Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  “Well, Mr Norrell,” said Lascelles, “you are full of surprizes tonight! So much admiration for a man you have always claimed to hate and despise!”

  “My admiration does not lessen my hatred one whit!” said Mr Norrell, sharply. “I said he was a great magician. I did not say he was a good man or that I welcomed his influence upon English magic. Besides what you have just heard was my private opinion and not for public circulation. Childermass knows. Childermass understands.”

  Mr Norrell glanced nervously at Drawlight, but Drawlight had stopped listening some time ago – just as soon as he discovered that Childermass’s story concerned no one in the fashionable world, but only Yorkshire farmers and drunk servants. At present he was busy polishing his snuff box with his handkerchief.

  “So Clegg stole this book?” said Lascelles to Childermass. “Is that what you are going to tell us?”

  “In a manner of speaking. In the autumn of 1754 Findhelm gave the book to Clegg and told him to deliver it to a man in the village of Bretton in the Derbyshire Peak. Why, I do not know. Clegg set off and on the second or third day of his journey he reached Sheffield. He stopped at a tavern, and there he fell in with a man, a blacksmith by trade, whose reputation as a drinker was almost as extraordinary as his own. They began a drinking contest that lasted two days and two nights. At first they simply drank to see which of them could drink the most, but on the second day they began to set each other mad, drunken challenges. There was a barrel of salted herrings in the corner. Clegg challenged the blacksmith to walk across a floor of herrings. An audience had gathered by this time and all the lookers-on and the loungers-about emptied out the herrings and paved the floor with fish. Then the blacksmith walked from one end of the room to the other till the floor was a stinking mess of pulped fish and the blacksmith was bloody from head to foot with all the falls he had taken. Then the blacksmith challenged Clegg to walk along the edge of the tavern roof. Clegg had been drunk for a whole day by this time. Time after time the onlookers thought he was about to fall and break his worthless neck, but he never did. Then Clegg challenged the blacksmith to roast and eat his shoes – which the blacksmith did – and finally, the blacksmith challenged Clegg to eat Robert Findhelm’s book. Clegg tore it into strips and ate it piece by piece.”

  Mr Norrell gave a cry of horror. Even Lascelles blinked in surprize.

  “Days later,” said Childermass, “when Clegg awoke he realized what he had done. He made his way down to London and four years after that he tumbled a serving girl in a Wapping tavern, who was Vinculus’s mother.”

  “But surely the explanation is clear!” cried Mr Norrell. “The book is not lost at all! The story of the drinking contest was a mere invention of Clegg’s to blind Findhelm to the truth! In reality he kept the book and gave it to his son! Now if we can only discover …”

  “But why?” said Childermass. “Why should he go to all this trouble in order to procure the book for a son he had never seen and did not care about? Besides Vinculus was not even born when Clegg set off on the road to Derbyshire.”

  Lascelles cleared his throat. “For once, Mr Norrell, I agree with Mr Childermass. If Clegg still had the book or knew where it was to be found, then surely he would have produced it at his trial or tried to use it to bargain for his life.”

  “And if Vinculus had profited so much from his father’s crime,” added Childermass, “why did he hate his father? Why did he rejoice when his father was hanged? Robert Findhelm was quite sure that the book was destroyed – that is plain. Nan told me Clegg had been hanged for stealing a book, but the charge Robert Findhelm brought against him was not theft. The charge Findhelm brought against him was book-murder. Clegg was the last man in England to be hanged for book-murder.”3

  “So why does Vinculus claim to have this book if his father ate it?’ said Lascelles in a wondering tone. “The thing is not possible.”

  “Somehow Robert Findhelm’s inheritance has passed to Vinculus, but how it happened I do not pretend to understand,” said Childermass.

  “What of the man in Derbyshire?” asked Mr Norrell, suddenly. “You said that Findhelm was sending the book to a man in Derbyshire.”

  Childermass sighed. “I passed through Derbyshire on my way back to London. I went to the village of Bretton. Three houses and an inn high on a bleak hill. Whoever the man was that Clegg was sent to seek out, he is long dead. I could discover nothing there.”

  Stephen Black and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair were seated in the upper room of Mr Wharton’s coffee-house in Oxford-street where the Peep-O’Day-Boys met.

  The gentleman was speaking, as he often did, of his great affection for Stephen. “Which reminds me,” he said; “I have been meaning for many months to offer you an apology and an explanation.”

  “An apology to me, sir?”

  “Yes, Stephen. You and I wish for nothing in the world so much as Lady Pole’s happiness, yet I am bound by the terms of the magician’s wicked agreement to return her to her husband’s house each morning where she must while away the long day until evening. But, clever as you are, you must surely have observed that there are no such constraints upon you and I dare say you are wondering why I do not take you away to Lost-hope House to be happy for ever and for ever.”

  “I have wondered about that, sir,” agreed Stephen. He paused because his whole future seemed to depend upon the next question. “Is there something which prevents you?”

  “Yes, Stephen. In a way there is.”

  “I see,” said Stephen. “Well, that is most unfortunate.”

  “Would not you like to know what it is?” asked the gentleman.

  “Oh yes, sir! Indeed, sir!”

  “Know then,” said the gentleman, putting on grave and important looks quite unlike his usual expression, “that we fairy-spirits know something of the future. Often Fate chuses us as her vessels for prophecy. In the past we have lent our aid to Christians to allow them to achieve great and noble destinies– Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, William Shakespeare, John Wesley and so forth.4 But often our knowledge of things to come is misty and …” The gentleman gestured furiously as if he were brushing away thick cobwebs from in front of his face. “… imperfect. Out of my dear love for you, Stephen, I have traced the smoke of burning cities and battlefields and prised dripping, bloody guts out of dying men to discover your future. You are indeed destined to be a king! I must say that I am not in the least surprized! I felt strongly from the first that you should be a king and it was most unlikely that I should be wrong. But more than this, I believe I know which kingdom is to be yours. The smoke and guts and all the other signs state quite clearly that it is to be a kingdom where you have already been! A kingdom with which you are already closely connected.”

  Stephen waited.

  “But do you not see?” cried the gentleman, impatiently. “It must be England! I cannot tell you how delighted I was when I learnt this important news!”

  “England!” exclaimed Stephen.

  “Yes, indeed! Nothing could be more beneficial for England herself than that you should be her King. The present King is old and blind and as for his sons, they are all fat and drunk! So now you see why I cannot take you away to Lost-hope. It would be wholly wrong of me to remove you from your rightful kingdom!”

  Stephen sat for a moment, trying to comprehend. “But might not the kingdom be somewhere in Africa?” he said at last. “Perhaps I am destined to find my way back there and perhaps by some strange portent the people will recognize me as the descendant of one of their kings?”

  “Perhaps,” said the gentleman, doubtfully. “But, no! That cannot be. For you see it is a kingdom where you have already been. And you never were in Africa. Oh, Stephen! How I long for your wonderful destiny to be accomplished. On that day I shall ally my many kingdoms to Great Britain – and you and I shall live in perfect amity and brotherhood. Think how our enemies will be confounded! Think how eaten up with rage the magicians wi
ll be! How they will curse themselves that they did not treat us with more respect!”

  “But I think that you must be mistaken, sir. I cannot rule England. Not with this …” He spread out his hands in front of him. Black skin, he thought. Aloud he continued, “Only you, sir, with your partiality for me, could think such a thing possible. Slaves do not become kings, sir.”

  “Slave, Stephen? Whatever do you mean?”

  “I was born into slavery, sir. As are many of my race. My mother was a slave on an estate in Jamaica that Sir Walter’s grandfather owned. When his debts grew too great Sir William went to Jamaica to sell the estate – and one of the possessions which he brought back with him was my mother. Or rather he intended to bring her back to be a servant in his house, but during the voyage she gave birth to me and died.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed the gentleman in triumph. “Then it is exactly as I have said! You and your estimable mother were enslaved by the wicked English and brought low by their machinations!”

  “Well, yes, sir. That is true in a sense. But I am not a slave now. No one who stands on British soil can be a slave. The air of England is the air of liberty. It is a great boast of Englishmen that this is so.” And yet, he thought, they own slaves in other countries. Out loud he said, “From the moment that Sir William’s valet carried me as a tiny infant from the ship I was free.”

  “Nevertheless we should punish them!” cried the gentleman. “We can easily kill Lady Pole’s husband, and then I will descend into Hell and find his grandfather, and then …”

  “But it was not Sir William and Sir Walter who did the enslaving,” protested Stephen. “Sir Walter has always been very much opposed to the slave trade. And Sir William was kind to me. He had me christened and educated.”

  “Christened? What? Even your name is an imposition of your enemies? Signifying slavery? Then I strongly advise you to cast it off and chuse another when you ascend the throne of England! What was the name your mother called you?”

  “I do not know, sir. I am not sure that she called me any thing.”

  The gentleman narrowed his eyes as a sign that he was thinking hard. “It would be a strange sort of mother,” he mused, “that did not name her child. Yes, there will be a name that belongs to you. Truly belongs to you. That much is clear to me. The name your mother called you in her heart during those precious moments when she held you in her arms. Are you not curious to know what it was?”

  “Certainly, sir. But my mother is long dead. She may never have told that name to another soul. Her own name is lost. Once when I was a boy I asked Sir William, but he could not remember it.”

  “Doubtless he knew it well, but in his malice would not tell it to you. It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen – someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact. Yes, that is what I will do. As a token of the love I bear you, I will find your true name!”

  31

  Seventeen dead Neapolitans

  April 1812—June 1814

  There were in the British Army at that time a number of “exploring officers” whose business it was to talk to the local people, to steal the French Army’s letters and always to know the whereabouts of the French troops. Let your notions of war be as romantic as they may, Wellington’s exploring officers would always exceed them. They forded rivers by moonlight and crossed mountain ranges under the searing sun. They lived more behind French lines than English ones and knew everyone favourable to the British cause.

  The greatest of these exploring officers was, without a doubt, Major Colquhoun Grant of the 11th Foot. Often the French would look up from whatever they were doing and see Major Grant on horseback, observing them from atop a far-off hill. He would peer at them through his telescope and then make notes about them in his little notebook. It made them most uncomfortable.

  One morning in April 1812, quite by chance, Major Grant found himself caught between two French cavalry patrols. When it became clear that he could not outride them he abandoned his horse and hid in a little wood. Major Grant always considered himself to be a soldier rather than a spy, and, as a soldier, he made it a point of honour to wear his uniform at all times. Unfortunately the uniform of the 11th Foot (as of almost all infantry regiments) was bright scarlet and as he hid amongst the budding spring leaves the French had no difficulty whatsoever in perceiving him.

  For the British the capture of Grant was a calamity akin to losing a whole brigade of ordinary men. Lord Wellington immediately sent out urgent messages – some to the French generals proposing an exchange of prisoners and some to the guerrilla commanders,1 promising them silver dollars and weapons aplenty if they could effect Grant’s rescue. When neither of these proposals produced any results Lord Wellington was obliged to try a different plan. He hired one of the most notorious and ferocious of all the guerrilla chieftains, Jeronimo Saornil, to convey Jonathan Strange to Major Grant.

  “You will find that Saornil is rather a formidable person,” Lord Wellington informed Strange before he set off, “but I have no fears upon that account, because frankly, Mr Strange, so are you.”

  Saornil and his men were indeed as murderous a set of villains as you could wish to see. They were dirty, evil-smelling and unshaven. They had sabres and knives stuck into their belts and rifles slung over their shoulders. Their clothes and saddle-blankets were covered with cruel and deadly images: skulls and crossbones; hearts impaled upon knives; gallows; crucifixions upon cartwheels; ravens pecking at hearts and eyes; and other such pleasant devices. These images were formed out of what appeared at first to be pearl buttons but which, on closer examination, proved to be the teeth of all the Frenchmen they had killed. Saornil, in particular, had so many teeth attached to his person that he rattled whenever he moved, rather as if all the dead Frenchmen were still chattering with fear.

  Surrounded as they were by the symbols and accoutrements of death, Saornil and his men were confident of striking terror into everyone they met. They were therefore a little disconcerted to find that the English magician had outdone them in this respect – he had brought a coffin with him. Like many violent men they were also rather superstitious. One of them asked Strange what was inside the coffin. He replied carelessly that it contained a man.

  After several days of hard riding the guerrilla band brought Strange to a hill which overlooked the principal road leading out of Spain and into France. Along this road, they assured Strange, Major Grant and his captors were sure to pass.

  Saornil’s men set up camp nearby and settled themselves to wait. On the third day they saw a large party of French soldiers coming along the road and, riding in the middle of them, in his scarlet uniform, was Major Grant. Immediately Strange gave instructions for his coffin to be opened. Three of the guerrilleros took crowbars and prised off the lid. Inside they found a pottery person – a sort of mannikin made from the same rough red clay which the Spanish use to make their colourful plates and jugs. It was life-size, but very crudely made. It had two holes for eyes and no nose to speak of. It was, however, carefully dressed in the uniform of an officer of the 11th Foot.

  “Now,” said Strange to Jeronimo Saornil, “when the French outriders reach that rock there, take your men and attack them.”

  Saornil took a moment to digest this, not least because Strange’s Spanish had several eccentricities of grammar and pronunciation.

  When he had understood he asked, “Shall we try to free El Bueno Granto?” (El Bueno Granto was the Spaniards’ name for Major Grant.)

  “Certainly not!” replied Strange. “Leave El Bueno Granto to me!”

  Saornil and his men went halfway down the hill to a place where thin trees made a screen that hid them from the road. From here they opened fire. The French were taken entirely by surprize. Some were killed; many others wounded. There were no rocks and very few bushes – scarcely any where to hide – but the road was still before them, offering a good chance of outrunning thei
r attackers. After a few minutes of panic and confusion the French gathered up their wits and their wounded and sped away.

  As the guerrilleros climbed back up the hill, they were very doubtful that any thing had been accomplished; after all, the figure in the scarlet uniform had still been among the Frenchmen as they rode off. They reached the place where they had left the magician and were amazed to find he was no longer alone. Major Grant was with him. The two men were sitting sociably on a rock, eating cold chicken and drinking claret.

  “… Brighton is all very well,” Major Grant was saying, “but I prefer Weymouth.”

  “You amaze me,” replied Strange. “I detest Weymouth. I spent one of the most miserable weeks of my life there. I was horribly in love with a girl called Marianne and she snubbed me for a fellow with an estate in Jamaica and a glass eye.”

  “That is not Weymouth’s fault,” said Major Grant. “Ah! Capitán Saornil!” He waved a chicken leg at the chieftain by way of greeting. “Buenos Días!”

  Meanwhile the officers and soldiers of the French escort continued on their way to France and when they reached Bayonne they delivered their prisoner into the keeping of the Head of Bayonne’s Secret Police. The Head of the Secret Police came forward to greet what he confidently believed to be Major Grant. He was somewhat disconcerted when, on reaching out to shake the Major’s hand, the entire arm came away in his hand. So surprized was he that he dropped it on the ground where it shattered into a thousand pieces. He turned to make his apologies to Major Grant and was even more appalled to discover large black cracks appearing all over the Major’s face. Next, part of the Major’s head fell off – by which means he was discovered to be completely hollow inside – and a moment later he fell to bits like the Humpty-Dumpty person in Mother Goose’s Melody.

  On July 22nd Wellington fought the French outside the ancient university city of Salamanca. It was the most decisive victory for any British Army in recent years.