“The stag must be raised.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “Is it possible?”
“Yes. He was bred in this land, this life.”
I found I was trembling, and I clutched my hands tightly together. “Where is he?”
“In exile. But he will return.”
I nodded. “If the stag is to be raised, then I must learn the dances and intricacies of the labyrinth. I must become the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
He nodded. “But neither of these tasks—the raising of the stag, and the handing to you of the powers of Mistress of the Labyrinth—can be accomplished if the first is not achieved. Old wounds must be healed, Eaving. They must, for Asterion is growing powerful beyond measure. Give him another life beyond this one, and if you don’t have the weapons and power needed to destroy him, then he will best you…”
He stopped, and took a moment to compose himself. “There is one more thing,” he said.
I closed my eyes briefly. I was not sure if I wanted to hear it.
“Eaving,” he said, “you have been reborn. The Stag God shall rise. There is one more who shall walk again.”
I considered his words. I was still so much the novice as Eaving. When I had been Caela I’d lingered in unknowing for years, and once I had known who I was, and accepted it…well, then I’d died all too soon. There was still so much for me to know…to remember…
“Who?” I said, hoping Long Tom would just tell me.
“The Lord of the Faerie,” he said. “The one the peoples venerate as the Green Man.”
Then he was gone, and I was left rigid with shock and ancient memory.
Idol Lane, London
He was a grown man now, thirty-three years old, and successful without being flamboyant or overly noticeable within the great bustling community that was London. Weyland Orr had risen from street boy to entrepreneur essentially by becoming a procurer. Whatever it was that a man or woman wanted, then Weyland Orr could discover and deliver it: fine linens, dainties, jewels, horse- and woman-flesh—none of it was beyond the remarkable skills of Weyland. Whatever a Londoner wanted, Weyland could deliver—so long as there was coin enough to pay at the end of the transaction.
Weyland was totally discreet. Not merely in the procuring of dreams, but in keeping himself as unremarkable as possible. People requested, Weyland discovered and delivered, and after a day or so the customer tended to forget who had procured the goods; there had been a man…but, oh, his face, it was too difficult to recall, and his name…no…that had gone, as well. Weyland drifted through London, discovering its secrets, indulging its whims, pandering to its excesses, and yet few ever noticed or remembered him. He was merely one of the city’s more spectral inhabitants, slipping silently and unobserved through back alleys and lanes.
Jane was far better known than Weyland. He’d come to regret prostituting her so early. He’d overused her during her early years, offering her without thought to sailor and labourer and clerk alike. A year or so previously Weyland had noticed the early signs of the pox in her—the open sore on her forehead which would not heal, the ache in her long bones as the disease took hold. Weyland lamented the onset of this disease. Not because it made Jane suffer and would eventually disfigure her, but because Weyland did not want her to die before she managed that which he needed more than anything else in this life: for her to pass on the mysteries of the labyrinth to Cornelia-reborn.
Diseased, and thus useless as an earning woman, Jane no longer prostituted for Weyland, but managed the homeless, friendless girls that Weyland took from the streets. These girls Jane fed and bathed, and taught them some of the sexual skills that she had learned as a Mistress of the Labyrinth and as a woman who had experienced much through her several lives. Once the girls were fed, cleaned, and trained, Weyland offered them to his clients, whether sailor or bishop, so long as the girls’ freshness and looks lasted.
All this activity took place in a single room Weyland leased from a tavern keeper just off Cheapside. Here Weyland ate and slept, kept Jane, and worked his girls. Weyland could have afforded quarters more commodious, but for years he had preferred discretion to comfort, anonymity to open brazenness.
He was, after all, a highly cautious man, and he didn’t want to bring himself to the attention of the Troy Game, which was more powerful in this life than ever before. Weyland would have vastly preferred the opulence of a palace, but that he did not dare.
But, oh, how difficult it was to live in such close confines with Jane. Not surprisingly, Jane loathed Weyland, and her tongue was becoming tarter with each passing year (even with the beatings Weyland dealt her). It had now got to the point where Weyland had decided that it was high time to find more comfortable quarters. Somewhere discreet, somewhere dark, somewhere overlooked (Weyland still meant to keep himself as unremarked as possible), but somewhere larger where he could live separated by a wall or two from Jane.
Thus, in the autumn of 1646, Weyland set about discovering suitable accommodation for himself, Jane, whatever number of girls he had working for him at any given time, and for Cornelia-reborn, Noah, once he brought her to join them. Nothing ostentatious, nothing that might draw him to the attention of the Troy Game, but something that had more than one room.
As Weyland wandered the streets about his business, he also kept alert for some unassuming, darkened house that might serve both as a prison for Jane (as well as, eventually, Noah) and as a sanctuary for himself. London afforded many narrow alleys and winding, tiny lanes into which were crowded a host of tenement dwellings. Given his now not inconsiderable resources, Weyland could have had his pick of fifty of them.
And yet none of them felt right.
Weyland had not thought he would be so fastidious. He found fault with this house, and then that, and then the one after. This was too gloomy, this too airy, this had too many doors. After all, what was a house? A shelter, only—yet why should he care so greatly about finding the right shelter? To his disgust, as his hunt for a house extended into the months, Weyland found himself dreaming of shelter; of finding the perfect and most unexpected shelter; of falling into a space so comforting and beloved he could finally feel safe. Contented. Fulfilled.
These dreams worried Weyland. Yearning dreams of a comforting and safe shelter were so unlike him that Weyland wondered if he’d somehow managed to fall under the influence of some dark, malign planet. Damn it! All he needed was something vaguely upright, with at least two rooms, and secreted down some dark alleyway.
How difficult could that be in a city composed of almost nothing else?
Finally, just when Weyland thought he would drive himself insane with the looking, he wandered down Idol Lane.
Idol Lane was a narrow, crooked, dark, malodorous passageway in Tower Street Ward that ran north from Thames Street uphill to the junction of Tower and Little Tower streets. It was relatively insignificant, save that, halfway along, the lane bordered the jumbled buildings and churchyard of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East; everything else in the lane was either dank warehouse or tumbledown tenement. Barely nine feet wide the lane was cobbled with slippery, slime-covered stones, and existed in a permanent state of semi-darkness as both the church buildings and the warehouses reared so high into the sky that all sunlight was effectively blocked out.
As it was, the lane was much the same as hundreds of other malodorous, narrow lanes in the city, and as he stepped into it Weyland did not give it much thought. He was due to meet with a wealthy wool merchant in the church nave who required a small item that no one but Weyland could procure for him.
That the small item had to be stolen from the bedchamber of one of the great nobles in the realm had vastly increased its already not inconsiderable value, and Weyland was looking forward to a payment that would—should he ever find the right house—furnish his new home quite nicely.
Weyland slipped into the churchyard and then through a small door in the northern face of the church into the nave. St Dunstan’s-in-the-East had once been a quite magnificent church but now was greatly decayed. Its once beautiful floor of luminous green tiles was marred with myriad cracks. The banners hanging from the roof beams were motheaten and so faded their armorial shields were impossible to read. Two of the stained-glass windows were broken. Most of the golden plate from the altar had been pawned, and the majority of the stone memorials and tombs in the church (of which there were close to a hundred) were water-stained and crumbled.