Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (51 page)

For a moment or two before the spell took effect, he was aware of all the sounds around him: rain splashing on metal and leather, and running down canvas; horses shuffling and snorting; Englishmen singing and Scotsmen playing bagpipes; two Welsh soldiers arguing over the proper interpretation of a Bible passage; the Scottish captain, John Kincaid, entertaining the American savages and teaching them to drink tea (presumably with the idea that once a man had learnt to drink tea, the other habits and qualities that make up a Briton would naturally follow).

Then silence. Men and horses began to disappear, few by few at first, and then more quickly — hundreds, thousands of them vanishing from sight. Great gaps appeared among the close-packed soldiers. A little further to the east an entire regiment was gone, leaving a hole the size of Hanover-square. Where, moments before, all had been life, conversation and activity, there was now nothing but the rain and the twilight and the waving stalks of rye. Strange wiped his mouth because he felt sick. “Ha!” he thought. “That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not. Should I tell someone? The Duke? He will not thank me for it.”

Someone was looking down at him; someone was speaking to him — a captain in the Horse Artillery. Strange saw the man’s mouth move but he heard not a sound. He snapped his fingers to dismiss the spell. The captain was inviting him to come and share some brandy and cigars. Strange shivered and declined.

For the rest of the night he sat by himself under the elm-tree. Until this moment it had never seemed to him that his magicianship set him apart from other men. But now he had glimpsed the wrong side of something. He had the eeriest feeling — as if the world were growing older around him, and the best part of existence — laughter, love and innocence — were slipping irrevocably into the past.

At about half past eleven the next morning the French guns began to fire. The Allied artillery replied. The clear summer air between the two armies was filled with drifting veils of bitter, black smoke.

The French attack was chiefly directed at the Château of Hougoumont, an Allied outpost in the valley, whose woods and buildings were defended by the 3rd Foot Guards, Coldstream Guards, Nassauers and Hanoverians. Strange summoned vision after vision into his silver dish so that he could watch the bloody engagements in the woods around the Château. He was in half a mind to move the trees to give the Allied soldiers a better shot at their attackers, but this sort of close hand-to-hand fighting was the very worst subject for magic. He reminded himself that in war a soldier may do more harm by acting too soon or too impetuously than by never acting at all. He waited.

The cannonade grew fiercer. British veterans told their friends that they had never known shot fall so fast and thick. Men saw comrades cut in half, smashed to pieces or beheaded by cannonballs. The very air shook with the guns’ reverberations. “Hard pounding this,” remarked the Duke coolly, and ordered the front ranks to withdraw behind the crest of the ridge and lie down. When it was over, the Allies lifted their heads to see the French infantry advancing through the smoke-filled valley: sixteen thousand men shoulder to shoulder in immense columns, all shouting and stamping together.

More than one soldier wondered if, at last, the French had found a magician of their own; the French infantrymen appeared much taller than ordinary men and the light in their eyes as they drew closer burnt with an almost supernatural fury. But this was only the magic of Napoleon Buonaparte, who knew better than any one how to dress his soldiers so they would terrify the enemy, and how to deploy them so that any onlooker would think them indestructible.

Now Strange knew exactly what to do. The thick, clogging mud was already proving a decided hindrance to the advancing soldiers. To hamper them further he set about enchanting the stalks of rye. He made them wind themselves around the Frenchmen’s feet. The stalks were as tough as wires; the soldiers staggered and fell over. With luck, the mud would hold them down and they would be trampled by their comrades — or by the French cavalry who soon appeared behind them. But it was painstaking work and, in spite of all his efforts, this first magic of Strange’s probably did no more harm against the French than the firing of a skilful British musketeer or rifleman.

An
aide-de-camp
flew up with impossible velocity and thrust a strip of goatskin into Strange’s hand with a shout of, “Message from his Grace!” In an instant he was off again.

French shells have set the Château of Hougoumont on fire. Put out the flames.

Wellington

Strange summoned another vision of Hougoumont. The men there had suffered greatly since he had last seen the Château. The wounded of both sides lay in every room. The haystack, outbuildings and Château were all on fire. Black, choking smoke was everywhere. Horses screamed and wounded men tried to crawl away — but there was hardly anywhere to go. Meanwhile the battle raged on around them. In the chapel Strange found half a dozen images of saints painted on the walls. They were seven or eight feet tall and oddly proportioned — the work, it seemed, of an enthusiastic
amateur
. They had long, brown beards and large, melancholy eyes.

“They’ll do!” he muttered. At his command the saints stepped down from the walls. They moved in a series of jerks, like marionettes, but they had a certain lightness and grace. They stalked through the ranks of wounded men to a well in one of the courtyards. Here they drew buckets of water which they carried to the flames. All seemed to be going well until two of them (possibly Saint Peter and Saint Jerome) caught fire and burnt up — being composed of nothing but paint and magic they burnt rather easily. Strange was trying to think how to remedy this situation when part of an exploded French shell hit the side of his silver dish, sending it spinning fifty yards to the right. By the time he had retrieved it, knocked out a large dent in its side and set it to rights, all the painted saints had succumbed to the flames. Wounded men and horses were burning. There were no more paintings upon the walls. Almost brought to tears by his frustration, Strange cursed the unknown artist for his idleness.

What else was there? What else did he know? He thought hard. Long ago John Uskglass would sometimes make a champion for himself out of ravens — birds would flock together to become a black, bristling, shifting giant who could perform any task with ease. On other occasions Uskglass would make servants out of earth.

Strange conjured a vision of Hougoumont’s well. He drew the water out of the well in a sort of fountain; and then, before the fountain could spill on the ground, he forced it to take on the clumsy semblance of a man. Next he commanded the water-man to hurry to the flames and cast himself down upon them. In this way a stall in the stables was successfully doused and three men were saved. Strange made more as quickly as he could, but water is not an element that holds a coherent form easily; after an hour or so of this labour his head was spinning and his hands were shaking uncontroulably.

Between four and five o’clock something entirely unexpected happened. Strange looked up to see a brilliant mass of French cavalry approaching. Five hundred abreast they rode and twelve deep — yet the thunder of the guns was such that they made no sound that any one could hear; they seemed to come silently. “Surely,” thought Strange, “they must realize that Wellington’s infantry is unbroken. They will be cut to pieces.” Behind him the infantry regiments were forming squares; some of the men called to Strange to come and shelter inside their square. This seemed like good advice and so he went.

From the relative safety of the square Strange watched the cavalry’s approach; the cuirassiers wore shining breast-plates and tall crested helmets; the lancers’ weapons were embellished with fluttering pennants of red and white. They seemed scarcely to belong to this dull age. Theirs was the glory of ancient days — but Strange was determined to match it with an ancient glory of his own. The images of John Uskglass’s servants burnt in his mind — servants made of ravens, servants made of earth. Beneath the French horsemen the mud began to swell and bubble. It shaped itself into gigantic hands; the hands reached up and pulled down men and horses. The ones who fell were trampled by their comrades. The rest endured a storm of musket-fire from the Allied infantry. Strange watched impassively.

When the French had been beaten back, he returned to his silver dish.

“Are you the magician?” said someone.

He spun round and was astonished to find a little, round, soft-looking person in civilian clothes who smiled at him. “Who in God’s name are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Pink,” explained the man. “I am a commercial traveller for Welbeck’s Superior Buttons of Birmingham. I have a message from the Duke for you.”

Strange, who was covered in mud and more tired than he had ever been in his life, took a moment to comprehend this. “Where are all the Duke’s
aides-de-camp
?”

“He says that they are dead.”

“What? Hadley-Bright is dead? What about Colonel Canning?”

“Alas,” smiled Mr Pink, “I can offer no precise information. I came out from Antwerp yesterday to see the battle and when I espied the Duke I took the opportunity to introduce myself and to mention in passing the excellent qualities of Welbeck’s Superior Buttons. He asked me as a particular favour to come and tell you that the Prussian army is on their way here and have reached Paris Wood, but, says his Grace, they are having the devil of a time …” (Mr Pink smiled and blinked to hear himself say such a soldierly word.) “… the devil of a time in the little lanes and the mud, and would you be so good as to make a road for them between the wood and the battlefield?”

“Certainly,” said Strange, rubbing some of the mud from his face.

“I will tell his Grace.” He paused and asked wistfully, “Do you think his Grace would like to order some buttons?”

“I do not see why not. He is as fond of buttons as most men.”

“Then, you know, we could put ‘Supplier of Buttons to his Grace the Duke of Wellington’ in all our advertisements.” Mr Pink beamed happily. “Off I go then!”

“Yes, yes. Off you go.” Strange created the road for the Prussians, but in later times he was always inclined to suppose he must have dreamt Mr Pink of Welbeck’s Superior Buttons.
⁶

Events seemed to repeat themselves. Again and again the French cavalry charged and Strange took refuge within the infantry square. Again the deadly horsemen swirled against the sides of the square like waves. Again Strange drew monstrous hands from the earth to pull them down. Whenever the cavalry withdrew the cannonade began again; he returned to his silver dish and made men out of water to put out the flames and succour the dying in ruined, desperate Hougoumont. Everything happened over and over, again and again; it was inconceivable that the fighting would ever end. He began to think it had always been like this.

“There must come a time when the musket-balls and cannonshot run out,” he thought. “And what will we do then? Hack at each other with sabres and bayonets? And if we all die, every one of us, who will they say has won?”

The smoke rolled back revealing frozen moments like tableaux in a ghostly theatre: at the farmhouse called La Haye Sainte the French were climbing a mountain of their own dead to get over the wall and kill the German defenders.

Once Strange was caught outside the square when the French arrived. Suddenly, directly in front of him, was an enormous French cuirassier upon an equally enormous horse. His first thought was to wonder if the fellow knew who he was. (He had been told the entire French Army hated the English magician with a vivid, Latin passion.) His second thought was that he had left his pistols inside the infantry square.

The cuirassier raised his sabre. Without thinking, Strange muttered Stokesey’s
Animam Evocare
. Something like a bee flew out of the breast of the cuirassier and settled in the palm of Strange’s hand. But it was not a bee; it was a bead of pearly blue light. A second light flew out of the cuirassier’s horse. The horse screamed and reared up. The cuirassier stared, puzzled.

Strange raised his other hand to smash horse and horseman out of existence. Then he froze.

"And can a magician kill a man by magic?” the Duke had asked.

And he had answered, “A magician might, but a gentleman never could.”

While he was hesitating a British cavalry officer — a Scots Grey — swung round out of nowhere. He slashed the cuirassier’s head open, from his chin, upwards through his teeth. The man toppled like a tree. The Scots Grey rode on.

Strange could never quite remember what happened after this. He believed that he wandered about in a dazed condition. He did not know for how long.

The sound of cheering brought him to himself. He looked up and saw Wellington upon Copenhagen. He was waving his hat — the signal that the Allies were to advance upon the French. But the smoke wreathed itself so thickly about the Duke that only the soldiers nearest to him could share in this moment of victory.