“Indeed?” said Mr Norrell. He promised that in future he would always bear in mind the necessity of doing magic to excite the public imagination.

They stayed that night in the Old Ship Tavern and the following morning they returned to London. As a rule Mr Norrell detested long journeys. Though his carriage was a most superior example of the carriage-makers’ art with everything in the way of iron springs and thick-padded seats, still he felt every bump and dent in the road. After half an hour or so, he would begin to suffer from pains in his back and aches in his head and queasinesses in his stomach. But upon this particular morning he scarcely gave any thought to his back or his stomach at all. From the first moment of setting off from the Old Ship he was in a curiously nervous condition, beset by unexpected ideas and half-formed fears.

Through the carriage glass he saw great numbers of large black birds – whether ravens or crows he did not know, and in his magician’s heart he was sure that they meant something. Against the pale winter sky they wheeled and turned, and spread their wings like black hands; and as they did so each one became a living embodiment of the Raven-in-Flight: John Uskglass’s banner. Mr Norrell asked Lascelles if he thought the birds were more numerous than usual, but Lascelles said he did not know. After the birds the next thing to haunt Mr Norrell’s imagination were the wide, cold puddles that were thickly strewn across every field. As the carriage passed along the road each puddle became a silver mirror for the blank, winter sky. To a magician there is very little difference between a mirror and a door. England seemed to be wearing thin before his eyes. He felt as if he might pass through any of those mirror-doors and find himself in one of the other worlds which once bordered upon England. Worse still, he was beginning to think that other people might do it. The Sussex landscape began to look uncomfortably like the England described in the old ballad:

This land is all too shallow

It is painted on the sky

And trembles like the wind-shook rain

When the Raven King passed by¹

For the first time in his life Mr Norrell began to feel that perhaps there was too much magic in England.

When they reached Hanover-square Mr Norrell and Lascelles went immediately to the library. Childermass was there, seated at a desk. A pile of letters lay in front of him and he was reading one of them. He looked up when Mr Norrell entered the room. “Good! You are back! Read this.”

“Why? What is it?”

“It is from a man called Traquair. A young man in Nottinghamshire has saved a child’s life by magic and Traquair was a witness to it.”

“Really, Mr Childermass!” said Lascelles, with a sigh. “I thought you knew better than to trouble your master with such nonsense.” He glanced at the pile of opened letters; one had a large seal displaying someone’s arms. He stared at it for several moments before he realized that he knew it well and snatched it up. “Mr Norrell!” he cried. “We have a summons from Lord Liverpool!”