“Her Game’s dark heart,” I corrected him, “but perhaps not hers.”
We left the king in the Athenaeum and went straight to London Bridge.
It was dusk now, and cold, and Jack and I hunched deep into our coats as we walked briskly across the bridge.
When we got to the centre we stopped, and, leaning against the bridge balustrade, stared down into the grey water.
For a long moment neither of us said a word, then Jack spoke, his voice flat.
“I don’t feel a thing.”
We should have felt it, particularly as we knew what we were looking for. Damn it, this Game was supposedly designed for Jack and me, its dark heart should have sung out to us, should have screamed to us…
I felt a sudden weight in my chest, as if my heart had swollen so greatly it could no longer beat.
“Jack—” I began but whipped about as I heard a step behind me.
It was my mother.
Rather, it was Eaving.
I so rarely saw her as Eaving that I shrunk against Jack for reassurance, then relaxed a fraction as she smiled at me, then at Jack.
Eaving walked to the balustrade and looked over, resting her bare hands on the icy stone, her long dark hair drifting a little in the breeze. She wore only a diaphanous gown, but, cloaked as warmly in magic as she was, she didn’t appear cold.
“It’s not quite the same view as it was from the old bridge,” she said.
“I imagine you were much closer to the water then,” said Jack. I could feel his tension through the intervening layers of clothes. Why was my mother here, and why as Eaving?
“This is my home,” Eaving said, still looking into the water as if entranced. “In this water I came into my true being. So long ago, when I walked as Caela.”
Eaving sighed, as if lost deep in memory, then looked at us, a gentle smile on her face.
“Yes, you are right,” she said. “When I leaned over old London Bridge I was much closer to the water, and the old bridge had so many piers, twenty of them, that they blocked fully a third of the river. The water used to tumble furiously through, and the sprites tumbled with it, and had much merriment.”
Now she turned to us fully, and the smile on her face became mischievous.
“But that is not why the view is not quite the same,” she said.
We waited, Jack and I.
“They didn’t demolish the old bridge and then build the new one atop its ruins,” she said. “Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling unutterably foolish. I had lived in London during the time when the old medieval bridge had been demolished…had I been so absorbed in my misery I hadn’t even known what was happening in the city about me?
“What did they do, Eaving?” said Jack, his voice tight. He was irritated at her for teasing, and I knew my mother well enough to know this was just the reaction she’d hoped for.
“Building a bridge takes years,” said Eaving, “and early nineteenth-century London was a busy port and city—no one wanted to be bridgeless all that time. So they built the new bridge alongside the old bridge, and, once the new was completed, they then started to demolish old London Bridge.”
Jack muttered something, and I repressed a smile.
Eaving laughed, then nodded across the traffic to the eastern side of the bridge. “The old bridge, or whatever is left of it under the water, lies on the eastern aspect of this current bridge, some one hundred feet downstream. That is where I hung over the side, laughing at the water sprites, that is where Weyland and I gave the four bands to Grace to carry into the Faerie, and that is where your crypt lies.”
“How did you know about the crypt?” said Jack.
“George called me once you’d left the Athenaeum,” said Eaving. “He is frantic with worry.”
“And you?” I said.
She looked at me then, my goddess mother. “When you see the White Queen, deep within the dark heart, tell her I loved her.”
Her voice broke a little at that last, and she stopped, collected herself, and dared a small smile.
“The water sprites will aid you,” she said, “when you wish.”
And then she was gone.
That night the bombers came, and London suffered one of the most terrible raids in weeks. Then, I thought it only yet another example of Catling’s malignance.
Then, I had no idea what the White Queen had built, and of what horror.
SEVEN
Copt Hall
Friday, 14th March 1941
They had the location of the heart of the labyrinth. For five days Jack and Grace did what hitherto had been impossible and traced the lines of the White Queen’s Game. They begged and borrowed every book and scrap of information they could about the building of the chapel on London Bridge. Harry spent two days ferrying books from wherever he could beg them; the king allowed Harry to raid his library, and Harry even managed to acquire books and manuscripts from the college libraries of Oxford and Cambridge.
Grace brought out the map she had made so many months previously on which she’d drawn the various sections of the Game (or the shadow as they’d then called it) and spread it out over the drawing room floor. They took Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata and, item by item, marked out all the locations he’d described or referred to onto Grace’s map.
Then, knowing the precise location of the dark heart of the Game, they began to trace out the parameters and meanderings of the Shadow Game. It was difficult and tedious work—the Shadow Game was larger and more complex than anyone had thought possible—but Jack and Grace did not work alone. Noah and Weyland, as well as Ariadne and Silvius, spent their days at Copt Hall, with Stella dropping in for eight or nine hours on two occasions. Without them, Jack and Grace would never have managed the task as quickly as they did. They were all intimately connected with the arts of the labyrinth, either as Kingman or as Mistress of the Labyrinth, and all could help in the unravelling of the mystery.
By Saturday, when they believed they had mapped out the majority of the Game, they sat back in their chairs and sofas and stared at the map, which lay spread out on the hearth rug between them.
Even Malcolm, who had brought in sandwiches and tea, stepped back and regarded the map, arms folded, eyes thoughtful.
“Can you understand it?” Malcolm finally said.
No one answered for a moment, then Ariadne and Stella (who had arrived a few hours previously, after dawn) exchanged a glance, then looked at Jack.
Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “Can you, Jack?”
In his turn, Jack looked at Silvius, then at Grace.
“It’s…twisted,” she said, holding Jack’s eyes.
He sighed. “Aye. Noah…what do you make of it?”
Noah stared at the map with troubled eyes. “I have never seen anything like it. I cannot quite understand it.”
“Twisted?” said Harry. He’d been watching the expression on Jack’s face turn from excitement to concern over the past few hours, and he didn’t like it. “Jack, is this Game going to help us…or destroy us?”
If Harry had been hoping for reassurance from Jack, he didn’t get it.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Jack said, “nor had I ever imagined it.” He looked at his father. “Silvius?”
Silvius opened his mouth, but he didn’t get a chance to speak.
“Just tell us what you see, Jack!” Harry said.
“It is a Game,” said Jack, “a Game which uses the power of the labyrinth to entrap evil. In that, it is no different to any Game that has been built previously, including the Troy Game. But…”
“Damn it, Jack!” Harry said, now edging forward in his seat. “What do you see!”
“I have never imagined a Game so complex or farreaching in terms both of power and of physical range,” Jack said. “What we see here is how far the Game extends in and about London, but I suspect it travels further out into the countryside…if the Game makes use of the London Eleanor Crosses, then why not also those extending into Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire? Christ, the White Queen has spent two thousand years building this…its intricacy is unbelievable.”
“And is that good or is that bad?” said Harry.
Jack gave a small shrug, but Harry noted with some disquiet the glance he again shared with Grace.
“It is good insofar as it means that this Game is unbelievably powerful,” Jack said, “but it is bad in that any Kingman or Mistress of the Labyrinth who tries to wield its power…” He broke off, not able to finish.
“Gods,” whispered Ariadne, “any Kingman or Mistress who tries to work it will be killed!”