She may have been invisible, but as the fog thickened even more, coiling and twisting up from the Channel waters, there came a faint laugh, and some merry, whispered words.
Just like bubbling pea soup.
One after another, Luftwaffe pilots swore as the hastily radioed orders came in.
Return to base! Return to base! Flying conditions now extremely difficult.
Not to mention landing conditions, thought pilots as they exchanged glances within cockpits.
Now they’d have to get their bombers safely back on the ground…without their satanic payloads exploding.
At midnight, precisely, exhausted fire crews and emergency personnel in London were astounded to hear the All Clear sound.
All had expected the Luftwaffe to return and finish what they had so devastatingly started: the IBs had clearly been dropped to create fires to act as beacons for returning bombers.
No one had any way of knowing that the reason those bombers didn’t return was walking slowly through the surf in the churning, thick yellow fog that had suddenly, inexplicably, blanketed the Channel coast.
TEN
London
Monday, 30th December, 1940
While suburban Londoners could not fail to have been aware of the massive air raid
overnight, because of reporting restrictions very few had any idea of the amount of damage resulting from the raid. All that the BBC reported that morning was: Enemy aircraft attacked towns in the south of England during the night causing some damage. Fires were started and casualties have been reported. Unknowing, tens of thousands of people caught trains into work in the City as usual on Monday morning, only to stand outside London Bridge railway station, or Waterloo Station, mouths agape in horror at what they saw.
Twisted, blackened, smoking rubble where once there had been buildings.
Where once there had been the City.
Almost without exception, every one of those workers tried to find their way to work. They picked their way through streets littered with debris—masonry, twisted steel beams, shattered glass, stillsmouldering bodies—to their place of work…if it was still standing. It took some workers almost five hours to reach their workplace, only to stand for ten minutes talking with comrades before starting the painful return journey to the railway station once more. Others managed to get to their work in more timely fashion, to spend the day sorting out debris, tidying what they could, rescuing what remained, and, if practicable, settling down to the day’s business. Still others, deeply moved by the exhausted firemen about them, silently took sandwiches and thermoses from their lunch boxes and handed them out among the fire crews.
The GPO sent out the mail as usual, and postmen picked their careful way around fire crews and over rubble in order to deliver their letters.
Determined not to allow themselves to be cowed, Londoners did their best to resume their normal routines as soon as possible.
Jack and Noah stayed on Blackfriars Bridge until well after dawn, looking north to where the dome of St Paul’s still rose from amid the destruction.
“No doubt the papers will claim it a miracle,” Jack said dryly.
“Jack…what are we going to do?” Noah looked exhausted. Her shoulders were slumped, her face was smudged with soot, her hands trembled slightly where they clutched her coat.
“Indeed!” said a new voice. “What are you going to do?”
The Lord of the Faerie had appeared behind them, and Jack and Noah turned to the sound of his angry voice.
“The Sidlesaghes have gone!” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Murdered! And I heard what Catling said to you—sweet gods, she will work her murderous way through the entire Faerie! I didn’t agree with you completing the Troy Game, but I think I agree even less with your abandoning the attempt.”
“Coel—” Jack began.
“What happened?” the Lord of the Faerie continued. “Why did you stop? Look!” His hand cast out at the destruction beyond the bridge. “Can you even imagine what the Faerie looks like this morning? Can you—”
“Coel!” Jack reached out and seized the Lord of the Faerie’s shoulders. “Be still a moment. Listen to me. Grace is back. She—”
“Grace cannot fix what you have so gloriously mangled!” the Lord of the Faerie said.
“The shadow is back, too,” said Noah quietly.
The Lord of the Faerie sent her a furious glance. “And what good has that cursed shadow done any of us to this point? None!”
“Please, Coel,” said Jack, “please. I know how you fear. But listen to me. There is something happening, something…good. The All Clear sounded at midnight…why? The Luftwaffe should have returned, but they didn’t. And the Sidlesaghes…I’m not entirely sure they are completely gone. When Catling spoke to us she was unsettled, badly so. She only hauls out the huge threats when she feels threatened. She—”
“You didn’t complete her,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “She wasn’t threatened, she was angry.”
“She didn’t use Grace as a threat,” Jack said. “Catling snatched Grace from before Noah’s and my eyes within the cathedral…but when Catling came to us here she didn’t use Grace to threaten us as she did when Grace was buried under Coronation Avenue. That means she didn’t have Grace. And if Grace could have escaped the terror that was Catling last night, if she could have risen from her deathbed, then Grace has managed to access some power, or some knowledge, that thwarted Catling. Coel, let me talk to Grace. Believe me, trust me, for there is hope, and her name is Grace.”
The Lord of the Faerie stared at Jack, then gave a tight nod. “Gods help you if you’re wrong on this, Jack.”
With that he vanished, and Jack and Noah were left standing on the footpath of the bridge, staring at the space he had inhabited.
“What did you mean,” Noah said, “when you told the Lord of the Faerie that the Sidlesaghes had not completely gone? I can’t feel them…what can you sense?”
Jack paused a bit before answering, his eyes focussed on the dome of St Paul’s in the distance. “I can’t feel them either,” he said eventually. “It was just that, when we felt them die, I also sensed…a passing. I don’t know how else to explain it. They’ve gone, but I am not sure they’ve gone quite into death.”
ELEVEN
Copt Hall
Monday, 30th December, 1940
GRACE SPEAKS
Ifound myself on the road to Epping Forest somewhere around Leytonstone. I had no idea how I had come to be there—the last thing I remembered was the French beaches—but I knew there was only one place I wanted to be right now, and that was Copt Hall. Somehow the combination of Malcolm and Jack felt so right, so comfortable, that I almost wept at the thought of the distance I had yet to go.
I didn’t think I could use anything save my shaky legs to get me there. Whatever power I commanded had been totally exhausted with the efforts of the past hours. I was completely exhausted. If I had managed to get myself off a bed most people expected me to die in, then it had only been possible through the effort and expenditure of power and whatever reserves of strength remained to me. It was December, I knew, because I could feel it rising through the soles of my feet and in the sharpness of the air; that meant I’d spent weeks, months, wasting away in that hospital. I hadn’t managed to bring myself back to full vitality. I’d managed only to get myself awake and up, and after what I’d done over the past night, I obviously wasn’t going to be able to walk to the nearest telephone box, let alone the final five or six miles to Copt Hall.
I slumped down on the verge of the road and huddled as deep inside the hound’s-tooth coat as I could. It was freezing, although thankfully not raining, and the coat was all I had. My feet were bare, my scalp stung where it had healed from Catling’s nasty gift of that concrete lintel, my cheeks and nose felt as if they were succumbing to frostbite.
I had to get to Copt Hall soon.
I looked around. It was mid-morning and, while the war had thinned out traffic, a lorry or bus would come along sooner or later. I had no money for the bus fare, but surely a kindly lorry or bus driver would give me a lift to the gates of Copt Hall. I wouldn’t even need to explain away my strange appearance—dishevelled and disorientated victims of the bombing were an all-too-frequent sight in London and its environs. The driver would merely assume I’d escaped the raid of last night and was travelling to…a kindly uncle, perhaps, who would give me shelter.
Just then I heard the purr of a motor on the road leading from London. I struggled to my feet and moved to the side of the road, peering in the direction of London, hoping the driver, whoever it might be, would be kind enough to stop.