As soon as Malcolm had stepped back, the oncewhite towel now hanging limp and bloodied from his hands, the Lord of the Faerie made as if to help Jack to rise, but Jack shrugged him off irritably.
“I am no cripple,” he said, and he slid his feet down to the grass and stood upright.
He was still directly facing me, and thus I had clear sight of what happened next.
He stood, his head hanging down, his arms limp, his chest and shoulders looking as though they’d been through a mincer, then he shuddered, his arms jerked, and his head snapped up.
His body quivered, and appeared to blur for an instant.
Then, in the silence, I gasped, because his shoulders and chest (and back also, I knew, though I could not see it) completely lost their bloody aspect and appeared as though they were covered with blue-black living lines. I had thought Walter to be carving the image of the stag into Jack’s flesh, but that was not quite so.
I could see elements of the stag in the lines that marked Jack’s shoulders and chest, but there was far more to those lines than just representation.
They lived. They had power of their own.
It was the forest woven into his flesh. And something else, although I could not immediately make it out.
Jack stood, his head cocked very slightly to one side, his entire presence so powerful and so beautiful I could not have looked away even if I had been commanded to do so. He shook his head very slightly, as if to clear it.
“Well?” said the Lord of the Faerie.
Jack straightened, and looked the Lord of the Faerie directly in the eye.
“You were right,” he said, and his voice, although low, seemed to vibrate with…not power—knowledge, maybe. “I feel entire, at home with both myself and the forest. Complete.”
SEVEN
Epping Forest
Sunday, 10th September 1939
The skin about the Lord of the Faerie’s eyes crinkled, the only sign of his deep emotion. “Then I am most pleased for you,” he said, his eyes trailing over Jack’s upper body.
The mark covered Jack’s shoulders (and also running a couple of inches down over the tops of his arms), the top part of his back, and the front of his chest; its wounds had already healed over into faded blue-black slightly raised lines, their meanderings partway between a tattoo and a scar. Although it had been a scant few minutes since Walter had finished, the mark looked as though it had been there for decades, fading into Jack’s flesh as if it were a living part of him.
The Lord of the Faerie ran one of his hands over the markings. “If you look at it one way,” he said softly, “you can see the spread of the stag’s antlers. But if you narrow your eyes and look another way, you can see…” His eyes slid up to meet Jack’s. “Then you can see the Ringwalk. Tell me, Jack, who are you now? Man, or stag? Kingman, or Ringwalker?”
Jack gave a slight smile. He opened his mouth, about to answer, but then he stilled.
His entire being stilled. And then the marks on his body moved slightly. They seemed to blur, and then shift as if rearranging themselves more comfortably, but the movement was so slight that the Lord of the Faerie, watching, was not quite sure if the mark had moved, or if it was his imagination.
Jack lifted his head, and looked towards the eastern edge of the clearing, where stood a great beech and a scrubby crab apple. A moment later he strode over, leaned down, and hauled out a white-faced Grace.
The Lord of the Faerie made a sound partway between exasperation and surprise and walked over to where Jack held Grace, Malcolm following close behind the Faerie Lord.
Walter stayed at the stump. He appeared completely indifferent to what was happening at the edge of the clearing, concentrating instead on cleaning the instruments he had brought with him and putting them neatly back inside a leather satchel that he had kept to one side.
Jack was not sure whether to be angry or disturbed. He had grasped Grace by both her wrists, the sleeves of her coat pushed up to reveal her scars, his hands holding tightly enough that she couldn’t pull away, but not so tight that he would injure her. She appeared frightened. Her face was white, her blue eyes brilliant and wide, her pulse jumped under his fingers, her breath was fast and shallow.
Jack wasn’t prepared to go by appearances. Grace played the innocent well enough, but she was also a Darkwitch and a Mistress of the Labyrinth, and “innocence” did not sit well with either.
“Why are you here, Grace?” he said.
She swallowed. “I wanted to see what you and…Harry…”
Jack wondered why she wouldn’t refer to him as the Lord of the Faerie.
“…were up to. I knew something was up, and—”
“How did you know ‘something was up’?” Jack said. The Lord of the Faerie had moved very close now, alternating his concerned gaze between Jack and Grace.
Malcolm stood slightly to one side, holding Jack’s shirt, jacket and shoes and socks, and looking considerably less worried than either Jack or the Lord of the Faerie. Indeed, he looked mildly amused.
Grace tried to pull away and Jack tightened his grip.
“How did you know ‘something was up’?” he repeated, his voice harder now. “Why track me down, first at Faerie Hill Manor and then here? How did you know?”
Malcolm made as if to say something, but Jack shot him a hard glance, and Malcolm shut his mouth.
“I had seen you with the Lord of the Faerie, with Harry, talking. I—”
“We never talked of this before you,” said the Lord of the Faerie. His entire being had tensed, and he had subtly aligned his body with that of Jack’s.
“Yes, you did,” said Grace. “You spoke of it over the breakfast we shared at Faerie Hill Manor.”
Jack didn’t know what to think. How had she known it was tonight?
“My parents knew about it,” Grace went on, “but they did not speak of it to me. Oh gods, I just knew, Jack! Not any specifics, just that…there was something happening. I could sense it.”
To one side, Malcolm smiled again, very slightly.
“Why not just ask, Grace?” Jack said. “Why sneak about? Why hide behind the trees? Why didn’t you just walk out and say, ‘Here I am, may I watch?’”
“Because you would have sent me away,” said Grace softly, and in this statement, at least, Jack could see truth.
“And so what did you think, Grace?” he said. “What did you make of what you saw?”
Again she tried to pull away from him, and again he had to tighten his hands. Her eyes flickered over his upper body, and he could feel her tension.
“That you are very strange,” she whispered, “and that I am very much afraid of you right now, and of what I may have done.”
“What you may have done?” said Jack.
“Everything, everyone I touch is corrupted with Catling,” said Grace. “I tie their fate to hers.”
“My fate is already tied to Catling’s,” Jack said. “I can’t imagine anything you could do that would further damn me. The marking was perfect, Grace. It has not been ‘corrupted’.”
He could see she didn’t believe it, and he wondered again how much of this frailty was genuine, and how much an act. For gods’ sakes, he should never forget that she was a Darkwitch.
“I’m sorry,” said Grace, “but you should know…Catling was here, too. She witnessed this.”
To one side, Malcolm was looking anywhere but at Jack or Grace.
Jack’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t immediately say anything. He was certain very little went on that Catling didn’t know about. She was the Troy Game incarnate, after all, and her tendrils probably spread under most of the land by now. She would have known, in any case.
His silence had obviously further disconcerted Grace, for she stuttered on as if to fill the void: “She said…she said that…that I was doing only what was needed. By watching…I think.”
“Well, then,” said Jack, “at least we haven’t annoyed her, have we?”
&nbs
p; “Jack?” said the Lord of the Faerie.
Jack did not reply, looking only at Grace. “Who are you?” he said, very softly. Then his hands tightened about Grace’s wrists so that she gasped, and the marks on his upper body blurred, and then shifted.
They moved, flowing down both his arms like living lines of ink, circling his wrists, then cascading over his hands and onto Grace’s flesh.
She cried out and jerked back, but could not free herself from Jack’s grip.
Malcolm, his face intense, stepped forward, the Lord of the Faerie also moving closer. Both men had their eyes riveted on Grace’s wrists.
Jack’s marks encircled Grace’s wrists and then seeped into her scars, filling them with their liquid blue-black.
Grace cried out once more, and renewed her twisting, but Jack held her so tightly she could not free herself.
Then the liquid blue-black receded, climbing back over Jack’s hands, up his arms, and, within a moment, reverting to their faded appearance about his upper body.
Abruptly, Jack let Grace go, and she stumbled back a pace or two, rubbing at her wrists.
“You are a mystery,” Jack said, his voice puzzled. “I cannot make you out. Either you are completely shuttered, or you are utterly transparent. I cannot for the life of me understand you. But the marks see no harm in you. No harm at all.”
“Of course not,” said Malcolm. “Is that not what I discovered?”
Jack shot him a glance that was part exasperated, part irritated. Then he looked over to Walter. “You have your car here? Yes? Then will you drive Grace back into London?”
“I have no obligation to you any more,” said Walter. “I have done what you asked. I am free of you.”
“Indeed, you have no obligation to me,” Jack snapped. “I am asking this of your goodwill only, not from any sense of damned obligation owed!”
Then he looked back to Grace. “Go back to London, Grace. Go home.”
“Jack,” she said, “I’m sorry about Catling.”
“Everyone is sorry about Catling,” he said. “It is not a burden you need to carry alone.”
She opened her mouth to speak again, but Jack tipped his head towards Walter. “Go,” he said, and Grace nodded, and walked over to Walter.
Within a moment they were gone, walking westwards through the forest towards the main road.
Jack finally took the shirt Malcolm had been patiently holding and slipped it on.
“Coel,” he said to the Lord of the Faerie, using the man’s ancient name, “why was Grace so unsure of you in this form?”
“Grace has not been to the Faerie since she was a baby,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “She has not seen me as the Lord of the Faerie for a very, very long time.”
“Why has she not been back to the Faerie, Coel?”
“We thought to keep her away because…”
“Ah,” Jack said softly, doing up the buttons of his shirt. “In case she further contaminated you, yes?”
The Lord of the Faerie’s face tightened, but he did not respond to Jack’s jibe.
“And now, Jack?” he said.
“Now I need to go see Catling,” Jack said. “Wait for me in Faerie Hill Manor, Coel, and ask Noah to meet with us there at dawn. Malcolm. My shoes, if you please.”
EIGHT
The Crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral
Sunday, 10th September 1939
Jack walked back to Faerie Hill Manor with the Lord of the Faerie, and from there drove his Austin convertible down to London.
He did not see Walter’s car on the road—he and Grace were likely half an hour ahead of him.
London was quiet: blacked out and shut down against the expected air raids. Jack drove slowly—unlike his earlier wild drive through Epping Forest—with only a sliver of light seeping out from the guards over the car’s headlamps. There was almost no one about. A few blackout and ARP wardens, the occasional giggling couple heading home from a dance hall, an early milkman driving his horse-drawn van along Aldersgate.
St Paul’s was as still as a headstone.
Jack parked his car in Paternoster Row, one street to the north of the cathedral. He got out slowly, buttoning his jacket against the pre-dawn chill, closing the car door quietly. He stood in the road, looking upwards at the dome of the cathedral looming above the intervening buildings, and lit a cigarette, drawing slowly on it as he thought.
Jack should have felt unsettled, but he didn’t. Grace’s presence at his marking should have disturbed him, and, on some level it did, but not as much as he might have expected.
Instead Jack felt more at peace with himself than he had in…well, than he ever had. The marking had accomplished what the Lord of the Faerie had said it would. He felt complete, as if he had finally arrived at the end of a very, very long journey. He had absorbed all that had been Og, but he was, most of all, still Jack.
And he felt more…sinuous. A strange word, but it described perfectly what Jack sensed about his altered state. It wasn’t as if he knew more—knowledge had flowed into him when he became Ringwalker and that store of knowledge had not increased during the past few hours; it was just that he seemed to insinuate himself into all the cracks and crevices of that knowledge where previously he had skimmed over them.
Jack glanced upwards, higher than the dome of the cathedral. Again he sensed the “strangeness” that hung over London, so much like an ethereal shadow always at the very edge of his vision, always shifting just before he could bring it into focus. Jack’s inability to grasp its extent and purpose was not even changed by his new perception.
A movement to his right caught at the outer edge of his vision, and he dropped his head and looked.
Further down Paternoster Row, just where it intersected with Maria Lane, stood a shadowy figure. A young woman, too thin, with long dark curls, and dressed in an ankle-length black silk dress. Her hands were folded before her and her face cast down, but as Jack watched, the cigarette burning unheeded in his fingers, she raised her head and stared at him.
It was too dark, and she too far, for Jack to make out her features, but he could feel her smile and his flesh goosebumped with the cold that emanated from her.
Jack blinked, and she vanished. Abruptly, he tossed the cigarette down to the roadway and ground it out under the sole of his shoe.
Catling waited, impatiently.
Although the exterior of the cathedral had been as still as a headstone, the interior had more life. Jack entered through an open side door in the northern face of the cathedral—one used by cathedral personnel rather than the public.
There were people here—one group of three men standing under the dome itself, others moving in the shadows further down the nave—but none of them saw Jack, or realised his presence, for he had cloaked himself with Faerie magic. The last thing Jack wanted was to converse with Catling in full view and understanding of the cathedral’s servants.
For several minutes Jack stood on the marble floor beneath the dome.
Here it was, Cornelia’s stone hall. So many memories: watching Asterion in his guise as Silvius make love to Caela; his own numerous confrontations with Cornelia-Caela within its spaces; all the dreams he’d had over the past three thousand years that had been centred within this cathedral.
Jack turned slowly around, trying to absorb everything. The cathedral was huge, but it was not only a massive space. Most mortals walking in here must have been truly awed, Jack thought, but they could not have seen what he did, or understood what he felt. St Paul’s was, after all, so much more than just a cathedral. Deep below twisted the dark heart of the labyrinth that Jack had created with Genvissa, in his life as Brutus.
But that dark heart wasn’t just “deep below”. Jack could feel it twisting up through all the columns and struts of the building, and could sense its dark veins throbbing through the fabric of the dome.
For an instant he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
What had he and Genvissa done? r />
What a fool he’d been, and her as well. They’d had no idea how easily they had been manipulated. How pliable they had been in the snaking fingers of an ancient evil. All they’d thought about was their own immortality, their own power.
Their own gain.
And now the Lord of the Faerie, and Noah, and Asterion, and all the Faerie wanted him, Jack, to unwind the Game. To destroy it.
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Jack whispered.
Because the Troy Game can’t be destroyed.
The thought hit him like a sledgehammer, and Jack’s eyes flew open.
There was a movement to his side, and again he saw the figure of the woman lurking in the shadows.
She vanished almost as soon as he’d caught sight of her.
Bitch, Jack thought, and he turned for the doorway in which the young woman had been standing.
It was the entrance to the stairwell leading down to the crypt.
Jack’s mouth quirked. Catling could easily have met him on the main floor of the cathedral, but no doubt she felt more comfortable, and more in control, in the crypt.
The crypt of St Paul’s stretched the entire length and breadth of the cathedral. Originally it had been the burial chamber of the cathedral—all and sundry in London who had any influence at all tried to ensure their burial within St Paul’s crypt—but Jack had heard that, a few years previously, crypt burials had finally been banned. Many of Britain’s heroes had a tomb here: the Duke of Wellington’s casket took pride of place in the centre of the crypt under the dome of the cathedral itself; Admiral Lord Nelson’s casket was only a little further down, conveniently placed opposite the entrance to the cathedral treasury, perhaps so that his ghostly presence might thwart any attempted burglary; a dozen lesser generals and captains; Christopher Wren himself.
The space was surprisingly light, spacious and welcoming.
It was also a hive of activity. To one end of the crypt were set bunk beds, as well as what appeared to be a portable mess hall. There were several groups of men: some sleeping, a few playing cards at one of the tables, and the larger number moving purposefully about the crypt with various stores, boxes and gas masks.