He smiled politely: “A binding agreement, I think you said? I shall expect it – whatever it is – later this evening!”
At eight o’clock he dined with the Greysteels in their gloomy dining-hall.
Miss Greysteel asked him about Lord Byron.
“Oh!” said Strange. “He does not intend to return to England. He can write poems anywhere. Whereas in my own case, English magic was shaped by England – just as England herself was shaped by magic. The two go together. You cannot separate them.”
“You mean,” said Miss Greysteel, frowning a little, “that English minds and history and so forth were shaped by magic. You are speaking metaphorically.”
“No, I was speaking quite literally. This city, for example, was built in the common way …”
“Oh!” interrupted Dr Greysteel, laughing. “How like a magician that sounds! The slight edge of contempt when he speaks of things being done in the common way!”
“I do not think that I intended any disrespect. I assure you I have the greatest regard for things done in the common way. No, my point was merely that the boundaries of England – its very shape was determined by magic.”
Dr Greysteel sniffed. “I am not sure of this. Give me an example.”
“Very well. There once was a very fine town stood on the coast of Yorkshire whose citizens began to wonder why it was that their King, John Uskglass, should require taxes from them. Surely, they argued, so great a magician could conjure up all the gold he wanted from the air. Now there is no harm in wondering, but these foolish people did not stop there. They refused to pay and began to plot with the King’s enemies. A man is best advised to consider carefully before he quarrels with a magician and still more with a king. But when these two characters are combined in one person, Why! then the peril is multiplied a hundred times. First a wind came out of the north and blew through the town. As the wind touched the beasts of the town they grew old and died – cows, pigs, fowls and sheep – even the cats and dogs. As the wind touched the town itself houses became ruins before the very eyes of the unhappy householders. Tools broke, pots shattered, wood warped and split, brick and stone crumbled into dust. Stone images in the church wore away as if with extreme age, until, it was said, every face of every statue appeared to be screaming. The wind whipped up the sea into strange, menacing shapes. The townspeople, very wisely, began to run from the town and when they reached the higher ground they looked back and were just in time to see the remains of the town slip slowly under the cold, grey waves.”
Dr Greysteel smiled. “Let the government be who they may – Whigs, Tories, emperors or magicians – they take it very ill when people do not pay their taxes. And shall you include these tales in your next book?”
“Oh, certainly. I am not one of those miserly authors who measure out their words to the last quarter ounce. I have very liberal ideas of authorship. Anyone who cares to pay Mr Murray their guinea will find that I have thrown the doors of my warehouse wide open and that all my learning is up for sale. My readers may stroll about and chuse at their leisure.”
Miss Greysteel gave this tale a moment or two of serious consideration. “He was certainly provoked,” she said at last, “but it was still the act of a tyrant.”
Somewhere in the shadows footsteps were approaching.
“What is it, Frank?” asked Dr Greysteel.
Frank, Dr Greysteel’s servant, emerged from the gloom.
“We have found a letter and a little box, sir. Both for Mr Strange.” Frank looked troubled.
“Well, do not stand and gape so. Here is Mr Strange, sat just at your elbow. Give him his letter and his little box.”
Frank’s expression and attitude all declared him to be tussling with some great perplexity. His scowl suggested that he believed himself to be quite out of his depth. He made one last attempt to communicate his vexation to his master. “We found the letter and the little box on the floor just inside the door, sir, but the door was locked and bolted!”
“Then someone must have unlocked and unbolted it, Frank. Do not be making mysteries,” said Dr Greysteel.
So Frank gave the letter and box to Strange and wandered away into the darkness again, muttering to himself and inquiring of the chairs and tables he met on the way what sort of blockhead they took him for.
Aunt Greysteel leaned over and politely entreated Mr Strange to use no ceremony – he was with friends and should read his letter directly. This was very kind of her, but a little superfluous, since Strange had already opened the paper and was reading his letter.
“Oh, aunt!” cried Miss Greysteel, picking up the little box which Frank had placed on the table. “See, how beautiful!”
The box was small and oblong and apparently made of silver and porcelain. It was a beautiful shade of blue, but then again not exactly blue, it was more like lilac. But then again, not exactly lilac either, since it had a tinge of grey in it. To be more precise, it was the colour of heartache. But fortunately neither Miss Greysteel nor Aunt Greysteel had ever been much troubled by heartache and so they did not recognize it.
“It is certainly very pretty,” said her aunt. “Is it Italian, Mr Strange?”
“Mmm?” said Strange. He glanced up. “I do not know.”
“Is there anything inside?” asked Aunt Greysteel.
“Yes, I believe so,” said Miss Greysteel, beginning to open it.
“Flora!” cried Dr Greysteel and shook his head sharply at his daughter. He had an idea that the box might be a present which Strange intended to give to Flora. He did not like this idea, but Dr Greysteel did not think himself competent to judge the sorts of behaviour in which a man like Strange – a fashionable man of the world – might consider himself licensed to indulge.
Strange, with his nose still deep in the letter, saw and heard none of this. He took up the little box and opened it.
“Is there any thing inside, Mr Strange?” asked Aunt Greysteel.
Strange shut the box quickly again. “No, madam, nothing at all.” He put the box in his pocket and immediately summoned Frank and asked for a glass of water.
He left the Greysteels very soon after dinner and went straight to the coffee-house on the corner of the Calle de la Cortesia. The first glimpse of the contents of the box had been very shocking and he had a strong desire to be among people when he opened it again.
The waiter brought his brandy. He took a sip and opened the box.
At first he supposed that the fairy had sent him a replica of a small, white, amputated finger, made of wax or some such material and very lifelike. It was so pale, so drained of blood, that it seemed almost to be tinged with green, with a suggestion of pink in the grooves around the fingernail. He wondered that any one should labour so long to produce any thing quite so horrible.
But the moment he touched it he realized it was not wax at all. It was icy cold, and yet the skin moved in the same way as the skin moved upon his own finger and the muscles could be detected beneath the skin, both by touch and sight. It was, without a doubt, a human finger. From the size of it he thought it was probably a child’s finger or perhaps the smallest finger of a woman with rather delicate hands.
“But why would the magician give him a finger?” he wondered. “Perhaps it was the magician’s finger? But I do not see how that can be, unless the magician were either a child or a woman.” It occurred to him that he had heard something about a finger once, but for the moment he could not remember what it was. Oddly enough although he did not remember what he had been told, he thought he remembered who had told him. It had been Drawlight. “… which explains why I did not pay a great deal of attention. But why would Drawlight have been talking of magic? He knew little and cared less.”
He drank some more brandy. “I thought that if I had a fairy to explain everything to me, then all the mysteries would become clear. But all that has happened is that I have acquired another mystery!”
He fell to musing upon the various stories he had heard conce
rning the great English magicians and their fairy-servants. Martin Pale with Master Witcherley, Master Fallowthought and all the rest. Thomas Godbless with Dick-come-Tuesday; Meraud with Coleman Gray; and most famous of all, Ralph Stokesey and Col Tom Blue.
When Stokesey first saw Col Tom Blue, he was a wild, unruly person – the last fairy in the world to ally himself to an English magician. So Stokesey had followed him into Faerie, to Col Tom Blue’s own castle4 and had gone about invisibly and discovered many interesting things.5 Strange was not so naive as to suppose that the story as it had come down to children and magio-historians was an accurate description of what had happened. “Yet there is probably some truth in it somewhere,” he thought. “Perhaps Stokesey managed to penetrate Col Tom Blue’s castle and that proved to Col Tom Blue that he was a magician to be reckoned with. There is no reason that I could not do something similar. After all this fairy knows nothing of my skills or achievements. If I were to pay him an unexpected visit, it would prove to him the extent of my power.”
He thought back to the misty, snowy day at Windsor when he and the King had almost stumbled into Faerie, lured by the gentleman’s magic. He thought of the wood and the tiny lights within it that had suggested an ancient house. The King’s Roads could certainly take him there, but – leaving aside his promise to Arabella – he had no desire to find the gentleman by magic he had already done. He wanted this to be something new and startling. When he next saw the gentleman he wanted to be full of the confidence and exhilaration that a successful new spell always bestowed on him.
“Faerie is never very far away,” he thought, “and there are a thousand ways of getting there. Surely I ought to be able to find one of them?”
There was a spell he knew of that could make a path between any two beings the magician named. It was an old spell – just a step away from fairy magic. The paths it would make could certainly cross the boundaries between worlds. Strange had never used it before and he had no idea of what the path would like look or how he would follow it. Still he believed he could do it. He muttered the words to himself, made a few gestures, and named himself and the gentleman as the two beings between whom the path should be drawn.
There was a shift as sometimes happened at the start of magic. It was as if an invisible door had opened and closed, leaving him upon the other side of it. Or as if all the buildings in the city had turned round and everything was now facing in another direction. The magic appeared to have worked perfectly – something had certainly happened – but he could see no result. He considered what to do next.
“It is probably only a matter of perception – and I know how to cure that.” He paused. “It is vexatious. I had much rather not use it again, but still, once more is not likely to hurt.”
He reached into the breast of his coat and brought out the tincture of madness. The waiter brought him a glass of water and he carefully tipped in one tiny drop. He drank it down.
He looked around and perceived for the first time the line of glittering light which began at his foot, crossed the tiled floor of the coffee-house and led out of the door. It was very like those lines which he had often made to appear upon the silver dish of water. He found that if he looked directly at it, it disappeared. But if he kept it in the corner of his eye he could see it very well.
He paid the waiter and stepped out into the street. “Well,” he said, “that is truly remarkable.”
55
The second shall see his dearest possession in his enemy’s hand
Night of 2nd/3rd December 1816
It was as if that fate which had always seemed to threaten the city of Venice had overtaken her in an instant; but instead of being drowned in water, she was drowned in trees. Dark, ghostly trees crowded the alleys and squares, and filled the canals. Walls were no obstacle to them. Their branches pierced stone and glass. Their roots plunged deep beneath paving stones. Statues and pillars were sheathed in ivy. It was suddenly – to Strange’s senses at any rate – a great deal quieter and darker. Trailing beards of mistletoe hid lamps and candles and the dense canopy of branches blocked out the moon.
Yet none of Venice’s inhabitants appeared to notice the least change. Strange had often read how men and women could be cheerfully oblivious to magic going on around them, but never before had he seen an example of it. A baker’s apprentice was carrying a tray of bread on his head. As Strange watched, the man neatly circumvented all the trees he did not know were there and ducking this way and that to avoid branches which would have poked his eye out. A man and a woman dressed for the ballroom or the Ridotto, with cloaks and masks, came down the Salizzada San Moisé together, arm in arm, heads together, whispering. A great tree stood in their way. They parted quite naturally, passed one on each side of the tree and joined arms again on the other side.
Strange followed the line of glittering light down an alley to the quayside. The trees went on where the city stopped, and the line of light led through the trees.
He did not much care for the idea of stepping into the sea. At Venice there is no gently sloping beach to lead one inch by inch into the water; the stone world of the city ends at the quayside and the Adriatic begins immediately. Strange had no notion how deep the water might be just here, but he was tolerably certain that it was deep enough to drown in. All he could do was hope that the glittering path which led him through the wood would also prevent him from drowning.
Yet at the same time it pleased his vanity to think how much better suited he was to this adventure than Norrell. “He could never be persuaded to step into the sea. He hates getting wet. Who was it that said a magician needs the subtlety of a Jesuit, the daring of a soldier and the wits of a thief? I believe it was meant for a insult, but it has some truth in it.”
He stepped off the quayside.
Instantly the sea became more ethereal and dreamlike, and the wood became more solid. Soon the sea was scarcely more than a faint silver shimmer among the dark trees and a salty tang mingling with the usual scents of a night-time wood.
“I am,” thought Strange, “the first English magician to enter Faerie in almost three hundred years.”1 He felt excessively pleased at the thought and rather wished there were someone there to see him do it and be astonished. He realized how tired he was of books and silence, how he longed for the times when to be a magician meant journeys into places no Englishman had ever seen. For the first time since Waterloo he was actually doing something. Then it occurred to him that, rather than congratulating himself, he ought to be looking about him and seeing if there were any thing he could learn. He applied himself to studying his surroundings.
The wood was not quite an English wood, though it was very like it. The trees were a little too ancient, a little too vast and a little too fantastic in shape. Strange had the strong impression that they possessed fully formed characters, with loves, hates and desires of their own. They looked as if they were accustomed to being treated equally with men and women, and expected to be consulted in matters that concerned them.
“This,” he thought, “is just as I would have expected, but it ought to stand as a warning to me of how different this world is from my own. The people I meet here are sure to ask me questions. They will want to trick me.” He began to imagine the sorts of questions they might ask him and to prepare a variety of clever answers. He felt no fear; a dragon might appear for all he cared. He had come so far in the last two days; he felt as if there was nothing he could not do if he tried.
After twenty minutes or so of walking the glittering line led him to the house. He recognized it immediately; its image had been so sharp and clear before him that day in Windsor. Yet at the same time it was different. In Windsor it had appeared bright and welcoming. Now he was struck by its overwhelming air of poverty and desolation. The windows were many, but very small and most of them were dark. It was much bigger than he expected – far larger than any earthly dwelling. “The Czar of Russia may have a house as large as this,” he thought, “or perhap
s the Pope in Rome. I do not know. I have never been to those places.”
It was surrounded by a high wall. The glittering line seemed to stop at the wall. He could not see any opening. He muttered Ormskirk’s Spell of Revelation, followed immediately by Taillemache’s Shield, a charm to ensure safe passage through enchanted places. His luck held and immediately a mean little gate appeared. He passed through it and found himself in a wide grey courtyard. It was full of bones that glimmered whitely in the starlight. Some skeletons were clad in rusting armour; the weapons that had destroyed them were still tangled with their ribs or poking out of an eye-socket.
Strange had seen the battlefields of Badajoz and Waterloo; he was scarcely perturbed by a few ancient skeletons. Still it was interesting. He felt as if he really were in Faerie now.
Despite the dilapidation of the house he had the strongest suspicion that there was something magical about its appearance. He tried Ormskirk’s Revelation again. Immediately the house shifted and changed and he could see that it was only partly built of stone. Some of what had appeared to be walls, buttresses and towers was now revealed as a great mound of earth – a hillside in fact.
“It is a brugh!” he thought in great excitement.2
He passed under a low doorway and found himself immediately in a vast room filled with people dancing. The dancers were dressed in the finest clothes imaginable, but the room itself seemed in the very worst state of repair. Indeed at one end, part of a wall had collapsed and lay in a heap of rubble. The furnishings were few and shabby, the candles were of the poorest sort and there was only one fiddler and one piper to provide the music.
No one appeared to be paying Strange the least attention and so he stood among the people near the wall and watched the dance. In many ways the entertainment here was less foreign to him than, say, a conversazione3 in Venice. The manners of the guests seemed more English and the dance itself was very like the country dances that are enjoyed by ladies and gentlemen from Newcastle to Penzance every week of the year.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Page 73