“But why should you change all of a sudden? There is no rhyme or reason in it!”

“There is every sort of reason,” said Vinculus. “I was a Prophecy before; but the things that I foretold have come to pass. So it is just as well I have changed – or I would have become a History! A dry-as-dust History!”

“So what are you now?”

Vinculus shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps I am a Receipt-Book! Perhaps I am a Novel! Perhaps I am a Collection of Sermons!” He was excessively diverted by these thoughts and cackled to himself and capered about some more.

“I hope you are what you have always been – a Book of Magic. But what are you saying? Vinculus, do you mean to tell me that you never learnt these letters?”

“I am a Book,” said Vinculus, stopping in mid-caper. “I am the Book. It is the task of the Book to bear the words. Which I do. It is the task of the Reader to know what they say.”

“But the last Reader is dead!”

Vinculus shrugged as if that were none of his concern.

“You must know something!” cried Childermass, growing almost wild with exasperation. He seized Vinculus’s arm. “What about this? This symbol like a horned circle with a line through it. It occurs over and over again. What does it mean?”

Vinculus pulled his arm away again. “It means last Tuesday,” he said. “It means three pigs, one of ’em wearing a straw hat! It means Sally went a-dancing in the moon’s shadow and lost a little rosy purse!” He grinned and wagged a finger at Childermass. “I know what you are doing! You hope to be the next Reader!”

“Perhaps,” said Childermass. “Though I cannot, for the life of me, tell how I shall begin. Yet I cannot see that any one else has a better claim to be the next Reader. But whatever else happens, I shall not let you out of my sight again. Henceforth, Vinculus, you and I shall be each other’s shadow.”

Vinculus’s mood soured upon the instant. Gloomily he dressed himself again.

Spring returned to England. Birds followed ploughs. Stones were warmed by the sun. Rains and winds grew softer, and were fragranced with the scents of earth and growing things. Woods were tinged with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour – as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.

Spring returned to England, but Strange and Norrell did not. The Pillar of Darkness covered Hurtfew Abbey and Norrell did not come out of it. People speculated upon the probability of Strange having killed Norrell, or Norrell having killed Strange, the different degrees to which each deserved it, and whether or not someone ought to go and find out.

But before any one could reach a conclusion concerning these interesting questions the Darkness disappeared – taking Hurtfew Abbey with it. House, park, bridge and part of the river were all gone. Roads that used to lead to Hurtfew now led back upon themselves or to dull corners of fields and copses that no one wished to visit. The house in Hanover-square and both Strange’s houses – the one in Soho-square and his home in Clun¹ – suffered the same queer fate. In London the only creature in the world who could still find the house in Soho-square was Jeremy Johns’ cat, Bullfinch. Indeed, Bullfinch did not appear to be aware that the house was in any way changed and he continued to go there whenever he wished, slipping between number 30 and number 32, and everyone who saw him do it agreed that it was the oddest sight in the world.²