Eaving reached out, and touched his cheek as she had so recently touched her daughter’s. “And I should have kissed you, and failed to. Will you forgive me?”
“Will you kiss me now?” Ringwalker said.
“And will you love me now?” Eaving said, taking Ringwalker’s hands in hers.
Then, not responding in words, both leaned forward and kissed, deeply and passionately, as if they had been lovers parted for aeons.
And Ringwalker’s markings, the blue-inked scars over his upper body, flowed down his arms to where Noah held his hands. They touched her flesh once, twice, as if probing, and then retreated up his arms to once more writhe about his shoulders and chest.
On her hill, the black-haired woman saw, and smiled.
Deep within the crowd, Malcolm saw also, and he looked over to Grace and gave a little nod, as if something had just been confirmed in his mind.
Then he moved his head very slightly in the direction of the hill where the black-haired woman hid, and his eyes crinkled in delight.
Eaving drew back, smiled, and reached for the bowl of water. She balanced it carefully in her hands, then raised it up to Ringwalker’s face that he might drink.
He took a long draught, then, as Eaving replaced the bowl on the table, he reached for a strand of leaves and loosely twisted it within her hair.
They kissed again, and as they did, so the crowd erupted in a great cry of jubilation.
Ringwalker and Eaving had drawn away from the crowd now, making their departure, and Grace turned to realise, with a start, that her father was gone.
Already feeling empty and desolate at the sight of her mother and Ringwalker embracing, Grace looked about, her heart beating fast.
What had happened to Weyland?
She saw him, finally, standing on the very far side of The Naked, as far away from Eaving and Ringwalker as he could get. Grace walked over slowly, coming to a silent halt by his side. She followed his eyes, looking out over the Faerie, then very quietly slipped her hand into his.
“I wish…” Weyland finally said.
Grace blinked away tears. “I know,” she whispered, and leaned against her father.
Ringwalker and Eaving went to a place very private and very secretive, a cave that existed at the borderlands of water and forest.
There they kissed again.
“We have made love in such a variety of places,” Ringwalker said as Eaving turned away from him slightly, and slid the gown from her shoulders, “and over so many thousands of years.”
“And as so many different people,” Eaving said. Naked now, she turned back to Ringwalker, running her hands over his body, untying the wrap about his hips.
“I was glad to see Grace at the ceremony,” Ringwalker said, then wished he could have dragged the words back. He supposed that the last thing Eaving wanted to chat about now was her daughter.
“Mmmmm,” Eaving said distractedly, her attention on everything but her daughter.
Ringwalker opened his mouth to say something else, and then realised, with a jolt, that he was using words to delay that moment when he would need to act on this consummation.
Somewhat clumsily, he put his hands on her shoulders, then caressed her upper arms.
I wonder, he thought, why I don’t feel more joy.
“Ringwalker,” she breathed, pressing her warm body the full length of his, her hands about his lower back, then running up to his shoulders.
“These marks are so wondrous,” she said, and kissed them. “So…seductive.”
Then her hands ran down his arms, pausing at those spots where the kingship bands of Troy would eventually rest.
“I can’t wait for the moment that I slide the bands on your limbs,” Eaving said, and her voice was so sensuous and the promise so imbued with deep sexual overtones, Ringwalker should have responded.
But he didn’t, not in the way he thought Eaving may have hoped. Everything felt…not wrong…but faded and pale. Muted. There was desire, yes, but it was a faint ghost of what he’d once felt for this woman.
She looked up at him questioningly, wondering why he took so long to respond, and Ringwalker bent his head to kiss her so that she could not see the hesitation in his eyes.
As their mouths touched, then clung, he understood very suddenly that what he had said to Weyland was true. He was tired of loving Noah.
“Ringwalker?” Eaving said. “Is anything the matter?”
“Nothing,” Ringwalker said, and picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed that rested between two lighted braziers.
All night, as he lay with Eaving, the marks on his shoulders remained quiescent, as if sleeping, and whenever Eaving moved her hands over them, Ringwalker shifted them away again, very gently.
Noah returned to her apartment within the Savoy the next morning at ten o’clock.
Weyland was sitting on the sofa, not even pretending to read his newspaper, his fingers drumming lightly on the arm of the seat. He stood as Noah entered, and tried to smile.
“So what did you do all night, my lovely?” he said.
Noah shrugged off her coat and kissed him softly on the mouth. She was very relaxed, very calm, very confident. “We spent all night laughing at how stupid we had been as Brutus and Cornelia, and admitted that we preferred a friendship to the constant strife of loving.”
She said it so guilelessly that Weyland was tempted to believe her, but he wished before anything else that she had told him the truth.
At Copt Hall Malcolm was setting out the breakfast things when Jack walked in the kitchen door.
“I would have expected more of a spring in your step,” Malcolm commented as Jack sat down at the table.
“Last night was none of your business, Malcolm.”
Oh, but it surely was, Malcolm thought. “You’re very irritable this morning.”
“It is none of your business, Malcolm!”
Unperturbed, Malcolm set down some toast and tea. “Great marriages,” he said, “need not necessarily be made in Faerie places.”
Jack had no idea what Malcolm meant, but he knew the man well enough to know that if he responded it would only encourage Malcolm further.
He began to butter his toast with hard, jerky movements of his knife.
Behind him, Malcolm arched one eyebrow as the toast finally crumbled into disarray.
For him, the Great Marriage had gone better than he could have hoped.
THREE
Faerie Hill Manor
Friday, May 10th 1940
Spring more than made up for the terrible winter. Once May arrived then, almost overnight, or so it seemed to the bemused inhabitants of England, the skies cleared, what was left of snow and ice immediately evaporated, floods receded, and mud and slush turned to newly sprung turf and emerging meadow flowers. Even in the concrete and tarmac City, flowers pushed their heads out of cracks in walls and butterfly bushes sprang out of gutters and old tiled roofs, producing their gorgeously scented purple flowers a full six weeks early.
No one had ever seen a spring like it. The newspapers were full of reports of the bounty: the surge in crops, the record weights of vegetables, and the wonderfully clear and warm weather. Old-timers shook their heads and said they’d not heard of the like, even in their grandparents’ time. Many were seen to grin, and remark on how winter still lingered in the German Fatherland.
The results in the Faerie were as spectacular as those in the mortal world. All signs of frost damage vanished, and the hills and forests seemed somehow to “lift”; foliage became thicker, flowers more beautifully scented, shrubbery denser, the very air itself almost decadently sweeter.
The only troubling note was that the Idyll remained distant. It had not retreated further, but neither did it bond itself to the Faerie’s borders any more.
Nonetheless, the lines fell from Harry’s face, and as each day passed his mortal appearance more closely mirrored that of the Lord of the Faerie. Those mortals around him, the p
eople he worked with in military intelligence and some of the more obscure government departments, remarked on it, and he said only that the spring had provided him with a tonic so good it had soothed away all his cares and aches.
Stella laughed more often, and the Sidlesaghes took to wandering the bridle paths of Epping Forest, coming close to playing tag through the dappled shadows.
But the most extraordinary change resulting from the Great Marriage was in Noah.
The day after the Great Marriage she left the Savoy to visit with Matilda and Ecub. The instant she walked out into the street to catch a cab, she stopped, her eyes widening.
“My gods, Jack,” she whispered, “I can feel it, too!”
On the evening of Friday the tenth of May, Jack, Noah, Weyland and Grace met with Harry and Stella at Faerie Hill Manor. It was the first time they had all gathered together since the Great Marriage. Overall it was a happy get-together—after all, the Great Marriage had apparently done what it was supposed to—and all were relaxed.
All save Grace, who was very quiet. This, however, was so much her usual state that no one save Jack, who had seen her far more animated, paid it much attention.
Once everyone was gathered, Harry asked if anyone had listened to the radio since lunchtime.
Noah shook her head, looking to Weyland, who also shook his. “We’ve spent the day in our apartment, reading,” she said. “Grace?”
Grace just gave a shake of her head.
“Copt Hall didn’t come equipped with a radio,” said Jack with a grin, “and I doubt that Malcolm would allow me one if I desired it. What is it, Harry? Bad news, or good?”
“Good. Neville Chamberlain has resigned.”
Chamberlain had been Britain’s Prime Minister all through the lead-up to the war and during its initial months. He was a likeable enough chap, and a good Prime Minister during peace, but most people thought he was out of his depth when confronted with the sheer enormity of Hitler.
“And?” said Jack softly. “Who has replaced him?”
“Winston Churchill,” said Harry.
“This is good?” said Jack. “I’m sorry, I don’t know him, although I’ve heard of him.”
“Yes, it is good,” said Harry. “I’ve met Churchill on several occasions, and know him well through other acquaintances. George,” he said, referring to the king, “does not like him particularly, but I think Churchill will be of much benefit for the land. He has a touch of the Faerie about him—there must be ancient blood in there somewhere—and he has pluck, and those combined will, I think, do us all much good.”
“And surely,” said Stella, “we cannot fail to miss the significance of his rise to power so soon after the Great Marriage. He is the land’s choice.”
“I’ve called you together tonight,” said Harry, “to work out where we go from here. I think that Jack needs to get the arm-bands, and then—”
“Harry,” said Noah, leaning forward in her chair, her eyes shining, and looking at Jack even though she addressed Harry, “before we talk about that, there is something else I need to tell you.”
“And it is…?” said Harry, who had a sudden horrible premonition that she was about to announce she was pregnant to Jack. Babies were all very well, but this, now, would be disastrous. He flickered a glance Weyland’s way, trying to see if Weyland had any inkling of what it was Noah was about to reveal.
But Weyland had his face blank of all expression, and was no help to Harry.
“I can sense the shadow, Jack!” she said. “I walked outside the day after the Great Marriage, and suddenly, I felt it!”
Everyone in the room reacted, some far more than others.
Stella looked at Noah with some curiosity, but did not seem overly excited at the news. Grace stared at her mother as if she had announced an imminent Martian invasion. Harry just looked stunned, incapable of speech.
Weyland’s face tensed, and he looked away from his wife.
Jack made a soft sound and sat forward. “You felt it? Thank gods! Tell me, what? What did you feel? Do you understand it? Can you recognise if—”
“Jack!” said Noah, laughing and holding out her hands as if to fend him off. “Be still a moment, and let me tell it. Yes, I can now feel what you do. A shadow—I don’t know what else to call it either—hovering over London, its tentacles reaching deep within the city, and something distinctly labyrinthine. I have not explored as you and Grace have done,” she finally glanced at her daughter to include her in the conversation, “but I have used every sense I have, as Mistress of the Labyrinth, as Eaving, and as Darkwitch, to scry it out.”
“And?” said Jack. His sense of excitement had faded now, and instead he appeared palpably tense.
“I think it is a weakness in the Troy Game,” Noah said.
“No,” said Grace. “Not a weakness.”
“Grace,” said Noah, “I know that you think—”
“Can’t you see that it is a trap?” Grace said angrily. “Catling is too cunning for you! I know! She sits beside my bed at night, and what I feel in this shadow over London is what I feel emanating from her. It is a trap.” She brushed tears away from her eyes, muttering an inaudible curse, more at the tears than at what her mother had just said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. I just don’t think this is any weakness. I wish…”
She drifted to a close, looked about, then hunched in her chair miserably.
Jack watched her, his eyes narrowed in thought. Was she so miserable at what she thought was his and Noah’s misinterpretation of the shadow…or at the fact that her mother could feel it as well?
“Weyland,” Jack said, “can you feel it yet?”
Weyland gave a terse shake of his head. “Obviously Noah’s new-found ability is tied to the success of your wedding night.”
Jack chose to ignore that remark—there wasn’t much he could say to it anyway—and instead changed the subject.
“Harry, I hear you about the kingship bands,” he said, “but once I retrieve them, Catling will expect Noah and me to complete her immediately. Not having them buys us more time—I can give Catling some excuse or other. But now that Noah can feel this weakness as well—”
To one side, Grace looked away as Jack used the word “weakness” as if it was fact.
“—I am more convinced than ever that we need to get to the bottom of this particular mystery before anything else. If we can exploit this weakness, then perhaps we have the means to unwind the Troy Game.”
Harry nodded. “All right, I agree. You are sure you can placate Catling?”
Jack gave a small shrug. “I will do my best.” He looked at Noah. “Secreting those final two bands in the Otherworld was a masterstroke, Noah. Unlike the other four bands, Catling will have no idea what needs to be done to retrieve those two, and must needs believe whatever I tell her.”
Noah smiled at him, warmed by his compliment, then she looked at Grace, and her smile died a little. She stood up. “Grace, what say you and I go to the kitchen and make some coffee. I think we need clear heads now more than whisky-fuddled wits.”
“Grace,” Noah said as soon as she and her daughter were alone in the kitchen, “I should have mentioned this to you beforehand. I apologise. That was not the way for you to hear.”
Grace clattered around in the sink, filling the kettle. “But what good points you scored with Jack.”
“Grace—”
“I’m sorry,” Grace said, now banging the kettle down on the stovetop so heavily water slopped out of its spout. “It is just that I don’t believe it is a weakness. I am afraid that…”
“I know.” Noah came to stand behind her daughter, who was staring at the kettle and making no effort to light the gas burner. She put her hands on Grace’s shoulders, and pulled her back into her body, holding her gently. “I know you are scared, and I know you are scared about what Jack and I think. My darling,” she turned Grace about, “I can only promise you that I will keep an open mind, and Jack a
nd I will explore every possible avenue of explanation. Neither of us wants to make a mistake.”
“I can help.”
“Yes, of course.” Noah was not sure what help Grace could be—mainly because she was worried that Grace was the one with the shuttered mind when it came to deciphering this particular puzzle—but Noah also knew very well that she could not say that. “Grace, I promise that I will keep an open mind on this.”
Grace and Noah seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to be making a simple pot of coffee, and as Harry and Stella wandered off to converse in low tones by the fire, Jack slipped over to sit next to Weyland.
“Weyland,” Jack said.
Weyland gave a soft grunt.
“Weyland. For your sake, I am sorry that Noah and I had to make the Great Marriage.”
Weyland shot him a look full of cynicism.
“Believe it or not,” Jack said, “I am sorry for it. Weyland…” He hesitated, wondering how to put what he wanted to say into words, and wondering just what it was he wanted to say, in the first instance.
“Jack, just leave it.”
“Weyland—”
“Leave it.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
Finally Jack cleared his throat. “May I ask you something? It isn’t about Noah.”
“If you must.”
“Weyland…you spent thousands of years trying to kill me and steal the kingship bands so that you could control the Troy Game. Can I assume that you have Kingman powers? That you have Kingman knowledge? That if you did have the kingship bands, and Noah, that you could step fully into the shoes of the Kingman?”
“Oh, my, what a loaded question. How should I answer?”
“Honestly, if you please.”
“Then I will. Yes, I could do it. I do not have precise Kingman training, but on the other hand I lived so long in the heart of the labyrinth that I have absorbed many of its secrets. I could not do it prettily—perhaps you might offer me further training—but do it I could. Remember also that I would bring my Darkcraft behind whatever I could do as Kingman. I could be a very, very effective—and somewhat bleak—Kingman. Jack, why do you ask?”