Chapter Text
It was midnight.
Here in the Eternal Darkness, it was always midnight. Consequently, heedless of the hour, Jonathan Strange was reading a book. He had just made a rather important discovery in it.
Strange yelled for Mr Norrell, and received no response.
This was not at all unusual in their lives nowadays. The annoyance of going in and out to enter their various houses for things they needed was such a dreadful inconvenience that they had modified the labyrinth in Hurtfew. Its various doors off the corridor to the library now led to the front rooms of Ashfair, the house in Hanover Square, and Strange's house in London.
The resulting profusion of rooms was convenient, except when you wanted to find someone.
Strange employed his usual solution to this dilemma: he cast a scrying spell and divided the quarters into the four houses, then the relevant house into four sections.
Mr Norrell was, Strange discovered, asleep in Hurtfew.
Upon consideration, Strange recalled that he himself had been trying to sleep when he had made his discovery. The inaccuracy of clocks had only exacerbated his own tendency to lose track of the hour.
He hurried into Ashfair's front room and through to Hurtfew Abbey, still contemplating what he had found.
Mr Norrell was not pleased about being awoken. "It's always midnight anyway," said Strange carelessly, sitting down on the bed, ignoring Mr Norrell's nervous scrabble away from him. "Look at this."
Mr Norrell reached over and settled his reading glasses on his face. "Oh. Yes, the Tale of the Fairy Gold. He placed a ten-year curse on the Raven King, but the Raven King got round it by putting the clock hands round 7300 times and asking the sun to lie for him. I've always suspected it was apocryphal, not least because the clocks even at the end of John Uskglass's reign were not really accurate enough to--"
Strange waved a hand. "It's the principle I'm thinking of. Do you think it's sound?"
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't ever seen a spell for it."
Strange flourished the other book he was holding triumphantly. "Look at this. It's a bit of nursery rhyme, but I think there's something in there. It's about the sacrifice of time--making the clock go faster, as it were. It references the original story, but obliquely, and the spell would be similar in form to--ah, what's the one, the one for making crops grow quicker?"
"Song of Ceres, it's called in later texts," said Mr Norrell, clearly interested despite himself. "A most fanciful name, but a well-attested spell."
"Yes, that's the one. You sacrifice one thing, don't you, to bring forth the larger effect? An apple, say, for a field of wheat?"
"Yes, that's right. It's a head of wheat, not an apple--like for like."
Strange took a deep breath. "We were discussing the auspiciousness of hundredth anniversaries. "Could we trick the spell into thinking it'd been 100 years?"
"Spells aren't sentient," said Mr Norrell sternly. "You cannot trick them into anything."
Strange sighed. "It was only a manner of speaking, Mr Norrell."
"A magician must be precise in his speech. If you'll recall, it was an insufficiently precise manner of speaking which led to my present situation. Not, of course, that I should have wished for you to be alone in the Darkness, but..."
"Mr Norrell, please. Is it possible?"
"It depends on the procedure you were thinking," said Mr Norrell. "A sacrifice of time for more time?"
"One day for a hundred years?"
"I don't know," said Mr Norrell. "I would have to do more research."
"Well, come, then," said Strange, tugging his arm. Mr Norrell flinched, and Strange let go, but stood up, clapping his hands together.
"I wanted to sleep," said Mr Norrell reproachfully.
"You can do that," said Strange, "when we break the curse."
Of course it wasn't really so quick as that. Strange had many enthusiasms and ideas for escape, most of which died off when they failed to work.
This time, though, bit by bit, they built a plan. One day Mr Norrell thought would be insufficient, so they sacrificed a year. That year would go by in an instant, and it would never be theirs again, but since they had already passed many years here, it seemed a small sacrifice. For some weeks, they worked on setting up the spell. Finally, almost two months after Strange had burst into Norrell's room, they were ready.
The two magicians stood at opposite ends of the little table at which they did magic.
"It could go very badly," said Mr Norrell.
"Think of what we could gain," said Strange. He smiled at Mr Norrell, who looked a little flustered and fidgeted.
"If we are freed," he said, "you will not forget our friendship, will you?"
Strange looked surprised. "Of course not. After all this time, I don't think I would be able to. We have been through something no one else can understand, after all."
Mr Norrell nodded.
Everything needed for the spell was on the table. Some pages from a calendar they hadn't used in some time, the smallest clock in Strange's London house, a flower to signify the passage of the seasons. The words had included a great many exhortations to pagan gods and goddesses, which Mr Norrell, in his general dislike of florilegia, had removed. It was only a few lines, now.
They held a candle in their clasped hands, and began to recite the spell.
A wind seemed to sweep through the room without disturbing anything, and yet it swept not just through the air but through the magicians' very bones. They were frozen, unable to move, as the shadows seemed to flicker wildly and, outside, the trees of Faerie grew taller before their very eyes. The phantom wind rushed upward and then back down in directions no wind had ever gone, and suddenly, as the candle guttered out in their hands, the room returned to normal.
The Darkness rolled back. The effect was something like stormclouds clearing and something like, had Strange and Mr Norrell known it, a solar eclipse receding.
For the first time in many years, the two magicians saw the sun shining through their window.
"I didn't think it would work," said Mr Norrell.
Strange stretched out a hand and let a sunbeam fall on it. He laughed softly in delight, and flung the window open.
"Let's go back to England," he said.
Transportation was easy to accomplish; they landed Hurtfew Abbey in its usual location with very little fuss. Mr Norrell said everything looked different, that the trees had grown up a good deal, but Strange said that was only natural when it had been five years.
They got into a debate, as they always did, about how long it had been since they had entered the darkness. Strange insisted that he had kept careful track and that it had been only five years, not more; Mr Norrell insisted that it had been at least seven.
"We'll settle this," said Strange. "Let's go through your house on Hanover-Square and find a newspaper or someone to ask."
It was raining in London -- of course. Mr Norrell poked his head out and said, softly, "Good English rain."
Strange smiled, and stepped out of the house without pausing to put his coat on. The ever-present smell of London hit him, though it seemed different than usual, somehow. Probably the effects of having been in Faerie for so long--where cities often smelled of blood and dead things, but rarely of humanity. He shook his head.
Women's dress, he noted as the people streamed down the street, had certainly changed... Far more than he would have expected in the time period, but then he had never paid very much attention to it. Were the buildings different? Surely that couldn't be right. He frowned.
"Are you sure, Mr Norrell, that we are in England?"
Mr Norrell said, "Of course I'm sure! Where else would we be?"
"I don't know..."
Mr Norrell stepped out with Strange. At that moment, some sort of contraption, shaped like a kind of low, self-powered carriage, rushed by them at high speed, making a noise like nothing Strange had ever heard before. Mr Norrell shrank back into the doorway, twisting his hands in terror.
"What the devil," said Strange, staring after it in astonishment.
"This must be England," Mr Norrell repeated. "There isn't any London anywhere else. This is London, I suppose. It looks like London."
"Perhaps it's Hell."
Mr Norrell gave this due consideration. "I would not be surprised to find an imitation of London in Hell," he said, "and certainly that contrivance that passed us just now was devilish. All the same, I don't think that's the solution. The trees at Hurtfew were too tall, Mr Strange."
Strange stared at him, the meaning of his words beginning to dawn.
"Gain one hundred years, the spell said." Mr Norrell looked around himself, out at the London that wasn't quite exactly as they knew. "I suspect that we have done just that. If you can find a newspaper, I think you will find the year is 1917."
They found a newspaper, though they had to walk for some time in the familiar and yet bizarrely alien streets to do so.
"February," said Mr Norrell. "That would explain the inclement weather--" there was a cutting chill in the air, and Mr Norrell had insisted on bundling himself up well before they left the house--"and the year would explain the...er....changes. It was a very precise effect, I see."
"We've traveled through time, by magic? I thought you said that was impossible."
"To the best of my knowledge," said Mr Norrell irritably, "Nobody had ever done it before. No doubt the power of the fairy's curse assisted. Fairies, as you know, do not experience time as we do. It may even be that as soon as the curse was ended, we would inevitably emerge a hundred years after it had started. Many tales, distorted though they are, tell of people who entered Faerie and spent what they perceived as a short time there, then later came out to find themselves some decades distant from their original time. I think you'll find in T--"
"How do we get back?" demanded Strange, cutting off Mr Norrell's lecture.
"I don't think we can. At least, there's no record of that ever happening."
"We can't stay here!" said Strange, grabbing onto Mr Norrell's arm. "We broke the spell so that we could go back home! This is not home!"
Mr Norrell glanced around them. "Mr Strange," he said, "I think that we should return to the house. We're attracting attention."
Strangely-dressed as they were, and loud as Strange was being, more than one person had stopped to stare. Mr Norrell took hold of Strange firmly and towed him back to Hanover Square, glancing around himself every few minutes.
As more and more people stared, he said, feebly, "We are actors." Actors, in Mr Norrell's opinion, got up to all sorts of strange, outlandish, and completely inexplicable things; surely, that wouldn't have changed so much in a hundred years.
The house on Hanover Square had its own share of watchers by the time they got back. Strange was silent, still seemingly stunned, so Mr Norrell had to push through a crowd of people whispering about why an entire house had suddenly appeared in an area of the square that had been rumored to be cursed, haunted, or both for decades. He wasn't a tall man nor one with aggressive elbows, so it took some time.
Finally, he got himself and Strange back into the house and locked the door firmly.
"Well," he said. "If we were hoping for an inconspicuous arrival, it seems that we have failed."
Strange laughed, with a worrying edge of hysteria. "Oh," he said. "We've arrived in London a hundred years from where we started, after having been in Faerie for five years, without the knowledge of a single soul, all our kith and kin dead, bringing four houses inclined to wander and a library that has now probably reached mythical in its reputation. God forbid we be conspicuous ."
Mr Norrell frowned. Strange's face had gone very white, and his eyes very wild; it was a mood Mr Norrell had not seen him in for six and a half years. After some consideration about how best to deal with a Strange who might tip over into real hysteria at any moment, he went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea.
"Oh, good," said Strange faintly, when he received it. "Tea repairs all ills, does it?"
"Drink it."
Strange drank. By the time they had both finished, he looked calmer, though no less pale.
"We need to get back," he said when he put the cup down. "We must get back."
"In the long term, I agree it would be desirable to search for a solution," said Mr Norrell, "But in the short term, we had best focus on the practicalities of our situation."
"Heaven forbid you focus on a practicality," said Strange. "What practicalities are these?"
"Where we are, and how we will be received. When I say where we are, I refer not to our geographical location, but to our place in this time."
Strange rubbed his head. "I understand, I think."
"I need you to remain calm," said Mr Norrell firmly, "because I need you for this. You know I'm not skilled at conversation or negotiation. Men of the world like to be talked to other men of the world, I have learned that well. I am not one--you are."
Strange ran a hand down his face and sighed. "Very well. I'll try, if only for the sake of being able to buy food when our supplies run out. What shall we do?"
There was a knock at the door.
Strange raised his eyebrows, and answered it. A sort of constable greeted them, looking rather sheepish.
"Good morning to you gentlemen," he said, peering at Strange and then behind him towards Mr Norrell. "How do you do?"
"We could be better," said Strange. "What may we do for you?"
"People were wondering--er, that is to say, a house suddenly appeared here, and as you gentlemen probably know, no house has been able to be built here for a hundred years, and er--are you filming a motion picture?"
"A what?" said Strange.
"A motion picture, sir."
"No, we're not...whatever that is." Strange grinned a wide, dangerous grin, the one that always made Mr Norrell tremble a little knowing that it betokened some act of mischief or great risk. "To be precise, we came here from Faerie. We've traveled a hundred years in time."
It's a good rule for surviving in society not to tell policemen something he's likely to interpret as deliberately wasting his time. Strange, however, had technically never interacted with police officers as such, and was besides that disinclined to listen to any rule that didn't suit him.
In consequence, it took some time for the ensuing snarl of offended bureaucracy and misunderstanding to get sorted. Once it had, the policeman referred Strange and Mr Norrell to the head of the Department of Magical Regulation, who called in two historians and an expert on misuse of magic, who put Strange and Mr Norrell into one of the horrible automobiles (as they seemed to be called) and took them across town to his office and made them answer an uncomfortable number of questions.
Once they were finished, though, the expert on misuse of magic contacted the head of the Department of Magical Regulation on a bizarre device which he explained was a telephone and said that Strange and Mr Norrell were who they said they were.
"I suppose," he said to the two magicians, evidently bewildered, "we have no grounds to keep you here. You can go back home. I'll have one of my men drive you back to Hanover Square."
And so it was that Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, back in England for the first time in a hundred years, returned home.
They made a cup of tea, and had some supper. They cleared the dishes, and Strange washed them while Mr Norrell dried and arranged them on the shelves.
Then they sat down.
They looked at each other.
"What do we do now?" said Strange.
The few weeks following their arrival always appeared in Mr Norrell's memory as a confused blur of overstimulation and panic. Their first step was to ascertain how much money they had. The push-pull forces of inflation and investment had left the two of them with enough to survive on for some time. It took a considerable amount of convincing for their banks to accept that they were themselves, but the overexcited newspaper articles about their return helped. Taxation was a tangle that would have to be sorted out, but not by them and not right this moment.
They put Mr Norrell's house in Hanover Square, which he had never felt truly his home, up for sale. Strange's London house had been let originally, and the debate over who owned it raged for some time. They took a flat, which had more modern conveniences in it than either of them could puzzle out, and linked the bedroom doors to Hurtfew Abbey and Ashfair so they could return to blessed simplicity when it all became too much.
They bought new clothes, which fit them uncomfortably and were made of foreign materials. Strange adopted the new fashions readily, not wanting to look antiquated, but Mr Norrell took some convincing.
"You'll stand out," Strange said. "Everyone will know it's you, and they'll mob you. You know you would hate that."
"But I don't like how these feel," said Mr Norrell plaintively. "They are wrong. And what about my wig?"
"Your wig has been out of fashion for ten years anyway," said Strange.
"I don't care about fashions. I care about comfort."
"You'll be more comfortable if you're less conspicuous," Strange pointed out. Mr Norrell couldn't argue with this, and, with much more complaining, wore his new clothes any time they left the house.
Slowly, week by week, they found their footing.
They had not got properly settled yet, nor had they allowed a great many visitors, when William Wood came.
He came in what was shaping up to be a fine March; he came into their flat, perched on their sofa, drank their tea, and introduced himself as the Chancellor of Magic.
"It would be remiss of me not to visit the nation's two greatest magicians," he said, smiling a thin smile.
"We are honored," said Strange politely. Mr Norrell, silent and suspicious, only peered at him.
"Is there anything that we can do to help you transition more easily into our present time?" said William Wood. "The nation is, of course, in difficult position right now with the war, but we will do our best."
"We're doing quite well on our own," said Strange. "Perhaps you have a request to make of us?"
William Wood smiled again. "It depends on what you want to volunteer. We know your record, of course, Mr Strange. Perhaps you'd be willing to serve your country again? Not yet, of course, but once you're comfortable here, you may want something to do."
Beside him, Mr Norrell gave a violent start.
Strange said, "I am not sure what use I could be to you. No doubt you have large squadrons of battle-magicians with far more up-to-date knowledge of their field than I have."
"Certainly," said William Wood, "but none of them have your reputation. You are the cofounder of modern English magic! The psychological advantages would be immense."
"I see," said Strange, thinking the concept of being a sort of mascot was not particularly appealing.
"Besides," added William Wod, "You and Mr. Norrell have a greater knowledge of Faerie than any modern magician could possibly pretend to claim."
Mr Norrell started again; Strange leaned forward a little. "Do you use fairy magic in the war?"
"Well, not officially and not yet. No doubt with your aid, though--"
"I'm not sure I'm interested in involving myself in another war, sir," said Strange carefully.
"I'll give you time to think on it, shall I? Of course, we never intended you to begin immediately. You're still finding your way around this new time. I'll return to speak to you in a few weeks or so."
Strange gave a thin smile and stood to escort their visitor out the door.
"He didn't wait long, did he," he said, as soon as he returned to what Mr Norrell still called the parlour. "We've hardly spoken to anyone here."
"You can't go," said Mr Norrell immediately, ignoring these practicalities.
Strange, despite the fact that he hadn't been intending to, arched an eyebrow. "You aren't my teacher anymore, you know. And that didn't even work last time."
"You can't ," said Mr Norrell. "I can't be without you again. It was intolerable last time. It would be much worse here when I don't know anyone."
Strange blinked. "I was serving my country."
"I didn't mean then . That was quite dreadful, too, of course. You could have died and then English magic would have lost its only other practical magician of any value whatsoever, and then where would we have been? No, I was referring to our schism, which was much more difficult. I couldn't even write to you. There was no one to talk to, except Childermass." Mr Norrell capped this unusually long unacademic speech with the enigmatic pronouncement, "But Childermass is Childermass."
Strange sat down slowly next to Mr Norrell. "You didn't do anything to repair it."
Mr Norrell frowned. "Neither did you. But that is not the issue at hand. Did you not find it terrible, to be so isolated -- a magician alone, as it were?"
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"It would be the same again, only worse. Mr Strange, we are men out of our time. It would be foolish to separate now, when we really are alone."
Strange ran a hand through his hair, adding an unnecessary extra degree of musedness to what was already a fine tangle. "There is something in what you say, Mr Norrell."
Mr Norrell peered at Strange, then narrowed his eyes. "You weren't going to go at all. You were teasing me."
"No--no. I wanted to hear your arguments I wasn't really decided in my own mind..." Strange flashed a sheepish look at Mr Norrell. "Besides, you should know better than to order me to do anything."
"Really, Mr Strange, you're one of the most contrary men I have ever known."
Strange grinned. "Not counting yourself, I suppose."
Mr Norrell sniffed in derision. "The question remains what you're going to do. What will you tell Mr Waters, when he returns?"
"I don't know. I don't want to go back -- I've had my fill. Patriotism is all very well, but two wars were enough. All the same, I don't think he'll take that for an answer."
"I don't feel easy in my mind about him," said Mr Norrell. "Nor about his interest in fairies."
"Oh, that. Yes, I do think that's something of a...warning message. Fairies oughtn't be involved in Christian wars."
"No indeed."
There was a silence.
Into it, Strange murmured, "Dear God, what will they do with us now?"
"A more apt question is what we shall do with ourselves," said Mr Norrell, clearly taking this as requiring an answer. Strange had meant it as a rhetorical question, in remembrance of the one he'd asked at the end of the war, but he did not correct Mr Norrell's presumption.
"I could ask that question with equal justification," he said. "What is there to do? We are, as you say, men out of our time."
"I am old," said Mr Norrell. "I do not want to do anything except return to my library and continue studying my books. Perhaps it would be nice to acquire new books, and see what our descendants have discovered, and perhaps even to publish a paper or two."
Strange thought, uncharitably, that this would be more than Mr Norrell, with his endless habit of revising and revising, had ever managed before.
"But as for adventures," continued Mr Norrell, leaning back and closing his eyes, "I'm quite finished with them."
"Men out of our time," said Strange thoughtfully. "Perhaps what we ought to do is try to return to it."
Mr Norrell sat up and looked at Strange. "I know I said earlier that such a course of action would be desirable in the long run, but I do not think so anymore. I suspect it's impossible, and I'm certain it's unwise."
"Why? We'd only be restoring things to their proper places. Inertia, didn't you say once? Things want to be where or what they were before."
"That's a very simplified way of putting it--"
"Yes, yes, yes, but isn't traveling back to your original timeline easier than traveling forward?" Strange leaned in closer to Norrell, who leaned back slightly in response. "We'd only have to reverse what we'd done."
"Thereby leaving us back in our prison."
"No, no. We wouldn't reverse the timeline, only our position in it."
"I don't think that journeying through time can possibly be as linear as you make it out to be," said Mr Norrell. "We are here now; we would have to overcome the inertia of our present position to move. That would require considerable sacrifice."
"Sacrifice," said Strange softly. "Well. We have enough to give, don't we?"
"I would strongly advise you to forget it." Mr Norrell looked at Strange for a moment, then let his eyes fall back to their usual position somewhere over his shoulder. "Concentrate on the future, Mr Strange, and not the past. It is better that way."
Strange didn't contradict him. He made no promises, either.
For the next three days or so, Strange moped around the flat while Mr Norrell attempted to set up some kind of order in it. They had only finished moving what they considered the essentials, and the flat was still in dreadful disorder.
It irked him to see Strange lolling around while he worked. On the third day, he said, "We should find out what we can about this time, shouldn't we?"
Strange emerged from the fog. "How do you propose to do that?"
"We might go to the library."
"Which one?"
Mr Norrell, who had prepared for this by purchasing a city guide on their last trip out, flourished it silently.
They chose a large library built some fifty years ago and dedicated to books of and about magic. The trip required them to take the alarmingly-crowded omnibus, a now-familiar trial which was still less frightening than the horror of modern hansom cabs, which weren't proper cabs at all. Mr Norrell clung silently to Strange's arm through the trip, terrified that they would be separated by the push and bustle of the crowd.
"I give them credit," said Strange. "They certainly have come up with some innovative solutions in the time we've been gone, haven't they? Horseless transportation."
"I don't like it," said Mr Norrell.
"I can't say it's to my particular taste either, but it's creative."
"I'm afraid I will fall over."
Strange patted Mr Norrell on the back briskly, which made him squirm a little. "Come on, this is our stop."
It was a good library. In fact, it was rather larger than Mr Norrell's own, which caused him some slight disgruntlement. But then, most of them weren't books of magic, not in the sense that Mr Norrell's were. There were a great number of biographies, and a huge quantity of texts produced in the flourishing of magic after he and Strange and left England.
The two of them split up, with an agreement to return, and wandered. Mr Norrell found a shelf that looked promising and began to examine it briskly, looking for anything of interest. This seemed to be largely a collection of biographies and references to magical figures. He skimmed over the Aureates and Argentines -- little likely to be new to him there, though he'd come back later and see -- and over, later, to the section marked Post-Revival .
Mr Norrell's fingers landed on a book titled An Encyclopaedia of Magicians of the Nineteenth Century .
He narrowed his eyes, immediately remembering the York Society and wondering if they had kept their side of the bargain after his presumed death. Harrumphing to himself, Mr Norrell flipped through the book with slightly less than his usual care, looking for the Fs. For it was, he thought, Foxcastle that would be most likely of all of them to go back on his promise once Norrell had gone.
At the Cs, though, he stopped dead, arrested by the sight of a familiar name.
CHILDERMASS, John. Born 1771?, unknown location in Yorkshire, died 1843, Starecross Village, Yorkshire. English magician of the Revival Period. The early life of John Childermass is almost entirely unknown. From letters we know his probable birth day, year, and county. Little else about him can be stated with certainty until 1817, when he enters the public record. Rising to the public's notice as the servant of Gilbert Norrell, he later became one of the leading figures of the Revival. Childermass was the first Reader of the King's New Book and contributed significantly to our understanding of the text. He was also instrumental in shaping the current incarnation of English magical law. Childermass taught magic, particularly divination, at fellow Revivalist John Segundus's school, from 1819-1832. His famous statement of his relationship to the two schools of magic--that he was neither a Strangeite nor a Norrellite, but to some degree both--is clearly demonstrated in his approach to his efforts towards a regulatory scheme of magic and in what we know of his pedagogy. After he retired, he edited several publications on magical theory and magical law, including--
Mr Norrell closed the book with a thump, Foxcastles and York Societies forgotten. After a moment, he looked again. To see how it ended.
The final sentence: John Childermass is buried in the Magicians' Corner of Westminster Abbey. His gravestone stands next to Norrell's side of the Revival Memorial.
He closed the book again, more carefully. Then he closed his eyes and hid his face for a long time, until he recovered.
Taking a deep breath, Mr Norrell looked up Revival Memorial . This, said the book, was a stele of obsidian erected for Strange and Norrell in Westminster Abbey after they were presumed dead in 1825. It commemorates the curse of eternal darkness the magicians were said to labor under. The right side is inscribed with Strange's face, and the left with Norrell's, working off the 1814 portrait .
He harrumphed to himself, put the book back on the shelf, and found Strange several shelves down.
"There is a memorial to us in Westminster Abbey," he said. "We're presumed dead."
Strange put his book down. "I imagine we must hold the record for longest time being presumed dead before being found to be alive."
"That is not what I hoped my legacy would be."
"No, nor mine, but you can't argue that it got us memorialized in Westminster Abbey. How did you find out about this?"
"Childermass is there," said Mr Norrell abruptly, and sat down. He pulled one of Strange's books towards him without checking the title. Upon opening it, to his dismay, he found that it was a novel.
"What is this?" he asked.
"You found Childermass? Was he in a book?"
"Is this some sort of love story? How appalling. Why did you choose it?"
"Don't ignore me, Mr Norrell."
Mr Norrell made a sour face. "He was. I found the entry in a dictionary of magicians. I don't want to discuss it."
Strange shrugged. "I thought the story looked interesting."
"It has vampires in it."
"Yes, I know, isn't it fascinating? It incorporates completely ridiculous theories of magic into the concept of the undead."
"There's no such thing as vampires."
"I know, but you absolutely must see the justification the author uses. It's delightful." Strange took the book and began flipping through it.
"Don't show me, you'll only make me angry."
Strange put the book down and tilted his head. "Has your discovery upset you?"
"I told you I don't want to talk about it."
"Arabella," said Strange gently, "is in Shropshire. In the churchyard her father preached at."
Mr Norrell sat stiffly.
"We didn't leave them intentionally," Strange continued. "We may yet find them again. Try not to dwell on their graves. I thought Arabella was dead once -- but she was only dreaming, and I stole her back. If I have to again, I will."
Without meeting Strange's eye, Mr Norrell took up the novel about vampires and began to castigate it again. Strange joined him, but there was an undercurrent of tension between them that had not faded.
They investigated much more that day. They found the names of some of the most prominent Strangeite and Norrellite magicians who had followed in their footsteps.
"I can't say that I have a high opinion of most of these," said Mr Norrell, running his eye down a list dubiously. "I never intended for my principles to be used by other people."
"You never intended magic to be used by other people," Strange said.
"That's not true at all. After my death--but I intended to write some sort of guide before that time. And of course you would have been there to carry on my legacy."
"Death takes us all in forms that we don't expect," said Strange dryly, flipping through A Comprehensive Examination of the Strangeite and Norrellite Positions . "Did you know that your followers hold first tenant to be that magic must be learned from books?"
"Hmmm," said Mr Norrell, looking not at all displeased. "What are the others?"
"There seems to be a considerable amount of debate, but--" Strange began to read:
"The fundamental principles of Norrellism can best be described as the following five foundational arguments, which most Norrelites would agree upon as true, even if they disagreed on the importance and the order. It may be noted that these should be considered in relationship to Strangeism, rather than as absolute statements.
First, books of magic must be the primary source of magical education.
Second, the use of magic should be regulated by the government. Some common propositions in this area include the idea that magicians must be licensed to practice, and the creation of government-funded schools with approved curricula.
Third, human magic should remain in the domain of humans alone. Some Norrellites go so far as to claim that fairies do not exist, while others claim they are beings of pure evil, and still others simply claim that we should not use them for magic, but instead allow them to live their own lives in their own realm.
Fourth, the legacy of the Raven King should not be overstated in magic. The degree to which various Norrellites consider 'overstated' to apply--and what the actual legacy of the Raven King was--is highly controversial.
Fifth and finally, magic should above all be approached with caution, respect, and an awareness of the risks inherent in its practice. "
"I never said that fairies should never be used in Christian magic," said Mr Norrell.
"No, indeed," said Strange, casting him a significant glance. "Nevertheless, that is the impression you tried to convey while all the time having employed fairy-magic in the first place."
"As I recall, what I told you was that their use must be as minimal as possible and that we must exercise the utmost caution in our dealings with them." Mr Norrell frowned. "I don't think most of these principles are the ones I would have chosen, had I been asked to write the central arguments of my approach to magic."
"Well, let's have the Strangeite approach, then," said Strange. He read:
"The five fundamental principles of Strangeism are equally controversial, but run roughly as follows. Again, these should be understood as in contrast to Norrellism rather than as absolute statements.
First, the primary source of magical education should be practice and apprenticeship to an experienced magician.
Second, that the government should not be involved in magical practice; that schools of magic, apprenticeship programs, and regulatory standards should be developed by private individuals.
Third, that fairies are a natural source of magic which magicians must make use of if they wish to fully develop English magic. Again, make use of is a statement into which much debate has been poured.
Fourth, that the Raven King is the foundation of all English magic, and that it is his legacy that magicians must continue.
Fifth, that magic is above all an art form, and that its use should take into account aesthetic concerns and delights before all else. "
"I dare say," said Mr Norrell when Strange had stopped reading, "that those are not the principles you would have codified had you been given the chance, either."
"No," said Strange. "Certainly some of them seem to be to be sensible, but..." He trailed off. "I suppose we should have expected that our legacy had gone beyond us."
"Very probably, it went beyond us the moment we went into the Darkness and were no longer there to regulate it," said Mr Norrell.
"Perhaps even before that," said Strange. "Perhaps it went beyond us as soon as we began to teach it--you to me, and me to my students. Perhaps none of us can be in control of our own world-views once we begin to pass them on to other people."
Mr Norrell said, reproachfully, "You are philosophizing, Mr Strange."
Strange laughed. "I'm afraid I am. Is this a lending library? Let's take some of these back to the flat."
The books Strange had brought back were all on the subject of magic and time. Mr Norrell, skimming them in an immense hurry during one of Strange's naps, had found nothing helpful. This was not to say that Strange wouldn't, given enough time and energy. That was, after all, what had put them in 1917 in the first place.
Mr Norrell had deliberately avoided bringing home the dictionary, and the novel too. His own choices were on current magical theory, and he wasn't finding them very compelling. Thoroughly nonsensical views of fairy-magic, everywhere you looked, had no one these days met a fairy? Mr Wood, he recalled, had said that they were not yet officially using fairy magic in the war. This suggested an unofficial element, certainly.
He went flipping through a review of magical law from 1700-1900, which made him think of Childermass too. Childermass had always been particularly good at magical law. Resolutely ignoring this thought, he looked for fairy magic in the index.
The use of fairy aid in English magic had, it seemed, been banned not very long after he and Strange had disappeared. In fact, it seemed that their own case had been held up as one of the reasons why fairy magic was far too dangerous for anyone to use. This argument Mr Norrell could not find fault with.To his surprise, he found that Lady Pole had been instrumental in the movement to make fairy magic illegal. Peculiar after it had saved her life, but then, perhaps she had found conditions there uncongenial.
He read on. The use of magic in wartime had now been regulated very greatly. Reviving the dead was not allowed -- just as well -- and nor was any kind of summoning of spirits. Mr Norrell wondered what William Wood intended to say to these regulations if he wanted Strange's knowledge of Faerie.
Mr Norrell put the book aside, and stared for a moment at Strange. He had collapsed on the sopha after a bout of research. Though Mr Norrell had told him to go properly to bed, Strange had simply draped his long limbs over as much of the sopha as possible, and gone immediately to sleep.
His face was very peaceful, though not quite still. There was something so very mercurial and so very animated about Jonathan Strange, that even in sleep, as he dreamed, small movements passed across his face. Mr Norrell imagined that Strange was having an argument with him in a dream, or perhaps testing some new theory. Or perhaps--
Mr Norrell shook his head. He ought to go back to reading. But it was difficult, not to be distracted. When Strange was awake, Mr Norrell rarely permitted himself to look very long at his face without some very good excuse to do so. He was terribly afraid that his feelings would show on his own face.
Looking at Strange, he was seized with a great and ardent knowledge that he must not lose him again. They could stay here, they could go back to their own time, they could move forward into the unthinkably futuristic year of 2017, and Mr Norrell would not mind. Not any more than he minded the Darkness, which had been, in its own way, a solace. Not if Strange was there with him.
He rubbed his eyes and took his spectacles off, for he was sure further no reading would be done. In his heart, there was a tender place, a longing, a wish to lay down beside Strange on the sopha, though there was scarcely room for both of them. He wanted to look at Strange's face for as long as he liked and even be looked at in return, he wanted to touch Strange's hands without the requirement of excuse.
Mr Norrell crept along to his own bedroom, undressed, and lay in the bed, wishing dearly that he was not alone in it. It seemed entirely unfair that all his life he had hated to be touched and avoided it at every opportunity, and now he craved it, but could not have it.
He did not want to return to 1817, or whatever year it would be by the time they got back. 1824, he thought, but then magic was uncertain. In 1824 Arabella Strange would be alive.
Childermass would be alive, as well, but Mr Norrell had the sense that Childermass had done quite well without Mr Norrell's intervention. He had become a great magician. Mr Norrell had half-consciously known the potential was there, of course; however, Childermass had always been on his side, and therefore nonthreatening. At least, until the very end. Mr Norrell wished he could told Childermass that the very end had been a mistake, but then, he thought, perhaps Childermass would not like to hear him.
No, he thought: we cannot go back. We cannot go and undo what has already been done. If they went back, the time that they were in now would collapse, and change, and that could not be allowed to happen. It was untidy.
In 1824 Arabella Strange would be alive.
What, Mr Norrell asked himself sternly, did he believe would happen in this time, with Arabella Strange dead? Did he believe Strange would become so lonely and desperate for company that he would turn to Mr Norrell? There were women here, after all. Mr Norrell was not comely, and moreover Strange had always been fond of the society of women. In a way, it was worse here: Mr Norrell couldn't speak of his feelings, even if he had wanted to, because they were alone together, and he could not risk alienating Strange.
Nevertheless...they could not leave. He was certain of that. They could not leave.