@velogiraffe asked for “♠. Strange & Norrell.”
Fairies never forgot and never grew; by the age of four thousand, therefore, they were comprised mostly of bad habits. Jousting was one. No fairy could be persuaded that it was not the height of good manners to resolve slight disputes with a tourney. Strange could barely recall what offense had prompted this one---indeed he had the strong impression that remembering well had been among the named infractions[1].
Mr Norrell would not be participating in the tilt. Mr Norrell was the spoils.
Mr Strange had his doubts as to whether any knight of legend had been subjected to the indignity, not only of tilting for his erstwhile tutor, but of being fanatically tutored throughout. “Straighter! straighter!” Mr Norrell cried, as Strange took his unicorn for a few experimental turns round the length of the field. Strange would have very much liked to see Mr Norrell adopt an upright posture for any lesser occasion than a mouse on the shelves.
Still Norrell could be seen to grow easier in his lofty wooden seat, and Strange, for his part, felt tolerably confident he would be spitted nowhere vital. When the court’s impatience had reached its breaking-point he rode to the barrier at the foot of the dais, thinking to make one last speech to Had-mercy’s lady. To his surprise a dry hand stopped him. Mr Norrell had addressed him in great sputtering shouts for as long as Mr Strange stayed more than a dozen feet back; now that he was close to, Mr Norrell was silent. An odd, attentive look had found a home in the spare features, which, though always wary, more often spoke of suspicion than interest. The effect was so incongruous as to seem nearly wry.
“One detail,” Mr Norrell muttered, leaning down. “Quite essential for this audience. A distortion of English chivalry, but then---” He affixed something to Mr Strange’s buttonhole. Mr Strange had never heard that English knights had buttonholes at all. Still, he had to own the pear tree’s sprig looked well enough there, for a favor.
[1] Fairies never forgot, but (as they said) they held Christians to a higher standard. Christians were known to lose twenty names, and ten dear faces, every day of their vanishing lives.
