Taking out his pocket-knife, he cut the body down. Then he pulled off Vinculus’s breeches and boots, and surveyed the body: the corpse of a forked animal on a barren, winter moor.
The strange marks covered every inch of skin – the only exceptions were his face, hands, private parts and the soles of his feet. He looked like a blue man wearing white gloves and a white mask. The more Childermass looked at him, the more he felt that the marks meant something. “This is the King’s Letters,” he said at last. “This is Robert Findhelm’s book.”
Just then it started to snow with a flurry of sharp, icy flakes. The wind blew harder.
Childermass thought of Strange and Norrell twenty miles away and he laughed out loud. What did it matter who read the books at Hurtfew? The most precious book of all lay naked and dead in the snow and the wind.
“So,” he said, “it has fallen to me, has it? ‘The greatest glory and the greatest burden given to any man in this Age.’ ”
At present the burden was more obvious than the glory. The book was in a most inconvenient form. He had no idea how long Vinculus had been dead or how soon he might begin to rot. What to do? He could take his chances and throw the body over his horse. But a freshly hanged corpse would be difficult to explain to any one he met on the road. He could hide the body and go and fetch a horse and cart. How long would it take? And supposing that in the meantime someone found the body and took it. There were doctors in York who would pay money for corpses and no questions asked.
“I could cast a spell of concealment,” he thought.
A spell of concealment would certainly hide it from human eyes, but there were dogs, foxes and crows to consider. They could not be deceived by any magic Childermass knew. The book had been eaten once already. He had no wish to risk it happening a second time.
The obvious thing was to make a copy, but his memorandum book, pen and ink were lying upon the table in the drawing-room in the Darkness of Hurtfew Abbey. So what then? He could scratch a copy on to the frozen earth with a stick – but that was no better than what he had already. If only there had been some trees, he might have been able to strip the bark and burn some wood and write upon the bark with the ashes. But there was only this one twisted hawthorn.
He looked at his pocket-knife. Perhaps he ought to copy the book on to his own body? There were several things in favour of this plan. First, who was to say that the positioning upon Vinculus’s body did not carry some meaning with it? The closer to the head, the more important the text? Any thing was possible. Second, it would make the book both secret and secure. He would not have to worry about any one stealing it. Whether he intended to shew it to Strange or Norrell, he had not yet decided.
But the writing upon Vinculus’s body was both dense and intricate. Even if he were able to force his knife to mimic all those delicate dots, circles and flourishes exactly – which he doubted – he would have to cut quite deep to make the marks permanent.
He took off his greatcoat and his ordinary coat. He undid the wrist of his shirt and rolled up his sleeve. As an experiment, he cut one of the symbols on the inside of Vinculus’s arm into the same place upon his own arm. The result was not promising. There was so much blood that it was difficult to see what he was doing and the pain made him feel faint.
“I can afford to lose some blood in this cause, but there is so much writing – it would surely kill me. Besides, how in the world could I copy what is written on his back? I will put him over my horse and if any one challenges me – well, I will fire at them if needs be. That is a plan. It is not a very good plan, but it is a plan.” He put on his coat and his greatcoat again.
Brewer had wandered off a little way and was cropping at some dry grasses, which the wind had exposed. Childermass walked over to him. Out of his valise he took a length of strong rope and the box containing his pistols. He rammed a ball into each pistol and primed them with powder.
He turned back to make sure that all was right with the body. Someone – a man – was bending over it. He shoved the pistols into the pockets of his greatcoat and began to run, calling out.
The man wore black boots and a black travelling coat. He was half-stooping, half-kneeling on the snowy ground beside Vinculus. For a brief moment Childermass thought it was Strange – but this man was not quite so tall and was somewhat slighter in figure. His dark clothes were clearly expensive and looked fashionable. Yet his straight, dark hair was longer than any fashionable gentleman would have worn it; it gave him something of the look of a Methodist preacher or a Romantic poet. “I know him,” thought Childermass. “He is a magician. I know him well. Why can I not think what his name is?”
Out loud he said, “The body is mine, sir! Leave it be!”
The man looked up. “Yours, John Childermass?” he said with a mildly ironic air, “I thought it was mine.”
It was a curious thing but despite his clothes and his air of cool authority, his speech sounded uncouth – even to Childermass’s ears. His accent was northern – of that there was no doubt – but Childermass did not recognize it. It might have been Northumbrian, but it was tinged with something else – the speech of the cold countries that lie over the North Sea and – which seemed more extraordinary still – there was more than a hint of French in his pronunciation.
“Well, you are mistaken.” Childermass raised his pistols. “I will fire upon you, if I have to, sir. But I would much rather not. Leave the body to me and go on your way.”
The man said nothing. He regarded Childermass a moment longer and then, as if he had become bored with him, turned back to his examination of the body.
Childermass looked round for a horse or a carriage – some indication of how the man had got here. There was nothing. In all the wide moor there were only the two men, the horse, the corpse and the hawthorn tree.
“Yet there must be a carriage somewhere,” he thought. “There is not so much as a spot of mud on his coat and none on his boots. He looks as if he has just come fresh from his valet. Where are his servants?”
This was a discomfiting thought. Childermass doubted he would have much difficulty in overpowering this pale, thin, poetical-looking person, but a coachman and two or three stout footmen would be another matter entirely.
“Does the land hereabouts belong to you, sir?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And where is your horse? Where is your carriage? Where are your servants?”
“I have no horse, John Childermass. I have no carriage. And only one of my servants is here.”
“Where?”
Without troubling to look up, the man raised his arm and pointed a thin, pale finger.
Childermass looked behind him in confusion. There was no one there. Just the wind blowing across the snowy tussocks. What did he mean? Was it the wind or the snow? He had heard of mediaeval magicians who claimed these and other natural forces as servants. Then comprehension dawned on him. “What? No, sir, you are mistaken! I am not your servant!”
“You boasted of it, not three days ago,” said the man.
There was only one person who had any claim to be Childermass’s master. Was this, in some mysterious fashion, Norrell? An aspect of Norrell? In the past, magicians had sometimes appeared in different forms according to the qualities which made up their character. Childermass tried to think what part of Gilbert Norrell’s character might suddenly manifest as a pale, handsome man with a peculiar accent and an air of great authority. He reflected that strange things had happened recently, but nothing as queer as that. “Sir!” he cried. “I have warned you! Let the body be!”
The man bent closer to Vinculus’s corpse. He plucked something out of his own mouth – a tiny pearl of light faintly tinged with rose and silver. He placed it in Vinculus’s mouth. The corpse shivered. It was not like the shudder of a sick man, nor yet like the shiver of a healthy one; it was like the shiver of a bare birch wood as spring breathes upon it.
“Move away from the body, sir!” cried Childermass.
“I will not ask you again!”
The man did not even trouble to look up. He passed the tip of his finger over the body as if he were writing upon it.
Childermass aimed the right-hand pistol somewhat wide of the man’s left shoulder, intending to frighten him away. The pistol fired perfectly; a cloud of smoke and a smell of gunpowder rose from the pan; sparks and more smoke disgorged from the barrel.
But the lead refused to fly. It hung in the air as if in a dream. It twisted, swelled and changed shape. Suddenly it put forth wings, turned into a lapwing and flew away. In the same instant Childermass’s mind grew as quiet and fixed as a stone.
The man moved his finger over Vinculus and all the patterns and symbols flowed and swirled as if they had been written upon water. He did this for a while and when he was satisfied, he stopped and stood up.
“You are wrong,” he said to Childermass. “He is not dead.” He came and stood directly before Childermass. With as little ceremony as a parent who cleans something from a child’s face, the man licked his finger and daubed a sort of symbol on each of Childermass’s eye-lids, on his lips and over his heart. Then he gave Childermass’s left hand a knock, so that the pistol fell to the ground. He drew another symbol on Childermass’s palm. He turned and seemed about to depart, but glancing back and apparently as an afterthought, he made a final gesture over the cut in Childermass’s face.
The wind shook the falling snow and made it spin and twist about. Brewer made a sound as if something had disturbed him. Briefly, the snow and the shadows seemed to form a picture of a thin, dark man in a greatcoat and boots. The next moment the illusion was gone.
* * *
Childermass blinked. “Where am I wandering to?” he asked himself irritably. “And what am I doing talking to myself? This is no time to be wool-gathering!” There was a smell of gunpowder. One of his pistols lay in the snow. When he picked it up it was still warm as if he had recently discharged it. That was odd, but he had no time to be properly surprized because a sound made him look up.
Vinculus was getting up off the ground. He did it clumsily, in jerks, like something new-born that has not yet discovered what its limbs are for. He stood for a moment, his body swaying and his head twitching from side to side. Then he opened his mouth and screamed at Childermass. But the sound that came out of his mouth was no sound at all; it was the emptied skin of sound without flesh or bones.
It was, without a doubt, the strangest thing Childermass had ever seen: a naked blue man with blood-engorged eyes, silently screaming in the middle of a snow-covered moor. It was such a very extraordinary situation that for some moments he was at a loss to know what to do. He wondered if he ought to try the spell called Gilles de Marston’s Restoration of Flown Tranquillity, but on further consideration, he thought of something better. He took out the claret that Lucas had given him and shewed it to Vinculus. Vinculus grew calmer and fixed his gaze upon it.
A quarter of an hour later they were seated together on a tussock beneath the hawthorn, breakfasting on the claret and a handful of apples. Vinculus had put on his shirt and breeches and was wrapped in a blanket that belonged to Brewer. He had recovered from his hanging with surprizing rapidity. His eyes were still blood-shot, but they were less alarming to look at than before. His speech was hoarse and liable to be interrupted at any moment by fits of violent coughing, but it was comprehensible.
“Someone tried to hang you,” Childermass told him. “I do not know who or why. Luckily I found you in time and cut you down.” As he said this, he felt a faint question disturb his thoughts. In his mind’s eye he saw Vinculus, dead on the ground, and a thin, white hand, pointing. Who had that been? The memory slipped away from him. “So tell me,” he continued, “how does a man become a book? I know that your father was given the book by Robert Findhelm and that he was supposed to take the book to a man in the Derbyshire hills.”
“The last man in England who could read the King’s letters,” croaked Vinculus.
“But your father did not deliver the book. Instead he ate it in the drinking contest in Sheffield.”
Vinculus took another drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Four years later I was born and the King’s Letters were written on my infant body. When I was seventeen, I went to look for the man in the Derbyshire hills – he lived just long enough for me to find him out. That was a night indeed! A starlit, summer night, when the King’s Book and the last Reader of the King’s Letters met and drank wine together! We sat upon the brow of the hill at Bretton, looking out over England, and he read England’s destiny from me.”
“And that was the prophecy which you told to Strange and Norrell?”
Vinculus, who had been seized with a fit of coughing, nodded. When he was able to speak again, he added, “And also to the nameless slave.”
“Who?” said Childermass with a frown. “Who is that?”
“A man,” replied Vinculus. “It has been part of my task to bear his story. He began as a slave. Will soon be a king. His true name was denied him at his birth.”
Childermass pondered this description for a moment or two. “You mean John Uskglass?” he said.
Vinculus made a noise of exasperation. “If I meant John Uskglass, I would say so! No, no. He is not a magician at all. He is a man like any other.” He thought for a moment. “But black,” he added.
“I have never heard of him,” said Childermass.
Vinculus looked at him with amusement. “Of course not. You have lived your life in the Mayfair magician’s pocket. You only know what he knows.”
“So?” said Childermass, stung. “That is not so very trifling, is it? Norrell is a clever man – and Strange another. They have their faults, as other men do, but their achievements are still remarkable. Make no mistake; I am John Uskglass’s man. Or would be, if he were here. But you must admit that the restoration of English magic is their work, not his.”
“Their work!” scoffed Vinculus. “Theirs? Do you still not understand? They are the spell John Uskglass is doing. That is all they have ever been. And he is doing it now!”
68
“Yes.”
February 1817
In the silver dish of water the speck of light flickered and disappeared.
“What!” cried Strange. “What has happened? Quickly, Mr Norrell!”
Norrell tapped the water’s surface, redrew the lines of light and whispered a few words, but the water in the dish remained dark and still. “He is gone,” he said.
Strange closed his eyes.
“It is very odd,” continued Norrell, in a tone of wonder. “What do you suppose he was doing in Yorkshire?”
“Oh!” cried Strange. “I dare say he came here on purpose to make me mad!” With a cry of mingled rage and self-pity he demanded, “Why will he not attend to me? After everything I have done, why does he not care enough to look at me? To speak to me?”
“He is an old magician and an old king,” answered Norrell briefly. “Two things that are not easily impressed.”
“All magicians long to astonish their masters. I have certainly astonished you. I wanted to do the same to him.”
“But your real purpose is to free Mrs Strange from the enchantment,” Norrell reminded him.
“Yes, yes. That is right,” said Strange, irritably. “Of course it is. Only …” He did not finish his thought.
There was a silence and then Norrell, who had been looking thoughtful, said, “You mentioned magicians always wishing to impress their masters. I am reminded of something which happened in 1156 …”
Strange sighed.
“… In that year John Uskglass suffered some strange malady – as he did from time to time. When he recovered, a celebration was held at his house in Newcastle. Kings and queens brought presents of immense value and splendour – gold, rubies, ivory, rare spices. Magicians brought magical things – clouds of revelation, singing trees, keys to mystical doors and so on – each one trying to outdo the
other. The King thanked them all in the same grave manner. Last of all came the magician, Thomas Godbless. His hands were empty. He had no gift. He lifted his head and said, ‘Lord, I bring you the trees and hills. I bring you the wind and the rain.’ The kings and queens, the great lords and ladies and the other magicians were amazed at his impudence. It appeared to them as if he had done nothing at all. But for the first time since he had been ill, the King smiled.”
Strange considered this. “Well,” he said. “I am afraid I am with the kings and queens. I can make nothing of it. Where did you get this tale?”
“It is in Belasis’s Instructions. In my youth I studied the Instructions with a passionate devotion and I found this passage particularly intriguing. I concluded that Godbless had somehow persuaded the trees and the hills and so on to greet John Uskglass in some mystical fashion, to bow down before him as it were. I was pleased to have understood something that Belasis had not, but I thought no more about it – I had no use for such magic. Years later I discovered a spell in Lanchester’s The Language of Birds. Lanchester got it from an older book, now lost. He admitted that he did not know what it was for, but I believe it is the spell Godbless used – or one very like it. If you are serious in your intention of talking to John Uskglass, suppose we cast it now? Suppose we ask England to greet him?”
“What will that achieve?” asked Strange.
“Achieve? Nothing! At least, nothing directly. But it will remind John Uskglass of the bonds between him and England. And it will shew a sort of respectfulness on our part, which is surely more in keeping with the behaviour a king expects from his subjects.”
Strange shrugged. “Well,” he said. “I have nothing better to suggest. Where is your copy of The Language of Birds?”
He looked about the room. Every book lay where it had fallen the moment it had ceased to be a raven. “How many books are there?” he asked.
“Four or five thousand,” said Norrell.
The magicians took a candle each and began to search.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Page 90