Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (80 page)

When they were both in the sitting-room again, Aunt Greysteel said, “See! The storm is almost passed. It seems to be going back towards the coast. How odd! I thought that was the direction it came from. I suppose your embroidery silks were ruined by the rain along with everything else.”

“Embroidery silks?” said Flora. Then, remembering, “Oh! I did not get so far as the shop. It was, as you say, a foolish undertaking.”

“Well, we can go out later and get whatever you need. How sorry I am for the poor market people! Everything on the stalls will have been spoilt. Bonifazia is making your gruel, my love. I wonder if I told her to use the new milk?”

“I do not remember, aunt.”

“I had better go and just mention it.”

“I can go, aunt,” said Flora, proposing to stand up.

But her aunt would not hear of it. Flora must remain exactly where she was, at the fire-side, with her feet upon a footstool.

It was becoming lighter by the moment. Before proceeding to the kitchen, Aunt Greysteel surveyed the mirror. It was very large and ornate; the sort of mirror, in fact, that is made on the island of Murano in the Venetian Lagoon. “I confess I am surprized at you liking this mirror, Flora. It has so many scrolls and curlicues and glass flowers. Generally you prefer simple things.”

Flora sighed and said she supposed she had acquired a taste for what was sumptuous and elaborate since she had been in Italy.

“Was it expensive?” asked Aunt Greysteel. “It looks expensive.”

“No. Not expensive at all.”

“Well, that is something, is it not?”

Aunt Greysteel went down the stairs to the kitchen. She was feeling a good deal recovered, and felt confident that the train of shocks and alarms of which the morning seemed to have been composed was now at an end. But in this she was quite wrong.

Standing in the kitchen with Bonifazia and Minichello were two men she had never seen before. Bonifazia did not appear to have begun making Flora’s gruel. She had not even fetched the oatmeal and milk out of the pantry.

The moment Bonifazia laid eyes upon Aunt Greysteel, she took her by the arm and unleashed a flood of eager dialect words upon her. She was speaking of the storm — that much was clear — and saying it was evil, but beyond that Aunt Greysteel understood very little. To her absolute astonishment it was Minichello who helped her comprehend it. In a very reasonable counterfeit of the English language he said, “The magician Engliss makes it. The magician Engliss makes the
tempesta
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

With frequent interruptions from Bonifazia and the two men, Minichello informed her that in the midst of the storm several people had looked up and seen a cleft in the black clouds. But what they had seen through the cleft had astonished and terrified them; it had not been the clear azure they were expecting, but a black, midnight sky full of stars. The storm had not been natural at all; it had been contrived in order to hide the approach of Strange’s Pillar of Darkness.

This news was soon known all over the town and the citizens were greatly disturbed by it. Until now the Pillar of Darkness had been a horror confined to Venice, which seemed — to the Paduans at least — a natural setting for horrors. Now it was clear that Strange had stayed in Venice by choice rather than enchantment. Any city in Italy — any city in the world might suddenly find itself visited by Eternal Darkness. This was bad enough, but for Aunt Greysteel it was much worse; to all her fear of Strange was added the unwelcome conviction that Flora had lied. She debated with herself whether it was more likely that her niece had lied because she was under the influence of a spell, or because her attachment to Strange had weakened her principles. She did not know which would be worse.

She wrote to her brother in Venice, begging him to come. In the meantime she determined to say nothing. For the rest of the day she observed Flora closely. Flora was much as usual, except that there sometimes seemed to be a tinge of penitence in her behaviour to her aunt, where no tinge ought to have been.

At one o’clock on the next day — some hours before Aunt Greysteel’s letter could have reached him — Dr Greysteel arrived with Frank from Venice. They told her that it had been no secret in Venice when Strange left the parish of Santa Maria Zobenigo and went to
terrafirma
. The Pillar of Darkness had been seen from many parts of the city, moving across the face of the sea. Its surface had flickered and twists and spirals of Darkness had darted in and out, so that it appeared to be made of black flames. How Strange had contrived to cross over the water — whether he had travelled in a boat, or whether his passage had been purely magical — was not known. The storm by which he had tried to hide his approach had not been conjured up until he got to Strà , eight miles from Padua.

“I tell you, Louisa,” said Dr Greysteel, “I would not exchange with him now upon any consideration. Everyone fled at his approach. From Mestre to Strà he could not have seen another living creature — nothing but silent streets and abandoned fields. Henceforth the world is an empty place to him.”

A few moments before, Aunt Greysteel had been thinking of Strange with no very tender feelings, but the picture that her brother conjured up was so shocking that tears started into her eyes. “And where is he now?” she asked in a softened tone.

“He has gone back to his rooms in Santa Maria Zobenigo,” said Dr Greysteel. “All is just as it was. As soon as we heard he had been in Padua, I guessed what his object was. We came as soon as we could. How is Flora?”

Flora was in the drawing-room. She had been expecting her father — indeed she seemed relieved that the interview had come at last. Dr Greysteel had scarcely got out his first question when she burst forth with her confession. It was the release of an overcharged heart. Her tears fell abundantly and she admitted that she had seen Strange. She had seen him in the street below and known that he was waiting for her and so she had run out of the house to meet him.

“I will tell you everything, I promise,” she said. “But not yet. I have done nothing wrong. I mean …” She blushed. “… apart from the falsehoods I told my aunt — for which I am very sorry. But these secrets are not mine to tell.”

“But why must there be secrets at all, Flora?” asked her father. “Does that not tell you that there is something wrong? People whose intentions are honourable do not have secrets. They act openly.”

“Yes, I suppose … Oh, but that does not apply to magicians! Mr Strange has enemies — that terrible old man in London and others besides! But you must not scold me for doing wrong. I have tried so hard to do good and I believe I have! You see, there is a sort of magic which he has been practising and which is destroying him — and yesterday I persuaded him to give it up! He made me a promise to abandon it completely.”

“But, Flora!” said her father, sadly. “This distresses me more than all the rest. That you should regard yourself as entitled to exact promises from him is something which requires explanation. Surely you must see that? My dear, are you engaged to him?”

“No, papa!” Another burst of tears. It took a great many caresses from her aunt to restore her to tolerable calm. When she could speak again, she said, “There is no engagement. It is true that I was attached to him once. But that is all over and done with. You must not suspect me of it! It was for friendship’s sake that I asked him to promise me. And for his wife’s sake. He thinks he is doing it for her, but I know that she would not want him to do magic so destructive of his health and reason — whatever the object, however desperate the circumstances! She is no longer able to guide his actions — and so it fell to me to speak on her behalf.”

Dr Greysteel was silent. “Flora,” he said after a minute or two, “you forget, my dear, that I have seen him often in Venice. He is in no condition to keep promises. He will not even remember what promise he has made.”

“Oh! But he will! I have arranged matters so that he must!”

A fresh return of tears seemed to shew that she was not quite as free of love as she claimed. But she had said enough to make her father and aunt a little easier in their minds. They were convinced that her attachment to Jonathan Strange must come to a natural close sooner or later. As Aunt Greysteel said later that evening, Flora was not the sort of girl to spend years in longing for an impossible love; she was too rational a creature.

Now that they were all together again Dr Greysteel and Aunt Greysteel were eager to continue their travels. Aunt Greysteel wished to go to Rome to see the ancient buildings and artefacts which they had heard were so remarkable. But Flora no longer had any interest in remains or works of art. She was happiest, she said, where she was. Most of the time she would not even leave the house unless absolutely forced to it.Whenthey proposed a walk or a visit to a church with a Renaissance altarpiece, she declined to accompany them. She would complain that it was raining or that the streets were wet — all of which was true; there was a great deal of rain in Padua that winter, but the rain had never troubled her before.

Her aunt and father were patient, though Dr Greysteel in particular thought it a little hard. He had not come to Italy to sit quietly in an apartment half the size of the rooms in his own comfortable house in Wiltshire. In private he grumbled that it was perfectly possible to read novels or embroider in Wiltshire (these were now Flora’s favourite pursuits) and a good deal cheaper too, but Aunt Greysteel scolded him and made him hush. If this was the way in which Flora intended to grieve for Jonathan Strange, then they must let her.

Flora did propose one expedition, but that was of a most peculiar sort. After Dr Greysteel had been in Padua about a week she announced that she had a great desire to be upon the sea.

Did she mean a sea-voyage, they asked. There was no reason why they should not go to Rome or Naples by sea.

But she did not mean a sea-voyage. She did not wish to leave Padua. No, what she would like would be to go out in a yacht or other sort of boat. Only for an hour or two, perhaps less. But she would like to go immediately. The next day they repaired to a small fishing village.

The village had no particular advantages of situation, prospect, architecture or history — in fact it had very little to recommend it at all, other than its proximity to Padua. Dr Greysteel inquired in the little wine-shop and at the priest’s house until he heard of two steady fellows who would be willing to take them out upon the water. The men had no objection to taking Dr Greysteel’s money, but they were obliged to point out that there was nothing to see; there would have been nothing to see even in good weather. But it was not good weather; it was raining — hard enough to make an excursion on the water most uncomfortable, not quite hard enough to dispel the heavy, grey mist.

“Are you sure, my love, that this is what you want?” asked Aunt Greysteel. “It is a dismal spot and the boat smells very strongly of fish.”

“I am quite sure, Aunt,” said Flora and climbed into the boat and settled herself at one end. Her aunt and father followed her. The mystified fishermen sailed out until all that could be seen in any direction was a shifting mass of grey water confined by walls of dull, grey mist. The fishermen looked expectantly at Dr Greysteel. He, in turn, looked questioningly at Flora.

Flora took no notice of any of them. She was seated, leaning against the side of the boat in a pensive attitude. Her right arm was stretched out over the water.

“There it is again!” cried Dr Greysteel.

“There is what again?” asked Aunt Greysteel, irritably.

“That smell of cats and mustiness! A smell like the old woman’s room. The old woman we visited in Cannaregio. Is there a cat on board?”

The question was absurd. Every part of the fishing-boat was visible from every other part; there was no cat.

“Is any thing the matter, my love?” asked Aunt Greysteel. There was something in Flora’s posture she did not quite like. “Are you ill?”

“No, Aunt,” said Flora, straightening herself and adjusting her umbrella. “I am well. We can go back now if you wish.”

For a moment Aunt Greysteel saw a little bottle floating upon the waves, a little bottle with no stopper. Then it sank beneath the water and was gone for ever.

This peculiar expedition was the last time for many weeks that Flora would shew any inclination to go out. Sometimes Aunt Greysteel would try to persuade her to sit in a chair by the window so that she could see what was going on in the street. In an Italian street there is often something amusing going on. But Flora was greatly attached to a chair in a shadowy corner, beneath the eerie mirror; and she acquired a peculiar habit of comparing the picture of the room as it was contained in the mirror and the room as it really was. She might, for example, suddenly become interested in a shawl that was thrown across a chair and look at its reflection and say, “That shawl looks different in the mirror.”

“Does it?” Aunt Greysteel would say, puzzled.

“Yes. It looks brown in the mirror, whereas in truth it is blue. Do not you think so?”