And all Grace could think about was that “the rubble” consisted of at least five storeys of blank walls and featureless windows, and that “pulling it off her” was going to take many hours, maybe even days.
She started to sob, then stopped the instant the rucking of her chest caused her such distress she almost fainted again.
Then, suddenly, miraculously, she felt Matilda’s face move under her outstretched fingers.
Noah sat on a pile of bricks to one side of the ambulance. Her arms and legs were bandaged, and she had plasters over her forehead and one cheek.
Her eyes were dull.
Weyland stood by her, his eyes shifting between Noah and the emergency workers now crawling uselessly over the mountain of rubble.
Jack walked over, every step dragging.
He sat on the ground next to Noah, avoiding looking at Weyland’s face.
“Catling,” he said, needing to say no more.
Noah gave a soft cry. “Why? Why now?”
“She says she will keep Grace trapped until we agree to complete her. Until we ‘come up with a date’.”
Weyland muttered an expletive, turning his face away.
Noah began to cry. “Jack…Ecub and Erith are dead.”
Jack stared at Noah, unable to speak. No wonder he’d been so consumed by an awareness of death.
Ecub and Erith. They’d been through so much together, and when he’d been Louis, they’d been his lovers.
“Matilda is still alive,” he said. “She is still alive.”
Noah swallowed, the movement making her wince in pain. “But she is close to death, Jack. I’m sorry.”
Jack’s hands sank into his face. Grace was suffering, yes, but Catling had ensured that Noah and he would suffer as badly.
He wiped at his eyes, his hand trembling. “When you say ‘dead’, Noah, how dead is that?”
“They won’t come back, Jack. I don’t know how Catling has managed it, but she has cut their ties, not only to life, but to us and to this land. They’re gone completely.”
Jack gave a low cry and buried his face in his hands. No! And Matilda hovered close to death. No…not Matilda.
After a moment he raised his head, and reached out to take one of Noah’s hands.
“Matilda!” Grace croaked. “Please, please, answer me.”
She felt an exhalation of breath, and perhaps a groan, but it was enough.
“Matilda!”
Another groan, and Grace felt the woman’s face contort under her fingers. The movement caused her to scrape her wrist across a piece of rubble. It wasn’t much of a movement, but it was enough for Grace to suddenly remember her diamond bands.
“Oh, gods,” she whispered. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods…
Surely she had enough ability left to dredge the diamond bands to life? Grace closed her eyes and concentrated with everything she had. Surely she could manage this at least? This tiny bit of magic?
There was a faint flicker of light which Grace felt rather than saw. She opened her eyes.
The diamonds had appeared about her right wrist, the only one free of the rubble, and they now faintly illumed the space in which she and Matilda lay.
Grace was initially overwhelmed with relief that she’d managed it, and then relief was instantly swamped with horror as she realised just how dreadful was her and Matilda’s situation.
They lay in an air pocket within the rubble roughly eight inches high and some four feet long. The entire space sloped downwards, probably following the line of the stairs, with Grace lying at its upper limit and Matilda further down. Both of their bodies were buried within the rubble; only the left half of Matilda’s face was showing, while Grace at least had her entire head and one arm free.
What little part of their flesh showed was covered in pulverised brick dust and small pieces of rubble and marked here and there with drying rivulets of blood.
Matilda’s left eye blinked, once, slowly, then again.
“Matilda?” Grace whispered. “Matilda?”
“Oh, Grace,” Matilda managed to whisper. “What are you doing here?”
A policeman came over to Jack, Noah and Weyland. Weyland had slumped down on the ground beside Noah and Jack, each of the men holding one of Noah’s hands.
Jack looked up at the man, wondering if it were truly a policeman, or Catling come to taunt them.
But it was just a young, ashen-faced constable. “Madam? Gentlemen? My sergeant sent me over. Do you know anyone inside the building?”
Noah made an incoherent sound, and it was Weyland who answered. “Our daughter is in there,” he said. “Grace Orr. And three dear friends.” He gave the constable their names.
“Why hasn’t anyone got them out yet?” said Jack, standing up. “Do you want a hand?”
“Sir,” said the constable, “we’re doing everything we can. All available emergency workers have been called in. But…it is difficult. The shelter was in the basement, and at least five storeys have come down on top of it. The rubble is so compacted that we can’t—”
The constable stopped abruptly, realising he’d said too much.
“We’ll do our best, sir,” he concluded.
“Jesus Christ,” Weyland muttered.
“You’ll live,” Matilda said in a hoarse voice. “Catling can’t have you die.”
Grace wept. “Why can’t I help you, Matilda?”
Matilda closed her eyes. Talking was difficult, breathing was harder, and something had so completely crushed her right shoulder and arm she wished she could lapse into unconsciousness again just to escape the pain.
But then Grace would be left alone in here.
Matilda suddenly missed Jack intensely. She’d seen so little of him in this life, and she regretted not making the time to see and talk to him more since his return to London. She wished desperately Jack were here now—not crushed under the rubble like herself and Grace, but just close enough so she could hear his voice, and pass the time of her dying with some happy memories of when she had been the Duchess of Normandy and he its charismatic duke. Times when they had been married, and happy.
She knew she was dying. She could feel death tugging insistently at her, but Matilda wasn’t ready to give in just yet. Best to hang on until they came for Grace. Best to wait until Grace was out. Then she could give in.
“Why can’t I help you?” Grace whispered again, and to that Matilda had no answer save the one she was sure Grace already knew.
You’re too badly injured, Grace. You’re as close to death as me. You have as much power left as you have life.
THIRTEEN
Stoke Newington, London
Monday, 14th October 1940
Just after dawn the fire chief came to speak with Noah, Weyland and Jack. “Every entrance down to the basement shelter is buried under tons of rubble,” he said, “and the bomb shattered both the water and sewer mains. I’m afraid the basement is flooding.” After witnessing so much death over the past month the chief was physically tired and utterly emotionally exhausted.
He’d watched his words and how he said them, at the beginning. Now he couldn’t be bothered. He wasn’t unsympathetic to the plight of the two men and woman standing before him (the parents and sweetheart of a girl buried in the nightmare that had once been Coronation Avenue, so he’d been told), but he had no more resources left to even try to summon tact or to wrap the terrible news in vaguenesses.
Noah laid a hand on his arm. “You must be able to do something.” Her words were softly spoken, but underscored with a terrible anxiety.
“We’re doing all we can,” the fire chief said. “I’m sorry. Perhaps it would be better if you went home and waited for news.”
His expression gave no doubt as to what news he thought that would be.
“We’re not leaving,” Noah and Weyland said together, and the fire chief gave a tired shrug, then walked away.
Weyland turned to Jack. “Surely you can do something!”
&n
bsp; Jack was so tired and so overwrought that his eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I haven’t thought of it? That I haven’t racked my mind for every possible thing I could do? Goddamn it, Weyland, I can’t shift tons of rubble on my own, either with my hands or with my power, and…and, Jesus Christ! There is nothing I can do!”
Noah shook her head slowly from side to side, then sank down to the ground, head lowering into her hands. “Grace…” she whispered. “I can’t reach her. Always before this I could feel her, touch her. Now there’s nothing but darkness.”
None of them could…Under normal circumstances any one of the three could easily have communicated with Grace with their abilities, but now, nothing. They’d tried desperately hard, but nothing.
Like Matilda, they all knew what that meant.
Unlike Matilda, none of them were willing to admit it, even to themselves.
Jack dropped to his haunches beside her. “Noah, we need to talk about what Catling said. What she threatened! Ecub and Erith are dead, and Matilda is dying. Grace is suffering gods know what and probably wishes she were dead. Jesus, she is crushed under rubble! She—”
Noah grabbed at one of his hands. “What will hurt worst, Jack? Completing the Troy Game, or watching Grace suffer?”
“May I make a suggestion?”
Jack and Noah looked up. Malcolm had appeared, carrying a tray on which rested a plate of sandwiches and three steaming cups of tea.
“Not now, Malcolm,” Jack said tiredly.
“Yes, now,” said Malcolm, setting the tray down on the ground before Jack, Noah and Weyland. “I have been speaking with the king,” he continued, and none of the others wondered at that. Malcolm had the air of someone who would damn well talk to whomever he wished whenever he wished. “George is making an effort to come view the situation for himself. Harry is also on his way. May I suggest that you commit to nothing until both those men arrive? Between them they head the mortal and Faerie worlds, and their input is not only needed, it is required.”
Jack resented Malcolm’s lecturing tone, but knew he spoke sense. “Grace suffers,” he said, and Malcolm rested a hand on his shoulder.
“I know,” he said gently.
“Matilda? Are you still there?”
That was such a silly thing to say, Matilda thought. Where would she go? But, oh, Grace’s voice. So lost and alone. So desperate.
“Yes,” she said, “I am still here.”
“How are you, Matilda?”
Well, I’m buried beneath tons of rubble. My shoulder and arm and abdomen and pelvis are crushed. My legs scream.
“My feet are wet,” Matilda said. It was the least troublesome of her burdens at present.
Grace took in a hiccupy breath, and Matilda realised she was trying hard not to cry. Oh, how I wish I could touch her. Reach out to her.
“I wish Jack were here,” Grace said.
“Me too,” said Matilda, unable to keep the desperate longing out of her voice. Oh, to have Jack here one last time. To have him hold me one last time.
“What was he like as a husband, Matilda?”
Matilda thought about laughing, but knew it would crucify her with agony. “He was a trouble,” she said, and there was enough humour in her voice for Grace to give a short, breathless laugh.
“I’m a little scared of him, Matilda.”
Matilda thought about that. “Not of him, you’re not. Of life, maybe.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Grace spoke in a whisper. “What should I do, Matilda?”
“Take a damn risk,” said Matilda. “That’s what I did. I never regretted it.”
“But you lost him.”
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
“I am dying, do you know that?”
Grace began to weep. “Yes.”
“Then hear me out, for I speak with the clarity of death. If you do not take the risk, then you will lose him. If you risk all for him, who knows?”
Grace didn’t answer.
“Grace…risk it all.”
At eleven a.m. the king and his queen arrived. Word had spread around London about the tragedy at Coronation Avenue, and crowds had been gathering since dawn. The site swarmed with rescue workers, but no matter how much rubble they shifted, they had still not even got near the stairwells leading down to the shelter, let alone started to clear them.
The area was cordoned off by police. To one side the Red Cross had erected a tent, and in that tent sat the relatives of those trapped.
Among them waited Noah, Weyland and Jack. Harry and Stella had joined them after dawn, and now all five sat slightly apart from the other ashen-faced relatives. Malcolm was still there, but spent his time helping the Red Cross distribute tea and sandwiches.
Harry brought the news that the Faerie had not been troubled during the previous night’s bombing. Catling had reserved all her ire for Grace, it appeared.
Jack’s face was less ashen than it was grey. “I can’t believe it has all come to this,” he said. “Sitting huddled in a tent by a mountain of rubble, being fed tea and sandwiches by charity workers. I’m sick to death of it. It has to stop somehow. Gods, Stella, where did we go wrong? What did we start?”
Stella sighed. “I don’t want to spend my time revisiting the sins of the past, Jack. Brutus and Genvissa simply don’t matter any more. I’m just grateful that now it isn’t my decision.”
Jack was about to say something more, but just then Harry looked out the tent flap at a convoy of cars arriving and straightened from where he was leaning against a table. “George is here,” he said. “Thank the gods.”
They all rose to their feet, huddling together but staying in the tent as the other relatives and members of the Red Cross went outside to watch the king and queen.
“He’ll come in to see us,” said Harry. “He knows we’re here. Wait.”
Matilda wished she could die. Her pain was growing too intense for her to ignore, or wish away, or to be able to concentrate on thinking of something else. To make matters worse, icy water was creeping slowly up her body. The coldness intensified and clarified the pain, and Matilda wondered if Catling had fated her to die, not from her crushing injuries, but from a slow drowning.
She thought this very likely. It would be just what Catling would do. The effect on Matilda was nothing—the effect it would have on Grace was everything. For hours Grace had tried all she could, tried to summon every particle of power she had, in order to help Matilda.
Grace had not been able to achieve anything. She was so terribly injured that all her abilities as either Darkwitch or Mistress of the Labyrinth were as nothing.
Even had Grace been able to use her power, Matilda doubted she could do much.
After all, what was the power of gods when compared to the unmoveable force of hundreds of tons of masonry?
The king and queen talked quietly among the relief workers for twenty minutes, then they split up, Queen Elizabeth to talk to the relatives standing huddled in a teary-eyed, haggard-faced group to one side of the Red Cross tent, the king to duck inside the tent, waving back his courtiers and minders as he did so.
George VI stopped immediately inside the tent, his face lined with months of care, and looked at the group standing a few feet away.
“Who is in there?” he asked.
“Our daughter,” Weyland said. “And Matilda, Ecub and Erith. Ecub and Erith are dead, Matilda is dying, and Grace…” He couldn’t go on.
“Dear God,” George said, then went to Noah and hugged her tight. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, cradling her head against his shoulder.
Then he looked over the top of her head to where Jack and Weyland stood. “What has happened?”
Weyland motioned for Jack to answer. Jack gave a sigh, then briefly told George VI of what had happened over the past night.
“What do I do, George?” In his exhausted emotional state Jack didn’t even care about the appropriate honorifics. “Catling has the power to
murder this city, this entire country, if she doesn’t get her way. But if Noah and I do what she asks…”
“Ah, God…” The king let Noah go and rubbed a hand over his face. “Harry?”
“The last thing I want is to see the land tied by the Troy Game,” he said. “I am opposed to Jack and Noah completing the Game.”
But what about Grace? Jack wanted to scream at him. In the end he spoke mildly. “Catling is only going to get worse. The idea of what she might do after this appals me.”
“You want to complete the Game?” Weyland said, aghast.
“You want your daughter to suffer any more than she is? Or this land?” Jack countered.
“Stop,” said the king. “What are the alternatives? For Christ’s sake…my wife and I have toured the bombed-out areas of London week in, week out. The grief and destruction—not just of buildings but of lives—is more than I think I can bear. Do I want Jack and Noah to complete the Game and condemn this land to subservience to that thing who calls herself Catling? No. Do I want Catling to crucify my people because you refuse to complete her? No. Give me an alternative.”
“We thought there might be a way…” Jack began, then drifted off, not knowing how to explain about the shadow.
“Oh,” Noah said, “I forgot to tell you what I’d heard from Long Tom. George,” she said to the king, “can you stay ten minutes? You need to hear this.”
Jack, Weyland and Harry all opened their mouths, but Noah waved them to silence. “George?”
He chewed his lip and looked over his shoulder. “I have already stayed too long. Elizabeth and my minders will be wondering what I am doing. Can you come to the palace in two hours? Yes, yes, I know you don’t want to leave here, but there’s not much you can do, and we need to discuss this in more detail than we can in this tent. Somewhere more discreet. I’ll talk to my private secretary on my way back to the car. He will stay behind and get you to the palace. Okay?”