Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (56 page)

Jeremy came back into the room rather suddenly. He went immediately to Strange and bent and whispered in his ear.

“Well, speak, man! Tell us what is the matter!” said Henry.

Jeremy looked rather doubtfully at Strange, but Strange said nothing. He covered his mouth with his hand and his eyes went this way and that, as if he were suddenly taken up with some new, and not very pleasant, idea.

Jeremy said, “Mrs Strange is no longer in the house, sir. We do not know where she is.”

Henry was questioning Mr Hyde about what he had seen on the hills and barely giving him time to answer one question before asking another. Jeremy Johns was frowning at them both. Strange, meanwhile, sat silently, staring in front of him. Suddenly he stood up and went rapidly out of the room.

“Mr Strange!” called Mr Hyde. “Where are you going?”

“Strange!” cried Henry.

As nothing could be done or decided without him, they had no choice but to follow him. Strange mounted the stairs to his library on the first floor and went immediately to the great silver dish that stood upon one of the tables.

“Bring water,” he said to Jeremy Johns.

Jeremy Johns fetched a jug of water and filled the dish.

Strange spoke a single word and the room seemed to grow twilit and shadowy. In the same moment the water in the dish darkened and became slightly opaque.

The lessening of the light terrified Henry.

“Strange!” he cried. “What are we doing here? The light is failing! My sister is outside. We ought not to remain in the house a moment longer!” He turned to Jeremy Johns as the only person present likely to have any influence with Strange. “Tell him to stop! We must start to search!”

“Be quiet, Henry,” said Strange.

He drew his finger over the surface of the water twice. Two glittering lines of light appeared, quartering the water. He made a gesture above one of the quarters. Stars appeared in it and more lines, veinings and webs of light. He stared at this for some moments. Then he made a gesture above the next quarter. A different pattern of light appeared. He repeated the process for the third and fourth quarters. The patterns did not remain the same. They shifted and sparkled, sometimes appearing like writing, at other times like the lines of a map and at other times like constellations of stars.

“What is all this meant to do?” asked Mr Hyde, in a wondering tone.

“Find her,” said Strange. “At least, that is what it is supposed to do.”

He tapped one of the quarters. Instantly the other three patterns disappeared. The remaining pattern grew until it filled the surface of the water. Strange divided it into quarters, studied it for a while and then tapped one of the quarters. He repeated this process several times. The patterns grew denser and began more and more to resemble a map. But the further Strange got, the more doubting his expression grew and the less sure he seemed of what the dish was shewing him.

After several minutes Henry could bear it no longer. “For God’s sake, this is no time for magic! Arabella is lost! Strange, I beg you! Leave this nonsense and let us look for her!”

Strange said nothing in reply but he looked angry and struck the water. Instantly the lines and stars disappeared. He took a deep breath and began again. This time he proceeded in a more confident manner and quickly reached a pattern he seemed to consider relevant. But far from drawing any useful information from it, he sat instead regarding it with a mixture of dismay and perplexity.

“What is it?” asked Mr Hyde in alarm. “Mr Strange, do you see your wife?”

“I can make no sense of what the spell is telling me! It says she is not in England. Not in Wales. Not in Scotland. Not in France. I cannot get the magic right. You are right, Henry. I am wasting time here. Jeremy, fetch my boots and coat!”

A vision blossomed suddenly on the face of the water. In an ancient, shadowy hall a crowd of handsome men and lovely women were dancing. But as this could have no conceivable connexion with Arabella, Strange struck the surface of the water again. The vision vanished.

Outside, the snow lay thick upon everything. All was frozen, still and silent. The grounds of Ashfair were the first places to be searched. When these proved to contain hardly so much as a wren or a robin, Strange, Henry, Mr Hyde and the servants began to search the roads.

Three of the maidservants went back to the house where they went into attics that had scarcely been disturbed since Strange had been a boy. They took an axe and a hammer and broke open chests that had been locked fifty years before. They looked into closets and drawers, some of which could hardly have contained the body of an infant, let alone that of a grown woman.

Some of the servants ran to houses in Clun. Others took horses and rode to Clunton, Purslow, Clunbury and Whitcott. Soon there was not a house in the neighbourhood that did not know Mrs Strange was missing and not a house that did not send someone to join the search. Meanwhile the women of these houses kept up their fires and made all manner of preparations so that should Mrs Strange be brought to
that
house, she should instantly have as much warmth, nourishment, and comfort as one human being can benefit from at a time.

The first hour brought them Captain John Ayrton of the 12th Light Dragoons, who had been with Wellington and Strange in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. His lands adjoined those of Strange. They were the same age and had been neighbours all their lives, but Captain Ayrton was so shy and reserved a gentleman that they had rarely exchanged more than twenty words in the course of a year. In this crisis he arrived with maps and a quiet, solemn promise to Strange and Henry to give them all the assistance that was in his power.

It was soon discovered that Mr Hyde was not the only person to have seen Arabella. Two farm labourers, Martin Oakley and Owen Bullbridge, had also seen her. Jeremy Johns learnt this from some friends of the two men, whereupon he instantly took the first horse he could lay his hands upon and rode to the snowy fields on the banks of the Clun river where Oakley and Bullbridge had joined the general search. Jeremy half-escorted them, half-herded them back to Clun to appear before Captain Ayrton, Mr Hyde, Henry Woodhope and Strange.

They discovered that Oakley and Bullbridge’s account contradicted Mr Hyde’s in odd ways. Mr Hyde had seen Arabella on the bare snowy hillsides of Castle Idris. She had been walking north-wards. He had seen her at precisely nine o’clock and, just as before, he had heard bells ringing.

Oakley and Bullbridge, on the other hand, had seen her hurrying through the dark winter trees some five miles east of Castle Idris, yet they too claimed to have seen her at precisely nine o’clock.

Captain Ayrton frowned and asked Oakley and Bullbridge to explain how they had known it was nine o’clock, since, unlike Mr Hyde, neither of them possessed a pocket-watch. Oakley replied that they had thought it must be nine o’clock because they had heard bells ringing. The bells, Oakley thought, belonged to St George’s in Clun. But Bullbridge said that they were
not
the bells of St George’s — that the bells he had heard were many, and that St George’s had but one. He had said that the bells he had heard were sad bells — funeral bells, he thought — but, when asked to explain what he meant by this, he could not.

The two accounts agreed in all other details. In neither was there any nonsense about black gowns. All three men said she had been wearing a white gown and all agreed that she had been walking rather fast. None of them had seen her face.

Captain Ayrton set the men to search the dark winter woods in groups of four and five. He set women to find lanterns and warm clothing and he set riders to cover the high, open hills around Castle Idris. He put Mr Hyde — who would be satisfied with nothing else — in charge of them. Ten minutes after Oakley and Bullbridge had finished speaking, all were gone. As long as daylight lasted they searched, but daylight could not last long. They were only five days from the Winter Solstice: by three o’clock the light was fading; by four it was gone altogether.

The searchers returned to Strange’s house, where Captain Ayrton intended to review what had been done so far and hoped to determine what ought to be done next. Several of the ladies of the neighbourhood were also present. They had tried waiting in their own houses for news of Mrs Strange’s fate and found it a lonely, anxious business. They had come to Ashfair partly in case they were needed, but chiefly so that they might take comfort in each other’s society.

The last to arrive were Strange and Jeremy Johns. They came, booted and muddy, direct from the stables. Strange was ashen-faced and hollow-eyed. He looked and moved like a man in dream. He would probably not even have sat down, had Jeremy Johns not pushed him into a chair.

Captain Ayrton laid out his maps upon the table and began to question each of the search parties about where they had been and what they had found — which was nothing at all.

Every man and woman present thought how the neatly drawn lines and words upon the maps were in truth ice-covered pools and rivers, silent woods, frozen ditches and high, bare hills and every one of them thought how many sheep and cattle and wild creatures died in this season.

“I think I woke last night …” said a hoarse voice, suddenly. They looked round.

Strange was still seated in the chair where Jeremy had placed him. His arms hung at his sides and he was staring at the floor. “I think I woke last night. I do not know when exactly. Arabella was sitting at the foot of the bed. She was dressed.”

“You did not say this before,” said Mr Hyde.

“I did not remember before. I thought I had dreamt it.”

“I do not understand,” said Captain Ayrton. “Do you mean to say that Mrs Strange may have left your house during the night?”

Strange seemed to cast about for an answer to this highly reasonable question, but without success.

“But surely,” said Mr Hyde, “you must know if she was there or not in the morning?”

“She was there. Of course she was there. It is ridiculous to suggest … At least …” Strange paused. “That is to say I was thinking about my book when I rose and the room was dark.”

Several people present began to think that as a husband Jonathan Strange, if not absolutely neglectful, was at least curiously unobservant of his wife, and some of them were led to eye him doubtingly and run through in their minds the many reasons why an apparently devoted wife might suddenly run away into the snow. Cruel words? A violent temper? The dreadful sights attendant on a magician’s work — ghosts, demons, horrors? The sudden discovery that he had a mistress somewhere and half a dozen natural children?

Suddenly there was a shout from outside in the hall. Afterwards no one could say whose voice it had been. Several of Strange’s neighbours who were standing nearest the door went to see what the matter was. Then the exclamations of those people drew out the rest.

The hall was dark at first, but in a moment candles were brought and they could see that someone was standing at the foot of the stairs.

It was Arabella.

Henry rushed forward and embraced her; Mr Hyde and Mrs Ayrton told her how glad they were to see her safe and sound; other people began to express their amazement and to inform any one who would listen that they had not had the least idea of her being there. Several of the ladies and maids gathered around her, asking her questions. Was she hurt? Where had she been? Had she got lost? Had something happened to distress her?

Then, as sometimes will happen, several people became aware at the same time of something rather odd: Strange had said nothing, made no movement towards her — nor, for that matter, had she spoken to him or made any movement towards him.

The magician stood, staring silently at his wife. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Good God, Arabella! What have you got on?”

Even by the candles’ uncertain, flickering light it was quite plain that she was wearing a black gown.

44
Arabella

December 1815

You must be chilled to the bone!” declared Mrs Ayrton, taking one of Arabella’s hands. “Oh, my dear! You are as cold as the grave!”

Another lady ran and fetched one of Arabella’s shawls from the drawing-room. She returned carrying a blue Indian cashmere with a delicate border of gold and pink threads, but when Mrs Ayrton wrapped it around her, the black gown seemed to extinguish all its prettiness.

Arabella, with her hands folded in front of her, looked at them all with a calm, indifferent expression upon her face. She did not trouble to answer any of their kind inquiries. She seemed neither surprized nor embarrassed to find them there.

“Where in the world have you been?” demanded Strange.

“Walking,” she said. Her voice was just as it had always been. “Walking! Arabella, are you quite mad? In three feet of snow? Where?”

“In the dark woods,” she said, “among my soft-sleeping brothers and sisters. Across the high moors among the sweet-scented ghosts of my brothers and sisters long dead. Under the grey sky through the dreams and murmurs of my brothers and sisters yet to come.”

Strange stared at her. “What?”

With such gentle questioning as this to encourage her, it surprized no one that she said no more and at least one of the ladies began to think that it was her husband’s harshness that made her so quiet and made her answer in such odd strain.

Mrs Ayrton put her arm around Arabella and gently turned her towards the stairs. “Mrs Strange is tired,” she said firmly. “Come, my dear, let you and I go up to …”

“Oh, no!” declared Strange. “Not yet! I wish to know where that gown came from. I beg your pardon, Mrs Ayrton, but I am quite determined to …”

He advanced towards them, but then stopt suddenly and stared down at the floor in puzzlement. Then he carefully stepped out of the way of something. “Jeremy! Where did this water come from? Just where Mrs Strange was standing.”

Jeremy Johns brought a candelabra to the foot of the stairs. There was a large pool. Then he and Strange peered at the ceiling and the walls. The other manservants became interested in the problem and so did the gentlemen.

While the men were thus distracted, Mrs Ayrton and the ladies led Arabella quietly away.

The hall at Ashfair was as old-fashioned as the rest of the house. It was panelled in cream-painted elmwood. The floor was well-swept stone flags. One of the manservants thought that the water must have seeped up from under the stones and so he went and fetched an iron rod to poke about at them to prove that one of them was loose. But he could not make them move. Nowhere was there any sign of where the water could have crept in. Someone else thought that perhaps Captain Ayrton’s two dogs might have shed the water. The dogs were carefully examined. They were not in the least wet.

Finally they examined the water itself.

“It is black and there are tiny scraps of something in it,” pointed out Strange.

“It looks like moss,” said Jeremy Johns.

They continued to wonder and exclaim for some time until a complete lack of any success obliged them to abandon the matter. Shortly afterwards the gentlemen left, taking their wives with them.

At five o’clock Janet Hughes went up to her mistress’s bed-chamber and found her lying upon the bed. She had not even troubled to take off the black dress. When Janet asked her if she felt unwell, Arabella replied that she had a pain in her hands. So Janet helped her mistress undress and then went and told Strange.

On the second day Arabella complained of a pain which went from the top of her head all down her right side to her feet (or at least that was what they supposed she meant when she said, “from my crown to the tips of my roots"). This was sufficiently alarming for Strange to send for Mr Newton, the physician at Church Stretton. Mr Newton rode over to Clun in the afternoon, but apart from the pain he could find nothing wrong and he went away cheerfully, telling Strange that he would return in a day or two. On the third day she died.