The hall at Ashfair was as old-fashioned as the rest of the house. It was panelled in cream-painted elmwood. The floor was well-swept stone flags. One of the manservants thought that the water must have seeped up from under the stones and so he went and fetched an iron rod to poke about at them to prove that one of them was loose. But he could not make them move. Nowhere was there any sign of where the water could have crept in. Someone else thought that perhaps Captain Ayrton’s two dogs might have shed the water. The dogs were carefully examined. They were not in the least wet.

Finally they examined the water itself.

“It is black and there are tiny scraps of something in it,” pointed out Strange.

“It looks like moss,” said Jeremy Johns.

They continued to wonder and exclaim for some time until a complete lack of any success obliged them to abandon the matter. Shortly afterwards the gentlemen left, taking their wives with them.

At five o’clock Janet Hughes went up to her mistress’s bedchamber and found her lying upon the bed. She had not even troubled to take off the black dress. When Janet asked her if she felt unwell, Arabella replied that she had a pain in her hands. So Janet helped her mistress undress and then went and told Strange.

On the second day Arabella complained of a pain which went from the top of her head all down her right side to her feet (or at least that was what they supposed she meant when she said, “from my crown to the tips of my roots”). This was sufficiently alarming for Strange to send for Mr Newton, the physician at Church Stretton. Mr Newton rode over to Clun in the afternoon, but apart from the pain he could find nothing wrong and he went away cheerfully, telling Strange that he would return in a day or two.

On the third day she died.

Volume III
John Uskglass

It is the contention of Mr Norrell of Hanover-square
that everything belonging to John
Uskglass must be shaken out of modern magic,
as one would shake moths and dust out of an
old coat. What does he imagine he will have
left? If you get rid of John Uskglass you will
be left holding the empty air.

Jonathan Strange, Prologue to The History and
Practice of English Magic, pub. John Murray,
London, 1816

45
Prologue to The History and Practice of English Magic

by Jonathan Strange

In the last months of 1110 a strange army appeared in Northern England. It was first heard of near a place called Penlaw some twenty or thirty miles north-west of Newcastle. No one could say where it had come from – it was generally supposed to be an invasion of Scots or Danes or perhaps even of French.