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He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from errors in typesetting.
These Bibles included the Unrighteous Bible, so called from a printer’s error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?”; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, making it “Thou shalt commit Adultery.” There were the Discharge Bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs.
It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters.
The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor’s error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five.
2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher.
3. And bye the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali.
4. And bye the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh.
5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefet
tinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone with half an oz. of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *“Æ@;!*
6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.8
Bilton and Scaggs’ second great publishing disaster occurred in 1653. By a stroke of rare good fortune they had obtained one of the famed “Lost Quartos”—the three Shakespeare plays never reissued in folio edition, and now totally lost to scholars and playgoers. Only their names have come down to us. This one was Shakespeare’s earliest play, The Comedie of Robin Hoode, or, The Forest of Sherwoode.9
Master Bilton had paid almost six guineas for the quarto, and believed he could make nearly twice that much back on the hardcover folio alone.
Then he lost it.
Bilton and Scaggs’ third great publishing disaster was never entirely comprehensible to either of them. Everywhere you looked, books of prophecy were selling like crazy. The English edition of Nostradamus’ Centuries had just gone into its third printing, and five Nostradamuses, all claiming to be the only genuine one, were on triumphant signing tours. And Mother Shipton’s Collection of Prophecies was sprinting out of the shops.
Each of the great London publishers—there were eight of them—had at least one Book of Prophecy on its list. Every single one of the books was wildly inaccurate, but their air of vague and generalized omnipotence made them immensely popular. They sold in the thousands, and in the tens of thousands.
“It is a licence to printe monney!” said Master Bilton to Master Scaggs.10 “The public are crying out for such rubbishe! We must straightway printe a booke of prophecie by some hagge!”
The manuscript arrived at their door the next morning; the author’s sense of timing, as always, was exact.
Although neither Master Bilton nor Master Scaggs realized it, the manuscript they had been sent was the sole prophetic work in all of human history to consist entirely of completely correct predictions concerning the following three hundred and forty-odd years, being a precise and accurate description of the events that would culminate in Armageddon. It was on the money in every single detail.
It was published by Bilton and Scaggs in September 1655, in good time for the Christmas trade,11 and it was the first book printed in England to be remaindered.
It didn’t sell.
Not even the copy in the tiny Lancashire shop with “Locale Author” on a piece of cardboard next to it.
The author of the book, one Agnes Nutter, was not surprised by this, but then, it would have taken an awful lot to surprise Agnes Nutter.
Anyway, she had not written it for the sales, or the royalties, or even for the fame. She had written it for the single gratis copy of the book that an author was entitled to.
No one knows what happened to the legions of unsold copies of her book. Certainly none remain in any museums or private collections. Even Aziraphale does not possess a copy, but would go weak at the knees at the thought of actually getting his exquisitely manicured hands on one.
In fact, only one copy of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies remained in the entire world.
It was on a bookshelf about forty miles away from where Crowley and Aziraphale were enjoying a rather good lunch and, metaphorically, it had just begun to tick.
AND NOW IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK. The Antichrist had been on Earth for fifteen hours, and one angel and one demon had been drinking solidly for three of them.
They sat opposite one another in the back room of Aziraphale’s dingy old bookshop in Soho.
Most bookshops in Soho have back rooms, and most of the back rooms are filled with rare, or at least very expensive, books. But Aziraphale’s books didn’t have illustrations. They had old brown covers and crackling pages. Occasionally, if he had no alternative, he’d sell one.
And, occasionally, serious men in dark suits would come calling and suggest, very politely, that perhaps he’d like to sell the shop itself so that it could be turned into the kind of retail outlet more suited to the area. Sometimes they’d offer cash, in large rolls of grubby fifty-pound notes. Or, sometimes, while they were talking, other men in dark glasses would wander around the shop shaking their heads and saying how inflammable paper was, and what a firetrap he had here.
