Druids Sword (22 page)

Damn it!

I burst into tears, lost in misery, and managed to make it over to where the outdoor table and chairs sat pushed against a wall. I sat down (almost falling in the attempt), and it was only then, as the cold of the chair penetrated through to my flesh, that I realised I’d come out dressed in only a thin silk frock, without even a cardigan, and that not only was the air close to freezing, but there was a dusting of snow over the terrace.

I was mortified. I was in agony from my wrists, but for the moment that mortification hurt worse. Everyone inside would be thinking…

How silly.

Poor Grace.

Perhaps someone should go out.

After all, it is Christmas, and she really shouldn’t be alone.

And then, gods curse it, someone
did
come out. I heard the opening and closing of the doors, the brief murmur of conversation while they were open, and then several sets of footsteps coming towards me.

I couldn’t bear to look, tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I wondered if I would embarrass myself further if I made a dash for the lawns.

In the end, the choice was made for me. As I tensed to rise, Jack and Harry pulled out chairs to one side of me, and Malcolm set a plate of the marzipan fruit on the table, as well as a decanter of whisky and several glasses.

Then, with no comment, he took a blanket he had over one arm and tucked it about my shoulders, poking it efficiently down the sides of my body, and folding it over my front, enclosing me within its warmth.

Then he turned and walked back inside.

Jack and Harry—both well wrapped in thick coats and with hats pulled down low—took no notice of me. Jack poured out whisky for the two of them, Harry grabbed a piece of marzipan fruit and chewed away enthusiastically, and then, well fortified, both began to chat.

Thus began the most extraordinary hour.

Jack and Harry sat there, keeping me company on the terrace, chatting away about friends they had known in past lives, stupidities both had managed to commit, sharing humour and warmth and companionship.

They didn’t once address me, and only rarely glanced at me (Jack once leaned over and, without missing a single beat in his conversation, matter-offactly tucked in a corner of the blanket which came loose when I shuddered under a particularly vile
spasm), but somehow they
included
me in everything they said and did. I felt a part of the conversation, even if I couldn’t speak, and even if the two men rarely looked at me.

I felt included in their company.

Jack and Harry had a shared past that went back thousands of years. They had been enemies, they had been friends, they had shared wives and lovers and adventures and disasters too numerous to tally.

All without me.

By rights I should have felt such an outsider that this conversation would have been a misery for me. But it wasn’t. They gossiped back and forth about people and events I’d heard of, and far more of people and events of which I’d never heard, and yet they somehow made me feel such a part of their entire existence, that anyone listening might have thought me their intimate companion for all these thousands of years.

It was an amazing gift, and I had no doubt at all that it was Jack’s doing (as I had no doubt at all that he’d somehow been the catalyst for my mother’s transformation). Harry had never once done anything like this for me: not when we’d been lovers, not at any other time.

No, this was Jack, and I felt such a surge of gratitude to him that I actually began to weep even more than I had previously.

The men were, by this time, engaged in a spirited discussion about the relative merits of the war stallions both had owned when Jack had been William and Harry had been Harold, and I sat there and wept with happiness as Catling’s fire banded my wrists and the men argued about fetlocks.

It was the best Christmas I’d ever had.

And, as I sat there, and wept in joy, the pain abruptly vanished and I gave a soft gasp.

The pain had lost its effectiveness. Catling had done her worst, and all I had done was weep with happiness.

Jack and Harry barely broke stride (they’d reached withers by this stage). Jack poured out a fresh glass of whisky, pushing it towards me, and Harry picked up a marzipan pear, put it on a plate that had appeared to one side, sliced it into thin layers, and likewise pushed that towards me.

We sat there for perhaps another hour. Gradually, I joined in the conversation which Jack had steered away from his and Harry’s shared past to the problems the Epping Forest keepers had trying to reestablish the resident fallow deer population. That was a topic I didn’t have much knowledge of, either, but somehow Harry and Jack listened to what I had to say (while in no way appearing in the slightest bit patronising), and laughed at some of my weaker attempts at jesting.

That made Jack remember our meeting in the Lyons teashop, and soon he had both Harry and me laughing uproariously with his vastly exaggerated account of how every woman within five hundred yards had offered him her body then and there.

“And yet you were resistant?” Harry said to me, eventually.

I grinned at Jack. “Everyone needs at least one mountain left to scale.”

“Is that a challenge?” he said, his tone light, those dark eyebrows raised.

“It most certainly isn’t an invitation,” I said, and he smiled, and our conversation drifted to other things.

We went back in, eventually, to find most of the others had gone to bed. My parents and I were staying at Faerie Hill Manor that night, going back to the Savoy in the morning, and I walked towards the stairs, thinking to go to bed myself, when Jack called softly to me.

I’d walked up three or four of the stairs by this time, and I turned, and looked down at him.

He was holding out the plate with the remaining slices of marzipan pear on it. “Take this,” he said. “A midnight snack.”

It was already long past midnight, but I smiled, and thanked him, and walked back down the steps to take the plate from his hand.

As I did so I looked over to where Harry stood by the door leading to the drawing room.

As our eyes met, he gave a small, sad smile, then turned his back and walked through the door.

I looked at Jack, who was watching me with eyes so unreadable they had become as mysterious as the strange shadow that hung over London.

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?
”

J
ack 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.