Jack had heard enough. He increased the pressure of his arm about Grace’s waist a little, thinking to turn for the door, but Grace resisted.
“White Queen,” Grace said, “I have a message for you from your mother.”
“Yes?” the White Queen said.
“Your mother loved you, very greatly. She wanted you to know that.”
For a long minute the White Queen looked at Grace, her face expressionless.
“It was a long time ago,” the White Queen said eventually. “Too long. It makes no difference now, as it made no difference then. I was a dream for her, nothing more. A hope. A fantasy. What I am now is nothing Noah could comprehend; all she would try to see is the daughter she lost. Tell her that I am sorry, but that she is meaningless to me.”
Jack thought that that would be the last thing he would tell Noah. “Does anything mean anything to you?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said the White Queen. “The Troy Game’s demise. That is all I exist for.”
Grace stared at the White Queen. “And when the Troy Game is trapped? What then for you?”
The White Queen gave a smile of infinite sadness. “Why, then I will be free, but who knows what that freedom might encompass.”
Much later that day Jack and Grace sat in the drawing room of Copt Hall. After leaving the crypt and returning to the car, they’d driven in complete silence, both too wrapped in their own thoughts to want to talk. Malcolm had met them at the door, taken one look at their faces, and vanished back to the kitchen to make tea.
Now they sat, their tea growing cold, both staring at the fire.
Jack was finding very little comfort in the flames. He felt terribly responsible. More than anything he wanted to be able to hate the White Queen, but he couldn’t. She had built a Game centuries before Grace had been born and trapped. There was no reason to suppose that she could also magically produce out of her hat the spell that would shatter Catling’s hold on Grace.
He dragged his eyes away from the fire to Grace. Oh, gods, he felt so guilty. Over the past year she had blossomed into such an amazing woman, so full of confidence, and then to see it shattered so easily in that crypt at the thought of being entombed for an eternity with Catling…
“I will find a way,” he said, relieved his voice sounded a great deal more confident than he felt.
Grace turned her eyes to him. She had recovered remarkably well from that terrible moment, having regained most of her poise, but still there lingered that haunted air in the shadows of her eyes.
“Jack, even if you don’t—”
“I will find a way.”
Tears filled her eyes, and he was instantly contrite and filled with hatred for himself at the same time. If only…if only…if only…
He rose and walked over to Grace’s chair, and, taking her hands, pulled her up into his arms. “I will find a way,” he whispered into her hair.
Part Eight
DANSE MACABRE
London, 1941
“What do you think will happen?” said Jim. He was sitting with his brother and the White Queen on the tomb of the Trandescants in St Mary-at-Lambeth, both imps having returned from Europe the previous night. Once they would have sat on old London Bridge, but that had been demolished a century ago. All of them sat with their arms about their drawn-up legs, chins resting on knees. Air raid sirens sounded dimly from the north and east.
It was going to be a bad night.
The White Queen shrugged, more out of melancholy than disinterest.
“We’d like you to consider all the trouble we’ve been to,” said Bill.
“Indeed,” said Jim, “we helped you put the finishing touches to your Game—”
“And then we led Wilkinson by the nose to all the places you told us—”
“And whispered in his ear about what was important and not—”
“And then we went over to Germany and started whispering again, and—”
“I get the point,” said the White Queen. “You’ve been very good. Veritable treasures.”
“I mean,” said Jim, “where would this country be without us?”
The White Queen burst into laughter, making the imps’ eyes widen in startlement. “In a great deal of trouble to be sure,” she answered finally.
“But,” said Bill, “all will be lost if Brutus-reborn can’t manage—”
“Or his girl doesn’t carry through—”
“Or if Catling—” both imps hissed as one ”—gets wind of what’s about!”
“Who’s to say, then,” said Bill, “that we won’t get eaten up instead of Catling?”
“No one is to say,” said the White Queen, very quietly. “No one can tell. I certainly can’t. We’re either going to win or lose with this one, my fine black fellows, and from this point on there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
“Nothing?” squeaked Jim.
“Well…” said the White Queen. “I do need several more rather fun air raids organised, if you could manage it.”
“Just tell us when!” said Jim, and both imps brightened.
ONE
Copt Hall
March to April 1941
GRACE SPEAKS
After that terrible morning in the crypt of St Thomas’, Jack withdrew into himself a little for a few days. He felt so guilty, and so helpless, and so desperate, and that made me feel worse. Jack kept protesting that he would find a means to break me free from Catling’s hex, but, oh, the emptiness of those protests. He hadn’t been able to do anything before, how could he now?
I tried not to think about what the White Queen had said. I would do the right thing, and continue to ensure my own destruction, together with Catling’s, once I’d been dragged into the dark heart of the Shadow Game. If I thought about that, if I let even a single contemplation of it scamper across my mind, then I knew I would succumb entirely to despair.
I couldn’t think of it.
I couldn’t.
So I had to believe Jack. There had to be a way, and Jack would find it.
He would.
He must.
For at least a week we kept apart from everyone else, save Malcolm. Harry was desperate to see us, no doubt to tell us of the latest disaster to befall the Faerie, and my parents pestered, but Malcolm turned away all of them. I know my mother’s creed and very reason for existence was to provide shelter, but that week Malcolm made a damn good job of it himself.
After three or four days Jack and I began to spend hours each day walking Epping Forest, often well into the night. We rarely spoke, but we did not need to in order to communicate. After the shock of our meeting with the White Queen, we used those walks to draw gradually back together again. We might start out walking side by side, but by the end of the walk, after hours spent on the paths and under the trees, our steps would slow and we would link arms, and walk so close that our bodies bumped and touched in myriad different places. Spring had arrived, and the increasing warmth of the sun and the bright green of new, vibrant growth pushing through the mouldy leaf litter increased our spirits until one day, without thinking, we laughed at a tiny fawn that had stumbled into our path and stood staring at us until his mother nudged him back into the undergrowth.
These walks helped as nothing else. Just being close to Jack, trusting in him, feeling his strength and determination, made me feel as if there might be a way, and I wouldn’t need to spend eternity trapped with Catling…No! I couldn’t even think of that. I couldn’t.
I mustn’t. I would go mad if I allowed that thought to intrude.
One night, after a long walk, when we’d felt closer than previously, we made love for the first time since we’d rented that little room in Southwark. Very gently, very slowly. Afterwards, dozing in Jack’s arms, I imagined myself lying in a glade in the forest on a warm summer’s day, looking up through the forest canopy to the sky so far above, and every time Jack moved slightly in sleep, so the forest moved very slightly about me. When I drifted into a deeper sleep my dreams took over where my imaginings had left off, and I spent that night in the warm embrace of the forest, feeling more loved than I had ever thought possible.
In the morning, Jack rose, kissed me, and said that he needed to go out this evening.
“Where?” I asked.
“To see Ariadne,” he replied.
I sat up in the bed. “Jack? Of what did you dream last night?”
He stood the longest time, not answering, looking with unfocussed eyes at the pattern of the bedspread.