Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell Part 25

"No, I do not."

"Have you found Vinculus's book?" asked Lascelles.

"No, I have not."

"Tut," said Lascelles. He eyed Childerma.s.s disapprovingly. "If you take my advice, Mr Norrell, you will not permit Mr Childerma.s.s to waste any more time upon Vinculus. No one has heard or seen any thing of him for years. He is probably dead."

Childerma.s.s sat down upon the sopha like a man who had a perfect right to do so and said, "The cards say he is not dead. The cards say he is still alive and still has the book."

"The cards! The cards!" cried Mr Norrell. "I have told you a thousand times how I detest any mention of those objects! You will oblige me by removing them from my house and never speaking of them again!"

Childerma.s.s threw his master a cool look. "Do you wish to hear what I have learnt or not?" he asked.

Mr Norrell nodded sullenly.

"Good," said Childerma.s.s. "In your interest, Mr Norrell, I have taken care to improve my acquaintance with all Vinculus's wives. It has always seemed to me nigh on impossible that one of them did not know something that would help us. It seemed to me that all I had to do was to go with them to enough gin-houses, buy them enough gin, and let them talk, and eventually one of them would reveal it to me. Well, I was right. Three weeks ago Nan Purvis told me a story which finally put me on the track of Vinculus's book."

"Which one is Nan Purvis?" inquired Lascelles.

"The first. She told me something that happened twenty or thirty years ago when Vinculus and she were first married. They had been drinking at a gin-house. They had spent their money and exhausted their credit and it was time to return to their lodgings. They staggered along the street and in the gutter they saw a creature even worse for drink than themselves. An old man was lying there, dead drunk. The filthy water flowed around him and over his face, and it was only by chance that he did not drown. Something about this wretch caught Vinculus's eye. It seemed that he recognized him. He went and peered at him. Then he laughed and gave the old man a vicious kick. Nan asked Vinculus who the old man was. Vinculus said his name was Clegg. She asked how he knew him. Vinculus replied angrily that he did not know Clegg. He said he had never known Clegg! What was more, he told her, he was determined never to know him! In short there was no one in the world whom he despised more than Clegg! When Nan complained that this was not a very full explanation, Vinculus grudgingly said that the man was his father. After this he refused to say any more."

"But what has this to do with any thing?" interrupted Mr Norrell. "Why do you not ask these wives of Vinculus's about the book book?"

Childerma.s.s looked annoyed. "I did so, sir. Four years ago. You may remember I told you. None of them knew any thing about it."

With an exasperated wave of his hand Mr Norrell indicated that Childerma.s.s was to continue.

"Some months later Nan was in a tavern, listening to an account of a hanging at York that someone was reading from a newspaper. Nan loved to hear of a good hanging and this report particularly impressed her because the name of the man who had been executed was Clegg. It stuck in her mind and that evening she told Vinculus. To her surprize, she found that he already knew all about it and that it was indeed his father. Vinculus was delighted Clegg had been hanged. He said Clegg richly deserved it. He said Clegg had been guilty of a terrible crime the worst crime committed in England in the last hundred years."

"What crime?" asked Lascelles.

"At first Nan could not bring it to mind," said Childerma.s.s. "But with a little persistent questioning and the promise of more gin she remembered. He had stolen a book."

"A book!" exclaimed Mr Norrell.

"Oh, Mr Norrell!" cried Drawlight. "It must be the same book. It must be Vinculus's book!"

"Is it?" asked Mr Norrell.

"I believe so," said Childerma.s.s.

"But did this woman know what the book was?" said Mr Norrell.

"No, that was the end of Nan's information. So I rode north to York, where Clegg had been tried and executed, and I examined the records of the Quarter Sessions. The first thing I discovered was that Clegg was originally from Richmond in Yorkshire. Oh yes!" Here Childerma.s.s glanced meaningfully at Mr Norrell. "Vinculus is, by descent at least, a Yorkshireman.1 Clegg began life as a tightrope walker at the northern fairs, but as tightrope-walking is not a trade that combines well with drinking and Clegg was a famous drinker he was obliged to give it up. He returned to Richmond and hired himself out as a servant on a prosperous farm. He did well there and impressed the farmer with his cleverness, so that he began to be entrusted with more and more business. From time to time he would go drinking with bad companions and on these occasions he never stopped at one bottle or two. He drank until the spigots gave out and the cellars were emptied. He was mad-drunk for days and in that time he got up to all sorts of mischief thieving, gambling, fighting, destruction of property but he always made sure that these wild adventures took place far away from the farm and he always had some plausible excuse to explain his absence so that his master, the farmer, never suspected any thing was amiss, though the other servants knew all about it. The farmer's name was Robert Find-helm. He was a quiet, kindly, respectable sort of man the sort of man easily deceived by a rogue like Clegg. The farm had been in his family for generations, but once, long ago, it had been one of the granges of the Abbey of Easby . . ." Clegg began life as a tightrope walker at the northern fairs, but as tightrope-walking is not a trade that combines well with drinking and Clegg was a famous drinker he was obliged to give it up. He returned to Richmond and hired himself out as a servant on a prosperous farm. He did well there and impressed the farmer with his cleverness, so that he began to be entrusted with more and more business. From time to time he would go drinking with bad companions and on these occasions he never stopped at one bottle or two. He drank until the spigots gave out and the cellars were emptied. He was mad-drunk for days and in that time he got up to all sorts of mischief thieving, gambling, fighting, destruction of property but he always made sure that these wild adventures took place far away from the farm and he always had some plausible excuse to explain his absence so that his master, the farmer, never suspected any thing was amiss, though the other servants knew all about it. The farmer's name was Robert Find-helm. He was a quiet, kindly, respectable sort of man the sort of man easily deceived by a rogue like Clegg. The farm had been in his family for generations, but once, long ago, it had been one of the granges of the Abbey of Easby . . ."

Mr Norrell drew in his breath sharply and fidgeted in his chair.

Lascelles looked inquiringly at him.

"Easby Abbey was one of the foundations of the Raven King," explained Mr Norrell.

"As was Hurtfew," added Childerma.s.s.

"Indeed!" said Lascelles in surprize.2 "I confess that after all you have said about him, I am surprized that you live in a house so closely connected to him." "I confess that after all you have said about him, I am surprized that you live in a house so closely connected to him."

"You do not understand," said Mr Norrell, irritably. "We are speaking of Yorkshire, of John Uskgla.s.s's Kingdom of Northern England where he lived and ruled for three hundred years. There is scarcely a village, scarcely a field even, that does not have some close connexion with him."

Childerma.s.s continued. "Find helm's family possessed some-thing else that had once belonged to the Abbey a treasure that had been given into their keeping by the last Abbot and which was handed down from father to son with the land."

"A book of magic?" asked Norrell, eagerly.

"If what they told me in Yorkshire is true, it was more than a book of magic. It was The Book of Magic. A book written by the Raven King and set down in his own hand."

There was a silence.

"Is this possible?" Lascelles asked Mr Norrell.

Mr Norrell did not answer. He was sitting deep in thought, wholly taken up with this new, and not altogether pleasant, idea.

At last he spoke, but it was more as if he were speaking his thoughts out loud, rather than answering Lascelles's question. "A book belonging to Raven King or written by him is one of the great follies of English magic. Several people have imagined that they have found it or that they know where it is hidden. Some of them were clever men who might have written important works of scholarship but instead wasted their lives in pursuit of the King's book. But that is not to say that such a book might not exist somewhere . . ."

"And if it did exist," urged Lascelles, "and if it were found what then?"

Mr Norrell shook his head and would not reply.

Childerma.s.s answered for him. "Then all of English magic would have to be reinterpreted in the light of what was found there."

Lascelles raised an eyebrow. "Is this true?" he asked.

Mr Norrell hesitated and looked very much as if he would like to say that it was not.

"Do you you believe that this was the King's book?" Lascelles asked Childerma.s.s. believe that this was the King's book?" Lascelles asked Childerma.s.s.

Childerma.s.s shrugged. "Find helm certainly believed it. In Richmond I discovered two old people who had been servants in Findhelm's house in their youth. They said that the King's book was the pride of his existence. He was Guardian of The Book first, and all else husband, parent, farmer second." Childerma.s.s paused. "The greatest glory and the greatest burden given to any man in this Age," he mused. "Findhelm seems to have been a theoretical magician himself in a small way. He bought books about magic and paid a magician in Northallerton to teach him. But one thing struck me as very curious both these old servants insisted that Findhelm never read the King's book and had only the vaguest notion of what it contained."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr Norrell, softly.

Lascelles and Childerma.s.s looked at him.

"So he could not read it," said Mr Norrell. "Well, that is very . . ." He fell silent, and began to chew on his fingernails.

"Perhaps it was in Latin," suggested Lascelles.

"And why do you a.s.sume that Findhelm did not know Latin?" replied Childerma.s.s with some irritation. "Just because he was a farmer . . ."

"Oh! I meant no disrespect to farmers in general, I a.s.sure you," laughed Lascelles. "The occupation has its utility. But farmers are not in general known for their cla.s.sical scholarship. Would this person even have recognized Latin when he saw it?"

Childerma.s.s retorted that of course Findhelm would have recognized Latin. He was not a fool.

To which Lascelles coldly replied that he had never said he was.

The quarrel was becoming heated when they were both suddenly silenced by Mr Norrell saying slowly and thoughtfully, "When the Raven King first came into England, he could not read and write. Few people could in those days even kings. And the Raven King had been brought up in a fairy house where there was no writing. He had never even seen writing before. His new human servants shewed it to him and explained its purpose. But he was a young man then, a very young man, perhaps no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. He had already conquered kingdoms in two different worlds and he had all the magic a magician could desire. He was full of arrogance and pride. He had no wish to read other men's thoughts. What were other men's thoughts compared to his own? So he refused to learn to read and write Latin which was what his servants wanted and instead he invented a writing of his own to preserve his thoughts for later times. Presumably this writing mirrored the workings of his own mind more closely than Latin could have done. That was at the very beginning. But the longer he remained in England, the more he changed, becoming less silent, less solitary less like a fairy and more like a man. Eventually he consented to learn to read and write as other men did. But he did not forget his own writing the King's Letters, as it is called and he taught it to certain favoured magicians so that they might understand his magic more perfectly. Martin Pale mentions the King's Letters and so does Belasis, but neither of them had ever seen so much as a single penstroke of it. If a piece of it has survived and in the King's own hand, then certainly . . ." Mr Norrell fell silent again.

"Well, Mr Norrell," said Lascelles, "you are full of surprizes tonight! So much admiration for a man you have always claimed to hate and despise!"

"My admiration does not lessen my hatred one whit!" said Mr Norrell, sharply. "I said he was a great magician. I did not say he was a good man or that I welcomed his influence upon English magic. Besides what you have just heard was my private opinion and not for public circulation. Childerma.s.s knows. Childerma.s.s understands."

Mr Norrell glanced nervously at Drawlight, but Drawlight had stopped listening some time ago just as soon as he discovered that Childerma.s.s's story concerned no one in the fashionable world, but only Yorkshire farmers and drunk servants. At present he was busy polishing his snuff box with his handkerchief.

"So Clegg stole this book?" said Lascelles to Childerma.s.s. "Is that what you are going to tell us?"

"In a manner of speaking. In the autumn of 1754 Findhelm gave the book to Clegg and told him to deliver it to a man in the village of Bretton in the Derbyshire Peak. Why, I do not know. Clegg set off and on the second or third day of his journey he reached Sheffield. He stopped at a tavern, and there he fell in with a man, a blacksmith by trade, whose reputation as a drinker was almost as extraordinary as his own. They began a drinking contest that lasted two days and two nights. At first they simply drank to see which of them could drink the most, but on the second day they began to set each other mad, drunken challenges. There was a barrel of salted herrings in the corner. Clegg challenged the blacksmith to walk across a floor of herrings. An audience had gathered by this time and all the lookers-on and the loungers-about emptied out the herrings and paved the floor with fish. Then the blacksmith walked from one end of the room to the other till the floor was a stinking mess of pulped fish and the blacksmith was b.l.o.o.d.y from head to foot with all the falls he had taken. Then the blacksmith challenged Clegg to walk along the edge of the tavern roof. Clegg had been drunk for a whole day by this time. Time after time the onlookers thought he was about to fall and break his worthless neck, but he never did. Then Clegg challenged the blacksmith to roast and eat his shoes which the blacksmith did and finally, the blacksmith challenged Clegg to eat Robert Find-helm's book. Clegg tore it into strips and ate it piece by piece."

Mr Norrell gave a cry of horror. Even Lascelles blinked in surprize.

"Days later," said Childerma.s.s, "when Clegg awoke he realized what he had done. He made his way down to London and four years after that he tumbled a serving girl in a Wapping tavern, who was Vinculus's mother."

"But surely the explanation is clear!" cried Mr Norrell. "The book is not lost at all! The story of the drinking contest was a mere invention of Clegg's to blind Findhelm to the truth! In reality he kept the book and gave it to his son! Now if we can only discover . . ."

"But why?" said Childerma.s.s. "Why should he go to all this trouble in order to procure the book for a son he had never seen and did not care about? Besides Vinculus was not even born when Clegg set off on the road to Derbyshire."

Lascelles cleared his throat. "For once, Mr Norrell, I agree with Mr Childerma.s.s. If Clegg still had the book or knew where it was to be found, then surely he would have produced it at his trial or tried to use it to bargain for his life."

"And if Vinculus had profited so much from his father's crime," added Childerma.s.s, "why did he hate his father? Why did he rejoice when his father was hanged? Robert Findhelm was quite sure that the book was destroyed that is plain. Nan told me Clegg had been hanged for stealing a book, but the charge Robert Findhelm brought against him was not theft. The charge Findhelm brought against him was book-murder. Clegg was the last man in England to be hanged for book-murder."3 "So why does Vinculus claim to have this book if his father ate it?' said Lascelles in a wondering tone. "The thing is not possible." "Somehow Robert Findhelm's inheritance has pa.s.sed to Vinculus, but how it happened I do not pretend to understand," said Childerma.s.s.

"What of the man in Derbyshire?" asked Mr Norrell, suddenly. "You said that Findhelm was sending the book to a man in Derbyshire."

Childerma.s.s sighed. "I pa.s.sed through Derbyshire on my way back to London. I went to the village of Bretton. Three houses and an inn high on a bleak hill. Whoever the man was that Clegg was sent to seek out, he is long dead. I could discover nothing there."

Stephen Black and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair were seated in the upper room of Mr Wharton's coffee-house in Oxford-street where the Peep-O'Day-Boys met.

The gentleman was speaking, as he often did, of his great affection for Stephen."Which reminds me,"he said; "I have been meaning for many months to offer you an apology and an explanation."

"An apology to me, sir?"

"Yes, Stephen. You and I wish for nothing in the world so much as Lady Pole's happiness, yet I am bound by the terms of the magician's wicked agreement to return her to her husband's house each morning where she must while away the long day until evening. But, clever as you are, you must surely have observed that there are no such constraints upon you and I dare say you are wondering why I do not take you away to Lost-hope House to be happy for ever and for ever."

"I have wondered about that, sir," agreed Stephen. He paused because his whole future seemed to depend upon the next question. "Is there something which prevents you?"

"Yes, Stephen. In a way there is."

"I see," said Stephen. "Well, that is most unfortunate."

"Would not you like to know what it is?" asked the gentleman.

"Oh yes, sir! Indeed, sir!"

"Know then," said the gentleman, putting on grave and important looks quite unlike his usual expression, "that we fairy-spirits know something of the future. Often Fate chuses us as her vessels for prophecy. In the past we have lent our aid to Christians to allow them to achieve great and n.o.ble destinies Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, William Shakespeare, John Wesley and so forth.4 But often our knowledge of things to come is misty and . . ." The gentleman gestured furiously as if he were brushing away thick cobwebs from in front of his face. ". . . imperfect. Out of my dear love for you, Stephen, I have traced the smoke of burning cities and battlefields and prised dripping, b.l.o.o.d.y guts out of dying men to discover your future. You are indeed destined to be a king! I must say that I am not in the least surprized! I felt strongly from the first that you should be a king and it was most unlikely that I should be wrong. But more than this, I believe I know which kingdom is to be yours. The smoke and guts and all the other signs state quite clearly that it is to be a kingdom where you have already been! A kingdom with which you are already closely connected." But often our knowledge of things to come is misty and . . ." The gentleman gestured furiously as if he were brushing away thick cobwebs from in front of his face. ". . . imperfect. Out of my dear love for you, Stephen, I have traced the smoke of burning cities and battlefields and prised dripping, b.l.o.o.d.y guts out of dying men to discover your future. You are indeed destined to be a king! I must say that I am not in the least surprized! I felt strongly from the first that you should be a king and it was most unlikely that I should be wrong. But more than this, I believe I know which kingdom is to be yours. The smoke and guts and all the other signs state quite clearly that it is to be a kingdom where you have already been! A kingdom with which you are already closely connected."

Stephen waited.

"But do you not see?" cried the gentleman, impatiently. "It must be England! I cannot tell you how delighted I was when I learnt this important news!"

"England!" exclaimed Stephen.

"Yes, indeed! Nothing could be more beneficial for England herself than that you should be her King. The present King is old and blind and as for his sons, they are all fat and drunk! So now you see why I cannot take you away to Lost-hope. It would be wholly wrong of me to remove you from your rightful kingdom!"

Stephen sat for a moment, trying to comprehend. "But might not the kingdom be somewhere in Africa?" he said at last. "Perhaps I am destined to find my way back there and perhaps by some strange portent the people will recognize me as the descendant of one of their kings?"

"Perhaps," said the gentleman, doubtfully. "But, no! That cannot be. For you see it is a kingdom where you you have have already already been been. And you never were in Africa. Oh, Stephen! How I long for your wonderful destiny to be accomplished. On that day I shall ally my many kingdoms to Great Britain and you and I shall live in perfect amity and brotherhood. Think how our enemies will be confounded! Think how eaten up with rage the magicians will be! How they will curse themselves that they did not treat us with more respect!"

"But I think that you must be mistaken, sir. I cannot rule England. Not with this . . ." He spread out his hands in front of him. Black Black skin skin, he thought. Aloud he continued, "Only you, sir, with your partiality for me, could think such a thing possible. Slaves do not become kings, sir."

"Slave, Stephen? Whatever do you mean?"

"I was born into slavery, sir. As are many of my race. My mother was a slave on an estate in Jamaica that Sir Walter's grandfather owned. When his debts grew too great Sir William went to Jamaica to sell the estate and one of the possessions which he brought back with him was my mother. Or rather he intended to bring her back to be a servant in his house, but during the voyage she gave birth to me and died."

"Ha!" exclaimed the gentleman in triumph. "Then it is exactly as I have said! You and your estimable mother were enslaved by the wicked English and brought low by their machinations!"

"Well, yes, sir. That is true in a sense. But I am not a slave now. No one who stands on British soil can be a slave. The air of England is the air of liberty. It is a great boast of Englishmen that this is so." And And yet yet, he thought, they they own own slaves slaves in in other other countries. countries. Out loud he said, "From the moment that Sir William's valet carried me as a tiny infant from the ship I was free." Out loud he said, "From the moment that Sir William's valet carried me as a tiny infant from the ship I was free."

"Nevertheless we should punish them!" cried the gentleman. "We can easily kill Lady Pole's husband, and then I will descend into h.e.l.l and find his grandfather, and then . . ."

"But it was not Sir William and Sir Walter who did the enslaving," protested Stephen. "Sir Walter has always been very much opposed to the slave trade. And Sir William was kind to me. He had me christened and educated."

"Christened? What? Even your name is an imposition of your enemies? Signifying slavery? Then I strongly advise you to cast it off and chuse another when you ascend the throne of England! What was the name your mother called you?"

"I do not know, sir. I am not sure that she called me any thing."

The gentleman narrowed his eyes as a sign that he was thinking hard. "It would be a strange sort of mother," he mused, "that did not name her child. Yes, there will be a name that belongs to you. Truly belongs to you. That much is clear to me. The name your mother called you in her heart during those precious moments when she held you in her arms. Are you not curious to know what it was?"

"Certainly, sir. But my mother is long dead. She may never have told that name to another soul. Her own name is lost. Once when I was a boy I asked Sir William, but he could not remember it."

"Doubtless he knew it well, but in his malice would not tell it to you. It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable n.o.bility of character. Me, in fact. Yes, that is what I will do. As a token of the love I bear you, I will find your true name!"

1 Yorkshire was part of the Raven King's kingdom of Northern England. Childerma.s.s and Norrell's respect for Vinculus would have increased a little, knowing that he was, like them, a Northerner.

2 Many people besides Lascelles remarked upon the odd circ.u.mstance that Mr Norrell who hated any mention of the Raven King should have lived in a house built of stones quarried upon the King's instruction, and upon land which the King had once owned and knew well.

3 Book-murder was a late addition to English magical law. The wilful destruction of a book of magic merited the same punishment as the murder of a Christian.