Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (61 page)

At the end of this time: "Oh, I give up!" thought Strange.

His Majesty, who had been happily unconscious of the magic directed at him, was chatting confidentially to the person with the silver hair that only he could see. "Have you been sent here for ever or can you go away again? Oh, do not stay to be caught! This is a bad place for kings! They put us in strait waistcoats! The last time I was permitted to go out of these rooms was on a Monday in 1811. They tell me that was three years ago,but they lie!By my calculation, it will be two hundred and forty-six years on Saturday fortnight!"

"Poor, unhappy gentleman!" thought Strange. "Shut away in this cold, melancholy place without friends or amusements! Small wonder time passes so slowly for him. Small wonder he is mad!"

Out loud he said, "I shall be very happy to take you outside, Your Majesty, if you wish it."

The King paused in his chatter and turned his head slightly. "Who said that?" he demanded.

"I did, Your Majesty. Jonathan Strange, the magician." Strange made the King a respectful bow, before recollecting that His Majesty could not see it.

"Great Britain! My dear Kingdom!" cried the King. "How I should love to see her again — especially now that it is summertime. The trees and meadows are all decked in their brightest finery and the air is sweet as cherry-tart!"

Strange glanced out of the window at the white, icy mist and the skeletal winter trees. "Quite so. And I would account it a great honour if Your Majesty would accompany me outside."

The King seemed to consider this proposal. He took off one of his slippers and attempted to balance it upon his head. When this did not work, he put the slipper back on, took a tassel that hung from the end of his dressing-gown cord and sucked upon it thoughtfully. "But how do I know that you are not a wicked demon come to tempt me?" he asked at last in a tone of the most complete reasonableness.

Strange was somewhat lost for an answer to this question. While he was considering what to say, the King continued, "Of course if you are a wicked demon, then you should know that I am Eternal and cannot die. If I discover that you are my Enemy, I shall stamp my foot and send you straight back to Hell!"

"Really? Your Majesty must teach me the trick of that. I should like to know something so useful. But permit me to observe that, with such powerful magic at your command, Your Majesty has nothing to fear from accompanying me outside. We should leave as quickly and discreetly as we can. The Willises are sure to be here soon. Your Majesty must be very quiet!"

The King said nothing, but he tapped his nose and looked very sly.

Strange's next task was to discover a way out without alerting the madhouse attendants. The King was no help at all in this regard. When asked where the various doors led to, he gave it as his opinion that one door led to America, another to Everlasting Perdition and a third might possibly be the way to next Friday. So Strange picked one — the one the King thought led to America — and quickly escorted His Majesty through several rooms. All had painted ceilings in which English monarchs were depicted as dashing about the sky in fiery chariots, vanquishing persons who symbolized Envy, Sin and Sedition, and establishing Temples of Virtue, Palaces of Eternal Justice and other useful institutions of that sort. But though the ceilings were full of the most intense activity, the rooms beneath them were forlorn, threadbare and full of dust and spiders. The furniture was all covered up with sheets so that it appeared as if these chairs and tables must have died some time ago and these were their gravestones.

They came to a sort of back-staircase. The King, who had taken Strange's warning to be quiet very much to heart, insisted upon tip-toeing down the stairs in the highly exaggerated manner of a small child. This took some time.

"Well, Your Majesty," said Strange, cheerfully, when at last they reached the bottom, "I think we managed that rather well. I do not hear any sounds of pursuit. The Duke of Wellington would be glad to employ either of us as Intelligence Officers. I do not believe that Captain Somers-Cocks or Colquhoun Grant himself could have crossed enemy territory with more . . ."

He was interrupted by the King playing a very loud, very triumphant blare upon his flute.

"D—!" said Strange and listened for sounds of the madhouse attendants coming or, worse still, the Willises.

But nothing happened. Somewhere close at hand there was an odd, irregular thumping and clattering, accompanied by screams and wailing — rather as if someone were being beaten by a whole cupboardful of brooms at once. Apart from that, all was quiet.

A door opened on to a broad stone terrace. From here the land descended steeply and at the foot of the slope lay a Park. On the right a long, double line of winter trees could be just seen.

Arm in arm the King and Strange walked along the terrace to the corner of the Castle. Here Strange found a path leading down the slope and into the Park. They descended this path and had not walked far into the Park when they came upon an ornamental pool, bounded by a low stone rim.
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At its centre stood a little stone pavilion decorated with carved creatures. Some resembled dogs – except that their bodies were long and low like lizards and each had a row of spines along its back. Others were meant to represent curved stone dolphins which had somehow contrived to fasten themselves to the walls. On the roof half a dozen classical ladies and gentlemen were sitting in classical attitudes, holding vases. It had clearly been the architect's intention that fountains of water should gush out of the mouths of all these strange animals and out of the vases on the roof and tumble decoratively into the pool, but just now all was frozen and silent.

Strange was about to make some remark on the melancholy sight which this frozen pool presented, when he heard several shouts. He looked back and saw that a group of people was descending the slope of the Castle very rapidly. As they drew nearer he saw that they were four in number: two gentlemen he had never seen before and the two madhouse attendants — the one with the face like a Cheshire cheese and the one who had been sent to fetch the Willises. They all looked angry.

The gentlemen hurried up, frowning in an important, offended sort of manner. They shewed every symptom of having dressed in a great hurry. One was attempting to fasten the buttons of his coat, but without much success. As soon as he did up the buttons, they flew open again. He was about Mr Norrell's age and wore an old-fashioned wig (rather like Mr Norrell's) which from time to time made a little jump and spun round on his head. But he differed from Mr Norrell in that he was rather tall, rather handsome and had an imposing, decisive manner. The other gentleman (who was several years younger) was plagued by his boots, which seemed to have developed opinions of their own. While he was struggling to walk forwards, they were attempting to carry him off in an entirely different direction. Strange could only suppose that his earlier magic had been rather more successful than he had expected and had made the clothes themselves difficult to manage.

The tallest gentleman (the one who wore the playful wig) gave Strange a furious stare. "Upon whose authority is the King outside?" he demanded.

Strange shrugged. "Mine, I suppose."

"You! Who are you?"

Not liking the manner in which he was addressed, Strange retorted, "Who are you?"

"I am Dr John Willis. This is my brother, Dr Robert Darling Willis. We are the King's physicians. We have charge of the King's person by order of the Queen's Council. No one is allowed to see His Majesty without our permission. I ask you again: who are you?"

"I am Jonathan Strange. I have come at the request of their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of York, Clarence, Sussex, Kent and Cambridge to see whether or not His Majesty might be cured by magic."

"Ha!" cried Dr John contemptuously. "Magic! That is chiefly used for killing Frenchmen, is it not?"

Dr Robert laughed in a sarcastic manner. But the effect of cold, scientific disdain was rather spoilt when his boots suddenly carried him off with such force that he banged his nose against a tree.

"Well, Magician!" said Dr John. "You mistake your man if you think you may mistreat me and my servants with impunity. You will admit, I dare say, that you glued the doors of the Castle shut by magic, so that my men could not prevent you leaving?"

"Certainly not!" declared Strange. "I did nothing of the sort! I
might
have done it," he conceded, "if there had been any need. But your men are as idle as they are impertinent! When His Majesty and I left the Castle they were nowhere to be seen!"

The first madhouse attendant (the one with a face like a Cheshire cheese) almost exploded upon hearing this. "That is not true!" he cried. "Dr John, Dr Robert, I beg that you will not listen to these lies! Martin here," he indicated the other madhouse attendant, "has had his voice entirely taken from him. He could not make a sound to raise the alarm!" The other madhouse attendant mouthed and gestured furiously in confirmation. "As for me, sir, I was in the passageway at the bottom of the stairs, when the door opened at the top. I was just readying myself to speak to this magician — and some strong words I was going to give him too, sir, on your behalf — when I was pulled by magic into a broom cupboard and the door shut fast upon me . . ."

"What nonsense!" cried Strange.

"Nonsense, is it?" cried the man. "And I suppose you did not make the brooms in the cupboard beat me! I am all over bruises."

This, at least, was perfectly true. His face and hands were covered in red marks.

"There, Magician!" cried Dr John, triumphantly. "What do you say now? Now that all your tricks are exposed?"

"Oh, really!" said Strange. "He has done that to himself to make his story more convincing!"

The King blew a vulgar noise on his flute.

"Be assured," said Dr John, "that the Queen's Council will soon hear of your impudence!" Then, turning away from Strange, he cried out, "Your Majesty! Come here!"

The King skipped nimbly behind Strange.

"You will oblige me by returning the King to my care," said Dr John.

"I will do no such thing," declared Strange.

"And you know how lunatics should be treated, do you?" said Dr Robert with a sneer. "You have studied the matter?"

"I know that to keep a man without companionship, to deny him exercise and a change of air cannot possibly cure any thing," said Strange. "It is barbaric! I would not keep a dog so."

"In speaking as you do," added Dr Robert, "you merely betray your ignorance. The solitude and tranquility of which you complain so vigorously are the cornerstones of our whole system of treating the King."

"Oh!" said Strange. "You call it a system, do you? And what does it consist of, this system?"

"There are three main principles," declared Dr Robert. "Intimidation . . ."

The King played a few sad notes upon his flute . . .

". . . isolation . . ."

. . . which became a lonely little tune . . .

". . . and restraint."

. . . ending in a long note like a sigh.

"In this way," continued Dr Robert, "all possible sources of excitement are suppressed and the patient is denied material with which to construct his fantasies and improper notions."

"But in the end," added Dr John, "it is by the imposition of his will upon his patient that the doctor effects his cure. It is the forcefulness of the doctor's own character which determines his success or failure. It was observed by many people that our father could subdue lunatics merely by fixing them with his eye."

"Really?" said Strange, becoming interested in spite of himself. "I had never thought of it before, but something of the sort is certainly true of magic. There are all sorts of occasions when the success of a piece of magic depends upon the forcefulness of the magician's character."

"Indeed?" said Dr John, glancing briefly to his left.

"Yes. Take Martin Pale for example. Now he . . ." Strange's eyes involuntarily followed where Dr John had looked. One of the madhouse attendants — the one who could not speak — was creeping around the ornamental pool towards the King with a pale-coloured something in his hands. Strange could not think at first what it could be. And then he recognized it. It was a strait waistcoat.

Several things happened at once. Strange shouted something — he did not know what — the other madhouse attendant lunged towards the King — both Willises attempted to grab Strange — the King blew piercing shrieks of alarm on his flute — and there was an odd noise as if a hundred or so people had all cleared their throats at once.

Everyone stopped and looked about them. The sound appeared to have come from the little stone pavilion at the centre of the frozen pool. Suddenly out of the mouths of each stone creature a dense white cloud appeared, as if they had all exhaled at once. The breath-clouds glittered and sparkled in the thin, misty light, and then fell upon the ice with a faint tinkling sound.

There was a silence, followed immediately by a horrible sound like blocks of marble being ripped apart. Then the stone creatures tore themselves from the walls of the pavilion and began to crawl and waddle down and across the ice towards the Willises. Their blank stone eyes rolled in their sockets. They opened their stone mouths and from every stone throat came a plume of water. Stone tails snaked from side to side and stone legs went stiffly up and down. The lead pipes which conducted water to their mouths extended magically behind them.

The Willises and the madhouse attendants stared, quite unable to comprehend what was happening. The grotesque creatures crawled, dragging their pipes behind them and dousing the Willises with water. The Willises shrieked and leapt about, more from fright than because of any real hurt they had sustained.

The madhouse attendants ran away and as to the Willises remaining any longer with the King, there could be no question of it. In the cold air their drenched clothes were turning icy.

"Magician!" cried Dr John, as he turned to run back to the Castle. "Why! It is just another name for liar! Lord Liverpool shall know of it, Magician! He shall know how you use the King's physicians! Ow! Ow!" He would have said more but the stone figures on the roof of the pavilion had stood up and begun pelting him with stones.