Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  Childermass flinched as if he had been struck and seemed about to return a sharp answer, but he was interrupted by Mr Norrell. “Upon the contrary! Childermass did well to leave as soon as he could. There is always more magic in such a place than appears at first sight. Some fairies delight in combat and death. I do not know why. They are prepared to go to great lengths to secure such pleasures for themselves.”

  “Please, Mr Lascelles,” said Childermass, “if the place has a strong appeal for you, then go! Do not stay upon our account.”

  Lascelles looked thoughtfully at the field and the gap in the hedge. But he did not move.

  “You do not like the ravens perhaps?” said Childermass in a quietly mocking tone.

  “No one likes them!” declared Mr Norrell. “Why are they here? What do they mean?”

  Childermass shrugged. “Some people think that they are part of the Darkness that envelops Strange, and which, for some reason, he has made incarnate and sent back to England. Other people think that they portend the return of John Uskglass.”

  “John Uskglass. Of course,” said Lascelles. “The first and last resort of vulgar minds. Whenever any thing happens, it must be because of John Uskglass! I think, Mr Norrell, it is time for another article in The Friends reviling that gentleman. What shall we say? That he was unChristian? UnEnglish? Demonic? Somewhere I believe I have a list of the Saints and Archbishops who denounced him. I could easily work that up.”

  Mr Norrell looked uncomfortable. He glanced nervously at the Tuxford postillion.

  “If I were you, Mr Lascelles,” said Childermass, softly, “I would speak more guardedly. You are in the north now. In John Uskglass’s own country. Our towns and cities and abbeys were built by him. Our laws were made by him. He is in our minds and hearts and speech. Were it summer you would see a carpet of tiny flowers beneath every hedgerow, of a bluish-white colour. We call them John’s Farthings. When the weather is contrary and we have warm weather in winter or it rains in summer the country people say that John Uskglass is in love again and neglects his business.1 And when we are sure of something we say it is as safe as a pebble in John Uskglass’s pocket.”

  Lascelles laughed. “Far be it from me, Mr Childermass, to disparage your quaint country sayings. But surely it is one thing to pay lip-service to one’s history and quite another to talk of bringing back a King who numbered Lucifer himself among his allies and overlords? No one wants that, do they? I mean apart from a few Johannites and madmen?”

  “I am a North Englishman, Mr Lascelles,” said Childermass. “Nothing would please me better than that my King should come home. It is what I have wished for all my life.”

  It was nearly midnight when they arrived at Hurtfew Abbey. There was no sign of Strange. Lascelles went to bed, but Mr Norrell walked about the house, examining the condition of certain spells that had long been in place.

  Next morning at breakfast Lascelles said, “I have been wondering if there were ever magical duels in the past? Struggles between two magicians? – that sort of thing.”

  Mr Norrell sighed. “It is difficult to know. Ralph Stokesey seems to have fought two or three magicians by magic – one a very powerful Scottish magician, the Magician of Athodel.2 Catherine of Winchester was once driven to send a young magician to Granada by magic. He kept disturbing her with inconvenient proposals of marriage when she wanted to study and Granada was the furthest place she could think of at the time. Then there is the curious tale of the Cumbrian charcoal-burner …”3

  “And did such duels ever end in the death of one of the magicians?”

  “What?” Mr Norrell stared at him, horror-struck. “No! That is to say, I do not know. I do not think so.”

  Lascelles smiled. “Yet the magic must exist surely? If you gave your mind to it, I dare say you could think of a half a dozen spells that would do the trick. It would be like a common duel with pistols or swords. There would be no question of a prosecution afterwards. Besides, the victor’s friends and servants would be perfectly justified in helping him shroud the matter in all possible secrecy.”

  Mr Norrell was silent. Then he said, “It will not come to that.”

  Lascelles laughed. “My dear Mr Norrell! What else can it possibly come to?”

  Curiously, Lascelles had never been to Hurtfew Abbey before. Whenever, in days gone by, Drawlight had gone to stay there, Lascelles had always contrived to have a previous engagement. A sojourn at a country house in Yorkshire was Lascelles’s idea of purgatory. At best he fancied Hurtfew must be like its owner – dusty, old-fashioned and given to long, dull silences; at worst he pictured a rain-lashed farmhouse upon a dark, dreary moor. He was surprized to find that it was none of these things. There was nothing of the Gothic about it. The house was modern, elegant and comfortable and the servants were far from the uncouth farmhands of his imagination. In fact they were the same servants who waited upon Mr Norrell in Hanover-square. They were London-trained and well acquainted with all Lascelles’s preferences.

  But any magician’s house has its oddities, and Hurtfew Abbey – at first sight so commodious and elegant – seemed to have been constructed upon a plan so extremely muddle-headed, that it was quite impossible to go from one side of the house to the other without getting lost. Later that morning Lascelles was informed by Lucas that he must on no account attempt to go to the library alone, but only in the company of Mr Norrell or Childermass. It was, said Lucas, the first rule of the house.

  Naturally, Lascelles had no intention of obeying such a prohibition, delivered to him by a servant. He examined the eastern part of the house and found the usual arrangement of morning-room, dining-room, drawing-room – but no library. He concluded that the library must lie in the unexplored, western part. He set off and immediately found himself back in the room he had just left. Thinking he must have taken a wrong turn, he tried again. This time he arrived at one of the sculleries where a small, unclean, sniffling maid first wiped her nose on the back of her hand and then used that same hand to wash the cooking pots. No matter which path he chose, it returned him immediately to either morning-room or the scullery. He grew very sick of the sight of the little maid, and she did not seem exactly overjoyed to see him. But though he wasted an entire morning on this fruitless endeavour it never occurred to him to attribute his failure to any thing other than a peculiarity of Yorkshire architecture.

  For the next three days Mr Norrell kept to the library as much as he could. Whenever he saw Lascelles he was sure to hear some fresh complaint about Childermass; while Childermass kept harassing him with demands that he search for Drawlight’s letter by magic. In the end he found it easier to avoid them both.

  Nor did he divulge to either of them something he had discovered which worried him a great deal. Ever since he and Strange had parted he had been in the habit of summoning up visions to try and discover what Strange was doing. But he had never succeeded. One night, about four weeks ago, he had not been able to sleep. He had got up and performed the magic. The vision had not been very distinct, but he had seen a magician in the darkness, doing magic. He had congratulated himself on penetrating Strange’s counterspells at last; until it occurred to him that he was looking at a vision of himself in his own library. He had tried again. He had varied the spells. He named Strange in different ways. It did not matter. He was forced to conclude that English magic could no longer tell the difference between himself and Strange.

  Letters arrived from Lord Liverpool and the Ministers with angry descriptions of more magic which no one could explain. Mr Norrell wrote back, promising his earliest attention to these matters just as soon as Strange had been defeated.

  On the third evening after their arrival Mr Norrell, Lascelles and Childermass were gathered together in the drawing-room. Lascelles was eating an orange. He had a little pearl-handled fruit knife with a jagged blade, which he used to cut the peel. Childermass was laying out his cards upon a little table. He had been reading the cards for the past two hours. It was a m
easure of how far Mr Norrell was distracted by the present situation that he made not the slightest objection. Lascelles, on the other hand, was driven half-mad by those cards. He was certain that one of the subjects of all those layings-out and turnings-over was himself. In this he was perfectly correct.

  “How I detest this inactivity!” he said, abruptly. “What can Strange be waiting for, do you suppose? We do not even know for certain that he will come.”

  “He will come,” said Childermass.

  “And how do you know that?” asked Lascelles. “Because you have told him to?”

  Childermass did not respond. Something he had seen in the cards had claimed his attention. His glance flickered over them. Suddenly he rose from the table. “Mr Lascelles! You have a message for me!”

  “I?” said Lascelles, in surprize.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that someone has recently given you a message for me. The cards say so. I would be grateful if you would deliver it to me.”

  Lascelles gave a snort of contempt. “I am not any body’s messenger – yours least of all!”

  Childermass ignored this. “Who is the message from?” he asked.

  Lascelles said nothing. He went back to his knife and his orange.

  “Very well,” said Childermass and he sat down and laid out the cards again.

  Mr Norrell, in a state of great apprehension, watched them. His hand fluttered up towards the bell-cord, but after a moment’s consideration he changed his mind and went in search of a servant himself. Lucas was in the dining-room, laying the table. Mr Norrell told him what was going on. “Can not something be done to separate them?” he asked. “They might be cooler in a while. Has no message come for Mr Lascelles? Is there nothing that needs Childermass’s attention? Can you not invent something? What about dinner? Can it be ready?”

  Lucas shook his head. “There is no message. Mr Childermass will do as he pleases – he always does. And you ordered dinner for half-past nine, sir. You know you did.”

  “I wish Mr Strange were here,” said Mr Norrell, miserably. “He would know what to say to them. He would know what to do.”

  Lucas touched his master’s arm as if trying to rouse him. “Mr Norrell? We are trying to prevent Mr Strange from coming here – if you remember, sir?”

  Mr Norrell looked at him in some irritation. “Yes, yes! I know that! But still.”

  Mr Norrell and Lucas returned to the drawing-room together. Childermass was turning over his last card. Lascelles was staring with great determination at a newspaper.

  “What do the cards say?” said Mr Norrell to Childermass.

  Mr Norrell asked the question, but Childermass spoke his answer to Lascelles. “They say that you are a liar and a thief. They say that there is more than a message. You have been given something – an object – something of great value. It is meant for me and yet you retain it.”

  A short silence.

  Lascelles said coldly, “Mr Norrell, how long do you intend that I shall be insulted in this manner?”

  “I ask you for the last time, Mr Lascelles,” said Childermass, “will you give me what is mine?”

  “How dare you address a gentleman in such a fashion?” asked Lascelles.

  “And is it the act of a gentleman to steal from me?” replied Childermass.

  Lascelles turned a dead white. “Apologize!” he hissed. “Apologize to me or I swear, you whoreson, you dregs of every Yorkshire gutter, I will teach you better manners.”

  Childermass shrugged. “Better a whoreson than a thief!”

  With a cry of rage, Lascelles seized him and thrust him against the wall so hard that Childermass’s feet actually left the ground. He shook Childermass and the paintings on the wall rattled in their frames.

  Curiously, Childermass seemed defenceless against Lascelles. His arms had somehow got pinned against Lascelles’s body and though he struggled hard, he seemed unable to free them. It was over in a moment. Childermass nodded briefly at Lascelles as if to say Lascelles had won.

  But Lascelles did not release him. Instead, he leant hard against him, keeping him trapped against the wall. Then he reached down and picked up the pearl-handled knife with the jagged edge. He drew the blade slowly across Childermass’s face, cutting him from eye to mouth.

  Lucas let out a cry, but Childermass said nothing at all. He somehow freed his left hand and raised it. It was closed in a tight fist. They remained like that for a moment – a tableau – then Childermass dropped his hand.

  Lascelles smiled broadly. He let Childermass go and turned to Mr Norrell. In a calm, quiet voice he addressed him thus: “I will not suffer any excuses to be made for this person. I have been insulted. If this person were of a rank to be noticed by me, I should certainly call him out. He knows it. His inferior condition protects him. If I am to remain another moment in this house, if I am to continue as your friend and adviser, then this person must leave your service this minute! After tonight I can never hear his name spoken by you or any of your servants again on pain of dismissal. I hope, sir, that this is sufficiently plain?”

  Lucas took the opportunity to hand Childermass a surreptitious napkin.

  “Well, sir,” said Childermass to Mr Norrell, wiping the blood from his face, “which of us is it to be?”

  A long moment of silence. Then in a hoarse voice quite unlike his usual tone, Mr Norrell said, “You must go.”

  “Goodbye, Mr Norrell,” said Childermass, bowing. “You have made the wrong choice, sir – as usual!” He gathered up his cards and left.

  He went up to his bare little attic bedroom and lit the candle which stood upon a table. There was a cracked, cheap looking-glass hanging on the wall. He examined his face. The cut was ugly. His neckcloth and the right shoulder of his shirt were soaked in blood. He washed the wound as best he could. Then he washed and dried his hands.

  Carefully he took something out of his coat-pocket. It was a box, the colour of heartache, about the size of a snuff box but a little longer. He whispered to himself, “A man cannot help his training.”4

  He opened it. For a moment or two he looked thoughtful; he scratched his head and then cursed because he had very nearly dropt blood into it. He snapped it shut and put it in his pocket.

  It did not take long to collect his possessions. There was a mahogany case containing a pair of pistols, a small purse of money, a razor, a comb, a toothbrush, a bit of soap, some clothes (all as ancient as the ones he was wearing) and a small parcel of books, including a Bible, A Child’s History of the Raven King by Lord Portishead and a copy of Paris Ormskirk’s Revelations of Thirty-Six Other Worlds. Mr Norrell had paid Childermass well for years, but what he did with his money no one knew. As Davey and Lucas had often remarked to each other, he certainly did not spend it.

  Childermass packed everything into a battered valise. There was a dish of apples upon the table. He wrapped them in a cloth and added them to the valise. Then, holding the napkin to his face, he went downstairs. He was in the stable-yard before he remembered that his pen, ink and memorandum book were still in the drawing-room. He had put them on a side-table while he read his cards. “Well, it is too late to go back,” he thought. “I shall have to buy others.”

  There was a party waiting for him in the stables: Davey, Lucas, the grooms and several of the manservants who had managed to slip away from the house. “What are you all doing here?” he asked, in surprize. “Holding a prayer meeting?”

  The men glanced at each other.

  “We saddled Brewer for you, Mr Childermass,” said Davey. Brewer was Childermass’s horse, a big, unhandsome stallion.

  “Thank you, Davey.”

  “Why did you let him do it, sir?” asked Lucas. “Why did you let him cut you?”

  “Don’t fret about it, lad. It’s of no consequence.”

  “I brought bandages. Let me bind up your face.”

  “Lucas, I need my wits tonight and I cannot think if
I am all over bandages.”

  “But it will leave a terrible scar if the lips of the wound are not closed.”

  “Let it. No one will complain if I am less beautiful than I was. Just give me another clout5 to staunch the flow. This one is soaked through. Now, lads, when Strange comes …” He sighed. “I do not know what to tell you. I have no advice. But if you get a chance to help them, then do it.”

  “What?” asked one manservant. “Help Mr Norrell and Mr Lascelles?”

  “No, you blockhead! Help Mr Norrell and Mr Strange. Lucas, tell Lucy, Hannah and Dido that I said goodbye and wished them well – and good, obedient husbands when they want them.” (These were three housemaids who were particular favourites of Childermass.)

  Davey grinned. “And you yourself willing to do the job, sir?” he said.

  Childermass laughed – then flinched at the pain in his face. “Well, for Hannah perhaps,” he said. “Goodbye, lads.”

  He shook hands with all of them and was a little taken aback when Davey, who for all his strength and size was as sentimental as a schoolgirl, insisted on embracing him and actually shed tears. Lucas gave him a bottle of Mr Norrell’s best claret as a parting gift.

  Childermass led Brewer out of the stables. The moon had risen. He had no difficulty in following the sweep out of the pleasure-grounds into the park. He was just crossing over the bridge when the sudden realization came upon him that there was magic going on. It was as if a thousand trumpets had sounded in his ear or a dazzling light had shone out of the darkness. The world was entirely different from what it had been a moment before, but what that difference was he could not at first make out. He looked round.

  Directly above the park and house there was a patch of night-sky shoved in where it did not belong. The constellations were broken. New stars hung there – stars that Childermass had never seen before. They were, presumably, the stars of Strange’s Eternal Darkness.

  He took one last look at Hurtfew Abbey and galloped away.

  All the clocks began to strike at the same moment. This in itself was extraordinary enough. For fifteen years Lucas had been trying to persuade the clocks of Hurtfew to tell the hour together and they had never done so until this moment. But what o’clock it might be was hard to say. The clocks struck on and on, long past twelve, telling the time of a strange, new era.