Stephen tasted the wine and the pork steaks. “It is altogether excellent, sir. What was the occasion when you dined here before?”
“Oh! I and my friends were celebrating our departure for the Crusades. William of Lanchester1 was here and Tom Dundell2 and many other noble lords and knights, both Christian and fairy. Of course it was not a coffee-house then. It was an inn. From where we sat we looked out over a wide courtyard surrounded by carved and gilded pillars. Our servants, pages and squires went to and fro, making everything ready for us to wreak a terrible vengeance upon our wicked enemies! On the other side of the courtyard were the stables where were housed not only the most beautiful horses in England, but three unicorns that another fairy – a cousin of mine – was taking to the Holy Lands to pierce our enemies through and through. Several talented magicians were seated at the table with us. They in no way resembled the horrors that pass for magicians nowadays. They were as handsome in their persons as they were accomplished in their art! The birds of the air stooped to hear their commands. The rains and the rivers were their servants. The north wind, the south wind, etc., etc., only existed to do their bidding. They spread their hands and cities crumbled – or sprang up whole again! What a contrast to that horrible old man who sits in a dusty room, muttering to himself and turning the pages of some ancient volume!” The gentlemen ate some cockatrice fricassee thoughtfully. “The other one is writing a book,” he said.
“So I have heard, sir. Have you been to look at him recently?”
The gentleman frowned. “I? Did you just not hear me say that I consider these magicians the stupidest, most abominable men in England? No, I have not seen him above twice or three times a week since he left London. When he writes, he cuts his nibs rather square with a old pen-knife. I should be ashamed to use so battered and ugly an old knife, but these magicians endure all sorts of nastiness that you and I would shudder at! Sometimes he gets so lost in what he is writing that he forgets to mend his nib and then the ink splatters on to his paper and into his coffee and he pays it no attention at all.”
Stephen reflected how odd it was that the gentleman, who lived in a partly ruinous house surrounded by the grisly bones of bygone battles, should be so sensitive to disorder in other people’s houses. “And what of the subject of the book, sir?” he asked. “What is your opinion of that?”
“It is most peculiar! He describes all the most important appearances of my race in this country. There are accounts of how we have intervened in Britain’s affairs for Britain’s good and the greater glory of the inhabitants. He continually gives it as his opinion that nothing is so desirable as that the magicians of this Age should immediately summon us up and beg for our assistance. Can you make any thing of this, Stephen? I cannot. When I wished to bring the King of England to my house and shew him all sorts of polite attentions, this same magician thwarted me. His behaviour upon that occasion seemed calculated to insult me!”
“But I think, sir,” said Stephen, gently, “that perhaps he did not quite understand who or what you were.”
“Oh! who can tell what these Englishmen understand? Their minds are so peculiar! It is impossible to know what they are thinking! I fear you will find it so, Stephen, when you are their King!”
“I really have no wish to be King of anywhere, sir.”
“You will feel very differently when you are King. It is just that you are cast down at the thought of being excluded from Lost-hope and all your friends. Be easy upon that score! I too would be miserable if I thought that your elevation would be the means of parting us. But I see no necessity for you to reside permanently in England merely because you are its monarch. A week is the utmost any person of taste could be expected to linger in such a dull country. A week is more than enough!”
“But what of my duties, sir? It is my understanding that kings have a great deal of business, and as little as I want to be King, I should not wish …”
“My dear Stephen!” cried the gentleman in affectionate but amused delight. “That is what seneschals are for! They can perform all the dull business of government, while you remain with me at Lost-hope to enjoy our usual pleasures. You will return here every so often to collect your taxes and the tribute of conquered nations and put them into a bank. Oh, I suppose that once in a while it will be prudent to stay in England long enough to have your portrait painted so that the populace may adore you all the more. Sometimes you may graciously permit all the most beautiful ladies in the land to wait in line to kiss your hands and fall in love with you. Then, all your duties performed to perfection, you can return to Lady Pole and me with a good conscience!” The gentleman paused and grew unusually thoughtful. “Though I must confess,” he said at last, “that my delight in the beautiful Lady Pole is not so overpowering as once it was. There is another lady whom I like much more. She is only moderately pretty, but the deficiency in beauty is more than compensated for by her lively spirits and sweet conversation. And this other lady has one great advantage over Lady Pole. As you and I both know, Stephen, however often Lady Pole visits my house, she must always go away again in accordance with the magician’s agreement. But in the case of this lady, there will be no need for any such foolish agreement. Once I have obtained her, I shall be able to keep her always at my side!”
Stephen sighed. The thought of some other poor lady held prisoner at Lost-hope for ever and a day was melancholy indeed! Yet it would be foolish to suppose that he could do any thing to prevent it and it might be that he could turn it to Lady Pole’s advantage. “Perhaps, sir,” he said, respectfully, “in that case you would consider releasing her ladyship from her enchantment? I know her husband and friends would be glad to have her restored to them.”
“Oh! But I shall always regard Lady Pole as a most desirable addition to all our entertainments. A beautiful woman is always good company and I doubt if her ladyship has her equal for beauty in England. There are not many to equal her in Faerie. No, what you suggest is entirely impossible. But to return to the subject in hand. We must decide upon a scheme to pluck this other lady from her home and carry her off to Lost-hope. I know, Stephen, that you will be all the more eager to help me when I tell you that I consider the removal of this lady from England as quite essential to our noble aim of making you King. It will be a terrible blow to our enemies! It will cast them down into utter despair! It will produce strife and dissension amongst them. Oh, yes! It will be all good things to us and all bad to them! We would fail in our lofty duties if we did any thing less!”
Stephen could make very little of this. Was the gentleman speaking of one of the Princesses at Windsor Castle? It was well known that the King had gone mad when his youngest and favourite daughter died. Perhaps the gentleman with the thistledown hair supposed that the loss of another Princess might actually kill him, or loosen the wits of some other members of the Royal Family.
“Now, my dear Stephen,” said the gentleman. “The question before us is: how may we fetch the lady away without any one noticing – particularly the magicians!” He considered a moment. “I have it! Fetch me a piece of moss-oak!”
“Sir?”
“It must be about your own girth and as tall as my collar bone.”
“I would gladly fetch it for you immediately, sir. But I do not know what moss-oak is.”
“Ancient wood that has been sunk in peat bogs for countless centuries!”
“Then, sir, I fear we are not very likely to find any in London. There are no peat bogs here.”
“True, true.” The gentleman flung himself back in his chair and stared at the ceiling while he considered this tricky problem.
“Would any other sort of wood suit your purposes, sir?” asked Stephen, “There is a timber merchant in Gracechurch-street, who I dare say …”
“No, no,” said the gentleman, “This must be done …”
At that instant Stephen experienced the queerest sensation: he was plucked out of his chair and stood upon his feet. At the same moment the coffee-ho
use disappeared and was replaced by a pitch-black, ice-cold nothingness. Though he could see nothing at all, Stephen had the sense that he was in a wide, open place. A bitter wind howled about his ears and a thick rain seemed to be falling upon him from all directions at once.
“… properly,” continued the gentleman in exactly the same tone as before. “There is a very fine piece of moss-oak hereabouts. At least I think I remember …” His voice, which had been somewhere near Stephen’s right ear, moved away. “Stephen!” he cried, “Have you brought a flaughter, a rutter and a tusker?”
“What, sir? Which, sir? No, sir. I have not brought any of those things. To own the truth, I did not quite understand that we were going any where.” Stephen found that his feet and ancles were deep in cold water. He tried to step aside. Immediately the ground lurched most alarmingly and he sank suddenly into it up to the middle of his calves. He screamed.
“Mmm?” inquired the gentleman.
“I … I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.”
“It is a bog,” said the gentleman, helpfully.
“It is certainly a most terrifying substance.” Stephen attempted to mimic the gentleman’s calm, uninterested tone. He knew only too well that the gentleman set a great value upon dignity in every situation and he feared that if he let the gentleman hear how terrified he was, there was every possibility that the gentleman would grow disgusted with him and wander off, leaving him to be sucked into the bog. He tried to move, but found nothing solid beneath his feet. He flailed about, almost fell and the only result was that his feet and legs slipped a little further into the watery mud. He screamed again. The bog made a series of most unpleasant sucking noises.
“Ah, God! I take the liberty of observing, sir, that I am sinking by degrees. Ah!” He began to slip sideways. “You have often been so kind as to express an affection for me, sir, and to say how much you prefer my society to that of any other person. If it would not inconvenience you in any way, perhaps I might prevail upon you to rescue me from this horrible bog?”
The gentleman did not trouble to reply. Instead Stephen found himself plucked by magic out of the bog and stood upon his feet. He was quite weak with fright and would have liked to lie down, but dared not move. The ground here seemed solid enough, but it was unpleasantly wet and he had no idea where the bog was.
“I would gladly help you, sir,” he called into the darkness, “but I dare not move for fear of falling into the bog again!”
“Oh, it does not matter!” said the gentleman. “In truth, there is nothing to do but wait. Moss-oak is most easily discovered at dawn.”
“But dawn is not for another nine hours!” exclaimed Stephen in horror.
“No, indeed! Let us sit down and wait.”
“Here, sir? But this is a dreadful place. Black and cold and awful!”
“Oh, quite! It is most disagreeable!” agreed the gentleman with aggravating calmness. He fell silent then and Stephen could only suppose that he was pursuing this mad plan of waiting for the dawn.
The icy wind blew upon Stephen; the damp seeped up into every part of his being; the blackness pressed down upon him; and the long hours passed with excruciating slowness. He had no expectation of being able to sleep, but at some time during the night he experienced a little relief from the misery of his situation. It was not that he fell asleep exactly, but he did fall to dreaming.
In his dream he had gone to the pantry to fetch someone a slice of a magnificent pork pie. But when he cut the pie open he found that there was very little pork inside it. Most of the interior was taken up by the city of Birmingham. Within the pie-crust forges and smithies smoked and engines pounded. One of the citizens, a civil-looking person, happened to stroll out from the cut that Stephen had made and when his glance fell upon Stephen, he said …
Just then a high, mournful sound broke in upon Stephen’s dream – a slow, sad song in an unknown language and Stephen understood without ever actually waking that the gentleman with the thistle-down hair was singing.
It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.
Stephen began to dream again. This time he dreamt that hills walked and the sky wept. Trees came and spoke to him and told him their secrets and also whether or not he might regard them as friends or enemies. Important destinies were hidden inside pebbles and crumpled leaves. He dreamt that everything in the world – stones and rivers, leaves and fire – had a purpose which it was determined to carry out with the utmost rigour, but he also understood that it was possible sometimes to persuade things to a different purpose.
When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant.
“This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?” he said.
“My kingdoms?” exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. “Oh, no! This is Scotland!”
The gentleman disappeared suddenly – and reappeared a moment later with an armful of tools. There was an axe and a spit and three things Stephen had never seen before. One was a little like a hoe, one was a little like a spade and the last was a very strange object, something between a spade and a scythe. He handed all of them to Stephen, who examined them with a puzzled air. “Are they new, sir? They shine so brightly.”
“Well, obviously one cannot employ tools of ordinary metal for such a magical undertaking as I am proposing. These are made of a compound of quicksilver and starshine. Now, Stephen, we must look for a patch of ground where the dew has not settled and if we dig there we are sure to find moss-oak!”
All through the glen all the grasses and tiny coloured bog-plants were covered with dew. Stephen’s clothes, hands, hair and skin had a velvety, grey bloom, and the gentleman’s hair – which was always extraordinary – had added the sparkle of a million tiny spheres of water to its customary brilliance. He appeared to be wearing a jewelled halo.
The gentleman walked slowly across the glen, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Stephen followed.
“Ah!” cried the gentleman. “Here we are!”
How the gentleman knew this, Stephen could not tell.
They were standing in the middle of a boggy expanse, exactly like every other part of the glen. There was no distinguishing tree or rock nearby to mark the spot. But the gentleman strode on with a confident air until he came to a shallow depression. In the middle of the depression was a long, broad stripe where there was no dew at all.
“Dig here, Stephen!”
The gentleman proved surprizingly knowledgeable about the art of peat cutting. And though he did none of the actual work himself he carefully instructed Stephen how to cut away the uppermost layer of grasses and moss with one tool, how to cut the peat with another tool and how to lift out the pieces with a third.
Stephen was unaccustomed to hard labour and he was soon out of breath and every part of him ached. Fortunately, he had not cut down very far when he struck something much harder than the peat.
“Ah!” cried the gentleman, very well pleased. “That is the moss oak. Excellent! Now, Stephen, cut around it!”
This was easier said than done. Even when Stephen had cut away enough of the peat to expose the moss-oak to the air it was still very difficult to see what was oak and what was peat – both were black, wet and oozing. He dug some more and he began to suspect that, though the gentleman called it a log, this was in fact an entire tree.
“Could you not lift it out by magic, sir?” he asked.
“Oh, no! No, indeed! I shall ask a great deal of this wood and therefore it is incumbent upon us to make its passage from the bog into the wider world as easy as we can! Now, do you take this axe, Stephen, and cut me a piece as tall as my collar-bone. Then with the spit and the tusker we will prise it out!”
It took them three more hours to accomplish the task. Stephen chopped the wood to the size the gentleman had asked for, but the task of manoeuvring it out of the bog was more than one man could manage and the gentleman was obliged to descend into the muddy, stinking hole with him and they strained and pulled and heaved together.
When at last they had finished, Stephen threw himself upon the ground in a condition of the utmost exhaustion, while the gentleman stood, regarding his log with delight.
“Well,” he said, “that was a great deal easier than I had imagined.”
Stephen suddenly found himself once more in the upper room of the Jerusalem Coffee-house. He looked at himself and at the gentleman. Their good clothes were in tatters and they were covered from head to foot with bog-mud.
For the first time he was able to see the log of moss-oak properly. It was as black as sin, extremely fine-grained, and it oozed black water.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Page 56