“Well!” said the gentleman after a moment. “I could not be more astonished! Have you ever seen this person before, Stephen?”

“Yes, sir. I must confess that I have. This is the man I told you about. The one with the strange disfiguration who told me the prophecy. His name is Vinculus.”

“Good day to you, King!” said Vinculus to Stephen. “Did I not tell you the hour was almost come? And now it has! The rain shall make a door for you and you shall go through it! The stones shall make a throne for you and you shall sit upon it!” He surveyed Stephen with a mysterious satisfaction, as if the crown, orb and sceptre were somehow all his doing.

Stephen said to the gentleman, “Perhaps the Venerable Beings to whom you applied are mistaken, sir. Perhaps they have brought us to the wrong person.”

“Nothing seems more likely,” agreed the gentleman. “This vagabond is scarcely any threat to any one. To me least of all. But as the North Wind and the Dawn have taken the trouble to point him out to us, it would be most disrespectful to them not to kill him.”

Vinculus seemed curiously unmoved by this proposal. He gave a laugh. “Try if you can do it, Fairy! You will discover that I am very hard to kill!”

“Are you indeed?” said the gentleman. “For I must confess that it looks to me as if nothing would be easier! But then you see I am very adept at killing all sorts of things! I have slain dragons, drowned armies and persuaded the earthquakes and tempests to devour cities! You are a man. You are all alone – as all men are. I am surrounded by ancient friends and allies. Rogue, what do you have to counter that?”

Vinculus thrust out his dirty chin at the gentleman in a gesture of the utmost contempt. “A book!” he said.

It was an odd thing to say. Stephen could not help thinking that if Vinculus had indeed possessed a book he would have been well advised to sell it and buy a better coat.

The gentleman turned his head to gaze with sudden intensity at a distant line of white hills. “Oh!” he exclaimed with as much violence as if he had been struck. “Oh! They have stolen her from me! Thieves! Thieves! English thieves!”

“Who, sir?”

“Lady Pole! Someone has broken the enchantment!”

“The magic of Englishmen, Fairy!” cried Vinculus. “The magic of Englishmen is coming back!”

“Now you see their arrogance, Stephen!” cried the gentleman, spinning round to bestow a look of vivid fury upon Vinculus. “Now you see the malice of our enemies! Stephen, procure me some rope!”

“Rope, sir? There is none for miles around, I am sure. Let you and I …”

“No rope, Fairy!” jeered Vinculus.

But something was happening in the air above them. The lines of sleet and snow were somehow twisting together. They snaked across the sky towards Stephen. Without warning a length of strong rope fell into his hand.