Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

  “Perhaps it does mean something,” offered Stephen, “but not for you. Perhaps it means something for him. Or me.”

  “Nay, that can’t be right,” objected the carrier. “It’s me it’s happening to.”

  Stephen considered the unknown man’s odd colour. “Does he have a disease?” he asked.

  “Could be,” said the carrier, unwilling to commit himself.

  After they had eaten, the carrier began to nod and pretty soon he was fast asleep with the reins in his hands. The cart continued serenely along the road under the captainship of the horse – a beast of excellent sense and judgement.

  It was a weary journey for Stephen. The sad exile of Lady Pole and the loss of Firenze depressed his spirits. He was glad to be relieved of the carrier’s conversation for a while.

  Once he heard a sort of muttering, suggesting that the blue man was waking up. At first he could not tell what the blue man was saying and then he heard very clearly, “The nameless slave shall be king in a strange country.”

  That made him shiver; it reminded him so forcibly of the gentleman’s promise to make him King of England.

  It grew dark. Stephen halted the horse, got down from the box and lit the three ancient lanterns that hung about the cart. He was about to get back upon the box when a ragged, unkempt-looking person climbed suddenly out of the back and jumped down upon the icy ground to stand in front of him.

  The unkempt person regarded Stephen by the lanterns’ light. “Are we there yet?” he asked in a hoarse tone.

  “Are we where?” asked Stephen.

  The man considered this for a moment and then decided to rephrase his original question. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Nowhere. Between somewhere called Ulleskelf and another place called Thorpe Willoughby, I believe.”

  Though the man had asked for this information he did not seem much interested in it when it was given to him. His dirty shirt was open to the waist and Stephen could see that the carrier’s description of him had been of a most misleading nature. He was not blue in the same way that Stephen was black. He was a thin, disreputable hawk of a man, whose skin in its natural state ought to have been the same colour as every other Englishman’s, but it was covered in a strange patterning of blue lines, flourishes, dots and circles.

  “Do you know John Childermass, the magician’s servant?” he asked.

  Stephen was startled – as any body would be who was asked the same question twice in two days by complete strangers. “I know him by sight. I have never spoken to him.”

  The man grinned and winked. “He has been looking for me for eight years. Never found me yet. I have been to look at his master’s house in Yorkshire. It stands in a great park. I should have liked to steal something. When I was at his house in London I ate some pies.”

  It was a little disconcerting to find oneself in the company of a self-confessed thief, yet Stephen could not help but feel some sort of fellowship with someone who wished to rob the magician. After all, if it had not been for Mr Norrell Lady Pole and he would never have fallen under an enchantment. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two crown coins. “Here!” he said.

  “And what is that for?” asked the man suspiciously (but he took the coins anyway).

  “I am sorry for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, if what I am told is true, you have no home.”

  The man grinned again and scratched his dirty cheek. “And if what I am told is true, you have no name!”

  “What?”

  “I have a name. It is Vinculus.” He grabbed Stephen’s hand. “Why do you try to pull away from me?”

  “I do not,” said Stephen.

  “Yes, you did. Just then.”

  Stephen hesitated. “Your skin is marked and discoloured. I thought perhaps the marks meant you had a disease of some sort.”

  “That is not what my skin means,” said Vinculus.

  “Means?” said Stephen. “That is an odd word to use. Yet it is true – skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books I read, or languages I master, I will never be any thing but a curiosity – like a talking pig or a mathematical horse.”

  Vinculus grinned. “And mine means the opposite of yours. It means you will be raised up on high, Nameless King. It means your kingdom is waiting for you and your enemy shall be destroyed. It means the hour is almost come. The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown; the nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country …”

  Then, keeping tight hold of Stephen’s hand, Vinculus recited the whole of his prophecy. “There,” he said when he was done, “now I have told it to the two magicians and I have told it to you. The first part of my task is done.”

  “But I am not a magician,” said Stephen.

  “I never said you were,” answered Vinculus. Without warning he released Stephen’s arm, pulled his ragged coat tight around him, plunged into the darkness beyond the glow of the lanterns and was gone.

  A few days later the gentleman with the thistle-down hair expressed a sudden desire to see a wolf hunt, something he had apparently not done for several centuries.

  There happened to be one going on in southern Sweden just then and so he instantly transported himself and Stephen to the place. Stephen found himself standing upon a great branch that belonged to an ancient oak in the midst of a snowy forest. From here he had an excellent view of a little clearing where a tall wooden pole had been planted in the ground. On top of the pole was an old wooden cartwheel, and on top of the cartwheel a young goat was securely tied. It bleated miserably.

  A family of wolves crept out of the trees, with frost and snow clogging their fur, their gaze fixed hungrily upon the goat. No sooner had they appeared, than dogs could be heard in every part of the forest and riders could be glimpsed approaching at great speed. A pack of hounds came pouring into the clearing; the two foremost dogs leapt upon a wolf and together the three creatures became a single snapping, snarling, biting, thrashing knot of bodies, legs and teeth. The hunters galloped up and shot the wolf. The other wolves went streaming into the dark trees, and the dogs and hunters followed.

  As soon as the sport waned in one place, the gentleman carried himself and Stephen through the air by magic, to wherever it was likely to be better. In this fashion they progressed from treetop to treetop, from hill to rocky outcrop. Once they travelled to the top of a church tower in a village of wooden houses, where the windows and doors were made in quaint, fairy-tale shapes and the roofs were dusted with powdery snow that glittered in the sunlight.

  They were waiting in a quiet part of the wood for the hunters to appear, when a single wolf passed by their tree. He was the handsomest of his kind, with fine, dark eyes and a pelt the colour of wet slate. He looked up into the tree and addressed the gentleman in a language that sounded like the chatter of water over stones and the sighing of wind amongst bare branches and the crackle of fire consuming dead leaves.

  The gentleman answered him in the same speech, then gave a careless laugh and waved him away with his hand.

  The wolf bestowed one last reproachful glance upon the gentleman and ran on.

  “He begs me to save him,” the gentleman explained.

  “Oh, could you not do it, sir? I hate to see these noble creatures die!”

  “Tender-hearted Stephen!” said the gentleman, fondly. But he did not save the wolf.

  Stephen was not enjoying the wolf hunt at all. True, the hunters were brave and their hounds were faithful and eager; but it was too soon after the loss of Firenze for him to take pleasure in the deaths of any creature, especially one as strong and handsome as the wolf. Thinking of Firenze reminded him that he had not yet told the gentleman about his meeting with the blue-skinned man in the cart and the prophecy. He did so now.

  “Really? Well, that is mo
st unexpected!” declared the gentleman.

  “Have you heard this prophecy before, sir?”

  “Yes, indeed! I know it well. All my race do. It is a prophecy of …” Here the gentleman said a word which Stephen did not understand.2 “Whom you know better by his English name, John Uskglass, the Raven King. But what I do not understand is how it has survived in England. I did not think Englishmen interested themselves in such matters any more.”

  “The nameless slave! Well, that is me, sir, is it not? And this prophecy seems to tell how I will be a king!”

  “Well, of course you are going to be a king! I have said so, and I am never wrong in these matters. But dearly as I love you, Stephen, this prophecy does not refer to you at all. Most of it is about the restoration of English magic, and the part you have just recited is not really a prophecy at all. The King is remembering how he came into his three kingdoms, one in England, one in Faerie, one in Hell. By the nameless slave he means himself. He was the nameless slave in Faerie, the little Christian child hidden in the brugh, brought there by a very wicked fairy who had stolen him away out of England.”

  Stephen felt oddly disappointed, though he did not know why he should be. After all he did not wish to be king of anywhere. He was not English; he was not African. He did not belong anywhere. Vinculus’s words had briefly given him the sense of belonging to something, of being part of a pattern and of having a purpose. But it had all been illusory.

  48

  The Engravings

  Late February–March 1816

  “You are changed. I am quite shocked to see you.”

  “Am I? You surprize me. I am perhaps a little thinner, but I am not aware of any other change.”

  “No, it is in your face, your air, your … something.”

  Strange smiled. Or rather he twisted something in his face and Sir Walter supposed that he was smiling. Sir Walter could not really recall what his smile had looked like before.

  “It is these black clothes,” said Strange. “I am like a leftover piece of the funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.”

  They were in the Bedford coffee-house in Covent-garden, chosen by Sir Walter as a place where they had often been very merry in the past and which might therefore do something to cheer Strange’s spirits. But on such an evening as this even the Bedford was somewhat deficient in cheerfulness. Outside, a cold black wind was pulling people this way and that, and driving a thick black rain into their eyes. Inside, rooms full of damp, unhappy gentlemen were producing a kind of gloomy, domesticated fog, which the waiters were attempting to dispel by putting extra shovelsful of coals on the fire and getting extra glassesful of hot spiced wine into the gentlemen.

  When Sir Walter had come into the room he had discovered Strange writing furiously in a little book. He nodded towards the book and remarked, “You have not given up magic then?”

  Strange laughed.

  Sir Walter took this to mean he had not – which Sir Walter was glad of, for Sir Walter thought a great deal of a man’s having a profession and believed that useful, steady occupation might cure many things which other remedies could not. Only he did not quite like the laugh – a hard, bitter exclamation which he had never heard from Strange before. “It is just that you said …” he began.

  “Oh, I said a great many things! All sorts of odd ideas crept into my brain. Excess of grief may bring on quite as fine a bout of madness as an excess of any thing else. Truth to tell, I was not quite myself for a time. Truth to tell, I was a little wild. But, as you see, that is all past now.”

  But – truth to tell – Sir Walter did not see at all.

  It was not quite enough to say that Strange had changed. In some senses he was just what he had always been. He smiled as often as before (though it was not quite the same smile). He spoke in the same ironic, superficial tone as he had always done (while giving the impression of scarcely attending to his own words). His words and his face were what all his friends remembered – with this difference: that the man behind them seemed only to be acting a part while his thoughts and his heart were somewhere else entirely. He looked out at them all from behind the sarcastic smile and none of them knew what he was thinking. He was more like a magician than ever before. It was very curious and no one knew what to make of it, but in some ways he was more like Norrell.

  He wore a mourning ring on the fourth finger of his left hand with a thin strand of brown hair inside it and Sir Walter noticed that he continually touched it and turned it upon his finger.

  They ordered a good dinner consisting of a turtle, three or four beefsteaks, some gravy made with the fat of a green goose, some lampreys, escalloped oysters and a small salad of beet root.

  “I am glad to be back,” said Strange. “Now that I am here I intend to make as much mischief as I can. Norrell has had everything his own way for far too long.”

  “He is already in agonies whenever your book is mentioned. He is forever inquiring of people if they know what is in it.”

  “Oh, but the book is only the beginning! And besides it will not be ready for months. We are to have a new periodical. Murray wishes to bring it forward as quickly as possible. Naturally it will be a very superior production. It is to be called The Famulus1 and is intended to promote my views on magic.”

  “And these are very different from Norrell’s, are they?”

  “But, of course! My chief idea is to examine the subject rationally without any of the restrictions and limitations that Norrell imposes upon it. I am confident that such a re-examination will rapidly open up new avenues worthy of exploration. For, when you consider the matter, what does our so-called restoration of English magic amount to? What have Norrell and I actually done? Some weaving of illusions with clouds, rain, smoke etc. – the easiest things in the world to accomplish! Bestowing life and speech upon inanimate objects – well, I grant you, that is quite sophisticated. Sending storms and bad weather to our enemies – I really cannot emphasize how simple weather-magic is. What else? Summoning up visions – well, that might be impressive if either of us could manage it with any degree of skill, but neither of us can. Now! Compare that sorry reckoning with the magic of the Aureates. They persuaded sycamore and oak woods to join with them against their enemies; they made wives and servants for themselves out of flowers; they transformed themselves into mice, foxes, trees, rivers, etc.; they made ships out of cobwebs, houses out of rosebushes…”

  “Yes, yes!” interrupted Sir Walter. “I understand that you are impatient to try all these different sorts of magic. But though I do not much like saying it, it seems to me that Norrell may be right. Not all these sorts of magic will suit us nowadays. Shape-changing and so on were all very well in the past. It makes a vivid incident in a story, I grant you. But surely, Strange, you would not want to practise it? A gentleman cannot change his shape. A gentleman scorns to seem any thing other than what he is. You yourself would never wish to appear in the character of a pastry-cook or a lamplighter …”

  Strange laughed.

  “Well then,” said Sir Walter, “consider how much worse it would be to appear as a dog or a pig.”2

  “You are deliberately chusing low examples.”

  “Am I? A lion, then! Would you like to be a lion?”

  “Possibly. Perhaps. Probably not. But that is not the point! I agree that shape-changing is a sort of magic which requires delicate handling, but that is not to say that some useful application might not exist. Ask the Duke of Wellington whether he would have liked to be able to turn his exploring officers into foxes or mice and have them slip about the French camps. I assure you his Grace will not be so full of qualms.”

  “I do not think you could have persuaded Colquhoun Grant to become a fox.”3

  “Oh! Grant would not have minded being a fox as long as he could have been a fox in a uniform. No, no, we need to turn our attention to the Aureates. A great deal more energy ought to be applied to the study of
the life and magic of John Uskglass and when we …”

  “That is the one thing you must not do. Do not even think of it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am serious, Strange. I say nothing against the Aureates in general. Indeed, upon the whole, I think you are right. Englishmen take great pride in their ancient magical history – in Godbless, Stokesey, Pale and the rest. They do not like to read in their newspapers that Norrell makes light of their achievements. But you are liable to fall into the opposite mistake. Too much talk of other kings is bound to make the Government nervous. Particularly when we are liable to be overrun by Johannites at any moment.”

  “Johannites? Who are the Johannites?”

  “What? Good Lord, Strange! Do you never look into a newspaper?”

  Strange looked a little put out. “My studies take up a great deal of my time. All of it in fact. And besides, you know, in the past month I can plead distractions of a very particular nature.”

  “But we are not speaking of the past month. There have been Johannites in the northern counties for four years.”

  “Yes, but who are they?”

  “They are craftsmen who creep into mills at dead of night and destroy property. They burn down factory-owners’ houses. They hold pernicious meetings inciting the common people to riotous acts and they loot marketplaces.”4

  “Oh, machine-breakers. Yes, yes, I understand you now. It is just that you misled me by that odd name. But what have machine-breakers to do with the Raven King?”

  “Many of them are, or rather claim to be, his followers. They daub the Raven-in-Flight upon every wall where property is destroyed. Their captains carry letters of commission purporting to come from John Uskglass and they say that he will shortly appear to re-establish his reign in Newcastle.”

  “And the Government believes them?” asked Strange in astonishment.

  “Of course not! We are not so ridiculous. What we fear is a great deal more mundane – in a word, revolution. John Uskglass’s banner is flying everywhere in the north from Nottingham to Newcastle. Of course we have our spies and informers to tell us what these fellows are doing and thinking. Oh, I do not say that they all believe that John Uskglass is coming back. Most are as rational as you or I. But they know the power of his name among the common people. Rowley Fisher-Drake, the Member for Hampshire, has brought forward a Bill in which he proposes to make it illegal to raise the Raven-in-Flight. But we cannot forbid people to fly their own flag, the flag of their legitimate King.”5 Sir Walter sighed and poked a beefsteak upon his plate with a fork. “Other countries,” he said, “have stories of kings who will return at times of great need. Only in England is it part of the constitution.”