Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (127 page)

At the river's edge he knelt down among the frozen grasses to fill the dish with water. The unknown stars shone up at him from the depths. He stood up again (a little dizzy from the unaccustomed exertion) — and immediately he had an overwhelming sense of magic going on — much stronger than he had ever felt it before. If any one had asked him to describe what was happening, he would have said that all of Yorkshire was turning itself inside out. For a moment he could not think which direction the house lay in. He turned, stumbled and walked straight into Mr Strange, who for some reason was standing directly behind him. "I thought you were going to remain in the library!" he said in surprize.

Strange glared at him. "I did remain in the library! One moment I was reading Goubert's
Gatekeeper of Apollo
. The next moment I was here!"

"You did not follow me?" asked Norrell.

"No, of course not! What is happening? And what in God's name is taking you so long?"

"I could not find my greatcoat," said Norrell, humbly. "I did not know where Lucas had put it."

Strange raised one eye-brow, sighed and said, "I presume you experienced the same as me? Just before I was plucked up and brought here, there was a sensation like winds and waters and flames, all mixed together?"

"Yes," said Norrell.

"And a faint odour, as of wild herbs and mountainsides?"

"Yes," said Norrell.

"Fairy magic?"

"Oh!" said Norrell. "Undoubtedly! This is part of the same spell that keeps you here in Eternal Darkness." He looked around. "How extensive is it?"

"What?"

"The Darkness."

"Well, it is hard for me to know exactly since it moves around with me. But other people have told me that it is the size of the parish in Venice where I lived. Say half an acre?"

"Half an acre! Stay here!" Mr Norrell put the silver dish of water down upon the frozen ground. He walked off in the direction of the bridge. Soon all that was visible of him was his grey wig. In the starlight it resembled nothing so much as a little stone tortoise waddling away.

The world gave another twist and suddenly the two magicians were standing together on the bridge over the river at Hurtfew.

"What in the world . . . ?" began Strange.

"You see?" said Norrell, grimly. "The spell will not allow us to move too far from one another. It has gripped me too. I dare say there was some regrettable impreciseness in the fairy's magic. He has been careless. I dare say he named you as the English magician — or some such vague term. Consequently, his spell — meant only for you — now entraps any English magician who stumbles into it!"

"Ah!" said Strange. He said nothing more. There did not seem any thing to say.

Mr Norrell turned towards the house. "If nothing else, Mr Strange," he said, "this is an excellent illustration of the need for great preciseness about names in spells!"

Behind him Strange raised his eyes heavenward.

In the library they placed the silver dish of water on a table between them.

It was very odd but the discovery that he was now imprisoned in Eternal Darkness with Strange seemed to have raised Mr Norrell's spirits rather than otherwise. Cheerfully he reminded Strange that they still had not found a way to name John Uskglass and that this was certain to be a great obstacle in finding him — by magic or any other means.

Strange, with his head propped up on his hands, stared at him gloomily. "Just try John Uskglass," he said.

So Norrell did the magic, naming John Uskglass as the person they sought. He divided the surface of the water into quarters with lines of glittering light. He gave each quarter a name: Heaven, Hell, Earth and Faerie. Instantly a speck of bluish light shone in the quarter that represented Earth.

"There!" said Strange, leaping up triumphantly. "You see, sir! Things are not always as difficult as you suppose."

Norrell tapped the surface of the quarter; the divisions disappeared. He redrew them, naming them afresh: "England, Scot- land, Ireland, Elsewhere." The speck of light appeared in England. He tapped the quarter, redrew the divisions and examined the result. And on and on, he went, refining the magic. The speck glowed steadily.

He made a soft sound of exclamation.

"What is it?" asked Strange.

In a tone of wonder, Norrell said, "I think we may have succeeded after all! It says he is here. In Yorkshire!"

1 These are the customary three elements of a traditional English summoning spell. The envoy finds the person summoned, the path brings him to the summoner and the handsel (or gift) binds him to come.

2 At the Shadow House in July 1809, Mr Segundus, Mr Honeyfoot and Henry Woodhope being present.

3 "
Florilegium
", "epitome" and "skimmer" are all terms for parts of spells. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries fairies in England were fond of adding to their magic, exhortations to random collections of Christian saints. Fairies were baffled by Christian doctrine, but they were greatly attracted to saints, whom they saw as powerful magical beings whose patronage it was useful to have. These exhortations were called
florilegia
(lit. cullings or gatherings of flowers) and fairies taught them to their Christian masters. When the Protestant religion took hold in England and saints fell out of favour,
florilegia
degenerated into meaningless collections of magical words and bits of other spells, thrown in by the magician in the hope that some of them might take effect.

An epitome is a highly condensed form of a spell inserted within another spell to strengthen or enlarge it. In this case an epitome of preservation and deliverance is intended to protect the magician from the person summoned. A skimmer is a sprinkling of words or charms (from a dialect word of Northern English, meaning to brighten or sparkle). A skimmer of supplication en- courages the person summoned to aid the magician.

4 The last element of a successful summoning spell is temporal. The magician must somehow convey to the summoned person
when
he is meant to appear, otherwise (as Strange once observed) the summoned person might appear at any time and feel he had fulfilled his obligations. A candle stub is a very convenient device: the magician instructs the person summoned to appear when the flame goes out.

5 The chaos of ravens and wind is also described in the tale of the Newcastle glovemaker's child (Chapter 39, footnote 1).

67
The hawthorn tree

February 1817

C
HILDERMASS WAS CROSSING a lonely moorland. In the middle of the moor a misshapen hawthorn tree stood all alone and from the tree a man was hanging. He had been stripped of his coat and shirt, revealing in death what he had doubtless kept hidden during his life: that his skin bore a strange deformation. His chest, back and arms were covered with intricate blue marks, marks so dense that he was more blue than white.

As he rode up to the tree, Childermass wondered if the murderer had written upon the body as a joke. When he had been a sailor he had heard tales of countries where criminals's confessions were written on to their bodies by various horrible means before they were killed. From a distance the marks looked very like writing, but as he got closer he saw that they were beneath the skin.

He got down from his horse and swung the body round until it was facing him. The face was purple and swollen; the eyes were bulging and filled with blood. He studied it until he could discern in the distorted features a face he knew. "Vinculus," he said.

Taking out his pocket-knife, he cut the body down. Then he pulled off Vinculus's breeches and boots, and surveyed the body: the corpse of a forked animal on a barren, winter moor.

The strange marks covered every inch of skin — the only exceptions were his face, hands, private parts and the soles of his feet. He looked like a blue man wearing white gloves and a white mask. The more Childermass looked at him, the more he felt that the marks meant something. "This is the King's Letters," he said at last. "This is Robert Findhelm's book."

Just then it started to snow with a flurry of sharp, icy flakes. The wind blew harder.

Childermass thought of Strange and Norrell twenty miles away and he laughed out loud. What did it matter who read the books at Hurtfew? The most precious book of all lay naked and dead in the snow and the wind.

"So," he said, "it has fallen to me, has it? `The greatest glory and the greatest burden given to any man in this Age.' "

At present the burden was more obvious than the glory. The book was in a most inconvenient form. He had no idea how long Vinculus had been dead or how soon he might begin to rot. What to do? He could take his chances and throw the body over his horse. But a freshly hanged corpse would be difficult to explain to any one he met on the road. He could hide the body and go and fetch a horse and cart. How long would it take? And supposing that in the meantime someone found the body and took it. There were doctors in York who would pay money for corpses and no questions asked.

"I could cast a spell of concealment," he thought.

A spell of concealment would certainly hide it from human eyes, but there were dogs, foxes and crows to consider. They could not be deceived by any magic Childermass knew. The book had been eaten once already. He had no wish to risk it happening a second time.

The obvious thing was to make a copy, but his memorandum book, pen and ink were lying upon the table in the drawing-room in the Darkness of Hurtfew Abbey. So what then? He could scratch a copy on to the frozen earth with a stick — but that was no better than what he had already. If only there had been some trees, he might have been able to strip the bark and burn some wood and write upon the bark with the ashes. But there was only this one twisted hawthorn.

He looked at his pocket-knife. Perhaps he ought to copy the book on to his own body? There were several things in favour of this plan. First, who was to say that the positioning upon Vinculus's body did not carry some meaning with it? The closer to the head, the more important the text? Any thing was possible. Second, it would make the book both secret and secure. He would not have to worry about any one stealing it. Whether he intended to shew it to Strange or Norrell, he had not yet decided.

But the writing upon Vinculus's body was both dense and intricate. Even if he were able to force his knife to mimic all those delicate dots, circles and flourishes exactly — which he doubted — he would have to cut quite deep to make the marks permanent.

He took off his greatcoat and his ordinary coat. He undid the wrist of his shirt and rolled up his sleeve. As an experiment, he cut one of the symbols on the inside of Vinculus's arm into the same place upon his own arm. The result was not promising. There was so much blood that it was difficult to see what he was doing and the pain made him feel faint.

"I can afford to lose some blood in this cause, but there is so much writing — it would surely kill me. Besides, how in the world could I copy what is written on his back? I will put him over my horse and if any one challenges me — well, I will fire at them if needs be. That is a plan. It is not a very good plan, but it is a plan." He put on his coat and his greatcoat again.

Brewer had wandered off a little way and was cropping at some dry grasses, which the wind had exposed. Childermass walked over to him. Out of his valise he took a length of strong rope and the box containing his pistols. He rammed a ball into each pistol and primed them with powder.

He turned back to make sure that all was right with the body. Someone — a man — was bending over it. He shoved the pistols into the pockets of his greatcoat and began to run, calling out.

The man wore black boots and a black travelling coat. He was half-stooping, half-kneeling on the snowy ground beside Vinculus. For a brief moment Childermass thought it was Strange — but this man was not quite so tall and was somewhat slighter in figure. His dark clothes were clearly expensive and looked fashionable. Yet his straight, dark hair was longer than any fashionable gentleman would have worn it; it gave him something of the look of a Methodist preacher or a Romantic poet. "I know him," thought Childermass. "He is a magician. I know him well. Why can I not think what his name is?"

Out loud he said, "The body is mine, sir! Leave it be!"

The man looked up. "Yours, John Childermass?" he said with a mildly ironic air, "I thought it was mine."

It was a curious thing but despite his clothes and his air of cool authority, his speech sounded uncouth — even to Childermass's ears. His accent was northern — of that there was no doubt — but Childermass did not recognize it. It might have been Northumbrian, but it was tinged with something else — the speech of the cold countries that lie over the North Sea and — which seemed more extraordinary still — there was more than a hint of French in his pronunciation.