When I got it open a thick booklet with a dull red cover fell out – written on the front was Soldier’s Service and Pay Book. When I picked it up a photograph fluttered out from between the pages – sepia toned and faded, of a young man. Younger than me, I realised with a shock, stiffly posing in his uniform – unmistakably Hugh Oswald. I retrieved the photograph and handed it and the booklet to Hugh, who took them without looking at them. He nodded down at the bag.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

Inside the bag were two staves the size and shape of pickaxe handles. At one end they sported grips made of wrapped canvas and leather and at the other an iron cap. Branded neatly into one side was the same number sequence as on the bag, at a guess Hugh’s service number, and the hammer and anvil sigil of the Sons of Weyland – British wizardry’s legendary smiths.

Makers of staffs.

‘Don’t be shy,’ said Hugh. ‘They won’t bite you.’

A couple of bad experiences has taught me a certain amount of caution when handling unfamiliar arcane objects, so at first I just let my fingertips brush the surface of the wood. I felt it at once, the rasping, dancing, wriggling honey-soaked warm intimacy of the hive.

‘Have you been keeping this in your attic?’ I asked.

‘As a matter of fact, yes. Well spotted,’ said Hugh. ‘Take a good grip. It won’t hurt you.’

I closed my hand around one staff and lifted it like a club. It was heavy and comfortable and could, if I was any judge, serve usefully as a hand-to-hand weapon in a pinch. Had it ever come to that pinch? Had this frail old man, who had to muster up his strength to eat toast, smacked some poor unsuspecting German with it? Take that Fritz! Eat English Oak. I felt the heart of it then, the beating of the hammers and the hot breath of the forge and behind that the rivers of steel and oceans of coal and the clang clang clang of Empire.

I don’t know about the enemy, but it scared the hell out of me.

‘I want you to have them,’ said Hugh

‘I’m not sure I should take these,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t Mellissa want them?’

‘Now you listen to me, lad,’ said Hugh. ‘In 1939 we had no inkling of what was to come – the end of the world can arrive with no warning at all and a wise man makes sure he has a big stick tucked away, just in case.’

I nodded.

‘Thank you,’ I said. I replaced the staff in its bag and buckled it up.

A more practical weapon, I thought, from a less civilised age.

‘What did happen at Ettersberg?’ I said. The question I’d been aching to ask.

‘Operation Spatchcock,’ said Hugh.

‘What went wrong?’ I said.