“But by your own account, Mr Norrell, this was long ago when you were young and inexperienced. You are a very different magician now, and I flatter myself that I am no ordinary assistant. Perhaps if we were to try again?”

“One cannot find so powerful a magician unless he wishes to be found,” declared Mr Norrell, flatly. “It is useless to make the attempt. Do you think he cares what happens to England? I tell you he does not. He abandoned us long ago.”

“Abandoned?” said Strange, frowning. “That is rather a harsh word. I suppose years of disappointment would naturally incline one towards a conclusion of that sort. But there are many accounts of people who saw John Uskglass long after he had supposedly left England. The glovemaker’s child in Newcastle,¹ the Yorkshire farmer,² the Basque sailor …”³

Mr Norrell made a small sound of irritation. “Hearsay and superstition! Even if those stories are true – which I am very far from allowing – I have never understood how any of them knew that the person they had seen was John Uskglass. No portraits of him exist. Two of your examples – the glovemaker’s child and the Basque sailor – did not in fact identify him as Uskglass. They saw a man in black clothes and other people told them later that it was John Uskglass. But it is really of very little consequence whether or not he returned at this or that time or was seen by this or that person. The fact remains that when he abandoned his throne and rode out of England he took the best part of English magic with him. From that day forth it began to decline. Surely that is enough in itself to mark him as our enemy? You are familiar, I dare say, with Watershippe’s A Faire Wood Withering?”⁴

“No, I do not know it,” said Strange. He gave Mr Norrell a sharp look that seemed to say he had not read it for the usual reason. “But I cannot help wishing, sir, that you had said some of this before.”

“Perhaps I have been wrong to keep so much of my mind from you,” said Mr Norrell, knotting his fingers together. “I am almost certain now that I have been wrong. But I decided long ago that Great Britain’s best interests were served by absolute silence on these subjects and old habits are hard to break. But surely you see the task before us, Mr Strange? Yours and mine? Magic cannot wait upon the pleasure of a King who no longer cares what happens to England. We must break English magicians of their dependence on him. We must make them forget John Uskglass as completely as he has forgotten us.”

Strange shook his head, frowning. “No. In spite of all you say, it still seems to me that John Uskglass stands at the very heart of English magic and that we ignore him at our peril. Perhaps I will be proved wrong in the end. Nothing is more likely. But on a matter of such vital importance to English magic I need to understand for myself. Do not think that I am ungrateful, sir, but I believe the period of our collaboration is over. It seems to me that we are too different …”