Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (43 page)

Another time Stephen received a letter from the mayor and aldermen of Bath describing how, two months before, the Marquess of Wellesley had been in Bath and had done nothing during his stay but talk of Stephen Black and his remarkable honesty, intelligence and faithfulness to his master. So impressed had the mayor and the aldermen been by his lordship's report, that they had immediately ordered a medal, celebrating Stephen's life and virtues, to be struck. When five hundred medals had been made, the mayor and the aldermen had ordered them to be distributed to the chief householders of Bath amid general rejoicing. They enclosed a medal for Stephen, and begged that whenever he next found himself in Bath he would make himself known to them so that they might hold a magnificent dinner in his honour.

None of these miracles did any thing to raise poor Stephen's spirits. They only served to emphasize the eerie character of his present life. He knew that the overseer, dog and the mayor and the aldermen were all acting against their natures: overseers loved money — they did not give it away for no good reason; dogs did not patiently pursue strange quests for weeks on end; and mayors and aldermen did not suddenly develop a lively interest in negro servants they had never seen. Yet none of his friends seemed to think there was any thing remarkable about the course his life was taking. He was sick of the sight of gold and silver, and his little room at the top of the house in Harley-street was full of treasures he did not want.

He had been almost two years under the gentleman's enchantment. He had often pleaded with the gentleman to release him — or, if not him, then Lady Pole — but the gentleman would not hear of it. So Stephen had roused himself to try and tell someone about what he and Lady Pole suffered. He was anxious to discover if there were precedents for their case. He had faint hopes of finding someone who would help free them. The first person he had spoken to was Robert, the footman. He had warned Robert that he was about to hear a private revelation of a secret woe, and Robert had looked suitably solemn and interested. But, when Stephen began to speak, he found to his own astonishment that it was upon quite a different matter; he found himself delivering a very earnest and learned discourse upon the cultivation and uses of peas and beans — a subject he knew nothing about. Worse still, some of his information was of a most unusual nature and would have frankly astonished any farmer or gardener who had heard it. He explained the different properties of beans either planted or gathered by moonlight, by moondark, at Beltane or on Midsummer's Night, and how these properties were changed if you sowed or gathered the beans with a silver trowel or knife.

The next person to whom he attempted to describe his trouble was John Longridge. This time he found himself delivering an exact account of Julius Caesar's dealings and experiences in Britain. It was clearer and more detailed than any scholar could have managed, tho' he had studied the subject for twenty years or more. Once again it contained information that was not set down in any book.
¹

He made two more attempts to communicate his horrible situation. To Mrs Brandy he delivered an odd defence of Judas Iscariot in which he declared that in all Iscariot's last actions he was following the instructions of two men called John Copperhead and John Brassfoot whom Iscariot had believed to be angels; and to Toby Smith, Mrs Brandy's shopman, he gave a list of all the people in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England who had been stolen away by fairies in the last two hundred years. None of them were people he had ever heard of.

Stephen was obliged to conclude that, try as he might, he
could not
speak of his enchantment.

The person who suffered most from his strange silences and dismal spirits was, without a doubt, Mrs Brandy. She did not understand that he had changed to the whole world, she only saw that he had changed towards
her
. One day at the beginning of September Stephen paid her a visit. They had not met for some weeks, which had made Mrs Brandy so unhappy that she had written to Robert Austin, and Robert had gone to Stephen and scolded him for his neglect. However once Stephen had arrived in the little parlour above the shop in St James's-street, no one could have blamed Mrs Brandy if she had wished him immediately away again. He sat with his head in his hand, sighing heavily, and had nothing to say to her. She offered him Constantia-wine, marma-lade, an old-fashioned wigg bun — all sorts of delicacies — but he refused them all. He wanted nothing; and so she sat down on the opposite side of the fire and resumed her needlework — a nightcap which she was despondently embroidering for him.

"Perhaps," she said, "you are tired of London and of me, and you wish to return to Africa?"

"No," said Stephen.

"I dare say Africa is a remarkably charming place," said Mrs Brandy, who seemed determined to punish herself by sending Stephen immediately to Africa. "I have always heard that it is. With oranges and pineapples everywhere one looks, and sugar canes and chocolate trees." She had laboured fourteen years in the grocery trade and had mapped out her world in its stock. She laughed bitterly. "It seems that I would fare very ill in Africa. What need have people of shops when they have only to stretch out their hand and pluck the fruit of the nearest tree? Oh, yes! I should be ruined in no time in Africa." She snapped a thread between her teeth. "Not that I should not be glad to go tomorrow," She poked the thread viciously into the needle's innocent eye, "if any one were to ask me."

"Would you go to Africa for my sake?" asked Stephen in surprize.

She looked up. "I would go any where for your sake," she said. "I thought you knew that."

They regarded one another unhappily.

Stephen said that he must return and attend to his duties in Harley-street.

Outside in the street, the sky darkened and rain began to fall. People put up umbrellas. As Stephen walked up St James's-street, he saw a strange sight — a black ship sailing towards him through the grey rainy air above the heads of the crowd. It was a frigate, some two feet high, with dirty, ragged sails and peeling paint. It rose and fell, mimicking the motion of ships at sea. Stephen shivered a little to see it. A beggar emerged from the crowd, a negro with skin as dark and shining as Stephen's own. Fastened to his hat was this ship. As he walked he ducked and raised his head so that his ship could sail. As he went he performed his curious bobbing and swaying movements very slowly and carefully for fear of upsetting his enormous hat. The effect was of a man dancing amazingly slowly. The beggar's name was Johnson. He was a poor, crippled sailor who had been denied a pension. Having no other means of relief, he had taken to singing and begging to make a livelihood, in which he had been most successful and he was known throughout the Town for the curious hat he wore. Johnson held out his hand to Stephen, but Stephen looked away. He always took great care not to speak to, or in any way acknowledge, negroes of low station. He feared that if he were seen speaking to such people it might be supposed that he had some connexion with them.

He heard his name cried out, and he jumped as if he had been scalded, but it was only Toby Smith, Mrs Brandy's shopman.

"Oh! Mr Black!" cried Toby, hurrying up. "There you are! You generally walk so fast, sir! I was sure you would be in Harley-street by now. Mrs Brandy sends her compliments, sir, and says you left this by your chair."

Toby held out a silver diadem, a delicate band of metal of a size to fit Stephen's head exactly. It had no ornament other than a few odd signs and queer letters cut into its surface.

"But this is not mine!" said Stephen.

"Oh!" said Toby, blankly, but then he appeared to decide that Stephen was joking. "Oh, Mr Black, as if I have not seen it upon your head a hundred times!" Then he laughed and bowed and ran back to the shop, leaving Stephen with the diadem in his hand.

He crossed over Piccadilly into Bond-street. He had not gone far when he heard shouting, and a tiny figure came running down the street. In stature the figure appeared no more than four or five years old, but its dead-white, sharp-featured face belonged to a much older child. It was followed at a distance by two or three men, shouting "Thief !" and "Stop him!"

Stephen sprang into the thief's path. But though the young thief could not entirely escape Stephen (who was nimble), Stephen was not quite able to fasten on to the thief (who was slippery). The thief held a long bundle wrapped in a red cloth, which he some-how contrived to tip into Stephen's hands, before darting in among a crowd of people outside Hemmings's, the goldsmith. These people were but newly emerged from Hemmings's and knew nothing of the pursuit, so they did not spring apart when the thief arrived among them. It was impossible to say which way he went.

Stephen stood, holding the bundle. The cloth, which was a soft, old velvet, slipped away, revealing a long rod of silver.

The first of the pursuers to arrive was a dark, handsome gentleman sombrely, but elegantly dressed in black. "You had him for a moment," he said to Stephen.

"I am only sorry, sir," said Stephen, "that I could not hold him for you. But, as you see, I have your property." Stephen offered the man the rod of silver and the red velvet cloth but the man did not take them.

"It was my mother's fault!" said the gentleman, angrily. "Oh! How could she be so negligent? I have told her a thousand times that if she left the drawing-room window open, sooner or later a thief would come in by it. Have I not said so a hundred times, Edward? Have I not said so, John?" The latter part of this speech was addressed to the gentleman's servants, who had come running up after their master. They lacked breath to reply, but were able to assure Stephen by emphatic nods that the gentleman had indeed said so.

"All the world knows that I keep many treasures at my house," continued the gentleman, "and yet she continues to open the window in spite of my entreaties! And now, of course, she sits weeping for the loss of this treasure which has been in my family for hundreds of years. For my mother takes great pride in our family and all its possessions. This sceptre, for example, is proof that we are descended from the ancient kings of Wessex, for it belonged to Edgar or Alfred or someone of that sort."

"Then you must take it back, sir," urged Stephen. "Your mother, I dare say, will be much relieved to see it safe and sound."

The gentleman reached out to take the sceptre, but suddenly drew back his hand. "No!" he cried. "I will not! I vow I will not. If I were to return this treasure to my mother's keeping, then she would never learn the evil consequences of her negligence! She would never learn to keep the window shut! And who knows what I might lose next? Why, I might come home tomorrow to an empty house! No, sir, you must keep the sceptre! It is a reward for the service you did me in trying to catch hold of the thief."

The gentleman's servants all nodded as if they saw the sense of this, and then a coach drew up and gentleman and servants all got into it and drove away.

Stephen stood in the rain with a diadem in one hand and a sceptre in the other. Ahead of him were the shops of Bond-street, the most fashionable shops in all the kingdom. In their windows were displayed silks and velvets, headdresses of pearl and peacock feathers, diamonds, rubies, jewels and every sort of gold and silver trinkets.

"Well," thought Stephen, "doubtless he will be able to make all sorts of eerie treasures for me out of the contents of those shops. But I shall be cleverer than him. I shall go home by another way."

He turned into a narrow alleyway between two buildings, crossed a little yard, passed through a gate, down another alley-way and emerged in a little street of modest houses. It was quite deserted here and strangely quiet. The only sound was the rain striking the cobblestones. Rain had darkened all the fronts of the houses until they appeared to be almost black. The occupants of the houses seemed a very frugal lot, for not one of them had lit a lamp or a candle despite the gloominess of the day. Yet the heavy cloud did not cover the sky completely and a watery white light shewed at the horizon, so that between the dark sky and the dark earth the rain fell in bright silver shafts.

A shining something rolled suddenly out of a dark alleyway and skittered unevenly over the wet cobblestones, coming to a stop directly in front of Stephen.

He looked at it and heaved a great sigh when he saw that it was, as he expected, a little silver ball. It was very battered and old-looking. At the top where there ought to have been a cross to signify that all the world belonged to God, there was a tiny open hand. One of the fingers was broken off. This symbol — the open hand — was one that Stephen knew well. It was one of those employed by the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. Only last night Stephen had taken part in a procession and carried a banner bearing this very emblem through dark, windswept courtyards and along avenues of immense oak-trees in whose unseen branches the wind soughed.

There was the sound of a window sash being raised. A woman poked her head out of a window at the top of the house. Her hair was all in curl papers. "Well, pick it up!" she cried, glaring furiously at Stephen.

"But it is not mine!" he called up to her.

"It is not his, he says!" This made her angrier still. "And I suppose I did not just see it fall out of your pocket and roll away! And I suppose my name is not Mariah Tompkins! And I suppose I do not labour night and day to keep Pepper-street clean and tidy, but you must come here a-purpose to throw away your rubbish!"

With a heavy sigh, Stephen picked up the orb. He found that, whatever Mariah Tompkins said or believed, if he put it in his pocket there was a very real danger of it tearing the cloth, it was so heavy. So he was obliged to walk through the rain, sceptre in one hand, orb in the other. The diadem he put on his head, as the most convenient place for it, and attired in this fashion he walked home.

On arriving at the house in Harley-street, he went down to the area and opened the kitchen door. He found himself, not in the kitchen as he had expected, but in a room he had never seen before. He sneezed three times.