Childermass stood up.

“Where are you going?” asked Mr Segundus.

“To find Strange and Norrell,” said Childermass.

“Why?” cried Lady Pole, rounding on him. “To warn them? So that they can prepare themselves against a woman’s vengeance? Oh, how these men protect one another!”

“No, I am going to offer them my assistance to free Mrs Strange and Stephen Black.”

Lascelles walked on. The path entered a wood. At the entrance to the wood was the statue of the woman holding the plucked eye and heart – just as Childermass had described. Corpses hung from the thorn-trees in various states of decay. Snow lay on the ground and it was very quiet.

After a while he came to the tower. He had imagined it to be a fanciful, otherlandish sort of place; “But really,” he thought, “it is very plain, like the castles of the Scottish border country.”

High in the tower was a single window glowing with candlelight and the shadow of someone watching. Lascelles noticed something else too, something that Childermass had either not seen, or else had not troubled to report: the trees were full of serpent-like creatures. They had heavy, sagging forms. One was in the process of swallowing whole a fresh, meaty-looking corpse.

Between the trees and the brook was the pale young man. His eyes were empty and there was a slight dew upon his brow. His uniform was, thought Lascelles, that of the 11th Light Dragoons.

Lascelles addressed him thus: “One of our countrymen approached you a few days ago. He spoke to you. You challenged him. Then he ran away. He was a dark, ill-favoured fellow. A person of despicable habits and base origins.”

If the pale young man recognized Childermass from this description, he shewed no sign of it. In a dead voice he said, “I am the Champion of the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. I offer challenges to …”

“Yes, yes!” cried Lascelles, impatiently. “I do not care about that. I have come here to fight. To erase the stain upon England’s honour that was made by that fellow’s cowardice.”

The figure at the window leaned forward eagerly.

The pale young man said nothing.

Lascelles made a sound of exasperation. “Very well! Believe that I mean this woman all sorts of harm if it pleases you. It matters not one whit to me! Pistols?”

The pale young man shrugged.

There being no seconds to act for them, Lascelles told the young man that they would stand at twenty paces and he measured the ground himself.

They had taken their positions and were about to fire, when something occurred to Lascelles. “Wait!” he cried. “What is your name?”

The young man stared dully at him. “I do not remember,” he said.

They both fired their pistols at the same time. Lascelles had the impression that, at the last moment, the young man turned his pistol and deliberately fired wide. Lascelles did not care: if the young man was a coward then so much the worse for him. His own ball flew with pleasing exactitude to pierce the young man’s breast. He watched him die with the same intense interest and sense of satisfaction that he had felt when he had killed Drawlight.