Harry was waiting for him, opening the front door as soon as Jack knocked.
They nodded a greeting.
“Is all set?” Jack said.
“Yes.” Harry motioned to the drawing room. “Come on through. There’s time for a talk before you go.”
Jack more than half expected to find Grace huddled by the fire again, as he had the first time he’d walked into this room, but although the fire crackled, the room was empty save for himself and Harry.
“Where’s Stella?” Jack said.
“Gone to the Faerie for the night,” Harry said. “Drink?”
Jack hesitated, then nodded. A drink wouldn’t do him any harm at all.
As Harry walked over to the drinks cabinet, Jack idly glanced at a copy of The Daily Mail lying on a table.
There was a small article partway down the page. The body of another woman had been found under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr.
“What do you know about this?” Jack said, tapping the article with a finger as Harry handed him his whisky.
Harry glanced down, then looked sharply back to Jack. “Why the interest?”
“There was another murder, wasn’t there? The night I arrived. I remember the radio announcer mentioning it just before Chamberlain made the announcement of war. What do you know about it, Harry? Why your interest in my interest?”
Harry sipped at his whisky, taking his time in replying. “There’s been some concern about the two murders at Scotland Yard,” he said finally. “The murders were particularly brutal. Both women had their bellies mutilated—ripped apart. Their wombs were gone.” He paused. “Some wit within the Yard has dubbed the killer the Penitent Ripper…the murders bear some resemblance to the Jack the Ripper murders fifty years ago. You have heard of them? Yes?—but because this time the women are left on the porch of St Magnus the Martyr the ‘Jack’ has been replaced with ‘Penitent’. No doubt the papers will get hold of that sobriquet soon enough. Jack, do you know anything about them?”
Jack shook his head. “It must take a special kind of fury to be that brutal to a woman.” He gave a grunt. “Reminds me of Weyland…”
They fell silent, remembering that horrific day so long ago when, as Charles II and Louis de Silva, they had ridden back into London to hear the screams of Noah and Jane as Weyland tore them apart.
“Not Weyland,” said Harry, “not this time.”
Jack gave a small shrug and set his emptied whisky glass to one side.
“Noah told me that you and she seemed to have…sorted out some of your differences,” Harry said, breaking the small awkward silence that had risen between them.
“We talked,” Jack said. “We didn’t fight.”
“Really?” Harry looked at Jack carefully. “Are you getting on well enough to make the Great Marriage, d’you think?” The Great Marriage symbolised the ultimate union between the land and the waters, bringing all aspects of the land and Faerie into harmony. If Jack and Noah in their capacities as gods of the forest and waters effected the Great Marriage, it would strengthen the land and the Faerie in their battle against the Troy Game.
“We have to do it, don’t we?” Jack said.
“To give yourselves the best chance of saving the land, yes you do. But somehow I thought you’d be more cheerful about the prospect than you seem.”
“I’m sure I won’t find it too difficult, Harry, but I don’t want to talk about that tonight. Nor those murders. Tonight it is just me and the forest.”
At that moment the telephone rang, and both men started. Harry walked over to the desk and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
He listened a moment, carefully turning his back so Jack could not see his face, then said, “I’ll let him know. Thank you for telephoning, Walter.”
“He has not backed out?” Jack took a step towards Harry as he put the telephone receiver back into its cradle.
Harry shook his head. “No. There’s been a bomb scare Hampstead way. A woman out with her boyfriend found what they thought was a UXB lying on the edge of the heath. Everyone panicked, half the neighbourhood was evacuated, the ARP and the Fire Brigade became terribly officious, and the end result is that what with the panic and the evacuation, and all the personnel running about the heath, Walter has been caught up in the fuss and said he won’t be able to leave the area for a couple of hours.”
Jack’s shoulders clearly relaxed. “What was it, if not a UXB?”
“Apparently some schoolboys had made a papiermâché approximation of what they thought a bomb might look like, painted it black, and stored it under a shrub to see if they could frighten evening lovers out for a stroll.”
“So I have an hour or two to spare.”
“Feel free to relax here. I am needed back in the Faerie, although I’ll be back in time for…well, in time for your adornment. Help yourself to another drink. Or two, if you think you need it.”
Jack refilled his glass, wandered desultorily about the bookshelves for a quarter of an hour, then decided he needed space and air. He put the almostuntouched whisky glass down on the table and headed for the set of doors that led to the side terrace.
He slipped through, shutting the doors quickly behind him, and wandered slowly over to the stone balustrade that looked down the side of the hill on which the house stood. It was a lovely night: cool, but not cold, with moonlight filtering through the cloud layer. Jack took a deep breath, staring towards the forest, his eyes picking out individual trees, and the slow movement of the creatures across the forest floor, sniffing out food and scent trails, and…
Jack became aware that he wasn’t alone on the terrace.
It was an unsettling sense, for he felt that the other presence was either fearful or antagonistic, either about to run away or to attack.
He turned around, very slowly, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, as if he were merely taking in the view.
There, to his left. In the shadows where the terrace joined into a hip of the house. Jack strolled casually closer, always looking over the railing at the view, his senses straining towards the shadows on his left.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
He tensed, then turned easily, a smile on his face. “Grace. What are you doing here?”
She was sitting against the wall of the house at an outdoor table and chair setting, looking desperately uncomfortable at Jack’s presence. She was huddled into a coat, so deeply that all that was visible of her was the pale smudge of her face beneath her tousled hair.
“I came to see Stella,” Grace said, her eyes watching Jack’s every move as he walked over to the table, sitting down in a chair opposite her.
He didn’t take his eyes off her, despite realising that she was growing more self-conscious by the moment. “She isn’t here. She’s in the Faerie tonight. That’s where you should find her.”
“Oh.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. Have you come to see Stella, he wondered, or Harry? Come to see your lover?
“I didn’t see another car outside when I pulled up,” he said.
“I didn’t come by car.”
Already nervous at what awaited him later that night, Jack grew even more unsettled at the implications of that response. “Do you often sit out here and scare people?” he snapped.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What do you want, Grace? Don’t feed me the Stella story.”
She took a long time to respond, but finally answered directly. “I came to see you, Jack. I knew you’d be here tonight.”
The truth at last. But how did she know he’d be here? Only Harry and Walter, and possibly Noah, knew about tonight.
Ah, but there was Malcolm. Malcolm knew he’d be coming to Faerie Hill Manor tonight, but—presumably—did not know the reason.
Will I see him atop Ambersbury Banks tonight? Jack wondered, and knew, without a doubt, that he would.
So. Malcolm told Grace. Interesting. What was there between them?
“Well, here I am, then.” Jack shook a cigarette out of its pack, then slid the pack back into the breast pocket of his jacket. “What did you want to see me about?”
She ran her tongue over her top lip. “I needed to talk to you about my mother. I wondered what you and my mother…what…you and she…um…”
Jack lit the cigarette with a match, the glow momentarily lighting his face. “Yes?”
She shifted, even more uncomfortable, and would not look at Jack’s face. Then she took a deep breath. “I wanted to know what you wanted with my mother.”
“It’s none of your business, Grace.”
Now she looked directly at him. “Don’t dismiss me like that. When you play with the Troy Game, you’re playing with my life, Jack.”
He watched her, hiding the expression of his eyes behind the drifting smoke of his cigarette. “I need and want a great deal from your mother.”
“Do you love her?”
“Of course,” he said, softly, wondering as he said it whether he really meant it, or if he’d said that only to goad Grace.
“Don’t tear us apart, Jack! Don’t upset things.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Grace! What the hell business is it of yours? What is between your mother and me and your damned father goes back a very long time before you were born. She and I…she and I…ah!” He was too angry to go on.
“She loves my father.”
“Really?”
She was silent, again dropping her gaze away from his angry eyes.
“I have spent three thousand years loving your mother, Grace. Besides, she and I need to make the Great Marriage—”
Grace’s face tensed at that.
“—and we need to close out the Troy Game together. Or destroy it together. She and I are so linked, and so closely—don’t you know of the intimacy that must exist between a Mistress of the Labyrinth and a Kingman?—that I can’t just…” Jack stopped, wondering what he was doing, trying to explain himself to this girl. “I am not going to just walk away from Noah. Unless you give me a good reason, of course.”
Jack was angry enough to push Grace a bit too far. “Come now, what might that reason be? Ah, perhaps you think to offer yourself as compensation if I leave Noah alone. A suitable runners-up prize to the sorry loser? Oh come now, Grace, you can’t possibly think yourself any kind of replacement for your mother. You’re only—”
It was precisely at that moment that she looked at him, and Jack stopped mid-flow, appalled by what he saw in her eyes. He’d never once seen that in any person’s eyes, not even in Cornelia-Caela-Noah’s when he’d said the most vicious things to her. This he’d only ever seen in the eyes of an animal when it was trapped and knew it was going to die.
A great withdrawing, deep into itself.
A passing from the world.
“Jesus, Grace, I’m sorry.” Instantly contrite, and hating himself for what he’d said, Jack reached across the table and grabbed at the sleeve of her coat, certain in that moment that she was actually about to vanish. “I’m sorry, Grace.”
She hovered there, at the edge of that bleak place, and Jack’s fingers tightened about her coat sleeve. He had thought previously that he’d understood how terrible her life had been. Now he understood that he truly had no idea, and that he very likely never would.
What he did understand was her fright at the idea that he, Jack, would tear her mother and father apart. They must be one of her few constants; perhaps the only certainty she had.
Not to mention that any drama between Jack, Noah and Weyland, if it affected the Troy Game, had the distinct possibility of destroying any hope Grace had for freedom from Catling’s hex.
I’m sorry, Grace. This he said both with his power and with pure emotion. I’m sorry, Grace. That was a vicious thing to say, and I am sorry for it.
“You’ll destroy us,” she whispered. “You’ll destroy me.”
He tightened his fingers about her arm. “I don’t want to. I won’t, Grace.”
He could see that she didn’t believe him, but he felt her arm relax very slightly under his hand, and the terrible withdrawing in her eyes had stopped.
“You must love your father very much,” Jack said, releasing Grace’s coat sleeve and suddenly remembering his cigarette. He drew deeply on it.
“I don’t want to hurt him,” Grace said.
That response told him a great deal about Grace. Did she think everything her fault? Did she shoulder the responsibility for all the world’s ills?
“He and I go back a long way,” he said. “Many lives. I hadn’t ever imagined Asterion could be a good father.”
Grace had relaxed, at least enough that one of her hands crept out from beneath the coat sleeve, fingers idly drawing invisible patterns on the tabletop.
“Fatherhood is his redemption,” she said. “He thinks he dare not fail at it.”
Jack was watching the patterns her fingers made on the table, fascinated by their movement. “I’m surprised he and Noah have not had more children.”
“After their tragedy with me?” Grace said. “I’m surprised they even dare still make love.”
That remark should have been bitter, but instead Jack found himself smiling at the rich layer of amusement behind it. Who are you, he thought, behind that mask of fear?
Grace’s mouth lifted in a small smile as well, and for a brief instant they shared the moment of humour. Then her eyes dropped back to her fingers, and Jack’s followed them.
And he went cold as he realised what she’d been so idly doing, tracing out those patterns on the tabletop.
She had been tracing out harmonies. Meaningless, idle harmonies, but harmonies nonetheless, drawing together the strands of existence in the night air about them, in the tabletop, in the threads that made up her coat, in the smoke dribbling out the end of his cigarette…
Grace could have sat there and done that before almost any man save Jack, and they would have had no idea what she was doing.
But Jack was a Kingman, and he knew precisely what she was doing.
And what she was.
“Who taught you the arts of Mistress of the Labyrinth?” he asked.
Grace snatched her hand back from the table, and it vanished up the overlong sleeve of her coat.
“Ariadne?” said Jack, hating it that his voice had now hardened, but so surprised and unnerved by what he’d just realised—and by what he knew hovered beneath the flesh of her arms—that he was unable to stop it. “Your mother?”
“Stella.”
“Stella?”
“Why not?”
“Why?”
“She said I should learn, and so she taught me.”
“Not your mother?”
Grace’s tongue slid about her upper lip again. “I don’t think she knows I’ve been trained.”
Jack’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me! How could she not know?”
“She doesn’t ever see me, Jack. She only sees a tragedy. She just sees her mistake.”
“Sweet mother of God, Grace.” He paused. Noah didn’t know? How blind was she when it came to her daughter? “Where did Stella teach you?”
“Where she was taught by her mother. On Tot Hill. There was a—”
Jack remembered back all those thousands of years. “There was a stone building on the hill. A meeting hall. Genvissa—Stella—took me there.”
Grace nodded. “That stone building was transformed into the Great Founding Labyrinth by her mother.”
As a Kingman, Jack knew the process by which all Mistresses of the Labyrinth were trained. They were taken by the one who taught them to a building which, through the arts of the labyrinth, was transformed into a mirror of the Great Founding Labyrinth that had once stood on Knossos. There they learned to manipulate the harmonies of life, and to control the labyrinth itself.
So Stella taught Grace on Tot Hill. “Which House of Parliament did you use?” Jack said, referring to the fact that the British Houses of Parliame
nt stood on the exact site that Genvissa’s stone hall had once occupied. Now that his initial shock was over at the discovery Grace was a trained Mistress, he was vaguely amused at the thought that either Commons or Lords had been transformed, without any mortal realising it, into the Great Founding Labyrinth.
Grace looked him in the eye, and he saw for the first time a flash of confidence in their depths.
“Not the Houses of Parliament,” she said. “Westminster Abbey. The altar.”
Jack’s unease returned. When he was William, Asterion had crowned him at the altar of the abbey. That thought reminded Jack that Grace was not only a Mistress of the Labyrinth, she was also a Darkwitch, bred twice by the father of Darkcraft himself, Asterion.
Just how vulnerable was Grace really? Was this a reality which sat before him, or an act? He couldn’t read her, and it made him distrust everything she said.
“It seems I am surrounded by Mistresses of the Labyrinth,” he said, lighting up a fresh cigarette. “Stella, your mother, Ariadne—who I believe is still about—and now you. Is there anyone else I should know about?”
Grace shook her head.
“And just one Kingman. All of you, to fight over me.”
She didn’t reply to that, and eventually Jack sighed, wishing he was anywhere but here and that Noah and Weyland had never conceived this complication of a child. “Grace Orr, Mistress of the Labyrinth, what do you know of this ‘wrongness’ that I have felt over London? You know something, I can feel it. What, for Christ’s sake?”
She took her time in answering. “Catling comes and sits with me at night.”
Jack was torn between irritation at her evasiveness and horror at her revelation. “What? Do your parents know?”
Grace shook her head. “I can’t tell them. They already have enough of a burden to carry.”
Jack wasn’t sure whether to regard her as a supreme manipulator (look how pitiful my life is) or a truly tragic figure. Or was there something else lurking there? Who was Grace, truly? “How long has Catling been ‘sitting with you at night’?”
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