He also had a pair of Jack’s trousers over one arm, and as he sat the tray down on the floor by the stool, Jack rose, shucked off the coat, discarded the hipwrap he had worn as Kingman, and slid the trousers on, buckling up the belt and then sitting down on the stool as Malcolm left. He reached for the tray, poured some brandy into the glasses, then handed one to me.
We sat for a while, saying nothing, sipping the brandy.
“I’m sorry I have been away so long,” I eventually said, handing Jack the empty glass.
He took it, raising his eyebrows to ask if I wanted a refill. I shook my head, and he set both our glasses on the tray.
“Where have you been?” he said. “Where did Catling take you?”
I shuddered. “Into hell, Jack. I will talk about it eventually, but not now, please.”
He nodded, his eyes downcast. “How did you escape?”
“I learned how to use what Catling sent against me. I have been silly, I should have learned earlier.”
He smiled, very gently. “Of all the silliness in this stupid adventure, Grace, you have been responsible for very little of it. Is that how you managed to escape her when she dragged you into the labyrinth after you stopped me?”
I nodded. “Everything she sends against me I can use.” I lifted my wrists a little out of the water, and for a moment the diamonds gleamed forth. “I learned how to take the pain she wrapped about my wrists, and use that. I learned how to take the hell she had sent me into, and use that. I can’t believe it took me so long to realise I had the ability.” I let my arms sink back into the water. “She can’t touch me now, unless to murder me, and she needs to murder herself to kill me. That she won’t do.”
I smiled suddenly. “I feel free of her, Jack, even though I’m not. She has no hold over me other than the threat of both our murders, and that is no hold at all.”
He looked at me very carefully at that. “No threat at all? Why not? Her fate is your fate. Whatever you have touched will share your fate. I—”
“Jack, please, stop.” I thought of everything I had seen while in my coma, but I was too exhausted to try to explain it to him now. There was hope, I was certain of it.
Jack must have seen that hope in my face.
“Grace, what have you learned?”
I smiled, remembering, and Jack leaned forward.
“The shadow,” he said, “reappeared when you reappeared.”
Indeed it had. It manifested itself when Jack and I were together and present in London. We were the only reason it existed; the reason it had appeared for the first time was when Jack and I were both present and aware in London.
“Grace?”
“Jack, I will tell you, but I need to sleep first. Not only because I am so very tired, as I see you are, but because I need to mull things over in my head.”
And, I thought, because what I have to tell you is so very, very difficult, Jack.
“Of course.” He studied me, his eyes travelling down my body as it lay in the bath. “You’re not very well, are you?”
I shook my head, close to tears again because he understood that I did not wish to talk now, and because he understood that I was, indeed, “not very well”.
He smiled. “I see that both flannel and soap are yet dry. Would you like me to wash the stink of hospital from you?”
He must have been desperate to discover what I had learned, but he was willing to wait, and for that, at this very moment, I was indebted to him. “Thank you,” I said.
Jack sank to his knees by the bath, picked up the flannel and soap, and proceeded to wash me down.
He touched me as a father would a child. There was nothing sexual or even intimate about it. Frankly, we were both too tired to care, and I wondered only that he had the energy to bathe me in the first instance.
Malcolm came back carrying a tin urn of clean water, and Jack washed my hair. He massaged my scalp gently, exploratively, his fingertips moving over the spot where the concrete lintel had punctured my skull.
“The doctors thought you would die,” he whispered. “Grace, how did you survive this?”
“Because I wanted to live,” I said.
His fingers stilled, then the knuckle of one of them rapped against the plate in my skull. “Well, you have a tin head, now,” he said, and I laughed, and he with me, and I have never, never, been as happy as I was at that point.
Jack helped me out of the bath, and dried me off, his hands exploring the recently-knitted bones in my legs and left arm (oh, such lumpy devils they were now!), then he gave me a silk dressing gown that Malcolm had set out, and then, wordlessly, carried me to a bed in one of the spare rooms. He tucked me in between the sheets, leaving me in the dressing gown, then laid his mouth very softly against my forehead, and told me to go to sleep. He said he needed to bathe, but that he would be back, and he would watch over me.
I slept. I drifted off immediately, but, as is so often the case when you are so very tired, I did not sleep soundly. I woke every hour or so, dragging myself up from dreams that were vaguely unsettling but not threatening.
Every time I opened my eyes I saw Jack sitting in an armchair by the bed. Sometimes he was dozing, sometimes reading a book, sometimes sipping from a cup of tea that Malcolm had brought in to him.
Sometimes the lamp was on, and I saw him in a glow of warm, rosy light, and I knew that the entire day had passed and we were well into the night.
And still Jack watched.
I saw Malcolm with him on one occasion. He sat on a wooden chair he’d pulled close to Jack’s armchair, and was leaning forward on it, talking in a low but urgent voice. He was saying something about New Year’s Eve, and Jack was frowning, but as I watched the frown cleared and Jack nodded, to Malcolm’s undisguised relief.
“If Grace agrees,” said Jack, and Malcolm seemed to accept that.
After that I did not remember anything else, so I must have drifted off finally into a sound sleep.
After he had spoken with Jack, Malcolm went into the bathroom to clean it, and clear away the brandy decanter and glasses.
But while the towels were still there, and the damp patches where a wet Grace had stood, the decanter and glasses had gone.
Malcolm thought nothing of it. Jack must have taken them down to the kitchen himself.
TWELVE
The Dark Heart of the Labyrinth
Monday, 30th December, 1940
Catling huddled in the heart of the labyrinth and wondered what had gone so wrong.
She should have been completed by now, but instead she found herself still incomplete and more vulnerable than ever.
Who could have thought that Grace would have found the gumption to break free of her hellish prison? Who could have thought Grace would have found the courage to stop the Dance of the Flowers and then confront Catling?
And confront her with real power.
To say that Catling didn’t like it was a massive understatement.
Too many things were going wrong.
For the first time in her existence Catling wondered if she really needed completion at all. Surely she had enough power now? Why push for completion at all?
Because if left incomplete she was vulnerable. Catling simply could not allow herself to remain incomplete for too many more years, because then Jack, Noah (and Grace, curse her!) could grow even more powerful, and might discover the means to undo the hex that bound Grace. If that happened then Catling could look forward to nothing but a rapid unwinding into oblivion.
As much as Catling was sure Jack and Noah would use any subsequent Dance of the Flowers to somehow trick Catling, and try to unwind her, Catling needed to be completed. She would need to risk the Dance of the Flowers.
But, oh, that day would be littered with trickeries.
Catling reviewed her weapons. She truly only had two. Her continued destruction of the Faerie, which meant the Lord of the Faerie would put incredible pressure on Jack and Noah to complete Catling, and the hex on Grace. Even if Jack and Noah might be prepared to risk losing the Faerie (and that was a major “if”), Catling was certain they would never risk losing Grace, particularly after that touching scene she’d witnessed in St Paul’s the night Jack and Grace pulled the bomb down atop her.