“Oh, indeed!” agreed Mr Norrell. “You know, Mr Strange, you really should try to rid yourself of the habit of wishing for things. It is a dangerous thing in a magician!” He began a long and not particularly interesting story about a fourteenth-century magician in Lancashire who had often made idle wishes and had caused no end of inconvenience in the village where he lived, accidentally turning the cows into clouds and the cooking pots into ships, and causing the villagers to speak in colours rather than words – and other such signs of magical chaos.

At first Strange barely answered him and such replies as he made were random and illogical. But gradually he appeared to listen with more attention, and he spoke in his usual manner.

Mr Norrell had many talents, but penetration into the hearts of men and women was not one of them. Strange did not speak of the restoration of his wife, so Mr Norrell imagined that it could not have affected him very deeply.

69
Strangites and Norrellites

February–spring 1817

Childermass rode and Vinculus walked at his side. All around them was spread the wide expanse of snow-covered moor, appearing, with all its various hummocks and hills, like a vast feather mattress. Something of the sort may have occurred to Vinculus because he was describing in great detail the soft, pillowy bed he intended to sleep in that night and the very large dinner he intended to eat before he retired there. There was no doubt that he expected Childermass to pay for these luxuries, and it would not have been particularly surprizing if Childermass had had a word or two to say about them, but Childermass said nothing. His mind was wholly taken up with the problem of whether or not he ought to shew Vinculus to Strange and Norrell. Certainly there was no one in England better qualified to examine Vinculus; but, on the other hand, Childermass could not quite predict how the magicians would act when faced with a man who was also a book. Childermass scratched his cheek. There was a faint, well-healed scar upon it – the merest silvery line upon his brown face.

Vinculus had stopped talking and was standing in the road. His blanket had fallen from him and he was eagerly pushing back the sleeves of his coat.

“What is it?” asked Childermass. “What is the matter?”

“I have changed!” said Vinculus. “Look!” He took off his coat and opened his shirt. “The words are different! On my arms! On my chest! Everywhere! This is not what I said before!” Despite the cold, he began to undress. Then, when he was quite naked again, he celebrated his transformation by dancing about gleefully like a blue-skinned devil.

Childermass dismounted from his horse with feelings of panic and desperation. He had succeeded in preserving John Uskglass’s book from death and destruction; and then, just when it seemed secure, the book itself had defeated him by changing.