“I have been dead within and almost-dead without!” Tears started from her eyes and she struck her own breast with her clenched hand. “And not only me! Others suffer even now! – Mrs Strange and my husband’s servant, Stephen Black!”

She recounted the cold, ghostly balls she had endured, the dreary processions she had been forced to take part in and the strange handicap that would not allow her and Stephen Black to speak of their predicament.

Mr Segundus and the servants heard each new revelation with mounting horror; Childermass sat and listened with impassive expression.

“We must write to the editors of the newspapers!” cried Lady Pole. “I am determined upon public exposure!”

“Exposure of whom?” asked Mr Segundus.

“The magicians, of course! Strange and Norrell!”

“Mr Strange?” faltered Mr Segundus. “No, no, you are mistaken! My dear Lady Pole, take a moment to consider what you are saying. I have not a word to say for Mr Norrell – his crimes against you are monstrous! But Mr Strange has done no harm – not knowingly at any rate. Surely he is more sinned against than sinning?”

“Oh!” cried Lady Pole. “Upon the contrary! I consider him by far the worse of the two. By his negligence and cold, masculine magic he has betrayed the best of women, the most excellent of wives!”

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.