Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (81 page)

“True, true." The gentleman flung himself back in his chair and stared at the ceiling while he considered this tricky problem.

“Would any other sort of wood suit your purposes, sir?" asked Stephen, “There is a timber merchant in Gracechurch-street, who I dare say . . ."

“No, no," said the gentleman, “This must be done . . ."

At that instant Stephen experienced the queerest sensation: he was plucked out of his chair and stood upon his feet. At the same moment the coffee-house disappeared and was replaced by a pitch-black, ice-cold nothingness. Though he could see nothing at all, Stephen had the sense that he was in a wide, open place. A bitter wind howled about his ears and a thick rain seemed to be falling upon him from all directions at once.

“. . . properly," continued the gentleman in exactly the same tone as before. “There is a very fine piece of moss-oak hereabouts. At least I think I remember . . ." His voice, which had been somewhere near Stephen's right ear, moved away. “Stephen!" he cried, “Have you brought a flaughter, a rutter and a tusker?"

“What, sir? Which, sir? No, sir. I have not brought any of those things. To own the truth, I did not quite understand that we were going any where." Stephen found that his feet and ancles were deep in cold water. He tried to step aside. Immediately the ground lurched most alarmingly and he sank suddenly into it up to the middle of his calves. He screamed.

“Mmm?" inquired the gentleman.

“I . . . I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up."

“It is a bog," said the gentleman, helpfully.

“It is certainly a most terrifying substance." Stephen attempted to mimic the gentleman's calm, uninterested tone. He knew only too well that the gentleman set a great value upon dignity in every situation and he feared that if he let the gentleman hear how terrified he was, there was every possibility that the gentleman would grow disgusted with him and wander off, leaving him to be sucked into the bog. He tried to move, but found nothing solid beneath his feet. He flailed about, almost fell and the only result was that his feet and legs slipped a little further into the watery mud. He screamed again. The bog made a series of most un- pleasant sucking noises.

“Ah, God! I take the liberty of observing, sir, that I am sinking by degrees. Ah!" He began to slip sideways. “You have often been so kind as to express an affection for me, sir, and to say how much you prefer my society to that of any other person. If it would not inconvenience you in any way, perhaps I might prevail upon you to rescue me from this horrible bog?"

The gentleman did not trouble to reply. Instead Stephen found himself plucked by magic out of the bog and stood upon his feet. He was quite weak with fright and would have liked to lie down, but dared not move. The ground here seemed solid enough, but it was unpleasantly wet and he had no idea where the bog was.

“I would gladly help you, sir," he called into the darkness, “but I dare not move for fear of falling into the bog again!"

“Oh, it does not matter!" said the gentleman. “In truth, there is nothing to do but wait. Moss-oak is most easily discovered at dawn."

“But dawn is not for another nine hours!" exclaimed Stephen in horror.

“No, indeed! Let us sit down and wait."

“Here, sir? But this is a dreadful place. Black and cold and awful!"

“Oh, quite! It is most disagreeable!" agreed the gentleman with aggravating calmness. He fell silent then and Stephen could only suppose that he was pursuing this mad plan of waiting for the dawn.

The icy wind blew upon Stephen; the damp seeped up into every part of his being; the blackness pressed down upon him; and the long hours passed with excruciating slowness. He had no expectation of being able to sleep, but at some time during the night he experienced a little relief from the misery of his situation. It was not that he fell asleep exactly, but he did fall to dreaming.

In his dream he had gone to the pantry to fetch someone a slice of a magnificent pork pie. But when he cut the pie open he found that there was very little pork inside it. Most of the interior was taken up by the city of Birmingham. Within the pie-crust forges and smithies smoked and engines pounded. One of the citizens, a civil-looking person, happened to stroll out from the cut that Stephen had made and when his glance fell upon Stephen, he said . . .

Just then a high, mournful sound broke in upon Stephen's dream - a slow, sad song in an unknown language and Stephen understood without ever actually waking that the gentleman with the thistle-down hair was singing.

It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

Stephen began to dream again. This time he dreamt that hills walked and the sky wept. Trees came and spoke to him and told him their secrets and also whether or not he might regard them as friends or enemies. Important destinies were hidden inside pebbles and crumpled leaves. He dreamt that everything in the world - stones and rivers, leaves and fire - had a purpose which it was determined to carry out with the utmost rigour, but he also understood that it was possible sometimes to persuade things to a different purpose.

When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant.

“This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said.

“My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. “Oh, no! This is Scotland!"

The gentleman disappeared suddenly - and reappeared a moment later with an armful of tools. There was an axe and a spit and three things Stephen had never seen before. One was a little like a hoe, one was a little like a spade and the last was a very strange object, something between a spade and a scythe. He handed all of them to Stephen, who examined them with a puzzled air. “Are they new, sir? They shine so brightly."

“Well, obviously one cannot employ tools of ordinary metal for such a magical undertaking as I am proposing. These are made of a compound of quicksilver and starshine. Now, Stephen, we must look for a patch of ground where the dew has not settled and if we dig there we are sure to find moss-oak!"

All through the glen all the grasses and tiny coloured bog-plants were covered with dew. Stephen's clothes, hands, hair and skin had a velvety, grey bloom, and the gentleman's hair - which was always extraordinary - had added the sparkle of a million tiny spheres of water to its customary brilliance. He appeared to be wearing a jewelled halo.

The gentleman walked slowly across the glen, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Stephen followed.

“Ah!" cried the gentleman. “Here we are!"

How the gentleman knew this, Stephen could not tell.

They were standing in the middle of a boggy expanse, exactly like every other part of the glen. There was no distinguishing tree or rock nearby to mark the spot. But the gentleman strode on with a confident air until he came to a shallow depression. In the middle of the depression was a long, broad stripe where there was no dew at all.

“Dig here, Stephen!"

The gentleman proved surprizingly knowledgeable about the art of peat cutting. And though he did none of the actual work himself he carefully instructed Stephen how to cut away the uppermost layer of grasses and moss with one tool, how to cut the peat with another tool and how to lift out the pieces with a third.

Stephen was unaccustomed to hard labour and he was soon out of breath and every part of him ached. Fortunately, he had not cut downvery far when he struck something much harder than the peat.

“Ah!" cried the gentleman, very well pleased. “That is the moss oak. Excellent! Now, Stephen, cut around it!"

This was easier said than done. Even when Stephen had cut away enough of the peat to expose the moss-oak to the air it was still very difficult to see what was oak and what was peat - both were black, wet and oozing. He dug some more and he began to suspect that, though the gentleman called it a log, this was in fact an entire tree.

“Could you not lift it out by magic, sir?" he asked.

“Oh, no! No, indeed! I shall ask a great deal of this wood and therefore it is incumbent upon us to make its passage from the bog into the wider world as easy as we can! Now, do you take this axe, Stephen, and cut me a piece as tall as my collar-bone. Then with the spit and the tusker we will prise it out!"

It took them three more hours to accomplish the task. Stephen chopped the wood to the size the gentleman had asked for, but the task of manoeuvring it out of the bog was more than one man could manage and the gentleman was obliged to descend into the muddy, stinking hole with him and they strained and pulled and heaved together.

When at last they had finished, Stephen threw himself upon the ground in a condition of the utmost exhaustion, while the gentle- man stood, regarding his log with delight.

“Well," he said, “that was a great deal easier than I had imagined."

Stephen suddenly found himself once more in the upper room of the Jerusalem Coffee-house. He looked at himself and at the gentleman. Their good clothes were in tatters and they were covered from head to foot with bog-mud.

For the first time he was able to see the log of moss-oak properly. It was as black as sin, extremely fine-grained, and it oozed black water.

“We must dry it out before it will be fit for any thing," he said.

“Oh, no!" said the gentleman with a brilliant smile. “For my purposes it will do very well as it is!"

1 William of Lanchester was John Uskglass's seneschal and favourite servant, and consequently one of the most important men in England.

2 Thomas of Dundale, John Uskglass's first human servant. See footnote 2, Chapter 45.

43
The curious adventure of Mr Hyde

December 1815

O
NE MORNING IN the first week of December Jeremy knocked upon the door of Strange's library at Ashfair House and said that Mr Hyde begged the favour of a few minutes' conversation with him.

Strange was not best pleased to be interrupted. Since he had been in the country he had grown almost as fond of quiet and solitude as Norrell. "Oh, very well!" he muttered.

Delaying only to write another paragraph, look up three or four things in a biography of Valentine Greatrakes, blot his paper, correct some spellings and blot his paper again, he went imme- diately to the drawing-room.

A gentleman was sitting alone by the fire, staring pensively into the flames. He was a vigorous-looking, active sort of man of fifty or so years, dressed in the stout clothes and boots of a gentleman- farmer. On a table at his side there was a little glass of wine and a small plate of biscuits. Clearly Jeremy had decided that the visitor had sat alone long enough to require some refreshment.

Mr Hyde and Jonathan Strange had been neighbours all their lives, but the marked differences in their fortunes and tastes had meant that they had never been more than common acquain- tances. This was in fact the first time they had met since Strange had become a magician.

They shook hands.

"I dare say, sir," began Mr Hyde, "you are wondering what can bring me to your door in such weather."

"Weather?"

"Yes, sir. It is very bad."

Strange looked out of the window. The high hills surrounding Ashfair were sheathed in snow. Every branch, every twig bore its burden of snow. The very air seemed white with frost and mist.

"So it is. I had not observed. I have not been out of the house since Sunday."

"Your servant tells me that you are very much occupied with your studies. I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but I have something to tell you which can wait no longer."

"Oh! There is no explanation necessary. And how is your . . ." Strange paused and tried to remember whether Mr Hyde had a wife, any children, brothers, sisters or friends. He found he was entirely without information upon the subject. "Farm," he fin- ished. "I recollect it is at Aston."

"It is nearer to Clunbury."

"Clunbury. Yes."

"All is well with me, Mr Strange, except for something rather . . . unsettling which happened to me three days ago. I have been debating with myself ever since whether I ought to come and speak to you about it. I have asked the advice of my friends and my wife and all are agreed that I ought to tell you what I have seen. Three days ago I had business on the Welsh side of the border, with David Evans - I dare say you know him, sir?"

"I know him by sight. I have never spoken to him. Ford knows him, I believe." (Ford was the agent who managed all the business of Strange's estate.)

"Well, sir, David Evans and I had finished our business by two o'clock and I was very anxious to get home. There was a thick snow lying everywhere and the roads between here and Llanfair Waterdine were very bad. I dare say you do not know it, sir, but David Evans's house is high up on a hill with a long view westwards and the moment he and I stepped outside we saw great grey clouds full of snow coming towards us. Mrs Evans, Davey's mother, pressed me to stay with them and come home the next day, but Evans and I talked it over and we both agreed that all would be well providing I left instantly and came home by the most direct way possible - in other words I should ride up to the Dyke and cross over into England before the storm was upon me."
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