Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell Part 59

"Yes. Oh, yes!" said Drawlight, though he had not the least idea what Strange was talking about.

"Good. Now repeat to me the messages I have given you. Tell them back to me."

Drawlight did so. Long years of collecting and repeating malicious gossip about his acquaintance had made him adept at remembering names and facts. He had the first message perfectly, but the second had descended to a few garbled sentences about magicians standing in the rain, looking at stones.

"I will shew you," said Strange, "and then you will understand. Leucrocuta, if you perform these three tasks, I shall take no revenge on you. I shall not harm you. Deliver these three messages and you may return to your night-hunts, to your devouring of men and women."

"Thank you! Thank you!" breathed Drawlight, gratefully, until a horrible realization gripped him. "Three! But, sir, you only gave me two!"

"Three messages, Leucrocuta," said Strange, wearily. "You must deliver three messages."

"Yes, but you have not told me what the third is!"

Strange made no reply. He turned away, muttering to himself.

In spite of all his terror, Drawlight had a great desire to get hold of the magician and shake him. He might have done it too, if he thought it would do any good. Tears of self-pity began to trickle down his face. Now Strange would kill him for not performing the third task and it was not his fault.

"Leucrocuta," said Strange, suddenly returning. "Bring me a drink of water!"

Drawlight looked around. In the middle of the square there was a well. He went over to it and found a horrible old iron cup attached to the stones by a length of rusting chain. He pushed aside the well-cover, drew up a pail of water and dipped the cup into the water. He hated touching it. Curiously, after everything that had happened to him that day it was the iron cup he hated the most. All of his life he had loved beautiful things, but now everything that surrounded him was horrible. It was the magicians' fault. How he hated them!

"Sir? Lord Magician?" he called out. "You will have to come here to drink." He shewed the iron chain by way of an explana- tion.

Strange came forward, but he did not take the proffered cup. Instead he took a tiny phial out of his pocket and handed it to Drawlight. "Put six drops in the water," he said.

Drawlight took out the stopper. His hand was trembling so much that he feared he would pour the whole thing on the ground. Strange did not appear to notice; Drawlight shook in some drops.

Strange took the cup and drank the water down. The cup fell from his hand. Drawlight was aware he did not know how exactly that Strange was changed. Against the starry sky the black shape of his figure sagged and his head drooped. Drawlight wondered if he were drunk. But how could a few drops of any thing make a man drunk? Besides he did not smell of strong liquor; he smelt like a man who had not washed himself or his linen for some weeks; and there was another smell too one that had not been there a minute ago a smell like old age and half a hundred cats.

Drawlight had the strangest feeling. It was something he had felt before when magic was about to happen. Invisible doors seemed to be opening all around him; winds blew on him from far away, bringing scents of woods, moors and bogs. Images flew unbidden into his mind. The houses around him were no longer empty. He could see inside them as if the walls had been removed. Each dark room contained not a person exactly a Being, an Ancient Spirit. One contained a Fire; another a Stone; yet another a Shower of Rain; yet another a Flock of Birds; yet another a Hillside; yet another a Small Creature with Dark and Fiery Thoughts; and on and on.

"What are they?" he whispered, in amazement. He realized that all the hairs on his head were standing on end as if he had been electrified. Then a new, different sensation took him: it was a sensation not unlike falling, and yet he remained standing. It was as if his mind had fallen down.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain.

He thought he lay beneath the earth, beneath England. Long ages pa.s.sed; cold and rain seeped through him; stones s.h.i.+fted within him. In the Silence and the Dark he grew vast. He became the earth; he became England. A star looked down on him and spoke to him. A stone asked him a question and he answered it in its own language. A river curled at his side; hills budded beneath his fingers. He opened his mouth and breathed out spring . . .

He thought he was pressed into a thicket in a dark wood in winter. The trees went on for ever, dark pillars separated by thin, white slices of winter light. He looked down. Young saplings pierced him through and through; they grew up through his body, through his feet and hands. His eye-lids would no longer close because twigs had grown up through them. Insects scuttled in and out of his ears; spiders built nests and webs in his mouth. He realized he had been entwined in the wood for years and years. He knew the wood and the wood knew him. There was no saying any longer what was wood and what was man.

All was silent. Snow fell. He screamed . . .

Blackness.

Like rising up from beneath dark waters, Drawlight came to himself. Who it was that released him whether Strange, or the wood, or England itself he did not know, but he felt its contempt as it cast him back into his own mind. The Ancient Spirits withdrew from him. His thoughts and sensations shrank to those of a Man. He was dizzy and reeling from the memory of what he had endured. He examined his hands and rubbed the places on his body where the trees had pierced him. They seemed whole enough; oh, but they hurt! He whimpered and looked around for Strange.

The magician was a little way off, crouching by a wall, muttering magic to himself. He struck the wall once; the stones bulged, changed shape, became a raven; the raven opened its wings and, with a loud caw, flew up towards the night sky. He struck the wall again: another raven emerged from the wall and flew away. Then another and another, and on and on, thick and fast they came until all the stars above were blotted out by black wings.

Strange raised his hand to strike again . . .

"Lord Magician," gasped Drawlight. "You have not told me what the third message is."

Strange looked round. Without warning he seized Drawlight's coat and pulled him close. Drawlight could feel Strange's stinking breath on his face and for the first time he could see his face. Starlight shone on fierce, wild eyes, from which all humanity and reason had fled.

"Tell Norrell I am coming!" hissed Strange. "Now, go!"

Drawlight did not need to be told twice. He sped away through the darkness. Ravens seemed to pursue him. He could not see them, but he heard the beating of their wings and felt the currents in the air that those wings created. Halfway across a bridge he tumbled without warning into dazzling light. Instantly he was surrounded by the sound of birdsong and of people talking. Men and women were walking and talking and going about their everyday pursuits. Here was no terrible magic only the everyday world the wonderful, beautiful everyday world.

Drawlight's clothes were still drenched in sea-water and the weather was cruelly cold. He was in a part of the city he did not recognize. No one offered to help him and for a long time he walked about, lost and exhausted. Eventually he happened upon a square he knew and was able to make his way back to the little tavern where he rented a room. By the time he reached it, he was weak and s.h.i.+vering. He undressed and rinsed the salt from his body as best he could. Then he lay down on his little bed.

For the next two days he lay in a fever. His dreams were unspeakable things, filled with Darkness, Magic and the Long, Cold Ages of the Earth. And all the time he slept he was filled with dread lest he wake to find himself under the earth or crucified by a winter wood.

By the middle of the third day he was recovered enough to get up and go to the harbour. There he found an English s.h.i.+p bound for Portsmouth. He shewed the captain the letters and papers Lascelles had given him, promising a large fee to the s.h.i.+p that bore him back to England and signed by two of the most famous bankers in Europe.

By the fifth day he was on a s.h.i.+p bound for England.

A thin, cold mist lay upon London, mimicking or so it seemed the thin, cold character of Stephen's existence. Lately his enchantment weighed upon him more heavily than ever. Joy, affection and peace were all strangers to him now. The only emotions that pierced the clouds of magic around his heart were of the bitterest sort anger, resentment and frustration. The division and estrangement between him and his English friends grew ever deeper. The gentleman might be a fiend, but when he spoke of the pride and self-importance of Englishmen, Stephen found it hard to deny the justice of what he said. Even Lost-hope, dreary as it was, was sometimes a welcome refuge from English arrogance and English malice; there at least Stephen had never needed to apologize for being what he was; there he had only ever been treated as an honoured guest.

On this particular winter's day Stephen was in Sir Walter Pole's stables in the Harley-street mews. Sir Walter had recently purchased a pair of very fine greyhounds, much to the delight of his male servants, who idled away a large part of every day in visiting the dogs and admiring them and talking with varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of their likely prowess in the field. Stephen knew he ought to check this bad habit, but he found he did not really care enough to do it. Today when Robert, the footman, had invited him to come and see the dogs, Stephen, far from scolding him, had put on his hat and coat and gone with him. Now he watched Robert and the grooms fussing over the dogs. He felt as if he was on the other side of a thick and dirty pane of gla.s.s.

Suddenly each man straightened himself and filed out of the stables. Stephen s.h.i.+vered. Experience had taught him that such unnatural behaviour invariably announced the arrival of the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

Now here he was, lighting up the cramped, dark stables with the brilliance of his silver hair, and the glitter of his blue eyes, and the brightness of his green coat; full of loud talk and laughter; never doubting for a moment that Stephen was as delighted to see him as he was to see Stephen. He was as pleased with the dogs as the servants had been, and called on Stephen to admire them with him. He spoke to them in his own language and the dogs leapt up and barked joyously, seeming more enamoured of him than any one they had ever seen before.

The gentleman said, "I am reminded of an occasion in 1413 when I came south to visit the new King of Southern England. The King, a gracious and valiant person, introduced me to his court, telling them of my many marvellous accomplishments, extensive kingdoms, chivalrous character etc., etc. However one of his n.o.blemen chose not to attend to this instructive and elevating speech. Instead he and his followers stood gossiping and laughing together. I was as you may imagine much offended by this treatment and determined to teach them better manners! The next day these wicked men were hunting hares near Hatfield Forest. Coming upon them all unawares, I had the happy notion of turning the men into hares and the hares into men. First the hounds tore their masters to pieces, and then the hares now in the shape of men found themselves able to inflict a terrible revenge upon the hounds who had chased and harried them." The gentleman paused to receive Stephen's praises for this feat, but before Stephen could utter a word, the gentleman exclaimed, "Oh! Did you feel that?"

"Feel what, sir?" asked Stephen.

"All the doors shook!"

Stephen glanced at the stable doors.

"No, not those doors!" said the gentleman. "I mean the doors between England and everywhere else! Someone is trying to open them. Someone spoke to the Sky and it was not me! Someone is giving instructions to the Stones and Rivers and it is not me! Who is doing that? Who is it? Come!"

The gentleman seized Stephen's arm and they seemed to rise up in the air, as if they were suddenly stood upon a mountain or a very high tower. Harley-street mews disappeared and a new scene presented itself to Stephen's eyes and then another, and then another. Here was a port with a crowd of masts as thick as a forest it seemed to fly away beneath their feet and was immediately replaced by a grey, winter sea and s.h.i.+ps in full sail bending to the wind next came a city with spires and splendid bridges. Curiously there was scarcely any sensation of movement. It felt more as if the world was flying towards Stephen and the gentleman, while they remained still. Now came snow-covered mountains with tiny people toiling up them next a gla.s.sy lake with dark peaks all around it then a level country with tiny towns and rivers spread across it like a child's toy.

There was something ahead of them. At first it looked like a black line that cut the sky in half. But as they drew nearer, it became a Black Pillar that reached up from the earth and had no end.

Stephen and the gentleman came to rest high above Venice (as to what they might be resting upon upon, Stephen was determined not to consider). The sun was setting and the streets and buildings beneath them were dark, but the sea and sky were full of light in which shades of rose, milky-blue, topaz and pearl were all blended harmoniously together. The city seemed to float in a radiant void.

For the most part the Black Pillar was as smooth as obsidian, but, just above the level of the house-roofs, twists and spirals of darkness were billowing out from it and drifting away through the air. What they could be, Stephen could not imagine.

"Is it smoke, sir? Is the tower on fire?" asked Stephen.

The gentleman did not reply, but as they drew closer Stephen saw that it was not smoke. A dark mult.i.tude was flying out of the Tower. They were ravens. Thousands upon thousands of ravens. They were leaving Venice and flying back in the direction Stephen and the gentleman had come.

One flock wheeled towards them. The air was suddenly tumultuous with the beating of a thousand wings, and loud with a thrumming, drumming noise. Clouds of dust and grit flew into Stephen's eyes, nose and throat. He bent low and cupped his hand over his nose to shut out the stench.

When they were gone, he asked in amazement, "What are they, sir?"

"Creatures the magician has made," said the gentleman. "He is sending them back to England with instructions for the Sky and the Earth and the Rivers and the Hills. He is calling up all the King's old allies. Soon they will attend to English magicians, rather than to me!" He gave a great howl of mingled anger and despair. "I have punished him in ways that I never punished my enemies before! Yet still he works against me! Why does he not resign himself to his fate? Why does he not despair?"

"I never heard that he lacked courage, sir," said Stephen. "By all accounts he did many brave things in the Peninsula."

"Courage? What are you talking about? This is not courage! This is malice, pure and simple! We have been negligent, Stephen! We have let the English magicians get the advantage of us. We must find a way to defeat them! We must redouble our efforts to make you King!"

1 The prison where Drawlight was imprisoned for debt in November 1814.

60.

Tempest and lies February 1817 AUNT GREYSTEEL HAD rented a house in Padua within sight of the fruit market. It was very convenient for everywhere and only eighty sechinis a quarter (which comes to about 38 guineas). Aunt Greysteel was very well pleased with her bargain. But it sometimes happens that when one acts quickly and with great resolve, all the indecisiveness and doubt comes afterwards, when it is too late. So it was in this case: Aunt Greysteel and Flora had not been living in the house a week, when Aunt Greysteel began to find fault with it and began to wonder if, in fact, she ought to have taken it at all. Although ancient and pretty, its gothic windows were rather small and several of them were fenced about with stone balconies; in other words it was inclined to be dark. This would never have been a problem before, but just at present Flora's spirits required support, and (thought Aunt Greysteel) gloom and shadows be they ever so picturesque might not in fact be the best thing for her. There were moreover some stone ladies who stood about the courtyard and who had, in the course of the years, acquired veils and cloaks of ivy. It was no exaggeration to say that these ladies were in imminent danger of disappearing altogether and every time Aunt Greysteel's eye fell upon them, she was put in mind of Jonathan Strange's poor wife, who had died so young and so mysteriously, and whose unhappy fate seemed to have driven her husband mad. Aunt Greysteel hoped that no such melancholy notions occurred to Flora.

But the bargain had been made and the house had been taken, so Aunt Greysteel set about making it as cheerful and bright as she could. She had never squandered candles or lamp oil in her life, but in her endeavour to raise Flora's spirits she put all questions of expence aside. There was a particularly gloomy spot on the stairs, where a step turned in an odd way that no one could possibly have predicted, and lest any one should tumble down and break their neck, Aunt Greysteel insisted upon a lamp being placed upon a shelf just above the step. The lamp burnt day and night and was a continual affront to Bonifazia, the elderly Italian maid who came with the house and who was an even more economical person than Aunt Greysteel herself.

Bonifazia was an excellent servant, but much inclined to criticism and long explanations of why the instructions she had just been given were wrong or impossible to carry out. She was aided in her work by a slow, put-upon sort of young man called Minich.e.l.lo, who greeted any order with a low, grumbling murmur of dialect words, quite impossible to comprehend. Bonifazia treated Minich.e.l.lo with such familiar contempt that Aunt Greysteel supposed they must be related, though she had yet to obtain any precise information upon this point.

So what with the arrangements for the house, the daily battles with Bonifazia and all the discoveries, pleasant or otherwise, attendant upon a sojourn in a new town, Aunt Greysteel's days were full of interesting occupation; but her chief and most sacred duty at this time was to try and find amus.e.m.e.nt for Flora. Flora had fallen into habits of quiet and solitude. If her aunt spoke to her she answered cheerfully enough, but few indeed were the conversations that she began. In Venice Flora had been the chief instigator of all their pleasures; now she simply fell in with whatever projects of exploration Aunt Greysteel proposed. She preferred those occupations that require no companion. She walked alone, read alone, sat alone in the sitting-room or in the ray of faint suns.h.i.+ne which sometimes penetrated the little courtyard at about one o'clock. She was less open-hearted and confiding than before; it was as if someone not necessarily Jonathan Strange had disappointed her and she was determined to be more independent in future.

In the first week in February there was a great storm in Padua. It happened at about the middle of the day. The storm came very suddenly out of the east (from the direction of Venice and the sea). The old men who frequented the town's coffee-houses said that there had been no sign of it moments before. But other people were not much inclined to take any notice of this; after all it was winter and storms must be expected.

First a great wind blew through the town. It was no respecter of doors or windows, this wind. It seemed to find out c.h.i.n.ks that no one knew existed and it blew almost as fiercely within the houses as without. Aunt Greysteel and Flora were together in a little sitting-room on the first floor. The window-panes began to rattle and some crystals that hung from a chandelier began to jingle. Then the pages of a letter that Aunt Greysteel was writing escaped from beneath her hand and went flying about the room. Outside the window, the skies darkened and it became as black as night; sheets of blinding rain began to descend.

Bonifazia and Minich.e.l.lo entered the sitting-room. They came under the pretext of finding out Aunt Greysteel's wishes concern- ing the storm, but in truth Bonifazia wanted to join with Aunt Greysteel in exclamations of astonishment at the violence of the wind and rain (and a fine duet they made of it too, albeit in different languages). Minich.e.l.lo came presumably because Bonifazia did; he regarded the storm gloomily, as if he suspected it of having been arranged on purpose to make work for him.

Aunt Greysteel, Bonifazia and Minich.e.l.lo were all at the window and saw how the first stroke of lightning turned the whole familiar scene into something quite Gothic and disturbing, full of pallid, unearthly glare and unexpected shadows. This was followed by a crack of thunder that shook the whole room. Bonifazia murmured appeals to the Virgin and several saints. Aunt Greysteel, who was equally alarmed, might well have been glad of the same refuge, but as a member of the communion of the Church of England, she could only exclaim, "Dear me!" and, "Upon my word!" and "Lord bless me!" none of which gave her much comfort.

"Flora, my love," she called out in a voice that quavered slightly, "I hope you are not frightened. It is a very horrid storm."

Flora came to the window and took her aunt's hand and told her that it was sure to be over very soon. Another stroke of lightning illuminated the town. Flora dropped her aunt's hand, undid the window-fastening and stepped eagerly out on to the balcony.

"Flora!" exclaimed Aunt Greysteel.

She was leaning into the howling darkness with both hands upon the bal.u.s.trade, quite oblivious of the rain that soaked her gown or of the wind that pulled at her hair.

"My love! Flora! Flora! Come out of the rain!"

Flora turned and said something to her aunt, but what it was they could not hear.

Minich.e.l.lo followed her on to the balcony and, with a surprizing delicacy (though without relinquis.h.i.+ng for a moment his native gloominess), he managed to herd her inside again, using his large, flat hands to guide her, in the same way shepherds use hurdles to direct sheep.

"Can you not see?" exclaimed Flora. "There is someone there! There, at the corner! Can you tell who it is? I thought . . ." She fell silent abruptly and whatever it was that she thought, she did not say.

"Well, my love, I hope you are mistaken. I pity any one who is in the street at this moment. I hope they will find some shelter as soon as they can. Oh, Flora! How wet you are!"

Bonifazia fetched towels and then she and Aunt Greysteel immediately set about drying Flora's gown, turning her round and round between them, and sometimes trying to give her a turn in contrary directions. At the same time both were giving Mini- ch.e.l.lo urgent instructions, Aunt Greysteel in stumbling, yet insistent Italian, and Bonifazia in rapid Veneto dialect. The instructions, like the turns, may well have been at odds with each other, because Minich.e.l.lo did nothing, except regard them with a baleful expression.

Flora gazed over the bowed heads of the two women into the street. Another stroke of lightning. She stiffened, as if she had been electrified, and the next moment she wriggled out of the clutches of aunt and maid, and ran out of the room.

They had no time to wonder where she was going. The next half hour was one of t.i.tanic domestic struggle: of Minich.e.l.lo trying to close shutters in the teeth of the storm; of Bonifazia stumbling about in the dark, looking for candles; of Aunt Grey- steel discovering that the Italian word she had been using to mean "shutter" actually meant "parchment". Each of them in turn lost his or her temper. Nor did Aunt Greysteel feel that the situation was much improved when all the bells in the town began to ring at once, in accordance with the belief that bells (being blessed objects) can dispel storms and thunder (which are clearly works of the Devil).

At last the house was secured or very nearly. Aunt Greysteel left Bonifazia and Minich.e.l.lo to complete the work and, forgetting that she had seen Flora leave the sitting-room, she returned thither with a candle for her niece. Flora was not there, but Aunt Greysteel observed that Minich.e.l.lo still had not closed the shutters in that room.

She mounted the stairs to Flora's bed-chamber: Flora was not there either. Nor was she in the little dining-parlour, nor in Aunt Greysteel's own bed-chamber, nor in the other, smaller sitting-room which they sometimes used after dinner. The kitchen, the vestibule and the gardener's room were tried next; she was not in any of those places.

Aunt Greysteel began to be seriously frightened. A cruel little voice whispered in her ear that whatever mysterious fate had befallen Jonathan Strange's wife, it had begun when she had disappeared very unexpectedly in bad weather.

"But that was snow, not rain," she told herself. As she went about the house, looking for Flora, she kept repeating to herself, "Snow, not rain. Snow, not rain." Then she thought, "Perhaps she was in the sitting-room all along. It was so dark and she is so quiet, I may well not have perceived her."

She returned to the room. Another stroke of lightning gave it an unnatural aspect. The walls became white and ghastly; the furniture and other objects became grey, as if they had all been turned to stone. With a horrible jolt, Aunt Greysteel realized that there was indeed a second person in the room a woman, but not Flora but not Flora a woman in a dark, old-fas.h.i.+oned gown, standing with a candle in a candlestick, looking at her a woman whose face was entirely in shadow, whose features could not be seen. a woman in a dark, old-fas.h.i.+oned gown, standing with a candle in a candlestick, looking at her a woman whose face was entirely in shadow, whose features could not be seen.

Aunt Greysteel grew cold all over.

There was a crack of thunder: then pitch-black darkness, except for the two candle flames. But somehow the unknown woman's candle seemed to illuminate nothing at all. Queerer still the room seemed to have grown larger in some mysterious way; the woman and her candle were strangely distant from Aunt Greysteel.

Aunt Greysteel cried out, "Who is there?"

No one answered.

"Of course," she thought, "she is Italian. I must ask her again in Italian. Perhaps she has wandered into the wrong house in the confusion of the storm." But try as she might, she could not at that moment think of a single Italian word.

Another flash of lightning. There was the woman, standing just as she had been before, facing Aunt Greysteel. "It is the ghost of Jonathan Strange's wife!" she thought. She took a step forward, and so did the unknown woman. Suddenly realization and relief came upon her in equal measures; "It is a mirror! Oh! How foolis.h.!.+ How foolis.h.!.+ To be afraid of my own reflection!" She was so relieved she almost laughed out loud, but then she paused; it had not been foolish to be frightened, not foolish at all; there had been no mirror in that corner until now there had been no mirror in that corner until now.

The next flash of lightning shewed the mirror to her. It was ugly and much too large for the room; she knew she had never seen it before in her life.

She hurried out of the room. She felt she would be able to think more clearly away from the sight of the baleful mirror. She was halfway up the stairs when some sounds that seemed to originate in Flora's bed-chamber made her open the door and look inside.

There was Flora. She had lit the candles they had placed for her and was in the middle of pulling her gown over her head. The gown was sopping wet. Her petticoat and stockings were no better. Her shoes were tumbled on the floor at the side of the bed; they were quite soaked and spoilt with rain.

Flora looked at her aunt with an expression in which guilt, embarra.s.sment, defiance and several other things more difficult of interpretation were mixed together. "Nothing! Nothing!" she cried.

This, presumably, was the answer to some question she expected her aunt to put to her, but all that Aunt Greysteel said was: "Oh, my dear! Where have you been? Whatever made you go out in such weather?"

"I . . . I went out to buy some embroidery silk."

Aunt Greysteel must have looked a good deal astonished at this, because Flora added doubtfully, "I did not think the rain would last so long."

"Well, my love, I must say I think you acted rather foolishly, but you must have been a good deal frightened! Was it that that made you cry?"

"Cry! No, no! You are mistaken, aunt. I have not been crying. It is rain, that is all."

"But you are . . ." Aunt Greysteel stopped. She had been going to say, you are crying now you are crying now, but Flora shook her head and turned away. For some reason she had wrapped her shawl into a bundle and Aunt Greysteel could not help thinking that if she had not done that the shawl would have given her some protection from the rain and she would not now be so wet. From out of the bundle she took a little bottle half full of an amber-coloured liquid. She opened a drawer, and put it inside.