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Flora peered at the bowl. “Do you have enough yet?”
Arabella looked agitated. “I have thirty two and that is the whole harvest!” Her face, voice and composure were all cracking at the edges. She had overrun the garden with white rosebushes, but she had not managed to collect the fifty blooms she required from them.
“Are there not even any more buds?”
The other woman closed her eyes and shook her head. She had worked so hard and now everything was falling apart.
“Why don’t we grow some?” Flora suggested brightly.
“It’s not midsummer. I can’t.” Harvest’s Boon was singularly effective, but timing was key.
“Why don’t we use Jonesy’s Green Thumbs?”
Arabella rubbed the heel of her hand against her eyes. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Jonesy who used to tend the castle gardens. I talked to him. I think he’s dead - but he was understandably guarded on the subject so I let it drop,” she added matter of factly. “But he has a marvelous spell for growing things - it’s not difficult at all…”
Arabella looked at Flora and couldn’t decide whether she was the more surprised that Flora should know just the spell she needed or that - quietly and without either Emma or she noticing - Flora had become a quite remarkable necromancer.
3rd Weirdsday of Stonember.
Hurfew has moved again.
We have yet to discover where we have been taken this time as it is well past the hour a gentleman ought trouble himself over such things. That is, if we magicians may still count ourselves gentlemen and if our reckoning of the hour is in any way to be believed. It does not much matter I suppose. It might be noon in truth, but that is a truth only the sun knows and is denied such as we. Still, we have taken supper; read and conversed a little by the fire, and Norrell has retired for the night, which places it at least past the hour I feel like laboring over maps and the true names of stars to discover our current whereabouts.
Our last trajectory was via Calcifer, if memory serves, a star that shines the oddest shade of blue. There is a legend that claims Calcifer is destined to fall and lose its heart to a magician. In Faery it is still quite the topic of debate as to whether this means the star is male or female. (Or, as I’ve heard, simply unutterably stupid.) The Fae are such an odd lot - and they do have the most contrary and convoluted opinions of English magicians.
Lord and Lady Amethyst Blayde - the last Fae we spoke with - treated us very well on account of ‘The Mad Magid Gwent’, a Welsh fellow who visited their estate some six hundred years ago and made himself very agreeable to them. His only foible being that he carried around the skull of his dead lover and often conversed with it. The Amethyst Blaydes wished to know whether I did such a thing. It would seem there are tales of the English magician losing his Reason, his Liberty and his Brightest Belle to the old king of Lost Hope.
I suppose something must have shown in my countenance because they were very swift to assure me that the Nameless Ebony King ruled there now and he was as wise and gracious as his predecessor was malicious and wicked. I believe they mean Stephen Black.
I assume also they meant well by all they said - they could not have known how tired and heart-sick the whole topic makes me. It has been four years, I suppose I ought not mind it by now. But anyone who thinks I’m a fellow who finds it so easy to come to peace with losing one’s wife does not know my character - and they patently have never met Arabella! Four brief years or four eternities: she is still my heart and soul.
Damn, this wine is not improving my mood.
I should go to bed - yet I am restless.
Perhaps I ought sit abed and compose poetry? There was a time I had a hankering to be a poet. There was a time I counted myself proficient at verse too. But there have been many times I have counted myself a lot of things and they have all proved as fleeting and insubstantial as each other in the end.
What am I in truth? Neither gentleman nor magician, married but a poor husband, a prisoner with the longest darkest chain that’s ever been fashioned I am a man who wished to walk the King’s Roads and to hell with the consequences. Well. In that I succeeded admirably.
Oh for heaven’s sake Jonathan! (I shall scold myself since no one else I heed is about at present.) You are in a very poor temper tonight!
I am, indeed I own I am quite guilty as charged. Some nights are darker than others and these moods come upon me. What was the Prince’s complaint? - not Hal, the other one.
I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. And indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air this brave o’erhanging firmament the majestical roof - which is cold and dead and lacks any warmth save for the mocking gazes of the stars from their lofty heights. They preen in the darkness and laugh at me as they glimmer. What I wouldn’t give for the Prince’s stale world filled with dusty people and foul air. Hamlet may think his existence hell but I have passed through Hell and Agrace to the Lands Beyond and I am starting to wonder what price I might pay - indeed what price I should cower from paying - to return home.
My heart is heavy and my thoughts black: I am not Hamlet but Faust.
Thankfully, Mephistopheles is a duke of Hell and cannot be summoned.
I am not certain that any demon can be summoned in truth. There was an essay fragment we found in Agrace written by someone in the court of Justinian II. It argued that Samael and his brethren were created as God’s thoughts given flesh - they had no free will of their own. (That was a boon given solely to the earthly races such as men and faeries.) If angels have no free will then they cannot rebel, only fight as instructed. In short, this fragment argued that Lucifer and his devils were simply angels fulfilling a different task and as such one couldn’t summon them any more than one could try to summon God. Any report of a demon or devil in Christian history was a faery or faery creature playing a trick upon the hapless would-be sorcerer.
I wonder what Henry would say to that? I’m not certain Henry approves of angels or demons and the like. He prefers his truths to be on a broader and flatter plain: God above, us below, and all those other things that poets, magicians or Catholics speak of swept off to one side.
Tha Young Magid At His True Love’s Grave.
“Qware ye be gaun ye broken man?
Qware ye be gaun?” qwath she.
“I am forgot an’ layd low, swete mayd,
An’ in hell I rest,” qwath he.
“Hell is struen wi’ tha bones
O’ magids such as thee.
Ye best wach y’ true taung if ye sport
Wi’ tha Fae an’ likes o’ me!”
He fixed her with an eye bright bold
Thow payl o’ brow wa he,
“I’d rather lye cold in ma grave
Than ever lye wi’ thee!”
“Lang ye rest there, fool magid!
Lang ye lay in hell,” curst she.
“For tha Seely mayd ye spurn’d
Hast in fury’s turn curst thee!”
Down he lay upon the graund
So wan an’ weak wa he
His cheek press’t t’ tha earthen mound
His brow crowned wi dark ivy.
Dear Lord, that’s awful - I’ve been reading too many ballads of late. We were told by the Grand Margrave that there are tales of a member of the Raven King’s court being afflicted as we are: one of his knights, a faery woman called Keziah.
The only reference I can find to her is in The King’s Defense of Endmost. It goes on for pages and there are plenty of references to her excellent good looks and battlefield fervor, but nothing that suggests she was ever imprisoned in a Pillar of Darkness. I might as well copy it here:
The King’s Defense of Endmost.
When captaines couragious, the King’s shining Host,
Did ride to the siege of the citty Endmost,
They mustred their souldiers to march at swift pace:
And the foremost in battle was Keziah Agrace.
Shee clothed herselfe from the top to the toe
In crimson the brightest, most seemelye to showe.
Loude cryed out her souldiers, and full they did say,
“Soe well thou becomest this gallant array!”
Then a faire shirt of male with rings interlace’d,
Wore the brave bonny lass Keziah Agrace.
A helmett of proof shee strait did provide,
A sword named Malaal shee girt by her side,
On her hand a goodly faire gauntlett and brace;
Oh, a brave bonny lass was Keziah Agrace.
Shee cheared her souldiers, that foughten for life,
With ancyent and standard, with drum and with fife,
"My souldiers," shee saith, "soe valiant and bold,
Nowe followe your captaine, whom you doe beholde;
First foremost in battel myselfe will I place!"
There was none ever like Keziah Agrace.
Shee led upp her souldiers in battaile array,
'Gainst three times theyr number by breake of the daye;
Shee laid death about her with blade and with mace
So fierce and determined Keziah Agrace.
Her looks they were proud her eyes dark helibore
Her black hair was elf-lock’d with blood and with gore
When brave Davis Wolfsblood was slaine in her sight,
Who was her true lover, her joy, and delight,
Because he was slaine with bloody disgrace,
Then vow’d to revenge him Keziah Agrace.
Then tooke shee her sword and her targe in her hand,
And mounting the walls all undaunted did stand,
There daring her foes to come thrice or come ace:
O what a brave captaine was Keziah Agrace!
Being falselye betrayed for lucre of hyre,
At length she was forced to make a retyre;
Her foes they besett her on everye side,
As thinking close siege shee cold never abide;
To beate down the walles and stones to debase:
But stoutlye deffyd them did Keziah Agrace.
"Saye, Raven King’s captaine, what woldest thou give
To ransome thy selfe, which else must not live?”
The enemy trembled to behold her dread face
Beautific in battle was Keziah Agrace!
“Oh fair mayd you still fight with might and with main
To slaughter such valor shall put us to shame!
Thy harte and thy weapons soe well do agree,
Come yield thy selfe quicklye, or slaine thou must bee."
“My sword at your feet? Death eyd rather embrace!”
Smiled sweetlye with venom Keziah Agrace.
“My lord hath heard tales of your great bravery
Hee will pardon your sins if his mistress you’ll bee.
Speake now and speake bold: what thinke ye of his case?
Will your heart bow to him, Keziah Agrace?
But this virtuous mayden despised them all,
"Ile nere sell my honour for purple nor pall:
A mayden of Agrace, sir, never will bee
The whore of a monarcke," so hottly quoth shee.
Then all her foes with shadow did shee efface
Hunger-dark commanding Keziah Agrace.
Obtenebre scour’d the fell battlefield bare
Ave Victor Corvus! horns and banners declare.
Called Scourge of His Enemies: finest in grace,
The ebon-haired mayden Keziah Agrace.
That bit at the end where she commands shadows to eat the enemy soldiers might be called relevant I suppose, but I really cannot see how it’s of any use. Unless we are perhaps meant to seek out Keziah and entreat her to use her magics to dispel the Darkness? One assumes she has power over such things, just as some Fae hold a particular dominion over a time or place or state. Personally I cannot imagine anything more alarming than a bloodthirsty female knight who can order one’s shadow to consume one. I wonder if she is a Bánánach Sidhe? Besides, if she is still alive one assumes she is with the King’s Host - if we find her we might as well petition the Raven King himself.
Reading over those ballads I must say, spelling was a lot more adventurous before Johnson had his way with it. All those expressive Es and Ys! The younger generation of Fae are all a-buzz for spelling and novels and fashion. They long for nothing more than to meet and emulate modern soldiers and poets and other persons of interest. It is quite the vogue for them to adopt ‘Christian customs’ as they term them. It is nothing more than an aesthetic of course, the merest passing fancy. I do not see it outlasting a hundred years…
And there! I had almost written myself out of my temper, but it snuck past me again and here it is.
It is only because I do not wish to sleep.
When my mood is thus my rest is deep and my dreams very ill. They do not hold much variation - I believe they are the same each time in fact. They begin in the Peninsular: I am watching my friends die - even the ones who did not. Death has set up house in a windmill garrisoned with rotting Neapolitans… Then I am in the labyrinth of Venice which is as indescribable as it is awful: something like a danse macabre and a masque, only it is frightful beyond belief and there are too many cats and ladies hold bouquets of pineapples and things I dare not name skulk just beyond the candlelight that shines from everybody’s eyes… There is a storm of ravens and white moths - almost a blessing. When I come back to myself I am alone in the darkness and know quite unequivocally that I always have been, and always shall remain so. I decide to make a candle of myself and cheat the dark that way. I say something about ashes and the number seven; I watch with great satisfaction as the fat burns from my arm, making a candle of my hand. It occurs to me to laugh…
I wake then, and cannot for the rest of the day shake the notion that I have burnt away my right hand and arm entirely. It is most disconcerting.
I do not wish to experience any of those things again and yet I know I shall, because I always do. So here I sit, drinking more wine than I ought and wasting ink and parchment on thoughts and notions which have no business anywhere outside my skull.
Perhaps I ought find myself a skull to talk to? - maybe Gwent’s skull - that should be an irony for him. (We magicians must beware of irony - it does for us all in the end.)
I occurs to me that Gwent is just an old name for Wales, which means I need to find the Welsh Magician of Wales - not a very promising start.
Some of the ballads claim Merlin was Welsh.
Merlin talking to Merlin? Norrell would have a fit.
It might knock me out of this damnable mood though. Perhaps I shall look for him tomorrow.
It was a little before dawn.
Emma stood doubtfully at the threshold of the dining room - the largest room in their house. Usually the table in the centre was covered with books, embroidery and other such projects, but all that had been cleared away. The table now was covered in a great quantity of white rose heads, also candles, an iron knife and a silver dish.
“Are you certain?” Emma asked.
“Whether it will work? Not in the least.”
“Whether it is worth it,” her companion corrected.
“Worth it?” Arabella echoed, staring at her with a hint of sharpness. “What have I to loose save the effort I have placed in this venture and numerous inches of hair? Both are mine to spend as I choose. The time I can never have again…” She reached a hand to her shoulder to touch a ringlet that spilled there, but from her expression she was remembering someone else laying fingers upon the tress. She smiled, a bright but wavering expression. “My hair at least shall grow back.” A thought. “And even if it doesn’t - well, I gave it up to a worthy cause.”
Emma looked resigned. “Would you have me stay or leave you in private?”
Arabella had picked up the small iron knife and was holding it ready in one hand whilst her fingers twisted and pulled on the frayed plait of her hair. “A little privacy, I think.” A twitch of a smile and a quick-thrown glance. “Although I am certain I shall need you very much come breakfast when I realise I look like the sorriest of shorn sheep!”
Emma’s eyes narrowed a fraction. She did not begrudge the magic or Arabella’s love for her husband. She just wished he might show his acknowledgement or reciprocation of it. Men really were, she thought with irritation, all a little useless.
3rd Thornsday of Stonember.
Well. I scarcely know where to begin - good God this ink is scarlet! I had always thought it black - it looked black enough by candlelight. Perhaps that’s a very fitting place to start - today has rather been like that all the way through.
I slept just as I thought I would with dreams and attendant horrors; and when I woke I rather thought I was still dreaming: the room was light. Not lit by candles or the glow of the fire but illuminated none the less, a soft diffusion of white-gold. I confess I sat up and for the longest time simply stared about me in wonder. Had the curse been broken? Something must have happened because this was sunlight of exactly the sort that one might expect on a clear day in early autumn in England. I looked out of the window: I could see the grounds of Hurtfew quite clearly, and beyond, like a black wall, the boundaries of our prison. I was disappointed and elated at once: the curse still held, but none the less something remarkable must have occurred as there was undeniably sunlight. I threw on my housecoat and hared out of my room, shouting for Norrell.
He was downstairs in the kitchen, enjoying some tea and cold game pie for breakfast.
“How was it done?” I demanded.
“How was what done?” he replied, seeming displeased and a little flummoxed at having his repast interrupted by such questions.
“The light, sir!” I all but shouted at him, waving my arms towards the arched windows through which early morning sunlight was streaming merrily.
“What light?” he asked. “There is only the candelabra and the fire.”
I realised the candles on the table were lit. “Why on earth do you have these?” I scolded, plucking up the candelabra and proceeding to snuff out the flames.
‘Mr Strange - this is a very ill joke you are playing! Sir, if you blow out all the candles I shall not be able to see to finish my breakfast.”
That surprised me so much that I allowed him to take the candles back and re-light them from the one of their brethren I’d yet to extinguish. “But, it is light, Mr Norrell!” I declared. “There is not the need for candles when it is light.”
He looked very startled at that. “We are still in the Darkness, sir, just as we were yesterday and as no doubt we shall be tomorrow.”
“You - you do not see it then?” I asked doubtfully.
“I see you in a state of agitation, sir, but I see nothing else out of the ordinary.”
“It’s light!” I told him. “Sunlight coming though the windows as it used to - as it ought to! And something in its character makes me fancy it is English sunlight, there is none of that twilight glimmer to it that is so pervasive in Faery. Sunlight, sir!”
“Mr Strange, are you quite well?” Norrell had picked up the candelabra, all the better to peer at me with it.
“I am perfectly well, thank you,” I protested. “Would you please take those candles away from my face before you set my eyebrows on fire?” I saw Norrell’s dubious look and knew very well he was doubting my sanity. “Do not you dare start thinking of pantries, sir, I shall not have you confine me again!”
He hesitated and then began Watch & Ward much to my annoyance. The magic slipped away from him - I felt it like raindrops on glass. I recalled that after last time I’d told the stones of Hurtfew not to allow that particular spell to be anchored in them. It seems they heeded me admirably. I glared at Norrell.
“I do not like it when you are so wild sir!” he complained as if that excused his behaviour.
“You would be as wild as a storm on a heath,” I rejoined wryly, “if you could see as I do!” (Norrell’s caution is a boon to the scholar in his character, but in all other aspects of his life it is vexatious in the extreme!)
“You are staring about you, sir, and there is no reason. Your smile is frankly alarming and given your history, I think it best if…”
“My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music,” I quoted at him, my temper somewhat piqued. Norrell is forever thinking I have lost my reason - as if sense might be misplaced as easily as a neckcloth - it is really most tiresome of him.
Still, even if he can be tiresome, I was sorry that he could not perceive the sunlight and told him so. He did not know quite how to respond to that, so I bid him good morning and returned to my chamber to dress.
In the Ash Tree room I noticed two things that had not made themselves clear to me when I awoke as I was so distracted by the sunlight. The first is that the room - in fact all of Hurtfew - has a curious scent that it does not usually hold: roses, lavender, rosemary, and burnt hair all mingled together. It is not especially strong, but it is there.
The second, is that my silver basin which was upon the washstand, is full of ash and dried white roses. There are fifty of them as well as four of a colour I cannot describe. Neither pink nor dusk nor violet: they are like the colour of the remembrance of true love. There are sprigs of lavender and rosemary too, and some odd blue-ish plant that looks like a variety of thistle. It is clear to me that those flowers are part of the spell, but it is not a working I have ever heard of. It reminds me a little of Lanchester in its character, but I have never read its like.
This daylight incidentally has shown me that one really cannot shave with any degree of skill nor attend perfectly to one’s appearance by candlelight. Oh, one may think one is suitably presentable, but really one is not. I am quite the ragged specimen when all along I had supposed I was neat enough! And how odd to see one’s eyes and face without the accompanying shadows and golden glow of the tallow’s flame! My eyes are quite a different shade of green altogether. And my clothes! Really, I had no idea that blue waistcoat was so brightly vivid - it’s almost violet. And I had supposed my velvet coat to be a cooler and more sober brown than that - it’s so warm a russet it’s practically glowing!
I shall of course study the magic as best I can. Does the sunlight, for example, range into the cellars? Or is it only where sunlight might naturally occur, ie, via windows? Is there in fact a small sun in the garden? Or has the sunlight been called in from elsewhere? - imported, if you will. I ought also try to gauge the spell’s duration. I shall work on the premise that it will last as long as daylight naturally lasts, which does not give me very long. There are plenty of avenues to explore in this matter.
But first, I do believe I shall take a turn about the gardens and admire the green of the grass and the boisterous hues of the flowers.
3rd Liesday of Stonember.
The sky is dark today; darkness tinged with the deepest purple, the darkest blue and thin veins of moss green swirl about my window. Perhaps in truth the darkness is just black and has no colour at all - perhaps I merely assign the tempestuous mass colours.
It was so very sweet a thing to perceive colour yesterday. To see things as they ought to be, not half-shadowed by candlelight. When the aetherlings are in the library it is very bright, but it is a false phosphor brightness - one would not mistake it for even a moment as daylight.
I read once that some sailors, when the voyage is very long and there has been nothing but the sea for months on end, fall prey to a sort of sickness. They look out from the ship and perceive not waves but green meadow-grass swaying in the wind. They jump over the side, thinking to feel land beneath their feet, but drown in the ocean instead. I believe I was beginning to drown a little. Although, I shall have to school my soul better to withstand it: there is no telling if or when such a gift may be repeated. (And it was a gift - of course it was a gift.)
The days of the week and the months of the year are different in faery. The days of the week, roughly translated from the sidhe, are: moonsday, truesday, weirdsday thornsday, liesday, jelly(?)day, souls(?)day, chasm. Chasm comes once every fourteen days, and those fifteen days entire are called a sennight (which I believe is also - confusingly - a middle-English term for fourteen days.) Two sennights make a calends, twelve calends and a handful of peculiar and separate days make a year. (The calends are: Yenesary, Frostberry, Mist, Anvil, Fey, Jewel, Longsky, Amfortas, Stonember, Oaktombe, Crisping, Lastfesting.) Thus Faery keeps close but not exact time with England.
It is the third Liesday of Stonember, but in England it is the seventeenth of September. Yesterday was the sixteen then - and the anniversary of our wedding.
Oh my darling wife, how clever you are! You make a far better magician than I or Norrell, I fear. (But I always suspected that ladies might be cleverer at such things than we poor gentlemen. Even if only for a day, you have managed something that neither Norrell nor I have!)
Oh Belle, that was a beautiful, lovely gift - the best, save you, I have ever been given. How you must have worked at it! I hope very much it did not cost you, my love. And I thank you with all my heart (which you still and ever shall have the keeping of). Sunlight. You cannot have the slightest notion how I’ve missed it. And I gave you nothing in return - a poor husband indeed, just as you once scolded me.
Perhaps we have been looking at things incorrectly? Perhaps there is a way, as you have done, to post ourselves via sunbeams and dried flowers, to import ourselves back to England? I hope so. Oh God Belle, I think I miss you more than sunlight. Or at least, were you here I know I should be able to bear the darkness with a far great equanimity.
But no, that is a horrible thing to contemplate - I shall not wish you here, not even as a passing idle fancy. I wish you in England, and happy…
I have not looked upon you for over a year.
There was a time when I could do little else - I watched you for hours. But you were unhappy and I could not soothe you; your pain drove me half mad.
I tried to limit myself after that, to only look in upon you once or twice a week - as if I was calling upon you. But all I saw was your fortitude, and your friends who could console you when I could not. In the end it became more that I could bear. Even after that, when you were coming back to yourself - you were so determined! - I loathed that I wasn’t there to kiss you and tell you how no man had ever been prouder of his wife and her wonderful achievements.
I decided then. I would not use my silver dish to look upon you. I was very stern with myself upon the subject. I hoped it might spur me on to greater achievement and so bring me back all the sooner.
I have broken my fast, this eve.
I have drawn lines of silver upon the water.
Oh Belle, my beautiful wonderful love - your hair…