Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (22 page)

“But …” began Strange.

“Hush, sir!” whispered the man, “Your voice. It is too loud. You will wake him up!”

“Wake him up? Who?”

“The man under the hedge, sir. He is a magician. Did you never hear that if you wake a magician before his time, you risk bringing his dreams out of his head into the world?”

“And who knows what horrors he is dreaming of!” agreed another man, in a whisper.

“But how …” began Strange. Once again several people among the crowd turned and frowned indignantly at him and made signs that he was to speak more softly.

“But how do you know he is a magician?” he whispered.

“Oh! He has been in Monk Gretton for the past two days, sir. He tells everyone he is a magician. On the first day he tricked some of our children into stealing pies and beer from their mothers’ larders, saying that they were for the Queen of the Fairies. Yesterday he was found wandering in the grounds of Farwater Hall, which is our great house here, sir. Mrs Morrow — whose property it is — hired him to tell her fortune, but all he said was that her son, Captain Morrow, has been shot dead by the French — and now, poor lady, she has lain down upon her bed and says she will lie there until she dies. And so, sir, we have had enough of this man. We mean to make him go. And if he will not, we shall send him to the workhouse.”

“Well, that seems most reasonable,” whispered Strange. “But what I do not understand is …”

Just at that moment the man under the hedge opened his eyes. The crowd gave a sort of soft, communal gasp and several people took a step or two backwards.

The man extracted himself from the hedge. This was no easy task because various parts of it — hawthorn twigs, elder branches, strands of ivy, mistletoe and witches’ broom — had insinuated themselves among his clothes, limbs and hair during the night or glued themselves to him with ice. He sat up. He did not seem in the least surprized to find he had an audience; indeed one would almost have supposed from his behaviour that he had been expecting it. He looked at them all and gave several disparaging sniffs and snorts.

He ran his fingers through his hair, removing dead leaves, bits of twig and half a dozen earwigs. “I reached out my hand,” he muttered to no one in particular. “England’s rivers turned and flowed the other way.” He loosened his neckcloth and fished out some spiders which had taken up residence inside his shirt. In doing so, he revealed that his neck and throat were ornamented with an odd pattern of blue lines, dots, crosses and circles. Then he wrapped his neckcloth back about his neck and, having thus completed his toilet to his satisfaction, he rose to his feet.

“My name is Vinculus,” he declared. Considering that he had just spent a night under a hedge his voice was remarkably loud and clear. “For ten days I have been walking westwards in search of a man who is destined to be a great magician. Ten days ago I was shewn a picture of this man and now by certain mystic signs I see that it is you!”

Everyone looked around to see who he meant.

The man in the shepherd’s smock and the knitted shawls came up to Strange and plucked at his coat. “It is you, sir,” he said.

“Me?” said Strange.

Vinculus approached Strange.

"
Two magicians shall appear in England
,” he said.

"The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me;

The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction;

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

The second shall see his dearest possession in his enemy’s hand
…”

“I see,” interrupted Strange. “And which am I, the first or the second? No, do not tell me. It does not matter. Both sound entirely dreadful. For someone who is anxious that I should become a magician, I must say you do not make the life sound very appealing. I hope to be married soon and a life spent in dark woods surrounded by thieves and murderers would be inconvenient to say the least. I suggest you chuse someone else.”

“I did not chuse you, Magician! You were chosen long ago.”

“Well, whoever it was, they will be disappointed.”

Vinculus ignored this remark and took a firm grasp of the bridle of Strange’s horse as a precaution against his riding off. He then proceeded to recite in its entirety the prophecy which he had already performed for the benefit of Mr Norrell in the library at Hanover-square.

Strange received it with a similar degree of enthusiasm and when it was done, he leant down from his horse and said very slowly and distinctly, “I do not know any magic!”

Vinculus paused. He looked as if he was prepared to concede that this might be a legitimate obstacle to Strange’s becoming a great magician. Happily the solution occurred to him immediately; he stuck his hand into the breast of his coat and pulled out some sheets of paper with bits of straw sticking to them. “Now,” he said, looking even more mysterious and impressive than before, “I have here some spells which … No, no! I cannot
give
them to you!” (Strange had reached out to take them.) “They are precious objects. I endured years of torment and suffered great ordeals in order to possess them.”

“How much?” said Strange.

“Seven shillings and sixpence,” said Vinculus.

“Very well.”

“Surely you do not intend to give him any money, sir?” asked Jeremy Johns.

“If it will stop him talking to me, then, yes, certainly.”

Meanwhile the crowd was regarding Strange and Jeremy Johns in no very friendly manner. Their appearance had coincided more or less with Vinculus’s waking and the villagers were starting to wonder if they might not be two apparitions from Vinculus’s dreams. The villagers began to accuse one another of having woken Vinculus up. They were just starting to quarrel about it when an official-looking person in an important-looking hat arrived and informed Vinculus that he must go to the workhouse as a pauper. Vinculus retorted that he would do no such thing as he was not a pauper any longer — he had seven shillings and sixpence! And he dangled the money in the man’s face in a very impertinent fashion. Just as a fight seemed certain to ensue from one cause or another, peace was suddenly restored to the village of Monk Gretton by the simple expedient of Vinculus turning and walking off one way and Strange and Jeremy Johns riding off another.

Towards five o’clock they arrived at an inn in the village of S— near Gloucester. So little hope had Strange that his meeting with Miss Woodhope would be productive of any thing but misery to them both that he thought he would put it off until the following morning. He ordered a good dinner and went and sat down by the fire in a comfortable chair with a newspaper. But he soon discovered that comfort and tranquillity were poor substitutes for Miss Woodhope’s company and so he cancelled the dinner and went immediately to the house of Mr and Mrs Redmond in order to begin being unhappy as soon as possible. He found only the ladies at home, Mrs Redmond and Miss Woodhope.

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation and so it will come as no surprize to my readers to discover that Strange’s musings concerning Miss Woodhope had produced a most inexact portrait of her. Though his imaginary conversations might be said to describe her
opinions
, they were no guide at all to her
disposition
and
manners
. It was
not
her habit to harass recently bereaved persons with demands that they build schools and almshouses. Nor did she find fault with everything they said. She was not so unnatural.

She greeted him in a very different manner from the cross, scolding young lady of his imaginings. Far from demanding that he immediately undo every wrong his father had ever done, she behaved with particular kindness towards him and seemed altogether delighted to see him.

She was about twenty-two years of age. In repose her looks were only moderately pretty. There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lively disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three counties.

Her friend, Mrs Redmond, was a kindly, placid creature of forty-five. She was not rich, widely travelled or particularly clever. Under other circumstances she would have been puzzled to know what to say to a man of the world like Jonathan Strange, but happily his father had just died and that provided a subject.

“I dare say you are a great deal occupied just now, Mr Strange,” she said. “I remember when my own father died, there was a world of things to do. He left so many bequests. There were some china jugs that used to stand upon the kitchen mantelpiece at home. My father wished a jug to be given to each of our old servants. But the descriptions of the jugs in his will were most confusing and no one could tell which jug was meant for which person. And then the servants quarrelled and they all desired to be given the yellow jug with pink roses. Oh! I thought I would never be done with those bequests. Did your father leave many bequests, Mr Strange?”

“No, madam. None. He hated everybody.”

“Ah! That is fortunate, is it not? And what shall you do now?”

“Do?” echoed Strange.

“Miss Woodhope says your poor, dear father bought and sold things. Shall you do the same?”

“No, madam. If I have my way — and I believe I shall — my father’s business will all be wound up as soon as possible.”

“Oh! But then I dare say you will be a good deal taken up with farming? Miss Woodhope says your estate is a large one.”

“It is, madam. But I have tried farming and I find it does not suit me.”

“Ah!” said Mrs Redmond, wisely.

There was a silence. Mrs Redmond’s clock ticked and the coals shifted in the grate. Mrs Redmond began to pull about some embroidery silks that lay in her lap and had got into a fearful knot. Then her black cat mistook this activity for a game and stalked along the sopha and tried to catch at the silks. Arabella laughed and caught up the cat and started to play with it. This was exactly the sort of tranquil domestic scene that Strange had set his heart upon (though he did not want Mrs Redmond and was undecided about the cat) and it was all the more desirable in his eyes since he had never met with anything other than coldness and disagreeableness in his childhood home. The question was: how to persuade Arabella that it was what she wanted too? A sort of inspiration came over him and he suddenly addressed Mrs Redmond again. “In short, madam, I do not think that I shall have the time. I am going to study magic.”

“Magic!” exclaimed Arabella, looking at him in surprize.

She seemed about to question him further, but at this highly interesting moment Mr Redmond was heard in the hall. He was accompanied by his curate, Henry Woodhope — the same Henry Woodhope who was both brother to Arabella and childhood friend to Jonathan Strange. Naturally there were introductions and explanations to get through (Henry Woodhope had not known Strange was coming) and for the moment Strange’s unexpected announcement was forgotten.

The gentlemen were just come from a parish meeting and as soon as everyone was seated again in the drawing-room, Mr Redmond and Henry imparted various items of parish news to Mrs Redmond and Arabella. Then they inquired about Strange’s journey, the state of the roads and how the farmers got on in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire (these being the counties Strange had travelled through). At seven o’clock the tea things were brought in. In the silence that followed, while they were all eating and drinking, Mrs Redmond remarked to her husband, “Mr Strange is going to be a magician, my love.” She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world, because to her it was.

“A magician?” said Henry, quite astonished. “Why should you want to do that?”

Strange paused. He did not wish to tell his real reason — which was to impress Arabella with his determination to do something sober and scholarly — and so he fell back upon the only other explanation he could think of. “I met a man under a hedge at Monk Gretton who told me that I was a magician.”

Mr Redmond laughed, approving the joke. “Excellent!” he said.

“Did you, indeed?” said Mrs Redmond.

“I do not understand,” said Henry Woodhope.

“You do not believe me, I suppose?” said Strange to Arabella.

“Oh, on the contrary, Mr Strange!” said Arabella with an amused smile. “It is all of a piece with your usual way of doing things. It is quite as strong a foundation for a career as I should expect from you.”

Henry said, “But if you are going to take up a profession — and I cannot see why you should want one at all, now that you have come into your property — surely you can chuse something better than magic! It has no practical application.”

“Oh, but I think you are wrong!” said Mr Redmond. “There is that gentleman in London who confounds the French by sending them illusions! I forget his name. What is it that he calls his theory? Modern magic?”

“But how is that different from the old-fashioned sort?” wondered Mrs Redmond. “And which will you do, Mr Strange?”