“Oh!” said Mr Norrell, quickly. “From what you tell me, Sir Walter, I am quite certain there is no need to trouble Lady Pole because, you see, I fear I can do nothing for her. Much as it pains me to say this to you, my dear Sir Walter – for as you know I should always wish to serve you when I can – but whatever it is that has distressed her ladyship I do not believe that it is in the power of magic to remedy.”

Sir Walter sighed. He ran his hand through his hair and looked unhappy. “Mr Baillie found nothing wrong and so I thought …”

“Oh! But it is precisely that circumstance which makes me so certain that I cannot help you. Magic and medicine are not always so distinct from one another as you seem to imagine. Their spheres often overlap. An illness may have both a medical cure and a magical one. If her ladyship were truly ill or if, God forbid!, she were to die again, then certainly there is magic to cure or restore her. But forgive me, Sir Walter, what you have described seems more a spiritual ailment than a physical one and as such belongs neither to magic nor medicine. I am no expert in these matters but perhaps a clergyman might be found to answer better?”

“But Lord Castlereagh thought – I do not know if it is true – Lord Castlereagh thought that since Lady Pole owes her life to magic – I confess that I did not understand him very well, but I believe he meant to say that since her ladyship’s life is founded upon magic, she would only be susceptible to cure by magic.”

“Indeed? Lord Castlereagh said that? Oh! He is quite mistaken, but I am most intrigued that he should have thought of it. That is what used to be called the Meraudian Heresy.¹ A twelfth-century abbot of Rievaulx dedicated himself to its destruction and was later made a saint. Of course the theology of magic has never been a favourite subject of mine, but I believe I am correct in saying that in the sixty-ninth chapter of William Pantler’s Three Perfectible States of Being …”²

Mr Norrell seemed about to embark upon one of his long, dull speeches upon the history of English magic, full of references to books no one had ever heard of. Sir Walter interrupted him with, “Yes, yes! But do you have any notion who the person with the green coat and the silver hair might be?”

“Oh!” said Mr Norrell. “You think there was somebody then? But that seems to me most unlikely. Might it not be something more in the nature of a dressing gown left hanging on a hook by a negligent servant? Just where one does not expect to see it? I myself have often been badly startled by this wig which you see now upon my head. Lucas ought to put it away each night – he knows he ought – but several times now he has left it on its wig stand on the mantelpiece where it is reflected in the mirror above the fireplace and resembles nothing so much in the world as two gentlemen with their heads together, whispering about me.”