Druids Sword (54 page)

O
n Sunday the ninth of March Harry rang Copt Hall to tell Jack that the king would meet with Jack and Grace at the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall late the next afternoon.

“He has the books,” Harry said to Jack on the telephone. “The Athenaeum is a private place to meet. The doorman has been told to look out for you at four.”

Thus, precisely at four, Jack and Grace presented themselves at the door of the Athenaeum, and were shown through into a private room.

The king was already there, and he rose and shook both their hands as they entered.

“Why do you want these books?” he said. “Of what importance are they?”

He looked worn and grey, and Jack thought that of everyone caught up in this nightmare, George VI shouldered the most care. He was in the unenviable position of knowing what was truly happening to his country, yet being unable to take any action which would affect the outcome. He knew what was at stake, and yet was totally helpless.

“It is of the utmost importance,” Jack said. He waved George back to his seat (noting the irony that he was waving the king to sit, when it should be the other way around), then he and Grace sat down in
armchairs opposite. One of the club’s waiters had left drinks and sandwiches out, but no one felt like eating.

Two large volumes, the same size as Sutherland’s, sat on a low table by the king’s chair. Unlike the ones Jack and Grace had received from the book dealer these were covered in fine calfskin, the boards tooled with gilt in intricate patterns, and the title and Wilkinson’s name stamped in the raised bands on the spines of each book.

Jack gave them a long look, as did Grace, but then he turned back to the king, and told George what they had learned.

“A new Game?” said George, his face even greyer than when Jack and Grace had first come in. “Why?”

“It is designed to destroy the Troy Game,” said Grace.

“And so then we’ll be stuck with yet another Game?” said the king. “I am sorry, but I like the sound of none of this. Noah told me once, many years ago, of this daughter she had lost. To think that she has been drifting about, this unknown ghost, building a new Game…what manner of daughter is she, then?”

“A very powerful one,” said Jack.

“Powerful in
what?
” said George. “Evil? Revenge? Bitterness? I know what occurred surrounding that girl’s untimely stillbirth. Murdered by hate, lost by a mother who, while desperate for her, had conceived her for all the wrong reasons, and by a father,” he shot Jack a flinty look, “who cared not a whit for either mother or daughter. And yet you expect me to believe she’s hung about, filled with goodwill, making the enchantment that will right the wrongs created by those she has every reason to hate?” By this point the king was staring directly at Jack. “That’s balderdash, man!”

“Sir—” said Jack.

“And you’re telling me that
these
books,” the king’s hand tapped the cover of the topmost book, “hold the key to understanding how this new Game works? So you and Grace can
make
it?”

“My sister,” Grace said that deliberately, hoping to turn the White Queen from unknown potential evil into a knowable entity, “may be cold and distant, but I did not sense evil intent from her.”

Now George turned his hard eyes to her. “Yet you have said she spent hundreds of years sitting by your bedside, and you never once sensed any good from her, either. You hated her.”

“I was convinced she was Catling,” said Grace, now eyeing the books with some desperation.

“Perhaps because she exuded the same degree of malice?” said the king.

Jack leaned forward, speaking in a low but intense voice. “This is going to be our only chance,” he said. “We have no other
choice,
damn it! We have no other means of destroying the Troy Game. None. And in the meantime the attacks on London and the rest of the country grow worse. How many have died now?”

“Don’t you
dare
to impute the blame for that to me!” the king said.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, “that is not what I intended. And you are right. More than anyone,
I
am to blame for this nightmare. Now I need to make it right. My only weapon, my only
chance
at a weapon, lies in those books. I have my doubts, too, sir, but I can’t afford to ignore this Game. I can’t afford not to
know
it. Once I know how it works and what its purpose is, then it will be my choice, and Grace’s choice, and
your
choice, sir, whether or not we use it. The Shadow Game is as yet only potential; it doesn’t exist as anything else. It needs
Grace and me to make it a reality. And I promise you, George, that we won’t take a step towards making it a reality without asking first for your permission.”

George sighed, rubbing tiredly at his face. “Noah asked me for my permission before she burned London to the ground in 1666, too. Why me? What have I done to be thus burdened?”

“You are a good man,” said Grace.

George sent her an expressionless glance, which more than anything else told the other two how lowspirited he was, then he sighed again, and tapped the books. “Read them here. Tell me what the key is.”

Grace looked at Jack, then she rose, lifted up the top book, held it a moment, then put it aside in favour of the second volume.

This she picked up and took back to her chair.

Jack inched forward until he was on the very edge of his seat. “For gods’ sakes, Grace, open it.”

She looked at him, then returned her eyes to the book.

Painfully slowly, she opened the front cover, and began to thumb through the pages.

Halfway through the book she stopped, and her eyes grew round as she stared at the engraving before her.

“What is it?” said Jack and the king together.

Grace opened her mouth, closed it, made a visible effort, then spoke.

“Sweet gods,” she whispered, “I don’t believe it.”

I
couldn’t believe it because it made too much damned sense. The single pamphlet that had been missing from Sutherland’s set of
Londina Illustrata
was a pamphlet about the forgotten crypt under St Thomas’ Chapel.

St Thomas’ Chapel had sat almost in the centre of old London Bridge.

I looked up from the book and met Jack’s eyes.

The centre of London Bridge, where my mother had loved to stand and watch the water sprites at play, and where she and my father had given me the four kingship bands to wear.

All this I shared mentally with Jack, watching the comprehension gather in his eyes.

St Thomas’ long-forgotten crypt, which had been built under the ninth pier of London Bridge.

I remembered my vision of the two remaining kingship bands lying on an altar.

They were in St Thomas’ crypt!

“The crypt is still
there?
” said Jack.

“What is going on?” said George VI. “Grace, what have you read?”

I hastily told him what the pamphlet referred to, scanning the words as I spoke.

“Old London Bridge, the twelfth-century bridge with all the houses on it,” I continued, “was demolished in the early nineteenth century to make way for a wider bridge capable of handling the city’s growing traffic. Wilkinson was there when they demolished the ninth pier,” again my eyes met Jack’s, nine was a number of such power, “on which St Thomas’ Chapel had stood.”

I took a deep breath, my fingers tracing the words. “The workmen found a stone floor deep in the pier, well below the waterline, at the foot of a spiral set of steps. The centre of the floor was of different stone to the edges…as if the steps had continued down.”

I glanced up at the two men.

Both were staring at me: the king with fear, Jack with a reflection of my own excitement.

“The workmen took up the first layer of stone,” I said. “Underneath they found bones—mixed human and donkey and cattle and raven.”

“Witchcraft,” muttered George.

“A warning,” said Jack.

“Aye, a warning. There was a plaque there as well, which said,
Dig no more.
Wilkinson said the workmen refused to go any further; there was another layer of masonry beneath the bones. They took the human bones—Wilkinson said it was thought they belonged to Peter de Colechurch, the twelfth-century Bridge Master who designed and constructed London Bridge—then left the stone floor as it was, dismantling the pier to that level. It was below the waterline, flush with the river bottom. Jack…the crypt is still there, its entrance sealed.”

Jack frowned, thinking. “The London Bridge that replaced it—it only had a few arches, right?”

“Yes,” I said, “the entrance and crypt would likely not have been disturbed.”

“The White Queen’s dark heart,” said Jack.

“Her Game’s dark heart,” I corrected him, “but perhaps not hers.”

We left the king in the Athenaeum and went straight to London Bridge.

It was dusk now, and cold, and Jack and I hunched deep into our coats as we walked briskly across the bridge.

When we got to the centre we stopped, and, leaning against the bridge balustrade, stared down into the grey water.

For a long moment neither of us said a word, then Jack spoke, his voice flat.

“I don’t feel a thing.”

We should have felt it, particularly as we
knew
what we were looking for. Damn it, this Game was supposedly designed for Jack and me, its dark heart should have sung out to us, should have
screamed
to us…

I felt a sudden weight in my chest, as if my heart had swollen so greatly it could no longer beat.

“Jack—” I began but whipped about as I heard a step behind me.

It was my mother.

Rather, it was Eaving.

I so rarely saw her as Eaving that I shrunk against Jack for reassurance, then relaxed a fraction as she smiled at me, then at Jack.

Eaving walked to the balustrade and looked over, resting her bare hands on the icy stone, her long dark hair drifting a little in the breeze. She wore only a diaphanous gown, but, cloaked as warmly in magic as she was, she didn’t appear cold.

“It’s not quite the same view as it was from the old bridge,” she said.

“I imagine you were much closer to the water then,” said Jack. I could feel his tension through the
intervening layers of clothes.
Why was my mother here, and why as Eaving?

“This is my home,” Eaving said, still looking into the water as if entranced. “In this water I came into my true being. So long ago, when I walked as Caela.”

Eaving sighed, as if lost deep in memory, then looked at us, a gentle smile on her face.

“Yes, you are right,” she said. “When I leaned over old London Bridge I was much closer to the water, and the old bridge had so many piers, twenty of them, that they blocked fully a third of the river. The water used to tumble furiously through, and the sprites tumbled with it, and had much merriment.”

Now she turned to us fully, and the smile on her face became mischievous.

“But that is not why the view is not quite the same,” she said.

We waited, Jack and I.

“They didn’t demolish the old bridge and then build the new one atop its ruins,” she said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling unutterably foolish. I had lived in London during the time when the old medieval bridge had been demolished…had I been so absorbed in my misery I hadn’t even known what was happening in the city about me?

“What did they do, Eaving?” said Jack, his voice tight. He was irritated at her for teasing, and I knew my mother well enough to know this was just the reaction she’d hoped for.

“Building a bridge takes years,” said Eaving, “and early nineteenth-century London was a busy port and city—no one wanted to be bridgeless all that time. So they built the new bridge alongside the old bridge, and, once the new was completed, they then started to demolish old London Bridge.”

Jack muttered something, and I repressed a smile.

Eaving laughed, then nodded across the traffic to the eastern side of the bridge. “The old bridge, or whatever is left of it under the water, lies on the eastern aspect of this current bridge, some one hundred feet downstream.
That
is where I hung over the side, laughing at the water sprites,
that
is where Weyland and I gave the four bands to Grace to carry into the Faerie, and
that
is where your crypt lies.”

“How did you know about the crypt?” said Jack.

“George called me once you’d left the Athenaeum,” said Eaving. “He is frantic with worry.”

“And you?” I said.

She looked at me then, my goddess mother. “When you see the White Queen, deep within the dark heart, tell her I loved her.”

Her voice broke a little at that last, and she stopped, collected herself, and dared a small smile.

“The water sprites will aid you,” she said, “when you wish.”

And then she was gone.

That night the bombers came, and London suffered one of the most terrible raids in weeks. Then, I thought it only yet another example of Catling’s malignance.

Then, I had no idea what the White Queen had built, and of what horror.

T
hey had the location of the heart of the labyrinth. For five days Jack and Grace did what hitherto had been impossible and traced the lines of the White Queen’s Game. They begged and borrowed every book and scrap of information they could about the building of the chapel on London Bridge. Harry spent two days ferrying books from wherever he could beg them; the king allowed Harry to raid his library, and Harry even managed to acquire books and manuscripts from the college libraries of Oxford and Cambridge.

Grace brought out the map she had made so many months previously on which she’d drawn the various sections of the Game (or the shadow as they’d then called it) and spread it out over the drawing room floor. They took Wilkinson’s
Londina Illustrata
and, item by item, marked out all the locations he’d described or referred to onto Grace’s map.

Then, knowing the precise location of the dark heart of the Game, they began to trace out the parameters and meanderings of the Shadow Game. It was difficult and tedious work—the Shadow Game was larger and more complex than anyone had thought possible—but Jack and Grace did not work alone. Noah and Weyland, as well as Ariadne and Silvius, spent their days at Copt Hall, with Stella dropping in for eight or nine hours on two
occasions. Without them, Jack and Grace would never have managed the task as quickly as they did. They were all intimately connected with the arts of the labyrinth, either as Kingman or as Mistress of the Labyrinth, and all could help in the unravelling of the mystery.

By Saturday, when they believed they had mapped out the majority of the Game, they sat back in their chairs and sofas and stared at the map, which lay spread out on the hearth rug between them.

Even Malcolm, who had brought in sandwiches and tea, stepped back and regarded the map, arms folded, eyes thoughtful.

“Can you understand it?” Malcolm finally said.

No one answered for a moment, then Ariadne and Stella (who had arrived a few hours previously, after dawn) exchanged a glance, then looked at Jack.

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “Can you, Jack?”

In his turn, Jack looked at Silvius, then at Grace.

“It’s…twisted,” she said, holding Jack’s eyes.

He sighed. “Aye. Noah…what do you make of it?”

Noah stared at the map with troubled eyes. “I have never seen anything like it. I cannot quite understand it.”

“Twisted?” said Harry. He’d been watching the expression on Jack’s face turn from excitement to concern over the past few hours, and he didn’t like it. “Jack, is this Game going to help us…or destroy us?”

If Harry had been hoping for reassurance from Jack, he didn’t get it.

“I have never seen anything like this,” Jack said, “nor had I ever imagined it.” He looked at his father. “Silvius?”

Silvius opened his mouth, but he didn’t get a chance to speak.

“Just tell us what you
see,
Jack!” Harry said.

“It is a Game,” said Jack, “a Game which uses the power of the labyrinth to entrap evil. In that, it is no different to any Game that has been built previously, including the Troy Game. But…”

“
Damn it, Jack!
” Harry said, now edging forward in his seat. “What do you see!”

“I have never imagined a Game so complex or farreaching in terms both of power and of physical range,” Jack said. “What we see here is how far the Game extends in and about London, but I suspect it travels further out into the countryside…if the Game makes use of the London Eleanor Crosses, then why not also those extending into Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire? Christ, the White Queen has spent two thousand years building this…its intricacy is unbelievable.”

“And is that good or is that bad?” said Harry.

Jack gave a small shrug, but Harry noted with some disquiet the glance he again shared with Grace.

“It is good insofar as it means that this Game is unbelievably powerful,” Jack said, “but it is bad in that any Kingman or Mistress of the Labyrinth who tries to wield its power…” He broke off, not able to finish.

“Gods,” whispered Ariadne, “any Kingman or Mistress who tries to work it will be killed!”

There was a short silence, broken by Weyland. “Of course,” he said. “Has it not been feeding off death for the past eighteen months?”

“Weyland,” said Jack, “we don’t truly know that the imps were ‘feeding’—”

“Damn you!” Weyland interjected. “
Look!
” He rose, moving forward so he could stab down at the map with a rigid forefinger. “What is it that you
don’t
see? The heart of this new labyrinth lies under old London Bridge. Yes? Then what was the gateway to old London Bridge, eh?”

Everyone was staring at the map. No one answered.

“The church of St Magnus the Martyr was the entrance to old London Bridge,” Weyland said, his voice much quieter now. “The road to the bridge literally led under its porch. Noah, how many times have you walked under the porch of St Magnus to get to the bridge to watch the sprites at play? Gods alone know I’ve been under it many, many times.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “The imps left the corpses of the women under the porch of St Magnus, leaving them as close as they could to the heart of the Shadow Game, and tossed the women’s wombs into the Thames to feed the Game. They not only knew what the shadow
was,
they knew where lay its heart. Please don’t delude yourselves that these murders had nothing to do with the White Queen or her Game. This is a vicious black Game, Jack, and I do not like the idea of my daughter dancing it into existence.”

Jack felt sick. He did not like the idea of Grace dancing it to her death, either.

“It is the Danse Macabre,” said Silvius very quietly. “The Dance of Death. No wonder it is strong enough to deal with the Troy Game. What else could?”

Noah shivered, rubbing her arms. “You can’t dance this, Jack. Nor you, Grace. Why? Why? It will kill you!”

“We’ll all be dead sooner or later,” said Harry, his voice harsh. “The Faerie is crumbling as we sit here and moan.”

Jack lit up a cigarette, his hands trembling. He couldn’t believe it. To come this far, to discover the extent of the Shadow Game, and then to learn its true nature.

A trap. A death trap. For the Troy Game, but also for himself and Grace. No wonder Boudicca had
called the White Queen a double-edged sword. No wonder the imps had fed her Game living flesh.

It would slice their heads off on its return swing.

He glanced at Grace. She was very pale, but composed, and she smiled very slightly at him when she caught his look.

“We don’t know it all yet, Jack,” she said. “Perhaps my sister has left us an escape.”

“But not one that’s apparent here,” said Jack. He drew deeply on his cigarette, then knelt down on one knee by the map, a finger tracing slowly over the outlined paths of the Shadow Game. “I’m torn between admiration for this Game’s construction, and horror at what it actually is.”

“Jack,” Grace leaned forward, “perhaps we’re not seeing this clearly. Yes, this is a Game of darkness and death, but, dear gods, think of
what
it is designed to trap! Maybe the Shadow Game is merely a reflection of its prey. Maybe…”

“All these maybes and perhapses,” said Silvius, “don’t change the fact that this Game will be a nightmare to dance. The power it will generate…no one, not you, not Jack, not Noah or Weyland, not even Ariadne—” he picked up Ariadne’s hand and kissed it as he spoke her name “—could survive the power that will rope out of this Game’s birth.”

“Silvius is right,” said Ariadne. “The White Queen has used Darkcraft to build this Game. Noah and Grace, who have had the Darkcraft bred within them, are first and foremost Mistresses of the Labyrinth. But their daughter and sister…I think her allegiance is first and foremost to the Darkcraft.”

“I do not like the sound of
that
,” said Harry. “I say again, as I have said before, why should we trust her? Even more, now you tell me she has built this death trap,
why trust her?
”

Jack stubbed out his cigarette. “Because she is all we have, Harry, and this Shadow Game is all we have to destroy the Troy Game.”

Harry sat back in his chair, his eyes flat, his expression hard. “She is all we’ve got,” he repeated, “and yet she has never shown herself to us—”

“That’s not quite right, Harry,” Grace put in. “She has sat at my side all my life and—”

“And never announced herself!” Harry said. “Curse it, am I the only one here with a suspicious mind? She has done
nothing
to earn our trust.”

“She has kept out of Catling’s way,” Grace said quietly, her eyes steady as she regarded Harry, “and she has worked for this land’s freedom. She is our only hope. Harry, I don’t think either Jack or me, or
anyone
else present in this room, can afford for the moment to ignore what she has done. Jack’s right, the Shadow Game is all we have. It is our only hope. Somehow, we’ll just have to learn how to use it.”