My fellows, he said in greeting.
Jack greeted Matilda, Ecub and Erith with evident delight, kissing each on the mouth, but Matilda with perhaps a little more depth and passion than the other two.
Noah received a peck on the cheek—“As you are a married woman,” Jack remarked—and Grace, a similar kiss on the cheek. She gave him no chance to kiss her mouth had he even wanted to, averting her face as he approached.
Jack gave Grace a strange look at that, but he turned away from her almost immediately without a word, and ushered the women to the easy chairs grouped about the fire.
As they settled themselves, Malcolm bore in a large tray, laden with silver pots of tea and hot water and delicate bone china cups and saucers. He set this down on a low table in the centre of the chairs, and then moved a stand filled with cakes and dainties beside it.
“We can help ourselves, Malcolm, thank you,” Jack said, and Malcolm inclined his head and withdrew.
Noah leaned over the table, ready to pour, but Jack waved her back.
“Grace,” he said, “will you be ‘mother’?”
She flushed a little, glancing at the other women, and Jack noticed that her hands trembled very slightly as she leaned forward. But, having once laid hand to teapot, Grace then accomplished the pouring of the tea with considerable poise, handing out the cups and passing around the milk pitcher and sugar bowl as needed.
Then she sat down, looked at Jack (who had been watching her keenly the entire time), and said, “Did I pass the test?”
“Grace—” Noah began, but Jack burst into laughter, surprised and delighted both by her unexpectedly direct gaze and her tart tone.
“Yes,” he said, “you did. You may apply forthwith to Malcolm for a position on the staff.”
For a moment he thought she almost smiled. Her eyes widened slightly, and her face relaxed, but then her customary guard went up and she dropped her eyes away from his. She refilled the teapot with hot water, then rose, the now-empty hot water pot in her hand.
“I’ll ask Malcolm to refill this,” she said, and then was gone before Jack, or any of the women, had time to comment.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Noah said. “She can be so abrupt at times.”
Jack stirred his tea. “She has reason enough to be, Noah.”
“Yes, but…” Noah’s voice drifted off.
Matilda had watched the exchange, her eyes narrowing, and now she spoke. “Enough of Grace, Jack. What of you? Goddamn it, man, we’ve missed you! Tell us all, now, we demand it. What have you been doing, where have you been, what do you know?”
Matilda was sitting in the chair next to Jack’s, close enough that he could lean over and kiss her softly on the mouth. “And I have missed you, too, Matilda,” he said, barely pulling his mouth away from hers. “How fortunate that you are no one else’s wife in this life.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling, “but I have my eye on your man Malcolm.”
The group laughed, and Jack slid back into his chair, and soon they were buried in conversation and reminiscences.
Grace stood under the overhang of a door and watched as Jack leaned over and kissed Matilda. She was a distance away, but she had acute enough hearing to pick up their exchange.
“Miss Orr?”
She spun around, clutching the hot water pot, her eyes wide with surprise.
Malcolm smiled at her. “Do you need more water?”
“Yes.” A pause. “Thank you.”
“Then come with me.”
He led her through the ruins to a kitchen where an Aga stove radiated warmth.
“Put the pot on the table,” he said. “It will take a moment to boil some more water.”
Grace obliged, and as Malcolm busied himself at the Aga she wandered slowly about the kitchen.
“This is a strange house,” she eventually said, standing by a plate rack and running one hand lightly over the china within.
Malcolm, still at the stove, glanced at her, pleased that she’d spoken. “It has a deep past, Miss Orr.”
She turned to face him. “A deep past? As have you, I think, Malcolm.”
“Me? I’m just Major Skelton’s manservant, Miss Orr.” Malcolm affected a rolling country burr as he spoke, but Grace did not smile.
“I don’t think you’re anyone’s servant, Malcolm. Tell me, what are you?”
Now Malcolm turned fully from the Aga. “Would you like me to show you, Grace? Just a little?”
He could see the indecision on her face: the slightly narrowed eyes, the corner of a top lip disappearing as she chewed on it.
“Do you dare, Grace?” he asked, very softly.
A long silence. “Yes,” Grace eventually said.
“Then roll up your sleeves.”
Grace took a step back, instinctively, defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. She was wearing a long-sleeved cardigan over a blouse and skirt, much as she’d been wearing the day her father had driven her and Jack down to London, and now she automatically tugged a little at the cuffs, pulling the already-stretched sleeves further over her hands.
“Grace,” said Malcolm, “do you think none of us know about your wrists, and the scars they bear? If you want to see what I am, then roll up your sleeves, and come naked-fleshed into my world.”
No one in the drawing room had commented on Grace’s continuing absence, even if they had noticed it. Jack had talked a while about where he’d been, and who, and what he had done in the years since 1666, and then Eaving’s Sisters had explained what they’d been doing (not a lot, according to their report, apart from wandering the Faerie and growing closer to the land).
Then Ecub asked Jack about what he’d said on the Sunday evening, about the “wrongness” within London.
Jack told them what he knew. “I went back into London yesterday, but discovered little more. Whatever it is, is so ethereal that I can barely grasp it. And you’re certain that none of you have felt it? Not even walking the land, or within the Faerie?”
All of the women, including Noah, shook their heads.
Jack sighed. “Maybe it is nothing. Maybe I have been away too long. Maybe…” He shrugged, and smiled disarmingly. “Maybe it is but the taint of the modern world.”
“What are you going to do now, Jack?” Matilda asked.
“Run the forest a little longer, bond with the land more deeply.” His eyes, suddenly keen, switched to Noah. “Collect my kingship bands.” A pause, as he studied Noah carefully. “Will you keep them from me, Noah?”
Her chin tilted up. “No. They are yours whenever you wish.”
A strange expression came over Jack’s face as she said that, but then it slipped away, and he stood up. “Good. Now, let me show you my home, such as it is.”
Malcolm led Grace out the kitchen door and towards a grassy area that bordered the gardens. It was now evening, and a mist had moved in from the forest almost a mile away.
Grace shivered, wrapping her arms about herself.
The sleeves of both cardigan and blouse were rolled up well over her elbows, and the livid scars about her wrists and arms almost glowed in the silvery, damp light.
Malcolm nodded towards several shapes looming up from the mist. “See,” he said, a hand on Grace’s back, pushing her gently forward. “They were once my companions.”
Three deer moved out of the mist, their nervousness apparent in their quick, high steps.
Malcolm held out a hand, and they sidled up to him, moving themselves so that he stood between them and Grace.
“Shush,” he said, his voice very soft, “don’t you see she’s been damaged as well?”
Grace stared at him then, as tense and as nervous as the deer.
Malcolm turned his face slightly so he could see her from the corner of his eye; one of his hands rubbed up and down the flank of first this deer, then the next. “Hold out your wrists, Grace. And come closer. Do.”
Do, do, do, he repeated, over and over, his voice soft and gentle and
calming, and before she had quite realised it, Grace took a step forward, extending one of her wrists.
Jack found himself standing on a balcony with Matilda at the very top of Copt Hall.
Noah, Ecub and Erith were somewhere else in the building.
“Jack, how are you? Tell me the truth, you can do that. You can trust me.”
He slipped an arm about her. “Oh, aye, I can trust you.” He moved slightly so he could kiss the top of her head. Matilda was taller than she had been in either of her previous lives, but still short enough that he could pull her in close and cuddle her under his chin.
“Well?” she said, leaning into him, and wondering if it was possible they might restart what had once been a great marriage.
“I feel lost and dislocated,” he said. “Nothing is right. I was away too long.”
“Noah…”
“I know. She is lost to me.” He gave a hollow laugh. “But can I accept it?”
“Jack,” she whispered, her arms about him now, “perhaps I can—”
“Look,” he said, his voice lifting in surprise, and she felt his body tense fractionally away from hers.
Matilda looked down. Far below them, at the edge of an overgrown grassy lawn and a patch of tangled shrubbery, stood Malcolm and Grace, close to a clutch of deer.
As they watched, Grace lifted one of her wrists, and one of the deer leaned forward, achingly slowly, and sniffed at it.
“What is she doing down there?” Jack asked. He’d moved completely away from Matilda now, and gripped the balcony railing.
“Finding a friend, perhaps?” Matilda said. “Gods alone know she has precious few of those.”
The deer leaned into Grace, so very, very slowly, and just as slowly Grace leaned towards it. The deer snuffled at Grace’s wrist, then ran its damp nose up her arm. Its tongue gently rasped against her skin. Grace gasped, and for a moment looked as if she was about to pull back.
“Be still, Grace,” said Malcolm. “He will not hurt you. He just wants to know you.”
“I am afraid…”
“I know, girlie.”
At the gentleness in Malcolm’s voice Grace looked at him. “I will destroy them.”
“You are talking of your hex? Afraid it will reach out to snatch them as well? Don’t fear. If that were so then my friends here would not come near you.”
The deer was now standing very close to Grace, close enough that it was leaning its body into the woman. The other two deer had also neared, and were sniffing curiously at Grace’s other wrist.
“Malcolm…Malcolm…who are you?”
“I was once a king, my dear, and these lovely creatures my warrior-priests.”
Jack was looking at Matilda. “Talk to me about Grace, Matilda. She is a puzzle to me.”
Matilda took her time in answering. “She’s lost, Jack. She was so loved and wanted by both her parents, but from babyhood she was lost to them, and perhaps even to herself. She has isolated herself within a ring of fire and of suffering, and can’t escape.”
Jack’s mouth gave a humourless twist. She is everyone’s “doom”, he thought.
“Grace has no friends,” Matilda continued. “She allows no one in, and besides…”
“Besides?”
“Jack, Grace has two extraordinary parents: one a goddess, a Darkwitch, and the most potent Mistress of the Labyrinth who has ever existed. The other is a creature so powerful and with such a dark, terrible past that he is, in his own way, as intimidating as Noah.”
“Intimidating?”
“Jack, Grace is intimidated by Noah, and by us, Eaving’s Sisters. We represent a past and a bond that she can’t share. You say that you are lost and dislocated, but so is Grace. Worst of all, Grace feels she disappoints Noah. Grace knows full well she can’t be the daughter Noah has always so desperately wanted.”
“Noah suffocates her.”
Matilda looked at him sharply. “Yes, she does, but can you blame her for it? If you had a child that suffered as Grace does—could you stand back and regard her with impartial coolness?” Then she looked down, and gasped. “Jack, look at that!”
Grace was laughing. Watching her, Malcolm had an enormous grin on his own face as he thought that it was possibly the first time Grace had laughed in scores, if not hundreds, of years.
The deer were crowding Grace, but she was not afraid. She patted and rubbed at them, and smiled and laughed, and seemed oblivious to Malcolm’s presence.
Suddenly Malcolm looked up, and saw Jack and Matilda watching from the heights of the hall.
She is accepted among the herd, he said in Jack’s mind.
So was Judas part of Christ’s herd, Jack replied, but there was no malignancy in his words, and they did not dampen Malcolm’s grin.
“You are welcomed within the glade, Grace,” he said, but he kept his eyes on Jack as he spoke.
The next moment Grace gave a cry, and twisted away from Malcolm and the deer.
THIRTEEN
Copt Hall
Thursday, 7th September 1939
NOAH SPEAKS
I was with Ecub and Erith, walking the gardens at the side of the house, when I felt Grace’s pain.
Catling!
As always, two emotions consumed me instantly: anger—fury—that Catling should so torment Grace, and a bleak impotence that was more devastating than the anger. What could I do? Nothing, really, for all I could do was fuss, and Grace so hated to be fussed over.
I knew from what I could feel that Grace was in the gardens at the back of Copt Hall, and I (as also Ecub and Erith) were with her within moments.
She was not alone. Jack’s valet, Malcolm, was standing by her side, and, as I ran towards Grace, Jack and Matilda materialised directly before my daughter.
I couldn’t look away from Grace. She was now half-crouched, bent over her wrists, and I could feel the suffering radiating out from her.
“Grace!” I cried, and ran the final few steps between us.
Before I could reach her, Jack stepped in front of me. “It’s all right, Noah,” he said. “Malcolm can take Grace into the kitchen where it is warm and quiet—”
Quiet? What was he trying to say?
“—until her pain has passed.”
With that he turned away from me, not even waiting for a response, and bent down and said something very quickly and quietly into Grace’s ear. She gave a tiny nod, then rose and, still half-crouched about herself, her wrists clutched to her chest, walked slowly towards the kitchen, Malcolm a half-step behind.
“Jack,” I began, irritated by the way he’d stepped in, but he motioned to me to wait.
“Malcolm can keep Grace company for the time being,” Jack said to me. “He can be quiet for her.”
I was grinding my teeth by this time, but I gave a jerk of my head.
“And while Grace endures,” Jack said, “you and I can talk.”
“Matilda and Erith and I,” said Ecub, “shall clear the tea things from the drawing room—no, do not worry, we shall not disturb Grace in the kitchen—and then wait in the car.” She looked at the other two women and winked. “I’m sure one of us has remembered to bring a flask of whisky with her, and we can spend the time quite pleasantly while waiting for Noah and Grace.”
Jack smiled his thanks, then took me by the elbow and guided me towards a stand of trees beyond the grass.
The trees hadn’t been there a few minutes previously.
Even this evidence of Jack’s power did nothing to quell my ill-temper.
“There was no need to step between us, Jack,” I said, none too gently pulling my elbow from his hand.
“She didn’t want you, Noah.”
That was too much. I stopped in my tracks and turned to him, my mouth opening to let him know what I thought…
“You said to me that she doesn’t like to be mothered,” he said. “Look, I know you want to help her, but…”
Oh, that “but”.
“Perhaps it is be
tter to just let her be,” he finished. “Let her endure alone. She didn’t choose isolation by circumstance, Noah, but by choice.”
“It is easy to see that you are not a parent,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. When he had been William, Jack had been an excellent parent to his and Matilda’s children, and he had been a loving father to our sons as well, even if he hadn’t been the best of husbands to me. And he’d been gone almost three hundred years since last I’d seen him—who knew what children he’d fathered in that time?
“Walk with me,” he said softly, and I briefly closed my eyes, and thought if he’d said that to me when he’d been Brutus, and I Cornelia, with that same measure of warmth and sweetness, then all of our troubles would never have had the chance to start.
So we walked. Twilight was thick about us now, and a heavy mist clung to our clothes and hair. I was glad for the coat I had put on earlier to walk in the garden, and slid my hands deep into its pockets. Above us the trees twisted, their branches mostly denuded of leaves, the earth to each side of our path humped into eerie misshapen swellings with the pressure of the roots below. Our feet crunched on dead leaves and forest litter, and as we walked deeper into the forest, and as the night settled about us, so all of the tension of the past minutes dissipated.
“It feels good,” I said eventually, “to be walking thus with you.”
From the corner of my eye I saw him smile slightly. “Aye, it does.”
I stopped, turning to look at him, thinking how handsome he was. I wish…oh, I could wish for so many things, and it couldn’t make the world any better a place, would it?
“We should have walked thus a long time ago,” I said.
The amusement dropped from his face, and he regarded me with an intensity that made my stomach twist with emotion.
“What we should have done a long time ago has been a hard and long lesson to learn,” he said.
We fell silent, neither of us able to look away from the other.