There was a party waiting for him in the stables: Davey, Lucas, the grooms and several of the manservants who had managed to slip away from the house. “What are you all doing here?” he asked, in surprize. “Holding a prayer meeting?”

The men glanced at each other.

“We saddled Brewer for you, Mr Childermass,” said Davey. Brewer was Childermass’s horse, a big, unhandsome stallion.

“Thank you, Davey.”

“Why did you let him do it, sir?” asked Lucas. “Why did you let him cut you?”

“Don’t fret about it, lad. It’s of no consequence.”

“I brought bandages. Let me bind up your face.”

“Lucas, I need my wits tonight and I cannot think if I am all over bandages.”

“But it will leave a terrible scar if the lips of the wound are not closed.”

“Let it. No one will complain if I am less beautiful than I was. Just give me another clout⁵ to staunch the flow. This one is soaked through. Now, lads, when Strange comes …” He sighed. “I do not know what to tell you. I have no advice. But if you get a chance to help them, then do it.”

“What?” asked one manservant. “Help Mr Norrell and Mr Lascelles?”

“No, you blockhead! Help Mr Norrell and Mr Strange. Lucas, tell Lucy, Hannah and Dido that I said goodbye and wished them well – and good, obedient husbands when they want them.” (These were three housemaids who were particular favourites of Childermass.)

Davey grinned. “And you yourself willing to do the job, sir?” he said.

Childermass laughed – then flinched at the pain in his face. “Well, for Hannah perhaps,” he said. “Goodbye, lads.”

He shook hands with all of them and was a little taken aback when Davey, who for all his strength and size was as sentimental as a schoolgirl, insisted on embracing him and actually shed tears. Lucas gave him a bottle of Mr Norrell’s best claret as a parting gift.

Childermass led Brewer out of the stables. The moon had risen. He had no difficulty in following the sweep out of the pleasure-grounds into the park. He was just crossing over the bridge when the sudden realization came upon him that there was magic going on. It was as if a thousand trumpets had sounded in his ear or a dazzling light had shone out of the darkness. The world was entirely different from what it had been a moment before, but what that difference was he could not at first make out. He looked round.

Directly above the park and house there was a patch of night-sky shoved in where it did not belong. The constellations were broken. New stars hung there – stars that Childermass had never seen before. They were, presumably, the stars of Strange’s Eternal Darkness.

He took one last look at Hurtfew Abbey and galloped away.

All the clocks began to strike at the same moment. This in itself was extraordinary enough. For fifteen years Lucas had been trying to persuade the clocks of Hurtfew to tell the hour together and they had never done so until this moment. But what o’clock it might be was hard to say. The clocks struck on and on, long past twelve, telling the time of a strange, new era.