We talked a little of tomorrow, when I would hand four of the bands of Troy to Jack. It was a very brief discussion, merely going over the technicalities of the ritual, but at the end of it Jack asked me if I was afraid.
“No,” I replied, “I’m not scared of you at all.”
That wasn’t what Jack had asked me, but I think it was the answer he was hoping for, because his eyes gleamed with pleasure, and he smiled.
“You’re not scared of yourself any more,” he said, and I realised it was true. I’d spent my lifetime being scared of myself, and of life in general.
I stared at Jack, and took a deep breath in wonder.
That night, as I lay in my bed in Ariadne’s apartment, Catling appeared to me.
The horrid cold-faced malevolence: she stood at the end of the bed and stared.
And then smiled, as if she actually approved of what was happening in my life.
I hated her, and loathed it that she tainted what had otherwise been a wonderful night, but for once I did not rail at her, or beg her to go away.
I rolled over, settled myself comfortably, and went back to sleep.
Part Five
THE ENTWINED BANDS
London, 1670
The skyline of London was very gradually inching upwards after the disaster of the Great Fire four years previously. Houses and warehouses had been the first structures to be rebuilt (beds and business, as always, came first), but now the churches and chapels were also rising, one by one, through the tangle.
Christopher Wren, although primarily responsible for the design and rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral, had designed fifty of these churches as well as myriad private and public secular buildings. He also supervised the work of building about half of these churches and private buildings.
Wren was a busy man.
Still only in his late thirties, Wren worked a staggering eighteen or nineteen hours each day, rising well before dawn to head off to whatever building site commanded his attention that day. He’d taken rooms in Southwark, which meant that every morning, at dawn, he walked across London Bridge heading for his work in London.
Always he paused by St Thomas’ Chapel, sometimes to enter for a few minutes’ prayer, sometimes to stand on the bridge staring at the skyline before him, and sometimes to pass the time of day with a small black-haired girl who would wait for him in the shadows of the chapel.
Wren had come to accept, somewhat grudgingly, the presence of this odd little girl in his life. They shared an interest in the rebuilding of London, but they did not share a friendship. For a little girl, she was strangely knowledgeable, supernaturally knowledgeable, and Wren knew that she was far more than just a “little girl”. Exactly what more she was Wren did not like to contemplate.
The Great Fire had razed London to the ground and, in the doing, exposed ancient plague pits and burial grounds. Sometimes, in his nightmares, Wren saw the little girl climbing out of one of these exposed pits where she’d been buried for a millennia or more. He would have liked to have been able to avoid her completely, but Wren needed the girl.
As an assistant she was utterly extraordinary.
Every time Wren thought a problem unsolvable, the girl had the answer.
Every time he thought he’d go insane with his workload, he’d rise one morning to find architectural plans finished and a detailed list of design ideas to one side for whatever new project had been sent his way.
Every time Wren thought he had no ideas left, then he’d have a brief chat to the girl and, suddenly, inspiration struck.
Her input was invaluable. She had interest in the strangest of things: this church, that warehouse, this wharf. Whenever Wren saw her waiting for him, he knew that she would have a new suggestion for him. Perhaps she might suggest he realign a hospital or house he was designing, just slightly. Maybe she would suggest the height of a chimney stack, or the orientation of windows. Possibly this steeple could be realigned, just a fraction, to match the angle of a street than ran alongside it.
The only building the girl was no help with whatsoever was St Paul’s.
“St Paul’s is none of my concern,” she told him once, when he’d asked. “It is a foreign land to me, and I am not welcome there.”
While St Paul’s may not have interested her, the small girl did have a lively interest in the church of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East. One morning in early 1670 Wren was crossing the bridge when he saw the girl waiting for him.
He was not surprised, for in his leather satchel he had the plans for the new spire of St Dunstan’s.
“Well?” The girl stepped forward, her eyes bright. She’d been badgering him for weeks to see this design. She’d made several suggestions as soon as she heard Wren had been commissioned to rebuild the spire, but out of sheer bloody-mindedness Wren had not yet shown her his final design.
For a moment Wren did not respond. Then he sighed, and pulled a rolled-up piece of paper from his satchel.
Before he could speak, the girl snatched the paper from Wren’s hands, and unrolled it. Her eyes brightened as they ran over the design. “It is very beautiful,” she said.
“Very different from my other spires.”
“And there are stairs?”
“Yes.” Wren turned the paper over. “Here. See?”
The little girl drew in a deep breath, then she nodded, and handed the plans back to Wren.
“It is very fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
Wren rolled up the paper, regarding her quizzically. “Why is St Dunstan’s-in-the-East so important to you?”
“It will be a tomb one day, Mister Wren, and I wanted it to be an especially fine one.”
“A tomb?” Wren suppressed a shudder. “Why the stairs, then?”
The girl smiled, the expression so cold Wren actually took a step back. “Because every tomb needs a way out, don’t you think?”
ONE
The Faerie, and Ambersbury Banks
Sunday, 22nd September 1940
Epping Forest lay quiet and still under the warm sun. Pollen motes danced in the shafts of sunshine lancing down through the forest canopy, and the leaves of the trees stirred gently, turned by the warmth of the air rather than by any breeze. It was a quiet, still, warm September day.
Several score cyclists, hikers and horse-riders made the most of the warmth, moving languidly along the forest paths. Some of them approached Ambersbury Banks, thinking either to partake of a picnic lunch atop its rise, or to take in the view, but without fail every one turned back when they approached within a hundred yards or so of the Banks.
They suddenly thought of something better to do, or a movement to their flank distracted them, or they abruptly remembered they should be turning for home, right now.
The mortal world left Ambersbury Banks well alone on Sunday the twenty-second of September 1940.
The ancient battlefield and pagan centre of worship was shrouded with druidic magic. Here the shafts of sunlight were wider and brighter and more numerous, so that the summit of Ambersbury appeared as if bathed in a golden, dancing waterfall.
The woodbound altar stone gleamed and, periodically, shafts of sunlight refracted off the stone and shot silver and gold splinters of light back into the treetops.
Figures moved slowly about the edges of the summit. Members of the Faerie, gods and those once-mortals who had been entangled in the machinations of the Troy Game had gathered here to witness, finally, the handing back to the Kingman, to Ringwalker, four of the golden kingship bands of Troy.
The gathering consisted of Sidlesaghes, water sprites, many of the forest deer, as well as Noah, Weyland, Eaving’s Sisters, the Caroller (who stood slightly apart from Eaving’s Sisters), Malcolm (who had a briefcase sitting on the ground several feet behind him) and Silvius. They stood in a rough circle about the central altar where waited Jack Skelton—Ringwalker.
Jack was dressed in the white linen hipwrap he’d once worn as Brutus, bound with a scarlet and gold corded wa
istband. As Brutus, Jack had worn sandals, but now his feet were bare so that he might keep constant contact with the land.
Across his shoulders, the markings of the Stag God appeared very dark. Occasionally they became a little indistinct, as if they quivered.
As Jack waited, he walked slowly about the altar stone, keeping his eyes averted from all the watchers. He felt peaceful and still, a state of being he’d never enjoyed as Brutus, or as William, or as Louis. Everything about the day felt right. Today four of the kingship bands would return to his flesh, a homecoming for which he’d been aching for over three thousand years.
And yet all he felt was stillness and peace, and a sense of such wellbeing and warmth, both physical and
spiritual, that Jack thought he could wait here for hours (days, months, years) and still not fret.
Jack understood that this sense of peace and wellbeing and stillness had very little to do with the knowledge that within an hour or less four of the bands would be his once again. Instead, it had everything to do with Grace. He knew that if it had been Noah who was to hand the bands to him, he would be feeling anxious and impatient, and would have spent this time pacing up and down wondering what else Noah might possibly do to upset him, to hinder, to create chaos.
From the moment he’d first met her as Cornelia, Noah had brought nothing but disarray and disharmony to his life. Oh, there had been joy and love as well, but those had been such fleeting moments, they’d been all but lost within the turmoil.
Grace was the temple bell, ringing out amid the disorder.
Jack stopped his slow wandering about the altar stone. He stood still, centred in a broad shaft of sunlight, struck by the realisation that Grace meant very much more to him than just a perfect, harmonious match of power, or a desirable woman. She was what he had always lacked in a long series of tumultuous lives—his keystone. A kernel of peace to which he could always return.
At that very moment Grace appeared at the edge of the summit. Ariadne—who had spent this past hour preparing Grace for the ritual—stood just behind her.
Grace was dressed as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, wearing a long white linen skirt, bound at her waist with a match to Jack’s scarlet and gold waistband. Her breasts were bare of any covering, her limbs of any jewellery, her short curls brushed loose and free.
“Grace,” Jack said.
She walked towards him, slowly, gracefully, and if she was nervous then she did not show it. She came to within a pace of him, her eyes direct on his, then halted.
Jack could not believe how composed and how lovely Grace looked. She was still a little too thin, but held herself with enough poise that it did not detract from her overall loveliness.
Thank the gods it is Grace standing here, and not Noah. The thought rocked Jack, and made him realise as nothing else how radically his life had altered in the past year.
Thank the gods, he whispered into Grace’s mind, that it is you standing here, and not your mother.
Then Jack stepped forward and took Grace’s right wrist in his right hand.
TWO
Ambersbury Banks
Sunday, 22nd September 1940
GRACE SPEAKS
Thank the gods, he said, that it is you standing here, and not your mother.
I’d been nervous to that point, not much, but enough to unsettle me. I’d never been so much the centre of attention, I’d never had such a vital role to play, I’d never been all-but-naked before Jack, and what we were about to do would be such an intimacy that I hadn’t been able to quell a nervous fluttering in my stomach as I’d walked out from the cover of the trees into the glade.
But, oh, what a wonderful thing for him to say. Suddenly there was nothing for me but him. All my awareness of the watchers vanished as if they were not there. All my self-consciousness vanished. All my doubts faded, and I was overwhelmed with the sense that what I was doing was something absolutely right.
He reached out, and slid his hand about my right wrist, and with that touch he became my entire world.
His hand moved up my forearm, his fingers very lightly tracing out the lines of the scars.
His eyes didn’t move from mine, nor allow mine to drop away.
His hand slid over my elbow, then up to my biceps. There it stilled, and I felt both its warmth and its pressure increase.
Grace…he whispered in my mind, and I felt the power of the labyrinth curl about me.
Through me.
Grace…
I closed my eyes momentarily—surrendering to the power—then let my own power rise to meet his.
Grace.
Oh, it felt good. During my time with Ariadne, Silvius had occasionally touched me with his Kingman power, but it was a pale shadow compared to how Jack’s power now enveloped me. I remembered how I had felt when last we’d been together atop Ambersbury Banks, the night of the parish hall dance, and that also was a pale shadow to what I experienced now.
Jack touched me, and tears misted in my eyes, because I had never, never thought to experience anything this beautiful.
Or this intimate. I can barely explain it, the sense of someone pervading deep into your being. It should have felt intrusive, and maybe if it had been anyone but Jack, then it would have been.
But Jack took so much care. Everything—his expression, his touch, his power—was so gentle that I felt nothing but serenity. I trusted him utterly, and he me, for we were both completely open to each other, both completely in the other’s hands and power.
The warmth and pressure of his hand increased, and I felt the sensual thrill that, so Ariadne said, always existed between a Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth when they entwined their powers. I hadn’t felt it before with Jack—there’d been attraction, but I hadn’t experienced this sexual connection that a Kingman and Mistress experience when they touch each other with their power.
I’d never been this relaxed with anyone in my life.
Jack’s eyes had darkened, and I knew he was feeling it as well, but along with that sexual awareness came a sense of humour. I saw the skin about the corners of his eyes crinkle a little, and I smiled, and we shared both humour and peace and thrill and stillness.
The pressure of Jack’s fingers increased yet further. Their touch burned through my skin—
Grace.
—and I surrendered to that, and surrendered to it what was demanded.
The first of the golden bands of Troy.
The golden metal rose up through my flesh from where it had been resting.
Oh, gods, the arousal of it! What had I said to Ariadne when she and Silvius had shown me the vision of the ancient Kingman drawing forth the bands from a Mistress of the Labyrinth? That this was the ultimate intimacy a Kingman and Mistress could share? I understood that statement now as I hadn’t been capable of understanding it then. It was a sexual intimacy, and thus the arousal, but it went far beyond that.
Way beyond it.
It was the complete opening of oneself to another person, and it involved absolute trust between both people.
And we both felt it. We stared at each other, sharing completely this astounding experience, and the fact that the golden band had now risen almost into his hand was almost irrelevant. Far more important was this opening and sharing.
The band had formed completely now; I felt its cool weight encircling my right biceps. My eyes filled with tears—at the overwhelming sensations flooding through me, and at the expression on Jack’s face—and thus I could not see very well, but I felt Jack’s hand slide between the golden band and my skin, and then I felt the band begin to move.
Infinitely slowly, but move it did, sliding over Jack’s hand and somehow, in the process, separating itself from my own arm. He kept his hand resting on my biceps, his eyes on mine, but both of us felt that band move up Jack’s forearm, over his elbow, slowly, slowly up his arm until it reached his biceps.
Where, waiting to greet it, were Jack’s marks, slithering about almost in a fr
enzy, wrapping themselves about the band, caressing it, bedding it down so that it would never move again.
Never again be taken from his flesh.
“Oh, gods, Grace,” I heard Jack whisper, and then I felt his left hand reach out and slide up my left arm, up to my biceps, so that Jack now stood very close to me, his arms crossed over (and grazing against, with every breath I took) my breasts.
The second band, that which lay deep beneath my upper left arm, began to rise up to meet Jack’s hand.
Again, that almost overwhelming sexuality combined with the far greater intimacy of complete trust.
When that band had risen from my flesh and had moved to Jack’s left biceps, then Jack slid his crossed hands down my arms—so slowly, so sensuously—to just below my elbows, where waited two more of the golden bands of Troy.
They rose together—the sensations now so overwhelming that I think I would have fallen were it not for Jack’s gentle grasp on my arms—moving over Jack’s hands and up to a point just below his elbows where, again, his marks waited to greet them.
When it was all done, I had to swallow in order to find the strength to speak.
“It is done, Jack,” I whispered.
There was something in his eyes, something unknowable. He was a different man, now. He had four of his kingship bands, and they empowered him, deepened him, more than I’d thought possible.
At that point I wanted badly to move away from him, to somehow cope with all the emotions and sensations that still surged through me. To evaluate what had just happened.
I tried to lean back, to break the contact between us, but his grip firmed a little.
Trust me, he whispered in my mind.
“No,” he said, “we are not yet done.”
Then he finally lifted his eyes away from mine and looked to where Malcolm stood.
“Prasutagus,” he said, “will you bring forth the box from the briefcase?”
Prasutagus? I’d heard the name somewhere previously. It had a strange familiarity about it, and it made my stomach turn over, but I had no idea why.