I nodded, feeling an appropriate dread.
She read my face and stroked my forearm with the same gesture she had used on Louise. “In human terms, your cat is several centuries old. And you've taken extraordinarily good care of her, sir."
"I've tried my best."
"You've done a remarkable job,” she said. “The best foods, the perfect vitamin cocktails. With these tests, I can see how good you've been to her. And of course, you never let your girl wander outdoors."
"Not in ages, no."
The veterinarian sighed deeply, staring into my eyes as if trying to weigh my soul. Then very quietly, she mentioned, “There's very little I can offer. But that doesn't mean we don't have options."
Every one of my cat bites seemed to ache.
"There are ways to create new proteins. Anti-prions, they're called. I can't do it myself, but I can send samples to a lab in Bombay, and they'll do the analysis and create a proper macromolecule that we can slip into the sick brain ... and then I think we have a fair chance of bringing this disease under control. And eventually, if Louise has any remaining good fortune ... we can reverse the damage and bring back the girl you've known for all these years..."
"How much?” I squeaked.
The woman shook her head. With a quiet, careful voice, she said, “I really don't know. This kind of work is attempted so infrequently—"
"I meant my bill so far. How much has this morning cost?"
The answer involved a simple push of a button. But the figures were still growing as various machines spat out raw data.
I tried to speak, but my voice failed me.
"There are other options,” the veterinarian continued. “And if you wish, we could euthanize her. Whenever you feel ready."
I felt many emotions, but none of them were ready for death. Staring at the poor creature, watching her fight against the restraints and soulless machines, I said quietly, “This disease looks like an awful way to die."
"If she does die,” she replied. “This process is so slow, and there's evidence that these lazy prions rarely eat up more than one or two portions of a brain."
"What about me?” I asked.
"There's nothing to worry about,” she chimed in. “Even if you ingested her brain tissue, and in huge quantities, you'd never get infected."
"No. I'm talking about my head. My brain."
"Sir?"
"If this cat is that much older than me, doesn't that imply that she's showing me the future? Showing both of us? One day, some little protein is going to turn against us, and we're going to be strapped on that table, hissing and spitting at the world."
Judging by her wide-eyed expression, the veterinarian had never imagined such an eternity. A painful pause ended when she straightened her back, and trying to smile, she asked, “What do you wish to do now, sir?"
"I don't know,” I admitted. “Muddle along like always, I guess."
* * * *
According to my journals, I spend thirty-two hours every week in the maintenance of my youth and good health. I also invest another ten hours caring for an elderly white cat. Nearly a quarter of my income goes toward our mutual wellbeing, and four-fifths of my worries, and from that, I think you can get a sense for how important these two lives are to me.
Extrapolate the figures, and there comes a personal crush-point just before the year 2300.
But really, what human being could spend every waking moment eating pills and doing sit-ups, all while submitting to unending scans of his tightly orchestrated bodies? Before the money and luck are gone, and before every waking moment of every day is spent on maintenance, hard decisions are going to become easy. I'll skip some little treatment, or maybe I'll forget my antioxidants on the worst possible day. And shortly after that, in a process barely noticeable at first, everything begins its inevitable collapse.
You know, each of us lives on a mountaintop.
Alone.
At first, your mountain is low and fertile. You can do whatever you want, and if you fall, you can bounce up again. But think of my image of blocks representing time: Your mountains grow tall and broaden out, blocks balanced on blocks, and eventually you find yourself standing on top of a chaotic pile with no place left to step. You have little freedom. You spend your existence holding very still, if you're lucky ... nothing below but darkness and a chilled wind mournfully calling your name....
* * * *
When Louise got sick, I had a girlfriend. A youngster, she was. Barely eighty-five. She was a tall taut woman who according to the customs of her strange generation kept her hair shaved and her boobs shrunk down to where they would never sag. She didn't appreciate being slashed by mad predators, so whenever she visited my apartment, I was supposed to shove my cat into the extra bedroom. After my expensive trip to the vet's, my girlfriend found me building a permanent cage in one corner of the living room. The exhausted cat was curled up inside her crate, sleeping away. The woman knelt down to risk a peek, then asked, “How did it go?"
I told the story.
From her expression, I knew what she was thinking. But she didn't say it until she found the kindest possible words.
"Think of the poor creature's misery,” she told me.
I'd been thinking about little else lately.
"Is this any sort of life?” she asked. “Is it right to keep her alive? In this terrible state?"
But Louise was happily asleep, at least for the moment.
"What? Are you really thinking about paying for those treatments?"
"I doubt I could afford them,” I admitted. Then I confessed my thoughts to her, and in effect, to myself too. “But in several years, in a few decades ... someday ... these treatments are going to become routine and halfway cheap. So what I did ... I bought a pair of diamond gloves from my vet. I'll feed Louise and put medicines in her food and clean up after her. Then if I need, I'll get a diamond suit and goggles and spend an hour every day fighting with her."
"That's crazy,” that hairless, breastless woman said to me.
I responded with a list of names. Two sisters and a brother. My parents and uncles and aunts. Three wives and one girlfriend who was as good as a wife, and half a hundred other important, much loved people who hadn't been as large in my existence for half as long as this one crazy-ass cat has been.
"This is me in another fifty years,” I told her, pointing at the locked carrier. “And it's you fifty years after that."
"I wouldn't live inside a cage,” she snapped.
I believed her.
Staring at me, she asked, “Would you accept such an existence?"
I was ready. With a laugh and slicing motion from my cut-up hand, I said to her exactly what I'm going to say to you now:
"Would you shove me inside a safe cage? And feed me and clean me and give me pills forever? Because if you aren't ready to do that for me ... then sadly, my dear, I think you should find your way out the door...."
[Back to Table of Contents]
John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner by Susanna Clarke
Last year, Susanna Clarke's first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, became an international bestseller and won a passel of awards. Those of you who have read the book know that all we've seen thus far of John Uskglass, the Raven King, is what other people think about him. Here now is a story that shows us a bit more of his life and character. (Readers of JS & MN might note that this story is the “curious tale” to which Mr. Norrell refers in chapter 63.)
This story is reprinted with kind permission from Bloomsbury USA from Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, where it appears with an accompanying illustration by the great Charles Vess.
This retelling of a popular Northern English folktale is taken from A Child's History of the Raven King by John Waterbury, Lord Portishead. It bears similarities to other old stories in which a great ruler is outwitted by one of his humblest subjects and, because of this, many scholars have argued that it has no historical basis.
>
Many summers ago in a clearing in a wood in Cumbria there lived a Charcoal Burner. He was a very poor man. His clothes were ragged and he was generally sooty and dirty. He had no wife or children, and his only companion was a small pig called Blakeman. Most of the time he stayed in the clearing which contained just two things: an earth-covered stack of smoldering charcoal and a hut built of sticks and pieces of turf. But in spite of all this he was a cheerful soul—unless crossed in any way.
One bright summer's morning a stag ran into the clearing. After the stag came a large pack of hunting dogs, and after the dogs came a crowd of horsemen with bows and arrows. For some moments nothing could be seen but a great confusion of baying dogs, sounding horns, and thundering hooves. Then, as quickly as they had come, the huntsmen disappeared among the trees at the far end of the clearing—all but one man.
The Charcoal Burner looked around. His grass was churned to mud; not a stick of his hut remained standing; and his neat stack of charcoal was half-dismantled and fires were bursting forth from it. In a blaze of fury he turned upon the remaining huntsman and began to heap upon the man's head every insult he had ever heard.
But the huntsman had problems of his own. The reason that he had not ridden off with the others was that Blakeman was running, this way and that, beneath his horse's hooves, squealing all the while. Try as he might, the huntsman could not get free of him. The huntsman was very finely dressed in black, with boots of soft black leather and a jeweled harness. He was in fact John Uskglass (otherwise called the Raven King), King of Northern England and parts of Faerie, and the greatest magician that ever lived. But the Charcoal Burner (whose knowledge of events outside the woodland clearing was very imperfect) guessed nothing of this. He only knew that the man would not answer him and this infuriated him more than ever. “Say something!” he cried.
A stream ran through the clearing. John Uskglass glanced at it, then at Blakeman running about beneath his horse's hooves. He flung out a hand and Blakeman was transformed into a salmon. The salmon leapt through the air into the brook and swam away. Then John Uskglass rode off.
The Charcoal Burner stared after him. “Well, now what am I going to do?” he said.
He extinguished the fires in the clearing and he repaired the stack of charcoal as best he could. But a stack of charcoal that has been trampled over by hounds and horses cannot be made to look the same as one that has never received such injuries, and it hurt the Charcoal Burner's eyes to look at such a botched, broken thing.
He went down to Furness Abbey to ask the monks to give him some supper because his own supper had been trodden into the dirt. When he reached the Abbey he inquired for the Almoner whose task it is to give food and clothes to the poor. The Almoner greeted him in a kindly manner and gave him a beautiful round cheese and a warm blanket and asked what had happened to make his face so long and sad.
So the Charcoal Burner told him; but the Charcoal Burner was not much practiced in the art of giving clear accounts of complicated events. For example he spoke at great length about the huntsman who had got left behind, but he made no mention of the man's fine clothes or the jeweled rings on his fingers, so the Almoner had no suspicion that it might be the King. In fact the Charcoal Burner called him “a black man” so that the Almoner imagined he meant a dirty man—just such another one as the Charcoal Burner himself.
The Almoner was all sympathy. “So poor Blakeman is a salmon now, is he?” he said. “If I were you, I would go and have a word with Saint Kentigern. I am sure he will help you. He knows all about salmon."
"Saint Kentigern, you say? And where will I find such a useful person?” asked the Charcoal Burner eagerly.
"He has a church in Grizedale. That is the road over there."
So the Charcoal Burner walked to Grizedale, and when he came to the church he went inside and banged on the walls and bawled out Saint Kentigern's name, until Saint Kentigern looked out of Heaven and asked what the matter was.
Immediately the Charcoal Burner began a long indignant speech describing the injuries that had been done to him, and in particular the part played by the solitary huntsman.
"Well,” said Saint Kentigern, cheerfully. “Let me see what I can do. Saints, such as I, ought always to listen attentively to the prayers of poor, dirty, ragged men, such as you. No matter how offensively those prayers are phrased. You are our special care."
"I am though?” said the Charcoal Burner, who was rather flattered to hear this.
Then Saint Kentigern reached down from Heaven, put his hand into the church font and pulled out a salmon. He shook the salmon a little and the next moment there was Blakeman, as dirty and clever as ever.
The Charcoal Burner laughed and clapped his hands. He tried to embrace Blakeman but Blakeman just ran about, squealing, with his customary energy.
"There,” said Saint Kentigern, looking down on this pleasant scene with some delight. “I am glad I was able to answer your prayer."
"Oh, but you have not!” declared the Charcoal Burner. “You must punish my wicked enemy!"
Then Saint Kentigern frowned a little and explained how one ought to forgive one's enemies. But the Charcoal Burner had never practiced Christian forgiveness before and he was not in a mood to begin now. “Let Blencathra fall on his head!” he cried with his eyes ablaze and his fists held high. (Blencathra is a high hill some miles to the north of Grizedale.)
"Well, no,” said Saint Kentigern diplomatically. “I really cannot do that. But I think you said this man was a hunter? Perhaps the loss of a day's sport will teach him to treat his neighbours with more respect."
The moment that Saint Kentigern said these words, John Uskglass (who was still hunting) tumbled down from his horse and into a cleft in some rocks. He tried to climb out but found that he was held there by some mysterious power. He tried to do some magic to counter it, but the magic did not work. The rocks and earth of England loved John Uskglass well. They would always wish to help him if they could, but this power—whatever it was—was something they respected even more.
He remained in the cleft all day and all night, until he was thoroughly cold, wet, and miserable. At dawn the unknown power suddenly released him—why, he could not tell. He climbed out, found his horse, and rode back to his castle at Carlisle.
"Where have you been?” asked William of Lanchester. “We expected you yesterday."
Now John Uskglass did not want any one to know that there might be a magician in England more powerful than himself. So he thought for a moment. “France,” he said.
"France!” William of Lanchester looked surprized. “And did you see the King? What did he say? Are they planning new wars?"
John Uskglass gave some vague, mystical, and magician-like reply. Then he went up to his room and sat down upon the floor by his silver dish of water. Then he spoke to Persons of Great Importance (such as the West Wind or the Stars) and asked them to tell him who had caused him to be thrown into the cleft. Into his dish came a vision of the Charcoal Burner.
John Uskglass called for his horse and his dogs, and he rode to the clearing in the wood.
Meanwhile the Charcoal Burner was toasting some of the cheese the Almoner had given him. Then he went to look for Blakeman, because there were few things in the world that Blakeman liked as much as toasted cheese.
While he was gone John Uskglass arrived with his dogs. He looked around at the clearing for some clue as to what had happened. He wondered why a great and dangerous magician would chuse to live in a wood and earn his living as a charcoal burner. His eye fell upon the toasted cheese.
Now toasted cheese is a temptation few men can resist, be they charcoal burners or kings. John Uskglass reasoned thus: all of Cumbria belonged to him—therefore this wood belonged to him—therefore this toasted cheese belonged to him. So he sat down and ate it, allowing his dogs to lick his fingers when he was done.
At that moment the Charcoal Burner returned. He stared at John Uskglass and at the empty green leaves wher
e his toasted cheese had been. “You!” he cried. “It is you! You ate my dinner!” He took hold of John Uskglass and shook him hard. “Why? Why do you these things?"
John Uskglass said not a word. (He felt himself to be at something of a disadvantage.) He shook himself free from the Charcoal Burner's grasp, mounted upon his horse and rode out of the clearing.
The Charcoal Burner went down to Furness Abbey again. “That wicked man came back and ate my toasted cheese!” he told the Almoner.
The Almoner shook his head sadly at the sinfulness of the world. “Have some more cheese,” he offered. “And perhaps some bread to go with it?"
"Which saint is it that looks after cheeses?” demanded the Charcoal Burner.
The Almoner thought for a moment. “That would be Saint Bridget,” he said.
"And where will I find her ladyship?” asked the Charcoal Burner, eagerly.
"She has a church at Beckermet,” replied the Almoner, and he pointed the way the Charcoal Burner ought to take.
So the Charcoal Burner walked to Beckermet and when he got to the church he banged the altar plates together and roared and made a great deal of noise until Saint Bridget looked anxiously out of Heaven and asked if there was any thing she could do for him.
The Charcoal Burner gave a long description of the injuries his silent enemy had done him.
Saint Bridget said she was sorry to hear it. “But I do not think I am the proper person to help you. I look after milkmaids and dairymen. I encourage the butter to come and the cheeses to ripen. I have nothing to do with cheese that has been eaten by the wrong person. Saint Nicholas looks after thieves and stolen property. Or there is Saint Alexander of Comana who loves Charcoal Burners. Perhaps,” she added hopefully, “you would like to pray to one of them?"
The Charcoal Burner declined to take an interest in the persons she mentioned. “Poor, ragged, dirty men like me are your special care!” he insisted. “Do a miracle!"
"But perhaps,” said Saint Bridget, “this man does not mean to offend you by his silence. Have you considered that he may be mute?"
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