Mr Segundus pulled Childermass to the right. “Stand just here!” he said, excitedly. “Now close one eye! Can you see it? Observe! A red-and-white rose where her mouth ought to be.”

“The magic affects us differently,” said Childermass. “I see something very strange, but I do not see that.”

“You are very bold to come here,” said both versions of Lady Pole, addressing Childermass, “considering who you are and whom you represent.”

“I am not here on Mr Norrell’s business. To own the truth I am not entirely sure who it is I represent. I think it is Jonathan Strange. It is my belief that he sent me a message – and I think it was about your ladyship. But the messenger was prevented from reaching me and the message was lost. Do you know, your ladyship, what Mr Strange might have wished to tell me about you?”

“Yes,” said both versions of Lady Pole.

“Will you tell me what it is?”

“If I speak,” they said, “I shall speak nothing but madness.”

Childermass shrugged his shoulders. “I have passed twenty years in the society of magicians. I am accustomed to it. Speak.”

So she (or they) began. Immediately Mr Segundus took a memorandum book out of a pocket of his night-gown and began to scribble notes. But, in Childermass’s eyes, the two versions of Lady Pole were no longer speaking as one. The Lady Pole who sat in Starecross Hall told a tale about a child who lived near Carlisle,² but the woman in the blood-red gown seemed to be telling quite a different story. She wore a fierce expression and emphasized her words with passionate gestures – but what she said Childermass could not tell; the whimsical tale of the Cumbrian child drowned it out.

“There! You see!” exclaimed Mr Segundus, as he finished scribbling his notes. “This is what makes them think her mad – these odd stories and tales. But I have made a list of all that she has told me and I have begun to find correspondences between them and ancient fairy lore. I am sure that if you and I were to make inquiries we would discover some reference to a set of fairies who had some close connexion with songbirds. They may not have been songbird-herds. That, you will agree, sounds a little too much like settled occupation for such a feckless race – but they may have pursued a particular sort of magic related to songbirds. And it may have suited one of their number to tell an impressionable child that she was a songbird-herd.”

“Perhaps,” said Childermass, not much interested. “But that was not what she meant to tell us. And I have remembered the magical significance of roses. They stand for silence. That is why you see a red-and-white rose – it is a muffling spell.”

“A muffling spell!” said Mr Segundus, in amazement. “Yes, yes! I see that! I have read about such things. But how do we break it?”