The Lord of the Faerie opened his mouth to answer, but in fact it was Elizabeth who spoke, her voice full of wonder. “You are the Green Man,” she said. “The Lord of the Forests.”
The Lord of the Faerie smiled, pleased. For centuries the simple folk had worshipped the Lord of the Faerie as the Green Man, honouring him every May Day with dancing and song and branches gathered from the woods. “Aye,” he said. “That is one of my names, although my realm stretches far further than just the forests.”
Elizabeth smiled, the expression making her beautiful. She sank once more into a deep curtsey. “My great lord, I am your servant!”
“And I!” cried Frances, aping Elizabeth’s curtsey.
“What may I do to please you?” asked Elizabeth, looking up at the Lord of the Faerie with shining eyes.
“Only that you do as I ask,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “Now, tell me, do you know who Eaving’s Sisters are?”
The girls glanced at each other, then shook their heads.
The Lord of the Faerie smiled. “Then I have some introductions to make. Come. You are about to be inducted into a sisterhood far greater than the one you have known hitherto.”
Twelve
Idol Lane, London
NOAH SPEAKS
Iwas numbed by all that had happened. The terrible agony when Weyland had set the imp to tearing his way free. Weyland’s subsequent healing of me. The story of his daughter.
Our shared vision atop the hill, where we both said too much.
Weyland’s two terrifying references to shelter.
Set against the uncertainty and terror of Weyland was the wonder of the Faerie Court, and the moment when Louis, knowing, finally had held me in his arms—and I had somehow, for some reason, held back from him.
In my current state I didn’t feel like exploring why I might have done that.
Then, so quickly following on that, Ariadne, telling me I was of her and Asterion’s blood. That I was a Darkwitch. That I was something that Louis and Charles both would naturally revile.
Then, Catling. My daughter, the lie. The Troy Game, making sure I did what it wanted. Nothing counted but what it wanted.
Yet more—Weyland, talking to me of a terrible price. I had told him that Jane was to teach me the ways of the labyrinth (I could hardly tell him about Ariadne, could I?) merely to distract him from questioning me too closely about Catling. Then he had wanted the bands. I had hedged (for all the gods’ sakes, I had wanted some space to think! Some time—was that too much to ask?), and then he had sprung, trapping me.
My entire world was utterly devastated. There was not a single element left that I could understand, or which existed to save me.
Amid all this chaos, where I drifted so vulnerable and fragile, stepped a saviour. Someone who offered me shelter, and time, and all the space I could ever need.
At a terrible price.
Part Seven
NOAH’S TERRIBLE PRICE
London, 1939
Jack Skelton had seen houses like this in Hollywood movies, but even Hollywood’s versions did nothing to prepare him for the sheer beauty and elegance of the building in which he found himself.
The front doors led into a small anteroom where a uniformed footman waited to take any coats and bags. The anteroom then opened out into a magnificent, domed entrance room with a grand staircase rising in graceful spirals to the heart of the house. The floor was marble, the fittings rich glowing mahogany and crystal, the atmosphere one of studied elegance and stillness.
He heard Stella come up behind him, and he turned to look at her. “What is Weyland doing here? For gods’ sakes, he—”
“He is welcome here, Ringwalker.”
“This is a pretty turnabout,” Skelton hissed. “Are you still his whore, then?”
Stella went white, and her eyes glittered. “Everyone else has moved forward, Brutus. Why can’t you?”
He took a step towards her, a hand outstretched, but stopped as he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs.
He whipped about.
Two men walked towards him. The one in front was in his early fifties, tall and lean with an ascetic face under thinning brown hair. He was dressed in what Skelton called casual uniform: military trousers and shirt under a civilian red woollen pullover.
“Jack,” said the man, holding out his hand.
Skelton took it, but, instead of shaking the man’s hand, bowed his head over it in a gesture of deep respect. “Faerie Lord,” he said. “You must be the Old Man.”
The Lord of the Faerie grinned. “Absolutely, old chap. Glad to see you, don’t you know?”
He laughed at the expression on Skelton’s face. “I am glad to see you, Jack. More than you can possibly know.” His face sobered. “You cannot imagine the pickle we find ourselves in.”
“If you’ve invited Weyland Orr into the Faerie then I’m not bloody surprised,” Skelton muttered.
“I think you know my companion,” the Lord of the Faerie said, turning about and waving the other man forward.
Skelton looked, and went still in shock.
The Lord of the Faerie’s “companion” explained the security outside.
He was George VI, King of England, and John Thornton-reborn.
“Jack,” said the king, stretching out his hand. “More salubrious surroundings within which to meet than The Broken Bough, I should think.”
The Llandin
“See,” said the Lord of the Faerie softly. He had his hand on Louis’ shoulder, and could feel the man trembling.
They stood atop Parliament Hill near Highgate. Once called the Llandin, it was the senior among the sacred hills of the ancient land.
It was late at night. London stretched in the distance, a sparkling of tiny lights by the moonlit gleam of the River Thames. To the east and west tiny hamlets likewise twinkled as people lit candles and lamps for the night.
None of this did the Lord of the Faerie and Louis de Silva see. Instead, there stretched before them the ancient faerie landscape. Forests crept down from the north and the east. Tiny laneways and roads winding, barely visible in the moonlight. The sweep of the river, far vaster in its ancient form than it was in seventeenth-century England.
The river also twinkled. Deep within its depths water sprites cast their eyes upwards, catching the moonlight and refracting it back to the two men atop the Llandin. As the sprites’ eyes caught the moonlight, so also did the tens of thousands of bronzed axes lying on the riverbed. They had been cast there over hundreds of years in order to honour the great goddess of the waters so that both land and women would burgeon with new life.
The river was alive with light.
Strange primeval beasts nosed among the river meadows, occasionally raising their snouts and sniffing the air, knowing that magic was afoot this night and nervous with anticipation.
Shadows were everywhere, haunting not only field and forest but also the few tiny human encampments dotting the meadows.
“When is this?” Louis asked softly. He remembered the time Genvissa brought him to this hill and showed him the land, and what he saw now was different even to that. Far, far older.
“Many millennia ago,” the Lord of the Faerie said.
“Is this when you first walked?”
The Lord of the Faerie turned his strange-lit eyes to de Silva. “There has never been a first time in my walking,” he said. “I have always been. If there has been land, then there was also me. I have taken many forms, not just this man shape. I have imitated the shape of the great toothed birds that once nested in the cliffs of a far more primordial time. I have taken the form of the tiniest of moles and vetches. Now this man form appeals to me, for it mirrors the shape of those who play the Troy Game.”
Louis shivered. “You do not play the Game, do you?”
“No. I am one of the very few who has not been caught within its twists and turns.”
“And thus you can see what others cannot?”
The Lord of the Faerie’s teeth gleamed. “Do not ask me what I can see,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “for it shall do you no good.”
Louis studied the face of the Lord of the Faerie. He could see Coel in there, but only just, and he wondered if Coel would ever survive in—
“What if Coel was always me?” said the Lord of the Faerie. “I rarely walk, only when needed. But I always live. Somewhere. In someone. Besides, would you begrudge Coel a death in me?”
The Lord of the Faerie paused, then laughed softly at the expression on Louis’ face.
“You would,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “That surprises me…and comforts me. Fear not, Louis-William-Brutus. Coel shall always laugh during the day. But on some nights…or on some desperate faerie concern…then I step forth in my true form. What better for a King of England, eh?”