Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (90 page)

For years Stephen had felt as if a pane of dirty, grey glass hung between him and the world; the moment that the last spark of the gentleman’s life was extinguished, the pane shattered. Stephen stood a moment, gasping for breath.

But his allies and servants were growing doubtful. There was a question in the minds of the hills and the trees. They began to know that he was not the person they had taken him for — that all this was borrowed glory.

One by one he felt them withdraw. As the last one left him, he fell, empty and insensible, to the ground.

In Padua the Greysteels had already breakfasted and were gathered together in the little sitting-room on the first floor. They were not in the best of spirits this morning. There had been a disagreement. Dr Greysteel had taken to smoking a pipe indoors — a thing to which Flora and Aunt Greysteel were very much opposed. Aunt Greysteel had tried to argue him out of it, but Dr Greysteel had proved stubborn. Pipe-smoking was a pastime he was particularly fond of and he felt that he ought to be permitted an indulgence or two, to make up for their never going anywhere any more. Aunt Greysteel said that he ought to smoke his pipe outside. Dr Greysteel replied that he could not because it was raining. It was difficult to smoke a pipe in the rain — the rain made the tobacco wet.

So he was smoking the pipe and Aunt Greysteel was coughing; and Flora, who was disposed to blame herself, glanced at each from time to time with an unhappy expression. Things had gone on like this for about an hour when Dr Greysteel happened to look up and exclaimed in amazement, “My head is black! Completely black!”

“Well, what do you expect if you smoke a pipe?” replied his sister.

“Papa,” asked Flora, putting down her work in alarm, “what do you mean?”

Dr Greysteel was staring at the mirror — the very same mirror which had so mysteriously appeared when day had turned to night and Strange had come to Padua. Flora went and stood behind his chair, so that she could see what he saw. Her exclamation of surprize brought Aunt Greysteel to join her.

Where Dr Greysteel’s head ought to have been in the mirror was a dark spot that moved and changed shape. The spot grew in size until gradually it began to resemble a figure fleeing down an immense corridor towards them. The figure drew closer, and they could see it was a woman. Several times she looked back as she ran, as if in fear of something behind her.

“What has frightened her to make her run like that?” wondered Aunt Greysteel. “Lancelot, can you see any thing? Does any one chase after her? Oh, poor lady! Lancelot, is there any thing you can do?”

Dr Greysteel went to the mirror, placed his hand upon it and pushed, but the surface was as hard and smooth as mirrors usually are. He hesitated for a moment, as though debating with himself whether to try a more violent approach.

“Be careful, papa!” cried Flora in alarm. “You must not break it!”

The woman within the mirror drew nearer. For a moment she appeared directly behind it and they could see the elaborate embroidery and beading of her gown; then she mounted up upon the frame as on a step. The surface of the mirror became softer, like a dense cloud or mist. Flora hastened to push a chair against the wall so that the lady might more easily descend. Three pairs of hands were raised to catch her, to pull her away from whatever it was that frightened her.

She was perhaps thirty or thirty-two years of age. She was dressed in a gown the colour of autumn, but she was breathless and a little disordered from running. With a frantic look she surveyed the unknown room, the unknown faces, the unfamiliar look of everything. “Is this Faerie?” she asked.

“No, madam,” answered Flora.

“Is it England?”

“No, madam.” Tears began to course down Flora’s face. She put her hand on her breast to steady herself. “This is Padua. In Italy. My name is Flora Greysteel. It is a name quite unknown to you, but I have waited for you here at your husband’s desire. I promised him I would meet you here.”

“Is Jonathan here?”

“No, madam.”

“You are Arabella Strange,” said Dr Greysteel in amazement.

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Aunt Greysteel, one hand flying to cover her mouth and the other to her heart. “Oh, my dear!” Then both hands fluttered around Arabella’s face and shoulders. “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed for the third time. She burst into tears and embraced Arabella.

Stephen awoke. He was lying on the frozen ground in a narrow dale. The sunlight was gone. It was grey and cold. The dale was choked with a great wall of millstones and boulders and earth — an eerie tomb. The wall had dammed the beck, but a little water still seeped through and was now spreading across the ground. Stephen’s crown, sceptre and orb lay a little distance away in pools of dirty water. Wearily he stood up.

In the distance he could hear someone calling, “Stephen! Stephen!” He thought it was Lady Pole.

“I cast off the name of my captivity,” he said. “It is gone.” He picked up the crown, the sceptre and orb, and began to walk.

He had no notion of where he was going. He had killed the gentleman and he had allowed the gentleman to kill Vinculus. He could never go home — if home it had been in the first place. What would an English judge and jury say to a black man who was a murderer twice over? Stephen had done with England and England had done with him. He walked on.

After a while it seemed to him that the landscape was no longer as English as it had been. The trees that now surrounded him were immense, ancient things, their boughs twice the thickness of a man’s body and curved into strange, fantastical shapes. Though it was winter and the briars were bare, a few roses still bloomed here, blood-red and snow-white.

England lay behind him. He did not regret it. He did not look back. He walked on.

He came to a long, low hill, and in the middle of the hill was an opening. It was more like a mouth than a door, yet it did not have an evil look. Someone was standing there, just within the opening, waiting for him. “I know this place,” he thought. “It is Lost-hope! But how can that be?”

It was not simply that the house had become a hill, everything seemed to have undergone a revolution. The wood was suddenly possessed of a spirit of freshness, of innocence. The trees no longer threatened the traveller. Between their branches were glints of a serene winter sky of coldest blue. Here and there shone the pure light of a star — though whether they were stars of morning or stars of evening he could no longer remember. He looked around for the ancient bones and rusting armour — those ghastly emblems of the gentleman’s bloodthirsty nature. To his surprize he found that they were everywhere — beneath his feet, stuffed into hollows of the tree roots, tangled up with briars and brambles. But they were in a far more advanced state of decay than he remembered; they were moss-covered, rust-eaten and crumbling into dust. In a little while nothing would be left of them.

The figure within the opening was a familiar one; he had often attended the balls and processions at Lost-hope. But he too was changed; his features had become more fairy-like; his eyes more glittering; his eye-brows more extravagant. His hair curled tightly like the fleece of a young lamb or like young ferns in spring, and there was a light dusting of fur upon his face. He looked older, yet at the same time more innocent. “Welcome!” he cried.

“Is this truly Lost-hope?” asked the person who had once been Stephen Black.

“Yes, grandfather.”

“But I do not understand. Lost-hope was a great mansion. This is …” The person who had once been Stephen Black paused. “I do not have a word for what this is.”

“This is a
brugh
, grandfather! This is the world beneath the hill. Lost-hope is changing! The old King is dead. The new King approaches! And at his approach the world sheds its sorrow. The sins of the old King dissolve like morning mist! The world assumes the character of the new. His virtues fill up the wood and the wold!”

“The new King?” The person who had once been Stephen Black looked down at his own hands. In one was the sceptre and in the other the orb.

The fairy smiled at him, as if wondering why he should be surprized. “The changes you wrought here far surpass any thing you did in England.”

They passed through the opening into a great hall. The new King sat down upon an ancient throne. A crowd of people came and gathered around him. Some faces he knew, others were unfamiliar to him, but he suspected that this was because he had never seen them as they truly were before. For a long time he was silent.

“This house,” he told them at last, “is disordered and dirty. Its inhabitants have idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties — things that ought not to be remembered, let alone celebrated. I have often observed it and often regretted it. All these faults, I shall in time set right.”
¹

The moment the spell took effect a great wind blew through Hurtfew. Doors banged in the Darkness; black curtains billowed out in black rooms; black papers were swept from black tables and made to dance. A bell — taken from the original Abbey long ago and since forgotten — rang frantically in a little turret above the stables.

In the library, visions appeared in mirrors and clock-faces. The wind blew the curtains apart and visions appeared in the windows too. They followed thick and fast upon one another, almost too rapid to comprehend. Mr Norrell saw some that seemed familiar: the shattered branch of holly in his own library at Hanover-square; a raven flying in front of St Paul’s Cathedral so that for a moment it was the living embodiment of the Raven-in-Flight; the great black bed in the inn at Wansford. But others were entirely strange to him: a hawthorn tree; a man crucified upon a thicket; a crude wall of stones in a narrow valley; an unstoppered bottle floating on a wave.

Then all the visions disappeared, except for one. It filled one of the tall library windows, but what it was a vision
of
, Mr Norrell was at a loss to know. It resembled a large, perfectly round, black stone of almost impossible brilliance and glossiness, set into a thin ring of rough stone and mounted upon what appeared to be a black hillside. Mr Norrell thought of it as a hillside because it bore some resemblance to a moor where the heather is all burnt and charred — except that this hillside was not the black of burnt things, it was the black of wet silk or well-shone leather. Suddenly the stone did something — it moved or spun. The movement was almost too quick to grasp but Mr Norrell was left with the sickening impression that it had blinked.

The wind died away. The bell above the stable ceased to ring.

Mr Norrell breathed a long sigh of relief that it was over. Strange was standing with his arms crossed, deep in thought, staring at the floor.

“What did you make of that?” asked Mr Norrell. “The last was by far the worst. I thought for a moment it was an eye.”

“It was an eye,” said Strange.

“But what could it belong to? Some horror or monster, I suppose! Most unsettling!”

“It was monstrous,” agreed Strange. “Though not quite in the way you imagine. It was a raven’s eye.”

“A raven’s eye! But it filled the whole window!”

“Yes. Either the raven was immensely large or …”

“Or?” quavered Mr Norrell.

Strange gave a short, uncheerful laugh. “Or we were ridiculously small! Pleasant, is it not, to see oneself as others see one? I said I wanted John Uskglass to look at me and I think, for a moment he did. Or at least one of his lieutenants did. And in that moment you and I were smaller than a raven’s eye and presumably as insignificant. Speaking of John Uskglass, I do not suppose that we know where he is?”

Mr Norrell sat down at the silver dish and began to work. After five minutes or so of patient labour, he said, “Mr Strange! There is no sign of John Uskglass — nothing at all. But I have looked for Lady Pole and Mrs Strange. Lady Pole is in Yorkshire and Mrs Strange is in Italy. There is no shadow of their presence in Faerie. Both are completely disenchanted!”

There was a silence. Strange turned away abruptly.

“It is more than a little odd,” continued Mr Norrell in a tone of wonder. “We have done everything we set out to do, but
how
we did it, I do not pretend to understand. I can only suppose that John Uskglass simply saw what was amiss and stretched out his hand to put it right! Unfortunately, his obligingness did not extend to freeing us from the Darkness. That remains.”

Mr Norrell paused. This then was his destiny! — a destiny full of fear, horror and desolation! He sat patiently for a few moments in expectation of falling prey to some or all of these terrible emotions, but was forced to conclude that he felt none of them. Indeed, what seemed remarkable to him now were the long years he had spent in London, away from his library, at the beck and call of the Ministers and the Admirals. He wondered how he had borne it.

“I am glad I did not recognize the raven’s eye for what it was,” he said cheerfully, “or I believe I would have been a good deal frightened!”

“Indeed, sir,” said Strange hoarsely. “You were fortunate there! And I believe I am cured of wanting to be looked at! Henceforth John Uskglass is welcome to ignore me for as long as he pleases.”

“Oh, indeed!” agreed Mr Norrell. “You know, Mr Strange, you really should try to rid yourself of the habit of wishing for things. It is a dangerous thing in a magician!” He began a long and not particularly interesting story about a fourteenth-century magician in Lancashire who had often made idle wishes and had caused no end of inconvenience in the village where he lived, accidentally turning the cows into clouds and the cooking pots into ships, and causing the villagers to speak in colours rather than words — and other such signs of magical chaos.

At first Strange barely answered him and such replies as he made were random and illogical. But gradually he appeared to listen with more attention, and he spoke in his usual manner.

Mr Norrell had many talents, but penetration into the hearts of men and women was not one of them. Strange did not speak of the restoration of his wife, so Mr Norrell imagined that it could not have affected him very deeply.