“At last!” exclaimed Mr Norrell. “What does he say?”

Lascelles took a moment to read the letter. “Only that he begs the favour of our attendance at Fife House upon a matter of the utmost urgency!” He thought rapidly. “It is probably the Johannites. Liverpool ought to have requested your assistance years ago to deal with the Johannites. I am glad he realizes it at last. And as for you,” he said, turning upon Childermass, “are you quite mad? Or do you have some game of your own to play? You chatter on about false claims of magic, while a letter from the Prime Minister of England lies unattended on the desk!”

“Lord Liverpool can wait,” said Childermass to Mr Norrell. “Believe me when I tell you that you need to know the contents of this letter!”

Lascelles gave a snort of exasperation.

Mr Norrell looked from one to the other. He was entirely at a loss. For years he had been accustomed to rely upon both of them, and their quarrels (which were becoming increasingly frequent) unnerved him completely. He might have stood there, unable to chuse between them, for some time, had not Childermass decided matters by seizing his arm and pulling him bodily into a small, panelled ante-chamber which led off the library. Childermass shut the door with a bang and leant on it.

“Listen to me. This magic happened at a grand house in Nottinghamshire. The grown-ups were talking in the drawing-room; the servants were busy and a little girl wandered off into the garden. She climbed a high wall that borders a kitchen-garden and walked along the top of it. But the wall was covered in ice and she tumbled down and fell through the roof of a hot-house. The glass broke and pierced her in many places. A servant heard her screaming. There was no surgeon nearer than ten miles away. One of the party, a young man called Joseph Abney, saved her by magic. He drew the shards of glass out of her and mended the broken bones with Martin Pale’s Restoration and Rectification,² and he stopped the flow of blood using a spell which he claimed was Teilo’s Hand.”³

“Ridiculous!” declared Mr Norrell. “Teilo’s Hand has been lost for hundreds of years and Pale’s Restoration and Rectification is a very difficult procedure. This young man would have had to study for years and years …”

“Yes, I know – and he admits that he has hardly studied at all. He barely knew the names of the spells, let alone their execution. Yet Traquair said that he performed the spells fluidly, without hesitation. Traquair and the other people who were present spoke to him and asked him what he was doing – the girl’s father was much alarmed to see Abney perform magic upon her – but, so far as they could tell, Abney did not hear them. Afterwards he was like a man coming out of a dream. All he could say was: ‘Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water.’ He seemed to think that the trees and the sky had told him what to do.”