Druids Sword (44 page)

T
hey convened in the early afternoon in a study in the private quarters of Buckingham Palace. The queen had already gone back to Windsor, where she and George slept (the government feeling that Buckingham Palace was too easy a target for Luftwaffe bombers), and George dismissed his secretary as soon as he had shown Noah, Jack, Harry and Stella into the room.

Without asking if they wanted it, George poured everyone a large whisky, then waved them into deep, comfortable chairs.

“Jack,” said George, “what’s been happening?”

As briefly as he could, yet not omitting any necessary detail, Jack told the king about the labyrinthine shadow which hung over London. “We don’t know truly if it is a help or a hindrance, if it is a trap or a weapon, and we call it a shadow because it is too insubstantial for any of us to see it clearly. After what has happened in the past night…” Jack paused, collected himself, and went on. “After what has happened over the past night I am inclined to think it is more hindrance than help. If not for that bomb…Noah, please tell us now what you heard from Long Tom.”

Jack looked at George and lifted his hands in a
gesture of despair. “She said she would wait until we got here.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Noah said. “Long Tom told me that he’d heard that the shadow, and thus perhaps the voice, belonged to a creature, a woman, so shadowy, so fleeting, that none could know her. He said she had not ever lived, and when I asked why it was that I could not sense her, or know of her, Long Tom said it was because she was lost to me.” She paused. “Long Tom said she is known as the White Queen for her face is as cold and pale as the winter landscape. She—”

“
The White Queen?
”

Noah stared at Jack. “You know her?”

“Yes, maybe I do,” Jack said. “While Grace has been staying with Ariadne, we have met on several occasions at the White Queen Cafe on Cromwell Road in Kensington. We were, so far as I could tell, the only customers. Certainly no one else was ever there when we were. There was a woman who ran the cafe…Mrs Stanford.”

Now everyone was staring at Jack.

“I don’t know any more,” he said. “Sorry. Grace and I would go there to meet, have tea and—” he gave a faint smile “—Mrs Stanford’s speciality, marmalade cake, and talk. But she was so ordinary. and nothing much ever happened there…except, of course,” he sighed, “that this strange voice spoke to us both in that place.”

“So we have a creature, the White Queen,” said Harry, “who masquerades as a Mrs Stanford, who makes marmalade cake and, in her spare time, strange labyrinthine shadows which hang over London. Marvellous. What does any of this tell us?”

“It raises more questions than it answers,” said Noah. “Who
is
she, this cold, unborn woman?
Why can’t we know her?
”

“Because she is somehow attached to Grace,” said Jack. “I think it is Grace she is interested in, or drawn to. None of us, not really.”

“But she called to you as well,” said the king.

“Maybe only because I am ‘attached’ to Grace,” Jack said with a shrug.

Stella had been sitting back, listening to the conversation, her brow creased in thought, the fingers of one hand tapping against the arm of the chair. “No, no. I don’t think you’re incidental, Jack. I think she is interested in you as well as Grace, although not perhaps
as
interested.
Damn it!
I wish we had Grace here. She must have the key. She must know something…”

“I wish we had Grace here, too,” said Noah, looking at Stella with steady eyes, “not for any information she might give us, but merely so I can hold her again, and know she is safe.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Jack. “All we’re doing is blowing useless words about the room. Catling has clearly given us a choice. Promise to complete her, and she will get Grace out of the nightmare that is Coronation Avenue—as well, please gods, anyone else who may still be alive—or Grace will continue to suffer, as well as London.” He shook his head. “Catling is going to escalate the violence, the death and the destruction if we don’t agree, Noah. I told her I lacked two of the kingship bands, but Catling didn’t believe me. She believes I do have them, and am just trying to deceive her. Noah, what choice do we have?
What?
”

No one replied immediately.

“Grace…” Stella said slowly.

“Grace is buried under several score tons of rubble and can’t get out until Noah and I—”

“I know, Jack,” Stella said. “I’m sorry.”

“Is there any way of contacting the White Queen?” George said. “Jack? Apart from Grace you are the only one who has had any contact with her.”

“
She
contacts us, we don’t contact her,” Jack said. “Look, if someone can arrange a car, I can drive around to the cafe from here.”

“It’s a start,” said Harry. “But if it fails?”

“My advice,” said George, “is to give Catling the promise, but to somehow delay the completion. Is that possible?”

Jack and Noah exchanged a glance.

“Yes,” said Jack, “Catling herself has made it possible. When she allied herself so closely to the land she managed to tie herself closely to its restrictions. That’s even more the case since she ‘arranged’ that Noah and I take on such vital roles within the life of the land.”

“The December solstice,” said Noah. “That would be the best time to complete her, and it is two months away. It would buy us time.”

“But if you promised,” said Harry, “would you need to go through with it?”

Noah shrugged. “No. But I dread to think of the consequences if Jack and I didn’t turn up for our ‘date’.” She grimaced. “We need to use those two months well.”

“And
I
need those final two bands,” Jack said. “Catling will be neither completed nor defeated without them.”

“Jack…” Noah said, sitting forward.

“Yes?”

“Do you think this White Queen might have them?”

For a moment Jack stared at Noah. “But Aeneas said…”

“Aeneas may have been duped.”

“Christ,” said Jack, “you may be right. Now it is even more important to either manage to contact the
White Queen, or, better, to get Grace out of that rubble.”

“Then are we agreed,” said George. “Jack tries his best to contact the White Queen, and if that doesn’t work, then Jack and Noah give their promise to Catling…and we all hope to God that once Grace comes out she can give us more information, or that she gives Jack and Noah the key that will destroy Catling. Yes?”

No one looked very happy about it, but eventually everyone nodded. After a little more desultory conversation, Jack, Noah, the Lord of the Faerie and Stella rose to leave.

After he farewelled the others, George pulled Jack to one side. “I will send for a car for you,” he said, “but first I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

Having initiated the conversation, George now hesitated. “I was watching your face as you talked of Grace,” he said. “I wanted to ask…if…”

Jack smiled. “Are you remembering that night in the Broken Bough, when we both lamented the fact neither of us would ever have Noah?”

George’s face relaxed. “Yes.”

“Well…I thought then, and thought for too many years afterwards, that I would never find another woman I could possibly love as much as Noah. But…maybe I have. As you have.”

Now George smiled, honestly and truly. “Yes. I have. Jack…good luck.”

Jack wasn’t sure if George wished him well with Grace, or more generally with the battle against the Troy Game. But he smiled, shook the king’s hand, and left feeling marginally better than when he had entered the room.

Half an hour later he drew up in his borrowed car outside the White Queen Cafe in Cromwell Road.

Very slowly Jack got out of the car and closed the door behind him.

Both windows and door were boarded up, and the cafe looked as if it had been abandoned for many months. Cobwebs hung between planks, and, through a gap in the planks covering the door, Jack could see a pile of mail on the floor.

He felt very cold and, for a moment, closer to despair than ever.

There was a postman walking past, and Jack stopped him, asking him if he knew how long the cafe had been boarded up.

“Mrs Stanford took herself down to her sister’s place in Devon at the beginning of the war,” the postman said, watching curiously the expressions crossing Jack’s face. “The cafe hasn’t been open in over a year.”

“Of course it hasn’t,” said Jack. “Thank you.”

As the postman continued on his way, looking back over his shoulder once or twice at the American who had stopped him, Jack looked up at the sky.

The shadow had vanished.

There was nothing left.

“Grace?” Jack whispered.

He received no reply. Whatever he’d been able to perceive of Grace previously had now vanished.

Grace was as “gone” as the White Queen and the labyrinthine shadow.

It was then, also, that Jack realised Matilda was dead, and he turned to the car, and, leaning against it, crossed his arms on the car’s roof, bent his face down into them, and wept.

I
f I had wanted to escape previously, it was nothing to how I felt now. My right hand scrabbled desperately amongst the rubble, scraping and cutting my fingers, but there was little I could do.

I could
feel
Catling drawing closer, a terrifying, malignant presence, far worse than anything else I had ever felt from her, seeping down through tiny cracks in the rubble.

How are you feeling, sweet Grace?

I gave a single sob,
loathing
myself for the weakness. The feeling of evil was so overpowering that every sense I had was screaming at me to run, run, run…

I’d never felt this sense of evil before, and I wondered at the fact she’d been saving it for so long.

I asked you how you were feeling, Grace.

I could see her now, although this made no sense in the confined (and pitch-black) crack I had as a space about me. Catling sat on a pile of rubble a few feet away, a young woman of malevolent air and a nasty, childishly spiteful face.

“I am not at my best,” I whispered, amazed that I could even speak.

Catling laughed. “You’re about to get even worse, sweeting. Tell me, can you feel the weight of bricks crushing you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that you’d be dead now if it weren’t for my intervention?”

What did she want? My gratitude? “Yes.”

“Your parents and Jack are quite distraught. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Are you happy about it?”

What did she want?
“No. I wish they didn’t suffer or worry.”

“Well, I
want
them to suffer and worry. It is good for them. Might concentrate their minds. I’ve told them that if they don’t agree to complete me then…well, here you’ll stay. Given that I think they rather want you out, I have high hopes they’ll do what I want.”

I was crying again, silently this time, feeling the tears trickle down my grit-covered cheeks.

“So I expect they’ll get you back, dear Grace.” She paused, and in that pause I could hear malevolence gathering. “Of course, they’re not going to get you back
quite
the way they want.”

As soon as she finished speaking, I heard it. What sounded like a huge boulder tumbling down through the rubble. There shouldn’t be space for it,
no
boulder should be able to force its way down through the rubble.

But one did nonetheless.

“It is the lintel from the doorway into the flats, Grace. Heavy concrete. Able to do much damage, I imagine. Poor Jack, won’t he weep when he sees you?”

I struggled, crying out in horror as I heard the lump of concrete tumbling closer, over and over, over and over…

“I’m going to say to you what I once heard your father saying to Jack, when he was welcoming him back into London after an unfortunate period of time spent in exile. I only need you alive, Grace. I don’t need you whole.”

The concrete slid closer, rasping and rumbling, and it was the most terrible thing I have ever heard in my entire life.

I only need you alive, Grace. I don’t need you whole.

Now the concrete was sliding towards me at a frightful pace. I was screaming, not caring about the pain that tore through my chest with the effort, when I felt a sudden rush of warm air, and then something slammed into my head.

N
auseated with fear and worry, Jack rejoined Noah and Weyland’s vigil at Coronation Avenue.

It was late at night now, almost midnight, but still the emergency personnel worked at the rubble, shifting it by hand, piece by piece, desperately searching for the entrance to the stairwell leading down to the basement shelter. It had been over twenty-four hours since the bomb had struck, and most of the initial crowd of onlookers had gone home to bed or their shelters, but a score or more still huddled about, sharing thermoses of tea or chocolate, transfixed by the horror before them.

The tent was still there, its interior as stark with despair as it had been when Jack had left it hours earlier. There was a table set out with the remnants of tea and sandwiches, but the Red Cross staff and volunteers had gone home an hour or so earlier. Noah and Weyland, the only two left within, had stood up when they heard the car pull up, its door slam, and then footsteps walking towards the tent, pausing as their owner stared for a long minute at the rubble.

When he entered, his uniform dishevelled, his face stubbled with beard, his eyes haggard, Noah gave a
soft cry and turned her own face into Weyland’s shoulder.

“You didn’t find the White Queen,” Weyland said, his voice flat and emotionless. He looked even worse than Jack, his face grey, his eyes bloodshot, and he wavered slightly on his feet, as if exhaustion was but a few minutes from claiming him completely.

Jack gave a terse shake of his head. “The cafe was boarded up. A passing postman told me it had been that way since the beginning of the war. What Grace and I entered had been a construct of the White Queen.”

“Who
is
she?” Noah said, turning her head to look at Jack although she kept it resting against Weyland. “What does she want. Why?
Why?
”

Weyland’s arm tightened about her, and Jack looked away briefly before continuing: “There’s worse. The shadow has gone.”

“
What?
” Noah and Weyland said together.

“You didn’t feel it?” Jack said to Noah.

She shook her head. “I was concentrating only on Grace,” she said. “And I…we…”

Noah burst into tears, and it was Weyland who finished what she’d been trying to say. “We lost any sense of her about an hour ago,” he said.

“Aye,” Jack said, then sat down abruptly on a nearby chair. “Matilda is dead—”

He’d been about to add “too”, and stopped himself only just in time.

“Oh, gods…” Noah said brokenly. “Not Matilda. Not Matilda as well.”

Weyland sat down in a chair, pulling Noah down into one beside his. “They can’t all be…”

“She isn’t dead,” Jack said, and Noah and Weyland understood he wasn’t referring to Matilda. “She
can’t
be. Catling can’t kill her without killing herself.”

They were empty words, and he knew it. Catling patently had the capability of making things far worse than death for Grace.

Noah straightened up, wiping away her tears. “Jack, we’ve got to—”

“I know,” he said.

“Dear gods,” Weyland said. “Complete the Troy Game? But—”

We will promise only,
said Jack into Weyland’s mind, holding the man’s eyes with his.
And, in promising, free Grace from whatever hell Catling has constructed for her.

“We must, Weyland,” Noah said.

Then pray to all the gods and heavens you can get out of the promise when you need to,
Weyland said.

Jack and Noah walked slowly through the crypt of St Paul’s. Again, while there were many members of the cathedral Watch about, none of them were aware of the man and woman—of the two ancient gods—who walked among them.

Jack and Noah had come straight from Coronation Avenue. Both looked terrible, close to exhaustion both physically and emotionally. They walked hand in hand, their steps dragging, their faces pale and drawn.

As they neared the tomb of Florence Nightingale, Catling emerged from the shadows.

This was the first time Noah had seen her in centuries, and she instinctively drew closer to Jack as they came to a halt a few paces away from Catling.

“Well,” said Catling, “for a Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth, you’re looking rather dilapidated. Where your pride? Your elegance? Your might?”

“Buried with Grace,” said Jack, “as well you know.”

Catling smiled, the expression terribly cruel. “And look what it has brought me, eh? What I wanted. My Kingman and Mistress, at my feet. So, tell me, what do you here? What do you have to say?”

“You know why we are here,” said Jack. “We’ve come with what you want. A promise to complete you, to raise the final Flower Gate.”

Something came over Catling then, and it took Noah and Jack a moment to realise it was intense excitement. Her entire form blurred, became a dense mass of darkness, before she returned to her usual form of the white-faced young woman.

“
When?
” Catling said.

“The winter solstice,” said Noah.

“No. No delays. Do it now.”

“Blame yourself for the delay!” snapped Jack. “You bound the Game to the land, you bound both your Kingman and Mistress to the land, and if you want this done properly then you need to wait until one of the nights of power which will bring the entire land behind us. The winter solstice it will have to be…unless you want something
less
than what we’re capable of delivering.”

Catling went very still, so much so that for a long moment she appeared to be a statue capable of neither breath nor movement.

“Two and a half months,” she said, finally. “I’ll tell you what, Jack. If you don’t mind me pushing Grace deeper and deeper into torment during those two and a half months, then I’m happy to wait. It’s no trouble on my part to strip Grace’s soul a little barer for each hour you delay. Your choice, Jack. Your choice.”

Jack wanted nothing more than to reach out and strangle her. “You
said
you’d give Grace back to us once we’d promised—”

“And so I will. Most of her, anyway. The best bits I may keep. Play with a little bit, if you understand my
meaning. Whatever happens, Jack, Grace is not going to be the same girl if ever she wakes up.”

Suddenly Catling’s face twisted. “
Complete me
!” Then she was gone, and Jack and Noah were left staring in horror at the space where she’d been.

They fled back to Coronation Avenue, using their power rather than more conventional means.

It was a vastly different place to that they had left but an hour earlier. The rescue efforts were now frantic, and directed in one spot, whereas previously they had been desultory and spread over most of the mound of rubble.

“Weyland?” Noah said as she and Jack appeared at his side (it was well that everyone’s attention was concentrated on the rescue effort, so that their sudden appearance raised no eyebrows).

“They’ve found the stairwell,” Weyland said, his voice tight. “You’ve promised, then.”

Noah and Jack glanced at each other, their faces gaunt.

Then they looked back at the rescue efforts, not bothering to answer.

Catling seethed. Icy dread be damned, she’d succumbed to incandescent rage. Jack was delaying.

Very well. If he wanted to delay then he was going to pay the price.

When he finally got Grace back he was going to wish she had died instead.

An hour later came a shout, then the activity became even more frantic. Noah moaned and would have started forward, save that Weyland held her back. “They’ll bring her out soon,” he said. “Wait.” The waiting was the worst thing any of the three had ever endured. It took another three hours before
enough of the rubble had been removed that the rescue workers could lift a limp, bloody figure onto a stretcher. Medical and rescue personnel leaned over her and, after several terrible, long minutes, the fire chief trudged over to where Noah, Weyland and Jack stood.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Noah burst into tears.