Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (88 page)

The candle guttered and went out …

… and in that moment …

… in that moment the room was full of ravens. Black wings filled the air like great hands gesturing, filled Strange’s vision like a tumult of black flames. He was struck at from every side by wings and claws. The cawing and the croaking were deafening. Ravens battered walls, battered windows, battered Strange himself. He covered his head with his hands and fell to the floor. The din and strife of wings continued a little while longer.

Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone and the room was silent.

The candles had all been extinguished. Strange rolled on to his back, but for some moments he could do nothing but stare into the Darkness. “Mr Norrell?” he said at last.

No one answered.

In the pitch-black darkness he got to his feet. He succeeded in finding one of the library desks and felt about until his hand met with an upturned candle. He took his tinderbox from his pocket and lit it.

Raising it above his head, he saw that the room was in the last extremes of chaos and disorder. Not a book remained upon a shelf. Tables and library steps had been overturned. Several fine chairs had been reduced to firewood. A thick drift of raven feathers covered everything, as if a black snow had fallen.

Norrell was half-lying, half-sitting on the floor, his back against a desk. His eyes were open, but blank-looking. Strange passed the candle before his face. “Mr Norrell?” he said again.

In a dazed whisper, Norrell said, “I believe we may assume that we have his attention.”

“I believe you are right, sir. Do you know what happened?”

Still in a whisper Norrell said, “The books all turned into ravens. I had my eye upon Hugh Pontifex’s
The Fountain of the Heart
and I saw it change. He used it often, you know — that chaos of black birds. I have been reading about it since I was a boy. That I should live to see it, Mr Strange! That I should live to see it! It has a name in the
Sidhe
language, the language of his childhood, but the name is lost.”
⁵
He suddenly seized Strange’s hand. “Are the books safe?”

Strange picked up one from the floor. He shook the raven feathers off it and glanced at the title:
Seven Doors and Forty-two Keys
by Piers Russinol. He opened it and began to read at random. “
… and there you will find a strange country like a chessboard, where alternates barren rock with fruitful orchards, wastes of thorns with fields of bearded corn, water meadows with deserts. And in this country, the god of magicians, Thrice-Great Hermes, has set a guard upon every gate and every bridge: in one place a ram, in another place serpent …
Does that sound right?” he asked doubtfully.

Mr Norrell nodded. He took out his pocket handkerchief and dabbed the blood from his face with it.

The two magicians sat upon the floor amid the books and feathers, and for a little while they said nothing at all. The world had shrunk to the breadth of a candle’s light.

Finally, Strange said, “How near to us must he be in order to do magic like that?”

“John Uskglass? For aught I know he can do magic like that from a hundred worlds away — from the heart of Hell.”

“Still it is worth trying to find out, is it not?”

“Is it?” asked Norrell.

“Well, for example, if we found he was close by, we could …” Strange considered a moment. “We could go to him.”

“Very well,” sighed Norrell. He did not sound or look very hopeful.

The first — and indeed only — requirement for spells of location is a silver dish of water. At Hurtfew Abbey Mr Norrell’s dish had stood upon a little table in the corner of the room, but the table had been destroyed by the violence of the ravens and the dish was nowhere to be seen. They searched for a while and eventually found it in the fireplace, upside-down beneath a mess of raven feathers and damp, torn pages from books.

“We need water,” said Norrell. “I always made Lucas get it from the river. Water that has travelled rapidly is best for location magic — and Hurtfew’s river is quick-flowing even in summer. I will fetch it.”

But Mr Norrell was not much in the habit of doing any thing for himself and it was a little while before he was out of the house. He stood on the lawn and stared up at stars he had never seen before. He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically.

At the river’s edge he knelt down among the frozen grasses to fill the dish with water. The unknown stars shone up at him from the depths. He stood up again (a little dizzy from the unaccustomed exertion) — and immediately he had an overwhelming sense of magic going on — much stronger than he had ever felt it before. If any one had asked him to describe what was happening, he would have said that all of Yorkshire was turning itself inside out. For a moment he could not think which direction the house lay in. He turned, stumbled and walked straight into Mr Strange, who for some reason was standing directly behind him. “I thought you were going to remain in the library!” he said in surprize.

Strange glared at him. “I did remain in the library! One moment I was reading Goubert’s
Gatekeeper of Apollo
. The next moment I was here!”

“You did not follow me?” asked Norrell.

“No, of course not! What is happening? And what in God’s name is taking you so long?”

“I could not find my greatcoat,” said Norrell, humbly. “I did not know where Lucas had put it.”

Strange raised one eye-brow, sighed and said, “I presume you experienced the same as me? Just before I was plucked up and brought here, there was a sensation like winds and waters and flames, all mixed together?”

“Yes,” said Norrell.

“And a faint odour, as of wild herbs and mountainsides?”

“Yes,” said Norrell.

“Fairy magic?”

“Oh!” said Norrell. “Undoubtedly! This is part of the same spell that keeps you here in Eternal Darkness.” He looked around. “How extensive is it?”

“What?”

“The Darkness.”

“Well, it is hard for me to know exactly since it moves around with me. But other people have told me that it is the size of the parish in Venice where I lived. Say half an acre?”

“Half an acre! Stay here!” Mr Norrell put the silver dish of water down upon the frozen ground. He walked off in the direction of the bridge. Soon all that was visible of him was his grey wig. In the starlight it resembled nothing so much as a little stone tortoise waddling away.

The world gave another twist and suddenly the two magicians were standing together on the bridge over the river at Hurtfew.

“What in the world … ?” began Strange.

“You see?” said Norrell, grimly. “The spell will not allow us to move too far from one another. It has gripped me too. I dare say there was some regrettable impreciseness in the fairy’s magic. He has been careless. I dare say he named you as the English magician — or some such vague term. Consequently, his spell — meant only for you — now entraps any English magician who stumbles into it!”

“Ah!” said Strange. He said nothing more. There did not seem any thing to say.

Mr Norrell turned towards the house. “If nothing else, Mr Strange,” he said, “this is an excellent illustration of the need for great preciseness about names in spells!”

Behind him Strange raised his eyes heavenward.

In the library they placed the silver dish of water on a table between them.

It was very odd but the discovery that he was now imprisoned in Eternal Darkness with Strange seemed to have raised Mr Norrell’s spirits rather than otherwise. Cheerfully he reminded Strange that they still had not found a way to name John Uskglass and that this was certain to be a great obstacle in finding him — by magic or any other means.

Strange, with his head propped up on his hands, stared at him gloomily. “Just try John Uskglass,” he said.

So Norrell did the magic, naming John Uskglass as the person they sought. He divided the surface of the water into quarters with lines of glittering light. He gave each quarter a name: Heaven, Hell, Earth and Faerie. Instantly a speck of bluish light shone in the quarter that represented Earth.

“There!” said Strange, leaping up triumphantly. “You see, sir! Things are not always as difficult as you suppose.”

Norrell tapped the surface of the quarter; the divisions disappeared. He redrew them, naming them afresh: “England, Scotland, Ireland, Elsewhere.” The speck of light appeared in England. He tapped the quarter, redrew the divisions and examined the result. And on and on, he went, refining the magic. The speck glowed steadily.

He made a soft sound of exclamation.

“What is it?” asked Strange.

In a tone of wonder, Norrell said, “I think we may have succeeded after all! It says he is here. In Yorkshire!”

67
The hawthorn tree

February 1817

Childermass was crossing a lonely moorland. In the middle of the moor a misshapen hawthorn tree stood all alone and from the tree a man was hanging. He had been stripped of his coat and shirt, revealing in death what he had doubtless kept hidden during his life: that his skin bore a strange deformation. His chest, back and arms were covered with intricate blue marks, marks so dense that he was more blue than white.

As he rode up to the tree, Childermass wondered if the murderer had written upon the body as a joke. When he had been a sailor he had heard tales of countries where criminals’s confessions were written on to their bodies by various horrible means before they were killed. From a distance the marks looked very like writing, but as he got closer he saw that they were beneath the skin.

He got down from his horse and swung the body round until it was facing him. The face was purple and swollen; the eyes were bulging and filled with blood. He studied it until he could discern in the distorted features a face he knew. “Vinculus,” he said.

Taking out his pocket-knife, he cut the body down. Then he pulled off Vinculus’s breeches and boots, and surveyed the body: the corpse of a forked animal on a barren, winter moor.

The strange marks covered every inch of skin — the only exceptions were his face, hands, private parts and the soles of his feet. He looked like a blue man wearing white gloves and a white mask. The more Childermass looked at him, the more he felt that the marks meant something. “This is the King’s Letters,” he said at last. “This is Robert Findhelm’s book.”

Just then it started to snow with a flurry of sharp, icy flakes. The wind blew harder.

Childermass thought of Strange and Norrell twenty miles away and he laughed out loud. What did it matter who read the books at Hurtfew? The most precious book of all lay naked and dead in the snow and the wind.

“So,” he said, “it has fallen to me, has it? ‘The greatest glory and the greatest burden given to any man in this Age.’ ”

At present the burden was more obvious than the glory. The book was in a most inconvenient form. He had no idea how long Vinculus had been dead or how soon he might begin to rot. What to do? He could take his chances and throw the body over his horse. But a freshly hanged corpse would be difficult to explain to any one he met on the road. He could hide the body and go and fetch a horse and cart. How long would it take? And supposing that in the meantime someone found the body and took it. There were doctors in York who would pay money for corpses and no questions asked.

“I could cast a spell of concealment,” he thought.

A spell of concealment would certainly hide it from human eyes, but there were dogs, foxes and crows to consider. They could not be deceived by any magic Childermass knew. The book had been eaten once already. He had no wish to risk it happening a second time.

The obvious thing was to make a copy, but his memorandum book, pen and ink were lying upon the table in the drawing-room in the Darkness of Hurtfew Abbey. So what then? He could scratch a copy on to the frozen earth with a stick — but that was no better than what he had already. If only there had been some trees, he might have been able to strip the bark and burn some wood and write upon the bark with the ashes. But there was only this one twisted hawthorn.

He looked at his pocket-knife. Perhaps he ought to copy the book on to his own body? There were several things in favour of this plan. First, who was to say that the positioning upon Vinculus’s body did not carry some meaning with it? The closer to the head, the more important the text? Any thing was possible. Second, it would make the book both secret and secure. He would not have to worry about any one stealing it. Whether he intended to shew it to Strange or Norrell, he had not yet decided.

But the writing upon Vinculus’s body was both dense and intricate. Even if he were able to force his knife to mimic all those delicate dots, circles and flourishes exactly — which he doubted — he would have to cut quite deep to make the marks permanent.

He took off his greatcoat and his ordinary coat. He undid the wrist of his shirt and rolled up his sleeve. As an experiment, he cut one of the symbols on the inside of Vinculus’s arm into the same place upon his own arm. The result was not promising. There was so much blood that it was difficult to see what he was doing and the pain made him feel faint.

“I can afford to lose some blood in this cause, but there is so much writing — it would surely kill me. Besides, how in the world could I copy what is written on his back? I will put him over my horse and if any one challenges me — well, I will fire at them if needs be. That is a plan. It is not a very good plan, but it is a plan.” He put on his coat and his greatcoat again.

Brewer had wandered off a little way and was cropping at some dry grasses, which the wind had exposed. Childermass walked over to him. Out of his valise he took a length of strong rope and the box containing his pistols. He rammed a ball into each pistol and primed them with powder.

He turned back to make sure that all was right with the body. Someone — a man — was bending over it. He shoved the pistols into the pockets of his greatcoat and began to run, calling out.

The man wore black boots and a black travelling coat. He was half-stooping, half-kneeling on the snowy ground beside Vinculus. For a brief moment Childermass thought it was Strange — but this man was not quite so tall and was somewhat slighter in figure. His dark clothes were clearly expensive and looked fashionable. Yet his straight, dark hair was longer than any fashionable gentleman would have worn it; it gave him something of the look of a Methodist preacher or a Romantic poet. “I know him,” thought Childermass. “He is a magician. I know him well. Why can I not think what his name is?”

Out loud he said, “The body is mine, sir! Leave it be!”

The man looked up. “Yours, John Childermass?” he said with a mildly ironic air, “I thought it was mine.”

It was a curious thing but despite his clothes and his air of cool authority, his speech sounded uncouth — even to Childermass’s ears. His accent was northern — of that there was no doubt — but Childermass did not recognize it. It might have been Northumbrian, but it was tinged with something else — the speech of the cold countries that lie over the North Sea and — which seemed more extraordinary still — there was more than a hint of French in his pronunciation.

“Well, you are mistaken.” Childermass raised his pistols. “I will fire upon you, if I have to, sir. But I would much rather not. Leave the body to me and go on your way.”

The man said nothing. He regarded Childermass a moment longer and then, as if he had become bored with him, turned back to his examination of the body.

Childermass looked round for a horse or a carriage — some indication of how the man had got here. There was nothing. In all the wide moor there were only the two men, the horse, the corpse and the hawthorn tree.

“Yet there must be a carriage somewhere,” he thought. “There is not so much as a spot of mud on his coat and none on his boots. He looks as if he has just come fresh from his valet. Where are his servants?”

This was a discomfiting thought. Childermass doubted he would have much difficulty in overpowering this pale, thin, poetical-looking person, but a coachman and two or three stout footmen would be another matter entirely.

“Does the land hereabouts belong to you, sir?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And where is your horse? Where is your carriage? Where are your servants?”

“I have no horse, John Childermass. I have no carriage. And only one of my servants is here.”

“Where?”

Without troubling to look up, the man raised his arm and pointed a thin, pale finger.

Childermass looked behind him in confusion. There was no one there. Just the wind blowing across the snowy tussocks. What did he mean? Was it the wind or the snow? He had heard of mediaeval magicians who claimed these and other natural forces as servants. Then comprehension dawned on him. “What? No, sir, you are mistaken! I am not your servant!”

“You boasted of it, not three days ago,” said the man.

There was only one person who had any claim to be Childermass’s master. Was this, in some mysterious fashion, Norrell? An aspect of Norrell? In the past, magicians had sometimes appeared in different forms according to the qualities which made up their character. Childermass tried to think what part of Gilbert Norrell’s character might suddenly manifest as a pale, handsome man with a peculiar accent and an air of great authority. He reflected that strange things had happened recently, but nothing as queer as that. “Sir!” he cried. “I have warned you! Let the body be!”

The man bent closer to Vinculus’s corpse. He plucked something out of his own mouth — a tiny pearl of light faintly tinged with rose and silver. He placed it in Vinculus’s mouth. The corpse shivered. It was not like the shudder of a sick man, nor yet like the shiver of a healthy one; it was like the shiver of a bare birch wood as spring breathes upon it.

“Move away from the body, sir!” cried Childermass. “I will not ask you again!”

The man did not even trouble to look up. He passed the tip of his finger over the body as if he were writing upon it.

Childermass aimed the right-hand pistol somewhat wide of the man’s left shoulder, intending to frighten him away. The pistol fired perfectly; a cloud of smoke and a smell of gunpowder rose from the pan; sparks and more smoke disgorged from the barrel. But the lead refused to fly. It hung in the air as if in a dream. It twisted, swelled and changed shape. Suddenly it put forth wings, turned into a lapwing and flew away. In the same instant Childermass’s mind grew as quiet and fixed as a stone.

The man moved his finger over Vinculus and all the patterns and symbols flowed and swirled as if they had been written upon water. He did this for a while and when he was satisfied, he stopped and stood up.

“You are wrong,” he said to Childermass. “He is not dead.” He came and stood directly before Childermass. With as little ceremony as a parent who cleans something from a child’s face, the man licked his finger and daubed a sort of symbol on each of Childermass’s eye-lids, on his lips and over his heart. Then he gave Childermass’s left hand a knock, so that the pistol fell to the ground. He drew another symbol on Childermass’s palm. He turned and seemed about to depart, but glancing back and apparently as an afterthought, he made a final gesture over the cut in Childermass’s face.

The wind shook the falling snow and made it spin and twist about. Brewer made a sound as if something had disturbed him. Briefly, the snow and the shadows seemed to form a picture of a thin, dark man in a greatcoat and boots. The next moment the illusion was gone.

Childermass blinked. “Where am I wandering to?” he asked himself irritably. “And what am I doing talking to myself? This is no time to be wool-gathering!” There was a smell of gunpowder. One of his pistols lay in the snow. When he picked it up it was still warm as if he had recently discharged it. That was odd, but he had no time to be properly surprized because a sound made him look up.

Vinculus was getting up off the ground. He did it clumsily, in jerks, like something new-born that has not yet discovered what its limbs are for. He stood for a moment, his body swaying and his head twitching from side to side. Then he opened his mouth and screamed at Childermass. But the sound that came out of his mouth was no sound at all; it was the emptied skin of sound without flesh or bones.

It was, without a doubt, the strangest thing Childermass had ever seen: a naked blue man with blood-engorged eyes, silently screaming in the middle of a snow-covered moor. It was such a very extraordinary situation that for some moments he was at a loss to know what to do. He wondered if he ought to try the spell called Gilles de Marston’s Restoration of Flown Tranquillity, but on further consideration, he thought of something better. He took out the claret that Lucas had given him and shewed it to Vinculus. Vinculus grew calmer and fixed his gaze upon it.

A quarter of an hour later they were seated together on a tussock beneath the hawthorn, breakfasting on the claret and a handful of apples. Vinculus had put on his shirt and breeches and was wrapped in a blanket that belonged to Brewer. He had recovered from his hanging with surprizing rapidity. His eyes were still blood-shot, but they were less alarming to look at than before. His speech was hoarse and liable to be interrupted at any moment by fits of violent coughing, but it was comprehensible.

“Someone tried to hang you,” Childermass told him. “I do not know who or why. Luckily I found you in time and cut you down.” As he said this, he felt a faint question disturb his thoughts. In his mind’s eye he saw Vinculus, dead on the ground, and a thin, white hand, pointing. Who had that been? The memory slipped away from him. “So tell me,” he continued, “how does a man become a book? I know that your father was given the book by Robert Findhelm and that he was supposed to take the book to a man in the Derbyshire hills.”

“The last man in England who could read the King’s letters,” croaked Vinculus.