The quarrel was becoming heated when they were both suddenly silenced by Mr Norrell saying slowly and thoughtfully, “When the Raven King first came into England, he could not read and write. Few people could in those days – even kings. And the Raven King had been brought up in a fairy house where there was no writing. He had never even seen writing before. His new human servants shewed it to him and explained its purpose. But he was a young man then, a very young man, perhaps no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. He had already conquered kingdoms in two different worlds and he had all the magic a magician could desire. He was full of arrogance and pride. He had no wish to read other men’s thoughts. What were other men’s thoughts compared to his own? So he refused to learn to read and write Latin – which was what his servants wanted – and instead he invented a writing of his own to preserve his thoughts for later times. Presumably this writing mirrored the workings of his own mind more closely than Latin could have done. That was at the very beginning. But the longer he remained in England, the more he changed, becoming less silent, less solitary – less like a fairy and more like a man. Eventually he consented to learn to read and write as other men did. But he did not forget his own writing – the King’s Letters, as it is called – and he taught it to certain favoured magicians so that they might understand his magic more perfectly. Martin Pale mentions the King’s Letters and so does Belasis, but neither of them had ever seen so much as a single penstroke of it. If a piece of it has survived and in the King’s own hand, then certainly …” Mr Norrell fell silent again.

“Well, Mr Norrell,” said Lascelles, “you are full of surprizes tonight! So much admiration for a man you have always claimed to hate and despise!”

“My admiration does not lessen my hatred one whit!” said Mr Norrell, sharply. “I said he was a great magician. I did not say he was a good man or that I welcomed his influence upon English magic. Besides what you have just heard was my private opinion and not for public circulation. Childermass knows. Childermass understands.”

Mr Norrell glanced nervously at Drawlight, but Drawlight had stopped listening some time ago – just as soon as he discovered that Childermass’s story concerned no one in the fashionable world, but only Yorkshire farmers and drunk servants. At present he was busy polishing his snuff box with his handkerchief.

“So Clegg stole this book?” said Lascelles to Childermass. “Is that what you are going to tell us?”