Mr Norrell and Mr Marston both stared at her.

Several things happened at once. Lucas loosed his hold of Childermass – who dropt like a stone to the ground – and ran to help his master. Mr Marston seized hold of the lady around her waist. Davey, Mr Norrell’s coachman, jumped down from his box and grabbed the arm which held the pistol.

Childermass lay amid the snow and shards of glass. He saw the woman shrug herself free of Mr Marston’s grasp with what seemed like remarkable ease. She pushed him to the ground with such force that he did not get up again. She put one small, gloved hand to Davey’s chest and Davey was flung several yards backwards. Mr Norrell’s footman – the one who had opened the carriage door – tried to knock her down, but his blow had not the least effect upon her. She put her hand upon his face – it looked like the lightest touch in the world – he crumpled to the ground. Lucas she simply struck with the pistol.

Childermass could make very little sense of what was happening. He dragged himself upright and stumbled forward for half a dozen yards, scarcely knowing whether he was walking upon the cobblestones of Hanover-square or an ancient road in Faerie.

Mr Norrell stared at the lady in the utmost horror, too frightened to cry out or run away. Childermass put up his hands to her in a gesture of conciliation. “Madam …” he began.

She did not even look at him.

The dizzying fall of white flakes confused him. Try as he might, he could not keep his hold upon Hanover-square. The eerie landscape was claiming him; Mr Norrell would be killed and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Then something strange happened.

Something strange happened. Hanover-square disappeared. Mr Norrell, Lucas and all the rest of them disappeared.

But the lady remained.

She stood facing him, upon the ancient road, beneath the sky with its tumble and seethe of black birds. She raised her pistol and aimed it out of Faerie and into England at Mr Norrell’s heart.

“Madam,” said Childermass again.

She looked at him with a cold, burning fury. There was nothing in the world he could say to deter her. Nothing in this world nor any other. And so he did the only thing he could think of. He seized hold of the barrel of the pistol.

There was a shot, an intolerably loud sound.

It was the force of the noise, Childermass supposed, which pushed him back into England.

Suddenly he was half-sitting, half-lying in Hanover-square with his back to the carriage-steps. He wondered where Norrell was and whether he was dead. He supposed he ought to go and find out, but he found he did not much care about it and so he stayed where he was.

It was not until a surgeon arrived that he understood that the lady had indeed shot someone and that the someone was himself.