Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (86 page)

“There! You see!” exclaimed Mr Segundus, as he finished scribbling his notes. “This is what makes them think her mad — these odd stories and tales. But I have made a list of all that she has told me and I have begun to find correspondences between them and ancient fairy lore. I am sure that if you and I were to make inquiries we would discover some reference to a set of fairies who had some close connexion with songbirds. They may not have been songbird-herds. That, you will agree, sounds a little too much like settled occupation for such a feckless race — but they may have pursued a particular sort of magic related to songbirds. And it may have suited one of their number to tell an impressionable child that she was a songbird-herd.”

“Perhaps,” said Childermass, not much interested. “But that was not what she meant to tell us. And I have remembered the magical significance of roses. They stand for silence. That is why you see a red-and-white rose — it is a muffling spell.”

“A muffling spell!” said Mr Segundus, in amazement. “Yes, yes! I see that! I have read about such things. But how do we break it?”

From his coat-pocket Childermass took a little box, the colour of heartache. “Your ladyship,” he said, “give me your left hand.”

She laid her white hand in Childermass’s lined, brown one. Childermass opened the box, took out the finger and laid it against the empty place.

Nothing happened.

“We must find Mr Strange,” said Mr Segundus. “Or Mr Norrell. They may be able to mend it!”

“No,” said Childermass. “There is no need. Not now. You and I are two magicians, Mr Segundus. And England is full of magic. How many years’ study do we have between us? We must know something to the point. What about Pale’s Restoration and Rectification?”

“I know the form of it,” said Mr Segundus. “But I have never been a
practical
magician.”

“And you never will be, if you do not try. Do the magic, Mr Segundus.”

So Mr Segundus did the magic.
³

The finger flowed into the hand, making a seamless whole. In the same instant the impression of endless, dreary corridors surrounding them disappeared; the two women before Childermass’s eyes resolved themselves into one.

Lady Pole rose slowly from her chair. Her eyes went rapidly this way and that, like someone who was seeing the world anew. Everyone in the room could see she was changed. There was animation and fire in every feature. Her eyes glowed with a furious light. She raised both arms; her hands were clenched in tight fists, as if she intended to bring them down upon someone’s head.

“I have been
enchanted
!” she burst out. “Bargained away for the sake of a wicked man’s career!”

“Good God!” cried Mr Segundus. “My dear Lady Pole …”

“Compose yourself, Mr Segundus!” said Childermass. “We have no time for trivialities. Let her speak!”

“I have been dead within and almost-dead without!” Tears started from her eyes and she struck her own breast with her clenched hand. “And not only me! Others suffer even now! — Mrs Strange and my husband’s servant, Stephen Black!”

She recounted the cold, ghostly balls she had endured, the dreary processions she had been forced to take part in and the strange handicap that would not allow her and Stephen Black to speak of their predicament.

Mr Segundus and the servants heard each new revelation with mounting horror; Childermass sat and listened with impassive expression.

“We must write to the editors of the newspapers!” cried Lady Pole. “I am determined upon public exposure!”

“Exposure of whom?” asked Mr Segundus.

“The magicians, of course! Strange and Norrell!”

“Mr Strange?” faltered Mr Segundus. “No, no, you are mistaken! My dear Lady Pole, take a moment to consider what you are saying. I have not a word to say for Mr Norrell — his crimes against you are monstrous! But Mr Strange has done no harm — not knowingly at any rate. Surely he is more sinned against than sinning?”

“Oh!” cried Lady Pole. “Upon the contrary! I consider him by far the worse of the two. By his negligence and cold, masculine magic he has betrayed the best of women, the most excellent of wives!”

Childermass stood up.

“Where are you going?” asked Mr Segundus.

“To find Strange and Norrell,” said Childermass.

“Why?” cried Lady Pole, rounding on him. “To warn them? So that they can prepare themselves against a woman’s vengeance? Oh, how these men protect one another!”

“No, I am going to offer them my assistance to free Mrs Strange and Stephen Black.”

Lascelles walked on. The path entered a wood. At the entrance to the wood was the statue of the woman holding the plucked eye and heart — just as Childermass had described. Corpses hung from the thorn-trees in various states of decay. Snow lay on the ground and it was very quiet.

After a while he came to the tower. He had imagined it to be a fanciful, otherlandish sort of place; “But really,” he thought, “it is very plain, like the castles of the Scottish border country.”

High in the tower was a single window glowing with candlelight and the shadow of someone watching. Lascelles noticed something else too, something that Childermass had either not seen, or else had not troubled to report: the trees were full of serpent-like creatures. They had heavy, sagging forms. One was in the process of swallowing whole a fresh, meaty-looking corpse.

Between the trees and the brook was the pale young man. His eyes were empty and there was a slight dew upon his brow. His uniform was, thought Lascelles, that of the 11th Light Dragoons.

Lascelles addressed him thus: “One of our countrymen approached you a few days ago. He spoke to you. You challenged him. Then he ran away. He was a dark, ill-favoured fellow. A person of despicable habits and base origins.”

If the pale young man recognized Childermass from this description, he shewed no sign of it. In a dead voice he said, “I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. I offer challenges to …”

“Yes, yes!” cried Lascelles, impatiently. “I do not care about that. I have come here to fight. To erase the stain upon England’s honour that was made by that fellow’s cowardice.”

The figure at the window leaned forward eagerly.

The pale young man said nothing.

Lascelles made a sound of exasperation. “Very well! Believe that I mean this woman all sorts of harm if it pleases you. It matters not one whit to me! Pistols?”

The pale young man shrugged.

There being no seconds to act for them, Lascelles told the young man that they would stand at twenty paces and he measured the ground himself.

They had taken their positions and were about to fire, when something occurred to Lascelles. “Wait!” he cried. “What is your name?”

The young man stared dully at him. “I do not remember,” he said.

They both fired their pistols at the same time. Lascelles had the impression that, at the last moment, the young man turned his pistol and deliberately fired wide. Lascelles did not care: if the young man was a coward then so much the worse for him. His own ball flew with pleasing exactitude to pierce the young man’s breast. He watched him die with the same intense interest and sense of satisfaction that he had felt when he had killed Drawlight.

He hung the body upon the nearest thorn-tree. Then he amused himself by taking shots at the decaying bodies and the serpents. He had not been engaged in this pleasant occupation for more than an hour when he heard the sounds of hooves upon the woodland path. From the opposite direction, from Faerie rather than England, a dark figure upon a dark horse was approaching.

Lascelles spun round. “I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart,” he began …

65
The ashes, the pearls,
the counterpane and the kiss

Mid February 1817

As Lucas and the others were leaving Hurtfew Abbey, Stephen was dressing in his bed-chamber at the top of the house in Harley-street.

London is a city with more than its fair share of eccentricities, but of all the surprizing places it contained at this time the most extraordinary was undoubtedly Stephen’s bed-chamber. It was full of things that were precious, rare or wonderful. If the Cabinet, or the gentlemen who direct the Bank of England, had been somehow able to acquire the contents of Stephen’s bed-chamber their cares would have all been over. They could have paid off Britain’s debts and built London anew with the change. Thanks to the gentleman with the thistle-down hair Stephen possessed crown jewels from who-knew-what kingdoms, and embroidered robes that had once belonged to Coptic popes. The flowerpots upon his windowsill contained no flowers, but only ruby-and-pearl crosses, carved jewels and the insignia of long-dead military orders. Inside his small cupboard was a piece of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the thigh-bone of a Basque saint. St Christopher’s hat hung upon a peg behind the door and a marble statue of Lorenzo de Medici by Michael Angel (which had stood, until recently, upon the great man’s tomb in Florence) occupied most of the floor.

Stephen was shaving himself in a little mirror balanced upon Lorenzo de Medici’s knee when the gentleman appeared at his shoulder.

“The magician has returned to England!” he cried. “I saw him last night in the King’s Roads, with the Darkness wrapped about him like a mystical cloak! What does he want? What can he be planning? Oh! This will be the end of me, Stephen! I feel it! He means me great harm!”

Stephen felt a chill. The gentleman was always at his most dangerous in this mood of agitation and alarm.

“We should kill him!” said the gentleman.

“Kill him? Oh no, sir!”

“Why not? We could be rid of him for ever! I could bind his arms, eyes and tongue with magic, and you could stab him through the heart!”

Stephen thought rapidly. “But his return may have nothing to do with you at all, sir,” he offered. “Consider how many enemies he has in England — human enemies, I mean. Perhaps he has come back to continue his quarrel with one of them.”

The gentleman looked doubtful. Any reasoning that did not contain a reference to himself was always difficult for him to follow. “I do not think
that
very likely,” he said.

“Oh, but yes!” said Stephen, beginning to feel upon surer ground. “There have been terrible things written about him in the newspapers and the magical journals. There is a rumour that he killed his wife. Many people believe it. Were it not for his present situation, he would very likely have been arrested by now. And it is common knowledge that the other magician is the author of all these lies and half-truths. Probably, Strange has come to take revenge upon his master.”

The gentleman stared at Stephen for a moment or two. Then he laughed, his spirits as elevated as moments before they had been the reverse. “We have nothing to fear Stephen!” he cried, in delight. “The magicians have quarrelled and hate each other! Yet they are nothing without one another. How glad that makes me! How happy I am to have you to advise me! And it so happens that I intend to give you a wonderful present today — something you have long desired!”

“Indeed, sir?” said Stephen with a sigh. “That will be most delightful.”

“Yet we ought to kill someone,” said the gentleman, immediately reverting to his former subject. “I have been quite put out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it. What do you say to the old magician? — Oh, but wait! That would oblige the younger one, which I do not want to do! What about Lady Pole’s husband? He is tall and arrogant and treats you like a servant!”

“But I
am
a servant, sir.”

“Or the King of England! Yes, that is an excellent plan! Let you and I go immediately to the King of England. Then you can put him to death and be King in his place! Do you have the orb, crown and sceptre that I gave you?”

“But the laws of Great Britain do not allow …” began Stephen.

“The laws of Great Britain! Pish tush! What nonsense! I thought you would have understood by now that the laws of Great Britain are nothing but a flimsy testament to the idle wishes and dreams of mankind. According to the ancient laws by which my race conducts itself, a king is most commonly succeeded by the person who killed him.”

“But, sir! Remember how much you liked the old gentleman when you met him?”

“Hmm, that is true. But in a matter of such importance I am willing to put aside my personal feelings. The difficulty is that we have too many enemies, Stephen! There are too many wicked persons in England! I know! I shall ask some of my allies to tell us who is our greatest enemy of all. We must be careful. We must be cunning. We must frame our question with exactitude.
¹
I shall ask the North Wind and the Dawn to bring us immediately into the presence of the one person in England whose existence is the greatest threat to me! And then we can kill him, whoever he is. You observe, Stephen, that I make reference to my own life, but I consider your fate and mine as bound so closely together that there is scarcely any difference between us. Whosoever is a danger to me, is a danger to you also! Now take up your crown and orb and sceptre and say a last farewell to the scenes of your slavery! It may be that you shall never see them again!”

“But …” began Stephen.

It was too late. The gentleman raised his long, white hands and gave a sort of flourish.

Stephen expected to be brought before one or other of the magicians — possibly both. Instead the gentleman and he found themselves upon a wide, empty moor covered in snow. More snow was falling. On one side the ground rose up to meet the heavy, slate-coloured sky; on the other was a misty view of far-away, white hills. In all that desolate landscape there was only one tree — a twisted hawthorn not far from where they stood. It was, thought Stephen, very like the country around Starecross Hall.

“Well, that is very odd!” said the gentleman. “I do not see any body at all, do you?”

“No, sir. No one,” said Stephen, in relief. “Let us return to London.”

“I cannot understand … Oh, but wait! Here is someone!”

Half a mile or so away there seemed to be a road or track of some sort. A horse and cart were coming slowly along it. When the cart drew level with the hawthorn tree, it stopped and someone got out. This person began to stump across the moor towards them.

“Excellent!” cried the gentleman. “Now we shall see our wickedest and most powerful enemy! Put on your crown, Stephen! Let him tremble before our power and majesty! Excellent! Raise your sceptre! Yes, yes! Hold forth your orb! How handsome you look! How regal! Now, Stephen, since we have a little time before he arrives …” The gentleman gazed at the little figure in the distance labouring across the snowy moor. “… I have something else to tell you. What is the date today?”

“The fifteenth of February, sir. St Anthony’s Day.”

“Ha! A dreary saint indeed! Well, in future the people of England will have something better to celebrate on the fifteenth of February than the life of a monk who keeps the rain off people and finds their lost thimbles!”
²

“Will they indeed, sir? And what is that?”

“The Naming of Stephen Black!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I told you, Stephen, that I would find your true name!”

“What! Did my mother really name me, sir?”

“Yes, indeed! It is all just as I supposed! — which is scarcely surprizing since I am rarely wrong in such matters. She named you with a name in her own tongue. With a name she had heard often among her own people when she was a young girl. She named you, but she did not tell the name to a single soul. She did not even whisper it into your infant ear. She had no time because Death stole upon her and took her unawares.”

A picture rose up in Stephen’s mind — the dark, fusty hold of the ship — his mother, worn out by the pains of childbirth, surrounded by strangers — himself a tiny infant. Did she even speak the language of the other people on board? He had no way of knowing. How alone she must have felt! He would have given a great deal at that moment to be able to reach out and comfort her, but all the years of his life lay between them. He felt his heart harden another degree against the English. Only a few minutes ago he had struggled to persuade the gentleman not to kill Strange, but why should he care what became of one Englishman? Why should he care what became of any of that cold, callous race?

With a sigh, he put these thoughts aside and discovered that the gentleman was still talking.

“… It is a most edifying tale and demonstrates to perfection all those qualities for which I am especially famed; namely self-sacrifice, devoted friendship, nobility of purpose, perceptiveness, ingenuity and courageousness.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“The story of my finding your name, Stephen, which I am now going to relate! Know then that your mother died in the hold of a ship, the
Penlaw
,
³
that was sailing from Jamaica to Liverpool. And then,” he added in a matter-of-fact tone, “the English sailors stripped her body and flung it into the sea.”

“Ah!” breathed Stephen.

“Now, as you may imagine, this made the task of recovering your name extremely difficult. After thirty or forty years, all that was left of your mother was four things: her screams in childbirth, which had sunk into the planks of the ship; her bones, which was all that was left of her, once the flesh and softer parts had been devoured by fishes …”

“Ah!” exclaimed Stephen again.

“… her gown of rose-coloured cotton which had passed into the possession of a sailor; and a kiss which the captain of the ship had stolen from her, two days earlier. Now,” said the gentleman (who was clearly enjoying himself immensely), “you will observe with what cleverness and finesse I traced the passage of each part of her through the world, until I was able to recover them and so divine your glorious name! The
Penlaw
sailed on to Liverpool where the wicked grandfather of Lady Pole’s wicked husband disembarked with his servant — who carried your own infant person in his arms. On the
Penlaw
’s next voyage, which was to Leith in Scotland, it met with a storm and was wrecked. Various spars and bits of broken hull were cast up upon the rocky shore, including the planks that contained your mother’s screams. These were taken by a very poor man to make a roof and walls for his house. I found the house very easily. It stood upon a windy promontory, overlooking a stormy sea. Inside, several generations of the poor man’s family were living in the utmost poverty and degradation. Now, you should know, Stephen, that wood has a stubborn, proud nature; it does not readily tell what it knows — even to its friends. It is always easier to deal with the ashes of the wood, rather than wood itself. So I burnt the poor man’s house to the ground, placed the ashes in a bottle and continued on my way.”

“Burnt, sir! I hope no one was hurt!”

“Well, some people were. The strong, young men were able to run out of the conflagration in time, but the older, enfeebled members of the family, the women and infants were all burnt to death.”

“Oh!”

“Next I traced the history of her bones. I believe I mentioned before that she was cast into the ocean where, due to the movement of the waters and the importunate interference of the fishes, the body became bones, the bones became dust, and the dust was very soon transformed by a bed of oysters into several handfuls of the most beautiful pearls. In time the pearls were harvested and sold to a jeweller in Paris, who created a necklace of five perfect strands. This he sold to a beautiful French Comtesse. Seven years later the Comtesse was guillotined and her jewels, gowns and personal possessions became the property of a Revolutionary official. This wicked man was, until quite recently, the mayor of a small town in the Loire valley. Late at night he would wait until all his servants had gone to bed and then, in the privacy of his bed-chamber, he would put on the Comtesse’s jewels and gowns and other finery and parade up and down in front of a large mirror. Here I found him one night, looking, I may say, very ridiculous. I strangled him upon the spot — using the pearl necklace.”

“Oh!” said Stephen.

“I took the pearls, let the miserable corpse fall to the ground and passed on. Next I turned my attention to your mother’s pretty rose-coloured gown. The sailor who had acquired it, kept it among his things for a year or two until he happened to find himself in a cold, miserable little hamlet on the eastern coast of America called Piper’s Grave. There he met a tall, thin woman and, wishing to impress her, he gave her the gown as a present. The gown did not fit this woman (your mother, Stephen, had a sweetly rounded, feminine figure), but she liked the colour and so she cut it up and sewed the pieces into a counterpane with some other cheap materials. The rest of this woman’s history is not very interesting — she married several husbands and buried them all, and by the time I found her she was old and withered. I plucked the counterpane off her bed as she slept.”

“You did not kill her, did you, sir?” asked Stephen, anxiously.

“No, Stephen. Why would I? Of course it was a bitter night with four feet of snow and a raging north wind outside. She may have died of the cold. I do not know. So we come at last to the kiss and the captain who stole it from her.”

“Did you kill him, sir?”

“No, Stephen — though I would certainly have done so to punish him for his insult to your esteemed mother, but he was hanged in the town of Valletta twenty-nine years ago. Fortunately he had kissed a great many other young women before he died and the virtue and strength of your mother’s kiss had been conveyed to them. So all I had to do was to find them and extract what was left of your mother’s kiss.”

“And how did you do that, sir?” asked Stephen, though he feared that he knew the answer all too well.