“There is something else you need to see,” said Magog, and once again a giant’s hand turned him around, towards the cavernous space of the hall.
The glade lay cool and sheltered in the dappled light. A pool of emerald water stretched across its centre, while shadowy sentinel trees stood watch about its rim.
Partway between the water and the trees lay a white stag with blood-red antlers. His heart lay cruelly torn from his breast, but, as Louis watched, he could see that the heart continued to beat strongly, and the stag’s flanks rose and fell with living breath.
There was a movement. The stag’s head stirred, and raised a little. He snorted, and then gave a soft cry, as if calling to someone.
A man stepped forth from the shadowy recesses beneath the trees.
A king, for there was a halo of golden light about his head, as if a crown.
A king tall and well muscled and with long black curling hair.
Charles.
He walked to the stag, now straining to rise, and extended a hand to its nose. Blinding light filled the glade and, when it cleared, there stood the stag, as glorious as he would have been in his prime. His chest was healed, his stance was majestic, and he glowed with power and purpose.
Charles had vanished.
“See,” whispered Gog. “The Stag God has risen.”
Louis could see nothing but the sight of Charles walking into the clearing. “I always knew it would be him,” he said, his voice curiously flat. “Always. Whatever she said to me.”
“Nothing counts for you in this life but that the Stag God rises,” said Magog. “Nothing counts but that! Not the bands, not even Noah. Your purpose in this life must only be to ensure that the Stag God rises. Can you imagine, Louis, what an opponent the Stag God shall be, when he has not only his ancient powers of this land fully restored to him, but the powers of the bands as well? When he is not only Stag God of the ancient land, but Kingman of the Troy Game as well? Then he can challenge Weyland Orr, but not before.”
“Not before,” echoed Gog. “Never before that time.”
“Noah shall survive until that moment, Louis. You must understand that it shall be the Stag God, and no one else, who must wrench her from Weyland’s claws. Do you understand that, Louis?”
Louis said nothing, staring at the empty space where but a moment before he had seen Charles transform into the Stag God.
“Do you understand that, Louis?”
“Aye,” Louis ground out, as if he ceded away his life with each passing word. “I understand that.”
Part Five
RESTORATION
London, 1939
They turned back for the road to Epping Forest, Frank barely able to contain his impatience and irritation, Skelton smoking non-stop. He sat so hunched down in his seat, and with his cap pulled down over his eyes, that even though Frank glanced at him several times, itching for conversation, he always turned his eyes back to the road, his words unsaid.
With Piper’s car still leading the way they drove through Higham Hill, then through Chigham, then yet still further north until the great stretch of King George’s reservoir appeared on their left. On the right, in the distance, rose a long line of dark green.
Epping Forest.
Skelton kept his eyes ahead. He’d straightened a little in his seat as they approached the reservoir and he’d taken a fresh cigarette from its pack, although he had not lit it. Instead it tapped up and down, up and down, up and down on his knee.
Frank glanced at it in irritation.
Skelton looked at him…and the tap tap tapping of the cigarette increased in tempo.
Frank opened his mouth, but just before he said anything Piper’s car swerved off on a narrow laneway to the right, heading eastwards directly for the line of green.
Skelton glanced at the signpost at the head of the lane, then started as he saw the name of the laneway. Idol Lane.
“Dear God!” he said. “Where are we going?”
“To the Old Man’s house,” Frank said. “I told you. Faerie Hill Manor.”
“Are you certain this isn’t Weyland Orr’s house?”
Frank shook his head. “No. The Spiv hangs about, but the house belongs to the Old Man.” He glanced down at Skelton’s right hand.
Skelton looked down himself, and saw that he’d crushed the cigarette. He swore, and threw the ruined smoke out the window. “How far?”
“Not far,” said Frank. “Look, see ahead? On that hill?”
Skelton leaned forward, trying to peer through the windscreen. There was a hill rising in the distance. It was not very high and covered in what appeared to be, from this distance, manicured lawns, and perfectly dome-shaped. On its summit stood one of those nineteenth-century Gothic fancies England was famed for, all towers and turrets and whimsical spires.
“Faerie Hill Manor,” said Skelton softly, “atop The Naked.”
Idol Lane, London
NOAH SPEAKS
Jane pulled myself and Catling into the house and then closed the door behind us. We stood in a dimly lit parlour, its dark floorboards, heavy wooden sideboard and chairs and shuttered window giving it an air of deep cheerlessness.
Granted, at that moment I did not need either floorboards or heavy furniture to impart any sense of cheerlessness. Yet, strangely, I also felt relieved. What I had dreaded for so long had finally arrived; I no longer had to anticipate it, I merely had to survive it.
We stood in that dark room, and stared at each other.
All our history, our battles and jealousies and hatreds as Cornelia and Genvissa, and then Caela and Swanne, rose between us…and then somehow dissipated, as if neither of us had the courage or energy to deal with it at this moment.
Jane was dressed plainly but well, in clothes that would have suited any prosperous housewife, a fitted bodice and full skirt partly hidden by a voluminous apron tied about her waist. Neither apron nor full skirt did anything to hide her thinness.
Unlike the neatness of her clothes, her blonde hair was slightly unkempt, and then I realised that it was deliberately left so, that the side wings of her hair might fall over her forehead and cheeks and hide, somewhat, the festering sores that marred her skin. If it was not for those sores, the fear in her eyes, and the lingering traces of pain that I saw shadowed in both her countenance and bearing, then Jane Orr would have been a lovely woman.
“You should have run,” she said.
“I am sick of running,” I said. I pulled Catling forward a step—she had been standing behind my skirts. “Catling, this is Jane Orr. She shall be our companion for some time to come.”
Jane and Catling looked at each other, some degree of ill will clearly passing between them. Catling, as I had so often bemoaned, was no innocent, and she well knew who Jane was.
Her murderess in her former life.
Jane gave a single nod.
Catling stared at her a moment longer, then looked about the parlour, affecting boredom.
Jane looked back to me. “He waits,” she said.
I took a deep breath, and I am not ashamed to admit that it shuddered a little on its intake.
“Very well,” I said, and Jane led us through the parlour to the door leading to the kitchen.
This room was lighter, brighter and far more homely than the parlour, and that last was what surprised me most in that first instant I had to take it all in.
I had not expected Weyland’s house to be “homely”—and I thought this must be Jane’s doing, not his.
The kitchen was larger than the parlour, as befitting the most used room of the house. There was a bright hearth with irons holding pots and a kettle to one side of the fire. More bright-polished pots and baking dishes hung from the high mantelpiece on which rested some beautiful pieces of delftware.
Weyland must be doing well indeed.
There was a dresser, piled high with good plate, both pewter and pottery, and a table, and it was to this table that my attention was held.
Three people sat there, two girls and a man.
I could not look at Weyland immediately—I did not want him to have the satisfaction of witnessing my frightened eyes alight instantly on him—and so I studied the two girls.
They were staring at me with faces both frightened and fascinated. They were very young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, pretty, and yet with hard lines marring their mouths and foreheads.
I did not have to stretch my imagination to wonder what had caused that hardness in girls so young.
One of them was a redhead, her skin very pale and creamy and with freckles scattered over her forehead and nose. Her name was Frances, I later learned. The other was dark-haired and with black eyes shining with intelligence. She, as I discovered, was Elizabeth.