'My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone,' Daniel finally says. 'To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666 – Number of the Beast and all that. I was, therefore, produced in 1646 – as always, Drake's timing was carefully thought out. When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic. Sometimes I look about myself – ' he waves his arm at the tavern " – and see the way it turned out, and wonder whether my father could possibly have been any more wrong.'