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Gilbert Norrell stands before the window of his library, staring out over the river, the orchard, the copse on the hill that hides a small circle of standing stones, the church tower of the village beyond. The landscape drifts in and out, carried through the darkness by the rain. Every drop carries a piece of what the darkness hides and viewed together it creates the largest of watercolours smeared across the glass. He doesn’t really feel homesick; in fact it is only at times like this, when the darkness breaks, that he realises he knows this place well enough to make sense of the coloured smudges, to fill in the gaps. He had never, before this, stood at the window with the express purpose of looking out, not even as a boy. He’d stood here to get extra light to read by and he’d allowed himself to be called over when Childermass noticed something unusual, but he was never the kind to admire vistas. Nor had his uncle been; they had just lived their lives here, in these rooms, paying little attention to anything besides their books. Not to say, necessarily, that they had ignored each other. They might have done, if the servants hadn’t made a point of quietly pressuring them into talking – James especially, and it makes Norrell smile, slightly bitterly, to know that while his uncle had had James – sharp-witted if quiet, angular, willing and able to argue every single toss – he had had Childermass just the same.
But he has not got Childermass any more, nor no-one else to remind him what Hurtfew had been, what it could have been. He has Strange, but he has lost his footing in the process, lost the land he grew up in, lost the home his house had been, lost all that made him what he was. Besides, of course, magic. He had thought that would be enough to keep.
“Norrell!” Strange calls from behind him, and he turns. Strange is standing on a chair, holding a book in each hand. He has ceased bothering to properly dress and his waistcoat hangs open, jacket discarded somewhere and doubtless getting all full of stains and holes. His hair, always flirting with wildness, has gone the whole way now – he’s clearly not brushed it for days, and it gives him an air that Norrell supposes should properly be called Romantic.
“This book has mention of Hurtfew Abbey.”
Norrell is slightly nonplussed. “I have mentioned that an abbey stood here, have I not? I know I mentioned the orchard-”
Strange waves a hand, still holding a book. Norrell winces.
“I had not finished.”
“You seemed to have.”
“Well, I had not. The book says there was also a house attached-”
“Merely a small cottage, by all accounts.”
“-and that – now, please do not dismiss this out of hand, as you do-”
“I do not. I have never. I consider all parts of an issue before I judge it, it is merely that I do it at greater speed than you-”
“It says that there used to live in this house a family named Haythornthwaite, is that not yours?”
Strange butchers the name most dreadfully, and slightly scatter-brained from the shift from reverie to bickering it takes Norrell a moment to understand him.
“Haythornthwaite, yes. My mother’s family.”
“Except it – well, first it calls them Haythornthwaite, and then a generation later it refers to them as Haythornthwaite-Fairwater, without explanation. I had thought marriage, but he writes out the family tree and there are no Fairwaters to be seen. And then the generation after that it’s back to Haythornthwaite. No scandals in your history, are there? Unamicable divorces? Head-choppings-off?” This last he asks with a wide grin, a recently adopted habit he had begun so that Norrell could more easily follow when he was joking.
Still, Norrell does not smile. He does not particularly like reminding that his family has been here for longer than the house. He certainly does not like being reminded of the Fairwaters. Yet it seems the time, now, to call up those ghosts. Strange would only go looking for them, and given what had happened last time he went off without Norrell’s guidance perhaps it is best to show him.
“You might be able to find the answers in the portrait gallery,” Norrell says, hesitantly, hoarsely, “It’s been boarded up these past forty years, but you are enterprising enough to handle that I’m sure.”
Strange hops down from the chair, looking bright and slightly giddy with the pull of a new project, and he is just about to vanish out the door when Norrell clears his throat. Strange frowns; Norrell glances pointedly at Strange’s hands. Strange, slightly red, puts the books down, and then runs off to find the portrait gallery.
Norrell thinks, after he’s left, that perhaps he should have offered directions – but this way will keep Strange busy. Perhaps even so busy that he doesn’t disturb the dead and gone at their resting.
-
It takes what Strange supposes to be a good couple of hours to find and get into the portrait gallery. This part of the house is dark and deep with dust and Strange sneezes far too many times, magic spluttering and dying as he does. Eventually, however, he makes his way in, conjuring a little ball of daylight to aid him. It is longer than he expected, a long and slightly twisted corridor with art on the one wall and windows on the other, curtains of heavy green velvet pulled across. He walks a little way in, not really looking at the first few paintings, just glancing at them to guess their age and orient himself. The first that really catches him is a huge portrait of an equally large man, of Henry VIII proportions; he is seated against a plain background of dark grey shot through with a subtle turquoise that Strange only catches when the light shines against it in a certain way. The texture, he thinks, is almost like feathers. He shakes this off as fancy and examines the man’s face. His jaw is broad, his cheekbones wide and flatly drawn, his nose long and twisted with a break or two. His eyes are small and grey, almost swallowed by a great, proud brow and thick eyebrows. Only the eyes are Norrell’s, Strange thinks, and then looks to the name plate.
John Henry William Montgomery Fairwater Haythornthwaite, it reads, 1783.
This must be Norrell’s infamous uncle, Strange thinks, and there is Fairwater. Not vanished into history, then.
Strange wanders down to the next painting, of a pretty young lady in a pale dress. She, too, has been painted on the grey and turquoise background, and seemingly by the same, albeit less experienced, hand. She looks proud, he thinks; she holds her head high, and dark hair tumbles over her shoulders in soft, gentle curls. She has John Haythornthwaite’s nose but more delicately painted, and enough has been made of her cheekbones that her face balances. She has a high, almost medieval forehead, and her mouth is soft but small. She, too, has Norrell’s eyes. He almost feels like they can see him.
Branwen Catherine Alice Montgomery Fairwater Norrell nee Haythornthwaite, d. 1774. Completed 1775.
She could surely not be a day over thirty. Less, probably. She looks, in a very faint way, a little like Lady Pole. That same hardened look in a soft face. Strange, this time, takes longer to look for Norrell in this lady’s face, to see what his too-young mother left him. Without knowing he does it he traces his fingers over her painted jawline, tries to imagine Norrell’s in its place. Yet he cannot see it, cannot imagine Norrell’s dusty roundness in the face of this girl who looks like she ought to be called out of ballads, out of books. Strange shivers and moves on.
He spends a few moments on Norrell’s maternal grandparents, only long enough to note the continuation of those eyes and the shift to nee Montgomery. Branwen is something of a family name, it seems – Norrell’s grandmother has it, as well.
With Norrell’s great grandparents the 1600s open up, and the style shifts; the dark background melts away and they begin to be painted with tables of books, with silver basins, with raven banners. Ever hopeful, Strange thinks.
The eyes continue, cool, hard, blue-gray. Even the men of the family – all John, Bran, William, Gilbert, Thomas – have long, black, softly curled hair, enough for Strange to wonder what Norrell’s was like before he greyed. It amuses Strange that the further along the corridor he goes, the longer the hair gets. He pauses to glance at a portrait of a man in shimmering armour, half-laughs at the familiar name as he traces it with his fingers. Except the name has changed, he realises.
John Gilbert Bluewater Haythornthwight, he reads, and wonders where exactly the confusion came. The portrait before it reads Fairwater, still, but it cannot be a scribal error for the one after reads Bluewater, and so on for a good few yards’worth of faces. Then again the portraits shift, solidly Tudor now, and Strange takes care to read every name as he passes it. Bluewater turns, for a single generation, to Hurtswater, and then shifts to Glasswater for three or four. The eyes are still there, the raven banners become more prominent, and then, right at the end, hidden even more deeply in shadow, there hangs a portrait of a young man. A young man with stubborn cheekbones and a wry twist to his narrow, small mouth, a young man with Norrell’s eyes and dark hair down to his waist, a young man with a silver circlet tucked into his waves, all of Yorkshire painted in behind him.
John Uskglass, reads the plate beneath.
Strange feels frozen. This cannot imply what it seems to. This – it must be later, it must be a fancy of a later Haythornthwaite, to explain away the name. Perhaps to strengthen their claim to this particular scrap of land in later disputes, later wars. Strange stares for a second longer and then hurriedly walks back down the corridor, not quite running but almost, trying to escape the realisation.
Still he doesn’t step back out into the safety of Hurtfew when he reaches the other end of the corridor, for another portrait, one he hadn’t noticed, catches his eye.
This one is another young face – barely over sixteen, Strange would wager, high but soft cheekbones, a faint and awkward smile on his face. If fashion dictated this young man be bewigged he has ignored it, and the family’s dark hair falls loose to his shoulders. He has delicate glasses perched precariously on his nose, which look almost silly on him, and those same eyes shine with paint that seems still wet. He is, Strange would say, almost pretty, his features fine but running to softness, a lightness to him that seems – well, a lightness that reminds him of Branwen, a quality that suggests he isn’t really there, that he has been conjured rather than captured.
Bran Gilbert Martin Montgomery Fairwater Norrell, Strange reads with faint and ridiculous horror.
Then he runs.
-
Sometime later, about an hour and a half by Norrell’s reckoning, Strange stumbles back into the library. Norrell does not turn but hears him crash into the table, hears his rushed breath.
“You-” Strange starts, and Norrell does turn, then, just as Strange is bounding up the steps to him.
“Yes?” Norrell asks, and finds it rather harder than he had anticipated to keep a straight face. Strange is pale with shock but his cheeks are bright red and his hair is grey with dust, and he looks most comical all twisted with outrage.
Strange bends until they are almost nose to nose, and stares at him. Norrell leans back just a little so that he has space to breathe.
“Your hair,” Strange says.
“Youthful indiscretion.”
Strange splutters, and Norrell almost laughs. His practice at suppression for once comes in useful, for he manages to keep his face impassive.
Strange stares for a minute longer, and then something seems to occur to him, “Are those the same glasses?”
Norrell feels himself blush. “It is uneconomical to replace an item when you can employ magic to fix it.”
“You looked like him.”
“It runs in the family.”
Strange laughs, though it has a hysterical edge. He backs away, a little wobbly, and staggers about until he finally catches hold of a chair and sits. “Oh, God,” he whispers, through his laughter, “Oh, God, I cannot believe that you – you – of all possible people – Childermass, I could understand! Segundus! Drawlight, even!”
Norrell makes a noise of soft indignation and Strange waves him off.
“But you! You! Who spent so long ignoring him, ignoring his place in magic, so intent on-”
“If you could rip your father out of all that you were, would you? If you could erase him, erase the effect he had on the world-”
“It’s not the same thing-”
“It is to me,” Norrell whispers, “It was. I thought he would listen, because I was his, but he never did.”
“Perhaps he couldn’t,” Strange says, sobering now, resting his forehead on his hand, “Perhaps he would have, if he could.”
“Perhaps,” Norrell says, though the part of him that is still eighteen and mourning rebels against the admission, “Perhaps.”
Behind him, the rain stops and Yorkshire melts away. The darkness falls back into place, but softly, like falling feathers.
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