“One day,” he said, “I shall find the right spell and banish the Darkness. And on that day I will come to you.”

“Yes. On that day. I will wait until then.”

He nodded and seemed about to depart, but then he hesitated. “Bell,” he said, “do not wear black. Do not be a widow. Be happy. That is how I wish to think of you.”

“I promise. And how shall I think of you?”

He considered a moment and then laughed. “Think of me with my nose in a book!”

They kissed once. Then he turned upon his heel and disappeared into the Darkness.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are first due to the immensely wonderful, much-missed Giles Gordon. I was proud to say he was my agent. I still am.

And special thanks to Jonny Geller for everything since Giles has been gone.

For encouragement when this book began: Geoff Ryman, Alison Paice (also much missed), and Tinch Minter and her writing group, especially Julian Hall.

For encouragement along the way: my parents Janet and Stuart, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling and Neil Gaiman whose generosity to other writers never ceases to amaze me.

For everyone who helped with languages: Stuart Clarke, Samantha Evans, Patrick Marcel and Giorgia Grilli. For help with knotty problems of Napoleonic military and naval history: Nicholas Blake (needless to say, the remaining errors are entirely my responsibility). For immensely perceptive comments and suggestions: Antonia Till. For writing books that were continually helpful: Elizabeth Longford (Wellington) and Christopher Hibbert and Ben Weinreb (The London Encyclopedia).

To Jonathan Whiteland, who cheerfully gives his time and expertise so that Macs can run and books be written.

And, above all, to Colin who did everything else so I could write, who never complained, and without whom it is most unlikely this book would ever have seen the light of day.

Notes

1 The library at Hurtfew

1 The History and Practice of English Magic, by Jonathan Strange, vol. I, chap. 2, pub. John Murray, London, 1816.

2 More properly called Aureate or Golden Age magicians.

3 A Complete Description of Dr Pale’s fairy-servants, their Names, Histories, Characters and the Services they performed for Him by John Segundus, pub. by Thomas Burnham, Bookseller, Northampton, 1799.

4 Dr Martin Pale (1485–1567) was the son of a Warwick leather-tanner. He was the last of the Aureate or Golden Age magicians. Other magicians followed him (c.f. Gregory Absalom) but their reputations are debatable. Pale was certainly the last English magician to venture into Faerie.

5 Magicians, as we know from Jonathan Strange’s maxim, will quarrel about any thing and many years and much learning has been applied to the vexed question of whether such and such a volume qualifies as a book of magic. But most laymen find they are served well enough by this simple rule: books written before magic ended in England are books of magic, books written later are books about magic. The principle, from which the layman’s rule of thumb derives, is that a book of magic should be written by a practising magician, rather than a theoretical magician or a historian of magic. What could be more reasonable? And yet already we are in difficulties. The great masters of magic, those we term the Golden Age or Aureate magicians (Thomas Godbless, Ralph Stokesey, Catherine of Winchester, the Raven King) wrote little, or little has survived. It is probable that Thomas Godbless could not write. Stokesey learnt Latin at a little grammar school in his native Devonshire, but all that we know of him comes from other writers.