Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  Mr Norrell looked more alarmed than ever. “Oh! But I must tell you that I no longer regard myself as your superior. My reading has been a great deal more extensive than yours, it is true, and I will give you what help I can, but I can offer you no security that I will be any more successful than you.”

  Strange frowned. “What? What are you talking about? I do not mean you! I mean John Uskglass. I want your help in summoning John Uskglass.”

  Mr Norrell breathed hard. The very air seemed to quiver as if a deep note had been sounded. He was aware, to an almost painful degree, of the darkness surrounding them, of the new stars above them and of the silence of the stopt clocks. It was one Great Black Moment going on for ever, pressing down upon him, suffocating him. And in that Moment it cost no effort to believe that John Uskglass was near – a mere spell away; the deep shadows in the far corners of the room were the folds of his robe; the smoke from the guttering candles was the raven mantling of his helm.

  Strange, however, seemed oppressed by no such immortal fears. He leant forward a little, with an eager half-smile. “Come, Mr Norrell,” he whispered. “It is very dull working for Lord Liverpool. You must feel it so? Let other magicians cast protection spells over cliffs and beaches. There will be plenty of them to do it soon! Let you and me do something extraordinary!”

  Another silence.

  “You are afraid,” said Strange, drawing back displeased.

  “Afraid!” burst out Norrell. “Of course I am afraid! It would be madness – absolute madness – to be any thing else! But that is not my objection. It will not work. Whatever you hope to gain by it, it will not work. Even if we succeeded in bringing him forth – which we might very well do, you and I together – he will not help you in the way you imagine. Kings do not satisfy idle curiosity – this King least of all.”

  “You call it idle curiosity …?” began Strange.

  “No, no!” said Norrell, interrupting hastily. “I do not. I merely represent to you how it will appear to him. What will he care about two lost women? You are thinking of John Uskglass as if he were an ordinary man. I mean a man like you or me. He was brought up and educated in Faerie. The ways of the brugh were natural to him – and most brughs contained captive Christians – he was one himself. It will not seem so extraordinary to him. He will not understand.”

  “Then I will explain it to him. Mr Norrell, I have changed England to save my wife. I have changed the world. I shall not flinch from summoning up one man; let him be as tremendous as he may. Come, sir! There is very little sense in arguing about it. The first thing is to bring him here. How do we begin?”

  Mr Norrell sighed. “It is not like summoning any one else. There are difficulties peculiar to any magic involving John Uskglass.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for one thing we do not know what to call him. Spells of summoning require the magician to be most particular about names. None of the names by which we call John Uskglass were really his own. He was, as the histories tell, stolen away into Faerie, before he could be christened – and so he became the nameless child in the brugh. ‘The nameless slave’ was one of the ways in which he referred to himself. Of course the fairies gave him a name after their own fashion, but he cast that off when he returned to England. As for all his titles – the Raven King, the Black King, the King of the North – these are what other people called him, not what he called himself.”

  “Yes, yes!” declared Strange, impatiently. “I know all that! But surely John Uskglass was his true name?”

  “Oh! By no means. That was the name of a young Norman aristocrat who died, I believe, in the summer of 1097. The King – our John Uskglass – claimed that man as his father, but many people have disputed whether they were really related at all. I do not suppose that this muddle of names and titles is accidental. The King knew that he would always draw the eyes of other magicians to him and so he protected himself from the nuisance of their magic by deliberately confusing their spells.”

  “So what ought I to do?” Strange snapped his fingers. “Advise me!”

  Mr Norrell blinked his small eyes. He was unaccustomed to think so rapidly. “If we use an ordinary English spell of summoning – and I strongly advise that we do, as they cannot be bettered – then we can make the elements of the spell do the work of identification for us. We will need an envoy, a path and a handsel.1 If we chuse tools that already know the King, and know him well, then it will not matter that we cannot name him properly, they will find him, bring him and bind him, without our help! Do you see?”

  In spite of all his terror, he was growing more animated at the prospect of magic – new magic! – to be performed with Mr Strange.

  “No,” said Strange. “I do not see at all.”

  “This house is built upon the King’s land, with stones from the King’s abbey. A river runs by it – not more than two hundred yards from this room; that river has often borne the King in his royal barge upon its waters. In my kitchen-garden are a pear-tree and an apple-tree – the direct descendants of some pips spat out by the King when he sat one summer’s evening in the Abbot’s garden. Let the old abbey stones be our envoy; let the river be our path; let next year’s apples and pears from those trees be our handsel. Then we may name him simply ‘The King’. These stones, this river, those trees know none other!”

  “Good,” said Strange. “And what spell do you recommend? Are there any in Belasis?”

  “Yes, three.”

  “Are they worth trying?”

  “No, not really.” Mr Norrell opened a drawer and drew out a piece of paper. “This is the best I know. I am not in the habit of using summoning spells – but if I were, this is the one I would use.” He passed it to Strange.

  It was covered with Mr Norrell’s small, meticulous handwriting. At the top was written, “Mr Strange’s spell of summoning.”

  “It is the one you used to summon Maria Absalom,”2 explained Norrell. “I have made some amendments. I have omitted the florilegium which you copied word for word from Ormskirk. I have, as you know, no opinion of florilegia in general and this one seems particularly nonsensical. I have added an epitome of preservation and deliverance, and a skimmer of supplication – though I doubt that either will help us much in this case.”3

  “It is as much your work as mine now,” observed Strange. There was no trace of rivalry or resentment in his voice.

  “No, no,” said Norrell. “All the fabric of it is yours. I have merely neatened the edges.”

  “Good! Then we are ready, are we not?”

  “There is one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are certain precautions that are necessary to secure Mrs Strange’s safety,” explained Mr Norrell.

  Strange cast a glance at him as if he thought it a little late in the day for Mr Norrell to be thinking of Arabella’s safety, but Mr Norrell had hurried to a bookshelf and was busy delving in a large volume and did not notice.

  “The spell is written in Chaston’s Liber Novus. Ah, yes! Here it is! We must build a magical road and make a door so that Mrs Strange may come safely out of Faerie. Otherwise she might be trapped there for ever. It might take us centuries to find her.”

  “Oh, that!” said Strange. “I have done it already. And appointed a doorkeeper to meet her when she comes out. All is in readiness.”

  He took the merest stub of a candle, placed it in a candlestick and lit it.4 Then he began to recite the spell. He named the abbey-stones as the envoy sent to seek the King. He named the river as the path the King was to come. He named next year’s apples and pears from Mr Norrell’s trees as the handsel the King was to receive. He named the moment of the flame’s dying as the time when the King was to appear.

  The candle guttered and went out …

  … and in that moment …

  … in that moment the room was full of ravens. Black wings filled the air like great hands gesturing, filled Strange’s vision like a tumult of black flames.
He was struck at from every side by wings and claws. The cawing and the croaking were deafening. Ravens battered walls, battered windows, battered Strange himself. He covered his head with his hands and fell to the floor. The din and strife of wings continued a little while longer.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone and the room was silent.

  The candles had all been extinguished. Strange rolled on to his back, but for some moments he could do nothing but stare into the Darkness. “Mr Norrell?” he said at last.

  No one answered.

  In the pitch-black darkness he got to his feet. He succeeded in finding one of the library desks and felt about until his hand met with an upturned candle. He took his tinderbox from his pocket and lit it.

  Raising it above his head, he saw that the room was in the last extremes of chaos and disorder. Not a book remained upon a shelf. Tables and library steps had been overturned. Several fine chairs had been reduced to firewood. A thick drift of raven feathers covered everything, as if a black snow had fallen.

  Norrell was half-lying, half-sitting on the floor, his back against a desk. His eyes were open, but blank-looking. Strange passed the candle before his face. “Mr Norrell?” he said again.

  In a dazed whisper, Norrell said, “I believe we may assume that we have his attention.”

  “I believe you are right, sir. Do you know what happened?”

  Still in a whisper Norrell said, “The books all turned into ravens. I had my eye upon Hugh Pontifex’s The Fountain of the Heart and I saw it change. He used it often, you know – that chaos of black birds. I have been reading about it since I was a boy. That I should live to see it, Mr Strange! That I should live to see it! It has a name in the Sidhe language, the language of his childhood, but the name is lost.”5 He suddenly seized Strange’s hand. “Are the books safe?”

  Strange picked up one from the floor. He shook the raven feathers off it and glanced at the title: Seven Doors and Forty-two Keys by Piers Russinol. He opened it and began to read at random. “… and there you will find a strange country like a chessboard, where alternates barren rock with fruitful orchards, wastes of thorns with fields of bearded corn, water meadows with deserts. And in this country, the god of magicians, Thrice-Great Hermes, has set a guard upon every gate and every bridge: in one place a ram, in another place serpent … Does that sound right?” he asked doubtfully.

  Mr Norrell nodded. He took out his pocket handkerchief and dabbed the blood from his face with it.

  The two magicians sat upon the floor amid the books and feathers, and for a little while they said nothing at all. The world had shrunk to the breadth of a candle’s light.

  Finally, Strange said, “How near to us must he be in order to do magic like that?”

  “John Uskglass? For aught I know he can do magic like that from a hundred worlds away – from the heart of Hell.”

  “Still it is worth trying to find out, is it not?”

  “Is it?” asked Norrell.

  “Well, for example, if we found he was close by, we could …” Strange considered a moment. “We could go to him.”

  “Very well,” sighed Norrell. He did not sound or look very hopeful.

  The first – and indeed only – requirement for spells of location is a silver dish of water. At Hurtfew Abbey Mr Norrell’s dish had stood upon a little table in the corner of the room, but the table had been destroyed by the violence of the ravens and the dish was nowhere to be seen. They searched for a while and eventually found it in the fireplace, upside-down beneath a mess of raven feathers and damp, torn pages from books.

  “We need water,” said Norrell. “I always made Lucas get it from the river. Water that has travelled rapidly is best for location magic – and Hurtfew’s river is quick-flowing even in summer. I will fetch it.”

  But Mr Norrell was not much in the habit of doing any thing for himself and it was a little while before he was out of the house. He stood on the lawn and stared up at stars he had never seen before. He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically.

  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 o
f 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, Scotland, 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!”

  67

  The hawthorn tree

  February 1817

  Childermass 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.