The left side of Drawlight’s head burst open, like an egg or an orange. He convulsed several times and was still.

Although there was no one there to see, and although his blood was pounding in his ears, in his chest, in his everything, Lascelles would not permit himself to appear in the least disturbed: that, he felt, would not have been the behaviour of a gentleman.

He had a valet who was much addicted to accounts of murders and hangings in The Newgate Calendar and The Malefactor’s Register. Sometimes Lascelles would amuse himself by picking up one of these volumes. A prominent characteristic of these histories was that the murderer, however bold he was during the act of murder, would soon afterwards be overcome with emotion, leading him to act in strange, irrational ways that were always his undoing. Lascelles doubted there was much truth in these accounts, but for safety’s sake he examined himself for signs of remorse or horror. He found none. Indeed his chief thought was that there was one less ugly thing in the world. “Really,” he said to himself, “if he had known three or four years ago that it would come to this, he would have begged me to do it.”

There was a rustling sound. To Lascelles’s surprize he saw that a small shoot was poking out of Drawlight’s right eye (the left one had been destroyed by the pistol blast). Strands of ivy were winding themselves about his neck and chest. A holly shoot had pierced his hand; a young birch had shot up through his foot; a hawthorn had sprung up through his belly. He looked as if he been crucified upon the wood itself. But the trees did not stop there; they kept growing. A tangle of bronze and scarlet stems blotted out his ruined face, and his limbs and body decayed as plants and other living things took strength from them. Within a short space of time nothing of Christopher Drawlight remained. The trees, the stones and the earth had taken him inside themselves, but in their shape it was possible still to discern something of the man he had once been.

“That briar was his arm, I think,” mused Lascelles. “That stone … his heart perhaps? It is small enough and hard enough.” He laughed. “That is the ridiculous thing about Strange’s magic,” he said to no one at all. “Sooner or later it all works against him.” He mounted on his horse and rode back towards the road.

63
The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache

Mid February 1817

More than twenty-eight hours had passed since Lascelles had left Hanover-square and Mr Norrell was half frantic. He had promised Lascelles they would wait for him, but now he feared they would arrive at Hurtfew Abbey to find Strange in possession of the library.

No one in the house at Hanover-square was permitted to go to bed that night and by morning everyone was tired and wretched.