He really is odd. Anyone will tell you that. But the other stories I’ve heard about him are so absurd and nonsensical I’d better not repeat them.”

“Let’s hear some of this nonsense.”

“Well … for example, what should I make of the story that he buried himself like a fakir, and after two years, or two weeks—I forget which—they dug him up and found him in perfect health? And in the war, they say, he went around during the gas attacks without his mask on and suffered no ill effects. He’s supposed to have magical healing powers. The most incredible of these stories is that he revived the Duke of Warwick a day after his doctors had pronounced him dead. There’s a rumour that he has a huge laboratory in Wales where he carries out strange experiments on animals. And he’s created some new creature that comes alive only at night … He doesn’t make any of this public because he loathes the democratic nature of the sciences. But it’s all nonsense. All I know is that, in company, he’s always extremely kind, and no one ever notices anything at all strange about him. But he isn’t seen very often. He doesn’t leave his castle for weeks on end.”

With that, he leant over towards me and whispered in my ear:

“Mad as a hatter!”

And he left me there.

In the course of the evening I successfully contrived a second meeting with the Earl. I sensed that he found me not uncongenial. He told me my eyes reminded him of a seventeenth-century doctor, one Benjamin Avravanel, whose portrait hung in his castle. The man had been murdered.

I won’t transcribe the long conversation we had, particularly since I did most of the talking while he asked the questions. And though I never did discover why the Earl was interested in Fludd, the discussion was not unproductive. I seemed to have gained his sympathy because, as we parted, he said:

“There are some old volumes on your subject in the possession of my family. If the mood takes you, do call in at my little place in Wales, and spend a few weeks there, looking them over.”

I felt the honour keenly, but am so idle by nature I would never have taken it seriously. However a few days later I received a written invitation that actually specified a date. That was how it all began.

I mentioned the invitation to one of my friends, Cecil Howard, an employee of the British Museum working on a subject related to my own. When he heard the news, the colour drained from his face.

“Bátky, you’re a lucky dog. In this country it’s only foreigners who get that sort of chance. Wonders are spoken of the Pendragon Library. But since Sackville-Williams was there to catalogue it, eighty-five years ago, no one with any expertise has been allowed in. The Pendragons have been reclusive for centuries. If you work up the material they’ve got there you’ll be the leading authority on the history of seventeenth-century mysticism and the occult.

“My God,” he sighed, sounding utterly deflated. “You’ll write the Life of Asaph Pendragon. You’ll get telegrams of congratulation from America, and five PhD students will come on annual pilgrimage from Germany to consult you. You’ll even get a mention in the French journals. And apart from all that, it’s quite something to be invited to Llanyvgan. It’s the finest and most exclusive castle in Wales.”

I left him to his envy.