A hall had stood on this site at the north-western edge of St Thomas’ Quarter of Epping Forest for almost eight hundred years. Kings and queens had either banqueted or hidden here; families had been raised within its walls, and families condemned within them; a community had thrived, their babies welcomed and their weary funeralled.
Four-storey walls reared into the night sky, a shifting mass of purples and silvers and greys in the faint moonlight.
The walls had no roof, nor glass to fill their gaping windows. Staircases wound upwards into nothingness; fireplaces sat in walls with great chasms plunging just beyond their hearths. Mice nested in the drains, and foxes in the cellars.
Smudges of soot left over from a disastrous Sunday morning fire in 1917 still besmirched the turrets.
Once, long, long ago, Copt Hall had lived.
Now it was a broken shell.
Once, deer had trodden softly through the gardens.
Now deer gathered again. One or two at first, moving nervously across the still-gravelled but weedpocked drive. Then two or three more, emerging from the shadows of derelict outhouses. Then a dozen, trotting apprehensively forward from the overgrown Italianate garden at the rear of the hall.
The night grew even more still than it had been, and the ears of the deer twitched as they stared at the iron gates.
Then, as one, they started and wheeled away to the right, away from the hall and towards the forest.
At its edge they stopped, and stared once more to the gates.
A man stood there. He was dressed in a greatcoat with a military cap pulled down low over his brow, a holdall in his hand.
He stared at the hall, then took off his cap so that his face became clear in the moonlight.
The deer, as one, let out a great sigh.
“Well,” said Stella, sitting herself down in a chair and crossing her elegant legs. She had lit a cigarette and was looking at the others, smoke drifting lazily about her face. “I think that all went rather well.”
“For gods’ sakes, Stella,” Noah said, “it was awful.”
“Well, for you maybe,” said Stella, “but then he and I didn’t part on such bad terms in the last life as you and he. What did you think, Grace? Brutus returned. You’re the only one here who hadn’t met him.”
Grace had her legs curled under her in the chair, and she gave an indifferent shrug in answer to Stella’s question.
“Are you tired, darling?” Noah said. “Do you want to go to bed?”
“Oh, Noah,” Stella said, “she’s not a child!”
Noah flushed, and might have said something, save that Weyland shot her a cautionary look. He poured Grace an inch of whisky and handed her the glass without a word, ran his fingers lightly through his daughter’s loose curls, then went and sat on the sofa, accepting a cigarette from Stella.
“He’s angry,” Weyland said, as he drew deeply on the cigarette.
“He’s only just arrived back,” said Silvius. He was now leaning on the mantelpiece over the hearth. “What did you expect? That he’d walk in here, grin easily, and say, ‘All is forgiven and I’m your man’?”
“I think,” said Harry, “that we should be damned glad he’s back at all. Noah, with all respect for your reasons, you tore his world apart in 1666. Frankly, for decades I was worried that he’d abandoned us so completely we’d never see him again.”
There was strain in his voice, and for a long moment no one else spoke. For a very long while, no one had expected him back.
“If he can’t help Grace,” Weyland said very quietly, “then I for one shall wish he had never returned.”
Jack Skelton walked slowly towards the front door. Rather, he walked towards the gaping hole that had once held the door. He had known about this hall from when he’d been Louis de Silva, transforming into Ringwalker and running the forest paths. Epping Forest was the remnant—the heart—of the great forests that had once covered this land, and Copt Hall itself had been built on a patch of ground where the barriers between the world of the mortal and the world of the Faerie were so thin as to be almost nonexistent.
Like as not, it was the reason a hall had existed on this site for eight hundred years. It served as a gatehouse between worlds, although the majority of the mortal inhabitants of the hall had probably never had any idea of what came and went through door and window, and what wafted through its spaces.
Jack’s pace slowed even further as he came closer to the hall. He had no idea why it had burned: what had caused the fire, or what purpose the destruction had served.
The owners had retired to London and had never rebuilt, although they had talked about it off and on for years. There was a small staff still living in the undamaged wing of the hall who managed the vegetable gardens, sending the food down to the owners’ London townhouse. Jack doubted he would ever come across them. He had the Faerie lease, not the mortal lease, and would be using this home within its Faerie aspect, not its mortal.
A step away from the front door the barren stone arch shimmered, and Jack’s feet scrunched in the gravel as he halted. The stonework shimmered again, and now Jack found himself before a whole and complete entrance, the massive wooden barred door in place, a soft light glowing from a lamp to one side of the entry overhang.
The door opened—something Jack had definitely not been expecting—to reveal a man standing inside.
He was tall and well built, with greying brown hair slicked back from his brow. His face was peculiarly mild, as if he practised exhibiting no emotion save blandness. Although he was dressed in a smart jacket and trousers, and with a beautifully knotted tie over his shirt, the man nonetheless projected an aura of servility.
Dear gods, thought Jack, don’t tell me the lease comes with a butler.
“Good evening, sir,” said the man. “I presume you are Major Skelton?”
Jack gave a nod.
“And you have the lease with you?”
Jack drew forth the lease from the pocket of his greatcoat. He made to hand it to the man, but as soon as he sighted the rolled indenture tied with the pink light the man waved his hand in satisfaction, and Jack pocketed the lease again.
The man now drew the door wide open and stepped back in a gesture of invitation. “My name’s Malcolm, sir. I watch over Copt Hall and welcome friends as they visit.” There was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “And I do indeed come with the lease.” He paused. “You might say that I come with the land.”
At that he smiled, and Jack saw that his teeth were stained very slightly with blue.
Jack relaxed. Malcolm was a Sidlesaghe, one of the most ancient creatures of the land. Normally they existed as the standing stones of the various circles, or Dances, scattered about Britain, but over the past thousand years the Sidlesaghes had increasingly taken living form as they aided efforts to repel the Troy Game.
“I also valet, sir. Whatever you desire in this house, then ask.”
“Thank you, Malcolm. I appreciate the welcome and the offer.” Jack stepped through the entrance, and Malcolm both closed the door and took Jack’s holdall in one smooth move.
“It is late, sir. Perhaps if I took you direct to your bedchamber?”
“Thank you, Malcolm.”
They stepped through into what had once been the main part of the house. There was little left but stark, soot-stained walls open to the night air.
Then Malcolm moved a hand and the empty space shimmered. Jack found himself looking at a comfortable drawing room, a fire crackling cheerily in the hearth, with sofas and wing-backed chairs drawn close in.
A decanter and glasses were set out on a lamp table close to the fire.
Malcolm saw Jack looking at the chair and fire. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nightcap before retiring, sir?”
Jack shook his head. “Another night, Malcolm. Bed for now, I think.”
Malcolm led him on towards the ruins of a oncefine staircase that, again at a movement from Malcolm’s hand, shimmered bac
k into their original glory.
At the top of the stairs he guided Jack to an elegant bedroom. A full tester bed, curtained with thick red drapes (now drawn back and tied against the bedposts), stood to one side of a blazing fire, while a fat armchair sat on the other side of the hearth.
A dressing table, replete with silver-backed brushes and combs and a jug and basin, rested against another wall with a doorway leading into a dressing room and bathroom.
Malcolm set the holdall down by the bed, and folded back the bed covers. “May I fetch you some cocoa?” he said as he pulled the sheets tight.
“If you will, Malcolm.”
Malcolm dipped his head, and left.
Jack wandered over to the bed and sat down, overcome with weariness. It wasn’t the journey at fault, but the strain of the meeting in the drawing room of Faerie Hill Manor. All that tenseness, all that expectation, their damned history of conflict and love and disappointment swirling all about them.
And Grace.
Jack thought she epitomised all of that conflict and love and disappointment and all of the mistakes they had made throughout so many lives. She was a lovely young girl, and should have been carefree and happy. But what was she instead? A shell of a girl, racked with agony, because of the blunders and screw-ups of others.
Or was she their fate made flesh? Was she everything that had ever gone wrong turned into breath and blood?
Jack rubbed his eyes. Grace. Our doom.
He didn’t know what to do. Why had he come back? What did they want of him?
What did he want?
It was such a mess. A morass of stupidity. What the hell was he doing here? What could he do? What could he do?
“Sir?”
Jack jumped, and looked to where Malcolm stood in the doorway, a cup of steaming cocoa in his hands.
“Sir, I am sorry, but there is a visitor at the front door. I—”
Jack felt his stomach drop away with dread. He knew who it was.
“Set out a chair for her by the fire below,” he said. “I will be with her shortly.”
Malcolm set the cocoa down on the table by the chair, and left.
Jack sat a moment, then stood, wandering over to look down at the cocoa.
“Fuck it,” he whispered, and walked towards the stairs.
She was standing before the fire, her hands held out as if for warmth. She’d heard him approach, he knew it, and she must have sensed the moment he started down the stairs, he knew that as well, but now she turned as if caught unawares, an expression of pleasant surprise on her face as though his step had startled her.
The expression faltered and died within the moment at the sight of his face.
Jack felt a little sick. She was so lovely, and he hated it that he yearned for her now as strongly as he had three hundred years ago.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Noah said. “What happened at Faerie Hill Manor wasn’t particularly pleasant. We were all too tense.”
“What have you told Weyland? That you were stepping out to admire the stars?”
“I told him I wanted to talk with you alone,” she said quietly.
“Ah. Then I suppose Weyland is lurking about the windows to make sure I don’t throw myself at you.”
“Jack,” she said. “Don’t.”
He walked past her to pour himself a glass of whatever the decanter held. He didn’t want anything to drink, but he desperately needed to do something with his hands. He held the decanter over another glass, raising his eyebrows to Noah.
She shook her head. “Jack—”
“But it is good whisky,” Jack said. “Are you sure you won’t have—”
“Jack—”
“Shit,” he said. He put the decanter to one side, stepped forward, and took Noah’s face in his hands. She started to pull back, but his hands tightened, and he leaned forward and kissed her with such an intensity that when Noah finally managed to wrench herself free her face was flushed and her breath rough.
“Have you tired of Weyland, then?” he said. “Have you come to tell me that you’ve got over your foolishness? That you want what we both should have had four thousand years ago?”
“No,” she said. “I love Weyland still.” More than ever I loved you.
“Then what the fuck are you doing here, Noah? What do you want?”
“I wanted to welcome you home, Jack. I didn’t get a chance at Faerie Hill Manor.”
Of course not. She’d been bound and gagged and couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So she’d had to come out here in the middle of the night.
He wondered if Weyland should be as sure of her as Noah thought he was.
“Jack, you are home. Oh, please, gods, we cannot be at odds like this. Everything is wrong. The land suffers, its people suffer, Catling—” she said the name with such vehement loathing that Jack’s face stilled “—looms over us with such menace that each dawn increases our burden of dread. And we don’t know what to do about it. We don’t know how to stop it, save by destroying the damned Troy Game.”
“But you can’t, can you?”
“No,” she said, “not without you.”
“And even then, how, Noah? Shall we destroy your daughter, as well? That should do it…but, oh, I forget, if we do Grace to death then we destroy the Faerie, and most of us—although I’m not sure that I’m included in that curse, am I?—and likely London and all of the land as well.”
He saw then just how badly Noah suffered. Her beautiful eyes became so agonised, and her lovely face so drawn, that he instantly took one of her hands and held it as softly as he could.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She pulled her hand from his and dashed away the tears that threatened to spill over. “You have no idea what it has been like, Jack.”
“No, but you somehow want me to make it instantly better, don’t you? Well, I’m sorry, Noah, I really am, but I don’t know how I can do that. I have no bloody idea. When Catling trapped Grace with her hex, she trapped all of us. What the hell am I doing back here?”
He walked away, standing staring into the vast interior of the hall, hands on hips. After a long moment he turned back to look at Noah. “What if I said there is nothing I can do?”
“I can’t accept that, Jack,” she said. “I won’t.”
He sighed, sat in one of the chairs and gestured to another. “Sit down. Tell me about the state of the Troy Game.”
“It is unbelievably strong,” she said, sitting on the edge of a chair. “You can feel that, surely.”
He hesitated, then gave a small nod. He remembered that momentary impression of the shadow hanging over St Paul’s, but thought it more likely a figment of his nerves at that point than of anything else.
“You know what powers I command, Jack,” Noah continued. “I am Noah, goddess of the waters. I am also a powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth. And I am a Darkwitch. I have three strengths and powers at my command and I can combine all three of them into something so powerful, so lethal, that, if I so choose, I could probably murder the entire world. But I can’t murder Catling. I can’t murder the Troy Game. It is too cunning for me now. Too deep. Too dark.”
“But you are also Eaving, the shelterer,” Jack said, calling Noah by her goddess name. “Wouldn’t that contra-indicate any and all of these murderous ambitions?”
She studied him, then laughed softly, realising that he was attempting a small jest. “Oh, aye, you are right. My Eaving nature would probably preclude any attempt at using my Darkwitch and Mistress of the Labyrinth powers to ‘murder’ anyone. I can’t think why Catling hasn’t asked me for shelter already.” Because her goddess name meant shelter, Noah was forced to shelter and protect any who asked it of her, no matter what she thought of them, or how she feared them.
Now Jack smiled, and the tension between them relaxed a little. “Tell me,” he said, very softly, and Noah didn’t need any more words to know exactly what he meant.
“I thought I was being so clever,” sh
e said, “burning London. I thought it would stop the Troy Game—Catling—in her tracks for a while, give us enough time to prepare. But Catling had already trapped us.”
She stopped, and both remembered that terrible day when Jack, in his form as Ringwalker, had battled with Weyland within the Idyll as Noah watched helplessly on. While they’d been so stupidly, pointlessly engaged, Catling had sent her two dark imps into the Idyll to twist the red wool hex about Grace’s wrists, thenceforth binding Grace’s fate to that of the Troy Game’s.
“Afterwards,” Noah continued, “when London lay burned and desecrated and you had left, we did everything we could think of to free Grace. Everything.” She paused, and Jack could again see the pain well up inside her. “Nothing worked. Not from any of us, gods or Faerie alike. Jack, it wasn’t just that Grace had been so cruelly trapped, it was that Catling then wrapped Grace in agony whenever she felt like it. Or whenever she felt she needed to remind us how badly, how finally, we were trapped, or whenever she had a particular message to get across. She has made Grace suffer all these years. All these years. And in the process…” Again she paused, and Jack realised it was to bring her emotions under control. “And in the process I lost my daughter.”
That statement startled Jack somewhat, although earlier he’d recognised the tension between Noah and Grace. Surely Grace had lost a great deal more than Noah?
Noah hadn’t noticed Jack’s reaction. “Grace was never a baby. She was never a child. She has spent her entire life struggling to survive the anguish and the hopelessness. Jack,” Noah looked over to him with eyes full of emotion, “all I had wanted was a daughter to love. I thought I’d have it with Catling, but look what she truly was. I was certain I’d have it with Grace, but then…”
“She doesn’t like to be mothered, does she?”
Noah made a small gesture of unhappiness. “I fuss too much. All I want to do is to take her in my arms and somehow take some of that hurt into myself, but she hates that.”