Mr Norrell did not trouble to ascertain Childermass’s wishes upon this point. Despite the fact that it was Childermass who was lying upon the bed sick with pain and loss of blood, and that Mr Norrell’s injuries had consisted chiefly of a slight headach and a small cut upon one finger, it was clear to Mr Norrell that he was the more sinned against of the two.

“So what was the magic?” asked Childermass.

“Mine, of course!” declared Mr Norrell, angrily. “Who else’s should it be? It was the magic I did to bring her back from the dead. That was what you felt and that is what Belasis’s Scopus revealed. It was early in my career and I dare say there were some irregularities that may have caused it to take an odd turn and …”

“An odd turn?” cried Childermass, hoarsely. He was seized with a fit of coughing. When he had regained his breath, he said, “At every moment I was in danger of being transported to some realm where everything breathed magic. The sky spoke to me! Everything spoke to me! How could that have been?”

Mr Norrell raised an eyebrow. “I do not know. Perhaps you were drunk.”

“And have you ever known me to be drunk in the performance of my duties?” asked Childermass, icily.

Mr Norrell shrugged defensively. “I have not the least idea what you do. It seems to me that you have been a law unto yourself from the first moment you entered my house.”

“But surely the idea is not so strange when considered in the light of ancient English magic,” insisted Childermass. “Have you not told me that Aureates regarded trees, hills, rivers and so on as living creatures with thoughts, memories and desires of their own? The Aureates thought that the whole world habitually worked magic of a sort.”

“Some of the Aureates thought so, yes. It is a belief that they imbibed from their fairy-servants, who attributed some of their own extraordinary magic to their ability to talk to trees and rivers and so forth, and to form friendships and alliances with them. But there is no reason to suppose that they were right. My own magic does not rely upon any such nonsensical ideas.”

“The sky spoke to me,” said Childermass. “If what I saw was true, then …” He paused.

“Then what?” asked Mr Norrell.

In his weakened state Childermass had been thinking aloud. He had meant to say that if what he had seen was true, then everything that Strange and Norrell had ever done was child’s-play and magic was a much stranger and more terrifying thing than any of them had thought of. Strange and Norrell had been merely throwing paper darts about a parlour, while real magic soared and swooped and twisted on great wings in a limitless sky far, far above them.