Good Omens

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 them­had 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 mo

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 fire trap he had here.

8

The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty‑seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:

"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read:

25. And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?

26. And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.

27. And the Lord did not ask him again.

It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.

9

The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.

10

Who had already had a few thoughts in that direction, and spent the last years of his life in Newgate Prison when he eventually put them into practice.

11

Another master stroke of publishing genius, because Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Parlia­ment had made Christmas illegal in 1654.