Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (32 page)

But from the first moment of his entering the house Strange found himself subject to that peculiarly uncomfortable Natural Law which states that whenever a person arrives at a place where he is not known, then wherever he stands he is sure to be in the way. He could not sit because the room he had been placed in contained no chairs — presumably in case the French should somehow penetrate the house and hide behind them — so he took up a position in front of a window. But then two officers came in and one of them wished to demonstrate some important military characteristic of the Portuguese landscape, for which purpose it was necessary to look out of the window. They glared at Strange who moved to stand in front of a half-curtained arch.

Meanwhile a voice was calling every moment from the passage-way for someone named Winespill to bring the gunpowder barrels and to do it quickly. A soldier of very small stature and with a slight hunchback entered the room. He had a vivid purple birth-mark on his face and appeared to be wearing part of the uniform of every regiment in the British Army. This, presumably, was Winespill. Winespill was unhappy. He could not find the gunpowder. He hunted in cupboards, under staircases and on balconies. He called back every now and then “One moment!” — until the moment came when he thought to look behind Strange, behind the curtain and under the arch. Immediately he shouted out that he had found the casks of gunpowder now and he would have seen them earlier only Someone — here he gave Strange a very black look — was standing in front of them.

The hours passed slowly. Strange was back at his station by the window and almost falling asleep, when he realized from certain sounds of bustle and disruption that Someone of Importance had just entered the house. The next moment three men swept into the room and Strange found himself at last in the presence of Lord Wellington.

How to describe Lord Wellington? How can such a thing be necessary or even possible? His face is everywhere one looks — a cheap print upon the wall of the coaching inn — a much more elaborate one, embellished with flags and drums, at the top of the Assembly-room staircase. Nowadays no young lady of average romantic feeling will reach the age of seventeen without purchasing at least one picture of him. She will think a long, aquiline nose infinitely preferable to a short, stubby one and consider it the worst misfortune of her life that he is married already. To make up for it she fully intends to name her first-born son, Arthur. Nor is she alone in her devotion. Her younger brothers and sisters are every bit as fanatical. The handsomest toy soldier in an English nursery is always called Wellington and has more adventures than the rest of the toy box put together. Every schoolboy impersonates Wellington at least once a week, and so do his younger sisters. Wellington embodies every English virtue. He is Englishness carried to perfection. If the French carry Napoleon in their bellies (which apparently they do), then we carry Wellington in our hearts.
²

Just at present Lord Wellington was none too pleased about something.

“My orders were perfectly clear, I think!” he said to the other two officers. “The Portuguese were to destroy all the corn that they could not carry away, so that it should not fall into the hands of the French. But I have just spent half the day watching the French soldiers going into the caves at Cartaxo and bringing out sacks again.”

“It was very hard for the Portuguese farmers to destroy their corn. They feared to be hungry,” explained one of the officers.

The other officer made the hopeful suggestion that perhaps it was not corn that the French had found in the sacks, but something else altogether less useful. Gold or silver, perhaps?

Lord Wellington eyed him coolly. “The French soldiers took the sacks to the windmills. The sails were going round in plain view! Perhaps you think they were milling gold? Dalziel, complain to the Portuguese authorities, if you please!” His gaze, darting angrily about the room, came to rest upon Strange. “Who is that?” he asked.

The officer called Dalziel murmured something in his lordship’s ear.

“Oh!” said Lord Wellington and then, addressing Strange, he said, “You are the magician.” The faintest note of inquiry pervaded his remark.

“Yes,” said Strange.

“Mr Norrell?”

“Ah, no. Mr Norrell is in England. I am Mr Strange.”

Lord Wellington looked blank.

“The other magician,” explained Strange.

“I see,” said Lord Wellington.

The officer called Dalziel stared at Strange with an expression of surprize, as if he thought that once Lord Wellington had told Strange who he was, it was rather ill-bred of him to insist on being someone else.

“Well, Mr Strange,” said Lord Wellington, “I fear you have had a wasted journey. I must tell you frankly that if I had been able to prevent your coming I would have done so. But now that you are here I shall take the opportunity to explain to you the great nuisance which you and the other gentleman have been to the Army.”

“Nuisance?” said Strange.

“Nuisance,” repeated Lord Wellington. “The visions you have shewn the Ministers have encouraged them to believe that they understand how matters stand in Portugal. They have sent me a great many more orders and interfered to a far greater extent than they would have done otherwise. Only I know what needs to be done in Portugal, Mr Strange, since only I am acquainted with all the circumstances. I do not say that you and the other gentleman may not have done some good elsewhere — the Navy seem pleased — I know nothing of that — but what I
do
say is that I need no magician here in Portugal.”

“But surely, my lord, here in Portugal magic is liable to no such misuse, since I shall be wholly at your service and under your direction.”

Lord Wellington gave Strange a sharp look. “What I chiefly need is men. Can you make more?”

“Men? Well, that depends on what your lordship means. It is an interesting question …” To Strange’s great discomfort, he found he sounded exactly like Mr Norrell.

“Can you make more?” interrupted his lordship.

“No.”

“Can you make the bullets fly any quicker to strike the French? They fly very quickly as it is. Can you perhaps upturn the earth and move the stones to build my Redoubts, Lunettes and Other Defensive Works?”

“No, my lord. But, my lord …”

“The name of the chaplain to the Headquarters is Mr Briscall. The name of the chief medical officer is Dr McGrigor. Should you decide to stay in Portugal then I suggest you make yourself known to these gentlemen. Perhaps you may be of some use to them. You are none to me.” Lord Wellington turned away and immediately shouted for someone named Thornton to get dinner ready. In this way Strange was given to understand that the interview was at an end.

Strange was used to deferential treatment from Government Ministers. He was accustomed to being addressed as an equal by some of the highest in the land. To find himself suddenly classed with the chaplains and doctors of the Army — mere supernumeraries — was very bad indeed.

He spent the night — very uncomfortably — at Pero Negro’s only inn and as soon as it was light he rode back to Lisbon. When he arrived back at the hotel in Shoemaker-street, he sat down and wrote a long letter to Arabella describing in great detail the shocking way he was treated. Then, feeling a little better, he decided that it was unmanly to complain and so he tore the letter up.

He next made a list of all the sorts of magic which Norrell and he had done for the Admiralty and tried to decide which would suit Lord Wellington best. After careful consideration he concluded that there were few better ways of adding to the misery of the French Army than by sending it storms of thunder and drenching rain. He immediately determined upon writing his lordship a letter offering to do this magic. A definite course of action is always a cheering thing and Strange’s spirits rose immediately — until, that is, he happened to glance out of the window. The skies were black, the rain was coming down in torrents and a fierce wind was blowing. It looked as if it might very well thunder in a short while. He went in search of Mr Prideaux. Prideaux confirmed that it had been raining like this for weeks — that the Portuguese thought it would continue for a good long while — and, yes, the French were indeed very unhappy.

Strange pondered this for a while. He was tempted to send Lord Wellington a note offering to make it
stop
raining, on the principle that it must be very uncomfortable for the British soldiers as well — but in the end he decided that the whole question of weather-magic was too vexed until he understood the war and Lord Wellington better. In the meantime he settled upon a plague of frogs as the best thing to drop on the heads of the French soldiers. It was highly Biblical and what, thought Strange, could be more respectable than that?

The next morning he was sitting gloomily in his hotel room, pretending to read one of Norrell’s books but actually watching the rain, when there was a knock at the door. It was a Scottish officer in the uniform of the Hussars who looked inquiringly at Strange and said, “Mr Norrell?”

“I am not … Oh, never mind! What can I do for you?”

“Message for you from Headquarters, Mr Norrell.” The young officer presented Strange with a piece of paper.

It was his own letter to Wellington. Someone had scrawled over it in thick, blue pencil the single word, “Denied”.

“Whose writing is that?” asked Strange.

“Lord Wellington’s, Mr Norrell.”

“Ah.”

The next day Strange wrote Wellington another note, offering to make the waters of the River Tagus rise up and overwhelm the French. This at least provoked Wellington into writing a rather longer reply explaining that at present the entire British Army and most of the Portuguese Army were
between
the Tagus and the French and consequently Mr Strange’s suggestion was not found to be at all convenient.

Strange refused to be deterred. He continued to send Wellington one proposal every day. All were rejected.

On a particularly gloomy day at the end of February he was passing through the hallway of Mr Prideaux’s hotel on his way to a solitary dinner when he almost collided with a fresh-faced young man in English clothes. The young man begged his pardon and asked if he knew where Mr Strange was to be found.

“I am Strange. Who are you?”

“My name is Briscall. I am Chaplain to the Headquarters.”

“Mr Briscall. Yes. Of course.”

“Lord Wellington has asked me to pay you a visit,” explained Mr Briscall. “He said something about your aiding me by magic?” Mr Briscall smiled. “But I believe his real reason is that he hopes I may be able to dissuade you from writing to him every day.”

“Oh!” said Strange. “I shall not stop until he gives me something to do.”

Mr Briscall laughed. “Very well, I shall tell him.”

“Thank you. And is there any thing I can do for you? I have never done magic for the Church before. I will be frank with you, Mr Briscall. My knowledge of ecclesiastical magic is very slight, but I should be glad to be of use to someone.”

“Hmm. I will be equally frank with you, Mr Strange. My duties are really very simple. I visit the sick and wounded. I read the soldiers the services and try and get them a decent burial when they are killed, poor fellows. I do not see what you could do to help.”

“Neither does any one else,” said Strange with a sigh. “But come, have dinner with me? At least I shall not have to eat alone.”

This was quickly agreed to and the two men sat down in the hotel dining-parlour. Strange found Mr Briscall to be a pleasant dinner companion who was happy to tell all he knew of Lord Wellington and the Army.

“Soldiers are not in general religious men,” he said, “but then I never expected that they would be and I have been greatly helped by the circumstance that all the chaplains before me went on leave almost as soon as they arrived. I am the first to stay — and the men are grateful to me for that. They look very kindly on any one who is prepared to share their hard life.”

Strange said he was sure of it.

“And what of you, Mr Strange? How do you get on?”

“I? I do not get on at all. No one wants me here. I am addressed — on the rare occasions when any one speaks to me at all — quite indiscriminately as Mr Strange or Mr Norrell. No one seems to have any notion that these might be
distinct
persons.”

Briscall laughed.

“And Lord Wellington rejects all my offers of help as soon as I make them.”

“Why? What have you offered him?”

Strange told him about his first proposal to send a plague of frogs to fall on the French from the sky.

“Well, I am really not at all surprized he refused
that
!” said Briscall, contemptuously. “The French cook frogs and eat them, do they not? It is a vital part of Lord Wellington’s plan that the French should starve. You might as well have offered to drop roast chickens on their heads or pork pies!”

“It is not my fault,” said Strange, a little stung. “I would be only too glad to take Lord Wellington’s plans into consideration — only I do not know what they are. In London the Admiralty told us their intentions and we shaped our magic accordingly.”