“She will know there has been good reason you could not do so,” said Long Tom as he prepared to leave.
“She will worry,” said Marguerite.
“She will know there was good reason,” the Sidlesaghe repeated. “Besides, she has a lover, John Thornton, to keep her company and to give her comfort.”
Complete silence met this pronouncement.
“What?” said Long Tom. “You thought you could take your pleasure in your shared bed, and in the comfort of your shared intimacies, and she not?”
“We have sent her our support,” said Charles, his voice tight.
“She is a living, breathing woman,” said Long Tom. “She needed more than the knowledge that you were all having a good time and wished her well.”
To that, no one had anything to say.
The group was very subdued as they first folded the emerald cloth then handed it into Marguerite’s hands, where it became once more the piece of crumbled turf. She put this away in its box, and stowed the box in one of Charles’ chests.
Then she rejoined the other three on the bed.
“I wish we had seen Noah,” she said.
“Aye,” said Charles. He looked exhausted, for it was mostly his power which had held the Circle together, and he rubbed at his eyes and forehead, as if he could soothe away his tiredness.
“Charles,” said Louis. “We need to—”
Charles gave him no chance to finish. He caught Louis’ eye, and gave a small nod. “I know. Wait a moment.” He rose from the bed, and gave Marguerite and Kate each a kiss. “Go to sleep,” he said. “Louis and I shall be with you shortly.”
The women looked at each other, then at Charles’ face; they pulled back the coverlets and slipped beneath them.
“Do not be long,” said Kate, and fell into sleep almost immediately.
Louis smiled and, leaning over the bed, tucked in the coverlets about her shoulders. He straightened and looked at Charles, who tipped his head towards the door.
They stood by a shadowed window, speaking in whispers.
“I do not care for what Long Tom has told us,” said Charles. “I for one cannot countenance the thought that we must sit idly back and watch Noah go to Asterion.”
“I am with you,” said Louis.
Charles held Louis’ gaze. “We must prevent it.”
“Aye. How?”
“One of us must—”
“How?”
Charles put a hand on Louis’ shoulder. “Ah, my friend. I am too weary to hold a single thought in my head. I cannot think of the ‘how’. Not tonight. But a ‘how’ you and I shall find. We must.”
Louis relaxed a little. “After what Long Tom has told us tonight, after what he has told us we must do, we have no choice.”
Charles’ hand tightened a little. “We will not tell Marguerite or Kate of our plans. It would only worry them.”
Louis nodded. “I wish…”
“We have wished on the stars and the moon and the sun for over two and a half thousand years already, my friend. I am sick to death of ‘wishes’. Now, we must act.”
Three
Idol Lane, London
Weyland brought two new girls to Idol Lane. They replaced the three who had worked for him since he’d first moved into this house, and who had slowly over the past six months grown so tired and dispirited that Weyland had let them go.
Each had walked out the front door, their heads low, their faces wretched, with nothing but enough coin to keep them fed for a week. Weyland felt he owed them nothing more. They had the skills to earn themselves more coin if they so desired, and there were enough men in the city who would take in a girl willing to exchange her body for food and a roof over her head.
These two new girls were the best Weyland had ever found. Both from Essex, and from neighbouring villages, they’d separately come to London seeking work in one of the great mansions of the Strand.
They had, of course, found no work at all, for they had few skills and no experience, but they had found each other and, in time, Weyland had found them—sheltering under one of the small bridges crossing Fleet River, cold, hungry and destitute.
Willing to do whatever they needed in order to survive.
They were called Elizabeth and Frances. They had surnames, but Weyland had forgotten them as soon as he’d heard them. Surnames were of no importance to whores. What was important was that they were pretty enough, young enough and, within an hour or two of being taken back to Idol Lane, terrified enough to do whatever Weyland told them.
At fifteen, Frances was the younger of the two by a year. She had a strong, lithe body and abundant red hair: Weyland could use that to market her as a firebrand, although less a firebrand Weyland thought he had yet to meet. Her face was round and pretty with pale, creamy skin, lightly spattered with freckles. Those who didn’t like firebrands could be tempted with her sweet innocent air.
Weyland found Frances somewhat dreary, but the other one, Elizabeth, attracted him markedly. She was tall and slim, with fine dark hair, elegant features, translucent skin and pale green eyes. Elizabeth had an exotic look about her which bespoke a fathering by one of the dark, quiet men who wandered the country’s highways and byways, and whose bloodlines stretched back many thousands of years into England’s ancient past. As attractive as Weyland found these mysterious looks, there was something else about her…Weyland wasn’t entirely sure what it was, although he wondered if it might be her intelligence, for Elizabeth had a wit about her that most of the girls Weyland brought to his house completely lacked. Unlike Frances, Elizabeth had been a virgin when she entered Idol Lane.
Weyland made certain that she lost that virginity within the hour.
Elizabeth had wept, and afterwards curled up about herself. Jane had gone to the girl, and wrapped her arms about Elizabeth, and tried to comfort her, all the time shooting Weyland dark looks that, had they been arrows, would certainly have seen Weyland skewered in forty different places.
But looks didn’t touch Weyland, and the next day both girls were hauled upstairs, and set to entertaining the men who came to the front door.
Within a week both Frances and Elizabeth had acquired the hard, blank facial expression of all whores, and somehow Weyland found that disquieting. Especially whenever he regarded Elizabeth.
At odd moments, when he was alone in his Idyll, Weyland regretted the fact that he’d set Elizabeth to whoring so soon.
Perhaps he could have brought her here, to the Idyll.
Perhaps she could have been a companion for him.
Perhaps…
When his thoughts drifted this way, Weyland found himself yearning for that something, that one, small, insignificant thing, that he needed to complete his Idyll. No matter how hard he’d tried, he’d never managed to identify the Idyll’s lack. But when he thought on Elizabeth, and thought on bringing her to the Idyll, then somehow…perhaps…maybe even…
Ah! It was just out of his reach.
But Weyland kept thinking of Elizabeth, and he began to spend more of his time in the kitchen when he knew that Elizabeth would be there.
Three weeks after Elizabeth had come to Idol Lane, Weyland came down the stairs, walked through the parlour into the kitchen, and there found Elizabeth alone, sitting at the table.
Elizabeth looked up, and a strange expression came over her face as she saw him standing there. To his discomfort, Weyland realised it was fear.
Why did that realisation discomfort him?
“Where are Jane and Frances?” he said.
“Gone to Smithfield,” she said. “Jane said we needed meat.”
Weyland nodded, and sat down next to her on the bench.
She smelt fresh, as if she had just bathed. The fact that Elizabeth was not staled with the sweat of men made Weyland feel extraordinarily cheerful. It made him think of the Idyll, and then of its incompleteness.
“Are you happy?” he said.
She looked at him in disbelief. “I want to go home,” she said.
“This is your home, now.”
To Weyland’s deepening discomfort, Elizabeth’s beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Home to my village,” she said. “Home to my sister, and her husband.”
“You need to earn to pay your way.”
“I would crawl there on my hands and knees, if you would but let me go.”
Weyland didn’t know what to say. He lifted a hand, and gently touched Elizabeth’s cheek.
She flinched.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “I wish…”
She tensed, and Weyland wondered if she was terrified.
The thought gave him no joy, and that unsettled him more than ever.
He thought again of his Idyll, waiting upstairs, and of Elizabeth’s sweetness and intelligence. Without thinking, Weyland slid his hand behind Elizabeth’s neck, holding her head still, and leaned forward and kissed her. She tensed even further, but then managed to relax a little, and that gave Weyland hope.