For several centuries no one had the faintest idea what any of this might mean, though several theories were advanced – and John Segundus was familiar with all of them. The most popular was that developed by William Pantler in the early eighteenth century. Pantler said that Cold Henry and Pale were speaking of theology. Fairies (as everybody knows) are beyond the reach of the Church; no Christ has come to them, nor ever will – and what is to become of them on Judgement Day no one knows. According to Pantler Cold Henry meant to enquire of Pale if there was any hope that fairies, like men, might receive Eternal Salvation. Pale’s reply – that Englishmen’s feet are different sizes – was his way of saying that not all Englishmen will be saved. Based on this Pantler goes on to attribute to Pale a rather odd belief that Heaven is large enough to hold only a finite number of the Blessed; for every Englishmen who is damned, a place opens up in Heaven for a fairy. Pantler’s reputation as a theoretical magician rests entirely on the book he wrote on the subject.

In Jacques Belasis’s Instructions Mr Segundus read a very different explanation. Three centuries before Martin Pale set foot in Cold Henry’s castle Cold Henry had had another human visitor, an English magician even greater than Pale – Ralph Stokesey – who had left behind him a pair of boots. The boots, said Belasis, were old, which is probably why Stokesey did not take them with him, but their presence in the castle caused great consternation to all its fairy-inhabitants who held English magicians in great veneration. In particular Cold Henry was in a pickle because he feared that in some devious, incomprehensible way, Christian morality might hold him responsible for the loss of the boots. So he was trying to rid himself of the terrible objects by passing them on to Pale who did not want them.

2 The Old Starre Inn

1 The conquerors of Imperial Rome may have been honoured with wreaths of laurel leaves; lovers and fortune’s favourites have, we are told, roses strewn in their paths; but English magicians were always only ever given common ivy.

2 The great church at York is both a cathedral (meaning the church where the throne of the bishop or archbishop is housed) and a minster (meaning a church founded by a missionary in ancient times). It has borne both these names at different periods. In earlier centuries it was more usually called the Minster, but nowadays the people of York prefer the term Cathedral as one which elevates their church above those of the nearby towns of Ripon and Beverley. Ripon and Beverley have minsters, but no cathedrals.

3 The stones of York

1 The well-known ballad “The Raven King” describes just such an abduction.

Not long, not long my father said

Not long shall you be ours

The Raven King knows all too well

Which are the fairest flowers