inclined to argue, but he too was affected by the sombre character of their surroundings and only answered, “Very true, sir. Very true.”

But a soldier ought not to dwell too long on such matters. His life is full of hardship and he must take his pleasure where he can. Though he may take time to reflect upon the cruelties that he sees, place him among his comrades and it is almost impossible for his spirits not to rise. Strange and Captain Whyte reached Flores de Avila at about nine o’clock and within five minutes they were greeting their friends cheerfully, listening to the latest gossip about Lord Wellington and making a great many inquiries about the previous day’s battle — another defeat for the French. One would scarcely suppose they had seen any thing to distress them within the last twelvemonth.

The Headquarters had been set up in a ruined church on a hillside above the village and there Lord Wellington, Fitzroy Somerset, Colonel De Lancey and Major Grant were waiting to meet them.

For all that he had won two battles in as many days Lord Wellington was not in the best of tempers. The French Army, famed throughout Europe for the rapidity of its marches, had got away from him and was now well on the way to Valladolid and safety. “It is a perfect mystery to me how they get on so fast,” he complained, “and I would give a great deal to catch up with them and destroy them. But this is the only army I have and if I wear it out I cannot get another.”

“We have heard from the Neapolitans with the guns,” Major Grant informed Strange and Captain Whyte. “They are asking a hundred dollars a piece for them. Six hundred dollars in all.”

“Which is too much,” said his lordship briefly. “Mr Strange, Captain Whyte, I hope you have good news for me?”

“Hardly, my lord,” said Strange. “The Neapolitans are in a wood. But as to where that wood might be I have not the least idea. I am not sure how to progress. I have exhausted everything I know.”

“Then you must quickly learn something else!”

For a moment Strange looked as if he was going to return his lordship an angry reply, but thinking better of it he sighed and inquired whether the seventeen dead Neapolitans were being kept safe.

“They have been put in the bell tower,” said Colonel De Lancey. “Sergeant Nash has charge of them. Whatever you want them for, I advise you to use them soon. I doubt they will last much longer in this heat.”

“They will last another night,” said Strange. “The nights are cold.” Then he turned and went out of the church.

Wellington’s Staff watched him go with some curiosity. “You know,” said Fitzroy Somerset, “I really cannot help wondering what he is going to do with seventeen corpses.”

“Whatever it is,” said Wellington, dipping his quill in the ink and beginning a letter to the Ministers in London, “he does not relish the thought of it. He is doing everything he can to avoid it.”

That night Strange did a sort of magic he had never done before. He attempted to penetrate the dreams of the Neapolitan company. In this he was perfectly successful.

One man dreamt that he was chased up a tree by a vicious Roast Leg of Lamb. He sat in the tree weeping with hunger while the Leg of Lamb ran round and round and thrust its knob of bone at him in a menacing way. Shortly afterwards the Leg of Lamb was joined by five or six spiteful Boiled Eggs who whispered the most dreadful lies about him.

Another man dreamt that, as he was walking through a little wood, he met his dead mother. She told him that she had just looked down a rabbit hole and seen Napoleon Buonaparte, the King of England, the Pope and the Czar of Russia at the bottom. The man went down the rabbit hole to see, but when he arrived at the bottom he discovered that Napoleon Buonaparte, the King of England, the Pope and the Czar of Russia were in fact all the same person, a huge blubbering great man as big as a church with rusty iron teeth and burning cartwheels for eyes. “Ha!” sneered this ogre. “You did not think we were really different people, did you?” And it reached into a bubbling cauldron that stood nearby and pulled out the dreamer’s little son and ate him. In short the Neapolitans’ dreams, though interesting, were not very illuminating.

Next morning at about ten o’clock Lord Wellington was sitting at a makeshift desk in the chancel of the ruined church. He looked up and saw Strange entering the church. “Well?” he asked.

Strange sighed and said, “Where is Sergeant Nash? I need him to bring out the dead bodies. With your permission, my lord, I will try some magic that I heard of once.”
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News quickly got about Headquarters that the magician was going to do something to the dead Neapolitans. Flores de Avila was a tiny place, scarcely more than a hundred dwellings. The previous evening had proved very dull for an army of young men who had just won a great victory and who felt inclined to celebrate and it was considered highly probable that Strange’s magic would prove the best entertainment of the day. A small crowd of officers and men soon gathered to see it.

The church had a stone terrace which overlooked a narrow valley and a prospect of pale, towering mountains. Vineyards and olive groves clothed the slopes. Sergeant Nash and his men fetched the seventeen corpses from the bell tower and propped them up in a sitting position against a low wall that marked the edge of the terrace.

Strange walked along, looking at each in turn. “I thought I told you,” he said to Sergeant Nash, “that I particularly did not want any one interfering with the corpses.”

Sergeant Nash looked indignant. “I am sure, sir,” he said, “that none of our lads has touched them. But my lord,” he said, appealing to Lord Wellington, “there was scarcely a corpse on the battlefield that those Spanish irregulars had not done something to …” He expatiated on the various national failings of the Spanish and concluded that if a man so much as went to sleep where the Spanish could find him he would be sorry for it when he woke up.