There was a short silence, broken by Weyland. “Of course,” he said. “Has it not been feeding off death for the past eighteen months?”
“Weyland,” said Jack, “we don’t truly know that the imps were ‘feeding’—”
“Damn you!” Weyland interjected. “Look!” He rose, moving forward so he could stab down at the map with a rigid forefinger. “What is it that you don’t see? The heart of this new labyrinth lies under old London Bridge. Yes? Then what was the gateway to old London Bridge, eh?”
Everyone was staring at the map. No one answered.
“The church of St Magnus the Martyr was the entrance to old London Bridge,” Weyland said, his voice much quieter now. “The road to the bridge literally led under its porch. Noah, how many times have you walked under the porch of St Magnus to get to the bridge to watch the sprites at play? Gods alone know I’ve been under it many, many times.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “The imps left the corpses of the women under the porch of St Magnus, leaving them as close as they could to the heart of the Shadow Game, and tossed the women’s wombs into the Thames to feed the Game. They not only knew what the shadow was, they knew where lay its heart. Please don’t delude yourselves that these murders had nothing to do with the White Queen or her Game. This is a vicious black Game, Jack, and I do not like the idea of my daughter dancing it into existence.”
Jack felt sick. He did not like the idea of Grace dancing it to her death, either.
“It is the Danse Macabre,” said Silvius very quietly. “The Dance of Death. No wonder it is strong enough to deal with the Troy Game. What else could?”
Noah shivered, rubbing her arms. “You can’t dance this, Jack. Nor you, Grace. Why? Why? It will kill you!”
“We’ll all be dead sooner or later,” said Harry, his voice harsh. “The Faerie is crumbling as we sit here and moan.”
Jack lit up a cigarette, his hands trembling. He couldn’t believe it. To come this far, to discover the extent of the Shadow Game, and then to learn its true nature.
A trap. A death trap. For the Troy Game, but also for himself and Grace. No wonder Boudicca had called the White Queen a double-edged sword. No wonder the imps had fed her Game living flesh.
It would slice their heads off on its return swing.
He glanced at Grace. She was very pale, but composed, and she smiled very slightly at him when she caught his look.
“We don’t know it all yet, Jack,” she said. “Perhaps my sister has left us an escape.”
“But not one that’s apparent here,” said Jack. He drew deeply on his cigarette, then knelt down on one knee by the map, a finger tracing slowly over the outlined paths of the Shadow Game. “I’m torn between admiration for this Game’s construction, and horror at what it actually is.”
“Jack,” Grace leaned forward, “perhaps we’re not seeing this clearly. Yes, this is a Game of darkness and death, but, dear gods, think of what it is designed to trap! Maybe the Shadow Game is merely a reflection of its prey. Maybe…”
“All these maybes and perhapses,” said Silvius, “don’t change the fact that this Game will be a nightmare to dance. The power it will generate…no one, not you, not Jack, not Noah or Weyland, not even Ariadne—” he picked up Ariadne’s hand and kissed it as he spoke her name “—could survive the power that will rope out of this Game’s birth.”
“Silvius is right,” said Ariadne. “The White Queen has used Darkcraft to build this Game. Noah and Grace, who have had the Darkcraft bred within them, are first and foremost Mistresses of the Labyrinth. But their daughter and sister…I think her allegiance is first and foremost to the Darkcraft.”
“I do not like the sound of that,” said Harry. “I say again, as I have said before, why should we trust her? Even more, now you tell me she has built this death trap, why trust her?”
Jack stubbed out his cigarette. “Because she is all we have, Harry, and this Shadow Game is all we have to destroy the Troy Game.”
Harry sat back in his chair, his eyes flat, his expression hard. “She is all we’ve got,” he repeated, “and yet she has never shown herself to us—”
“That’s not quite right, Harry,” Grace put in. “She has sat at my side all my life and—”
“And never announced herself!” Harry said. “Curse it, am I the only one here with a suspicious mind? She has done nothing to earn our trust.”
“She has kept out of Catling’s way,” Grace said quietly, her eyes steady as she regarded Harry, “and she has worked for this land’s freedom. She is our only hope. Harry, I don’t think either Jack or me, or anyone else present in this room, can afford for the moment to ignore what she has done. Jack’s right, the Shadow Game is all we have. It is our only hope. Somehow, we’ll just have to learn how to use it.”
EIGHT
The Savoy
Saturday, 15th March 1941
Jack felt as if he were caught on a never-ending emotional roller coaster. The elation of discovering the heart of the shadow labyrinth was so closely followed by the horror of realising the power and dark cruelty of the Shadow Game that he had to battle to keep bleak despondency at bay. The group broke up just after lunch, Noah and Weyland returning to the Savoy, Harry and Stella to Faerie Hill Manor, and Ariadne and Silvius to Kensington. By early evening Jack began to feel that he needed to get out of Copt Hall, and away from any discussion of either the Troy Game or the Shadow Game. He also wanted some time alone with Grace, without Malcolm threatening to interrupt. So it was that, as soon as Malcolm had cleared away their supper dishes, Jack suggested to Grace they go dancing.
“Dancing?” she said, pausing in the act of rising from her chair.
“You like dancing.”
She grinned, straightening up and brushing crumbs from her skirt. “That must have explained my complete enjoyment at St Margaret’s parish hall dance.”
You most certainly enjoyed dancing atop Ambersbury Banks that night, Jack said in her mind, then spoke aloud. “Real dancing. Weyland used to take you dancing in the Savoy. You enjoyed that.”
“Well…yes, but—”
“No buts, Grace. I need to get out. Come dancing with me. Let’s get away from Copt Hall, just for one night.”
She looked at him, and he could read her thoughts—“Dancing” is not getting away from the Game—but after a moment she nodded.
“Ariadne put a lovely dress into the suitcase of clothes that she brought to Copt Hall,” Grace said. “I can wear that.”
When, an hour later, Grace met Jack at the foot of the staircase, he had to take a deep breath to quell the sudden emotion surging through his chest.
The gown she wore—off-the-shoulder ivory silk that hugged her figure and draped softly from the hips to the floor—was lovely, and the fur coat she had folded over one arm and her carefully applied make-up made her look far more sophisticated than he was used to seeing her, but it was Grace’s air of confidence and her overall poise that so affected him. When he had first met Grace she’d been so lacking in self-assurance, so desperate to fade into the background, that he could never have imagined then how she might grow into the woman who stood before him now.
She stopped on the final step, one hand resting on the banister, and Jack saw that diamonds glittered about her wrist and up her forearm.
He held out his hand and, with a slight smile, she stepped down and took it.
Jack drew the car to a halt on the verge of the road at the top of a hill just north of London. For several minutes they sat there, the only sound the ticking of the cooling motor, looking towards the blacked-out capital.
“Can you feel it?” Jack finally asked, his voice soft.
“Yes.” Grace turned her head and looked towards the east. “The Luftwaffe is sending a massive raid tonight. They are not far away. An hour, perhaps.”
“Do you still want to go?”
She turned her head to look at him, and in the dark of the car he could not make out her expression. “I am not afraid, Jack.”
He didn’t reply.
“Jack…”
“That Game will kill us, Grace.”
“You were not afraid to die when you tried to complete the Troy Game with my mother.”
Now he turned back to her. “I am not afraid for me, but for you. I will not do anything that will harm you, Grace.” He was going to say more, but his voice had thickened during that last sentence, and now Jack swallowed, and silently damned whatever fates had led Grace to this point. What was the White Queen about, to save Grace with one breath, and then send her on the path to inexorable obliteration with the next?