Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  Suddenly uncomfortable, I took the plate and walked up the stairs.

  When I got to my room, I put the plate on my nightstand, thinking that I might eat some marzipan pear if I woke during the night.

  But I slept the night through, more soundly than I have slept in years, and when I woke in the morning both the plate and its contents had gone, and I thought that one of Harry’s servants had been in early and had cleared it away.

  I felt a small twinge of disappointment, but then forgot it within moments.

  Within the dark crypt, the White Queen put the plate with its sliced marzipan pear atop the altar. She stood a long moment, staring at it.

  Then she gave a soft smile and touched the marzipan fruit briefly, as if caressing it. She had been working so long for this, so long, and finally…

  Then the White Queen’s face lost its warmth, and grew cool and distant once more.

  All depended on whether or not Grace would be prepared to offer her life for Jack.

  So tell me, Grace,” the White Queen whispered into the chilly, dank air of the crypt. “Is he sweet enough to die for? Are you prepared to offer your neck to the return swing of the druid’s sword?”

  FOURTEEN

  Hampstead and Kensington

  New Year’s Eve, December 1939

  Jack spent New Year’s Eve with Matilda, Ecub and Erith at their house in Hampstead. Situated on Heath Road, the house had a commanding view of the heath, and once he’d parked the Austin, Jack spent several minutes standing, looking out over the landscape.

  He could remember riding through here, sitting behind Genvissa on her pony, as she took him to the Llandin, Llangarlia’s most sacred hill. He could remember becoming drunk on her dreams of power, remember being drunk with lust for her.

  And here he was, so many thousands of years on, more powerful than perhaps he could have imagined then, and yet so different, and coming to visit women who, as Brutus, he had despised.

  Jack sighed, and turned for the house.

  It was a modern brick house, sprawling and comfortable, and Matilda opened the door just as he raised his hand to knock.

  “Lost in memories, Jack?” she said softly as she leaned forward to kiss his cheek.

  “I have learned to hate memories,” he said.

  Matilda grinned. “Not all of them, I hope.”

  He laughed, and kissed her mouth. “No. There are a few I treasure.”

  It was an enjoyable evening. Despite what Jack had said to Matilda, the four of them spent several hours reminiscing. They did not discuss the great events that had consumed their several lives, nor did they mention the Troy Game, but, rather as Jack and Harry had done on Christmas Eve, they remembered the little things that had made life enjoyable and worthwhile: fabrics and foods; walks and glades; jests that had survived through the centuries. They recalled their time spent in exile on the Continent when Jack had been Louis, and the other three the wife and mistresses of Charles II, and they slipped naturally back into the closeness that all four had shared during that life.

  “Sometimes I wish,” Jack said as the hands of the clock crept ever closer to midnight, “that we could just sideslip into one of the harmless, comfortable times that we have all experienced, and leave the Troy Game and all that it implies behind us.”

  “If we did that,” said Erith, “then we would lose too much.”

  Jack opened his mouth to protest, then shut it, realising she was right. The good times they had shared would be as nothing if they were not all bonded by the terrors as well.

  “I thought you might have been at Faerie Hill Manor tonight,” Ecub remarked, glancing at the clock. It lacked but a few minutes until midnight. “Noah and Weyland will be there, and Silvius too, perhaps. And Grace.”

  “I ruined Weyland’s Christmas,” Jack said. “I thought I’d leave him to his family for New Year’s.”

  “I hear from Noah,” Ecub said, “and from Grace herself, that you have been spending time with Grace. That is well done, Jack. Inch by inch, Grace is emerging from her shell.”

  “I am not being charitable,” Jack said, a little annoyed by Ecub’s words. “Grace is somehow connected to this shadow. She can trace it. If I am to discover its true nature, then I need Grace.”

  “Let us not talk of this shadow tonight,” Matilda said, rising from her chair to top up their glasses. “Look, midnight is upon us, and we need to farewell the past and look only into the future.”

  As the clock chimed, they toasted the New Year, sharing laughter and kisses, then Erith and Ecub excused themselves, saying they were tired after so much conversation and alcohol and needed their bed.

  Jack laughed softly as the door closed behind them. “They are not terribly subtle. Did you ask them to do that, Matilda?”

  “No,” she said, “but they knew I would like time alone with you.”

  She moved to sit on the arm of his chair. “Jack, can I see your markings?”

  He put his glass down, slipped off his jacket and tie, then his shirt, then took a deep breath as Matilda slid her hands over his chest and shoulders.

  “They are very beautiful, Jack. Very powerful.”

  “Matilda—”

  “Will you stay the night with me, Jack?”

  It was tempting. Matilda’s hands were firm and inviting on his body and, oh, how he’d missed both her body and her advice in his bed. Spending the night with Matilda meant not only making love with her, but spending hours in talk with her, confiding his fears and hopes, asking her advice, and all the while running his hands over her body…

  Matilda smiled slowly as she saw his eyes darken. “Just this once,” she said. “Just for comfort.”

  Jack’s hands moved about her waist, then up her back. She leaned down and kissed him, and his hands firmed about her body and slid her down onto his lap.

  “Thank the gods,” she whispered. “For a moment I thought all you had come for tonight was tea and cake and conversation.”

  Suddenly all Jack could see was Grace sitting opposite him in the Lyons teashop as the tea lady fussed over Jack, and then Grace’s jesting about the occasion at Christmas.

  “I’m sorry, Matilda,” Jack said, leaning back, his hands falling away from her body. “I really should be going.”

  Jack’s father, Silvius, had no such qualms about refusing the invitation offered him the same night. By one a.m. he lay in bed in a luxurious Kensington apartment, running one hand softly over the waist and hip of the woman lying next to him, sated both with love and with alcohol.

  Ariadne smiled, kissing Silvius softly, and running her hand behind his head, tangling her fingers within his black curls.

  “It was nice of you to keep a pariah like me company on New Year’s,” she whispered.

  “It was an invitation I could not resist.”

  Her hand shifted from the nape of his neck to his bicep. “I can still feel the ghost of the kingship bands of Troy about your flesh,” she said, then leaned forward and gently kissed his arm.

  “Ah,” Silvius said, grinning. “It was not me you desired at all, then, but the gold I once wore.”

  “Indeed,” said Ariadne, arching one of her beautiful eyebrows. “Think that I wanted you?”

  “The things you have to put up with, eh, to remember your past glory days?”

  Ariadne briefly considered being offended (past glory days?) but then decided she preferred laughing with this man than being irate. “I wish I’d met you a long time ago,” she said.

  “If you could have dragged me away the instant before Brutus plunged that arrow into my eye, it might have saved everyone a great deal of trouble.”

  She smiled and kissed him, and for a few minutes there was little said between them at all. Just as Ariadne was sure that Silvius was thinking of nothing more than furthering his discovery of her body, he pulled his mouth from hers and leaned back just a little.

  “I was talking to Weyland this morning, and—” he began.

  �
��For all the gods’ sakes, Silvius, if you must talk then let us not talk of him!’

  She sounded truly waspish, and Silvius apologised to her. “I am an old man, Ariadne, and you know how old men’s minds wander at the most inappropriate moment. I’d started thinking about how Brutus murdered me, setting into motion all the events that led to the Troy Game, and then…well, witless fool that I am, I forgot what a treasure I held in my arms.”

  Mildly mollified, but not yet prepared to forgive him entirely, Ariadne sat up in bed, reaching for her cigarettes. “Want one?”

  Silvius repressed a sigh—whose fault was this, but his?—and sat up as well. “Yes, thank you.”

  Ariadne lit two cigarettes, handing one to Silvius. She drew deeply on hers as she leaned back against the pillows. “All right then, so you have managed to drag Weyland into our bed. What did you wish to say about him that was so important you could interrupt a loving with me?”

  She was still annoyed, but Silvius was relieved to hear a hint of amusement in her voice.

  “He’s set the imps to watching Jack,” Silvius said.

  Ariadne gave a small snort. “Fool.”

  “He fears for his family,” Silvius said. “For his marriage…for his daughter.”

  “And so he has set those black imps to scurrying about after Jack?”

  “They’ve grown up into private investigators,” said Silvius, amusement riddling his voice.

  Ariadne laughed at that. “What? Chasing down mischievous husbands?”

  Silvius smiled, happy that Ariadne had finally relaxed enough to laugh. Gods alone knew what she might have done to him had she been truly annoyed. He spent a moment or two smoking before mentioning what had really bothered him about his conversation with Weyland.

  “Weyland thinks the imps are involved in the Penitent Ripper murders,” he said.

  “Gods, Silvius!” Ariadne said, turning to look Silvius in the face. Details of the murderer’s grisly method of ripping out the women’s wombs had been leaked, if not into the press, then into enough ears that it had become the talk of London. Those details had been niggling at the back of Ariadne’s mind, but it wasn’t until Silvius mentioned the imps that they firmed into horrifying clarity.

  “What’s wrong?” Silvius said.

  “The imps!”

  “What about the imps, woman?”

  “The imps are doing the murders!”

  “How can you know?”

  Ariadne drew in a shaky breath, and, concerned, Silvius took her cigarette and stubbed it out with his in the ashtray on his bedside table.

  “Silvius, have you not heard the story of how the imps were born?”

  “Perhaps, Ariadne, but it would have been so long ago that—”

  “Weyland put both imps into Jane’s—now Stella—and Noah’s wombs. Then, when Charles and Louis entered London, he commanded the imps to tear themselves out of the women’s wombs…Silvius, those imps tore and chewed their way into life! Both women should have died, save that Weyland forced them to live.”

  Silvius remembered now—Stella had told him of this many, many years past. “The imps are recreating their own birth,” he said, horrified.

  “Tearing the women apart,” said Ariadne, “save that these women die, they do not survive, as did Jane and Noah.”

  “But…why? Why?”

  “Sheer damned bleakness,” said Ariadne. “They are, after all, Weyland’s creation.”

  She earned a sharp glance from Silvius at this, but he did not comment on it.

  “Why didn’t Weyland see the connection?” he said, after a moment.

  Ariadne’s only answer was to shrug and reach for another cigarette.

  Part Three

  THE GREAT MARRIAGE

  London, 1170

  Peter de Colechurch, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch in Cheapside, was a worried man. Peter’s duties as chaplain were only nominal, for the greater part of his day was taken up in his duties as Bridge Master of London Bridge. Peter had been delighted when Henry II offered him the post of Bridge Master seven years earlier, but the intervening years had witnessed Peter’s enthusiasm wane.

  London Bridge was nothing but trouble.

  The troubles had started more than a century ago when the ever-cursed Norsemen had pulled the damned thing down. A wooden bridge was quickly erected to replace the one that the Norsemen had destroyed, but that succumbed to fire within a few years. A new bridge was built, but that was swept away in floods within a year.

  It took fifteen years to secure the funds to rebuild the bridge and misfortune claimed it within four years. When Peter first came to the post of Bridge Master in 1163 his initial task was to rebuild the bridge yet again. Peter was an engineer of rare skill, which was the reason he had secured the post in the first instance. Over the course of two years he designed and supervised the building of a beautiful bridge made almost entirely of elm wood, known for its strength and resistance to rot.

  It had been up less than seven years, but already it was badly cracked and beginning to lean.

  It would need to be replaced soon.

  Henry II was demanding answers. Moreover, he was starting to murmur publicly about finding an engineer who could build a bridge that would last longer than a season. As much as Peter liked to moan quietly that the entire bridge was cursed, it was hardly an excuse he could present to the king.

  Today Peter was walking the length of the bridge, something he did twice a day. He walked from London over to Southwark, pausing to lean over the balustrade every so often to wince at the fresh cracks which had appeared overnight, and was now on his return trip.

  Halfway across he paused to look at St Paul’s.

  The cathedral was itself in the process of being rebuilt, and the steeple was just starting to rise above the body of the nave.

  Peter looked, awash with admiration. How he wished he could work on a cathedral…

  “Why not?” said a little girl’s voice.

  Peter looked down. A five- or six-year-old girl in a black dress stood at his side, regarding him gravely. She was very pretty with her black hair and eyes, although her face appeared so cold that she might have stepped from the grave not a moment since.

  Peter repressed a superstitious shiver.

  “St Paul’s needs something to rival it,” the little girl continued now that she had Peter’s full attention. “It needs something to balance it out. Why don’t you build a bridge to rival St Paul’s beauty?”

  “Little girl…” Peter began.

  “Oh, I’m not really a little girl, you know,” said the creature standing so close. “This form just amuses me. What would really thrill me is if you build me a house, right here on the bridge. One that will rival St Paul’s in beauty and power.”

  Peter was very slowly backing away. She was a devil, a malign fairy, a—

  “All I want is a chapel,” said the girl. “Is that so bad?”

  “A chapel?” Peter said, coming to a halt.

  “Indeed,” the girl said. “Imagine, if you will, a beautiful stone bridge, soaring over graceful stone piers—”

  “It can’t be done. No one can build the kind of piers, in this river, needed to support a stone—”

  “What if I showed you how?” the girl said.

  While Peter de Colechurch knew perfectly well that this apparition was a spirit of some kind, he was now wondering if, perhaps, it was an angel sent from God to guide him rather than a devil sent to tease him.

  After all, what devil would want a chapel?

  The little girl smiled, deepening the coldness on her face. “I will show you how to build this bridge,” she said, “and Henry will shower you with favours, and your name will ring down the centuries. All I want is a chapel, Peter. In the middle of the bridge. You can dedicate it to whomever you wish. I’m not fussed. There is just one little thing I need in this chapel.”

  “Yes?” said Peter, his suspicions again flaring.

  The little girl smil
ed sweetly. “A crypt, Peter de Colechurch, with an altar laid out and dedicated to God. Do we have a deal?”

  “Show me first how to build these piers,” said Peter, and the little girl laughed, and agreed.

  She knew Peter was hers.

  ONE

  Within the Faerie and atop the Savoy

  January to April 1940

  The worst winter in decades gripped the land. Snow lay in great drifts, blocking many roads and making communications difficult, and ice formed over rivers, even freezing the upper reaches of the Thames. Frosts crippled the fields, and raging winter seas washed mines ashore where they killed boys with too-curious fingers. Life continued as close to normal as possible under the twin weights of the cold and the war, but most outdoor activities had to be curtailed, if not stopped completely, and people shivered within their homes under the restrictions of the severe winter and fuel shortages. When the ice and snow and frosts had done, floods devastated large portions of south-eastern England.

  In late February and early March the IRA commenced a series of bombings in London. No one was killed, but a number of people were injured and the bombs caused extensive property damage.

  While the war raged in Europe, many people in London, and Great Britain generally, had begun to lose their initial fear of invasion, massive bombings and gas attacks. Most Londoners had stopped carrying their gas masks everywhere, those who had built air raid shelters in their back gardens had to spend an hour every fortnight dusting away the cobwebs from their doors, and Noah and Eaving’s Sisters had garaged their mobile canteen for the moment. London had suffered no attacks (although there had been several false air raid warnings), Britain had suffered no invasion, and on the fifth of April, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, went so far as to announce that he thought Hitler had “missed the bus” and that a German invasion of the West was now highly unlikely.

  It wasn’t a view that the Lord of the Faerie shared. One frosty March morning he arrived at the door of Copt Hall and asked Malcolm to fetch Jack.