“Then it is decided!” said Lord Wellington. “Mr Strange, Colonel De Lancey and Major Grant can turn their attention to the discovery of these guns. Somerset and I will go and annoy the French.” The brisk manner in which his lordship spoke suggested that he expected all of these things to start happening very soon. Strange and the gentlemen of the Staff swallowed the rest of their breakfast and went to their various tasks.

At about midday Lord Wellington and Fitzroy Somerset were seated upon their horses on a slight ridge near the village of Garcia Hernandez. On the stony plain below several brigades of British Dragoons were preparing to charge some squadrons of cavalry which formed the rearguard of the French Army.

Just then Colonel De Lancey rode up.

“Ah, Colonel!” said Lord Wellington. “Have you found me any Neapolitans?”

“There are no Neapolitans among the prisoners, my lord,” said De Lancey. “But Mr Strange suggested we look among the dead upon yesterday’s battlefield. By magical means he has identified seventeen corpses as Neapolitan.”

“Corpses!” said Lord Wellington, putting down his telescope in surprize. “What in the world does he want corpses for?”

“We asked him that, my lord, but he grew evasive and would not answer. However he has asked that the dead men be put somewhere safe where they will be neither lost nor molested.”

“Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people,” said Wellington.

At that moment an officer standing close by cried out that the Dragoons had increased their pace to a gallop and would soon be upon the French. Instantly the eccentricities of the magician were forgotten; Lord Wellington put his telescope to his eye and every man present turned his attention to the battle.

Strange meanwhile had returned from the battlefield to the castle at Alba de Tormes. In the Armoury Tower (the only part of the castle still standing) he had found a room that no one was using and had appropriated it. Scattered about the room were Norrell’s forty books. They were all still more or less in one piece, though some were decidedly battered-looking. The floor was covered with Strange’s notebooks and pieces of paper with scraps of spells and magical calculations scribbled on them. On a table in the centre of the room stood a wide and shallow silver bowl, filled with water. The shutters had been pulled tight and the only light in the room came from the silver bowl. All in all it was a veritable magician’s cave and the pretty Spanish maid who brought coffee and almond biscuits at regular intervals was quite terrified and ran out again as soon as she had put down her trays.