Strange sighed.

“… In that year John Uskglass suffered some strange malady – as he did from time to time. When he recovered, a celebration was held at his house in Newcastle. Kings and queens brought presents of immense value and splendour – gold, rubies, ivory, rare spices. Magicians brought magical things – clouds of revelation, singing trees, keys to mystical doors and so on – each one trying to outdo the other. The King thanked them all in the same grave manner. Last of all came the magician, Thomas Godbless. His hands were empty. He had no gift. He lifted his head and said, ‘Lord, I bring you the trees and hills. I bring you the wind and the rain.’ The kings and queens, the great lords and ladies and the other magicians were amazed at his impudence. It appeared to them as if he had done nothing at all. But for the first time since he had been ill, the King smiled.”

Strange considered this. “Well,” he said. “I am afraid I am with the kings and queens. I can make nothing of it. Where did you get this tale?”

“It is in Belasis’s Instructions. In my youth I studied the Instructions with a passionate devotion and I found this passage particularly intriguing. I concluded that Godbless had somehow persuaded the trees and the hills and so on to greet John Uskglass in some mystical fashion, to bow down before him as it were. I was pleased to have understood something that Belasis had not, but I thought no more about it – I had no use for such magic. Years later I discovered a spell in Lanchester’s The Language of Birds. Lanchester got it from an older book, now lost. He admitted that he did not know what it was for, but I believe it is the spell Godbless used – or one very like it. If you are serious in your intention of talking to John Uskglass, suppose we cast it now? Suppose we ask England to greet him?”

“What will that achieve?” asked Strange.

“Achieve? Nothing! At least, nothing directly. But it will remind John Uskglass of the bonds between him and England. And it will shew a sort of respectfulness on our part, which is surely more in keeping with the behaviour a king expects from his subjects.”

Strange shrugged. “Well,” he said. “I have nothing better to suggest. Where is your copy of The Language of Birds?”

He looked about the room. Every book lay where it had fallen the moment it had ceased to be a raven. “How many books are there?” he asked.

“Four or five thousand,” said Norrell.

The magicians took a candle each and began to search.

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair strode rapidly along the walled lane which led to the village of Starecross. Stephen stumbled after him, on his way from one death to another.

England seemed to him to be nothing but horrors and misery now. The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams. A bunch of dry leaves hung from a branch and rattled in the wind – that was Vinculus upon the hawthorn tree. The corpse of a rabbit ripped apart by a fox lay upon the path – that was Lady Pole, soon to be killed by the gentleman.