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The letter was delivered into Norrell's hands along with the rest of Strange's post by Childermass that grey morning.
Norrell paused as he read the Soho address penned in an unfamiliar womanly hand. He broke into the letter quickly, enflamed with unease, but also curiosity.
Dear Mr Strange,
I have been waiting all this time to hear from you. I do not know if any of my other letters reached you, but the matter has become urgent. What has happened to you? The papers gave almost no details after the black tower disappeared, but I can only think you have gone back to England. I wish you would write to me.
My father will not allow me to remain in Venice much longer.
You did not tell me how long it would take you to find your wife, but I have been very worried for you.
I still have the mirror you gave me, and your letter with instructions, however, so much time has passed now since you sent the mirror to me, I do not know if these instructions still stand.
You did not say if it was safe to move the mirror at all. With father making us come home, I am certain you would not wish for me to leave it behind, and I would not leave it with anyone else here as you entrusted it to me and the instructions in your letter were so very particular, that only I should know about the mirror.
Therefore I will be bringing it back with me to England, and I pray the spell you spoke of will still work. Having no further news from you, I do not know what else to do, but I am terrified lest moving the mirror all the way to England disrupts your efforts with your wife. If, God forbid, anything should happen to the mirror along the way, I should never forgive myself if it interfered with your spell, but I can think of nothing else to do.
I do so very much hope this letter reaches you, and that you are not in some great danger.
We expect to be back in England by the 11th of March. Below I include my address in Rotherhithe where I pray you will come the soonest you are able. I do so dearly wish to hear from you. I pray my moving the mirror will not endanger you or your wife. Please write.
Your affectionate friend,
Flora Greysteel
Childermass was standing beside Norrell's chair.
"Is it safe? Or must it be confiscated with the rest?" he said, his voice flat with slight dour irony.
Norrell stood and read the letter again by the window.
"I do not think Mr Strange should see this." Norrell folded the letter. "It is from a young lady. A Miss Greysteel. Was that not the name of the young woman he met in Venice? She talks of a mirror he gave her."
Norrell handed the letter to Childermas.
"She will be back in England by Monday," Childermass said.
"Why would Mr Strange have given her a mirror?" Norrell wrung his hands. "You do not think --?"
"Sir?"
"She writes very familiarly."
"She is young."
"But...if Mr Strange and she..."
"Mr Strange was very much in love with his wife." Childermass placed emphasis on the word wife, his brows lifting meaningfully.
"Of course."
Norrell began to pace the room.
"This mirror troubles me greatly. In his -- in his delirium, he might have given this girl an object imbued with magic. A mirror of all things." Norrell darted a look at Childermas. "No, it would not do to let her keep it. When she is back in England, you must go and retrieve it. It must be destroyed. But...we do not know what magic might be on the mirror."
"Why not ask him?" Childermass dropped the letter down on the table and put his hands in his pockets. "He has been straightforward in every way with you until now."
Norrell winced faintly. "It will agitate him." He stroked his knuckle down Dorothea's breast. "He does not like to speak of Venice."
"That is the easiest way to learn what was done. Let him see the letter."
Norrell picked up the letter from the desk and turned it in his hands uneasily.
"You must reseal it."
*
After dinner, they repaired to the library, as had become their habit.
Strange went and stood before the fire.
"These...letters came for you at your house in Soho-square, Mr Strange." Norrell handed him the bundle.
"Ah. I thank you."
Norrell turned away as Strange looked through the letters.
Norrell took himself off to his desk and pretended to organise his papers.
He stole a look at Strange. Strange was sitting now in one of the chairs reading a letter open in his hand, the others letters forgotten. He sat very still, his whole focus on the letter, his expression tense.
Norrell forced himself to look down at his papers and seem occupied. He was beset with sudden doubt. Strange may well choose not to confide in him. What then? Norrell would have to find some other means of raising the matter with him.
Minutes passed. There was only the clock ticking and the occasional pop of the fire.
Strange's chair creaked and at the edge of his vision, Norrell saw him stand. Then Norrell could not help but look at him again.
Strange stood before the fire, one hand resting on the mantle, as he often stood. He still had the letter in his hand and his head was bent as he read it again.
"Mr Norrell..." he said, turning slowly.
Norrell quickly lowered his eyes to his papers.
"Forgive me for interrupting you."
"Not at all." Norrell came around the desk. "Is all well, Mr Strange?"
"I have received a letter..." The firelight showed through the letter in Strange's hand as if the parchment was thin as a leaf, and the slanted delicate cursive of the girl's hand showed like the veins of a skeleton leaf.
"It is from a young lady who I met while I was in Venice. I..." Strange faltered. "Well, would you mind reading it?"
Norrell took the letter and sat by the fire. He frowned as he read. It must seem like his first reading of it. He felt self-conscious, and a little ashamed by this ruse. Impatient and anxious over his own duplicity, he finished reading quickly and lowered the letter.
"I am ashamed to say I had quite forgotten about her," Strange said when he saw Norrell was finished. "So much of what happened in Venice now seems like -- one long delirious dream. This young lady...she was kind enough to try to help me. I am afraid I put all sorts of notions in her head."
"She...makes mention of a mirror."
"Yes. Forgive me." Strange picked up his hand resting on the marble mantlepiece and slapped his palm down. "It is humiliating to remember. That I involved others in my --" He broke off, shook his head.
"At the time I...had been taking a potion of my own making."
"A potion?" Norrell sat forward. "What sort of potion?"
Strange turned his face slightly towards Norrell, while the rest of him faced the fire. His mouth twisted down in a kind of smile, narrow and bitter. "A potion to bring about a state of madness. I believed that I could summon the fairy. I thought my trouble was only that I could not see him. I thought that...if I was a lunatic..."
Strange nudged himself away from the mantlepiece with his hand and stepped back, his hands loose at his sides.
"I am ashamed to lay this business out before you now. But I would conceal nothing from you."
"Was the potion -- Did you -- Did it work?"
"Oh it worked, after a fashion. When I recall my state of mind at that time --" Strange's voice dropped low, "My grief, my desperation to see my --" He swallowed, went on more softly, "to see Bell again. The effects of the potion on my rational thinking. These elements together combined to break my grip on reality. I had...vivid hallucinations. I thought I spoke with a fairy."
Strange's face screwed up faintly with the effort of remembering.
"The fantasy I constructed was quite elaborate. I believed the fairy was lying to me. I believed -- I believed that he had stolen away Lady Pole. I followed him through the mirror. There was a -- a castle. A terrible place. I dreamt she was there. Dancing. Bell, I mean."
Strange stared into the fire, his dark eyes glassy and transfixed, far away.
Norrell watched him and barely breathed as he listened.
"She was not herself. She did not know me. When the fairy discovered my presence, he cursed me."
Strange blinked slowly several times, then broke his gaze from the fire. He looked at the carpet.
"Of course, there was no fairy. None of it was real. Somehow in my madness...I had performed a dreadful spell, I know not what. Some piece of black magic. I had cursed myself. But even that was not enough to bring me back from my madness. I believed that if I could only return to Faerie, if I could find her again...
"That was when I enlisted Miss Greysteel. I sent her a mirror along with instructions to wait. Then I went back through the mirror. I wandered for many days, searching for the fairy's castle. There was a...a forest. A great dark forest of Faerie. If I dreamt that as well, or if it was real, I cannot now say."
Strange darted a look at Norrell.
"I spent many days walking in that forest. Weeks, perhaps. There were strange lights in the trees. It took me such a long time to find the castle again. But I found it. I - I dreamt I found it. The ballroom. The dancers. Again, I saw Bell. I believed I could send her back through the mirror. But I could not disenchant her."
Strange's eyes fixed on Norrell again, a shadow of desperation in his look.
"I tried to... And then your summoning of Henny woke me from my dream. I -- had to leave that place. While you had Henny, it was impossible for me to remain, though I dearly wanted to."
No magician could stay away while his dæmon was in danger.
"I think I would have stayed forever in that dream if not for you. I am sure I would have gone mad and remained in Faerie until I starved. Chasing phantoms."
There was a pause. Norrell sat motionless, the letter from Miss Greysteel in his lap, his arms resting on the chair's armrests, his hands loose and empty.
Presently, Strange stood.
"I am sorry I have not told you all of this before now," he said. "It is -- painful for me to recall the depths I sank to. The way I behaved. Using my knowledge of magic to make myself mad. The weeks I spent lost in that Faerie forest... To lay the whole business out to you, well --"
He stopped before the fire.
"I am humiliated, sir. But there is no other man I feel would listen with more sympathy and understanding. Nor any who I owed the truth to more. I owe you my life. My sanity."
There was quiet then. The fire popped. Strange stood with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him. It was a scene that was familiar to Norrell from the time when Strange had been his pupil.
"I am glad you have told me this, Mr Strange," Norrell said quietly, marshalling his thoughts. "I know it is not easy for you to speak of that time." He stood, holding up the letter. "This mirror you gave to Miss Greysteel, then, it is only an ordinary mirror?"
Strange nodded. "The poor girl." He took the letter gently from Norrell. "She had no reason to doubt anything that I told her. Now she brings the mirror back with her to England. To think she has probably been staying in Venice out of fear that if she were to leave, she would -- disrupt the spell I told her I was attempting." Strange shut his eyes wincingly. "I do not know how I did not think of her sooner. I should have sent a letter to her the moment I was in my right mind. She needed to know at once that the instructions I gave were lunatic nonsense."
"You have had much to occupy yourself with. You have only lately recovered your health."
"I must visit her. I must apologise and explain myself. I have treated her very shabbily when she was kind enough to show me friendship."
Norrell walked slowly to the back of his chair. He stopped and rested his two hands on the back. "You might as easily send a letter. I do not know that it would be right to revisit that episode with an impressionable young person."
Strange looked stricken. "Of course. I am scarcely thinking of her reputation. It would be better for her if she were to deny any acquaintance with me."
"I meant more for your own sake, Mr Strange. It worries me that... Her letter indicates that she believed wholeheartedly the things you told her. About fairies, about your wife, the mirror. I do not like the thought of the two of you speaking of that time together. If she were to try to convince you that you are presently mistaken, if she were to disrupt the equilibrium you have achieved..."
"You need not worry yourself on that account, Mr Norrell. My chief emotion, being confronted with the very vessel I poured all my delusion into, speaking my mad fantasies back at me, would be the keenest embarrassment. I am myself once more. I will never again entertain those notions that I had while I was...in a disturbed frame of mind." Strange lowered his eyes humbly. "But I know why you worry."
"Please do not think I do not see the tremendous steps forward you have taken, Mr Strange. It is only that I know of your vulnerability."
"Of course." Strange spoke more quietly now, with all humility. "You must tell me what you think I should do."
He spoke now as a magician, as if this were a professional matter.
"I trust your judgement above my own," Strange added.
Norrell's breath caught.
He thought again of that day, when they had sat together in this very room. When Strange had been so far away from him.
"It has not sat right with me to go on calling myself your pupil."
Strange was no longer his pupil. That was true. Norrell looked at this man who now stood with all humility before the fire. Strange was what he had been that day -- a formidable magician. He had been an almost unmanageable opponent. Now, he asked with the greatest graciousness and modesty for Norrell to advise him.
Their conversation and this ending was the best conclusion Norrell could have hoped for when he decided to give Strange Miss Greysteel's letter.
"Write to the young lady," Norrell said. "And let that be the end of it."
Strange inclined his head. "I will do it this very night."
"I thank you for your frankness, Mr Strange. I know it was not easy for you to tell me all this, but it is for the best."
*