Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (119 page)

"I would have done it," said Lascelles.

"Would you? Well then, you are very welcome to go to Venice and try."

"Where is he now?"

"In the Darkness - in Venice - but he is coming to England."

"He said so?"

"Yes, I told you - I have messages: one for Childermass, one for Norrell and one for all the magicians in England."

"And what are they?"

"I am to tell Childermass that Lady Pole was not raised from the dead in the way Norrell said - he had a fairy to help him and the fairy has done things - wrong things - and I am to give Childermass a little box. That is the first message. And I am to tell Norrell that Strange is coming back. That is the third message."

Lascelles considered. "This little box, what does it contain?"

"I do not know."

"Why? Is it sealed shut in some way? By magic?"

Drawlight shut his eyes and shook his head. "I do not know that either."

Lascelles laughed out loud. "You do not mean to tell me that you have had a box in your possession for weeks and not tried to open it? You of all people? Why, when you used to come to my house, I never dared leave you alone for a moment. My letters would have been read; my business would have been common knowledge by the next morning."

Drawlight's glance sank to the ground. He seemed to shrink inside his clothes. He grew, if it were possible, several degrees more miserable. One might have supposed that he was ashamed to hear his past sins described, but it was not that. "I am afraid," he whispered.

Lascelles made a sound of exasperation. "Where is the box?" he cried. "Give it to me!"

Drawlight reached into a pocket of his coat and brought out something wrapped in a dirty handkerchief. The handkerchief was tied into many wonderfully complicated knots to guard against the box coming open of its own accord. Drawlight gave it to Lascelles.

With a series of grimaces, expressive of extreme distaste, Las- celles set himself to undo the knots. When he had done so, he opened the box.

A moment's silence.

"You are a fool," said Lascelles and shut the box with a snap and put it in his own pocket.

"Oh! But I have to . . ." began Drawlight, reaching out ineffectually.

"You said that there were three messages. What is the other one?"

"I do not think you will understand it."

"What? You understand it, yet I will not? You must have grown a great deal cleverer in Italy."

"That is not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean? Tell me quickly. I am growing bored of this conversation."

"Strange said that tree speaks to stone. Stone speaks to water. He said magicians can learn magic from woods and stones and such. He said John Uskglass's old alliances still held."

"John Uskglass, John Uskglass! How sick I am of that name! Yet they all rattle on about him nowadays. Even Norrell. I cannot understand why; his day was done four hundred years ago."

Drawlight held out his hand again. "Give me back my box. I must . . ."

"What the devil is the matter with you? Do not you understand? Your messages will never be delivered - except for the one to Norrell and that I shall deliver myself."

A howl of anguish burst from Drawlight. "Please, please! Do not make me fail him! You do not understand. He will kill me! Or worse!"

Lascelles spread his arms and glanced around, as if asking the wood to bear witness how ridiculous this was. "Do you honestly believe that I would allow you to destroy Norrell? Which is to say estroy
me
?"

"It is not my fault! It is not my fault! I dare not disobey him!"

"Worm, what will you do between two such men as Strange and me? You will be crushed."

Drawlight made a little sound, like a whimper of fear. He gazed at Lascelles with strange, addled eyes. He seemed about to say something. Then, with surprizing speed, he turned and fled through the trees.

Lascelles did not trouble to follow him. He simply raised one of the pistols, aimed it and fired.

The bullet struck Drawlight in the thigh, producing, for one instant, a red, wet flowering of blood and flesh in the white and grey woods. Drawlight screamed and fell with a crash into a patch of briars. He tried to crawl away but his leg was quite useless and, besides, the briars were catching at his clothes; he could not pull free of them. He turned his head to see Lascelles advance upon him; fear and pain rendered his features entirely unrecognizable.

Lascelles fired the second pistol.

The left side of Drawlight's head burst open, like an egg or an orange. He convulsed several times and was still.

Although there was no one there to see, and although his blood was pounding in his ears, in his chest, in his everything, Lascelles would not permit himself to appear in the least disturbed: that, he felt, would not have been the behaviour of a gentleman.

He had a valet who was much addicted to accounts of murders nd hangings in
The Newgate Calendar
nd
The Malefactor's Register
. Sometimes Lascelles would amuse himself by picking up one of these volumes. A prominent characteristic of these histories was that the murderer, however bold he was during the act of murder, would soon afterwards be overcome with emotion, leading him to act in strange, irrational ways that were always his undoing. Lascelles doubted there was much truth in these accounts, but for safety's sake he examined himself for signs of remorse or horror. He found none. Indeed his chief thought was that there was one less ugly thing in the world. "Really," he said to himself, "if he had known three or four years ago that it would come to this, he would have begged me to do it."

There was a rustling sound. To Lascelles's surprize he saw that a small shoot was poking out of Drawlight's right eye (the left one had been destroyed by the pistol blast). Strands of ivy were winding themselves about his neck and chest. A holly shoot had pierced his hand; a young birch had shot up through his foot; a hawthorn had sprung up through his belly. He looked as if he been crucified upon the wood itself. But the trees did not stop there; they kept growing.A tangle of bronze and scarlet stems blotted out his ruined face, and his limbs and body decayed as plants and other living things took strength from them. Within a short space of time nothing of Christopher Drawlight remained. The trees, the stones and the earth had taken him inside themselves, but in their shape it was possible still to discern something of the man he had once been.

"That briar was his arm, I think," mused Lascelles. "That stone . . . his heart perhaps? It is small enough and hard enough." He laughed. "That is the ridiculous thing about Strange's magic," he said to no one at all. "Sooner or later it all works against him." He mounted on his horse and rode back towards the road.

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

Mid February 1817

M
ORE 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,
ut 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 com- plicated.) "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), "in- visible 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."