A voice called out his name. He turned and found Colonel Manningham, an acquaintance of his, who immediately invited Strange to go with him to Lady Charlotte Greville’s house. (This was an English lady who was living in Brussels.) Strange protested that he had no invitation and anyway he ought to go and look for the Duke. But Manningham declared that the lack of an invitation could not possibly matter – he was sure to be welcome – and the Duke was just as likely to be in Lady Charlotte Greville’s drawing-room as anywhere else.
Ten minutes later Strange found himself in a luxurious apartment filled with people, many of whom he already knew. There were officers; beautiful ladies; fashionable gentlemen; British politicians; and representatives, so it seemed, of every rank and degree of British peer. All of them were loudly discussing the war and making jokes about it. It was quite a new idea to Strange: war as a fashionable amusement. In Spain and Portugal it had been customary for the soldiers to regard themselves as martyred, maligned and forgotten. Reports in the British newspapers had always endeavoured to make the situation sound as gloomy as possible. But here in Brussels it was the noblest thing in the world to be one of his Grace’s officers – and the second noblest to be his Grace’s magician.
“Does Wellington really want all these people here?” whispered Strange to Manningham in amazement. “What will happen if the French attack? I wish I had not come. Someone is sure to begin asking me about my disagreement with Norrell, and I really do not want to talk about it.”
“Nonsense!” Manningham whispered back. “No one cares about that here! And anyway here is the Duke!”
There was a little bustle and the Duke appeared. “Ah, Merlin!” he cried as his eye lighted upon Strange. “I am very glad to see you! Shake hands with me! You are acquainted with the Duke of Richmond, of course. No? Then allow me to make the introduction!”
If the assembly had been lively before, how much more spirited it became now his Grace was here! All eyes turned in his direction to discover whom he was talking to and (more interesting still) whom he was flirting with. One would not have supposed to look at him that he had come to Brussels for any other reason than to enjoy himself. But every time Strange tried to move away, the Duke fixed him with a look, as if to say, “No, you must stay. I have need of you!” Eventually, still smiling, he inclined his head and murmured in Strange’s ear, “There, I believe that will do. Come! There is a conservatory at the other end of the room. We will be out of the crowd there.”
They took their seats amid the palms and other exotic plants.
“A word of warning,” said the Duke. “This is not Spain. In Spain the French were the detested enemy of every man, woman and child in the country. But here matters stand quite differently. Buonaparte has friends in every street and in a great many parts of the Army. The city is full of spies. And so it is our job – yours and mine – to look as if nothing in the world were more certain than his defeat! Smile, Merlin! Take some tea. It will steady your nerves.”
Strange tried a careless smile, but it immediately turned itself into an anxious frown and so, to draw his Grace’s attention away from the deficiencies of his face, he inquired how his Grace liked the Army.
“Oh! It is a bad army at best. The most miscellaneous Army I ever commanded. British, Belgians, Dutch and Germans all mixed up together. It is like trying to build a wall out of half a dozen materials. Each material may be excellent in its way, but one cannot help wondering if the thing will hold together. But the Prussian Army has promised to fight with us. And Blücher is an excellent old fellow. Loves a fight.” (This was the Prussian General.) “Unfortunately, he is also mad. He believes he is pregnant.”
“Ah!”
“With a baby elephant.”
“Ah!”
“But we must put you to work straightaway! Have you your books? Your silver dish? A place to work? I have a strong presentiment that Buonaparte will appear first in the west, from the direction of Lille. It is certainly the way I would chuse and I have letters from our friends in that city assuring me that he is hourly expected there. That is your task. Watch the western border for signs of his approach and tell me the instant you catch a glimpse of French troops.”
For the next fortnight Strange summoned up visions of places where the Duke thought the French might appear. The Duke provided him with two things to help him: a large map and a young officer called William Hadley-Bright.
Hadley-Bright was one of those happy men for whom Fortune reserves her choicest gifts. Everything came easily to him. He was the adored only child of a rich widow. He had wanted a military career; his friends had got him a commission in a fashionable regiment. He had wanted excitement and adventure; the Duke of Wellington had chosen him to be one of his aides-de-camp. Then, just as he had decided that the one thing he loved more than soldiering was English magic, the Duke had appointed him to assist the sublime and mysterious Jonathan Strange. But only persons of a particularly sour disposition could resent Hadley-Bright’s success; everyone else was disarmed by his cheerfulness and good nature.
Day after day Strange and Hadley-Bright examined ancient fortified cities in the west of Belgium; they peered at dull village streets; they watched vast, empty vistas of fields beneath even vaster prospects of watercolour clouds. But the French did not appear.
On a hot, sticky day in the middle of June they were seated at this interminable task. It was about three o’clock. The waiter had neglected to remove some dirty coffee-cups and a fly buzzed around them. From the open window came the mingled odours of horse-sweat, peaches and sour milk. Hadley-Bright, perched on a dining-chair, was demonstrating to perfection one of the most important skills of a soldier – that of falling asleep under any circumstances and at any time.
Strange glanced at his map and chose a spot at random. In the water of his silver dish a quiet crossroads appeared; nearby was a farm and two or three houses. He watched for a moment. Nothing happened. His eyes closed and he was on the point of dozing off when some soldiers dragged a gun into position beneath some elm-trees. They had a rather businesslike air. He kicked Hadley-Bright to wake him up. “Who are those fellows?” he asked.
Hadley-Bright blinked at the silver dish.
The soldiers at the crossroads wore green coats with red facings. There suddenly seemed to be a great many of them.
“Nassauers,” said Hadley-Bright, naming some of Wellington’s German troops. “The Prince of Orange’s boys. Nothing to worry about. What are you looking at?”
“A crossroads twenty miles south of the city. A place called Quatre Bras.”
“Oh! There is no need to spend time on that!” declared Hadley-Bright with a yawn. “That is on the road to Charleroi. The Prussian Army is at the other end of it – or so I am told. I wonder if those fellows are supposed to be there?” He began to leaf through some papers describing the disposition of the various Allied armies. “No, I really don’t think …”
“And what is that?” interrupted Strange, pointing at a soldier in a blue coat who had appeared suddenly over the opposite rise with his musket at the ready.
There was the merest pause. “A Frenchman,” said Hadley-Bright.
“Is he supposed to be there?” asked Strange.
The one Frenchman had been joined by another. Then fifty more appeared. The fifty became two hundred – three hundred – a thousand! The hillside seemed to be breeding Frenchmen as a cheese breeds maggots. The next moment they all began to discharge their muskets upon the Nassauers at the crossroads. The engagement did not last long. The Nassauers fired their cannons. The Frenchmen, who appeared to have no cannons of their own, retreated over the hill.
“Ha!” cried Strange, delighted. “They are beaten! They have run away!”
“Yes, but where did they come from in the first place,” muttered Hadley-Bright. “Can you look over that hill?”
Strange tapped the water and made a sort of twisting gesture above the surface. The crossroads vanished and in its place appeare
d an excellent view of the French Army – or, if not the whole Army, a very substantial part of it.
Hadley-Bright sat down like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Strange swore in Spanish (a language he naturally associated with warfare). The Allied armies were in entirely the wrong place. Wellington’s divisions were in the west, ready to defend to the death all sorts of places that Buonaparte had no intention of attacking. General Blücher and the Prussian army were too far east. And here was the French Army suddenly popping up in the south. As matters stood at present, these Nassauers (who amounted to perhaps three or four thousand men) were all that lay between Brussels and the French.
“Mr Strange! Do something, I implore you!” cried Hadley-Bright.
Strange took a deep breath and opened wide his arms, as though he were gathering up all the magic he had ever learnt.
“Hurry, Mr Strange! Hurry!”
“I could move the city!” said Strange. “I could move Brussels! I could put it somewhere where the French will not find it.”
“Put it where?” cried Hadley-Bright, grabbing Strange’s hands and forcing them down again. “We are surrounded by armies. Our own armies! If you move Brussels you are liable to crush some of our regiments under the buildings and the paving stones. The Duke will not be pleased. He needs every man.”
Strange thought some more. “I have it!” he cried.
A sort of breeze rushed by. It was not unpleasant – indeed it had the refreshing fragrance of the ocean. Hadley-Bright looked out of the windows. Beyond the houses, churches, palaces and parks were mountain-ridges that had not been there a moment ago. They were black, as if covered with pine trees. The air was much fresher – like air that had never been breathed before.
“Where are we?” asked Hadley-Bright.
“America,” said Strange. And then by way of an explanation he added, “It always looks so empty on the maps.”
“Dear God! But this is no better than before! Have you forgotten that we have only just signed a peace treaty with America? Nothing will excite the Americans’ displeasure so much as the appearance of a European city on their soil!”
“Oh, probably! But there is no need for concern, I assure you. We are a long way from Washington or New Orleans or any of those places where the battles were. Hundreds of miles I expect. At least … That is to say I am not sure where exactly. Do you think it matters?”1
Hadley-Bright dashed outside to find the Duke and tell him that, contrary to what he might have supposed, the French were now in Belgium, but he, the Duke, was not.
His Grace (who happened to be taking tea with some British politicians and Belgian countesses) received the news in his customary imperturbable fashion. But half an hour later he appeared in Strange’s hotel with the Quartermaster General, Colonel De Lancey. He stared down at the vision in the silver dish with a grim expression. “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God!” he exclaimed. “De Lancey, you must write the orders as quickly as you can. We must gather the Army at Quatre Bras.”
Poor Colonel De Lancey looked most alarmed. “But how do we deliver the orders to the officers with all the Atlantic between us?” he asked.
“Oh,” said his Grace, “Mr Strange will take care of that.” His eye was caught by something outside the window. Four horsemen were passing by. They had the bearing of kings and the expressions of emperors. Their skin was the colour of mahogany; their long hair was the shiny jet-black of a raven’s wing. They were dressed in skins decorated with porcupine quills. Each was equipped with a rifle in a leather case, a fearsome-looking spear (as feathered as their heads) and a bow. “Oh, and De Lancey! Find someone to ask those fellows if they would like to fight tomorrow, would you? They look as if they could do the business.”
An hour or so later, in the town of Ath twenty miles from Brussels (or, rather, twenty miles from where Brussels usually stood) a pâtissier took a batch of little cakes from the oven. After the cakes had cooled he drew a letter upon each one in pink icing – a thing he had never in his life done before. His wife (who knew not a word of English) laid the cakes in a wooden tray and gave the tray to the sous-pâtissier. The sous-pâtissier carried it to the Headquarters of the Allied Army in the town, where Sir Henry Clinton was issuing orders to his officers. The sous-pâtissier presented the cakes to Sir Henry. Sir Henry took one and was about to carry it to his mouth when Major Norcott of the 95th Rifles gave a cry of surprize. There in front of them, written in pink icing on little cakes, was a dispatch from Wellington instructing Sir Henry to move the 2nd Division of Infantry towards Quatre Bras with as little delay as possible. Sir Henry looked up in amazement. The sous-pâtissier beamed at him.
At about the same time the general in charge of the 3rd Division – a Hanoverian gentleman called Sir Charles Alten – was hard at work in a château twenty-five miles south-west of Brussels. He happened to look out of the window and observed a very small and oddly behaved rainstorm in the courtyard. It shed its rain in the centre of the courtyard and touched the walls not at all. Sir Charles was curious enough to go outside and look more closely. There, written in the dust with raindrops, was the following missive:
Bruxelles, 15th June, 1815
The 3rd Division to move upon Quatre Bras immediately.
Wellington
Meanwhile some Dutch and Belgian generals in Wellington’s Army had discovered for themselves that the French were at Quatre Bras and were on their way there with the 2nd Netherlands Division. Consequently these generals (whose names were Rebecq and Perponcher) were more annoyed than enlightened when a great mass of songbirds alighted in the trees all around and began to sing:
The Duke’s ideas let us expound
At Quatre Bras the French are found
All his troops must gather round
To the crossroads all are bound
“Yes, yes! We know!” cried General Perponcher, gesturing at the birds to shoo them away. “Be off, d—you!” But the birds only flew closer and some actually settled upon his shoulders and horse. They continued singing in the most officious manner possible:
There reputations will be made
The Duke commands: be not afraid!
All the army’s plans are laid
Go quickly now with your brigade!
The birds accompanied the soldiers for all the remainder of the day, never ceasing for a moment to twitter and cheep the same aggravating song. General Rebecq – whose English was excellent – managed to catch hold of one of them and tried to teach it a new song, in the hopes that it might return to Jonathan Strange and sing it to him:
The Duke’s magician must be kicked
From Bruxelles to Maastricht
For playing tricks on honest men
To Maastricht and back again2
At six o’clock Strange returned Brussels to European soil. Immediately those regiments which had been quartered inside the city marched out of the Namur Gate and down the road that led to Quatre Bras. That done, Strange was able to make his own preparations for war. He collected together his silver dish; half a dozen books of magic; a pair of pistols; a light summer coat with a number of unusually deep pockets; a dozen hard-boiled eggs; three flasks of brandy; some pieces of pork pie wrapped in paper; and a very large silk umbrella.
The next morning, with these necessaries stowed in various places about his person and his horse, he rode with the Duke and his staff up to the crossroads at Quatre Bras. Several thousand Allied troops were assembled there now, but the French had yet to shew themselves. From time to time there was the sound of a musket, but it was scarcely more than you would hear in any English wood where gentlemen are shooting.
Strange was looking about him when a songthrush alighted upon his shoulder and began to chirrup:
The Duke’s ideas let us expound
At Quatre Bras the French are found …
“What?” muttered Strange. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to have disappeared hours ago!” He made Ormskirk’s sign to disperse a
magic spell and the bird flew off. In fact, rather to his consternation, a whole flock of birds took flight at the same moment. He glanced round nervously to see if any one had noticed that he had bungled the magic; but everyone seemed busy with military concerns and he concluded they had not.
He found a position to his liking – in a ditch directly in front of Quatre Bras farmhouse. The crossroads was on his immediate right and the 92nd Foot, the Highland Regiment were on his left. He took the hard-boiled eggs out of his pockets and gave them to such of the Highlanders as thought they might like to eat them. (In peacetime some sort of introduction is generally required to make a person’s acquaintance; in war a small eatable will perform the same office.) The Highlanders gave him some sweet, milky tea in return and soon they were chatting very companionably together.
The day was intensely hot. The road went down between the fields of rye, which seemed, under that bright sun, to glow with an almost supernatural brilliance. Three miles away the Prussian Army had already engaged with the French and there were faint sounds of guns booming and men shouting, like the ghosts of things to come. Just before noon drums and fierce singing were heard in the distance. The ground began to shake with the stamping of tens of thousands of feet, and through the rye towards them came the thick, dark columns of French infantry.
The Duke had given Strange no particular orders and so, when the fighting began, he set about performing all the magic he used to do on Spanish battlefields. He sent fiery angels to menace the French and dragons to breathe flames over them. These illusions were larger and brighter than any thing he had managed in Spain. Several times he climbed out of the ditch to admire the effect – in spite of the warnings of the Highlanders that he was liable to be shot at any moment.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Page 52
