The gentleman with the thistle-down hair strode rapidly along the walled lane which led to the village of Starecross. Stephen stumbled after him, on his way from one death to another.
England seemed to him to be nothing but horrors and misery now. The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams. A bunch of dry leaves hung from a branch and rattled in the wind – that was Vinculus upon the hawthorn tree. The corpse of a rabbit ripped apart by a fox lay upon the path – that was Lady Pole, soon to be killed by the gentleman.
Death upon death, horror upon horror; and there was nothing Stephen could do to prevent any of it.
At Starecross Hall Lady Pole was seated at a desk in her sitting-room, writing furiously. The desk was scattered with sheets of paper, all covered with handwriting.
There was a knock and Mr Segundus entered the room. “I beg your pardon!” he said. “Might I inquire? Do you write to Sir Walter?”
She shook her head. “These letters are to Lord Liverpool and the editor of The Times!”
“Indeed?” said Mr Segundus. “Well, I have, in fact, just finished a letter of my own – to Sir Walter – but nothing, I am sure, will delight him so much as a line or two in your ladyship’s own hand, assuring him that you are well and disenchanted.”
“But your own letter will do that. I am sorry, Mr Segundus, but while my dear Mrs Strange and poor Stephen remain in the power of that wicked spirit, I can spare no thought for any thing else! You must send these letters off straight away! And when they are done I shall write to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prince Regent!”
“You do not think perhaps that Sir Walter is the proper person to apply to such exalted gentlemen? Surely …?”
“No, indeed!” she cried, all indignation. “I have no notion of asking people to perform services for me which I can do perfectly well for myself. I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness! Besides, Sir Walter will not be able to explain half so well as me the true hideousness of Mr Norrell’s crimes!”
Just then another person entered the room – Mr Segundus’s manservant, Charles, who came to say that something very odd was happening in the village. The tall black man – the person who had originally brought her ladyship to Starecross – had appeared with a silver diadem upon his head, and with him was a gentleman with thistle-down hair, wearing a bright green coat.
“Stephen! Stephen and the enchanter!” cried Lady Pole. “Quickly, Mr Segundus! Summon up all your powers! We depend upon you to defeat him! You must free Stephen as you freed me!”
“Defeat a fairy!” exclaimed Mr Segundus in horror. “Oh, but no! I could not. It would take a far greater magician …”
“Nonsense!” she cried, with shining eyes. “Remember what Childermass told you. Your years of study have prepared you! You have simply to try!”
“But I do not know …” he began, helplessly.
But it did not much matter what he knew. The moment she finished speaking she ran from the room – and, since he considered himself bound to protect her, he was obliged to run after her.
At Hurtfew the two magicians had found The Language of Birds – it lay open on the table at the page where the fairy spell was printed. But the problem of finding a name for John Uskglass remained. Norrell sat crouched over the silver dish of water doing location spells. They had already run through all the titles and names they could think of, and the location spell did not recognize a single one. The water in the silver dish remained dark and featureless.
“What of his fairy name?” said Strange.
“That is lost,” replied Norrell.
“Did we try the King of the North yet?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Strange thought for a moment and then said, “What was that curious appellation you mentioned before? Something you said he called himself? The nameless something?”
“The nameless slave?”
“Yes. Try that.”
Norrell looked very doubtful. But he cast the spell for the nameless slave. Instantly a speck of bluish light appeared. He proceeded and the nameless slave proved to be in Yorkshire – in very much the same place where John Uskglass had appeared before.
“There!” exclaimed Strange, triumphantly. “All our anxiety was quite needless. He is still here.”
“But I do not think that is the same person,” interrupted Norrell. “It looks different somehow.”
“Mr Norrell, do not be fanciful, I beg you! Who else could it be? How many nameless slaves can there possibly be in Yorkshire?”
This was so very reasonable a question that Mr Norrell offered no further objections.
“And now for the magic itself,” said Strange. He picked up the book and began to recite the spell. He addressed the trees of England; the hills of England; the sunlight, water, birds, earth and stones. He addressed them all, one after the other, and exhorted them to place themselves in the hands of the nameless slave.
Stephen and the gentleman came to the packhorse bridge that led into Starecross.
The village was quiet; there was hardly any one to be seen. In a doorway a girl in a print-gown and woollen shawl was tipping milk from wooden pails into cheese-vats. A man in gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat came down a lane at the side of the house; a dog trotted at his side. When the man and the dog rounded the corner, the girl and the man greeted each other smilingly and the dog barked his pleasure. It was the sort of simple, domestic scene that would ordinarily have delighted Stephen, but in his present mood he could only feel a chill; if the man had reached out and struck the girl – or strangled her – he would have felt no surprize.
The gentleman was already on the packhorse bridge. Stephen followed him and …
… and everything changed. The sun came out from behind a cloud; it shone through the winter trees; hundreds of small, bright patches of sunlight appeared. The world became a kind of puzzle or labyrinth. It was like the superstition which says that one must not walk upon lines between flag stones – or the strange magic called the Doncaster Squares which is performed upon a board like a chessboard. Suddenly everything had meaning. Stephen hardly dared take another step. If he did so – if, for example, he stepped into that shadow or that spot of light, then the world might be forever altered.
“Wait!” he thought, wildly. “I am not ready for this! I have not considered. I do not know what to do!”
But it was too late. He looked up.
The bare branches against the sky were a writing and, though he did not want to, he could read it. He saw that it was a question put to him by the trees.
“Yes,” he answered them.
Their age and their knowledge belonged to him.
Beyond the trees was a high, snow-covered ridge, like a line drawn across the sky. Its shadow was blue upon the snow before it. It embodied all kinds of cold and hardness. It hailed Stephen as a King it had long missed. At a word from Stephen it would tumble down and crush his enemies. It asked Stephen a question.
“Yes,” he told it.
Its scorn and strength were his for the taking.
The black beck beneath the packhorse bridge sang its question to him.
“Yes,” he said.
The earth said …
“Yes,” he said.
The rooks and magpies and redwings and chaffinches said …
“Yes,” he said.
The stones said …
“Yes,” said Stephen. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Now all of England lay cupped in his black palm. All Englishmen were at his mercy. Now every insult could be revenged. Now every injury to his poor mother could be paid back a thousandfold. All of England could be laid waste in a moment. He could bring houses crashing down upon the occupants’ heads. He could command hills to fall and valleys to close their lips. He could summon up centaurs, snuff out stars, steal the moon from the sky. Now. Now. Now.
Now came Lady Pole and Mr Segundus, running down from the
Hall in the pale winter sunlight. Lady Pole looked at the gentleman with eyes ablaze with hatred. Poor Mr Segundus was all confusion and dismay.
The gentleman turned to Stephen and said something. Stephen could not hear him: the hills and the trees spoke too loud. But, “Yes,” he said.
The gentleman laughed gaily and raised his hands to cast spells on Lady Pole.
Stephen closed his eyes. He spoke a word to the stones of the packhorse bridge.
Yes, said the stones. The bridge reared up like a raging horse and cast the gentleman into the beck.
Stephen spoke a word to the beck.
Yes, said the beck. It grasped the gentleman in a grip of iron and bore him swiftly away.
Stephen was aware that Lady Pole spoke to him, that she tried to catch hold of his arm; he saw Mr Segundus’s pale, astonished face, saw him say something; but he had no time to answer them. Who knew how long the world would consent to obey him? He leapt down from the bridge and ran along the bank.
The trees seemed to greet him as he ran past; they spoke of old alliances and reminded him of times gone by. The sunlight called him King and spoke its pleasure at finding him here. He had no time to tell them he was not the person they imagined.
He came to a place where the land rose steeply upon either side of the beck – a deep dale in the moor, a place where millstones were quarried. Scattered around the sides of the dale were great, round, hewn stones, each of them half the height of a man.
The surface of the beck seethed and boiled where the gentleman was imprisoned. Stephen knelt upon a flat stone and leant over the water. “I am sorry,” he said. “You intended nothing but kindness, I know.”
The gentleman’s hair streamed out like silver snakes in the dark water. His face was a terrible sight. In his fury and hatred he began to lose his resemblance to humankind: his eyes grew further apart, there was fur upon his face and his lips rolled back from his teeth in a snarl.
A voice inside Stephen’s mind said: “If you kill me, you will never know your name!”
“I am the nameless slave,” said Stephen. “That is all I have ever been – and today I am content to be nothing more.”
He spoke a word to the millstones. They flew up in the air and flung themselves down upon the gentleman. He spoke to the boulders and rocks; they did the same. The gentleman was old beyond telling, and very strong. Long after his bones and flesh must have been crushed to pieces, Stephen could feel whatever was left of him struggling to bind itself back together by magic. So Stephen spoke to the stony shoulders of the dale and asked them to help him. Earth and rock crumbled; it heaped itself on top of the millstones and the rocks until there was a hill standing there as high as the sides of the dale.
For years Stephen had felt as if a pane of dirty, grey glass hung between him and the world; the moment that the last spark of the gentleman’s life was extinguished, the pane shattered. Stephen stood a moment, gasping for breath.
But his allies and servants were growing doubtful. There was a question in the minds of the hills and the trees. They began to know that he was not the person they had taken him for – that all this was borrowed glory.
One by one he felt them withdraw. As the last one left him, he fell, empty and insensible, to the ground.
In Padua the Greysteels had already breakfasted and were gathered together in the little sitting-room on the first floor. They were not in the best of spirits this morning. There had been a disagreement. Dr Greysteel had taken to smoking a pipe indoors – a thing to which Flora and Aunt Greysteel were very much opposed. Aunt Greysteel had tried to argue him out of it, but Dr Greysteel had proved stubborn. Pipe-smoking was a pastime he was particularly fond of and he felt that he ought to be permitted an indulgence or two, to make up for their never going anywhere any more. Aunt Greysteel said that he ought to smoke his pipe outside. Dr Greysteel replied that he could not because it was raining. It was difficult to smoke a pipe in the rain – the rain made the tobacco wet.
So he was smoking the pipe and Aunt Greysteel was coughing; and Flora, who was disposed to blame herself, glanced at each from time to time with an unhappy expression. Things had gone on like this for about an hour when Dr Greysteel happened to look up and exclaimed in amazement, “My head is black! Completely black!”
“Well, what do you expect if you smoke a pipe?” replied his sister.
“Papa,” asked Flora, putting down her work in alarm, “what do you mean?”
Dr Greysteel was staring at the mirror – the very same mirror which had so mysteriously appeared when day had turned to night and Strange had come to Padua. Flora went and stood behind his chair, so that she could see what he saw. Her exclamation of surprize brought Aunt Greysteel to join her.
Where Dr Greysteel’s head ought to have been in the mirror was a dark spot that moved and changed shape. The spot grew in size until gradually it began to resemble a figure fleeing down an immense corridor towards them. The figure drew closer, and they could see it was a woman. Several times she looked back as she ran, as if in fear of something behind her.
“What has frightened her to make her run like that?” wondered Aunt Greysteel. “Lancelot, can you see any thing? Does any one chase after her? Oh, poor lady! Lancelot, is there any thing you can do?”
Dr Greysteel went to the mirror, placed his hand upon it and pushed, but the surface was as hard and smooth as mirrors usually are. He hesitated for a moment, as though debating with himself whether to try a more violent approach.
“Be careful, papa!” cried Flora in alarm. “You must not break it!”
The woman within the mirror drew nearer. For a moment she appeared directly behind it and they could see the elaborate embroidery and beading of her gown; then she mounted up upon the frame as on a step. The surface of the mirror became softer, like a dense cloud or mist. Flora hastened to push a chair against the wall so that the lady might more easily descend. Three pairs of hands were raised to catch her, to pull her away from whatever it was that frightened her.
She was perhaps thirty or thirty-two years of age. She was dressed in a gown the colour of autumn, but she was breathless and a little disordered from running. With a frantic look she surveyed the unknown room, the unknown faces, the unfamiliar look of everything. “Is this Faerie?” she asked.
“No, madam,” answered Flora.
“Is it England?”
“No, madam.” Tears began to course down Flora’s face. She put her hand on her breast to steady herself. “This is Padua. In Italy. My name is Flora Greysteel. It is a name quite unknown to you, but I have waited for you here at your husband’s desire. I promised him I would meet you here.”
“Is Jonathan here?”
“No, madam.”
“You are Arabella Strange,” said Dr Greysteel in amazement.
“Yes,” she said.
“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Aunt Greysteel, one hand flying to cover her mouth and the other to her heart. “Oh, my dear!” Then both hands fluttered around Arabella’s face and shoulders. “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed for the third time. She burst into tears and embraced Arabella.
Stephen awoke. He was lying on the frozen ground in a narrow dale. The sunlight was gone. It was grey and cold. The dale was choked with a great wall of millstones and boulders and earth – an eerie tomb. The wall had dammed the beck, but a little water still seeped through and was now spreading across the ground. Stephen’s crown, sceptre and orb lay a little distance away in pools of dirty water. Wearily he stood up.
In the distance he could hear someone calling, “Stephen! Stephen!” He thought it was Lady Pole.
“I cast off the name of my captivity,” he said. “It is gone.” He picked up the crown, the sceptre and orb, and began to walk.
He had no notion of where he was going. He had killed the gentleman and he had allowed the gentleman to kill Vinculus. He could never go home – if home it had been in the first place. What would an English judge and jury say to a black man who was a
murderer twice over? Stephen had done with England and England had done with him. He walked on.
After a while it seemed to him that the landscape was no longer as English as it had been. The trees that now surrounded him were immense, ancient things, their boughs twice the thickness of a man’s body and curved into strange, fantastical shapes. Though it was winter and the briars were bare, a few roses still bloomed here, blood-red and snow-white.
England lay behind him. He did not regret it. He did not look back. He walked on.
He came to a long, low hill, and in the middle of the hill was an opening. It was more like a mouth than a door, yet it did not have an evil look. Someone was standing there, just within the opening, waiting for him. “I know this place,” he thought. “It is Lost-hope! But how can that be?”
It was not simply that the house had become a hill, everything seemed to have undergone a revolution. The wood was suddenly possessed of a spirit of freshness, of innocence. The trees no longer threatened the traveller. Between their branches were glints of a serene winter sky of coldest blue. Here and there shone the pure light of a star – though whether they were stars of morning or stars of evening he could no longer remember. He looked around for the ancient bones and rusting armour – those ghastly emblems of the gentleman’s bloodthirsty nature. To his surprize he found that they were everywhere – beneath his feet, stuffed into hollows of the tree roots, tangled up with briars and brambles. But they were in a far more advanced state of decay than he remembered; they were moss-covered, rust-eaten and crumbling into dust. In a little while nothing would be left of them.
The figure within the opening was a familiar one; he had often attended the balls and processions at Lost-hope. But he too was changed; his features had become more fairy-like; his eyes more glittering; his eye-brows more extravagant. His hair curled tightly like the fleece of a young lamb or like young ferns in spring, and there was a light dusting of fur upon his face. He looked older, yet at the same time more innocent. “Welcome!” he cried.
“Is this truly Lost-hope?” asked the person who had once been Stephen Black.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Page 91