And, in the seeing, did not pity me.
Then, today, when Catling bit while the deer were sniffing me, he came to me, and bent down, and whispered in my ear, I know. I’m not too sure that he really did, but the words were better than anything anyone else had ever spoken to me. And so, before my mother could fuss, he ushered Malcolm and me towards the kitchen.
There, while he and my mother wandered off among the trees, I sank down in a corner. I didn’t want a chair, I didn’t want to sit in front of the stove. I wanted cold to somehow provide comfort against the raging agony in my wrists, and I wanted solitude in order to find the strength to bear it, and the corner of the kitchen seemed like the best place available.
Malcolm paid me the compliment of ignoring me, wandering about from table to Aga, then to the sink, clearing away the tea dishes that someone—Matilda, I think—had brought in. He didn’t speak to me, and he didn’t look at me. I knew he was very aware of both my presence and my pain, but was not made uncomfortable by either.
Always I kept to myself when Catling struck. I never wanted anyone near me. The only reason I’d stayed in that drawing room for Jack’s arrival was because I had refused to allow Catling to drive me away on this momentous occasion.
So I should have hated it, having this strange man as witness to my humiliation. But I didn’t. I found his presence…comforting and consoling.
Despite the agony, and the humiliation, and the terrifying sense of being out of control that always accompanied these attacks, it was a good time for me. For the first time in many long years I really didn’t feel quite so alone. For too long too many people had fussed, and then Jack had appeared to know just what I needed.
Then Jack ruined it all by returning from his little walk in the woods with my mother. Returned with his arm linked with hers, and there was a glow to her face and a light in her eyes that terrified me. I didn’t want my father to be hurt, and I could see his devastation written all over my mother. I looked into her face and saw there the disintegration of our life. A delicate balance, that had so long preserved us against utter ruin, was broken.
My mother, of course, hurried over to where I was standing. “Grace?”
“I am well enough, mother. Don’t fuss.”
She didn’t. She turned directly away from me and back to Jack. “You have been very kind, Jack. Thank you,” she said, and then gave him a lovely smile that I’d only ever seen her give to my father…and that not recently.
I was certain then that she still loved Jack, and I cursed her silently. Not merely for what she would do to my father, but what she would do to all of us. My world was fracturing about me as I had feared it would the moment I heard Jack Skelton was returning.
“I want to go home,” I said. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Oh, gods, I sounded childish and selfish, but I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Thank you,” I said to Malcolm as I walked towards the door leading outside. Then, over my shoulder to my mother, “I’ll wait in the car.”
“That was rude, Grace,” Noah said as she drove us to London. She’d marched back to the car a few moments after I had left, where Matilda, Ecub and Erith waited. Jack and Malcolm had remained in the house.
“Father will be waiting for us,” I said.
“Jack was kind to you,” Noah said, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “The least you could have done was to thank him.”
She was right, of course, but I didn’t reply, for if I had I thought I would have burst into tears. I loved my parents; they provided the only constant and stability in my life. I didn’t want to see them tear apart, and I was terrified that my mother wouldn’t be able to help herself.
If they tore apart, then everything would tear with them. I was sure of it. Catling had set her trap, and Jack and my mother were falling into its clutches. My life as it was up to this point had been terrible enough, but it was a life, and I felt that with Jack’s arrival I had been sat down before some glum-eyed medical specialist who would fold his hands, look over the top of his glasses, and say, “I’m sorry, my dear, but there’s no hope. There is nothing to be done. I would give you six months only.”
My mother and Jack Skelton were going to murder all of us with their disastrous love. Why couldn’t they have learned that lesson a millennium ago?
Ah, but why should I hate them for that? We’d all been murdered, so long, long ago. There never was such a thing as hope, and I’d been foolish to ever believe it.
There was only ever the Troy Game, victorious.
TWO
Copt Hall
Thursday, 7th September 1939
“What were you doing with Grace, Malcolm?” Jack said. He was leaning against some cupboards, arms folded, his gaze steady on Malcolm, who was still at the sink. Outside he could hear Noah’s car pull away.
“I was introducing her to some of my companions.”
“They weren’t deer, Malcolm.”
Malcolm turned around at that, drying his hands on a tea towel. “Frankly, I thought I’d done a good job of disguising them.”
Now Jack’s gaze verged on the openly hostile. The disguise had been good—good enough to fool everyone else—but when Jack had come downstairs and seen the deer close, their forms had appeared false.
Transparent.
A disguise.
There had been three men standing there. Warriors, wearing tartan kilts and a terrible expression of loss in their eyes.
And Malcolm had allowed one of them to stroke Grace’s arm.
Jack was furious, but wasn’t quite sure why. Because Malcolm was something other than he’d thought? Because Grace had been in danger?
“Who are you, Malcolm?”
Malcolm gave Jack a long, considered look. “You thought I was a Sidlesaghe.”
“ Who are you, Malcolm?”
“My ancient name was Prasutagus,” he said. “I was king of the Iceni.”
Jack’s mind raced. As a man he did not know the name, but as Ringwalker…oh yes, the name was familiar. He could feel its significance seeping up from the soil beneath the foundations of the hall.
“You were Boudicca’s husband,” he said.
Malcolm gave a small smile. “I was far more than that.” He shifted slightly, making a slight movement with one hand, and suddenly Jack saw standing before him a tall, thin man who, though he continued to wear Malcolm’s clothing, exuded an aura of ancient power.
Faint blue lines marked his face—the woad markings of one of the ancient priests of the land.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “A druid, no less. So tell me, Druid Prasutagus, what were you doing with Grace? And why are you here,” one shoe tapped the floor, “in Copt Hall?”
“I am here to help save the land,” Malcolm replied.
From the infection you brought to it. Jack didn’t so much as hear that thought from Malcolm, but feel it.
“Should I trust you?” Jack said.
“Yes.”
“What do you know?”
“Enough.”
“That’s no answer,” Jack snapped. “And you have not told me what you were doing with Grace. Why show her to those warriors? Why allow them to touch her?”
“I wanted to know if I could trust her,” said Malcolm, “and if I could trust her with you. So I introduced her to some of my warrior-priests, men whose opinions I respect before any other. They instinctively trusted her.”
“There is more to Grace than meets the eye,” Jack said, wondering why Malcolm needed to be able to trust Grace.
“Oh, I know that,” said Malcolm. “Jack, I am not your enemy. I am your servant. I know who you are. I can do nothing but serve you. Don’t make me the enemy.”
Jack relaxed a little. “And your wife? Should I expect to see her dusting the stairs one day?”
“Boudicca still rests in death,” said Malcolm. “She has not returned to this world to live.”
Perhaps they needed someone in the Otherworld for w
hatever it was they were about, Jack thought. “What is the bond between you and Copt Hall?”
“The hall stands on the site where Boudicca killed herself and our two daughters,” he said. “This,” now his foot tapped at the kitchen floor, “is where they died. I am tied to it by sorrow and by power. And now, by you. I am not surprised you picked this place, above all others, to make your home.”
There was something else lurking behind his words, but Jack could not see it. Why was he back? What had Prasutagus and Boudicca to do with the Troy Game? Jack knew he could stand here all day and ask Malcolm questions and get little but more puzzlement back in response. So he studied Malcolm one moment longer, stretching out the silence until it was slightly uncomfortable, then gave a nod, as if dismissing Malcolm, and left the room.
Malcolm stared after him. Then, when he was quite sure Jack was gone, he bared his teeth in a silent snarl.
“That wasn’t very nice,” said a voice.
Malcolm snapped about.
A young woman with long curling black hair and a cold face was leaning against the outside door.
“When they discover you there’ll be hell to pay,” Malcolm said, recovering his composure.
“Ah, but isn’t that what you and I and Boudicca have planned for, all along?” said the woman. Her eyes wandered over to where Jack had been standing but a minute previously.
“You can’t wait to meet him, can you?” Malcolm said softly.
If it was possible, the woman’s face became even colder. “I care nothing for him,” she said.
“Of course not,” said Malcolm. “Did you know the imps are murdering—” he went on, but got no further, for suddenly he found himself alone in the kitchen.
THREE
Maze Pond, Southwark
Friday, 8th September 1939
Vera Clements finished her shift as a nurse’s aide at Guy’s Hospital far later than usual. That damned Ward Sister had been unhappy with the dressing trays, and had required Vera to do them all again—cleaning, laying out, wrapping, sterilising. The entire bloody lot. No matter that Sister had known it would make Vera late. No matter that Sister must have known that it would be fully dark by the time Vera left and Vera would need to walk to the train station along unlit streets.
Nothing mattered but the cursed dressing trays.
Vera had finished, but night had closed in, and Vera knew her parents would be worried. They hated her walking the streets at night and, once they realised she’d missed her usual train home, would be sitting at the kitchen table, a cold pot of tea between them, worried eyes flickering towards the little clock sitting on the dresser.
Well, at least London Station wasn’t far. All Vera had to do was duck up Maze Pond, then nip across St Thomas Street and she was there. Five minutes, six at the most, and she’d be inside the station and heading for her home.
She hunched down into her coat—Lord, but it was cold for this time of the year!—and walked so fast up Maze Pond it was almost a jog. Her heels clattered along the pavement, enough to wake the dead, but Vera didn’t care. Just another few minutes and she’d be out of this dark, lonely street and inside the train—
A shadow moved, catching Vera’s eye, and she jerked to a halt.
A man stood in the dark rectangle of a doorway across the street. Vera could make nothing out but the glow of his cigarette as he drew on it, and the outline of the hat pulled down low over his brow.
He wasn’t looking at her—his head was bent low, as if studying the pavement—but Vera knew his attention was all on her.
She forced her feet to move. Silly man, she told herself. Lonely, no doubt. Thinking to chat up a nurse on her way home. Well, he’d not get a word out of—
She gasped in shock. She couldn’t see it, but somehow she knew that another man was following her up Maze Pond. His footsteps were slow and stealthy, his movements slippery, his eyes fixed on her back.
Vera spun about.
A shape (the man) slipped into a passageway between buildings and was gone.
Trying to control her breathing, Vera glanced at the man across the street—still in his doorway, still drawing on his cigarette—then around at the now-empty street behind her.
Slowly, her every move a nightmarish effort now, Vera turned again and began to walk as fast as she could up the street.
From the corner of her eye she saw the man in the doorway toss aside his smoke and step after her.
Vera broke into a run. St Thomas Street was just ahead! She could reach it in less than a minute!
The second man stepped out of an alleyway directly in front of her and grabbed at her elbow.
Vera shrieked, the sound a harsh whistle in her throat, and jerked her arm away, heard the man laugh softly.
“Got you worried, have we, sweet?” he whispered.
She tried to step around him, tried to run, tried to drag her eyes away from his, but she stumbled in the gutter, sprawling painfully across the surface of the street.
A hand traced lightly down her back. Vera could feel its fingers burning through her coat.
Sobbing, terrified, Vera scrambled forward, trying repeatedly to get to her feet but stumbling back to her hands and knees every time.
Her hands and knees were bleeding, and the base of her chin throbbed from where it had slammed into the road.
One of the men stepped up behind her—Vera thought her heart would burst from fright—and buried his hand in her coat between her shoulder blades.
The next instant he had hauled her to her feet.
Run, he whispered in her mind. Run!
Vera ran.
Her feet slipped wildly on the road, but somehow she managed to stay upright. Her handbag had long gone, and her jaunty red woollen cap lay on the roadway where she’d fallen. Her hair escaped from its bun and wrapped itself about her eyes, blinding her, and her coat flapped madly as she ran towards the junction of Maze Pond with St Thomas Street.
She could see cars passing along St Thomas Street, could see the dim lights of London Station, could see the shapes of people moving about inside.
Vera knew she would never make it out of Maze Pond.
“Are we scared yet?” came a whisper in her ear. “Truly terrified?”
Vera spun around, hitting out madly, blindly, with her fists.
Something sharp, something nasty, sliced along her left ribs.
Can you feel her terror?
She heard that, although she knew her assailants weren’t addressing her.
Rather, they addressed something large, something shadowy, something huge, something seething down from the night sky!
Vera screamed, her mind refusing to accept what she was seeing, or what was about to happen to her.
One of the men, laughing softly, grabbed at the collar of her coat, pulling her against him.
A knife, very long, very cold, very sharp, slid into her belly, then jerked to one side.
Much later, the imps, moving under the cloak of power, left Vera Clements’ ruined corpse under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr on the northern bank of the Thames.
One of them, Jim, held a scrap of flesh in his hand—still warm, bloody, and soft.
He sighed, as if regretful, then walked the short distance to the embankment and tossed what remained of Vera’s womb into the cold, grey waters.
Then both he and Bill looked upwards, their teeth glinting.
It had been a good night.
FOUR
Faerie Hill Manor
Saturday, 9th September 1939
Jack drove through Epping Forest the night after Vera had taken her ill-fated walk along Maze Pond. Despite the cool weather, he had the hood of the Austin convertible folded back, and the wind rippled through the short curls on his head. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the top of the door, occasionally lifting it to his mouth to draw on the cigarette he held in his hand.
The car zipped along the narrow roadways. There was a speed limit
of only twenty mph in force to try to save petrol, but Jack ignored it. No one would see or hear him, for Jack drove that strange borderland between the Faerie and the mortal world, where distances expanded and contracted according to need, and where time passed only as requested. Trees crowded the verges of the roadway, dark and impenetrable, their branches meeting overhead so that Jack drove through a dark tunnel. Occasionally the headlamps of the Austin would catch something strange drifting between the trees or scampering across the road just in front of the car.
Jack had been driving for hours. In the usual world it would have taken but a few short minutes to drive from Copt Hall to Faerie Hill Manor, but Jack wanted the time and space to think. Tonight was a cliff edge: a night of beginnings and endings. Never again would he be the same once he stepped over that edge.
Tonight he would be marked. Tonight he would take that final step into the forest.
Do I really want to do it?
Yes, of course he did. It would give him power beyond knowing, and peace beyond anything he’d ever achieved, if all went well.
Am I frightened?
Yes, of course he was. This was a step that could never be retraced. Never again could he just walk away as he had when he was Louis de Silva.
This was the night that would bind him to the trees. Once and for all.
For the first time since he’d arrived back in England, Jack was not wearing his uniform. Instead, he’d dressed simply in an open-necked white shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a single-breasted jacket of the same material. Loose, elegant, comfortable clothing.
He’d be sore when he came back.
Jack shifted a little in the driver’s seat and forced his train of thought to Walter Herne, hoping that the man would be where planned, at the time planned.
“Just this one thing, Walter,” Jack whispered, “and then you’re a free man. Just this one thing…”
It was just after nine p.m. when Jack pulled into the forecourt of Faerie Hill Manor. Unlike the first night he’d arrived here, the house was now under full blackout conditions. A mere sliver of light showed here and there from behind blackout curtains, but that was it.