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Chapter Text

1. The Nameless King

He was officially styled The Nameless King of Lost-Hope; but the members of his household liked to call him Your Magnificence (for magnificent he truly was); Defender of the Pitiful (for such he was also); and The Great Shiner of Metal and Glass: for so he had taught them when he first arrived in Faerie, and it was still, they deemed, the most magical thing about him.

But you, dear reader, will remember him as Stephen, and when we last heard tell of him, he was standing in his new Kingdom, Lost-Hope, which had been happily cleansed of the poisonous influence of its previous owner, The Gentleman with the Thistle-Down Hair, whom Stephen had accidentally killed.

Cleansed, yes! - but what a job Stephen had before him to bring his new domain up to scratch! The castle of Lost-Hope alone is one of the largest in the whole of Faerie, with three thousand bedrooms, hundreds of ballrooms, twelve throne-rooms, three water-closets and forty-seven kitchens. Still, Stephen did not baulk, but quickly set his household to sweeping and mopping, scrubbing and dusting. The bones of a thousand soldiers lying around the corridors were carefully collected and buried in a peaceful spot outside the castle walls. The blood of a hundred children on the walls was meticulously collected and sent back to their mothers with a note of condolence. Some thirty pennants used by the Gentlemen in his tedious marches around the castle were burnt and the ashes ground into the soil. The ballrooms were emptied of fiddles and mirrors and, indeed, anything pertaining to dancing, and were designated as lecture-halls instead.

Finally, Stephen himself, in all his great majesty, visited every kitchen and freed all the Christians that were working there (some of whom had been toiling with no reward for hundreds of years) and sent them back to England.

At this, all his household agreed that Faerie had never seen such an honest and wise ruler - and then they began to suspect he was, perhaps, not a Fairy as they had assumed.

One day, therefore, a fairy named Imp-with-Fur asked Stephen: ‘Tell me, your Magnificence, are you a fairy or a Christian? You are as beautiful as a fairy, but you appear to have a soul. How else could you have done such wise things?’

Stephen was at that time sitting on his onyx throne, his silver crown on his head, wearing black satin breeches, waistcoat and a bearskin cape. He thought for a little before he answered.

‘I am not a fairy. I am not a Christian, either. I am not sure what I am, or what I will be, yet. But I do know that I am my mother’s child.’

‘Your mother? Did she help you defeat our previous master, may his bones be ground to dust? He was extraordinarily strong, and not even a fairy could have done it. I am, of course, glad you did.’ Imp-with-Fur smoothed out a wrinkle on his new waistcoat, and raised his furry chin proudly.

‘Ah, as to that, I cannot say. But - I remember. The Hills spoke to me, the Rivers gave me their blessing, and the Earth said it would obey me. But only for a short while. It was the Hills of England that spoke; but there are Hills in Africa too. And Rivers, and Mountains, and Plains and Deserts. My mother knew those places, and she named them, and she named me also. I do not know my name, and I do not know if I am a fairy, or a Christian - or neither, or both - but that is important, I think.’

‘Perhaps one day the Hills of Africa will welcome you back, your Brilliance.’

‘We shall see,’ said Stephen, and lounged back a little on his throne. ‘Time will tell.’

Chapter Text

2. The Nameless King and the Nameless Slave

Some time after he had become King - I cannot exactly say how long, as time means very little in Faerie, but probably between five and a hundred years - Stephen was walking through the woods surrounding his Kingdom.

The woods, like everything he owned, were extremely well-kempt, consisting of neatly trimmed hazels and olive trees springing from dry, smooth ground. No encroaching ivy or murderous thorn trees here; Stephen’s household knew how much he hated them, and they had learned to hate them too.

It was with some dismay, therefore, that Stephen, finding himself in a beautiful hazel copse, noticed a spray of ivy crawling up one of the slim, smooth trunks. He grabbed it and attempted to pull it up from the root. It did not give. It was tougher, and buried more deeply than he had imagined. Stephen pulled harder; the ivy root as it came out was long, and black, and attached, as he saw as he continued to pull, to a pale, round root, which was in turn attached to a pale LONG root, covered with a curious black something that felt like clothes - and Stephen found, with a mixture of disgust and consternation, that he was, in fact, holding the long, black locks of a pale man wearing long black robes who a moment ago had been under the earth. He glared up at Stephen with an extremely wrathful expression.

‘My pardon, sir!’ said Stephen hurriedly. ‘I thought you were an ivy root.’

‘A root indeed!’ answered the man. He stood up sharply and began brushing dirt off his robes. ‘And what art thou up to, pulling up ivy in the Gentleman’s land? He has hanged fairies for less.’ His voice was peculiar - it had an accent which reminded Stephen of the magician’s old servant, Childermass, mixed with some French. Something else seemed familiar about the fellow; but Stephen was not sure what it was.

‘Well, sir, this is not the Gentleman’s land. It is MY land. I am the new King of Lost-Hope.’ Stephen felt, not the first time, an immense swelling of pride in his heart at his words.

‘The King? But how? A Christian cannot defeat a fairy - unless he is me,’ said the man. If this was a joke, he did not smile.

‘I am not a Christian, sir, and I do not know how I defeated the gentleman. But it is done, and the brugh, the household and all the lands hereabouts are my responsibility. And, I may say, sir, if I choose to pull up an ivy root, I shall do so.’

The man, now standing to his full height, was almost as tall as Stephen, although he was a great deal thinner and dirtier. At Stephen’s reply, he gazed speculatively at him. His eyes were large and very dark, and made Stephen nervous.

Then he did something very peculiar. He took Stephen’s left hand, and, rather than shake it, lifted it and pressed his own dirty right hand palm against it, as if he and Stephen were beginning an old-fashioned dance. The man then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he smiled.

‘I have it!’ he said. ‘You are the Nameless Slave! The OTHER Nameless Slave. Those two dung-for-brains magicians thought you were me - and, for a while, you were.’ He removed his hand from Stephen’s, who repressed an urge to wipe his on his breeches.

‘The Hills and Streams spoke to me,’ answered Stephen. ‘But - not me? They thought I was you?’ But of course, he thought to himself. That is why this man is so familiar. For a while, he was my brother.

‘Ah, to them, all Christians are the same. All fairies too. Nay, nay, they spoke to you and there’s an end to it. Now I must depart.’ He began to stick his boot-toe back into the soil.

‘Wait!’ said Stephen. ‘Do not go yet. You are John Uskglass, I take it? The Gentlemen often spoke of you.’

‘No doubt, no doubt. He tried many times to kill me.’

‘Were you not scared?’

‘Scared?’ The man looked disgusted at the very thought, and actually spat on the ground. ‘There! He is nothing but THAT to me. A beetle is more my equal. I am more than glad you defeated him. I have better things to do than run a Kingdom, but it appears that YOU do not.’

‘Lost-Hope is my home now, and I have come to love its people. I will take care of it, and protect it from all harm.’

The man laughed. ‘I shall not harm it. You have nothing to fear from me. I shall not hold it against you that you were once me. But it is strange that that was never part of my plan. Indeed, you were never part of it at all.’ He came suddenly close to Stephen again, and instead of taking his hand, he pressed a finger to his cheek very briefly.

‘Your mother touched you there, before she died,’ he said.

Stephen, awakening as if from a dream, suddenly noticed that John Uskglass was several inches shorter than he had been when he began talking. He looked down, and saw that the man’s feet were slowly sinking into the yellow moss. His hair had turned back into long strands of ivy.

‘Leave this ivy here,’ he said, now waist-high in the ground. ‘Remove it at thy peril. I claim this part of thy land as mine. The rest is thine, Stephen.’ He closed his eyes and sighed slightly as the moss climbed over his head and joined at the top.

On his return home, Stephen was very careful to tell all his gardeners to never touch that particular hazel copse - and in particular to leave the ivy well alone. For its part, the plant forbore from creeping over any of the trees, but lay stretched out on the ground, green and fresh.

Chapter Text

O my seven sons and seven daughters, each more beautiful than the last! Let me tell you the story of how the most beautiful and gracious of all the Djinn, she who outshines the moon and stars, she who holds the deserts of the world in her hand, met and married Stephen Black.

- Not again, Mama.

Well, in those days, of course, Stephen Black had no wife and was as a consequence extremely sad and lonely. He sat all day in his throne-room, sighing and putting his head on his hand. His household became very worried, and said to themselves: ‘What can we do about our melancholy King?’ They tried many times to rouse him from his dejection. First, they wove him a beautiful jacket made of raindrops and snowflakes. This he rejected with a groan.

- Like so, Mama? Groooooumph?

Next, they presented him with a beautiful soft rabbit, the colour of the sky before dawn in colder climates. But despite its agreable temperament, the bunny was dismissed too. (But do not worry, it was not left without a friend; one of the footmen claimed it.)

Now, Stephen did not know this, but in his delightfully large clean kitchen, in a small corner by a window, lived and worked a little scullery-maid whose name was Best-Cook. All day long she sculleried by the window, and listened to what the other denizens of the kitchen had to say. When she heard them say that Stephen Black was sad, she resolved to go and see for herself. And so she found herself in his throne-room, in order to examine the King at closer quarters. She saw at once that he was extremely handsome with beautiful legs, but also very sad. At once a plan formed in her mind. When she returned to the kitchen, she said to the cooking mistress: ‘I know what we can do. Stephen Black is a great gourmand. Let me cook him some sweets to excite his palate and increase his happiness.’ The mistress, impressed greatly by Best-Cook’s plan, readily agreed.

- If you say so, Mama.

And so Best-Cook with her clever fingers modestly formed the most delicious halva, made with honey, sugar, hibiscus, cocoa, pistachio, saffron, and chocolate chip. When they were brought to Stephen, he ate them in a trice, murmuring with pleasure and smacking his lips all that time. ‘Of all the attempts to make me happy,’ he said, ‘this is the best. Who is the person of my household who made such delicious treats?’

‘A little scullery-maid named Best-Cook,’ said a servant who was there.

‘She is well-named, then,’ answered Stephen.

- Really, Mama!

‘Bring her to me.’ And so the beautiful shy scullery-maid was brought to Stephen and he looked into her eyes with his handsome brown ones.

‘You are no scullery-maid,’ he said. ‘Only a princess could make such delicious halva.’

Of course, Best-Cook could keep her secret no longer. ‘My name is not really Best-Cook!’ she told him sadly. ‘It is Princess Yasmine. Let me tell you my story.’

And she explained about how her father, the great and mighty Djinn, had decided to declare war on Stephen Black and how she had told him not to, and how in his rage he had threatened to turn her into a centipede, and how she had fled his palace and was now hiding in Stephen Black’s kitchen in the form of a scullery-maid.

- You told the story so well, my love.

Oh, there you are! Thank-you, my love. Well! As you can imagine, Stephen Black was filled with fury that his beautiful princess would be threatened to be turned into a centipede. ‘Let us go and find your father,’ he said, ‘and I shall fight him.’

- That does not sound like Papa. Papa is far too sensible.

Still, it was so. Stephen put on a beautiful set of silver mail and a beautiful silver helmet with a point going far above his head, and held a beautiful silver cutlass, and went to find the great and mighty Djinn, directed by the princess. She and Stephen travelled for many nights, and conversed and laughed a great deal all the time. And if they did something else more loving, not suitable for children’s ears, I shall not say it.

- Do not, Mama!

Finally, they arrived at the great and mighty Djinn’s palace, which was bigger and more beautiful than anything that can be found in Faerie - even Lost-Hope. Well, do you have anything to say to that?

- Not a thing, my love.

Stephen and the princess walked into the palace and admired all its beauties, which included waterfalls of lillium and rose, carpets of saffron, crystal floors and golden pillars. And of course, because it was a great deal sunnier than it is in Faerie, everything shone and glittered most satisfactorily.

- But now we come to the crux of the story.

Very well. After several days of wandering in such beauty, Stephen began to wonder where the great and mighty Djinn was. As soon as he queried out loud, there was a considerable clap of thunder and flash of lightning, and the princess screamed and was turned all at once into a centipede.

‘You dare come here!’ said a loud, deep voice. ‘I shall kill Princess J Yasmine, and then you!’

At which point Stephen was extraordinarily brave and handsome, for he took out his cutlass and shook it. ‘If you do so, I shall kill you!’ he exclaimed. ‘For I have come to love Princess Yasmine and I wish to marry her!’

Suddenly she screamed again, and was turned from a centipede into a donkey. ‘Will you love her now?’

‘Certainly!’ exclaimed Stephen again.

‘And now?’ As the princess was turned into a partridge.

‘Of course!’ Stephen continued to say, as the princess was turned into a wild boar, a stork, a jackal, a cheetah, and a newt. Give me sherbet to drink, Amin, I am thirsty.

- Here you are, dear Mama.

- And then she turned back into a princess.

Then she turned back into a princess, and looked a little sheepish. ‘I’m afraid I have brought you here on false pretences,’ she said to Stephen. ‘You see - I am not really a princess.’

‘You are a scullery-maid?’

‘No, not that either. I am my father. That is - I am the Djinn. This is my palace, my voice, and my magic that has turned me into all those animals. My scream was false - in fact I quite enjoy being a newt.’

'So I have been terrified all this time for nothing?' Stephen looked a little angry.

- A little!

A little, but he was soon mollified by the Djinn's explanation. ‘A while ago, I was travelling in Faerie, and spied you in the woods of Lost-Hope,' she said. 'I thought you were quite the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and resolved to know more of you. When I became your scullery-maid, I soon learnt that you were not only handsome, but also brave and honourable and loved by all. Including me. Now, I am all-powerful, but there is one thing I cannot do: I cannot make anyone love me in return. I hoped that if you knew me better, you might fall in love with me too.'

Astonishingly, she began to cry. Now, Djinns never cry, being made mostly of sand and wind. After several moments, Stephen came to her and took her hand very gently and kindly. ‘You may be a Djinn,’ he said, ‘but you are also a ninny. All this to make me fall in love with you! I was in love with you as soon as I ate your halva.’

- And so I was.

So she stopped crying, and they kissed, and did other things too -

- Mama!

And they returned to Lost-Hope, which conveniently was now only a step away from the Djinn’s palace and they married in great grandeur, and all the most beautiful people of the two worlds attended. Soon after, they had seven sons and seven daughters, each more beautiful than the last. And Stephen Black was never sad again - except when his wife was a centipede, which was seldom - and the great and mighty Djinn found someone to love her - even when she was a centipede - which was not very often. And they lived together in all happiness.

- That is a beautiful story, Mama.

- I never tire of hearing it, my love.

- I know you do not, my love.

- Mama and Papa, there are infinite rooms in this palace. Please find one.

Chapter Text

Whose story is this, in the end? This story, I mean? As I get older, and as my children become ever more brave and beautiful, this question occupies my mind more than it should. I know, of course, that the tale belonged to the magicians, for a while. At least, everyone thought so. They merely accepted it as their due. But then with the wink of a raven’s eye, John Uskglass put down his pen, and closed his book, and England forgot them – all except for a few loyal souls. It is not as if the magicians are dead; they live and breathe still, but only in the margins of the page. You can find them, if you look, counting the stitches in the hem of a nursemaid’s apron, perhaps, or flying through Orion’s Belt. They are not unhappy. It suits them well, I think, not to be narrated. They can discuss magic together in peace, and will do so forever.

So it is Uskglass’ pen, then, you will say, and Uskglass’ tale. But I do not think that is true. Uskglass, whether he likes it or not, is England, and England is obliged to be Uskglass; but despite what its countrymen say, they are not the storytellers of the world. They leave so much out. In the end, all the other countries of the world will pin England  like a great grey moth, and erase some lines, and add others, and the truth – or a modicum of it – will be heard. 

Uskglass will, of course, tell you that while this may be the case, he is still at the very beginning of his existence, and that all he has achieved will be nothing compared to his future deeds. But he has tarried in Faerie too long, and past has become future, and future past, and his life is bent back like a hairpin. He may escape his own spell one day – meanwhile, the story belongs to whom – to me?

‘Of course is your story, my love,’ my wife tells me. ‘It has always been your story. Now you must tell it.’

Still I hesitate. What is there left to say? It is not as if my deeds are unknown. My name, in some form, is mentioned in the annals of Faerie more than five hundred times. 

And yet. I hear a small whisper in my head. It has always been there. ‘Say it!’ It repeats. ‘Say it!’ My mother’s voice. It beats at me with the flutter of wings.

But where to begin? My wife says: ‘Begin with the Black Tower.’

‘But that is where the story ends.’

‘End, beginning, who cares? The Black Tower is your tale, and no one else will be able to explain it.’

She is correct, of course. She always is. 

I knew about the Black Tower, of course – everyone in England did – but was not aware that it remained after the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair was defeated. I was busy enough cleansing Lost-Hope of all his evil and spite to think much about it, and I had a poor opinion of the two magicians, just then. 

But then I heard from one of my seneschels that a terrible thing had happened to Faerie. 

When the magicians entered these lands, the Black Tower came too, naturally, and with it, death and destruction. But what is that to fairies? They are used to such things; some are stepped so far in blood they even welcome them, sometimes. But the peculiar type of death the Tower wrought was unlike anything in their long, long experience. For Faerie is infinite, and eternal; if it is not these things, it is not Faerie. The Black Tower is the enemy of infinity and eternity. It is one mile in diameter precisely, and it is midnight. You may guess the result of its presence in these lands. As the magicians journeyed and the Black Tower followed, it caused infinity to become finite, and forever to suddenly be able to foretell its own demise. A hole – a great hole of mortality – began to appear in Faerie, and as soon as it was able to measure its diameter and depth, it got bigger. People and lands began to disappear, and then they had never been, and nobody remembered them. 

As for me, when I heard the news, I did nothing at first. I shut my ears to its danger. I was too afraid. I felt again the old, damnable cowardice I felt in the Gentleman’s presence. I do not excuse myself exactly; but suddenly I felt again all his malice, his affection, his coldness, his lunacy. The Black Tower was full to the brim with them, like a cup of poison intended for my lips. If anyone could save Faerie from its menace, it would not be me. Let the magicians do it. It was their curse, I thought. But there, I was mistaken.

‘On the contrary,’ my wife says. ‘They were certainly cursed. I have seen all of history and I know. A curse is for everybody, and no one escapes.’

In the end, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and summoned the magicians to a wood at some distance from Lost-Hope. As they came nearer, oak and ash boughs began to bleed, and iron chains wound themselves amongst the leaves. I felt my heart compressed by the same chains. My wife stood beside me then, as now. 

‘Do not trouble yourself to describe the magicians,’ she says. ‘I will do it. One was tall, very tall, with hair the colour of a plane leaf into the dust. The other was very short, and wore a sheepskin as a hat. They were both extremely unaccommodating.’

‘I do not remember that part,’ I reply. 

‘Of course you do not. I shall tell you. The tall one said: “Good gracious! Sir Walter’s old butler! We were told we should meet a great warrior.” The short one said: “I do hope, sir, that in your new circumstances you will have forgotten – ah – that trouble I inadvertently caused you regarding Lady Pole’s extraordinary resurrection. One cannot make an omelette, you know, without -” and the tall one interjected: “An omelette! A wonderful idea, my dear fellow. Mr Black – for I now recall your name – you must forgive my bluntness. We have been wandering for an age, you know, Mr Norrell and myself, and have become quite eccentric as a result.” I turned them both into hamsters.’

And the Tower remained. But then something happened. 

‘Nothing to do with the hamsters.’

‘No indeed. All to do with me.’ 

I was suddenly alone, quite alone in the night. 

‘You are alone in your story, too,’ she says.

‘All alone,’ I reply.

The darkness smelled of blood and violence. No stars. No ravens. A lioness bit into a gazelle’s flank. I discovered I had a silver knife. I held it and sliced my arm from wrist to elbow. The blood flowed and flowed, dark on my dark skin, and the blood was my mother’s, and the man that sold her, and the man that loved her, and the man that manacled her, and the child that killed her. My blood. 

I looked up. The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair was standing there. His expression was cold and curious.

‘My dear Stephen,’ he said, ‘What a mess you have made of yourself! All great Neptune’s ocean shall never be able to clean off all that blood.’

I saw, now, that the silver knife was in his hand. 

‘That blood  is your mother’s curse,’ he added. ‘She cursed you before she died. It is time you made amends.’

‘I do not believe in curses,’ I said. ‘I reject your English magic.’

‘The white man’s burden,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Why then do you feel guilt, if you are not to blame? You are to blame for your mother’s death. She would have lived, but for you. I would have lived, but for you. She is to blame for your nameless state. You cannot escape it. You cannot escape the darkness.’

‘Did you feel guilt?’ my wife asks now. 

‘A little,’  I say. ‘He treated me like an equal, for a while. My darkness – I have some darkness – he welcomed and accepted it. And I killed him for it.’

But he was a monster too, and the Black Tower would destroy Faerie. It was my burden, after all, not the magician’s. My own darkness would destroy the lands I loved so much. I heard a small whisper in my head. It was my mother. She said:: ‘Do it!’ ‘Do it!’ The words beat like the fluttering of wings. The knife was still in his hands. He would be his own executioner. My hands were clean. ‘Kill yourself,’ I told him. He looked only vaguely startled, and immediately sliced open his own arm, from wrist to elbow. But instead of blood pouring out, the darkness poured it. It rushed in, like smoke, until there was none left. A short time afterwards, he, and the Black Tower were gone forever, and all the holes in Faerie were filled, and the people and places restored as if they had never been forgotten.

‘The magicians, by then, were no longer hamsters,’ says my wife. ‘Do you remember? The sun rose over the green leaves, and they wept and embraced each other.’

‘They had not seen the sun for years,’ I reply.

I did not wait to hear their thanks or explanations. Later, I was told that they had left to continue their wanderings together. And that is the end of my story. Except – I have discovered something in telling it. 

‘I knew you would,’ she says. 

‘I thought that the Gentleman died for a second time without telling me my name. But perhaps he inadvertently did reveal it,’ I say. ‘Or perhaps it was deliberate; his final punishment. My name is my curse. Ebi, she whispered as she died. The Yoruba name for guilt or shame.’

But I reject it. She gave it to me to tell me she was sorry to leave me. But she did not leave me, after all. She is in my face and heart. I am not ashamed of who I am. Her son is a King and a father and a good man. I know she is proud of me. And that really is the end of the story – or perhaps the beginning. And it is my story.