Childermass turned over the third card. IIII. L’Emperevr. And the fourth. IIII. L’Emperevr. By the fifth the number and name of the card had disappeared, but the picture remained the same: a young, dark-haired king at whose feet strutted a great, black bird. Childermass turned over each and every card. He even examined the remainder of the pack, but in his anxiety to see he fumbled and the cards somehow fell everywhere. Black Kings crowded about Childermass, spinning in the cold, grey air. Upon each card was the same figure with the same pale, unforgiving gaze.

“There!” said Vinculus softly. “That is what you may tell the magician of Hanover-square! That is his past and his present and his future!”

Needless to say when Childermass returned to Hanover-square and told Mr Norrell what had occurred, Mr Norrell was very angry. That Vinculus should continue to defy Mr Norrell was bad enough; that he should claim to have a book and Mr Norrell not be able read it was considerably worse; but that he should pretend to tell Mr Norrell’s fortune and threaten him with pictures of Black Kings was absolutely unbearable.

“He tricked you!” declared Mr Norrell, angrily. “He hid your own cards and supplanted them with a deck of his own. I am amazed you were so taken in!”

“Quite,” agreed Mr Lascelles, regarding Childermass coldly.

“Oh, to be sure, Vinculus is nothing but conjuring tricks,” agreed Drawlight. “But still I should have liked to have seen it. I am as fond as any thing of Vinculus. I wish you had told me, Mr Childermass, that you were going to see him. I would have come with you.”

Childermass ignored Lascelles and Drawlight and addressed Mr Norrell. “Even supposing that he is an able enough conjuror to perform such a trick – which I am very far from allowing – how was he to know I possessed such a thing as a pack of Marseilles cards? How was he to know when you did not?”

“Aye, and it was as well for you that I did not know! Telling fortunes with picture cards – it is everything I despise! Oh, it has been a very ill-managed business from start to finish!”

“And what of this book that the sorcerer claims to have?” asked Lascelles.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr Norrell. “That odd prophecy. I dare say it is nothing, yet there were one or two expressions which suggested great antiquity. I believe it would be best if I examined that book.”

“Well, Mr Childermass?” asked Lascelles.

“I do not know where he keeps it.”

“Then we suggest you find out.”

So Childermass set spies to follow Vinculus and the first and most surprizing discovery they made was that Vinculus was married. Indeed he was a great deal more married than most people. His wives were five in number and they were scattered throughout the various parishes of London and the surrounding towns and villages. The eldest was forty-five and the youngest fifteen and each was entirely ignorant of the existence of the other four. Childermass contrived to meet with each of them in turn. To two of them he appeared in the character of the unlikely milliner; to another he presented himself as a customs officer; for the benefit of the fourth he became a drunken, gambling rogue; and he told the fifth that, though he appeared to the world to be a servant of the great Mr Norrell of Hanover-square, he was in secret a magician himself. Two tried to rob him; one said she would tell him any thing he wanted to know as long as he paid for her gin; one tried to make him go with her to a Methodist prayer meeting; and the fifth, much to everyone’s surprize, fell in love with him. But in the end all his playacting was for nothing because none of them were even aware that Vinculus possessed such a thing as a book, let alone where he kept it.