Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (21 page)

“There!” said Vinculus softly. “That is what you may tell the magician of Hanover-square! That is his past and his present and his future!”

Needless to say when Childermass returned to Hanover-square and told Mr Norrell what had occurred, Mr Norrell was very angry. That Vinculus should continue to defy Mr Norrell was bad enough; that he should claim to have a book and Mr Norrell not be able read it was considerably worse; but that he should pretend to tell Mr Norrell’s fortune and threaten him with pictures of Black Kings was absolutely unbearable.

“He tricked you!” declared Mr Norrell, angrily. “He hid your own cards and supplanted them with a deck of his own. I am amazed you were so taken in!”

“Quite,” agreed Mr Lascelles, regarding Childermass coldly.

“Oh, to be sure, Vinculus is nothing but conjuring tricks,” agreed Drawlight. “But still I should have liked to have seen it. I am as fond as any thing of Vinculus. I wish you had told me, Mr Childermass, that you were going to see him. I would have come with you.”

Childermass ignored Lascelles and Drawlight and addressed Mr Norrell. “Even supposing that he is an able enough conjuror to perform such a trick — which I am very far from allowing — how was he to know I possessed such a thing as a pack of Marseilles cards? How was he to know when you did not?”

“Aye, and it was as well for you that I did not know! Telling fortunes with picture cards — it is everything I despise! Oh, it has been a very ill-managed business from start to finish!”

“And what of this book that the sorcerer claims to have?” asked Lascelles.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr Norrell. “That odd prophecy. I dare say it is nothing, yet there were one or two expressions which suggested great antiquity. I believe it would be best if I examined that book.”

“Well, Mr Childermass?” asked Lascelles.

“I do not know where he keeps it.”

“Then we suggest you find out.”

So Childermass set spies to follow Vinculus and the first and most surprizing discovery they made was that Vinculus was married. Indeed he was a great deal more married than most people. His wives were five in number and they were scattered throughout the various parishes of London and the surrounding towns and villages. The eldest was forty-five and the youngest fifteen and each was entirely ignorant of the existence of the other four. Childermass contrived to meet with each of them in turn. To two of them he appeared in the character of the unlikely milliner; to another he presented himself as a customs officer; for the benefit of the fourth he became a drunken, gambling rogue; and he told the fifth that, though he appeared to the world to be a servant of the great Mr Norrell of Hanover-square, he was in secret a magician himself. Two tried to rob him; one said she would tell him any thing he wanted to know as long as he paid for her gin; one tried to make him go with her to a Methodist prayer meeting; and the fifth, much to everyone’s surprize, fell in love with him. But in the end all his playacting was for nothing because none of them were even aware that Vinculus possessed such a thing as a book, let alone where he kept it.

Mr Norrell refused to believe this and in his private study on the second floor he cast spells and peered into a silver dish of water, examining the lodgings of Vinculus’s five wives, but nowhere was there any thing resembling a book.

Meanwhile on the floor above, in a little room set aside for his own particular use, Childermass laid out his cards. The cards had all returned to their original form, except for
The Emperevr
who had not shaken off his Raven-Kingish look. Certain cards appeared over and over again, among them
The Ace of Cups
— an ecclesiastical-looking chalice of such elaborate design that it more resembled a walled city on a stalk — and
II. La Papesse
. According to Childermass’s way of thinking both these cards stood for something hidden. The suit of Wands also appeared with quite unwonted frequency, but they were always in the higher numbers, the Seven, the Eight, the Nine and Ten. The more Childermass gazed at these rows of wands the more they appeared to him to be lines of writing. Yet at the same time they were a barrier, an obstacle to understanding, and so Childermass came to believe that Vinculus’s book, whatever it was, was in an unknown language.

22
The Knight of Wands

February 1808

Jonathan Strange was a very different sort of person from his father. He was not avaricious; he was not proud; he was not ill-tempered and disagreeable. But though he had no striking vices, his virtues were perhaps almost as hard to define. At the pleasure parties of Weymouth and in the drawing-rooms of Bath he was regularly declared to be “the most charming man in the world" by the fashionable people he met there, but all that they meant by this was that he talked well, danced well, and hunted and gambled as much as a gentleman should.

In person he was rather tall and his figure was considered good. Some people thought him handsome, but this was not by any means the universal opinion. His face had two faults: a long nose and an ironic expression. It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.

At the time of his father’s death he was much taken up with a scheme to persuade a certain young lady to marry him. When he arrived home from Shrewsbury on the day of his father’s death and the servants told him the news, his first thoughts were to wonder how his suit would be affected. Was she more likely to say yes now? Or less?

This marriage ought to have been the easiest matter in the world to arrange. Their friends all approved the match and the lady’s brother — her only relation — was scarcely less ardent in wishing for it than Jonathan Strange himself. True, Laurence Strange had objected strongly to the lady’s poverty, but he had put it out of his power to make any serious difficulty when he froze himself to death.

But, though Jonathan Strange had been the acknowledged suitor of this young lady for some months, the engagement — hourly expected by all their acquaintance — did not follow. It was not that she did not love him; he was quite certain that she did, but sometimes it seemed as if she had fallen in love with him for the sole purpose of quarrelling with him. He was quite at a loss to account for it. He believed that he had done everything she wanted in the way of reforming his behaviour. His card-playing and other sorts of gambling had dwindled away almost to nothing and he drank very little now — scarcely more than a bottle a day. He had told her that he had no objection to going to church more if that would please her — as often, say, as once a week — twice, if she would like it better — but she said that she would leave such matters to his own conscience, that they were not the sort of thing that could be dictated by another person. He knew that she disliked his frequent visits to Bath, Brighton, Weymouth and Cheltenham and he assured her that she had nothing to fear from the women in those places — doubtless they were very charming, but they were nothing to him. She said that was not what concerned her.
That
had not even occurred to her. It was just that she wished he could find a better way to occupy his time. She did not mean to moralize and no one loved a holiday better than her, but perpetual holidays! Was that really what he wanted? Did that make him happy?

He told her that he quite agreed with her and in the past year he had continually been forming plans to take up this or that profession or regular train of study. The plans themselves were very good. He thought he might seek out a destitute poetic genius and become his patron; he thought he would study law; look for fossils on the beach at Lyme Regis; buy an ironworks; study iron-founding; ask a fellow he knew about new methods of agriculture; study theology; and finish reading a fascinating work on engineering which he was almost certain he had put down on a little table at the furthest corner of his father’s library two or three years ago. But to each of these projected courses some formidable obstacle was found to exist. Destitute poetic geniuses were harder to come by than he had imagined;
¹
lawbooks were dull; he could not remember the name of the fellow who knew about agriculture; and the day that he intended to start for Lyme Regis it was raining heavily.

And so on and so on. He told the young lady that he heartily wished that he had gone into the Navy years ago. Nothing in the world would have suited him so well! But his father would never have agreed to it and he was twenty-eight now. It was far too late to take up a naval career.

The name of this curiously dissatisfied young woman was Arabella Woodhope and she was the daughter of the late curate of St Swithin’s in Clunbury.
²
At the time of Laurence Strange’s death she was paying an extended visit to some friends in the Gloucestershire village where her brother was a curate. Her letter of condolence reached Strange on the morning of the funeral. It expressed everything that was proper — sympathy for his loss tempered by an understanding of the elder Mr Strange’s many failings as a parent. But there was something more besides. She was concerned about him. She regretted her absence from Shropshire. She did not like him being alone and friendless at such a time.

His mind was made up upon the instant. He could not imagine that he was ever likely to find himself in a more advantageous situation. She would never be more full of anxious tenderness than she was at this moment and he would never be richer. (He could not quite believe that she was as indifferent to his wealth as she claimed.) He supposed he ought to allow a proper interval between his father’s funeral and his proposal of marriage. Three days seemed about right, so on the morning of the fourth day he ordered his valet to pack his clothes and his groom to make his horse ready and he set off for Gloucestershire.

He took with him the new manservant. He had spoken at length to this man and had found him to be energetic, resourceful and able. The new manservant was delighted to be chosen (though his vain spirit told him that this was the most natural thing in the world). But now that the new manservant has passed the giant-toppling stage of his career — now that he has, as it were, stepped out of myth and into the workaday world, it will perhaps be found more convenient to give him his name like an ordinary mortal. His name was Jeremy Johns.

Upon the first day they endured nothing but the commonplace adventures which befall any traveller: they quarrelled with a man who set his dog to bark at them for no reason and there was an alarm about Strange’s horse which began to shew signs of being sickly and which then, upon further investigation, was discovered to be in perfect health. On the morning of the second day they were riding through a pretty landscape of gently sloping hills, winter woods and prosperous-looking, tidy farms. Jeremy Johns was occupied in practising the correct degree of haughtiness for the servant of a gentleman newly come into an extensive property and Jonathan Strange was thinking about Miss Woodhope.

Now that the day had arrived when he was to see her again he began to have some doubts of his reception. He was glad to think she was with her brother — dear, good Henry who saw nothing but good in the match and who, Strange was quite certain, never failed to encourage his sister to think favourably of it. But he had some doubts about the friends with whom she was staying. They were a clergyman and his wife. He knew nothing of them, but he had the natural distrust that a young, rich, self-indulgent man feels for members of the clergy. Who could say what notions of extra-ordinary virtue and unnecessary self-sacrifice they might be daily imparting to her?

The low sun cast immense shadows. Ice and frost sparkled upon the branches of the trees and in hollows of the fields. Catching sight of a man ploughing a field, he was reminded of the families who lived upon his land and whose welfare had always been cause for concern to Miss Woodhope. An ideal conversation began to develop in his head.
And what are your intentions regarding your tenants?
she would ask —
Intentions?
he would say —
Yes
, she would say.
How will you ease their burdens? Your father took every penny he could from them. He made their lives miserable
—
I know he did
, Strange would say,
I have ever defended my father’s actions
—
Have you lowered the rents yet?
she would say.
Have you talked to the parish council? Have you thought about almshouses for the old people and a school for the children?

“It is really quite unreasonable for her to be talking of rents, almhouses and a school,” thought Strange gloomily. “After all, my father only died last Tuesday.”

“Well, that is odd!” remarked Jeremy Johns.

“Hmmm?” said Strange. He discovered that they had halted at a white gate. At the side of the road was a neat little white-painted cottage. It was newly built and had six sides and Gothic windows.

"Where is the toll-keeper?” asked Jeremy Johns.

"Hmmm?” said Strange.

“It is a tollhouse, sir. See, there is the board with the list of money to pay. But there is no one about. Shall I leave them sixpence?”

“Yes, yes. As you wish.”

So Jeremy Johns left the toll upon the doorstep of the cottage and opened the gate so that Strange and he could pass through. A hundred yards further on they entered a village. There was an ancient stone church with winter’s golden light upon it, an avenue of ancient, twisted hornbeams that led somewhere or other, and twenty or so neat stone cottages with smoke rising up from their chimneys. A stream ran by the side of the road. It was bordered by dry, yellow grasses with pendants of ice hanging from them.

“Where are all the people?” said Jeremy.

“What?” said Strange. He looked around and saw two little girls looking out of a cottage window. “There,” he said.

“No, sir. Those are children. I meant grown-ups. I do not see any.”

This was true; there were none to be seen. There were some chickens strutting about, a cat sitting on some straw in an ancient cart and some horses in a field, but no people. Yet as soon as Strange and Jeremy Johns left the village, the reason for this queer state of affairs became apparent. A hundred yards or so from the last house in the village a crowd was gathered round a winter hedge. They carried an assortment of weapons — billhooks, sickles, sticks and guns. It was a very odd picture, both sinister and a little ridiculous. Any one would have thought that the village had decided to make war upon hawthorn bushes and elder-trees. The low winter sun shone full upon the villagers, gilding their clothes and weapons and their strange, intent expressions. Long, blue shadows streamed behind them. They were completely silent and whenever one of them moved, he did so with great care as though afraid of making a noise.

As they rode by, Strange and Jeremy stood up in the stirrups and craned their necks to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that the villagers were looking at.

“Well, that is odd!” exclaimed Jeremy when they were past. “There was nothing there!”

“No,” said Strange, “there was a man. I am not surprized you could not see him. At first I took him for a hedge-root, but it was definitely a man — a grey, gaunt, weather-worn man — a man remarkably like a hedge-root, but a man nevertheless.”

The road led them into a dark winter wood. Jeremy John’s curiosity had been excited and he wondered who the man could be and what the villagers were intending to do to him. Strange answered once or twice at random, but soon fell to thinking of Miss Woodhope.

“It will be best to avoid discussing the changes brought on by my father’s death,” he thought. “It is altogether too dangerous. I will begin with light, indifferent subjects — the adventures of this journey for example. Now, what has happened that will amuse her?” He looked up. Dark, dripping trees surrounded him. “There must have been something.” He remembered a windmill he had seen near Hereford with a child’s red cloak caught up on one of the sails. As the sails turned the cloak was one moment being dragged through the slush and the mud and the next flying through the air like a vivid scarlet flag. “Like an allegory of something or other. Then I can tell her about the empty village and the children at the window peeping out between the curtains, one with a doll in her hand and the other with a wooden horse. Next come the silent crowd with their weapons and the man beneath the hedge.”

Oh!
she was certain to say
, Poor man! What happened to him?
—
I do not know
, Strange would say.
But surely you stayed to help him
, she would say.
No
, Strange would say.
Oh!
, she would say …

“Wait!” cried Strange, reining in his horse. “This will not do at all! We must go back. I do not feel easy in my mind about the man under the hedge.”

“Oh!” cried Jeremy Johns, in relief. “I am very glad to hear you say so, sir. Neither am I.”

“I don’t suppose you thought to bring a set of pistols, did you?” said Strange.

“No, sir.”

“D—!” said Strange and then flinched a little, because Miss Woodhope did not approve of oaths. “What about a knife? Something of that sort?”

“No, nothing, sir. But do not fret.” Jeremy jumped off his horse and went delving about in the undergrowth. “I can make us some clubs out of these branches which will do almost as well as pistols.”

There were some stout branches which someone had cut from a coppice of trees and left lying on the ground. Jeremy picked one up and offered it to Strange. It was scarcely a club, more a branch with twigs growing out of it.

“Well,” said Strange, doubtfully, “I suppose that it is better than nothing.”

Jeremy equipped himself with another branch just the same, and, thus armed, they rode back to the village and the silent crowd of people.

“You there!” cried Strange, singling out a man dressed in a shepherd’s smock with a number of knitted shawls tied over it and a wide-brimmed hat upon his head. He made a few flourishing gestures with his club in what he hoped was a threatening manner. “What … ?”

Upon the instant several of the crowd turned together and put their fingers to their lips.

Another man came up to Strange. He was dressed rather more respectably than the first in a coat of brown cord. He touched his fingers to his hat and said very softly, “Beg pardon, sir, but could not you take the horses further off? They stamp their feet and breathe very loud.”