Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (83 page)

63
The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood
beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache

Mid February 1817

More than twenty-eight hours had passed since Lascelles had left Hanover-square and Mr Norrell was half frantic. He had promised Lascelles they would wait for him, but now he feared they would arrive at Hurtfew Abbey to find Strange in possession of the library.

No one in the house at Hanover-square was permitted to go to bed that night and by morning everyone was tired and wretched.

“But why do we wait at all?” asked Childermass. “What good do you suppose
he
will be when Strange comes?”

“I place great reliance on Mr Lascelles. You know I do. He is my only adviser now.”

“You still have me,” said Childermass.

Mr Norrell blinked his small eyes rapidly. They seemed to be half a sentence away from,
but you are only a servant
. Mr Norrell said nothing.

Childermass seemed to understand him anyway. He made a small sound of disgust and walked off.

At six o’clock in the evening the library door was thrown open and Lascelles walked in. He looked as he had never looked before: his hair was dishevelled, his neckcloth was stained with dust and sweat, and there were mud-splashes on his greatcoat and boots.

“We were right, Mr Norrell!” he cried. “Strange is coming!”

“When?” said Mr Norrell, turning pale.

“I do not know. He has not been so kind as to furnish us with those details, but we should leave for Hurtfew Abbey as soon as possible!”

“We can go immediately. All is in readiness. So you actually saw Drawlight? Is he here?” Mr Norrell leant sideways to see if he could catch a glimpse of Drawlight behind Lascelles.

“No, I did not see him. I waited for him, but he never came. But do not fear, sir!” (Mr Norrell was on the point of interrupting.) “He has sent a letter. We have all the intelligence we need.”

“A letter! May I see it?”

“Of course! But there will be time enough for that on the journey. We must be off. You need not delay on my account. My wants are few and what I do not have, I can very easily do without.” (This was perhaps a little surprizing. Lascelles’s wants had never been few before. They had been numerous and complicated.) “Come, come, Mr Norrell. Rouse yourself. Strange is coming!” He strode out of the room again. Mr Norrell heard later from Lucas that he had not even asked for water to wash or for any thing to drink. He had simply gone to the carriage, thrown himself into a corner and waited.

By eight o’clock they were on their way to Yorkshire. Mr Norrell and Lascelles were inside the carriage; Lucas and Davey were upon the box; Childermass was on horseback. At the Islington tollgate Lucas paid the keeper. There was a smell of snow in the air.

Mr Norrell gazed idly at a shop window ablaze with lamplight. It was a superior sort of shop with an uncluttered interior and elegant modern chairs for the customers to sit upon; in fact it was so very refined an establishment that it was by no means clear what it sold. A heap of brightly coloured somethings lay tossed upon a chair, but whether they were shawls or materials for gowns or something else entirely, Mr Norrell could not tell. There were three women in the shop. One was a customer — a smart, stylish person in a spencer like a Hussar’s uniform, complete with fur trim and frogging. On her head was a little Russian fur cap; she kept touching the back of it as if she feared it would fall off. The shopkeeper was more discreetly dressed in a plain dark gown, and there was besides a little assistant who looked on respectfully and bobbed a nervous little curtsey whenever any one chanced to look at her. The customer and the shopkeeper were not engaged in business; they were talking together with a great deal of animation and laughter. It was a scene as far removed from Mr Norrell’s usual interests as it was possible to be, yet it went to his heart in a way he could not understand. He thought fleetingly of Mrs Strange and Lady Pole. Then something flew between him and the cheerful scene — something like a piece of the darkness made solid. He thought that it was a raven.

The toll was paid. Davey shook the reins and the carriage moved on towards the Archway.

Snow began to fall. A sleety wind buffeted the sides of the carriage and made it rock from side to side; it penetrated every chink and crack, and chilled shoulders, noses and feet. Mr Norrell was not made any more comfortable by the fact that Lascelles appeared to be in a very odd mood. He was excited, almost elated, though Mr Norrell could not tell why he should be. When the wind howled, he laughed, as if he suspected it of trying to frighten him and wished to shew it that it was mistaken.

When he saw that Mr Norrell was observing him, he said, “I have been thinking. This is the merest nothing! You and I, sir, will soon get the better of Strange and his tricks. What a pack of old women the Ministers are! They disgust me! All this alarm over one lunatic! It makes me laugh to think of it. Of course Liverpool and Sidmouth are the very worst of them! For years they have hardly dared put their noses out of their front doors for fear of Buonaparte and now Strange has sent them into fits merely by going insane.”

“Oh, but you are wrong!” declared Mr Norrell. “Indeed, you are! The threat from Strange is immense — Buonaparte was nothing to it — but you have not told me what Drawlight said. I should very much like to see his letter. I will tell Davey to stop at the Angel in Hadley and then …”

“But I do not have it. I left it at Bruton-street.”

“Oh! But …”

Lascelles laughed. “Mr Norrell! Do not concern yourself! Do I not tell you that it does not matter? I recall it exactly.”

“What does it say?”

“That Strange is mad and imprisoned in Eternal Darkness — all of which we knew before — and …”

“What form does his madness take?” asked Mr Norrell.

The merest pause.

“Talking nonsense mostly. But then he did that before, did he not?” Lascelles laughed. Catching sight of Mr Norrell’s expression, he continued more soberly, “He babbles about trees, and stones, and John Uskglass, and,” (glancing round for inspiration), “invisible coaches. And oh, yes! This will amuse you! He has stolen fingers off the hands of several Venetian maidens. Stolen them clean away! Keeps the stolen fingers in little boxes!”

“Fingers!” said Mr Norrell in alarm. This seemed to suggest some unpleasant associations to him. He thought for a moment but could make nothing of it. “Did Drawlight describe the Darkness? Did he say any thing that might help us understand it?”

“No. He saw Strange, and Strange gave him a message for you. He says that he is coming. That is the substance of the letter.”

They fell into silence. Mr Norrell began to doze without intending to; but several times in his dreams he heard Lascelles whispering to himself in the darkness.

At midnight they changed horses at the Haycock Inn at Wansford. Lascelles and Mr Norrell waited in the public parlour, a large, plain apartment with wood-panelled walls, a sanded floor and two great fireplaces.

The door opened and Childermass walked in. He went straight to Lascelles and addressed him in the following words: “Lucas says there is a letter from Drawlight telling what he has seen in Venice.”

Lascelles half-turned his head, but he did not look at Childermass.

“May I see it?” asked Childermass.

“I left it at Bruton-street,” said Lascelles.

Childermass looked a little surprized. “Very well then,” he said. “Lucas can fetch it. We will hire a horse for him here. He will catch up with us again before we reach Hurtfew.”

Lascelles smiled. “I said Bruton-street, did I not? But do you know? — I do not think it is there. I believe I left it at the inn, the one in Chatham where I waited for Drawlight. They will have thrown it away.” He turned back to the fire.

Childermass scowled at him for a moment or two. Then he strode out of the room.

A manservant came to say that hot water, towels and other necessaries had been set out in two bed-chambers so that Mr Norrell and Lascelles might refresh themselves. “And it’s a blindman’s holiday in the passage-way, gentlemen,” he said cheerfully, “so I’ve lit you a candle each.”

Mr Norrell took his candle and made his way along the passage-way (which was indeed very dark). Suddenly Childermass appeared and seized his arm. “What in the world were you thinking of?” he hissed. “To leave London without that letter?”

“But he says he remembers what it contains,” pleaded Mr Norrell.

“Oh! And you believe him, do you?”

Mr Norrell made no reply. He went into the room that had been made ready. He washed his hands and face and, as he did so, he caught a glimpse in the mirror of the bed behind him. It was heavy, old fashioned and — as often happens at inns — much too large for the room. Four carved mahogany columns, a high dark canopy and bunches of black ostrich feathers at each corner all contrived to give it a funereal look. It was as if someone had brought him into the room and shewn him his own tomb. He began to have the strangest feeling — the same feeling he had had at the tollgate, watching the three women — the feeling that something was coming to an end and that all his choices had now been made. He had taken a road in his youth, but the road did not lead where he had supposed; he was going home, but home had become something monstrous. In the half-dark, standing by the black bed, he remembered why he had always feared the darkness as a child: the darkness belonged to John Uskglass.

For always and for always

I pray remember me

Upon the moors, beneath the stars

With the King’s wild company

He hurried from the room, back to the warmth and lights of the public parlour.

A little after six o’clock a grey dawn came up that was scarcely any dawn at all. White snow fell through a grey sky on to a grey and white world. Davey was so liberally coated in snow that one might have supposed that someone had ordered a wax-works model of him and the plaster mould was being prepared.

All that day a succession of post-horses laboured to bring the carriage through snow and wind. A succession of inns provided hot drinks and a brief respite from the weather. Davey and Childermass — who, as coachman and rider, were undoubtedly the most exhausted of the party — derived the least benefit from these halts; they were generally in the stables arguing with the innkeeper about the horses. At Grantham the innkeeper infuriated Childermass by proposing to rent them a stone-blind horse. Childermass swore he would not take it; the innkeeper on the other hand swore it was the best horse he had. There was very little choice and they ended by hiring it. Davey said afterwards that it was an excellent beast, hard-working and all the more obedient to his instructions since it had no other means of knowing where to go or what to do. Davey himself lasted as far as the Newcastle Arms at Tuxford and there they were obliged to leave him. He had driven more than a hundred and thirty miles and was, said Childermass, so tired he could barely speak. Childermass hired a postillion and they travelled on.

An hour or so before sunset the snow ceased and the skies cleared. Long blue-black shadows overlaid the bare fields. Five miles out of Doncaster they passed the inn that is called the Red House (by reason of its painted walls). In the low winter sun it blazed like a house of fire. The carriage went on a little way and then halted.

“Why are we stopping?” cried Mr Norrell from within.

Lucas leant down from the box and said something in reply, but the wind carried his voice away and Mr Norrell did not hear what it was.

Childermass had left the highway and was riding across a field. The field was filled with ravens. As he passed, they flew up with a great croaking and cawing. On the far side of the field was an ancient hedge with an opening and two tall holly-trees, one on each side. The opening led into another road or lane, bounded by hedges. Childermass halted there and looked first one way and then the other. He hesitated. Then he shook his reins and the horse trotted between the trees, into the lane and out of sight.

“He has gone into the fairy road!” cried Mr Norrell in alarm.

“Oh!” said Lascelles. “Is that what it is?”

“Yes, indeed!” said Mr Norrell. “That is one of the more famous ones. It is reputed to have joined Doncaster to Newcastle by way of two fairy citadels.”

They waited.

After about twenty minutes Lucas climbed down from the box. “How long ought we to stay here, sir?” he asked.

Mr Norrell shook his head. “No Englishman has stept over the boundaries into Faerie since Martin Pale three hundred years ago. It is perfectly possible that he will never come out again. Perhaps …”

Just then Childermass reappeared and galloped back across the field.

“Well, it is true,” he told Mr Norrell. “The paths to Faerie are open again.”

“What did you see?” asked Mr Norrell.

“The road goes on a little way and then leads into a wood of thorn trees. At the entrance to the wood there is a statue of a woman with her hands outstretched. In one hand she holds a stone eye and in the other a stone heart. As for the wood itself …” Childermass made a gesture, perhaps expressive of his inability to describe what he had seen, or perhaps of his powerlessness in the face of it. “Corpses hang from every tree. Some might have died as recently as yesterday. Others are no more than age-old skeletons dressed in rusting armour. I came to a high tower built of rough-hewn stones. The walls were pierced with a few tiny windows. There was a light at one of them and the shadow of someone looking out. Beneath the tower was a clearing with a brook running through it. A young man was standing there. He looked pale and sickly, with dead eyes, and he wore a British uniform. He told me he was the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. He had sworn to protect the Lady of the Castle by challenging any one who approached with the intent of harming or insulting her. I asked him if he had killed all the men I had seen. He said he had killed some of them and hung them upon the thorns — as his predecessor had done before him. I asked him how the Lady intended to reward him for his service. He said he did not know. He had never seen her or spoken to her. She remained in the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart; he stayed between the brook and the thorn trees. He asked me if I intended to fight him. I reminded him that I had neither insulted nor harmed his lady. I told him I was a servant and bound to return to my master who was at that moment waiting for me. Then I turned my horse and rode back.”