“A love spell? Certainly. But it will be expensive. I generally charge four shillings for a spell to catch a milkmaid, ten shillings for a seamstress and six guineas for a widow with her own business. A Princess … Hmm.” Vinculus scratched his unshaven cheek with his dirty fingernails. “Forty guineas,” he hazarded.

“Very well.”

“And which is it?” asked Vinculus.

“Which what is what?” asked the unlikely milliner.

“Which Princess?”

“They are all pretty much the same, aren’t they? Does the price vary with the Princess?”

“No, not really. I will give you the spell written upon a piece of paper. Tear the paper in two and sew half inside the breast of your coat. You need to place the other half in a secret place inside the garments of whichever Princess you decide upon.”

The unlikely milliner looked astonished. “And how in the world can I do that?”

Vinculus looked at the man. “I thought you just said that you sewed their bonnets?”

The unlikely milliner laughed. “Oh yes! Of course.”

Vinculus stared at the man suspiciously. “You are no more a milliner than I am a … a …”

“A magician?” suggested the unlikely milliner. “You must certainly admit that it is not your only profession. After all you just picked my pockets.”

“Only because I wished to know what sort of villain you are,” retorted Vinculus, and he shook his arm until the articles he had taken from the pockets of the unlikely milliner fell out of his sleeve. There were a handful of silver coins, two golden guineas and three or four folded sheets of paper. He picked up the papers.

The sheets were small and thick and of excellent quality. They were all covered in close lines of small, neat handwriting. At the top of the first sheet was written, Two Spells to Make an Obstinate Man leave London and One Spell to Discover what My Enemy is doing Presently.

“The magician of Hanover-square!” declared Vinculus.

Childermass (for it was he) nodded.

Vinculus read through the spells. The first was intended to make the subject believe that every London churchyard was haunted by the people who were buried there and that every bridge was haunted by the suicides who had thrown themselves from it. The subject would see the ghosts as they had appeared at their deaths with all the marks of violence, disease and extreme old age upon them. In this way he would become more and more terrified until he dared not pass either a bridge or a church – which in London is a serious inconvenience as the bridges are not more than a hundred yards apart and the churches considerably less. The second spell was intended to persuade the subject that he would find his one true love and all sorts of happiness in the country and the third spell – the one to discover what your enemy was doing – involved a mirror and had presumably been intended by Norrell to enable Childermass to spy upon Vinculus.