Druids Sword (50 page)

“Of course.” He studied me, his eyes travelling down my body as it lay in the bath. “You’re not very well, are you?”

I shook my head, close to tears again because he understood that I did not wish to talk now, and because he understood that I was, indeed, “not very well”.

He smiled. “I see that both flannel and soap are yet dry. Would you like me to wash the stink of hospital from you?”

He must have been desperate to discover what I had learned, but he was willing to wait, and for
that, at this very moment, I was indebted to him. “Thank you,” I said.

Jack sank to his knees by the bath, picked up the flannel and soap, and proceeded to wash me down.

He touched me as a father would a child. There was nothing sexual or even intimate about it. Frankly, we were both too tired to care, and I wondered only that he had the energy to bathe me in the first instance.

Malcolm came back carrying a tin urn of clean water, and Jack washed my hair. He massaged my scalp gently, exploratively, his fingertips moving over the spot where the concrete lintel had punctured my skull.

“The doctors thought you would die,” he whispered. “Grace, how did you survive this?”

“Because I wanted to live,” I said.

His fingers stilled, then the knuckle of one of them rapped against the plate in my skull. “Well, you have a tin head, now,” he said, and I laughed, and he with me, and I have never,
never,
been as happy as I was at that point.

Jack helped me out of the bath, and dried me off, his hands exploring the recently-knitted bones in my legs and left arm (oh, such lumpy devils they were now!), then he gave me a silk dressing gown that Malcolm had set out, and then, wordlessly, carried me to a bed in one of the spare rooms. He tucked me in between the sheets, leaving me in the dressing gown, then laid his mouth very softly against my forehead, and told me to go to sleep. He said he needed to bathe, but that he would be back, and he would watch over me.

I slept. I drifted off immediately, but, as is so often the case when you are so very tired, I did not sleep soundly. I woke every hour or so, dragging myself up from dreams that were vaguely unsettling but not threatening.

Every time I opened my eyes I saw Jack sitting in an armchair by the bed. Sometimes he was dozing, sometimes reading a book, sometimes sipping from a cup of tea that Malcolm had brought in to him.

Sometimes the lamp was on, and I saw him in a glow of warm, rosy light, and I knew that the entire day had passed and we were well into the night.

And still Jack watched.

I saw Malcolm with him on one occasion. He sat on a wooden chair he’d pulled close to Jack’s armchair, and was leaning forward on it, talking in a low but urgent voice. He was saying something about New Year’s Eve, and Jack was frowning, but as I watched the frown cleared and Jack nodded, to Malcolm’s undisguised relief.

“If Grace agrees,” said Jack, and Malcolm seemed to accept that.

After that I did not remember anything else, so I must have drifted off finally into a sound sleep.

After he had spoken with Jack, Malcolm went into the bathroom to clean it, and clear away the brandy decanter and glasses.

But while the towels were still there, and the damp patches where a wet Grace had stood, the decanter and glasses had gone.

Malcolm thought nothing of it. Jack must have taken them down to the kitchen himself.

C
atling huddled in the heart of the labyrinth and wondered what had gone so wrong.

She
should
have been completed by now, but instead she found herself still incomplete and more vulnerable than ever.

Who could have thought that Grace would have found the gumption to break free of her hellish prison? Who could have thought Grace would have found the courage to stop the Dance of the Flowers
and then confront Catling?

And confront her with real power.

To say that Catling didn’t like it was a massive understatement.

Too many things were going wrong.

For the first time in her existence Catling wondered if she really needed completion at all. Surely she had enough power now? Why push for completion at all?

Because if left incomplete she was vulnerable.
Catling simply could not allow herself to remain incomplete for too many more years, because then Jack, Noah (and Grace, curse her!) could grow even more powerful, and might discover the means to undo the hex that bound Grace. If that happened then Catling could look forward to nothing but a rapid unwinding into oblivion.

As much as Catling was sure Jack and Noah would use any subsequent Dance of the Flowers to somehow trick Catling, and try to unwind her, Catling
needed
to be completed. She would need to risk the Dance of the Flowers.

But, oh, that day would be littered with trickeries.

Catling reviewed her weapons. She truly only had two. Her continued destruction of the Faerie, which meant the Lord of the Faerie would put incredible pressure on Jack and Noah to complete Catling, and the hex on Grace. Even if Jack and Noah might be prepared to risk losing the Faerie (and that was a major “if”), Catling was certain they would never risk losing Grace, particularly after that touching scene she’d witnessed in St Paul’s the night Jack and Grace pulled the bomb down atop her.

“All I have to be certain of,” whispered Catling in the desolation of the dark heart, “is that the hex can’t be broken. That it is so powerful that
nothing
can thwart it.”

She glanced upwards, looking through all the layers of earth and rock and masonry to the sky above.

She had time. Neither Jack nor Noah would move against her just yet—not while Grace was in such a pitiful condition. She had some weeks, perhaps even months, in which to wind down the bleakness and horror of the Blitz and use it to bolster the hex that bound Grace.

Bolster it so that no matter what happened, what Jack and Noah tried to do,
nothing
could possibly break it.

J
ack sat on the side of the bed, watching Grace sleep. She looked terrible: dark shadows ringed her eyes, her flesh had shrunk and her skin tone was ashen and faintly yellowish where it stretched over bone. On the other hand her breathing was deep and slow and comfortable, and her face relaxed.

He still couldn’t quite believe she was alive. He kept thinking of the moment he had walked into the bathroom, and saw her sitting in the bath, enclosed in steam and serenity. He remembered the gut-wrenching sense of relief and joy, combined with a terror that somehow the vision wasn’t real and that any moment she would evaporate before his eyes.

Now, watching her sleep, Jack found it difficult to believe she would survive, or that she would not be snatched from him again.

There was a noise behind him, and Jack turned his head slightly.

It was Malcolm carrying a tray with two bowls of hot soup.

“Did you do this for Boudicca?” said Jack quietly as Malcolm set the tray down.

“Of course,” said Malcolm, “I adored her.” He looked at Grace. “She will need to wake soon.”

“She will wake when she is ready,” said Jack, but
then he saw Malcolm’s smile, and looked back to Grace.

Her eyes had opened, and she was smiling at Malcolm and then at Jack as his eyes turned to her.

“Chicken soup,” she said, “with which to set the world to rights?”

“Chicken soup,” said Malcolm, “with which to set you on the road to rights. The world can look after itself.”

Jack helped Grace sit up, Malcolm plumping the pillows behind her, and Grace laughed and commented on what fine nurses they both had become.

Then Malcolm handed Grace and Jack their bowls of soup, told them he expected them to eat before they talked, and then departed.

“I wonder where he got these chickens,” said Grace. “Have the gardeners of Copt Hall missed one or two of their flock?”

Jack smiled, but did not answer, and, as instructed, they ate in silence.

Once they’d done, Jack took the bowls, set them aside, and sat once more on the side of the bed, taking Grace’s hand.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she forestalled him.

“I’m so sorry about Matilda,” she said.

Jack’s eyes filled with sudden tears, not merely at the loss of Matilda which still ate at the edges of his composure every moment he was awake, but at Grace’s care for his feelings. She was the one who had suffered alongside Matilda, she the one who had watched Matilda’s terrible dying, and yet she only thought of him.

He nodded, unable to speak.

“Have they recovered her body, or Erith’s and Ecub’s?” Grace asked.

Jack closed his eyes momentarily, forcing tears to slide down his cheeks. “No. The rescue teams got you out, but by the time they’d managed to clear out the entire basement almost three weeks had gone past. The basement had flooded—”

“I know,” Grace whispered.

“—and together with the weight of the rubble and debris, bodies were unrecognisable. They had…”

Decayed,
he wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say it without speaking in cold, bald words.

“It was impossible to determine who was who,” he finished. “Most were buried in a mass grave, including whatever was left of Matilda, Ecub and Erith.”

“Oh, Jack…”

He took a deep breath. “Matilda and I…she…”

“She loved you, and you her.”

“Oh, gods…” Jack wiped away his tears. “I wish she’d never been caught up in this damned…damned…”

“Ah, no you don’t,” Grace said. “Where would you have been all these years without Matilda?”

Jack laughed. “You’re right. Thank you for making me smile.” He wanted to ask Grace how Matilda had died, but he realised he didn’t want to know, and he knew also that Matilda wouldn’t have wanted him to know. “I’m glad you were there with her,” he said.

“Well, she’s probably chatting up Aeneas as we speak.”

Jack blinked away the last of his tears. “Aye, she probably is. Grace, please talk to me of what has happened.”

She sighed, and for a moment her eyes wandered away from his. Then, hesitantly, she told Jack of how Catling had tormented her in the rubble, and then sent her into the hell of memory.

“I saw too much, Jack.
Experienced
too much. Far too much. Catling hoped it would send me mad.”

Jack felt cold. He could imagine what Catling had showed Grace. Oh, gods, the terrible things he had done as Brutus…and yet still Grace could smile at him. “But she didn’t drive you mad.”
Nor did she drive you to hate me, and I have no idea what I have done to deserve such a gift.

“No. Almost, but before I succumbed someone came to me. Someone who called herself the White Queen.
She
tormented me with possibilities until I finally figured out how to save myself.” Grace looked carefully at Jack’s face. “You remember, don’t you? The White Queen Cafe where we met, and where the woman’s voice spoke to us?”

“Oh, aye. I remember that. But I, via Noah, have also heard the name elsewhere. The night you and Eaving’s Sisters were trapped in Coronation Avenue, the Sidlesaghes told your mother the shadow belonged to a woman called the White Queen. Later that night, not knowing what to do, only desperately seeking some means by which to save you, I went around to the cafe. It was boarded up, had been for a year or so. This White Queen has been playing with us, Grace.”

“That she has. She has been the one to come sit by my side at night, all these years. Not Catling. They just look so much alike.”

“The
White Queen
has been sitting with you?”

“Yes. Oh, and she called herself something else. The druid’s sword. This is something about which I think we need to talk to Malcolm.”

Jack grunted. “That doesn’t guarantee any answers from him.” He thought Grace was holding something back from him about the White Queen, but before he could ask her about it, she hurried on.

“I also discovered the true nature of the labyrinthine shadow.”

Jack held his breath, waiting.

Grace sat up a little straighter, the effort bringing a flush to her cheeks. “The shadow is a new Game. Rather, it is the potential for a new Game. It has been laid down by the White Queen for you and me to use, as Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth. That is why it only appeared when you and I were in London together, why it vanished when I ‘died’, and why no one else, save my mother who can glimpse it, could sense it.”

Jack was aware his mouth had slowly dropped open, but he didn’t care.
A new Game?
Should he be terrified or intrigued? And how?
Who
was this White Queen that she had the potential to build a new Game?
A new Game?

“Why?” he whispered, barely able to speak. “How?”

“To use against the Troy Game,” Grace said.

“But how hasn’t Catling sensed it? Surely…”

“She hasn’t sensed it for the same reason no one else has. This Game—or its potential, rather—was built exclusively for you and me.
We
are the only ones it cares about.
We
are the only ones it reveals itself to. I’m not even sure that Catling will know once the Game is opened…it shadows her so perfectly, is so close to a mirror image of the Troy Game, that Catling may simply not see it. Ah, at the moment the
only
thing I know for sure is that the shadow is a new Game waiting for us to open it, and to use it, somehow, against the Troy Game.”

Jack gave his head a little shake. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand
anything.
The imps could sense this Shadow Game. They were
feeding
it through their murders.”

“I don’t know why the imps are involved, Jack.” Grace paused. “Have there been any more murders since I was injured?”

Jack shook his head. “They stopped completely after early September. Perhaps the Blitz…ah, I don’t know. Grace, what do we make of a Game that requires murder to feed?”

“We don’t know they were working on behalf of the new Game, Jack. They just may have been worshipping it.”

Jack shrugged his shoulders in frustration. There were too many things left unknown. “Who is this White Queen that she should care…and that she should be able to build this massive ‘potential’ Game?”

“A friend of the druids, obviously.”

“Even so, the druids could not ever construct a Game, or show someone how to do it. So how could this White Queen do it?
How?
And you say that it should reveal itself only to you and me, but Noah can also sense it, if not as strongly. I don’t understand that. Grace, I’m sorry, but none of this makes sense.”

Grace’s hands tightened very slightly around his hand. “Jack, the only reason my mother can sense the shadow is that she has a close connection to the White Queen. She cannot sense the shadow because she has any connection to the new Game as such, but because she has an ancient bond with the White Queen.”

“Look, I’m sorry. Grace, I am not following a word of this.”

Grace’s eyes filled with tears. “Jack, Noah is the White Queen’s mother.”

Jack stared blankly at Grace, his mind refusing to accept the logical implication of that.

“Please, please understand the rest before I am forced to tell it to you,” Grace whispered.

“No…no…it can’t be possible.”

“The White Queen is she who has never lived, Jack. She is your and Cornelia’s daughter, conceived
in the magic of Mag’s Pond, and forced stillborn from Cornelia’s body by Genvissa’s ill will.”

Jack stared at Grace.

“Jack, Jack, please, just say something…”

“I…” There wasn’t anything
to
say. Jack felt as though someone had snatched his mind and made away with it.

His daughter? His and Cornelia’s?
A faint memory came back of something Noah had said on his return to England.
I wish my daughter had been born. Who knows what she may have been.

Prophetic words, indeed.

Jack tried to order his thoughts, to think this through logically. A daughter of himself and Noah would have the ability to construct this “potential” Game. Also, the White Queen was born of Noah, born of the line of Ariadne, which meant she was both Mistress of the Labyrinth and Darkwitch bred. She would naturally have the talent to construct a shadow labyrinthine Game.

And she would have built it of
Darkcraft.

No wonder it required murder to feed.

Then Jack’s heart skipped a beat as he thought of something else. The White Queen and Catling looked almost identical—they shared identical parents—and Grace had mistaken the White Queen for Catling when she’d come to sit at her side at night. Did that mean that the woman Jack had spoken to had sometimes been the White Queen,
not
Catling? It all made so much sense now!

“
Jack?
”

He blinked, refocussing on Grace’s face. She looked distraught, and more than anything else it was that look which cleared Jack’s mind. “Grace, I’m sorry.” He put his free hand about the back of her head, cradling it, and drew her closer until he could kiss the top of her forehead and then her
mouth. “I’m sorry. I…I just can’t believe…I can’t fathom this.”

“I know so little, Jack. I don’t know her reasons, or her motive—save that I am sure she wants us to destroy the Troy Game—I don’t even know how this new Game works…it looks so different to what I learned as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, or what I understand of the Troy Game. I don’t even know if I completely trust the White Queen.” Grace took a deep breath. “I remember once she asked me if I was prepared to die for you, and I said yes, if only to get rid of her.”

Jack went cold all over again. “Jesus, Grace.” He remembered how he had felt watching her sleep, wondering if she was to be snatched away from him again, and foreboding overwhelmed him.

Jack forced the presentiment away and kissed Grace’s forehead once more. “I kept hoping that you’d come back with answers, Grace, but
this?
”

“The White Queen has the bands, Jack.”

“Of course.”
She had them in her dark heart. She’d told him that day she’d appeared before him with the bands in her hands. And he’d thought her Catling, and cursed her.
“Aeneas said my daughter came and asked for them. I’d assumed Catling.”

“What else were you supposed to assume?”

“Where are they?”

“On an altar somewhere. I have no idea where. They’re waiting for you. I think the White Queen took them so that you wouldn’t be able to finish the Troy Game. She had no idea you’d try without them.”

“My daughter…” He drifted into silence, thinking, then spoke. “But Noah couldn’t sense the shadow at first. It was only later that she could. Why?”

“It was after the Great Marriage, yes?”

Jack nodded.

“Her parents had made the Great Marriage, maybe that made my…
our
…mother a ‘part of the team’ in a casual way. Or perhaps it made the White Queen happy, to see her parents at peace.”

Grace leaned in against Jack’s body. He still had no shirt on, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders, and played with the markings. She slid her fingers underneath them, lifting them slightly away from his skin, then allowed them to snap back into place.

“Grace,” Jack said very softly, wondering if she were trying to distract him away from his worries, “unless you want to take this a great deal further, right now, then please don’t do that.”

“Sorry.” She leaned back, the mischievous expression on her face anything but apologetic.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“I’ve grown up.”

“And…?”

“And at the moment I am all skin and bone,” she said, “and I couldn’t manage much more than I have just done. I need more of Malcolm’s soup, I think.”

Jack knew what she was saying—
I still don’t want to rush
—and wondered at the sense of pleasant anticipation that gave him. He had spent almost four thousand years taking what he wanted, generally at a
great
rush, and the thought of drawing closer to Grace only at a pace best measured in inches rather than leaps and bounds should have frustrated him beyond measure. But it didn’t.