“He has the books,” Harry said to Jack on the telephone. “The Athenaeum is a private place to meet. The doorman has been told to look out for you at four.”
Thus, precisely at four, Jack and Grace presented themselves at the door of the Athenaeum, and were shown through into a private room.
The king was already there, and he rose and shook both their hands as they entered.
“Why do you want these books?” he said. “Of what importance are they?”
He looked worn and grey, and Jack thought that of everyone caught up in this nightmare, George VI shouldered the most care. He was in the unenviable position of knowing what was truly happening to his country, yet being unable to take any action which would affect the outcome. He knew what was at stake, and yet was totally helpless.
“It is of the utmost importance,” Jack said. He waved George back to his seat (noting the irony that he was waving the king to sit, when it should be the other way around), then he and Grace sat down in armchairs opposite. One of the club’s waiters had left drinks and sandwiches out, but no one felt like eating.
Two large volumes, the same size as Sutherland’s, sat on a low table by the king’s chair. Unlike the ones Jack and Grace had received from the book dealer these were covered in fine calfskin, the boards tooled with gilt in intricate patterns, and the title and Wilkinson’s name stamped in the raised bands on the spines of each book.
Jack gave them a long look, as did Grace, but then he turned back to the king, and told George what they had learned.
“A new Game?” said George, his face even greyer than when Jack and Grace had first come in. “Why?”
“It is designed to destroy the Troy Game,” said Grace.
“And so then we’ll be stuck with yet another Game?” said the king. “I am sorry, but I like the sound of none of this. Noah told me once, many years ago, of this daughter she had lost. To think that she has been drifting about, this unknown ghost, building a new Game…what manner of daughter is she, then?”
“A very powerful one,” said Jack.
“Powerful in what?” said George. “Evil? Revenge? Bitterness? I know what occurred surrounding that girl’s untimely stillbirth. Murdered by hate, lost by a mother who, while desperate for her, had conceived her for all the wrong reasons, and by a father,” he shot Jack a flinty look, “who cared not a whit for either mother or daughter. And yet you expect me to believe she’s hung about, filled with goodwill, making the enchantment that will right the wrongs created by those she has every reason to hate?” By this point the king was staring directly at Jack. “That’s balderdash, man!”
“Sir—” said Jack.
“And you’re telling me that these books,” the king’s hand tapped the cover of the topmost book, “hold the key to understanding how this new Game works? So you and Grace can make it?”
“My sister,” Grace said that deliberately, hoping to turn the White Queen from unknown potential evil into a knowable entity, “may be cold and distant, but I did not sense evil intent from her.”
Now George turned his hard eyes to her. “Yet you have said she spent hundreds of years sitting by your bedside, and you never once sensed any good from her, either. You hated her.”
“I was convinced she was Catling,” said Grace, now eyeing the books with some desperation.
“Perhaps because she exuded the same degree of malice?” said the king.
Jack leaned forward, speaking in a low but intense voice. “This is going to be our only chance,” he said. “We have no other choice, damn it! We have no other means of destroying the Troy Game. None. And in the meantime the attacks on London and the rest of the country grow worse. How many have died now?”
“Don’t you dare to impute the blame for that to me!” the king said.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, “that is not what I intended. And you are right. More than anyone, I am to blame for this nightmare. Now I need to make it right. My only weapon, my only chance at a weapon, lies in those books. I have my doubts, too, sir, but I can’t afford to ignore this Game. I can’t afford not to know it. Once I know how it works and what its purpose is, then it will be my choice, and Grace’s choice, and your choice, sir, whether or not we use it. The Shadow Game is as yet only potential; it doesn’t exist as anything else. It needs Grace and me to make it a reality. And I promise you, George, that we won’t take a step towards making it a reality without asking first for your permission.”
George sighed, rubbing tiredly at his face. “Noah asked me for my permission before she burned London to the ground in 1666, too. Why me? What have I done to be thus burdened?”
“You are a good man,” said Grace.
George sent her an expressionless glance, which more than anything else told the other two how lowspirited he was, then he sighed again, and tapped the books. “Read them here. Tell me what the key is.”
Grace looked at Jack, then she rose, lifted up the top book, held it a moment, then put it aside in favour of the second volume.
This she picked up and took back to her chair.
Jack inched forward until he was on the very edge of his seat. “For gods’ sakes, Grace, open it.”
She looked at him, then returned her eyes to the book.
Painfully slowly, she opened the front cover, and began to thumb through the pages.
Halfway through the book she stopped, and her eyes grew round as she stared at the engraving before her.
“What is it?” said Jack and the king together.
Grace opened her mouth, closed it, made a visible effort, then spoke.
“Sweet gods,” she whispered, “I don’t believe it.”
SIX
London Bridge
Monday, 10th March 1941
GRACE SPEAKS
I couldn’t believe it because it made too much damned sense. The single pamphlet that had been missing from Sutherland’s set of Londina Illustrata was a pamphlet about the forgotten crypt under St Thomas’ Chapel.
St Thomas’ Chapel had sat almost in the centre of old London Bridge.
I looked up from the book and met Jack’s eyes.
The centre of London Bridge, where my mother had loved to stand and watch the water sprites at play, and where she and my father had given me the four kingship bands to wear.
All this I shared mentally with Jack, watching the comprehension gather in his eyes.
St Thomas’ long-forgotten crypt, which had been built under the ninth pier of London Bridge.
I remembered my vision of the two remaining kingship bands lying on an altar.
They were in St Thomas’ crypt!
“The crypt is still there?” said Jack.
“What is going on?” said George VI. “Grace, what have you read?”
I hastily told him what the pamphlet referred to, scanning the words as I spoke.
“Old London Bridge, the twelfth-century bridge with all the houses on it,” I continued, “was demolished in the early nineteenth century to make way for a wider bridge capable of handling the city’s growing traffic. Wilkinson was there when they demolished the ninth pier,” again my eyes met Jack’s, nine was a number of such power, “on which St Thomas’ Chapel had stood.”
I took a deep breath, my fingers tracing the words. “The workmen found a stone floor deep in the pier, well below the waterline, at the foot of a spiral set of steps. The centre of the floor was of different stone to the edges…as if the steps had continued down.”
I glanced up at the two men.
Both were staring at me: the king with fear, Jack with a reflection of my own excitement.
“The workmen took up the first layer of stone,” I said. “Underneath they found bones—mixed human and donkey and cattle and raven.”
“Witchcraft,” muttered George.
“A warning,” said Jack.
“Aye, a warning. There was a plaque there as well, which said, Dig no more. Wilkinson said the workmen refused to go any further; there was another layer of masonry beneath the bones. They took the human bones—Wilkinson said it was thought they belonged to Peter de Colechurch, the twelfth-century Bridge Master who designed and constructed London Bridge—then left the stone floor as it was, dismantling the pier to that level. It was below the waterline, flush with the river bottom. Jack…the crypt is still there, its entrance sealed.”
Jack frowned, thinking. “The London Bridge that replaced it—it only had a few arches, right?”
“Yes,” I said, “the entrance and crypt would likely not have been disturbed.”
“The White Queen’s dark heart,” said Jack.