Chapter Text
The first letter came the first week of October, a scant year after the loss of those infamous Revivalist magicians Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell. It was an extraordinary thing, this letter. Oh, it appeared most proper at the outset. The wax seal was typical red, hastily impressed with the outline of a small English goldfinch. The fine paper was the colour of eggshells, and addressed in a strong hand that nonetheless wavered, as careless letterers sometimes tend to, all up and down and not in a straight line at all. All told, a tolerable example of everyday correspondence. What was most unusual was the recipient - a magician - and the contents of the letter - which pertained to magic.
The letter was from Osmotherly, North Yorkshire and it was addressed to Mr John Segundus, Magician of Starecross Hall. It was personally delivered to Mr Segundus by his manservant, Charles, who, having recently been made to suffer some great unpleasantries as a result of Faerie magic[1], was very much troubled over a newly discovered and deeply-felt belief that magic and magicians both were complicated, dubious things, and so the letter was presented upon a small silver tray that Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot, his dear friend and colleague, had never seen before.
Indeed, Mr Segundus remarked upon the tray, wanting to gently impress upon Charles that this level of ceremony was entirely undesirable to him. Charles responded quite plainly that he did not like to touch the letter more than was necessary, nor did he desire to remain in the room while it was opened, and that any further magical correspondence Mr Segundus wished to receive would be presented much the same. He went on to say he was very sorry indeed for it, but it seemed the only sensible course.
Of course you are thinking that most masters would object to being spoken to in such an impudent manner by their servants, and you would be broadly correct. However, Charles had been some three years at the Hall some by this point, and he had not begun his time there quite so shy of magical doings. Moreover, Mr Segundus was a most sympathetic soul and in truth he had still not got in the habit of having a servant at all. They were at this point in their acquaintance each well-versed in what they considered one another’s little idiosyncrasies, chief among them lately being Charles’s suspicious nature in regards to Segundus’s profession, and Segundus’s penchant for getting dressed without any input at all from Charles.
“Oh, you must open it at once! Do not delay for my sake, sir,” Mr Honeyfoot eagerly pressed him, once Charles had quit the room. They had just finished their morning repast - a most congenial affair of milky tea and hot seeded caraway buns, made all the tastier by Mr Honeyfoot’s own amusing letters from his wife and his three lovely daughters, who were the county over visiting an aged and exceedingly disagreeable relation. “I wonder what it could be? Perhaps it is from another London journal, requesting more of your excellent histories? Or it is an urgent letter from some great lord, desiring your services!”
What services these might be Mr Honeyfoot did not elaborate upon, which was just as well, Segundus thought. His spellwork tended rather more towards the mundane than the fantastical; he scarcely felt he could have provided any Lordly aide.[2]
Segundus confided that he did not often have letters from anyone but his publishers and Mrs Lennox, his patroness, and opened it eagerly, using the edge of a hastily-cleaned butter knife.
He had felt, upon seeing the address, an immediate and potent blend of pride and discomfiture. Discomfort, for what if Mr Honeyfoot or Charles were now suffering the mistaken impression that he went about his daily business telling anyone who would listen that he, John Segundus, was a magician and incidentally he lived just that way, at Starecross Hall? But there was no small amount of pride, too, for it was the first missive he had ever received that had addressed him thus. And so as he unfolded it so did his excitement unfold alongside it, until each revealed twist of cursive and ink felt as sharp and sweet as the initial sip of some fine port, which glass has been swirled and sniffed and remarked upon so that the drink becomes that much finer for all the pageantry.
And he was a magician, after all! Oh, there were more and more self-styled magicians cropping up every week. Ladies and gentlemen whose neighbors' chickens now exclusively produced Dermochelys turtle eggs, or who had generated small roiling rain storms in their once-stately dining rooms, or who had found that all the hair on their heads had turned to lush English ivy overnight. But it must be said that few of these people had Mr Segundus’s mind for scholarship, and even fewer still his facility for practical magic. Accidental magic is quite one thing (and indeed lately it had been happening more than it had in centuries, to some alarming effect!) but to perform intentional magic! Now that is something entirely different. Control is hard-won and must be applauded, for a magician might spend years upon years in arduous study only to find she has not the slightest propensity towards returning her hair to its previous state, and must continue to wield pruning shears like silver barber’s scissors.
John Segundus had been 38 by the time he had managed any practical magic at all.[3] Being a most humble soul, he would be the first to tell you that his success had been due in no small part to Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell - for that same day they had restored magic to England, so that anyone with the talent for it might use it! - and also to John Childermass, Norrell’s servant, who had been so impatient about the whole business that Segundus had felt he had no other choice but to perform the spell. Since that auspicious day Segundus had enjoyed modest success with many of the spells he had tried, and had even set to devising some few of his own.
But the letter! Oh, that letter. He read it over twice with growing dismay. The first time he was impatient, hasty with anticipation. The second time he was slow and studied, wanting to make very certain of its contents. Once he felt he had really grasped the thing, he set it down upon the table rather too near the open butter keeper and leaned as far back in his chair as the creaky old oak would allow him.
“Oh,” he said, and frowned. His brow was furrowed. He had caught his bottom lip between his teeth, where the skin went first pink and then white and then pink again. He was, in short, the very picture of consternation. He opened his mouth as if to speak further, but all he managed was a short, thoughtful, “Hmm.”
Mr Honeyfoot was so alarmed by Segundus’s reaction - he had rarely seen his friend so perturbed - that the genial smile he wore as habitually as his white necktie began to turn about the edges. “Are you all right, sir? Is it some terrible news? Or perhaps it is one of your headaches? I will fetch Charles back straight away with the feverfew!”
“Oh, no. No thank you, but I am quite well,” Segundus assured him, and was momentarily quite touched by his friend’s concerned before he lapsed into pensive silence once more. “Hmm,” he said again.
He took up the letter again, but only to hand it over to Mr Honeyfoot, who was by this point all over anxiety and had been wondering if he ought to fetch Charles, or perhaps the village doctor, after all. Mr Honeyfoot looked inquiringly at Segundus, who merely nodded as though to say, at your leisure, sir. So Mr Honeyfoot eagerly began the letter from Osmotherly, which read as follows:
Sir —
I beg your humble pardon, for though we have never had the good fortune to meet, I am compelled to write to you without the necessary letter of introduction following a long interview with a mutual friend of yours and mine, Mr John Childermass. He has said much of your irreproachable character and, upon hearing of the predicament that has plagued my good family this past year, has emboldened me to seek your counsel.
It is my daughter Lucy of whom I write. She is a good, dutiful girl of fourteen. However, Lucy has lately been displaying signs of what Mr Childermass assures me is a great magical capability. You would be most impressed to hear what she has done! We know some thing of what we may expect from Lucy in the coming years, as my wife has long been a devoted reader of The Friends of English Magic! However, sir, to put it to you plainly, we feel Lucy would sorely benefit from a guiding hand. We know well that abilities such as hers must be cultivated in the proper directions, lest they grow wild and untamed.
Mr Childermass has confided that you may soon reopen your school for young magicians and thus I must beseech you, sir: take our Lucy into your favourable consideration! She is a clever girl of polished manner who would only benefit from your tutelage. Mr Childermass has spoken highly of your abilities in regards to magic, and informed us of your former success in tutoring young persons upon all aspects of education.
I implore you to respond with all haste, sir, so that my wife and I might make alternate arrangements if they are needed. We would be very glad indeed to host you for an interview, so that you might meet Lucy and observe her potential for yourself. We have some small questions to put to you ourselves - the presence of suitable chaperones chiefly among them, though we also wish to hear some of your planned curricula, and whether there might be daily prayer. We have heard as much of your affinity for magic as we have of your admirable disposition, and would count ourselves lucky indeed to make your acquaintance.
Most respectfully,
Henry Coffin
“Ah,” said Mr Honeyfoot. “Hmm.”
They sipped their tea for some time in a silence broken only by the muted tap of porcelain against table through fine white tablecloth. The conversation, when it hesitantly resumed, revolved chiefly around Segundus telling Mr Honeyfoot quite urgently that it had not been his intention at all to begin his school again in secret without any input from Mr Honeyfoot, and Mr Honeyfoot saying of course he had never considered it might be so! He was forever in admiration of Mr Segundus’s strength of character and knew he could never do such a thing, and perhaps Childermass was somehow mistaken? Segundus responded that Childermass was not much inclined to ever being mistaken, or at least he had never been mistaken in his presence or the presence of anyone in his personal acquaintance. They both wondered what Childermass could possibly have meant by misdirecting this poor gentleman to plead his case with Segundus. It seemed an unnecessary cruelty.
“Well!” Mr Honeyfoot said, eventually, when they had finished their tea and Segundus was conscientiously re-folding the letter and setting it aside, so he might take it upstairs to his study - for what purpose he could not have said, only feeling in some deep part of himself that it would not be very correct to dispose of it. “I know you should not like to hear it, sir, but I think we shall have to wait to find that out.”
Henry Coffin’s was the first letter to arrive addressed to Mr John Segundus, Magician of Starecross Hall, but it was not the last. In fact, he received so many letters that autumn that it sometimes felt as though someone had taken out a paid advertisement promoting his services in every newspaper in England. But then, Segundus privately thought, someone rather had, and that someone was a raconteur named Childermass.
The lie was so absurd! It was so mean-spirited! It was so entirely unreasonable! Segundus had not had even the smallest intimation to start up a school for magicians after the first attempt had been so thoroughly crushed beneath Norrell’s heel. And hadn’t Childermass been that heel? He had hoped that with the return of magic to England - the thing he had longed for his whole life - he might finally be allowed to settle into a quiet life of study and reflection. Indeed, he had lately been chiefly concerned with writing a definitive biography of Jonathan Strange[4]. Mrs Lennox had been so very pleased with this idea that she had kindly allowed him the continued use of her house, even after every thing that had happened! But of course no sooner had he begun to relax had that first letter from Osmotherly arrived, and his entire situation had once more been thrown into anxious disarray.
Why Childermass had lied so boldly and so readily to so many, he had not the faintest. He had not ever known Childermass to go about spreading untruths. In fact, Segundus had long admired his reckless pragmatism. Had felt a private relief at it, comfort in the idea that people such as he existed. That there was, in some happy few, an innate and vivid candor that class and Christian morality both had not managed to quash. Childermass was not always forthright, and he was not always clear as to his purposes, but he was no liar (except when the situation - or his former master - had dearly called for it). And so it was immediately clear to him that Childermass was madly working towards some indefinite goal, and that he intended for Segundus to be part of it, though to what end he could not say.
They had not exchanged correspondence in some months. Following the disappearance of his master, and at Segundus’s eager invitation, Childermass had stayed some weeks at Starecross. He had kept very much to himself, either studying the Raven King’s (objectionable, lawless) word or smoking endless pipes, pacing the barren moors that surrounded Starecross on all sides.
But no sooner had Segundus got used to having the man skulking about then had Childermass taken up with Vinculus, indicating he planned on touring him about England’s most venerable, ancient magical societies in order to hear their learned opinions - for whatever good that might do him! He had left his meagre possessions (a bible, a Child’s History of the Raven King, a spare coat) in the attic room he had commandeered as his own, but had then quickly become so transient that Segundus could not have sent him a letter even if he dearly wished it.
And how did he wish it! He took to composing baldly resentful letters to Childermass in his mind. He silently practiced scathing diatribes that would most certainly dismay the man, and make him reconsider this whole business altogether. He wished him caught in the rain upon horseback upon unpaved roads. If not for Segundus’s own sake, then for that of those parents who wrote to him pleading for the guidance of their magical children, when he could not be of any use at all.
Oh, he had written some few short letters and sent them (rather cunningly, he thought) to a handful of acquaintances within those societies of magicians. If any had truly hit their mark in terms of urgency he could not say, for he had felt upon composing them that good sense must dictate discretion, and so he had kept the letters as mild and inquisitive as possible.
Had his friend met Mr John Childermass lately, or did he expect to meet him soon? If it were the latter, would his friend perhaps do him the utmost kindness of letting Mr Childermass know that John Segundus would very much appreciate his advice upon some small magical matter? If he had already met Mr Childermass, did he know where Mr Childermass might be headed to next?
Mr William Hadley-Bright wrote back first, saying that he had seen Mr Childermass at the monthly meeting of the Learned Society of Magicians in Norwich just the night before, only two days after receiving Mr Segundus’s letter, but had been unable to get near enough to so much as shake the man’s hand, due in large part to the absolute uproar the presence of his book had caused. Wrote Hadley-Bright: “One may ask if it is very proper for the Raven King’s book to go about quite so naked and so often in his altitudes, but I say it was the finest entertainment Tom and I have had in years!”
Mr John Maydenstone wrote to say that yes, Mr Childermass had been in London some weeks ago and that the resulting furor was so great, he hoped that (if it were not too disagreeable to say) Mr Childermass was not planning a return trip any time soon. Dr Martin Ashby, of Shropshire, said much the same, and added that he had seemed a most canny, brooding sort of character. More letters came, and all were so alike in tone and content that they might as well have been written by a single man. All of them together boiled down to: no, this friend or that had not managed to speak with either Mr Childermass or his disagreeable, drunken book, and if they had, Mr Childermass had been quite unable to lend his ear for more than a minute here or there because there was always this or that other magician eager to interrogate him upon any number of subjects, and it had all really been quite a commotion, you see.
The more Segundus thought about it, the more it became exceedingly clear that Childermass did not wish to be questioned. Indeed, he seemed only to stay in any place long enough to achieve three things: presenting the Raven King’s book, identifying those magical young persons, and bending the ears of their guardians with tales of Starcross Hall and the kindly magician that resided within it. Which Segundus felt was really quite enough to be getting on with, for such short visits. Childermass seemed to be really getting a move on. He appeared in all these letters - all these fantastic, pitiable missives - much as a particular character may inhabit a variety of folk tales. Each with some unique morality lesson. Each with some fantastic tale of magical uproar.
And he had swindled missives from all over England! Some came from London. A great many came from York and Newcastle, and a small handful came from Kent. They came from nearby villages, from distant cities, from fishing hamlets along the coast. They were inked smartly upon fine linen paper by high society ladies with admirable hands and dashed onto common foolscap by merchants and farmers. They were concerned with small boys and young women and families all asunder. They were filled with animated toy theatres, and barn cats that were immensely surprized to find themselves suddenly capable of human speech, and enchanted kettles whose whistles had become Scotch airs. And dead in the center of all of these stories was Childermass. He was a yellow-curtain sage and a whispered suggestion and the pied piper, all. He was the sympathetic ear, the soothing balm. He was the full-page promotion in The Times. He was bundled together with unbleached post office string and delivered upon a silver tray.
Segundus sometimes thought that he might knock Childermass’s top hat straight off his head when next they met. He had ceased to feel badly about these little resentments.
By the beginning of November, Segundus had received nearly 50 letters. After the first few deliveries, when the deluge shewed no signs of slowing, Charles had given the post man a guinea so that he could accept them all without the two of them being tasked to counting out endless pennies, a chore which they both held to be pure Sisyphean torment.
Segundus personally felt rather Herculean about things, and that he might require spectacles sooner than later.
He had read every single one of these letters, some more than once. Then he had arranged them upon his desk into three neat stacks of yes, maybe, and regrettably not, because while some had undoubtedly been written by parents with a negligible sense of what magical ability actually presented as, many more were defensible. These tugged mightily on Segundus’s heartstrings, to say nothing of kindly Mr Honeyfoot. They each of them held children very dearly indeed, and it pained both men to hear of such trials and tribulations as had befallen some of these families.
Which is not to say each letter held a tale of woe! Some contained lovely things, truly marvelous discoveries of magic. Why, that first week, they had one from a governess in Newcastle upon Tyne whose young charge - a girl of 12, Miss Agnes Horsfall - had spied a rainbow filtering in upon the dining room wall and caught it in a crystal tumbler, where it now danced and shone (so long as one remembered to keep a piece of heavy cardstock upon the opening so it could not escape). Segundus very much desired to know what uses a captive rainbow might have, and had soon begun carrying about a crystal vial in the pocket of his waistcoat in case the opportunity to entrap one ever presented itself.
“I know you should not like to hear it, sir,” Mr Honeyfoot said one afternoon, having come by Starecross merely to borrow a book of Segundus’s before finding himself quite captive to Segundus’s mood, which was very dark and very cutting in regards to Childermass, “But I must urge you to reconsider the facts. There is no more Mr Norrell to put you out of business, and you have confided in me more than once that Mrs Lennox would dearly love to put Starecross to some greater use! I know for a fact that you yourself have often wished to begin again. I see no further obstacles. Why should you not have your school?”
Segundus knew what Mr Honeyfoot said was very sensible and correct. He knew, and yet he could not accept it, which very much perturbed him.
“I want to know what he means by it,” he confessed, feeling very wretched. Mr Honeyfoot’s look turned quizzical, and so Segundus hastened to explain. “Childermass! You know as well as I do that he does not do any thing without reason, so why has he concerned himself so fully with my occupation? To what end is he working? I cannot make any sense of it!”
Mr Honeyfoot laughed at him, but it was a warm, indulgent thing. “Oh, my dear Mr Segundus! Have you not considered that Mr Childermass merely esteems you? He seemed ever so regretful about halting our business those years ago. As well he should have been! I mean to say, I have the notion that perhaps he means to make up for Mr Norrell’s behavior - and by association, his own - by setting you up handsomely this time around. It is what you most rightly deserve, sir. No, I mean it! Indeed, I very much mean it. It was a nasty business he carried out, and you so tolerant of him and his undertakings, even after all of it! Lesser men than yourself would not have been so kind-hearted. No, I believe Mr Childermass intends you to have your school now that it is in his power to help you do so.”
Segundus had not considered this. In fact, when he tried to now it was as though every particle of him shied away from the very idea of it. Still, he went to his bed that night contemplative and solemn, twisting Mr Honeyfoot’s words this way and that.
These were the facts as he saw them: he was not some great magical scholar, nor possessed of any particular wit. He was an unmarried man of very limited means and a humble series of occupations. While these things seemed hardly calculated to disturb someone as socially unbothered as Childermass, they had bothered most everyone else Segundus’s whole life.
He had some faith in his own good character, of course. He had worked much of his life at decency. Like many gentle souls, he was much given to the idea that he himself was not innately decent, and worked very hard to spare any one the inconvenience of this glaring, congenital flaw. It never hurt any one, he would have said (had any one ever thought to ask him!) to strive for greater heights of compassion. Segundus had the idea, sometimes, that Childermass could tell how hard he belaboured this. Childermass had certainly always seemed amused by it. More-so than any other aspect of Segundus’ person, in fact.
Childermass himself, now! He did not believe Childermass to be the sort of selfless individual who practiced altruism for altruism’s sake (though he was certain Childermass was as good a man as any could be), just as he did not believe himself worthy of whatever esteem Childermass appeared intent on bestowing him. If indeed it was esteem and not some calculated means to an end! No, there was some hidden purpose to this madness.
“You are behaving very foolishly,” he told himself, emboldened by the dark solitude of his bedchamber. “You are being an utter blockhead.”
For he realized suddenly, even as he was filled with the sort of inward-facing melancholy that he condemned in himself more than anything, that none of these things mattered. This was not about him, or Childermass, or even magical society at large. He had been so preoccupied with confusion and annoyance that he had quite forgotten himself. He had the location, some knowledge, and a formidable patroness with the means to achieve this long-held dream. And now he had all the pupils he could want for! He had a singular responsibility to the magical children of England. He had been so wrong-footed about this entire business!
In the end, as he finally closed his eyes and lay back against his pillow exhausted with revelation, Segundus found in his heart that Mr Honeyfoot had been correct. And so it was that he resolved, the following morning, to sit down and write several letters of his own.
That night he dreamed he was upon the King’s Roads.
He knew at once where he was. It could never have been anywhere else. Sometimes that is the way of dreams.
There was a man beside him, pale and gaunt, with tangled hair that streamed all about his shoulders like black rainfall. He wore a circlet of polished, gleaming metal and a cold dark look upon his cold dark face. In his two pale and gaunt hands he bore two great raven’s feathers. He extended one to Segundus, the feather catching in the sunlight that fell so weak and grey in this land, all the dark shades of it turning purple then blue then black again. Segundus reached out to take it. He could not have done anything but.
The moment his fingers brushed it -
Lady Pole came on a gloomy day in early December. Snow had fallen late the previous night - lazy and soft, blanketing the roof and the trees and the fence posts until the hall and its grounds were all over white and hushed. It is in the nature of snow to dampen and quiet everything so that each chance sound becomes shocking and bold, and so Segundus heard the approach of her carriage from his upstairs study: the steady crunch of grass and ice beneath hooves, the creaking of wheels upon the newly-replaced packhorse bridge.
With this forewarning, he made quickly sure his hair was brushed and his clothing not in too much disarray and, rushing madly, met her at the gate just as one of her footmen was helping her down from her carriage.
They made the usual greetings. A bow from Segundus, accompanied by a murmured, “Welcome to Starecross, my lady,” that the lady in question took gracefully, as was her due. She inclined her handsome head in acknowledgement, and allowed him to help her over the threshold with his hand upon her elbow, followed close by her lady’s maid (a lovely young woman Segundus remembered now was called Rebecca Rowe), leaving her footmen and her maids to their duties.
“I hope I find you well, my lady,” said Segundus, leading her some way into the long front hallway, where there was warmth to be found. “And I hope also that your journey was not so difficult as last time!”
“Oh, I should think my driver knows the way well enough by now,” said Lady Pole.
There was a laboured silence. Segundus was not, generally, a man much given to mindless chatter. But now, confronted with the lady and her mild, inquisitive stare, as though she patiently waited for him to continue on with some cheerful, pointless niceties, and much longed for it to be done with already, he found he could not stop himself from blathering.
“Might I call for tea? Or, I beg your pardon, perhaps you are tired from your long journey and wish to rest?” said Segundus. He could not stop himself from adding, conscious all the while of Lady Pole’s light, fixedly polite smile, “I have given you rooms nearby the girl’s dormitories. Mrs Lennox has sent all manner of fine furnishings from Bath and London so that it may be comfortably appointed for you! She was very pleased to hear of your letter, and begs your pardon she could not be here to meet you herself. It is both our dearest wish that you may be comfortable here, my lady. I am sure you will not find it quite so comfortable as your usual accommodations, but I beg you to tell me of any thing you require, any thing at all, and I will be most happy to provide it for you!”
Lady Pole shook her head, already out of her pelisse and handing it carelessly to Rebecca, who draped the pale green velvet, trimmed in mink, reverentially over her arm so it fell in lustrous folds that shimmered in the dim light. “I require nothing but a bed and a room, and perhaps a candle or two to read by, Mr Segundus,” she told him. “I have had enough finery for two lifetimes. Perhaps we might sit in the parlour, and you may tell me what you will expect from me.”
Segundus readily agreed and begged a tea tray from Rebecca, who surely knew the wild passageways and oddities of the hall well enough. She went silently off to hang Lady Pole’s fine pelisse and to seek the impromptu services of the cook. The matter of refreshment settled, he led Lady Pole down the hallway and into the parlour, where they retired to chairs before the fireplace and made polite, inconsequential conversation upon Lady Pole’s journey from London, and this new drapery, or that same old lovely painting until the tea arrived, carried by Charles, who eyed the lady in such a way as to convey the oddest mixture of class deference and suspicion.
He poured the tea himself, shooing Charles to his other duties. Lady Pole was most gratified they had remembered her preference for lemon above milk and honey, settling herself back into her armchair with the cup and the saucer and a sigh. It was a melancholy sigh. It lay very old and grey upon her shoulders. She was not yet 30, he knew, and already her countenance had a tired gradient about it, a jumble of melancholy and fatigue. Some women are wearied by marriage, he thought. Others, by circumstance. Lady Pole had been prematurely aged by both.
“It is very strange to be back here,” said the lady, eventually. She had an air of the confessional about her.
Segundus was at once alarmed. “I hope it is not causing you any undue distress!”
Lady Pole looked at him with the most peculiar expression upon her lovely face. It had an amusement to it he could not guess at the origins of, but a sadness, too. “You may think I have taken leave of my senses for good, Mr Segundus, but I will tell you very plainly: I am often distressed. I do not believe I will ever be any less distressed. And so, it does not matter much to me which location I happen to find myself distressed in.”
This made very good sense to Segundus, who wished to inquire further into her ladyship’s state but did not feel it very proper. He thought that Lady Pole had probably taken quite enough prodding from himself. How many afternoons had they sat here in these very chairs while she told him all her endless, hopeless fairy tales? So instead he said, earnestly, “I cannot suppose it will be easy, my lady, but I had a hope we might each endeavour to create better memories here. For our own sakes, and for all the young ladies and gentlemen whose futures we may yet shape.”
“Yes,” murmured Lady Pole, looking struck by this. “Yes, I have much the same hope, Mr Segundus.”
They sipped their tea in mutual contemplation for some time, a homely silence filled only by the snap of the fire, the occasional clink of fine painted porcelain. Segundus supposed he was feeling very wistful. It was not that he longed for the past, no, nothing could be further from the truth! But it was such an unexpected thing to sit here in this room where they had once sat, caretaker and patient, and now they were a lady and a gentleman - which they had both been then to be entirely correct, but such things had not much mattered at Starecross, with the pall of strange fae magic cast dark and cloying over every inch of every room. What a remarkable thing, to share tea and conversation now with her ladyship. He found this situation much more pleasant, all-around.
“I suppose it was very rude of me to write you as I did,” Lady Pole said after some time, looking not at all troubled and in fact slightly pleased with herself. “I admit that when I received the letter from Mr Childermass my very first inclination was to set it on fire. But then I had a visit from Arabella, and she convinced me that I must read it and see what he had to say. He was very forward! I suppose I cannot be too surprized. He said that he could not blame me if I did not wish to ever set eyes on this place or you again, but that he thought I would be very useful to you as a chaperone, or perhaps even as some school mistress of comportment. He said I have a unique perspective of magic that may be useful to your purposes. I think he is right. You say you intend to take young ladies as pupils?”
Segundus nodded to say, yes, he did intend that. Lady Pole nodded herself once, and continued, “Well, I know you are chiefly concerned with turning out fine young magicians, Mr Segundus, but even magicians must learn such things as other ladies do. Or so society would have it! I wish it were not so. But I promise you, I will teach them all to the very best of my ability. I have had a very fine education myself, you know.”
And here Lady Pole paused for some time, looking quite unlike her usual self. That is to say, she looked hesitant, which was as foreign to her character as if she had suddenly begun belting an Italian operetta. For whatever damages the enchantment had done to her spirit, it had not seemed to matter how tired, how listless she became from dancing and endless processions and the weight of unspeakable roses - she had always been direct, even fierce.
Now, as she wavered for such long moments, Segundus found he was holding his breath. Eventually, conscious of breaking this silence that felt as confounding and portentous as any spell ever had, he said, gently, “My lady?”
“If you are to be my employer - truly, Mr Segundus! I intend to be treated as you would any other member of your staff. And while I am in your employ, I have only one requirement. That is, I will cease to be Lady Pole to you or any one else in this house. I would like to be Emma Wintertowne again. In fact, I dearly wish it.”
Her jaw was stubbornly set, shewing clear in the winter light that came gauzily through the window-glass. It was a pale, small light, and Lady Pole herself was pale and small upon her chair, holding her teacup against her saucer in a caged and careful manner, the way one might entrap a butterfly or small bird in their hand, as though the cup were some tremulous thing that she had caught and wished to keep.
“My Lady,” he said, feeling immediately disagreeable for it, “What of Sir Walter?”
“Oh, my husband will not mind it.” She gave a little laugh that held little amusement. “Well, I should say he does mind, but he is a politically-minded man and I think I am very bad for his business. No, Sir Walter has his occupation. He will barely notice I am gone. I think in the end he might be thankful for it. Our neighbors still think me quite mad, you see. They read the letters I sent to the Times and still they think me mad! As time goes by I find I have little desire to sit about his home like some decorative vase, waiting for his use. I would very much like to be of use here, Mr Segundus.”
Segundus could not find it within himself to refuse her. In truth, he had not even the slightest notion of doing so at all, though the request shocked him to the core as much as it concerned him - as much as he found he could understand it. She must have seen the agreement shewing in his face, for she let out a little sigh, softening at once in her countenance.
“You do me a kindness, sir,” she said, voice hushed. Then she set her teacup and saucer back upon the tray with a gentle hand and looked at him expectantly, her manner now one of business, so that he might ignore the way her eyes had suddenly gone so bright. “Now, I believe we have a great deal to discuss. How many girls will we be expecting? Might you shew me to their dormitories so I might get a better sense of things? I already know my way around, but I expect any number of things will have changed, and I would be very pleased to see the hall as it is now.”
“I fear I must insist on shewing you to your rooms before we get down to business! I would be a very bad host if I did not, I think.” He found himself smiling at her. To his great surprize, she smiled back for the first time in his memory, and it was as lovely as he had supposed it might be.
His first interview was set the first day of the new year. Osmotherly was close enough for a day trip, and there he found Miss Lucy Coffin to be not only a most magically-inclined sort of young person, but one blessed with a very agreeable temperament. His list of prospective students had been winnowed down, after much debate between himself and Mr Honeyfoot and Miss Wintertowne, to twelve students aged 11 to 16, and he was now chiefly concerned about how they might all get along in such tight quarters. Decency demanded separate dormitories for the young ladies and gentlemen, of course, but they would often be taking classes and meals together.
“Take it from me, sir, my lady,” said Mr Honeyfoot, who knew better than either of them could ever hope to, “Young ladies and gentlemen will always find some way to quarrel. We must be vigilant! To say nothing of impropriety! Though I am sure such young people as these will comport themselves with all decency.”
“I suppose some of society may find it very scandalous,” said Segundus, feeling suddenly very anxious.
Miss Wintertowne snorted in a very unladylike manner. “Norrell and Strange both have proven time and again that magicians will always find themselves quite above all the trappings of decent society. The young ladies you will teach are already ruined in the eyes of some men. Let them not also be shamed for it here.”
Mr Honeyfoot thought upon this for some time and eventually found he heartily agreed with her. Segundus found himself wishing to congratulate Childermass - for of course he had sent Miss Wintertowne to them - as much as he wished to ask the man if he intended for Segundus to have any input at all in the formation of his own school.
And oh, the Honeyfoots! Segundus, upon receiving the effusive letter of approval from Mrs Lennox, had immediately visited his dear friends and asked if Mr Honeyfoot should like a position with Starecross. Of course he had agreed at once, and as merrily and enthusiastically as any young man of twenty. Mrs Honeyfoot had been thrilled beyond measure that her husband and their dear friend Mr Segundus should have such an auspicious new calling. She said she had always known their dream would come to pass. Indeed, upon hearing the news she had first danced about their parlour, and then she had promptly informed their husband that they must move as close to Starecross as it were possible to get, and immediately. Her husband had naturally agreed. They had chosen a fine country house a short distance from the hall, close enough that Mr Honeyfoot or herself might even take breakfast there from time to time without troubling themselves overmuch.
And so daylight hours were soon chiefly concerned with scholastic matters. Inventory (candles, pens, ink, paper, counterpanes and tea services and all manner of new, fine furnishings that Mrs Lennox wished his students to have!), and construction, and interviews, and to say nothing of curriculum! It would do some injustice to those weeks to merely call them busy, for most nights found himself and Miss Wintertowne (and occasionally Mr Honeyfoot, if he could not find the energy to return home) in the parlour, slumped exhausted and in some disarray, not a one of them caring overmuch for propriety or for each other’s society, so exhausted were they.
His nights he dedicated to his biography of Jonathan Strange. He had always been by nature a fastidious record-keeper, and so all their correspondence he found already neatly arranged in a drawer by date. He began instead with the very pleasant task of reading them all over again, and as he read he could not help but to feel a sense of great pride in their friendship, for they described such feats of magic and such amusing anecdotal asides that they were a perpetual delight. Was it any wonder he had so admired the man? Was it any wonder he took such care of Strange’s legacy? For in Strange he had found the answer to his question, the question he had asked all his life - the certain knowledge that it was a right question, and that the magic he had read about in all those fantastic histories was truly within his grasp, if only he could reach far enough.
It was among these letters that he became reacquainted with all of Strange’s lengthy descriptions of his journeys upon the King’s Roads. These he felt compelled to keep apart from all the others, in a little wooden box upon his desk, for what reason he could not say. He felt compelled also to read them again and again, and he found each reading as delightful as the last. Each curl of cursive and ink rising from the page became the towers and turrets and bridges Strange described. Every crossed T or flourished G was some river or road crafted by the Raven King. They seemed to him as love letters, as though penned by some friend or another who feels compelled to speak when their heart has met another, similar heart, and been struck - as a conductor may strike a tuning fork, and all the orchestra may hear that clear sweet tone and be at once compelled to match it.
He wore no greatcoat because he did not wish to be encumbered, and was anyway rather inclined to think that the Raven King would not make his personal roadways so very chill. Some time ago - the first and only time he had been permitted beyond the doors of Mr Norrell’s library, in fact - he had seen reference to a spell meant to warm one’s whole person without any external heating source at all, but in lieu of this lost knowledge he brought a small metal flask filled with whiskey and his least threadbare scarf.
So it was, thusly prepared, that he stood before the largest mirror in Starecross Hall. Segundus shivered and wavered before it with his hands twisting nervously together, studiously avoiding recollection of his own pale complexion and much greying hair, the white cravat tied nervously round his neck.
It was a beautiful mirror. Magnificently tall and wide, framed in polished bronze, and situated just so against the wall farthest from the drawing room doors so that it reflected back the room, giving it cavernous depth. The room itself was very dark and very cold just now. The fire had been allowed to burn out by early evening, once the servants had ascertained there would be no great need for it. Unfortunately, Segundus felt now there was in fact a very great need, for he had brought with himself only a single candle and the light it cast was negligible. He set it down on a nearby table, a fine, ornate thing of lacquered oak, where it flickered and cast strange shadows upon the walls.
All the clocks in the hall had just tolled a rolling midnight, which seemed auspicious and in any case meant that all its residents would be abed. Miss Wintertowne, he had discovered, was rather inclined to tortured wakefulness, but she had retired early this night with a recent (and quite controversial) biography of Donata Torel, a figure whom she very much admired.
He thought of Strange. Indeed it was hard not to think of Strange, when here he stood now poised upon the very same adventure that had so invigorated and thrilled his friend. Segundus did not find himself very thrilled. In fact he felt timid, and as though this might all be a very foolish mistake. He was not at all certain he could even achieve the magic. And if he did, he wondered, for what purpose? But the thought had quite overtaken him these past weeks. He had re-read all his letters so many times over that they should have become very tedious, pedestrian as any particularly dull scholarly text (though he did not find very many scholarly texts particularly dull), but nothing could have been further from the truth. Instead they had become as a best-beloved novel, or a picture in a gallery that one could always derive pleasure from viewing.
How joyfully Strange described that first, sudden adventure along the Roads! “Imagine it!” Strange had written, paper spotted all over with enthusiastic ink-splatter, “Just imagine, if you may, passing through a reflection as though it were merely some common doorway! And all one really needs is a spell of revelation and a spell of dissolution, though a man with strong enough will might find he does not need either. I myself have not since the first attempt!” He had here most helpfully included his own spell of dissolution, which he claimed worked better than any else he had found.
Segundus set his hand to the cool glass for a moment, fingers spread wide and searching. His hand, when he withdrew it, left an unsightly smudge which he buffed at with the overlong, frayed cuff of his shirt. He frowned at himself. He squared his shoulders. His reflection did the same. “Well,” he told himself sternly, “Are you a magician or aren’t you?”
In the end, the spells themselves were easy enough to perform. It was just as Strange had said it would be. He murmured Doncaster’s words of revelation, and he performed Strange’s spell of dissolution, voice hushed in the expansive quiet of the room.
And then he peered into the mirror, and then he peered quite beyond it. Through the pane of glass, past the thin layer of amalgamated tin and mercury below and further and further and then! - further still, into some place that was at once remarkably strange and also entirely familiar, in the way that dreams can sometimes seem familiar. That is to say, it was at once so like and unlike anything he had seen before that he had the sudden, strange idea that every object in his periphery had moved itself six inches to the left, and taken on curious proportions, and it was so all over unnerving that the spell of dissolution, meant to make the mirror traversable, caught in his throat. He could see now that his friend had been quite correct: the spells themselves were almost entirely unnecessary, for once one saw the way, one could scarcely forget it.
He could see distant black spires and archways. He could see a mess of irregular stairways and thin strung foot-bridges between turrets beset with spikes of dark stone that grasped upwards like dead fingers from a grave. He could see a grey sky dotted in immense clouds, heavy with rain. He had the oddest idea that he had seen all of these things before - perhaps Strange’s letters, and his descriptions of Monsieur Minervois’s engravings had done them more justice than he had anticipated - and yet there was still something very raw about it. His heart was beating very fast. The single candle on its small ornate table began to take on the peculiar shining aura that light sometimes did when one of his headaches was looming.
He had a brief thought that he ought to have told Mr Honeyfoot, at the very least, what he had intended to do. He had another thought that it was rather too late for that, for he was afraid if he paused for any one or any thing he might never continue. And so he took a deep breath, held his hands in fists at his sides, and stepped through the mirror.
The heels of his shoes made a peculiar echoing click against the stone, as though he were traveling through a great hall and not, as it appeared, across a very tall and very wide bridge. The structure passed along a series of steep staircases and was itself dwarfed by the most enormous drawbridge that he had ever seen, hundreds of feet above and quite in disrepair. The mirror had not quite shewn it truly, he thought, amazed. The scale of it! The uncanny emptiness! The singular, chill bleakness that enveloped it all!
He took two tentative steps forward before the concept of having traveled through his own drawing-room mirror in order to have got here, to this curious place of such fantastic stone angles, made him stop very suddenly. He threw his hands up and out. He rather wished he had thought to wear his boots.
“I really should have brought a rope,” he lamented, though where he might have attached the rope to he could not imagine.
It was then that he remembered the whiskey, and though he found it a most repellant drink (it had been all he could scrounge from the kitchen at such short notice) he uncapped the flask and took such a large swallow that his eyes watered and his throat constricted. It calmed him somewhat, though, and in time he was steady enough to take some steps forward.
Where he was particularly he could not say. He had always enjoyed an exceptional sense of direction. Where another person might give you directions using mainly local landmarks or street names, Segundus was the happy, baffling sort of gentleman who would instead tell you to head East-South-East for approximately a league. Here his internal compass failed entirely. But then, he consoled himself, this was not England. And he was only the second man in centuries to stand here, in this extraordinary realm! Strange had made some desultory attempts at mapping the Roads he had traveled, but they could have been infinite for all anyone knew. Certainly none of the Aureate magicians had ever bothered to try. It seemed a grim, futile business in any case. The ground was not visible, if indeed there was a clearly-defined ground at all, and though a dim light touched every thing there were no earthly shadows beyond what the pathways themselves cast, no distant darkening or lightening of sky.
The bridge he found himself on was itself easily twenty feet across and made of unbroken grey rock, jutting out at odd angles as if it had grown in place organically, as one mass, and perhaps then been carved and somehow transported here from some distant mountain. Segundus stood equidistant along its length, and some hundred feet forward he could see its abrupt end. When he got himself to the edge he found a small, precariously winding staircase, leading downwards to a thin grey stone bridge.
Segundus found the staircase in good repair and got himself down it with only a modicum of prayer, though at the very bottom he found to his great disappointment that the bridge had collected a not-inconsiderable amount of water that soaked him straight up to his breeches.
Further along the water-logged bridge was a set of dirty white marble steps, leading upwards to a gigantic archway, extensively crumbling and beset by two massive carved figures on either side. It was a man in profile, left and right. A man with a young, handsome face and long wild hair like black rainwater. On his head he wore a hat with a raven’s wing affixed to each side.
The steps led upward to doors, arched and carved with great black birds, already pushed open and in unexpectedly good repair. He passed through them into a palatial hall, in a state of great ruin about the walls and ceilings. It was lit by shafts of light that passed through the fallen masonry and dark with shadows cast by no thing that he could see.
In the center of that hall was the most astonishing thing he had yet seen.
It was a statue. It was a life-size effigy, carved from smooth grey stone that shimmered and threw scattered points of light all across the filthy floor. It was a man upon a throne upon a plinth. A great bird perched upon the backrest of the throne, so skillfully made that each of its stone feathers seemed to catch some light stone breeze. The bird and the man both peered at the doorway, so fiercely and so intently that Segundus nearly glanced behind himself to see what had so taken the two.
He longed for a closer look, but he found he was suddenly very afraid. The statue, huge and cold and shining, was so expertly carved that the Raven King’s gaze seemed very real and very discerning, catching upon Segundus so steadily - so expectantly - that his hands began to tremble. He could not bring himself to approach it. He could not bring himself to turn his back to it. He could not breathe.
The room was bare of any other ornament or obvious function and was so very large and all over gloomy that Segundus crept alongside the nearest wall, sodden shoes squelching uncomfortably, one of his shaking hands brushing the crumbling surface. He felt he could not take his eyes off the grey stone King, and why he felt so he could not say, only that it made him tremble to behold it, only that he suddenly desired very much to leave.
He had never inquired with Strange how one might travel back from the King’s Roads, and in his prior excitement he had forgotten to review what histories of the Roads remained in the Starecross library. That he should be so foolish weighed very heavily upon him, for he realized suddenly - and with much embarrassment at his own lack of foresight - that there were no mirrors in this place to exit through. But in that same moment, now that he stood there against the crumbling wall with beams of light before and gloom behind, the answer was at once indescribably clear to him, as though he had known it all his life.
Segundus cast one last earnest look at the sad old hall, at the plinth that held the Raven King’s terrible likeness, shivering although it really was quite warm after all. Then he turned on his heel and walked through a shadow, home.
He could hardly contain his excitement over a late breakfast the following morning. His fingers beat against the table in mad patters like hail coming down and his feet - still pruney in new stockings and shoes, from his adventure upon the Roads! - tapped the rug, without any direction whatsoever from Segundus himself. Already inclined towards a somewhat nervous disposition, he upset his tea twice and sat his elbow on the grilled kippers, at which point Mr Honeyfoot put his fork down and leant forward, concerned. “My dear sir, is something the matter?”
“Perhaps it is an apoplexy,” Miss Wintertowne suggested, sounding rather more excited by the prospect than Segundus felt she properly should. She was hiding a wicked smile in the corner of her mouth, he could see it plain as day. “Our housekeeper had one over breakfast some years ago, poor soul. She inquired of my mother and I if perhaps we thought the toast had burnt, though it was in fact as perfectly made as it usually was, and then she had a terrible fit and fell over quite dead.”
“Good God!” Mrs Honeyfoot cried, and crossed herself. Segundus saw, from the corner of his eye (and to his quiet amusement), Charles and Rebecca Rowe do the same. “Well! Let us all pray that is not the case for our dear Mr Segundus.”
Segundus smiled politely at Miss Wintertowne, but could not find it in himself to rally, nor to chastise her. While it was true that he had once been her keeper, her doctor and her confidant, the reversal of the fairy’s spell had brought him quite beneath her once more. She was his employee, yes, but she was still a lady, however much she wished she were not. Mrs Honeyfoot tsked, but her expression - which she shared with her husband - was more fondly amused than not.
Why he did not tell any of them about his adventure he could not rightly say. If pressed, he might have said he believed Mr Honeyfoot might wish to accompany him, and Mr Honeyfoot was quite old and could not be expected to achieve much in terms of physical exertion. He might have said he did not believe it proper to discuss such things over breakfast. He might even have said he did not believe it proper to discuss such things in front of ladies.
All of these things he might have said would not have been entirely honest, of course. Mr Honeyfoot had never expressed the slightest desire to go upon the Roads himself. And Segundus had taught - and would soon teach - ladies all sorts of magical things, for he did not believe their sex ought to exclude them from the noble pursuit of magic. No, he knew in some deep well of himself that the truth was he simply wished to have some thing for himself. Some thing that no one else knew. It was only when one made desires plain, when one spoke out loud, that some thing contrived to ruin them. And this secret, this wonderful thing he had done and would do again, was already very dear to him. He did not wish for it to be taken from him as so many other things had been, all these years past.
But these were thoughts best kept to oneself, and so Segundus smiled and thanked his friends for their concern and said nothing else at all.
1He had not been particularly bothered himself by the excess of magic that had invaded Starecross the previous year. However, he had seen the sorry state in which it had left his master, and then had found himself obliged to watch as Stephen Black had somehow contrived to throw first a packhorse bridge and then an entire hill at a fairy. It would have been a stout-hearted man indeed who found himself confronted with such magic and come out the other side with any great enthusiasm for the subject. [return to text]
2It must be noted that while Mr Segundus was certainly a gentleman, he was one of extremely modest means. He had not often rubbed elbows with any Lords, though he had been employed by several as a tutor. In truth, he had a vague idea that any services a Lord might require would tend more towards hunting game or elevating the contents of his wine cellar than any grand acts of magic (the sort of magic that Jonathan Strange had once performed as easily as another man might exchange his hat!). He was not entirely sure either of those things were at all within his own oeuvre, and besides, the thought itself was so entirely discourteous that it made him blush, shocked at these little uncharitable notions which were not at all native to his character. As a result, he would have preferred to avoid the subject of Lords and their troubles all together.[return to text]
3Martin Pale’s Restoration and Rectification, the circumstances surrounding the need for which spell must be left to better scholars than I, for it is a grim business and the persons involved much changed by the experience. [return to text]
4By autumn of 1819 several publishers had already gone to press with biographies of Jonathan Strange. Most had been penned by gentlemen Segundus knew must have only met Strange in passing, and all were mistaken upon almost every pertinent detail of the man’s life and personality. The latest had been authored by a bold fellow named Hatch, whom Segundus assumed had not ever met Strange at all! For the opening pages had been chiefly concerned with impressing upon the reader how kind, how gentle, how humble was Strange.
Segundus had quite enough correspondence with the man in question - to say nothing of their years of acquaintance! - to prove this patently false. While his relationship with Strange had been extremely congenial, it had also often involved no small amount of benign quarrels of the sort that were so fundamental to Strange’s character (and to those of gentlemen scholars everywhere), such as Strange asking Segundus what he meant he couldn’t perform the spell, for he had personally found it very easy, and Segundus replying that this particular spell had not been done for three hundred years and that not every magician had Strange’s incredible facility for magic. This was very often followed by long periods of no communication at all when Strange concluded these conversations by admitting that yes, he supposed he was quite extraordinary.
While he would undoubtedly omit these little squabbles from his own book, it had seemed a terrible disservice to his friend to let the public at large go on believing in a Strange who was not at all the man that Segundus had known him to be. He had admired Strange greatly. Segundus thought him a very kind, noble sort of gentleman. But Strange was certainly not the sort of man apt to go around London performing domestic miracles upon wrinkled bed-linens or being kind to orphans, and that was just plain fact. All great men will become myths if we let them, Segundus had thought, but Jonathan Strange would sooner eat his own cravat than be relegated to history as some saintly reincarnation of the Raven King.
It is perhaps worth noting that no brave soul had yet attempted a biography of Gilbert Norrell. It is unclear whether this was due to the man’s well-known social reclusivity, or his infamously dreary attitudes upon so many aspects of magical scholarship, or merely because everyone remembered what he had done to Jonathan Strange’s The History and Practice of English Magic. In any case, it would be a great many years until anyone decided the reward was worth the risk.[return to text]