No! Noah wailed.
“Aye!” Catling said. “So now do you remember your duty, oh great Mistress of the Labyrinth? If you destroy me, then you destroy not only Grace, but this land, this city, and the Idyll and the Faerie besides.”
No…
“Complete me,” Catling went on, “and Grace lives, and this land and the Faerie and the Idyll live as well. Under my dominion of course, but at least they live. Now go. Go! Level the dancing floor as you wish, ensure your stone hall is rebuilt as you will, but know always that there is only one thing you can ever do if you want Grace and everything that you hold dear to survive…and that is to dance the final Dance of the Flowers with Ringwalker.”
She paused, and for a moment the only sound was the harsh breathing of Noah and Weyland, and the terrible cries of Grace, lying in the doorway, her wrists bound with agonising vileness.
“You cannot undo what I have done, Noah. No one can. Grace is bound to me, and everywhere she walks is tied to her fate. Now…go!”
There was an instant’s hesitation, and then, as the bands of fire about Grace’s wrists vanished as abruptly as they’d appeared, Weyland grabbed Noah and together they stumbled towards the open door and their daughter.
Epilogue
London 1666-1675
It was difficult to come to grips with the enormity of the disaster. As the fires slowly burned out, people picked their way back through what was left of the streets of London. In many cases the streets themselves no longer existed. Buildings had collapsed the length of several blocks or more, entirely filling the open space of streets with blackened, scorched, foul-smelling bricks and stones and half-consumed timbers. In some places the fire had been so intense the stones had melted; in other places buildings were left half-standing with dangerous unsupported stone walls swaying in the incongruous blue skies.
There was very little left of any home which had stood in the fire’s path. Goods and valuables, history and emotions, had all been devoured by the flames. People were stunned and uncomprehending, unable to envision how they might ever manage to rebuild their lives.
Only a few men summoned any degree of decisiveness in the initial days, and among them the king was first. Charles was everywhere, organising, commending, sympathising, releasing funds from the royal purse, and opening stores for food and materials for shelter. He had spent the three days of the fire in London itself, directing his guards to aid the firefighting efforts, handing out golden coins to any who would help in pulling down buildings in an effort to create a firebreak. By the time the fire had burned itself to a standstill, Charles looked tired and dishevelled, his clothes were sooty and water-soaked.
Yet still he did not rest. He paid for food to be sent to the homeless sheltering in Moorfields, then went there himself and addressed the crowd, assuring them that London would rise from the ashes better and stronger than ever. He consulted with architects, engineers, surveyors, and set them to drawing plans. He bullied the Commons into setting up Parliamentary Committees to establish strict laws regarding the rebuilding of London.
He called Sir Christopher Wren before him, and spoke quietly to him, and set him to rebuilding St Paul’s.
“As your vision requires it,” the king said to Wren quietly.
Wren looked startled. “You know of…?”
“Aye,” Charles said. “She came to me, as well.” He put his hand on Wren’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Wren. Many people will oppose what you shall build. It will be different. Innovative. Alarming. But between us we will persevere. We must. Sir Christopher, St Paul’s must be rebuilt the way you were shown.”
“I understand,” Wren said. “It will be my life’s work to accomplish it.”
Four days after the fire was finally quelled, the king stood amid the ruins of St Paul’s. The lead roof had melted entirely away; in places running down stone walls, in others collecting in great lumpy masses amid the rubble strewn along the floor of the nave. The walls had partly collapsed, the stained glass windows had shattered and exploded in the heat, and all the memorials and side chapels were gone. The great Norman cathedral of St Paul’s was nothing more than a shapeless, dangerous, teetering mass of leaning walls and piles of rubble.
Charles had come to the cathedral with a score of courtiers and guards, but he had waved all bar one of them away as he picked his way through the rubble. Louis de Silva was the only one he wanted to accompany him into the dark heart of the cathedral.
Louis and Charles walked slowly and carefully through the rubble. They did not speak, and, although to the watchers it appeared that it was the king and the courtier who walked through the ruins, in reality Charles and Louis slipped into the Faerie almost as soon as they had stepped out alone.
Now, in the heart of the cathedral, standing before what had once been the altar, the Lord of the Faerie and Ringwalker stood looking down at a jumbled pile of scorched bones.
“Is it…” Ringwalker said.
“Noah?” said the Lord of the Faerie. “No. She is safe. For the moment.”
“Then to whom do these bones belong?”
“Not to whom, Ringwalker, but to what. They are a warning of what will come if you and Noah do not complete the Troy Game.” He paused. “They are the bones of all our hopes and dreams.”
Ringwalker stood in silence for a long time, his eyes not leaving the pathetic jumble of bones.
“What can we do?” he whispered finally.
“I do not know,” said the Lord of the Faerie.
In the Realm of the Faerie Noah sat with her baby daughter in her lap. Behind her, his hand on her shoulder, stood Weyland Orr. Before them stood the assembled mass of the faerie folk, as well as the Lord of the Faerie and the Caroller.
Noah looked down on her daughter, and wept, and all wept with her.
They had flung everything they knew at the baby, every power at their command, and yet still faint red lines of fire glowed about her wrists.
She had been their joy. Now she would prove to be their doom.
All Noah could think of, as she sat there and wept, was her prophetic request to Christopher Wren: Build me a casket, Master Wren. Build me a coffin of hopes and dreams.
And so he would, save that now the cathedral would prove to be her casket, and not that of the Troy Game.
1675
After years of wrangling, of planning, of heartache, of arguing and of desperate pleading, Sir Christopher Wren finally had the approval of the city and church officials to rebuild the ancient cathedral church of St Paul’s in a cruciform layout with a magnificent dome.
On this day in the second half of the year, Wren stood on the site of the demolished cathedral. It had taken nine years, and far more lives, to bring the charred walls down. Now, Wren could start the intricate work of laying out the foundations.
It was an important day, and a crowd had gathered to watch. Wren, hatless, his curls blowing a little in the breeze, walked slowly about the levelled site, finally choosing a spot where one day would rise the great dome as that place most suitable from which to measure out the rest of the cathedral.
Impatient, his booted foot tapping, Wren called to a nearby labourer. “Bring me a stone, a flat stone, so that I may the more permanently mark this spot.”
The man hurried off, conscious of everyone’s eyes on him.
To one side of the churchyard was a pile of flat stones. The labourer grabbed one, and hurried back to Wren.
“Humph.” Wren took the stone, turning it over in his hands.
He stilled as he saw the stone’s front surface, and a chill of supernatural awe ran down his spine.
The stone was an old tombstone, broken and scorched in the Great Fire. But despite the dirt and ash which coated its surface, Wren could clearly read the single word inscribed there.
Resurgam.
I will rise again.
Wren breathed in deeply, trying to still his emotions. Then he raised the broken tombstone high above his head, showing it to all gathered about, and shouted, “Resurgam! Resurgam!”
Resurgam!
As the shouting died down a movement at the edge of the crowd caught Wren’s eye.
A little girl, not more than five or six, stood there. She was very lovely, with black snapping curls cascading down her back and with deep blue eyes in her pale face.
Shadows danced about her eyes and form, and for a moment Wren felt coldness envelop him.
In one hand she held a large rolled up sheet of paper, which she allowed to unravel once she realised she’d caught Wren’s eye.