Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (123 page)

"No, not ill." Mr Segundus looked embarrassed. "It is living in constant proximity to strong magic. I had not realized before how weakening that can be. To a person who is susceptible to it, I mean. The servants feel no effects whatsoever, I am glad to say."

There was a queer insubstantiality about him. He looked as if he were painted on the air. The merest draught from a gap in the casement took his hair and made little corkscrews and curlicues of it, as if it weighed nothing at all.

"I suppose that is what you have come about," he continued. "But you should tell Mr Norrell that I have done nothing but study the occurrences that presented themselves. I confess I have made a few notes, but really he has nothing to complain about."

"What magic?" asked Childermass. "What are you talking about? And you need not concern yourself any longer about Mr Norrell. He has problems of his own and knows nothing of my being here. What have you been doing, Mr Segundus?"

"Only watching and recording — as a magician should." Mr Segundus leant forward eagerly. "And I have come to some surprizing conclusions concerning Lady Pole's illness!"

"Oh?"

"In my opinion it is not madness at all. It is magic!" Mr Segundus waited for Childermass to be amazed. He looked a little disappointed when Childermass simply nodded.

"I have something that belongs to her ladyship," said Childermass. "Something she has long missed. So I beg that you will do me the kindness of taking me to her."

"Oh, but . . ."

"I mean her no harm, Mr Segundus. And I believe I may be able to do her some good. I swear it by Bird and Book. By Bird and Book."
¹

"I cannot take you to her," said Mr Segundus. He put up his hand to forestall Childermass's objection. "I do not mean that I m unwilling. I mean I
cannot
. Charles will take us." He indicated the servant at his side.

This seemed rather eccentric, but Childermass was in no mood to argue about it. Mr Segundus grasped Charles's arm and closed his eyes.

Behind the stone-and-oak passages of Starecross Hall, a vision of another house leapt up. Childermass saw high corridors that stretched away into unthinkable distances. It was as if two transparencies had been put into a magic lantern at the same time, so that one picture overlaid the other. The impression of walking through both houses at once rapidly brought on a sensation akin to sea-sickness. Confusion mounted in his mind and, had he been alone, he would soon have been at a loss to know which way to go. He could not tell whether he was walking or falling, whether he climbed one step, or mounted a staircase of impossible length. Sometimes he seemed to be skimming across an acre of stone flags, while at the same time he was scarcely moving at all. His head spun and he felt sick.

"Stop! Stop!" he cried and sank to the ground with his eyes closed.

"It affects you badly," said Mr Segundus. "Worse even than me. Close your eyes and take hold of my arm. Charles will lead us both."

They walked on, eyes closed. Charles guided them round a right- hand turning and up a staircase. At the top of the staircase there was a murmured conversation between Mr Segundus and someone. Charles drew Childermass forward. Childermass had the impression of entering a room. It smelt of clean linen and dried roses.

"This is the person you wish me to see?" said a woman's voice. There was something odd about it, as if it were coming from two places at once, as if there were an echo. "But I know this person! He is the magician's servant! He is . . ."

"I am the person your ladyship shot," said Childermass and he opened his eyes.

He saw not one woman, but two — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he saw the same woman doubled. Both sat in the same posture, looking up at him. They occupied the same space, so that he had the same giddy feeling in looking at her as he had had walking through the corridors.

One version of Lady Pole sat in the house in Yorkshire; she wore an ivory-coloured morning dress and regarded him with calm indifference. The other version was fainter — more ghostly. She sat in the gloomy, labyrinthine house, dressed in a blood-red evening gown. There were jewels or stars in her dark hair and she regarded him with fury and hatred.

Mr Segundus pulled Childermass to the right. "Stand just here!" he said, excitedly. "Now close one eye! Can you see it? Observe! A red-and-white rose where her mouth ought to be."

"The magic affects us differently," said Childermass. "I see something very strange, but I do not see that."

"You are very bold to come here," said both versions of Lady Pole, addressing Childermass, "considering who you are and whom you represent."

"I am not here on Mr Norrell's business. To own the truth I am not entirely sure who it is I represent. I think it is Jonathan Strange. It is my belief that he sent me a message — and I think it was about your ladyship. But the messenger was prevented from reaching me and the message was lost. Do you know, your lady- ship, what Mr Strange might have wished to tell me about you?"

"Yes," said both versions of Lady Pole.

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"If I speak," they said, "I shall speak nothing but madness."

Childermass shrugged his shoulders. "I have passed twenty years in the society of magicians. I am accustomed to it. Speak."

So she (or they) began. Immediately Mr Segundus took a memorandum book out of a pocket of his night-gown and began to scribble notes. But, in Childermass's eyes, the two versions of Lady Pole were no longer speaking as one. The Lady Pole who sat in Starecross Hall told a tale about a child who lived near Carlisle,
²
but the woman in the blood-red gown seemed to be telling quite a different story. She wore a fierce expression and emphasized her words with passionate gestures — but what she said Childermass could not tell; the whimsical tale of the Cumbrian child drowned it out.

"There! You see!" exclaimed Mr Segundus, as he finished scribbling his notes. "This is what makes them think her mad — these odd stories and tales. But I have made a list of all that she has told me and I have begun to find correspondences between them and ancient fairy lore. I am sure that if you and I were to make inquiries we would discover some reference to a set of fairies who had some close connexion with songbirds. They may not have been songbird-herds. That, you will agree, sounds a little too much like settled occupation for such a feckless race — but they may have pursued a particular sort of magic related to songbirds. And it may have suited one of their number to tell an impressionable child that she was a songbird-herd."

"Perhaps," said Childermass, not much interested. "But that was not what she meant to tell us. And I have remembered the magical significance of roses. They stand for silence. That is why you see a red-and-white rose — it is a muffling spell."

"A muffling spell!" said Mr Segundus, in amazement. "Yes, yes! I see that! I have read about such things. But how do we break it?"

From his coat-pocket Childermass took a little box, the colour of heartache. "Your ladyship," he said, "give me your left hand."

She laid her white hand in Childermass's lined, brown one. Childermass opened the box, took out the finger and laid it against the empty place.

Nothing happened.

"We must find Mr Strange," said Mr Segundus. "Or Mr Norrell. They may be able to mend it!"

"No," said Childermass. "There is no need. Not now. You and I are two magicians, Mr Segundus. And England is full of magic. How many years' study do we have between us? We must know something to the point. What about Pale's Restoration and Rectification?"

"I know the form of it," said Mr Segundus. "But I have never been a
practical
magician."

"And you never will be, if you do not try. Do the magic, Mr Segundus."

So Mr Segundus did the magic.
³

The finger flowed into the hand, making a seamless whole. In the same instant the impression of endless, dreary corridors surrounding them disappeared; the two women before Child- ermass's eyes resolved themselves into one.

Lady Pole rose slowly from her chair. Her eyes went rapidly this way and that, like someone who was seeing the world anew. Everyone in the room could see she was changed. There was animation and fire in every feature. Her eyes glowed with a furious light. She raised both arms; her hands were clenched in tight fists, as if she intended to bring them down upon someone's head.

"I have been
enchanted
!" she burst out. "Bargained away for the sake of a wicked man's career!"

"Good God!" cried Mr Segundus. "My dear Lady Pole . . ."

"Compose yourself, Mr Segundus!" said Childermass. "We have no time for trivialities. Let her speak!"

"I have been dead within and almost-dead without!" Tears started from her eyes and she struck her own breast with her clenched hand. "And not only me! Others suffer even now! — Mrs Strange and my husband's servant, Stephen Black!"

She recounted the cold, ghostly balls she had endured, the dreary processions she had been forced to take part in and the strange handicap that would not allow her and Stephen Black to speak of their predicament.

Mr Segundus and the servants heard each new revelation with mounting horror; Childermass sat and listened with impassive expression.

"We must write to the editors of the newspapers!" cried Lady Pole. "I am determined upon public exposure!"

"Exposure of whom?" asked Mr Segundus.

"The magicians, of course! Strange and Norrell!"

"Mr Strange?" faltered Mr Segundus. "No, no, you are mistaken! My dear Lady Pole, take a moment to consider what you are saying. I have not a word to say for Mr Norrell — his crimes against you are monstrous! But Mr Strange has done no harm — not knowingly at any rate. Surely he is more sinned against than sinning?"

"Oh!" cried Lady Pole. "Upon the contrary! I consider him by far the worse of the two. By his negligence and cold, masculine magic he has betrayed the best of women, the most excellent of wives!"

Childermass stood up.

"Where are you going?" asked Mr Segundus.

"To find Strange and Norrell," said Childermass.

"Why?" cried Lady Pole, rounding on him. "To warn them? So that they can prepare themselves against a woman's vengeance? Oh, how these men protect one another!"

"No, I am going to offer them my assistance to free Mrs Strange and Stephen Black."

Lascelles walked on. The path entered a wood. At the entrance to the wood was the statue of the woman holding the plucked eye and heart — just as Childermass had described. Corpses hung from the thorn-trees in various states of decay. Snow lay on the ground and it was very quiet.

After a while he came to the tower. He had imagined it to be a fanciful, otherlandish sort of place; "But really," he thought, "it is very plain, like the castles of the Scottish border country."

High in the tower was a single window glowing with candlelight and the shadow of someone watching. Lascelles noticed something else too, something that Childermass had either not seen, or else had not troubled to report: the trees were full of serpent-like creatures. They had heavy, sagging forms. One was in the process of swallowing whole a fresh, meaty-looking corpse.

Between the trees and the brook was the pale young man. His eyes were empty and there was a slight dew upon his brow. His uniform was, thought Lascelles, that of the 11th Light Dragoons.

Lascelles addressed him thus: "One of our countrymen approached you a few days ago. He spoke to you. You challenged him. Then he ran away. He was a dark, ill-favoured fellow. A person of despicable habits and base origins."

If the pale young man recognized Childermass from this description, he shewed no sign of it. In a dead voice he said, "I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. I offer challenges to . . ."

"Yes, yes!" cried Lascelles, impatiently. "I do not care about that. I have come here to fight. To erase the stain upon England's honour that was made by that fellow's cowardice."

The figure at the window leaned forward eagerly.

The pale young man said nothing.

Lascelles made a sound of exasperation. "Very well! Believe that I mean this woman all sorts of harm if it pleases you. It matters not one whit to me! Pistols?"

The pale young man shrugged.

There being no seconds to act for them, Lascelles told the young man that they would stand at twenty paces and he measured the ground himself.

They had taken their positions and were about to fire, when something occurred to Lascelles. "Wait!" he cried. "What is your name?"

The young man stared dully at him. "I do not remember," he said.

They both fired their pistols at the same time. Lascelles had the impression that, at the last moment, the young man turned his pistol and deliberately fired wide. Lascelles did not care: if the young man was a coward then so much the worse for him. His own ball flew with pleasing exactitude to pierce the young man's breast. He watched him die with the same intense interest and sense of satisfaction that he had felt when he had killed Drawlight.

He hung the body upon the nearest thorn-tree. Then he amused himself by taking shots at the decaying bodies and the serpents. He had not been engaged in this pleasant occupation for more than an hour when he heard the sounds of hooves upon the woodland path. From the opposite direction, from Faerie rather than England, a dark figure upon a dark horse was approaching.

Lascelles spun round. "I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart," he began . . .

1 This is an old Northern English oath. John Uskglass's arms shewed a Raven- in-Flight upon a white field (Argent, Raven Volant); those of his Chancellor, William Lanchester, shewed the same with the addition of an open book (Argent, Raven Volant above an open book).

For much of the thirteenth century John Uskglassdevoted himself to scholarship and magic, abandoning the business of government to Lanchester. Lanchester's arms were displayed in all the great courts of law and upon many important legal documents. Consequently, the people fell into the habit of swearing by Bird and Book, the elements of those arms.