“I—” I began.
“We should—” he said at the same time, and we both laughed self-consciously.
Then he leaned forward, and kissed me.
Oh, my. This wasn’t that hard angry kiss he’d given me when I’d met him the night he’d arrived at Copt Hall. This was something altogether different, and far more unnerving.
I drew back a little, just a little, but not far enough, for he merely closed the distance between us and continued the kiss, deepening it a little.
Eventually I managed to draw back enough to break the contact. Gods, what was I doing?
The answer to that didn’t bear thinking about.
He smiled a little, and way too intimately.
“Perhaps we should get back to the house,” I said.
He didn’t move. “I can scarcely believe that you will fetch those bands for me willingly. For years you’ve hidden them from me, and refused me access.”
I was still so befuddled by the kiss, and so confused by my own reaction to it, I wondered if he was talking about the bands…or something else.
“And you will just fetch them from the Faerie for me? Whenever I ask?”
Just the kingship bands, then. “Of course,” I said. “Whenever you ask.”
Again he gave me that odd look he had given me earlier when we’d talked about the bands.
“Jack,” I said, “I’m sorry that I kept them from you all these years. You know I had reason enough.”
He gave one of those infuriating slight shrugs. “I know you thought to have reason.”
I was about to snap, but he spoke before I could manage it. “And they’re in the Faerie?”
“Of course they are, save the two I sent into the Otherworld.”
And yet again, one of those strange looks.
“Jack?”
He smiled then, easy and relaxed, and changed the subject. “Have I mentioned today how beautiful you are?”
“Jack, don’t.”
He reached out a hand, and ran his fingers softly down the side of my face.
“Are you sure I can’t win you away from Weyland?”
“Jack…”
He turned his face then, staring back to the hall. “Catling has retreated,” he said, “and Grace’s pain has faded. We should go back.”
I was disappointed at his words, yet at the same time relieved. Yes, we should go back.
Back to Grace.
I sighed.
Part Two
GRACE
London, 1014
For scores of years the Danes and Norwegians had fought the Anglo-Saxons for control of England. First an Anglo-Saxon king sat the throne, then a Dane, then a Norwegian, and always there was yet another contender sailing up the Thames to launch an assault on London in order to gain the throne.
In 1014 the English King Aethelred, aided by the Norwegian King Olaf, made a desperate assault on London, trying to wrench it away from the Danes, who had seized the city and elected Cnut to the throne of England. The Danes had fortified the city well, constructing bulwarks and ditches in Southwark, reinforcing their castle on the site where the Tower of London now stands, and barricading the wooden bridge which straddled the Thames between London and Southwark.
By evening of the day of the attack the battle had reached its most desperate. Neither Aethelred nor Olaf could manage to breach the defences at either the castle on the northern bank of the river, or the defences on the southern bank at Southwark.
Olaf, an experienced Norse warrior, didn’t know what to try next. His men were nearing exhaustion, the Danish defenders appeared to have limitless supplies of ammunition as well as men, and it seemed to him that they would be beaten back to a humiliating defeat by star rise.
Olaf! Olaf!
Olaf was standing in the belly of one of his warships, gazing in frustration upriver to the bridge, when he heard his name being called.
He frowned, looking around the boat. It was filled with Norse warriors, and yet that voice had sounded as if it had come from the throat of a small girl.
A movement on the south bank of the river caught his attention.
The bank was far distant, but Olaf found he could see as clearly as if the bank was no more than ten feet away.
A small girl, five or six years old, stood there. She had long black curly hair, the whitest face imaginable, and was dressed in a dark gown of what, to Olaf, looked like a most expensive and exotic material.
Then, suddenly, the little girl was standing beside him in the belly of the ship, and Olaf made a sign against evil, knowing he stood in the presence of a malignant spirit.
“Do you want to win this city or not?” said the girl-spirit. “Yes? Then set aside your fear of me. Listen to me, Olaf, and hear how you can take this city from the Danes.”
Four hours later, under cover of full dark, Olaf directed his fleet of fifteen warships upriver towards the bridge. As soon as they came within range of the bridge, the Danes cast down spears and arrows and great stones, but they bounced harmlessly off Olaf’s ships, for Olaf had taken the spirit’s advice and fixed thick screens of woven hazel over and around his ships.
Once at the bridge, Olaf’s men worked quickly, casting strong cables around the piles of the bridge. As they moved out from under the cover of the hazel screens many were struck by missiles and fell into the river, but within minutes the cables were secured, and Olaf screamed at his men to row back downstream.
It took less than three minutes for the piles to give way. The bridge collapsed into the river, taking with it thousands of Danish warriors. Those that didn’t fall into the river fled into London, or into Southwark.
Aethelred and Olaf then set their warriors against the bulwarks and fortifications in a renewed assault. The loss of the bridge, and the thousands of Danes who had been crowded upon it, had broken the nerve of those Danes left, and by dawn London belonged to Olaf and Aethelred.
Once the city was secured, the Norwegians and the English set to feasting. Great quantities of drink and food were consumed and, as part of the celebrations, a Norse wit by the name of Ottar composed a short verse to celebrate the critical moment which had won the day.
London Bridge is broken down. Gold is won, and bright renown, Shields resounding, War-horns sounding, Hildur shouting in the din! Arrows singing, Mailcoats ringing, London Bridge is broken down! London Bridge is broken down!
In her dark corner of existence, the little girl did not even raise a smile at the drunken revelry. There had been only one thing she’d wanted, and that was to destroy London Bridge.
“London Bridge is fallen down!” she whispered. “London Bridge is fallen down!
“Now, let us rebuild it to what I want.”
ONE
Copt Hall
Thursday, 7th September 1939
GRACE SPEAKS
All my life, so it seems to me, has been spent watching everyone about me Waiting For Jack. It was like a parlour game that we all played whenever we had nothing else to do. When there was a lull in a conversation, whenever thumbs began to twiddle, if a book grew boring or an afternoon stretched ahead without a single amusement ready to fill the empty hours, then we played Waiting For Jack.
All my life. For almost three hundred years. Waiting For Jack. His name changed occasionally, of course. In my early years it was Waiting For Louis, or sometimes Waiting For Ringwalker. Occasionally someone would forget themselves entirely and play Waiting For Brutus. Life held its breath, Waiting For Jack.
It was a torment. Much of my life was a torment, but most particularly the Waiting For Jack part of it. I was the only one who didn’t know him. Everyone else had an opinion and, more importantly, a long history with this mythical creature. My mother had loved Jack, and had then abandoned him for my father. My father had spent the greater part of his life hating him, and then the remainder of it terrified that Jack would somehow snatch my mother back. Harry was Jack’s friend, but that friendship was based on a peculiar mix of
shared murder, women and ambition, and I had never pretended to understand it. Stella had been Jack’s lover and (most importantly) his partner in building the Troy Game, Matilda had been his wife, Silvius his father, Ecub and Erith his lovers as well, while Walter had simply existed, so far as I could tell, on a diet of unrelieved dislike for Jack…which was a breath of fresh air amid all the other shared histories of love and betrayals.
Everyone waited for Jack, everyone knew Jack, and I was the only one so completely excluded from all this history that I had no idea at all what to expect, or what to wait for.
Jack assumed almost mythic proportions in the time he was gone. This wasn’t just in my mind, but in everyone else’s as well. The Troy Game dominated our lives completely—whenever people weren’t playing Waiting For Jack then they were playing What Can We Do About The Troy Game. No one could get on with their lives until something was done about the Troy Game, and it appeared that the only person who knew what to do about the Troy Game was Jack.
When Jack arrived home, then somehow all would be well. I wasn’t so sure about this, because from what I’d been told about all the adventures and trials of the past it seemed most apparent to me that Jack had as little idea as anyone else about how to tackle the Troy Game problem, but everyone seemed to cling most desperately to the idea that somehow Jack could solve everything.
Jack would arrive home, and miraculously both Destroy the Troy Game and Save Grace within the first five minutes. That he didn’t do either was, I am afraid, not much of a surprise to me.
Life at the Savoy and at Faerie Hill Manor was thrown into turmoil the day Harry announced that Jack Skelton would be arriving on the Saturday evening train at Waterloo. My father was terrified and my mother even more so; Stella was amused (more at my parents’ reactions than at the idea that Mythical Jack was about to reappear and save us all); Harry was nervous, Walter resentful, and Silvius genuinely pleased.
Me? I was the most terrified of all, because I thought that this long-waited-for and almostmythical Jack would almost certainly manage to murder us. I had lived for hundreds of years in abject terror of the next time Catling might decide to visit her agony on me. It dominated my entire life. I could do nothing, go nowhere, without fearing that, while I was out, Catling might decide to amuse herself. But at least I knew I would always survive each of Catling’s attacks. At least I was alive, and at least I knew I would stay that way while Jack was absent.
But when Jack returned, that terrible decision would need to be made: to try to destroy the Troy Game and thus destroy not only me but everything tied to me, or decide to complete the Troy Game and allow me (and everything tied to me) a life, but a life spent in nightmarish subjection to Catling and her whims.
When I had been younger I’d tried desperately to free myself from Catling’s curse, but there was no means of escape. I had tried to use my Darkcraft, just once, and the suffering that Catling inflicted on me for that single piece of rebellion had impressed upon me the foolishness of trying to use my Darkcraft against her. So, as far as I was concerned, Jack’s arrival meant either one of two things: death, or a fate worse than death.
My wildest fantasy had always been one of how Jack would never return, and we’d all be kept in this appalling limbo. Yes, it was appalling, but it was in its own way a life, and for me it was surely better than either of the other two alternatives.
Jack would not be able to save us. I knew it. I had tried to tell my parents and Harry this, but they always metaphorically patted me on the head and told me they’d find a way once Jack arrived home. All they needed was Jack and his undoubtedly fresh ideas, and Grace, London and, indeed, the entire world would be saved.
But we would never be saved, and could never be saved. I knew this, because I knew Catling far better than any of them did, and I knew Catling had laid a trap for Jack that our Newly Arrived Saviour showed every sign of walking directly into.
I knew Catling had laid a trap for Jack, because I had seen it hovering over London that first night Jack arrived.
Catling had thrown that hex about my wrists when I was a scant few weeks old. I could remember those weeks before I’d been cursed, and that memory was a torment. My mother had adored me unconditionally; my father loved me more than life itself. I’d grown in my mother’s womb surrounded with that love, and when I was born I inhaled it with every breath. We all shared the Darkcraft, we revelled in it, we used it to merge our existences so that often the three of us—mother, father, baby—were more like one indivisible individual.
Then Catling hexed me, tied my fate to hers, and that love and unity was corrupted. Other emotions crowded in—fear, guilt, blame, uncertainty, impotency, pity, a smothering protectiveness—and they drove me apart from my parents as almost nothing else could have done. I became “pitiful Grace”, regarded with love but also with boundless sympathy laced always with a vile little streak of fear. There goes Grace, dear Grace, poor Grace, our doom. I became a nuisance to everyone—at least that’s how I felt. People had to look out for me, people had to try and ease my pain, people had to be nice to me. Poor Grace suffers, we must try our best for her.
Whenever I walked into a room, people would tense as if a great burden had fallen on their shoulders. I dragged in trial and disappointment and disaster at my heels, and I felt as if I made the world a wearier place for whomever I encountered. I was the outsider. Everyone else shared a past that I did not, and a companionship that I could not.
I retreated from my parents, and from everyone about me. I had no friends, not really, because everyone regarded me with that appalling combination of pity and dread, and it allowed no true closeness. Stella was the nearest thing I ever had to a friend, but I caught even her regarding me with that strange pity-fear expression in her eyes, and it killed any real friendship before it had begun.
I may not have had a friend, but I had a companion.
Catling.
She came and sat with me, night after night, year after year. She grew up with me, appearing as a little girl when I was, as an adolescent with me, and finally taking the shape of a young woman as I matured. She did not appear every night, but maybe one or two nights a week I would wake during the night and see her lurking in the shadows of my room, a strange, cold presence. Sometimes she would stand, sometimes she would creep close enough to sit in a chair, but always she’d be there, silent, staring unblinkingly at me. Occasionally she brought her hateful spiteful imps; mostly, Catling came alone.
I screamed at her, I wept at her, and I rose from my bed and tried to strike at her, but she ignored tears and words and always faded away the instant before my fists could strike.
She never spoke. She just watched me, sometimes allowing a small derisory smile to light her face.
Planning. That’s the single perception I got most strongly from her. She had a cunning little plan going, the bitch. I could see it in her eyes, in the way her fingers constantly moved as if she were playing cat’s cradle, in the way her lips occasionally moved in silent concert with her fingers.
She had a plan to destroy us all, and all it needed was Jack.
Catling played Waiting For Jack as well. The only difference between Catling’s playing of that game, and the rest of our fumbled attempts at it, was that Catling knew precisely how to win it.
Of Jack himself…well, he was both as expected, and yet different. I heard all the stories. Brutus, the hard-hearted, ambitious bully; William, the kinder, but still ambitious invader; Louis, the impotent, angry man. To me Jack seemed a strange mix of lover–soldier–Kingman. Those who knew Jack seemed evenly divided into those who loved or had loved him, and those who hated or feared him. Without exception the women were all bound by some degree of love (save for Stella, who professed herself beyond such considerations).
And despite her protestations, I wondered if my mother loved him still.
I’d been so grateful to him when Catling struck when I was with Malcolm and the deer. My mother had been rus
hing towards me, prepared to smother me with concern, and Jack had quietly stepped in, and allowed me to enjoy some peace. I knew my mother meant well, I knew she loved me, I knew how much my pain hurt her as well, and, yes, I loved her, but all I ever wanted was to be able to endure in some quietude, because that was the only thing that made the agony bearable.
I’d been enjoying myself. Stupidly, because I knew Catling would not be able to resist taking this opportunity to torment me. Strange, strange Malcolm had taken me out to the deer, and their simple presence, and the soft, tickly rasping of the deer’s tongue along my skin, was so undemanding, so easy, that I felt all the muscles along my neck and shoulders and back relax, and when I saw Malcolm grinning at me, I laughed in sheer enjoyment.
Then Catling struck.
My flesh tore open. I have had many years in which to think about the best words to describe what this felt like, and the simplest and best way to try and describe it to someone else is to say, “Well, imagine that you had barbed wire, razor-sharp, buried within the flesh of your wrists and lower forearms. Imagine also that every so often—no particular pattern to it, just on your tormentor’s whim—the barbed wire tore through towards the surface, ripping your flesh apart. But only slowly. Not fast. Not like some kindhearted nursing sister ripping a drain out of a wound in order to cause the least discomfort possible. No, this happens slowly. Worse, it happens continuously. You see, the barbed wire never quite makes it to the surface. It just continues to tear through your flesh. The terrible wounds are never actually made, they are continually in the making.”
The red wires that glowed about my wrists were merely the external manifestation of pain. The real pain—that was inside. The continual tearing upwards; the continual causing of the wound. Most people only saw the red-hot wires glowing about my wrists, but I think that when Jack Skelton first walked into the drawing room of Faerie Hill Manor he actually saw inside, saw the wounds in the making.