Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (70 page)

Several minutes passed. “He had a wife, you know,” he remarked to the little wooden figure. He brought his hand near to the candlelight to examine his nails. “Arabella Woodhope. The most charming girl in all the world. But dead. Dead, dead, dead.” He picked up a nail-buffer from the table and began to polish his nails with it. “In fact, now that I come to think of it, was I not in love with her myself? I think I must have been. She had the sweetest way of saying my name and smiling at the same time, and every time she did so, my heart turned over.” He laughed. “You know, it is really very ridiculous, but I cannot actually remember what my name is. Laurence? Arthur? Frank? I wish Arabella were here. She would know. And she would tell me too! She is not one of those women who tease one and insist upon making a game of everything long after it has ceased to be amusing. By God, I wish she were here! There is an ache here.” He tapped his heart. “And something hot and hard inside here.” He tapped his forehead. “But half an hour’s conversation with Arabella would put both right, I am sure. Perhaps I ought to summon this fellow’s fairy and ask him to bring her here. Fairies can summon the dead, can they not?” He picked up the spell from the table and read it again. “There is nothing to this. It is the simplest thing in the world.”

He rattled off the words of the spell and then, because it seemed important to do so, he went back to shining his nails.

In the shadows by the painted cupboard there was a person in a leaf-green coat — a person with hair the colour of thistle-down — a person with an amused, superior sort of smile upon his face.

Strange was still intent upon his nails.

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair walked very rapidly over to where Strange stood and put out his hand to pull Strange’s hair. But before he could do so, Strange looked directly at him and said, “I don’t suppose that you happen to have such a thing as a pinch of snuff, do you?”

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair froze.

“I have looked in every pocket of this damned coat,” continued Strange, perfectly unaware of the gentleman’s astonishment, “but there is not a snuff box anywhere. I cannot imagine what I was thinking of to come out without one. Kendal Brown is what I generally take, if you have it.”

As he spoke he fished in his pockets again. But he had forgotten about the little bone-and-blood posy that hung from the ceiling and as he moved, he knocked his head against it. The posy swung back, swung forward again and struck him fairly in the middle of his forehead.

54
A little box, the colour of heartache

1st and 2nd December 1816

There was a kind of snap in the air, followed immediately by a faint breeze and a new freshness, as if some stale odour had suddenly been swept from the room.

Strange blinked two or three times.

His first thought upon coming to himself was that his whole elaborate scheme had worked; here was someone — without a doubt a fairy — standing before him. His second thought was to wonder what in the world he had been doing. He pulled out his pocket-watch and examined it; almost an hour had passed since he had drunk the tincture.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I know it is an odd question, but have I asked any thing of you yet?”

“Snuff,” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

“Snuff?”

“You asked me for a pinch of snuff.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did I ask you for snuff?”

“A moment ago.”

“Ah! Ah. Good. Well, you need not trouble yourself. I do not need it now.”

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair bowed.

Strange was conscious that his confusion shewed in his face. He remembered all the stern warnings he had read against letting members of this tricksy race suspect that they know more than oneself. So he covered up his perplexity with sarcastic looks. Then, remembering that it is generally considered even more perilous to appear superior and so make the fairy-spirit angry, he covered up his sarcasm with a smile. Finally he went back to looking puzzled.

He did not notice that the gentleman was at least as uncomfortable as himself.

“I have summoned you here,” he said, “because I have long desired one of your race to aid me and instruct me in magic.” He had rehearsed this little pronouncement several times and was pleased to find that it sounded both confident and dignified. Unfortunately he immediately spoilt the effect by adding anxiously, “Did I mention that before?”

The gentleman said nothing.

“My name is Jonathan Strange. Perhaps you have heard of me? I am at a most interesting point in my career. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the entire future of English magic depends upon my actions in the coming months. Agree to help me and your name will be as famous as those of Col Tom Blue and Master Witcherley!”
¹

“Tut!” declared the gentleman in disgust. “Low persons!”

“Really?” said Strange. “I had no idea.” He pressed on. “It was your …” He paused to find the right phrase. “…
kind attentions
to the King of England that first brought you to my notice. Such power! Such inventiveness! English magic today lacks spirit! It lacks fire and energy! I cannot tell you how bored I am of the same dull spells to solve the same dull problems. The glimpse I had of your magic proved to me that it is quite different. You could surprize me. And I long to be surprized!”

The gentleman raised one perfect fairy eye-brow, as if he would not object in the least to surprizing Jonathan Strange.

Strange continued excitedly. “Oh! and I may as well tell you immediately that there is an old person in London called Norrell — a magician of sorts — who will be driven into fits of rage the moment he learns that you have allied yourself to me. He will do his best to thwart us but I dare say you and I will be more than a match for him.”

The gentleman appeared to have stopped listening. He was glancing about the room, fixing his gaze first upon one object, then upon another.

“Is there something in the room which displeases you?” asked Strange. “I beg you will tell me if that is the case. I dare say your magical sensibilities are much finer than my own. But even in my case there are certain things which can disrupt my ability to do magic — I believe it is so with all magicians. A salt-cellar, a rowan-tree, a fragment of the consecrated host — these all make me feel decidedly unsettled. I do not say I
cannot
do magic in their presence, but I always need to take them into account in my spells. If there is something here you dislike, you have only to say so and I shall be happy to remove it.”

The gentleman stared at him a moment as if he had not the least idea what Strange was talking about. Then suddenly he exclaimed, “My magical sensibilities, yes! How clever of you! My magical sensibilities are, as you suppose, quite tremendous! And just now they inform me that you have recently acquired an object of great power! A ring of disenchantment? An urn of visibility? Something of that nature? My congratulations! Shew me the object and I shall immediately instruct you as to its history and proper use!”

“Actually no,” said Strange, surprized. “I have nothing of that sort.”

The gentleman frowned. He looked hard, first at a chamber-pot half-hidden under the table, then at a mourning-ring that contained a miniature of an angel painted on ivory, and finally at a painted pottery jar that had once contained candied peaches and plums. “Perhaps you have come upon it by accident?” he asked. “Such objects can be very powerful even if the magician has no idea that they are present.”

“I really do not think so,” said Strange. “That jar, for instance, was purchased in Genoa from a confectioner’s. And there were dozens in the shop, just the same. I cannot see why one would be magical and the others not.”

“No, indeed,” agreed the gentleman. “And really there does not seem to be any thing here apart from the usual objects. I mean,” he added quickly, “the objects that I would expect to find in the apartments of a magician of your genius.”

There was a short pause.

“You make no reply to my offer,” said Strange. “You are undecided until you know more of me. That is just as it should be. In a day or two I will do myself the honour of soliciting your company again and we shall talk some more.”

“It has been a most interesting conversation!” said the gentleman.

“The first of many, I hope,” said Strange, politely, and bowed. The gentleman bowed in return.

Then Strange released the gentleman from the spell of summoning and he promptly disappeared.

Strange’s excitement was immense. He supposed he ought to sit down and make sober, scholarly notes of what he had seen, but it was difficult to keep from dancing, laughing and clapping his hands. He actually performed several figures of a country-dance, and if the carved wooden figure had not been attached by its feet to a wooden pillar he would certainly have made it his partner and whirled about the room with it.

When the dancing fit left him he was sorely tempted to write to Norrell. In fact he did sit down and begin a letter full of triumph and steeped in sarcasm. ("You will no doubt be
delighted
to learn …”) But then he thought better of it. “It will only provoke him to make my house disappear, or something. Ha! How furious he will be when I arrive back in England. I must publish the news immediately I return. I shall not wait for the next issue of
The Famulus
. That would take much too long. Murray will complain but I cannot help that.
The Times
would be best. I wonder what he meant by all that nonsense about rings of power and chamberpots? I suppose he was trying to account for my success in summoning him.”

Upon the whole he could not have been more pleased with himself if he had conjured up John Uskglass himself and had half an hour of civil conversation with him. The only unsettling part of the business was the memory — returning to him in scraps and fragments — of the form his madness had taken this time. “I think I turned into Lascelles or Drawlight! How perfectly horrible!”

The next morning Stephen Black had business to conduct for Sir Walter. He paid a visit to a banker in Lombard-street; he spoke to a portrait-painter in Little-Britain; he delivered instructions to a woman in Fetter-lane about a gown for Lady Pole. His next appointment was at the office of an attorney. A soft, heavy snow was falling. All around him were the customary sounds of the City: the snorting and stamping of the horses, the rattle of the carriages, the cries of the street-vendors, the slamming of doors and the padding of feet through the snow.

He was standing at the corner of Fleet-street and Mitre-court. He had just taken out his pocket-watch (a present from the gentleman with the thistle-down hair), when every sound ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife. For a moment it seemed he must have been struck deaf. But almost before he could feel any alarm he looked round and realized that this was not the only peculiarity. The street was suddenly empty. There were no people, no cats, no dogs, no horses, no birds. Everyone was gone.

And the snow! That was the oddest thing of all. It hung, suspended in the air, in huge, soft white flakes, as big as sovereigns.

“Magic!” he thought in disgust.

He walked a little way down Mitre-court, looking in the windows of the shops. Lamps were still lit; goods were lying heaped or scattered over the counters — silks, tobacco, sheet-music; fires were still burning in the hearths but their flames were frozen. He looked back and discovered that he had made a sort of tunnel through the three-dimensional lace-work of snow. It was, of all the strange things he had seen in his life, the strangest.

From out of nowhere a furious voice cried, “I thought myself quite safe from him! What tricks can he be using?” The gentleman with the thistle-down hair suddenly appeared immediately before Stephen, with blazing face and glittering eyes.

The shock was so great that for a moment Stephen feared he would drop down in a swoon. But he was well aware how highly the gentleman prized coolness and composure, so he hid his fright as best he could and gasped, “Safe from whom, sir?”

“Why, the magician, Stephen! The magician! I thought that he must have acquired some potent object that would reveal my presence to him. But I could not see any thing in his rooms and he swore that he had nothing of the sort. Just to be sure I have circled the globe in the past hour and examined every ring of power, every magical chalice and quern. But none of them are missing. They are all exactly where I thought they were.”

From this rather incomplete explanation Stephen deduced that the magician must have succeeded in summoning and speaking to the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. “But surely, sir,” he said, “there was a time when you wished to aid the magicians and do magic with them and gain their gratitude. That is how you came to rescue Lady Pole, is it not? Perhaps you will find you like it better than you think.”

“Oh, perhaps! But I really do not think so. I tell you, Stephen, apart from the inconvenience of having him summon me whenever he chuses, it was the dreariest half hour I have spent in many a long age. I have never heard any one talk so much! He is quite the most conceited person I have ever met. People like that who must be continually talking themselves and have no time to listen to any one else are quite disgusting to me.”

“Oh, indeed, sir! It is most vexatious. And I dare say that, since you will be busy with the magician, we will have to put off making me King of England?”

The gentleman said something very fierce in his own language — presumably a curse. “I believe you are right — and that makes me angrier than all the rest put together!” He thought for a moment. “But then again, it may not be so bad as we fear. These English magicians are generally very stupid. They usually want the same things. The poor ones desire an unending supply of turnips or porridge; the rich ones want yet more riches, or power over the whole world; and the young ones want the love of some princess or queen. As soon as he asks for one of those things, I will grant it to him. It is sure to bring a world of trouble on his head. It always does. He will become distracted and then you and I can pursue our plan to make you King of England! Oh, Stephen! How glad I am that I came to you! I always hear better sense from you than from anyone else!” Upon the instant the gentleman’s anger evaporated and he was full of delight. The sun actually appeared from behind a cloud and all the strange, suspended fall of snow glittered and blazed around them (though whether this was the gentleman’s doing or no, Stephen could not tell).

He was about to point out that he had not actually suggested any thing, but in that instant the gentleman disappeared. All the people, horses, carriages, cats and dogs immediately reappeared, and Stephen walked straight into a fat woman in a purple pelisse.

Strange rose from his bed in excellent spirits. He had slept for eight hours without interruption. For the first time in weeks he had not got up in the middle of the night to do magic. As a reward to himself for his success in summoning the fairy, he decided that today should be a holiday. Shortly after ten o’clock, he presented himself at the
palazzo
where the Greysteels were staying and found the family at their breakfast. He accepted their invitation to sit down, ate some hot rolls, drank some coffee and told Miss Greysteel and Aunt Greysteel that he was entirely at their service.

Aunt Greysteel was happy to give up her share of the favour to her niece. Miss Greysteel and Strange passed the forenoon in reading books about magic together. These were books that he had lent to her or that she had bought upon his recommendation. They were Portishead’s
A Child’s History of the Raven King
, Hickman’s
Life of Martin Pale
and Hether-Gray’s
The Anatomy of a Minotaur
. Strange had read them when he first began to study magic and he was amused to discover how simple, almost innocent, they seemed to him now. It was the most agreeable thing in the world to read them to Miss Greysteel, and answer her questions, and listen to her opinions upon them — eager, intelligent and, it seemed to him, slightly over-serious.

At one o’clock, after a light repast of cold meat, Aunt Greysteel declared that they had all sat still long enough and she proposed a walk. “I dare say, Mr Strange, that you will be glad of the fresh air. Scholars often neglect exercise.”

“We are very sad fellows, madam,” agreed Strange, cheerfully.

It was a fine day. They wandered through the narrow streets and alleys and chanced upon a happy succession of intriguing objects: a carving of a dog with a bone in its mouth; a shrine to a saint that none of them recognized; a set of windows whose curtains seemed at first to be made of heavy swags of the most exquisite lace, but which were found upon closer examination to be only spiders’ webs — vast, intermingling spiders’ webs which permeated every part of the room inside. They had no guide to tell them about these things; there was no one standing near whom they could ask; and so they entertained themselves by making up their own explanations.