Druids Sword (17 page)

J
ack walked back to Faerie Hill Manor with the Lord of the Faerie, and from there drove his Austin convertible down to London.

He did not see Walter’s car on the road—he and Grace were likely half an hour ahead of him.

London was quiet: blacked out and shut down against the expected air raids. Jack drove slowly—unlike his earlier wild drive through Epping Forest—with only a sliver of light seeping out from the guards over the car’s headlamps. There was almost no one about. A few blackout and ARP wardens, the occasional giggling couple heading home from a dance hall, an early milkman driving his horse-drawn van along Aldersgate.

St Paul’s was as still as a headstone.

Jack parked his car in Paternoster Row, one street to the north of the cathedral. He got out slowly, buttoning his jacket against the pre-dawn chill, closing the car door quietly. He stood in the road, looking upwards at the dome of the cathedral looming above the intervening buildings, and lit a cigarette, drawing slowly on it as he thought.

Jack should have felt unsettled, but he didn’t. Grace’s presence at his marking should have disturbed him, and, on some level it did, but not as much as he might have expected.

Instead Jack felt more at peace with himself than he had in…well, than he ever had. The marking had accomplished what the Lord of the Faerie had said it would. He felt
complete,
as if he had finally arrived at the end of a very, very long journey. He had absorbed all that had been Og, but he was, most of all, still Jack.

And he felt more…sinuous. A strange word, but it described perfectly what Jack sensed about his altered state. It wasn’t as if he
knew
more—knowledge had flowed into him when he became Ringwalker and that store of knowledge had not increased during the past few hours; it was just that he seemed to insinuate himself into all the cracks and crevices of that knowledge where previously he had skimmed over them.

Jack glanced upwards, higher than the dome of the cathedral. Again he sensed the “strangeness” that hung over London, so much like an ethereal shadow always at the very edge of his vision, always shifting just before he could bring it into focus. Jack’s inability to grasp its extent and purpose was not even changed by his new perception.

A movement to his right caught at the outer edge of his vision, and he dropped his head and looked.

Further down Paternoster Row, just where it intersected with Maria Lane, stood a shadowy figure. A young woman, too thin, with long dark curls, and dressed in an ankle-length black silk dress. Her hands were folded before her and her face cast down, but as Jack watched, the cigarette burning unheeded in his fingers, she raised her head and stared at him.

It was too dark, and she too far, for Jack to make out her features, but he could
feel
her smile and his flesh goosebumped with the cold that emanated from her.

Jack blinked, and she vanished. Abruptly, he tossed the cigarette down to the roadway and ground it out under the sole of his shoe.

Catling waited, impatiently.

Although the exterior of the cathedral had been as still as a headstone, the interior had more life. Jack entered through an open side door in the northern face of the cathedral—one used by cathedral personnel rather than the public.

There were people here—one group of three men standing under the dome itself, others moving in the shadows further down the nave—but none of them saw Jack, or realised his presence, for he had cloaked himself with Faerie magic. The last thing Jack wanted was to converse with Catling in full view and understanding of the cathedral’s servants.

For several minutes Jack stood on the marble floor beneath the dome.

Here it was, Cornelia’s stone hall. So many memories: watching Asterion in his guise as Silvius make love to Caela; his own numerous confrontations with Cornelia-Caela within its spaces; all the dreams he’d had over the past three thousand years that had been centred within this cathedral.

Jack turned slowly around, trying to absorb everything. The cathedral was huge, but it was not only a massive space. Most mortals walking in here must have been truly awed, Jack thought, but they could not have seen what he did, or understood what he felt. St Paul’s was, after all, so much more than just a cathedral. Deep below twisted the dark heart of the labyrinth that Jack had created with Genvissa, in his life as Brutus.

But that dark heart wasn’t just “deep below”. Jack could feel it twisting up through all the columns and
struts of the building, and could sense its dark veins throbbing through the fabric of the dome.

For an instant he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

What had he and Genvissa done?

What a fool he’d been, and her as well. They’d had no idea how easily they had been manipulated. How pliable they had been in the snaking fingers of an ancient evil. All they’d thought about was their own immortality, their own power.

Their own gain.

And now the Lord of the Faerie, and Noah, and Asterion, and all the Faerie wanted him, Jack, to unwind the Game. To destroy it.

“It’s not going to be that easy,” Jack whispered.

Because the Troy Game can’t be destroyed.

The thought hit him like a sledgehammer, and Jack’s eyes flew open.

There was a movement to his side, and again he saw the figure of the woman lurking in the shadows.

She vanished almost as soon as he’d caught sight of her.

Bitch,
Jack thought, and he turned for the doorway in which the young woman had been standing.

It was the entrance to the stairwell leading down to the crypt.

Jack’s mouth quirked. Catling could easily have met him on the main floor of the cathedral, but no doubt she felt more comfortable, and more in control, in the crypt.

The crypt of St Paul’s stretched the entire length and breadth of the cathedral. Originally it had been the burial chamber of the cathedral—all and sundry in London who had any influence at all tried to ensure their burial within St Paul’s crypt—but Jack had heard that, a few years previously, crypt burials
had finally been banned. Many of Britain’s heroes had a tomb here: the Duke of Wellington’s casket took pride of place in the centre of the crypt under the dome of the cathedral itself; Admiral Lord Nelson’s casket was only a little further down, conveniently placed opposite the entrance to the cathedral treasury, perhaps so that his ghostly presence might thwart any attempted burglary; a dozen lesser generals and captains; Christopher Wren himself.

The space was surprisingly light, spacious and welcoming.

It was also a hive of activity. To one end of the crypt were set bunk beds, as well as what appeared to be a portable mess hall. There were several groups of men: some sleeping, a few playing cards at one of the tables, and the larger number moving purposefully about the crypt with various stores, boxes and gas masks.

They were the cathedral Watch, but they had no idea of what they were truly guarding.

Just to the left of where Jack stood, at the base of the stairs, was a noticeboard, and on it, prominently displayed, was a fluttering piece of paper.

Jack stepped closer to read it. It was a memorandum, issued the day before.

The Dean and Chapter, having reviewed the situation in the light of experience, have decided to make the following statement. It is their intention to carry on the life of the Cathedral as fully and as long as circumstances permit.

Jack read that memo for what it was—a message from Catling.
You’re not going to kill me, Jack. I can’t be destroyed.

“It
is
my intention, Jack, to carry on as fully and as long as circumstances permit.”

Jack spun about.

A young woman stood a few feet away. Jack’s first impression was that she was lovely—and that she looked like Grace, save that her hair was black and very long and left to hang in curls down her back—but that initial impression was followed almost instantly with a sense of malevolence so powerful that Jack literally felt nauseous.

Catling.
All grown up now from her life as a child in the seventeenth century.

She still affected the long black dress, tightwaisted and full-skirted, which rustled about her like a graveyard wind.

Her face, though physically beautiful, was also so white, and her expression so hard and cold, that she had the appearance of a blank-faced doll.

“Nice to meet you after so many years, Jack,” said Catling, her mouth twisting in a parody of a smile. She paused, and the smile became particularly malicious. “Father.”

“I am not your father.”

“Oh, but you are. You and Genvissa made me, that night you danced the Dance of the Torches. It wasn’t the dance that was so important…but what you did after it. Remember?”

Jack kept his expression blank, but his mind raced. What had he and Genvissa done after they’d completed the Dance of the Torches and founded the Troy Game atop Og’s Hill?

Then his breath caught, remembering what he and Genvissa
had
managed in the megaron within the palace he had built on the White Mound.

They had made love. They’d fled the celebrations atop Og’s Hill and come back to his palace, where they’d fallen atop a pile of furs washed with torchlight and twisted and writhed in what Jack, as Brutus, had thought was a fairly close approximation to making love.

And they conceived a daughter.

Jack felt the breath still within him.

He had pulled himself free of Genvissa’s body, raising himself on his arms above her, then kneeling between her bent legs, laughing with sheer joy at all the power that lay within their reach.

She, her hands splayed across her belly, saying, “We have made a daughter between us, Brutus. A daughter-heir.”

And he had replied, so damned sure of himself, “You have blessed me.”

Then came Cornelia, rushing into the megaron, her belly gently rounded out with the daughter she had been carrying, and discovering her husband and Genvissa.

And he, Brutus, had looked over to Cornelia, and laughed.

“Yes,” said Catling. “You
do
remember, don’t you? You made
me
that night. Both within the labyrinth on Og’s Hill
and
on that pile of furs with Genvissa.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? It makes sense enough, surely. I was supposed to have become flesh incarnate when Genvissa gave birth to me…but then Asterion,” her voice hardened into implacable hatred, “gave Cornelia that dagger with which to murder Genvissa, and my fleshly body, with it. I hated Genvissa for failing to carry me to term. So I picked Cornelia as my Mistress of the Labyrinth, and later used her—and you—to finally arrive into flesh. Better late than never.”

Jack tried to make sense of what she was saying. “But why choose Cornelia to then become your Mistress of the Labyrinth? She had ruined your chances when she murdered Genvissa. Surely you must have loathed her.”

“And still do,” said Catling, “but I saw that Cornelia would grow into a powerful Darkwitch,
and
goddess, and that she would be the best Mistress of the Labyrinth I could hope for. Besides, it makes a pretty revenge, don’t you think? Choosing the woman who had briefly stymied me to then bear me, and complete me. It fulfils a nice circle.”

She paused. “You’re thinking of unwinding me, aren’t you?”

“Would you blame me?” said Jack.

“You can’t unwind me, Jack. Think to harm me and I will make Grace suffer so badly she will wish herself dead. And if Grace suffers, then all this land,” she hissed the last word, “will suffer with her. Hate me all you want, but you will
not
destroy me.”

Jack did hate her at that moment. He hated her so much that he literally swayed forward, his hands half raised, determined to do her unto death.

“Besides,” Catling said, “you are my creator and my father, Jack. It is impossible for you to destroy me.”

Then she stepped back, and laughed. “You and your pretty god pretensions. I care not for what magic markings you have all over your skin…” Her hand waved dismissively, and Jack felt his marks burn and slide, as if they were trying to escape her presence. “All I need is for you to do one thing—dance the Dance of the Flowers with Noah, and complete me. You’ll never escape me, you’ll never destroy me, so you may as well succumb to the inevitable and complete me. It will be sweeter for you, in the end.”

Then she stabbed a finger at him. “If you try to harm me, Jack, then I will take this land and destroy it. I will
burn
it. And then I will do the same to the Faerie. Hark!” She put her hand to her ear in a
parody of a pantomime gesture. “What is that I hear? The drone of bombers? The whistle of bombs? The shriek of flesh tearing? The—”

“Shut up, you vicious crone!”

Catling smiled at that, and stepped back. “I can’t be undone, Jack. Accept it.”

Then she was gone, and Jack was left alone, save for the soft footfalls of the cathedral Watch treading about the crypt.

Twenty minutes later, when he finally felt strong enough to leave the cathedral, Jack leaned against the Austin parked in Paternoster Row, and sent an urgent appeal to Harry.

Catling stood in the dark heart of the labyrinth, very still. Nothing moved, not a hair on her head, not a finger, not a fold of her cold, silken skirt.

She was disgusted with herself.

She’d overreacted, threatened, made a scene.

Made a
fool
of herself.

All because Jack had been so much more than she’d expected.

It wasn’t the power. Not really. Jack now combined his Kingman abilities with those of Ringwalker. Catling had expected him to be powerful.

What she hadn’t expected was for Jack to be so calm. So still. So at peace with himself.

That wasn’t the man she’d relied on speaking to this night. That wasn’t the man she’d known as Brutus, and then William, then Louis. Those men had been fractured, unsure.