“But I fear they will do me little good in a library,” said Strange with infuriating calmness. “I shall be in camps and on battlefields. And so must they.”

“Then you must place them in a box!” said Mr Norrell. “A very sturdy wooden box or perhaps an iron chest! Yes, iron will be best. We can have one made specially. And then …”

“Ah, forgive me, Mr Norrell,” interrupted Lord Liverpool, “but I strongly advise Mr Strange against the iron chest. He must not trust to any provision being made for him in the carts. The soldiers need the carts for their equipment, maps, food, ammunition and so on. Mr Strange will occasion the Army the least inconvenience if he carries all his possessions on a mule or donkey as the officers do.” He turned to Strange. “You will need a good, strong mule for your baggage and your servant. Purchase some saddlebags at Hewley and Ratt’s and place the books in them. Military saddlebags are most capacious. Besides, on a cart the books would almost certainly be stolen. Soldiers, I am sorry to say, steal everything.” He thought for a moment and then added, “Or at least ours do.”

How the dinner went after that Mr Norrell knew very little. He was dimly aware that Strange and his lordship talked a great deal and laughed a great deal. Several times he heard Strange say, “Well, that is decided then!” And he heard his lordship reply, “Oh, certainly!” But what they were talking about, Mr Norrell neither knew nor cared. He wished he had never come to London. He wished he had never undertaken to revive English magic. He wished he had stayed at Hurtfew Abbey, reading and doing magic for his own pleasure. None of it, he thought, was worth the loss of forty books.

After Lord Liverpool and Strange had gone he went to the library to look at the forty books and hold them and treasure them while he could.

Childermass was still there. He had taken his dinner at one of the tables and was now doing the household accounts. As Mr Norrell entered, he looked up and grinned. “I believe Mr Strange will do very well in the war, sir. He has already out-manoeuvred you.”

On a bright, moonlit night in early February a British ship called St Serlo’s Blessing¹ sailed up the Tagus and landed at Black-horse square in the middle of the city of Lisbon. Among the first to disembark were Strange and his servant, Jeremy Johns. Strange had never been in a foreign country before and he found that the consciousness of being so now and the important military and naval bustle that was going on all around him was quite exhilarating. He was eager to begin doing magic.

“I wonder where Lord Wellington is,” he said to Jeremy Johns. “Do you suppose any of these fellows will know?” He looked with some curiosity at a vast, half-built arch at one end of the square. It had a very military appearance and he would not have been at all surprized to learn that Wellington was somewhere at the rear of it.