Grace tipped her head slowly from side to side, as if considering what to say.
“I have barely given Catling a great deal of thought over the past two months,” she said. “Oh, we have talked of her, and of what we might do with this Game the White Queen has gifted us, but she has mostly been far from my thoughts…for the first time in all my life.”
“Catling has been very quiet,” said Jack. “At least so far as we’re concerned.”
But not for the Londoners. The city and suburbs had been subjected to horrific attacks. While not as large as that on the twenty-ninth of December, the air raids had been extensive, and caused heavy casualties, not the least because underground stations had been targeted, as also had Buckingham Palace.
Catling may not have been visiting personally, but her message was coming through as clear as day: Finish me, or people will continue to die.
She might not touch Grace again, but both feared the horrors Catling might visit on the Londoners, and they hoped they could discover the secrets of the White Queen’s Game before Catling moved.
Eventually, as they were driving through the northern suburbs of London, Grace roused herself from her thoughts.
“I hope this Sutherland has the set we’re after,” she said.
“If you ask me,” said Jack, “it’s a damn shame the White Queen couldn’t have left us a set where she’d know we could find them.”
Grace turned to look at him then, smiling gently. “What? If we’d found a set in early January then we would have lost these past two months of relative peace. I’m not sure, Jack, if either of us would have wanted that.”
He flickered a glance her way, amusement shining from his eyes. “I could stop the car right here, Grace, and we could walk the rest of the way down to Bloomsbury. That would give us an extra two or three days to enjoy each other’s company.”
“Keep driving, Jack. I’m not sure that even you are worth tired feet.”
Lionel Sutherland was waiting for them in the teashop. Jack and Grace spotted him instantly when they walked in: a well-built man in a superbly cut dark suit, warm hazel eyes enlivening an otherwise bland, round face, and sitting at a table with a large parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string on the floor beside him.
He had a pot of tea before him, and as they walked over was pouring the last dregs from it into his cup.
Sutherland rose the moment he saw them, reaching out to shake first Jack’s, then Grace’s, hand. “Major Skelton? Miss Orr? I’m very pleased to make the acquaintance of two of Sir Harry’s friends.”
As Jack and Grace sat themselves down, Sutherland signalled the waitress for more tea and cups. “Do you want anything to eat?” he asked as the waitress hovered about.
Jack and Grace exchanged a glance. “Do you have any marmalade cake?” Grace said to the waitress.
She shook her head. “Teacakes only, miss. And toast.”
“Miss Orr would like a plate of teacakes,” said Jack firmly, as Grace started to protest. “She’s been ill and needs feeding.”
Grace laughed weakly. “You will make an elephant of me yet, Jack.”
“Sir Harry told me you’d been caught in the Coronation Avenue disaster,” Sutherland said. “This war has taught all of us to treasure life.”
“This war has taught all of us to live,” said Jack, regarding Sutherland with genuine warmth, and the faintest sense of hope.
They chatted a few moments about the war (a subject which had replaced the weather as a suitable topic over which strangers could become acquainted), then busied themselves with the tea and cakes the waitress set on the table.
Eventually, Jack turned the conversation to the issue at hand. “Grace and I have been searching for a complete copy of Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata,” he said, finally allowing himself a long, hungry look at the parcel still sitting by Sutherland’s chair. “Harry said you might have one…”
“Well,” said Sutherland, pushing aside his cup and saucer, “no one truly knows what a complete set looks like. Wilkinson put out so many pamphlets over so many years…every set is different.”
“But you said this was almost complete,” said Jack.
Sutherland finally had the parcel on the table and was unwrapping it. “It is the most complete set I’ve ever seen,” he said. “At least, it has more in it than I’ve ever seen.”
Both Jack and Grace had their hands in their respective laps, clenching and unclenching their fingers in nervous anticipation. Both had yet to even see a copy, and, while they had cautioned themselves against hoping too much that this set might be the complete set they needed, neither could prevent a surge of excitement as Sutherland finally pulled the books free of their wrapping.
The books were large folio editions, twelve inches wide by fifteen high, and each almost two inches thick. They were bound in dull brown buckram, and had been stamped with the logo of Fulham Methodist Friends Library.
“Got half their stock when the library closed their doors several years ago,” said Sutherland as he saw Jack looking at the logo. “I sold most things on, but not these two books.”
He pushed the books towards Jack, who took a deep breath, ran his fingers over the covers, then slid the books over to Grace. “You’ll know. I won’t.”
Sutherland frowned at that, but watched as Grace opened the top book and stared at the title page.
“It’s the title page I saw,” she whispered. Then, carefully, almost reverentially, she started to turn the pages.
The book, both books, were a hodgepodge of pamphlets dealing with every intriguing cellar, crypt, attic, kitchen, laneway and sundry halfruined house that Wilkinson had managed to come across in his rambles about London. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what had attracted the man, save that the construction was old and forgotten and therefore, in Wilkinson’s eyes, worthy of record.
Grace ran her hands over each and every page, feeling rather than reading what was on it. The paper was thick and creamy, both text and myriad full-page engravings still wonderfully sharp and clear.
“Grace?” Jack muttered after a few minutes.
“Wait,” she said.
Sutherland frowned again. “What are you looking for? Perhaps I can help.”
Jack glanced at him. “An answer,” he said, “and we don’t know what it is.”
Sutherland raised his eyebrows at that comment, but said nothing.
Grace finished with the first volume, put it aside, and settled to looking through the second, her fingers flying over and through the pages. As she did so Jack leaned over her shoulder, intent on the pages as they flew past.
“It’s a map,” he said quietly. “A map of the key points of the Shadow Game.”
“Aye,” Grace said, her eyes and fingers still flying. But then, as she neared the end, her face became very still, her posture very rigid.
“Grace?” Jack said as she finally, slowly, closed the book.
She glanced at Jack, then looked to Sutherland. “There’s a single pamphlet missing,” she said.
“Dear Miss Orr,” Sutherland said, “a single pamphlet isn’t much.”
Grace looked at Jack. It is the one dealing with the heart of the labyrinth. Without it, we won’t know the Game’s intent and purpose.
But this is a map, Jack said to her privately.
Yes, she replied. These two books map out the inner core of the labyrinth. Not its full extent, but enough that we could extrapolate the rest. But the key to the dark heart is missing. Without that…
She raised her eyes to Sutherland. “Even though the set isn’t complete, Mr Sutherland, I wonder if we could purchase them from you? This is by far the finest set—” the only set “—that we’ve seen.”
“They’re yours,” said Sutherland. “Sir Harry arranged purchase.”
“Thank you,” Grace said, sliding the heavy volumes into her lap and holding onto them as if they were a much-loved child.
“Do you have any idea,” said J
ack to Sutherland, “where we might find a complete set?”
Sutherland blew air out from his cheeks. “Well, Major Skelton, God alone knows where you’d find a better set. I’ve been in the business over fifty years and I’ve yet to see a more complete pair of volumes than these here.”
“You’ve no idea?” said Jack.
Sutherland sat back in his chair, thinking. “The only thing I could suggest, and this is so far-fetched it is no suggestion at all, is that Wilkinson alone would have had a complete set. Find his set, and there you have it.”
“Mr Sutherland,” said Grace, “I expect you know our next question.”
She was so sweet, so lovely, that Sutherland smiled at her. “Look, this is a long shot, and I have no idea how you’d gain access…”
“But?” said Jack.
“Most of these chaps were inordinately proud of their work. With good reason—Wilkinson must have put most of his life into Londina Illustrata. What they often did, once a book was complete, was to send a perfect copy, the best copy they had, to the monarch. Londina Illustrata was completed the year Queen Victoria came to the throne. Your best bet is that Wilkinson sent her a copy as a coronation gift, perhaps hoping for a knighthood out of it. Or, at the very least, a bit of money. So, if there is a complete set remaining, then it would be in George VI’s private library…but unless you’re a personal friend of the king’s, I doubt very much you—”
He stopped, stunned by the wide grins on the pair’s faces.
“Mr Sutherland,” said Jack, “you have no idea.”
Grace put the books in the car, then, before she could get in herself, and uncaring of looks from passersby, Jack picked Grace up and spun her about in a circle.
“Damn it,” he said, “I always knew Thornton would come in useful for something some day!”
He set her back on her feet and kissed her, and when finally she leaned back and laughed, Jack thought she looked happier than ever he’d seen her.
“Thornton and the White Queen,” she said. “My sister did leave us a perfect set, in the safest place possible, after all.”
FOUR
London
Early March, 1941
Harry approached George VI for them, but until he could arrange a meeting, Jack and Grace spent every spare hour they could studying Sutherland’s set of Londina Illustrata.
It was an extraordinary collection of ephemera relating to ancient London. Wilkinson appeared to have had no rhyme or reason as to what he recorded in word and engraving: yes, he wrote pamphlets on important churches and their crypts, but he also included pamphlets on strange underground kitchens, on long-vanished water pumps, on intersections with forgotten cellars beneath them, on gateways and priories and ancient walls and halls. Any London collector would have appreciated the set—both descriptions and the folio engravings were magnificent—but to Jack and Grace they were extraordinary. Each turn of the page revealed new information, new meanings.
Somehow, and very likely under the subliminal direction of the White Queen, Robert Wilkinson had spent twenty years of his life mapping out the key points of the White Queen’s Shadow Game.
And here it was (save for that single, critical piece of information), in their hands.
Every pamphlet concentrated on one of the key, or cardinal, points of the Shadow Game. Some were important landmarks—St Paul’s itself, the church of St Alphage in London Wall, St Paul Shadwell—but just as many of them were forgotten or ignored landmarks: a kitchen, a cellar, a water pump, a tumbledown wall. Many of the landmarks had been removed, and only the power associated with them remained. Of the two Eleanor Crosses that had been built in London, only one remained, at Charing Cross. The other, Cheapside Cross, had long vanished.
Wilkinson also mentioned key points that he didn’t have time to cover, or that he felt had been covered sufficiently by other authors: all of Christopher Wren’s spires on the churches he had rebuilt in London after the Great Fire of 1666, as well as all the public and private buildings he had planned and constructed.
Among the key points that Wilkinson mentioned, there were two surprises.
The first was Copt Hall.
“I wonder who suggested that,” said Grace late one night as they sat in her bedroom, eating egg sandwiches and chocolate biscuits that Malcolm had brought them. “Boudicca or the White Queen herself?”
Jack had a hand resting on her shoulder, his thumb idly toying with one of her curls. “The Shadow Game is tied into Epping Forest,” he said.
“Into your power as Ringwalker,” Grace said.
“How long has the White Queen been planning this?” Jack said, his voice soft.
“Thousands of years,” Grace said. “Some of these places were built…oh, during the Dark Ages.”
And the White Queen had known he would become Ringwalker. Jack shook his head, not sure whether it was in wonderment or irritation.
The other surprise was a pamphlet on the building that had replaced Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in Southwark.
Skelton’s Meeting House.
That caused Jack and Grace much thought and discussion.
“What is its significance?” Grace wondered.
Jack gave a wry grin. “Perhaps only to point out that so much of my history has been meaningless theatre.”
Grace smiled. “Look, the Meeting House was named after a Reverend Mr Charles Skelton, a Dissenting Independent preacher. After his death the Meeting House was used as a mill to grind bones and stone.”
Now Jack laughed. “The mills of the White Queen grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small,” he said, paraphrasing the well-known proverb: The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. “She’s telling us that nothing has been left unplanned. Nothing left to chance.”
On another day, the Friday after they’d met Sutherland and acquired the books, they spent the afternoon walking about London, studying as many of the cardinal points of the Shadow Game as they could manage. They had wondered whether or not to be worried about Catling seeing them, but in the end they decided she would be able to gain little from their, to her, aimless wanderings.
“Do you remember,” Jack said as they stood by the ancient water pump at the junction of Leadenhall and Fenchurch streets, “the Sunday that your father drove us down to London after we’d listened to the declaration of war on the radio?”
“Oh, aye, I remember. I was trying to fade into the upholstery.”
Jack looked at her. “You didn’t want to be a nuisance, and I felt a pig at the way I’d been behaving.”
“I was so scared of you.”
“You were so…”
“Pathetic?”
“So not what I had expected from Noah and Weyland’s daughter. Dear gods, I had wanted to resent you so much.”
She smiled. “You brought me to this water pump to tell me that?”
“It isn’t quite the place, is it?” Jack looked around. The junction was one of the busiest in the City, leading as it did to Aldgate and the roads to the East End.
“Soon, Jack,” she said, and Jack looked back at her.
Aye, soon indeed. This relationship had been such a slow, sweet slide for Jack that, for the moment, he didn’t want the journey to end in either consummation or declaration. Neither of them had ever spoken of what they felt for each other, although that they did feel, and feel powerfully, was undoubted. Neither did either of them want to rush towards making love, although that they would was also undoubted.
Particularly now that they knew of the Shadow Game. To make it, as Kingman and Mistress, their union would need to be both physical and magical.
“Jack,” said Grace, grinning, “what did you want to say when you spoke about that day my father drove us down to London?”
He laughed. “My mind had drifted!” He shared with her a brief fragment of where his thoughts had been drifting, and her smile broadened, but he returned to the original topic of conversation. “Harry and I walked a
bout London, and this spot is where I first felt the presence of the shadow, although I had no idea what it was then.”
Jack looked down, tapping the pavement with his foot. Beneath the busy intersection, forgotten by all save those who had ever bothered to read Londina Illustrata, lay a twelfth-century crypt which had belonged to a now long-gone priory which had stood close to Aldgate.
It was one of the White Queen’s cardinal points.
“What does it do?” Jack said softly, his foot still tapping at the pavement.
“We won’t know until we have the key,” said Grace, knowing Jack referred not so much to this single point but to the Shadow Game as a whole. What was its purpose? How could it help them? How did it work?
Jack sighed, giving his head a slight shake. Finding all these cardinal points, finding the map, was, on the one hand, exciting (particularly after so long of not knowing what the shadow was), but on the other, singularly frustrating. None of the points made any sense and formed no pattern without knowing where they originated—where lay the heart of the new labyrinthine Game. It was impossible to work out the pathways of the new labyrinth without knowing the point at which they should start.
The dark heart of the White Queen’s labyrinth.
Jack repressed a shiver. Every day his mind returned to Boudicca’s warning, and he kept going back over each encounter he’d had with the White Queen, trying to guess at the subtleties of her words, and he wished he had somehow understood then who she was.
The best marriage you will ever make is in my dark heart, she’d told him. Then Jack had thought she was Catling, and that she referred to Jack’s “marriage” with Noah during the completion of the Troy Game.
Now, he knew differently. It was not Noah he needed to make the marriage with, but Grace, and it would be in the heart of the Shadow Game, not the Troy Game.
But who would that marriage serve? Him? Grace? The land? Or whatever mysterious purpose the White Queen owned?
Would it save Grace, or would it murder her?
Druid's Sword Page 54
