Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

“Oh, there you are!” he said, glancing sourly at Stephen. “A person may call and call in this house, but no one comes!” “I am very sorry, sir,” said Stephen, “but no one told me you were here.” He supposed the gentleman must be a guest of Sir Walter’s or Lady Pole’s – which explained the gentleman, but not the room. Gentlemen are often invited to stay in other people’s houses. Rooms hardly ever are.

“Yes, indeed! It is beautiful,” agreed the gentleman enthusiastically. “And very hard to make. The pigment must be mixed with the tears of spinsters of good family, who must live long lives of impeccable virtue and die without ever having had a day of true happiness!” “Poor ladies!” said Stephen. “I am glad it is so rare.” “Oh! It is not the tears that make it rare – I have bottles full of those – it is the skill to mix the colour.”

“Oh, no! It is a great treasure of mine that I wish Lady Pole to wear at my ball tonight!” He opened the box and shewed Stephen a small, white finger. At first this struck Stephen as a little unusual, but his surprize faded in a moment and if any one had questioned him about it just then, he would have replied that gentlemen often carried fingers about with them in little boxes and that this was just one of many examples he had seen. “Has it been in your family long, sir?” he asked, politely. “No, not long.”

he said in a shocked tone. “He ought to be the ruler of a vast estate! What is beauty for, I should like to know, if not to stand as a visible sign of one’s superiority to everyone else? But I see how it is! Your enemies have conspired together to deprive you of all your possessions and to cast you down among the ignorant and lowly!”

Everyone was dressed in the very height of fashion. The ladies wore gowns of the most exquisite colours (though, to own the truth, very few of them were colours that Stephen could remember having seen before).

She wore a gown the colour of storms, shadows and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.

It must be said, however, that Sir William Pole’s patronage was a somewhat mixed blessing. Though liberal in his praise and always courteous and condescending to the shop-people, he was scarcely ever known to pay a bill and when he died, the amount of money owing to Brandy’s was considerable. Mr Brandy, a short-tempered, pinched-faced, cross little old man, was beside himself with rage about it. He died shortly afterwards, and was presumed by many people to have done so on purpose and to have gone in pursuit of his noble debtor.

A heap of shining guineas was lying there. Mrs Brandy picked up one of the coins and examined it. It was as if she held a ball of soft yellow light with a coin at the bottom of it. The light was odd. It made Mrs Brandy, John and Toby look quite unlike themselves: Mrs Brandy appeared proud and haughty, John looked sly and deceitful and Toby wore an expression of great ferocity. Needless to say, all of these were qualities quite foreign to their characters. But stranger still was the transformation that the light worked upon the dozens of small mahogany drawers that formed one wall of the shop. Upon other evenings the gilt lettering upon the drawers proclaimed the contents to be such things as: Mace (Blades), Mustard (Unhusked), Nutmegs, Ground Fennel, Bay Leaves, Pepper of Jamaica, Essence of Ginger, Caraway, Peppercorns and Vinegar and all the other stock of a fashionable and prosperous grocery business. But now the words appeared to read: Mercy (Deserved), Mercy (Undeserved), Nightmares, Good Fortune, Bad Fortune, Persecution by Families, Ingratitude of Children, Confusion, Perspicacity and Veracity

Mrs Brandy’s acquaintance with Stephen Black had begun when Sir Walter had inherited his grandfather’s debts and Mrs Brandy had inherited her husband’s business. Every week or so Stephen had come with a guinea or two to help pay off the debt. Yet, curiously, Mrs Brandy was often reluctant to accept the money. “Oh! Mr Black!” she would say, “Pray put the money away again! I am certain that Sir Walter has greater need of it than I. We did such excellent business last week! We have got some carracca chocolate in the shop just at present, which people have been kind enough to say is the best to be had any where in London – infinitely superior to other chocolate in both flavour and texture! – and they have been sending for it from all over Town. Will not you take a cup, Mr Black?” Then Mrs Brandy would bring the chocolate in a pretty blue-and-white china chocolate-pot, and pour Stephen a cup, and anxiously inquire how he liked it; for it seemed that, even though people had been sending for it from all over Town, Mrs Brandy could not feel quite convinced of its virtues until she knew Stephen’s opinion. Nor did her care of him end with making him chocolate. She was solicitous for his health. If it happened to be a cold day, she would be concerned that he was not warm enough; if it were raining she would worry that he might catch a cold; if it were a hot, dry day she would insist that he sit by a window overlooking a little green garden to refresh himself. When it was time for him...

Stephen stepped into the queer light. The strange alterations which it had made to the appearance of Toby, John and Mrs Brandy were nothing to the changes it worked upon Stephen: his native handsomeness increased five-, seven-, tenfold; he acquired an expression of almost supernatural nobility; and, most extraordinary of all, the light somehow seemed to concentrate in a band around his brow so that he appeared to have been crowned with a diadem. Yet, just as before, none of those present noticed anything out of the common.

Mr Baillie regarded Sir Walter thoughtfully. He said he believed he understood the problem. Sir Walter and her ladyship had not been married long, had they? Well, Sir Walter must forgive him, but doctors were often obliged to say things which other people would not. Sir Walter was not accustomed to married life. He would soon discover that married people often quarrelled. It was nothing to be ashamed of – even the most devoted couples disagreed sometimes, and when they did it was not uncommon for one partner to pretend an indisposition. Nor was it always the lady that did so. Was there perhaps something that Lady Pole had set her heart upon? Well, if it were a small thing, like a new gown or a bonnet, why not let her have it since she wanted it so much? If it were a large thing like a house or a visit to Scotland, then perhaps it would be best to talk to her about it. Mr Baillie was sure that her ladyship was not an unreasonable person. There was a pause during which Sir Walter stared at Mr Baillie down his long nose. “Her ladyship and I have not quarrelled,” he said at last. Ah, said Mr Baillie in a kindly fashion. It might well appear to Sir Walter that there had been no quarrel. It was often the case that gentlemen did not observe the signs.

“When you said that you would take half the young lady’s life, I thought you would permit her to remain with her friends and family for half seventy-five years. I thought it would appear as if she had simply died!” “I never said so.” “You cheated me! You have not helped me at all! You risk undoing everything by your tricks!” cried Mr Norrell. The person in the window made a sound of disapproval. “I had hoped that I would find you more reasonable at our second meeting. Instead you are full of arrogance and unreasonable anger against me! I have kept to the terms of our agreement! I have done what you asked and taken nothing that was not mine to take! If you were truly concerned for the happiness of Lady Pole, you would rejoice that she is now placed among friends who truly admire and esteem her!”

Curiously, no one noticed that the strange malady that afflicted her ladyship was to a precision the same as that which afflicted Stephen Black. He too complained of feeling tired and cold, and on the rare occasions that either of them said any thing, they both spoke in a low, exhausted manner. But perhaps it was not so curious. The different styles of life of a lady and a butler tend to obscure any similarities in their situations. A butler has his work and must do it. Unlike Lady Pole, Stephen was not suffered to sit idly by the window, hour after hour, without speaking. Symptoms that were raised to the dignity of an illness in Lady Pole were dismissed as mere low spirits in Stephen. John Longridge, the cook at Harley-street, had suffered from low spirits for more than thirty years, and he was quick to welcome Stephen as a newcomer to the freemasonry of melancholy. He seemed glad, poor fellow, of a companion in woe. In the evenings when Stephen would sit at the kitchen table with his head buried in his hands, John Longridge would come and sit down on the other side of the table, and begin commiserating with him.

“I sit upon a black throne in the shadows,” muttered Vinculus, “but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it.

So Childermass set spies to follow Vinculus and the first and most surprizing discovery they made was that Vinculus was married. Indeed he was a great deal more married than most people. His wives were five in number and they were scattered throughout the various parishes of London and the surrounding towns and villages. The eldest was forty-five and the youngest fifteen and each was entirely ignorant of the existence of the other four. Childermass contrived to meet with each of them in turn. To two of them he appeared in the character of the unlikely milliner; to another he presented himself as a customs officer; for the benefit of the fourth he became a drunken, gambling rogue; and he told the fifth that, though he appeared to the world to be a servant of the great Mr Norrell of Hanover-square, he was in secret a magician himself. Two tried to rob him; one said she would tell him any thing he wanted to know as long as he paid for her gin; one tried to make him go with her to a Methodist prayer meeting; and the fifth, much to everyone’s surprize, fell in love with him. But in the end all his playacting was for nothing because none of them were even aware that Vinculus possessed such a thing as a book, let alone where he kept

Jonathan Strange was a very different sort of person from his father. He was not avaricious; he was not proud; he was not ill-tempered and disagreeable. But though he had no striking vices, his virtues were perhaps almost as hard to define. At the pleasure parties of Weymouth and in the drawing-rooms of Bath he was regularly declared to be “the most charming man in the world” by the fashionable people he met there, but all that they meant by this was that he talked well, danced well, and hunted and gambled as much as a gentleman should. In person he was rather tall and his figure was considered good. Some people thought him handsome, but this was not by any means the universal opinion. His face had two faults: a long nose and an ironic expression. It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.

It was not that she did not love him; he was quite certain that she did, but sometimes it seemed as if she had fallen in love with him for the sole purpose of quarrelling with him. He was quite at a loss to account for it. He believed that he had done everything she wanted in the way of reforming his behaviour. His card-playing and other sorts of gambling had dwindled away almost to nothing and he drank very little now – scarcely more than a bottle a day. He had told her that he had no objection to going to church more if that would please her – as often, say, as once a week – twice, if she would like it better – but she said that she would leave such matters to his own conscience, that they were not the sort of thing that could be dictated by another person.

It was just that she wished he could find a better way to occupy his time. She did not mean to moralize and no one loved a holiday better than her, but perpetual holidays! Was that really what he wanted? Did that make him happy? He told her that he quite agreed with her and in the past year he had continually been forming plans to take up this or that profession or regular train of study. The plans themselves were very good. He thought he might seek out a destitute poetic genius and become his patron; he thought he would study law; look for fossils on the beach at Lyme Regis; buy an ironworks; study iron-founding; ask a fellow he knew about new methods of agriculture; study theology; and finish reading a fascinating work on engineering which he was almost certain he had put down on a little table at the furthest corner of his father’s library two or three years ago. But to each of these projected courses some formidable obstacle was found to exist. Destitute poetic geniuses were harder to come by than he had imagined;1 lawbooks were dull; he could not remember the name of the fellow who knew about agriculture; and the day that he intended to start for Lyme Regis it was raining heavily. And so on and so on. He told the young lady that he heartily wished that he had gone into the Navy years ago. Nothing in the world would have suited him so well! But his father would never have agreed to it and he was twenty-eight now. It was far too late to take up a naval career.

Upon the first day they endured nothing but the commonplace adventures which befall any traveller: they quarrelled with a man who set his dog to bark at them for no reason and there was an alarm about Strange’s horse which began to shew signs of being sickly and which then, upon further investigation, was discovered to be in perfect health. On the morning of the second day they were riding through a pretty landscape of gently sloping hills, winter woods and prosperous-looking, tidy farms. Jeremy Johns was occupied in practising the correct degree of haughtiness for the servant of a gentleman newly come into an extensive property and Jonathan Strange was thinking about Miss Woodhope.

But he had some doubts about the friends with whom she was staying. They were a clergyman and his wife. He knew nothing of them, but he had the natural distrust that a young, rich, self-indulgent man feels for members of the clergy. Who could say what notions of extraordinary virtue and unnecessary self-sacrifice they might be daily imparting to her?

Catching sight of a man ploughing a field, he was reminded of the families who lived upon his land and whose welfare had always been cause for concern to Miss Woodhope. An ideal conversation began to develop in his head. And what are your intentions regarding your tenants? she would ask – Intentions? he would say – Yes, she would say. How will you ease their burdens? Your father took every penny he could from them. He made their lives miserable – I know he did, Strange would say, I have never defended my father’s actions – Have you lowered the rents yet? she would say. Have you talked to the parish council? Have you thought about almshouses for the old people and a school for the children? “It is really quite unreasonable for her to be talking of rents, almhouses and a school,” thought Strange gloomily. “After all, my father only died last Tuesday.”

“It is altogether too dangerous. I will begin with light, indifferent subjects – the adventures of this journey for example. Now, what has happened that will amuse her?” He looked up. Dark, dripping trees surrounded him. “There must have been something.” He remembered a windmill he had seen near Hereford with a child’s red cloak caught up on one of the sails. As the sails turned the cloak was one moment being dragged through the slush and the mud and the next flying through the air like a vivid scarlet flag. “Like an allegory of something or other. Then I can tell her about the empty village and the children at the window peeping out between the curtains, one with a doll in her hand and the other with a wooden horse. Next come the silent crowd with their weapons and the man beneath the hedge.” Oh! she was certain to say, Poor man! What happened to him? – I do not know, Strange would say. But surely you stayed to help him, she would say. No, Strange would say. Oh!, she would say … “Wait!” cried Strange, reining in his horse. “This will not do at all! We must go back. I do not feel easy in my mind about the man under the hedge.”

“I see,” interrupted Strange. “And which am I, the first or the second? No, do not tell me. It does not matter. Both sound entirely dreadful. For someone who is anxious that I should become a magician, I must say you do not make the life sound very appealing. I hope to be married soon and a life spent in dark woods surrounded by thieves and murderers would be inconvenient to say the least. I suggest you chuse someone else.” “I did not chuse you, Magician! You were chosen long ago.” “Well, whoever it was, they will be disappointed.”

“I do not know any magic!” Vinculus paused. He looked as if he was prepared to concede that this might be a legitimate obstacle to Strange’s becoming a great magician. Happily the solution occurred to him immediately; he stuck his hand into the breast of his coat and pulled out some sheets of paper with bits of straw sticking to them. “Now,” he said, looking even more mysterious and impressive than before, “I have here some spells which … No, no! I cannot give them to you!” (Strange had reached out to take them.) “They are precious objects. I endured years of torment and suffered great ordeals in order to possess them.” “How much?” said Strange. “Seven shillings and sixpence,” said Vinculus. “Very well.” “Surely you do not intend to give him any money, sir?” asked Jeremy Johns. “If it will stop him talking to me, then, yes, certainly.”

But he soon discovered that comfort and tranquillity were poor substitutes for Miss Woodhope’s company and so he cancelled the dinner and went immediately to the house of Mr and Mrs Redmond in order to begin being unhappy as soon as possible. He found only the ladies at home, Mrs Redmond and Miss Woodhope. Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation and so it will come as no surprize to my readers to discover that Strange’s musings concerning Miss Woodhope had produced a most inexact portrait of her. Though his imaginary conversations might be said to describe her opinions, they were no guide at all to her disposition and manners. It was not her habit to harass recently bereaved persons with demands that they build schools and almshouses. Nor did she find fault with everything they said. She was not so unnatural.

Under other circumstances she would have been puzzled to know what to say to a man of the world like Jonathan Strange, but happily his father had just died and that provided a subject.

“A magician?” said Henry, quite astonished. “Why should you want to do that?” Strange paused. He did not wish to tell his real reason – which was to impress Arabella with his determination to do something sober and scholarly – and so he fell back upon the only other explanation he could think of. “I met a man under a hedge at Monk Gretton who told me that I was a magician.” Mr Redmond laughed, approving the joke. “Excellent!” he said. “Did you, indeed?” said Mrs Redmond. “I do not understand,” said Henry Woodhope. “You do not believe me, I suppose?” said Strange to Arabella. “Oh, on the contrary, Mr Strange!” said Arabella with an amused smile. “It is all of a piece with your usual way of doing things. It is quite as strong a foundation for a career as I should expect from you.”

“What are they for?” “I do not know. I have not read them yet.” Jonathan Strange took the three spells Vinculus had given him out of his breast pocket and gave them to her to look at. “They are very dirty,” said Arabella. “Oh! We magicians do not regard a little dirt. Besides I dare say they are very old. Ancient, mysterious spells such as these are often …” “The date is written at the top of them. 2nd February 1808. That is two weeks ago.”

“But what of the last spell? One Spell to Discover what My Enemy is doing Presently. I think you can have no objection to that? Let me do the last spell.” “But will it work? You do not have any enemies, do you?” “None that I know of. And so there can be no harm in attempting it, can there?”

“Why is he your enemy?” asked Arabella. “I have not the least idea.” “Do you owe him money, perhaps?” asked Mr Redmond. “I do not think so.” “He could be a banker. It looks a little like a counting house,” suggested Arabella. Strange began to laugh. “Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.”

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

The truth is that historians of magic still argue over its significance – and some will be quick to tell you that it is of no significance whatsoever. No great events in English magical history took place there; furthermore, of the two magicians who lived in the house, one was a charlatan and the other was a woman – neither attribute likely to recommend its possessor to the gentleman-magicians and gentleman-historians of recent years– and yet for two centuries the Shadow House has been known as one of the most magical places in England.

If we measure a magician’s success by how much magic he does, then Absalom was no magician at all, for his spells hardly ever took effect. However, if instead we examine the amount of money a magician makes and allow that to be our yardstick, then Absalom was certainly one of the greatest English magicians who ever lived, for he was born in poverty and died a very rich man.

“The dream, sir, was mine! I lay down on purpose to dream it. I can bring proofs, witnesses that the dream was mine. Mr Woodhope,” he indicated his companion, “saw me do it. Mr Woodhope is a clergyman – the rector of a parish in Gloucestershire – I cannot imagine that his word could be doubted! I am rather of the opinion that in England a gentleman’s dreams are his own private concern. I fancy there is a law to that effect and, if there is not, why, Parliament should certainly be made to pass one immediately! It ill becomes another man to invite himself into them.”

No one had any objection to Strange’s waiting – providing he did not get in their way. But from the first moment of his entering the house Strange found himself subject to that peculiarly uncomfortable Natural Law which states that whenever a person arrives at a place where he is not known, then wherever he stands he is sure to be in the way.

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Shortly after this the British Headquarters received intelligence of something that had befallen a large part of the French Army as it was marching from Guarda to Sabugal. A patrol had been sent out to look at the road between the two towns, but some Portuguese had come along and told the patrol that this was one of the English magician’s roads and was certain to disappear in an hour or two taking everyone upon it to Hell – or possibly England. As soon as this rumour reached the ears of the soldiers they declined absolutely to walk along the road – which was in fact perfectly real and had existed for almost a thousand years. Instead the French followed some serpentine route over mountains and through rocky valleys that wore out their boots and tore their clothes and delayed them for several days. Lord Wellington could not have been more delighted.

“Battlefields!” said Lady Pole. “I know only too well what that is like. To glance out of a window and see nothing but broken bones and rusting armour everywhere one looks! It is a very melancholy sight. I hope you will not find it too distressing.” “Broken bones and armour?” echoed Arabella. “No, indeed. Your ladyship misunderstands me. The battles were all long ago. There is nothing to see – certainly nothing to distress one.” “And yet, you know,” continued Lady Pole, scarcely attending to her, “battles have been fought at some time or other almost everywhere. I remember learning in my schoolroom how London was once the scene of a particularly fierce battle. The people were put to death in horrible ways and the city was burnt to the ground. We are surrounded by the shadows of violence and misery all the days of our life and it seems to me that it matters very little whether any material sign remains or not.” Something changed in the room. It was as if cold, grey, beating wings had passed over their heads or as if someone had walked through the mirrors and cast a shadow into the room. It was an odd trick of the light which Arabella had often observed when she sat with Lady Pole. Not knowing what else to attribute it to, she supposed it must be because there were so many mirrors in the room.

“Happily, it is what you and I have never known any thing of,” she finished up, a little breathless, “to have one’s peace continually cut up by the sight of one’s husband paying attentions to other women.” “I suppose so,” answered Lady Pole, somewhat doubtfully. This annoyed Arabella. She tried to make allowances for all Lady Pole’s oddities, but she found it rather hard to forgive her her habitual coolness towards her husband. Arabella could not visit at Harley-street as often as she did without being aware of how very devoted Sir Walter was to Lady Pole. If he ever thought that any thing might bring her pleasure or ease her sufferings in the slightest, then that thing was done in an instant, and Arabella could never observe without a pang the very meagre return he got for his pains. It was not that Lady Pole shewed any dislike towards him; but sometimes she scarcely seemed to know that he was there. “Oh! But you do not consider what a blessing it is,” said Arabella. “One of the best blessings of existence.” “What is?” “Your husband’s love.” Lady Pole looked surprized. “Yes, he does love me,” she said at last. “Or at least he tells me that he does. But what good is that to me? It has never warmed me when I was cold – and I always am cold, you know. It has never shortened a long, dreary ball by so much as a minute or stopped a procession through long, dark, ghostly corridors. It has never saved me from any misery at all. Has the love of your husband ever saved you from any...

More than one soldier wondered if, at last, the French had found a magician of their own; the French infantrymen appeared much taller than ordinary men and the light in their eyes as they drew closer burnt with an almost supernatural fury. But this was only the magic of Napoleon Buonaparte, who knew better than any one how to dress his soldiers so they would terrify the enemy, and how to deploy them so that any onlooker would think them indestructible.

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.

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.

“Perhaps when we get home we shall find Mr Strange with papa,” she said. “Perhaps,” said Miss Greysteel. “Or maybe he has gone to play billiards with Lord Byron again,” said Aunt Greysteel. “It is odd that they should be friends. They seem such very different gentlemen.” “Oh, indeed! Though Mr Strange told me that he found Lord Byron a great deal less agreeable when he met him in Swisserland. His lordship was with some other poetical people who claimed all his attention and whose company he clearly preferred to that of any one else. Mr Strange says that he was barely civil.” “Well, that is very bad. But not at all surprizing. Should not you be afraid to look at him, my love? Lord Byron, I mean. I think that perhaps I might – a little.” “No, I should not be afraid.” “Well, my love, that is because you are more clear-headed and steady than other people. Indeed I do not know what there is in the world that you would be afraid of.” “Oh! I do not think it is because of any extraordinary courage on my part. As to extraordinary virtue – I cannot tell. I was never yet much tempted to do any thing very bad. It is only that Lord Byron could never have any power over me or sway the least of my thoughts or actions. I am quite safe from him. But that is not to say that there might not be someone in the world – I do not say that I have seen him yet – whom I would be a little afraid to look at sometimes – for fear that he might be looking sad – or lost – or thoughtful, or – what, you kno...

“He had a wife, you know,” he remarked to the little wooden figure. He brought his hand near to the candlelight to examine his nails. “Arabella Woodhope. The most charming girl in all the world. But dead. Dead, dead, dead.” He picked up a nail-buffer from the table and began to polish his nails with it. “In fact, now that I come to think of it, was I not in love with her myself? I think I must have been. She had the sweetest way of saying my name and smiling at the same time, and every time she did so, my heart turned over.” He laughed. “You know, it is really very ridiculous, but I cannot actually remember what my name is. Laurence? Arthur? Frank? I wish Arabella were here. She would know. And she would tell me too! She is not one of those women who tease one and insist upon making a game of everything long after it has ceased to be amusing. By God, I wish she were here! There is an ache here.” He tapped his heart. “And something hot and hard inside here.” He tapped his forehead.

It was a favourite joke afterwards in all the gentlemen’s clubs that the most extraordinary aspect of the whole business was not that Mr Norrell should have tried to acquire the letters, but that Scrope Davies – a notorious rake and drunk – should possess a Bible.

Drawlight had the strangest feeling. It was something he had felt before when magic was about to happen. Invisible doors seemed to be opening all around him; winds blew on him from far away, bringing scents of woods, moors and bogs. Images flew unbidden into his mind. The houses around him were no longer empty. He could see inside them as if the walls had been removed. Each dark room contained – not a person exactly – a Being, an Ancient Spirit. One contained a Fire; another a Stone; yet another a Shower of Rain; yet another a Flock of Birds; yet another a Hillside; yet another a Small Creature with Dark and Fiery Thoughts; and on and on. “What are they?” he whispered, in amazement. He realized that all the hairs on his head were standing on end as if he had been electrified. Then a new, different sensation took him: it was a sensation not unlike falling, and yet he remained standing. It was as if his mind had fallen down. He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the r...

The gentleman was already on the packhorse bridge. Stephen followed him and … … and everything changed. The sun came out from behind a cloud; it shone through the winter trees; hundreds of small, bright patches of sunlight appeared. The world became a kind of puzzle or labyrinth. It was like the superstition which says that one must not walk upon lines between flag stones – or the strange magic called the Doncaster Squares which is performed upon a board like a chessboard. Suddenly everything had meaning. Stephen hardly dared take another step. If he did so – if, for example, he stepped into that shadow or that spot of light, then the world might be forever altered. “Wait!” he thought, wildly. “I am not ready for this! I have not considered. I do not know what to do!” But it was too late. He looked up. The bare branches against the sky were a writing and, though he did not want to, he could read it. He saw that it was a question put to him by the trees. “Yes,” he answered them. Their age and their knowledge belonged to him. Beyond the trees was a high, snow-covered ridge, like a line drawn across the sky. Its shadow was blue upon the snow before it. It embodied all kinds of cold and hardness. It hailed Stephen as a King it had long missed. At a word from Stephen it would tumble down and crush his enemies. It asked Stephen a question. “Yes,” he told it. Its scorn and strength were his for the taking. The black beck beneath the packhorse bridge sang its question to him. “Yes...