“Why do I always manage to say the wrong thing to your mother, Grace?”
“I don’t think there was a right way to say that.”
I had sat on the side of the bed, and now Jack came and joined me. He slid a hand behind my head, and tipped my face to his. “Are you scared, Grace?”
Oh, aye, desperately, and he saw it in my eyes.
“It is the best I could think of,” he said. “I—”
I leaned forward and held him tightly to me. I knew it was the best he could do, and that was all I could ask of him.
“Do you think Ariadne and Silvius strong enough to work my mother’s devising?”
“Ariadne managed to destroy the Aegean world all by herself, and Silvius has as much talent as I ever had. They can do it, Grace.”
I let myself believe him. “You were right, Jack. I’d feel more comfortable with Ariadne and Silvius. With my mother there would always be the chance that our distance would intrude.”
We were silent a long time, sitting on the bed, holding each other.
“I wish there were another way, Grace,” he said.
With those words I realised he wasn’t sure it would work, and I buried my face against his chest, and fought desperately to keep the blackness at bay.
FOUR
Copt Hall and London
Sunday 6th April to Tuesday, 15th April 1941
Of the six people involved in the entrapment of the Troy Game and the saving of Grace, only Weyland needed any degree of extensive training in the steps of the Dance of the Flowers. Even then, he needed merely to shadow Jack, to be his footsteps and body, and thus his training needed only to show him the steps of the dance, and not to train him in the arts of wielding its power. Jack could have taught Weyland the steps, but he left it to Grace and Silvius.
Once Weyland learned the steps, then Jack needed to be sure that everyone knew precisely what to do, and at what point in time they needed to do it. But that needed to be left until Weyland was quite ready.
One of the first things Jack did was to visit the king, explain to him what he wanted to do, and ask his permission to go ahead. George was appalled at the risk, but he finally nodded. Better to take the risk than submit the land to Catling’s rule.
Noah concentrated on building the devising that would shelter Grace from Catling’s hex. For ten days after meeting with Jack at Copt Hall, Noah isolated herself in a room at Faerie Hill Manor.
Here, she sat in a chair, its back to the closed door, facing an open window. The room had no lights, no heating, no stimulus of any kind save from the open window, and for these ten days Noah took no sustenance save from her power, nor did she move from, nor move within, the chair. She sat, clothed in her power as Eaving, staring unblinking out the window with sage green eyes shot through with lightning.
Exploring possibilities.
As Eaving, Noah’s very purpose was to shelter. As a Darkwitch and a Mistress of the Labyrinth she could bring added (and far darker) power to her goddess powers which would entwine her devising with a strength that would give it its best chance of success.
Firstly, Noah had to think of a physical place of shelter. Grace had to go somewhere, and it had to be a place that already was something of a fortress. That inherent quality would surely need to be buttressed, but if it were a natural fortress in any case, then its power would be so much more potent.
There was one place which shone out, but it had some massive problems. Noah kept returning to it, then discarding the idea almost immediately.
No, it had already been corrupted by Catling. She could already stretch her malevolent fingers in there.
So Noah tried to think of somewhere else, somewhere naturally safe from Catling.
And, over the three days, she came up with nowhere as suitable as her first thought. Even though it was corrupted, it was such a natural shelter, and one where Grace would feel so comfortable…somewhere where she would have no doubts, which would feel like home to her.
“If only I can protect it,” whispered Noah, over and over. If only I can devise some means to keep Catling’s claws out of it.
The Idyll.
When Weyland had originally constructed his Idyll atop the house in Idol Lane, he had, because of his secretive, close nature, instinctively made of it a fortress. Over the following years, as Weyland’s relationship with Noah had developed, so the Idyll had grown, eventually touching the borders of the Faerie.
But with the gradual disintegration of the Faerie over the past year, the Idyll had retreated. Noah and Weyland rarely used it, and the Idyll had isolated itself from what was happening within the rest of the land. Now, as originally, there was only one entrance. Weyland’s house on Idol Lane had been destroyed in 1666, so the Idyll had taken as its single entrance the next best thing—the steps leading up through the rebuilt spire of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East.
Noah could easily protect those steps, and the Idyll was so familiar to her that she knew she could just as easily devise a sheltering protection for it.
Indeed, the Idyll would embrace it.
Yet there was a problem. Catling had already penetrated the Idyll. In fact, it was the place where Catling had managed to hex Grace in the first instance.
For days Noah went over every possibility, tried to think of every complication, tried to think of somewhere else.
At the end of the ten days, Noah finally acknowledged that she had no choice. The Idyll was the best shelter possible for Grace…now all Noah had to do was craft a devising that would shelter both Grace and the Idyll from Catling’s hex. Noah needed to create a devising that not merely transported Grace into the Idyll (relatively easy) but would then seal the Idyll from Catling’s hex (supremely difficult).
Moreover, Noah had to build a devising that Ariadne and Silvius could work.
“Damn you, Jack,” Noah muttered tiredly as, finally, she rose stiff and exhausted from that chair. “Why not allow me to work this? Why not?”
Once out of the room in Faerie Hill Manor Noah went back to the Savoy, where she slept for eighteen hours.
Then she rose, bathed, ate—all under the concerned gaze of Weyland—then kissed her husband, and said she needed to speak with Ariadne and Silvius.
“I’ll be back tonight,” she said, and left him, still staring after her with worried eyes.
Ariadne and Silvius were at home in their Kensington apartment, and it was Silvius who opened the door to Noah.
“Ariadne is in the drawing room,” he said. “Come through.”
From the look on Noah’s face, and the weariness in her eyes, there was a great deal more Silvius could have said, but he thought it prudent to leave it for the moment.
Ariadne rose as Noah entered, kissing her on both cheeks, then offering her an easy chair in which to sit.
“Well?” Ariadne said as Noah sank down.
“I can build a devising,” said Noah, “and I have a place in which to shelter Noah—”
“Where?” said Ariadne.
“The Idyll,” said Noah. “You have heard of it, surely.”
Ariadne and Silvius nodded. “But I thought that Catling could—” Ariadne began.
“I can build a devising to thwart her,” Noah snapped. “My only dilemma is, can you, both of you, control it?”
“We are not to blame for Jack’s decision,” Silvius said softly.
Noah sighed. “I am worried for Grace, Silvius. You will hold the life of my daughter in your care, and I need to know if you can control this devising.” She tapped a hand over her heart. “I need to know here.”
“We will do all we can,” Silvius said, and something in the steadiness of his gaze apparently answered some of Noah’s doubts, for she visibly relaxed.
“I am building this devising with everything that I am,” said Noah. “Mistress of the Labyrinth, Darkwitch and Eaving, goddess of the land. Neither of you will have any trouble with the labyrinthine parts of the devising, and Ariadne will have no trouble with that part of it constructed from the Darkcraft, but as for that part of the devising constructed from my powers as Eaving, then—”
“Noah,” said Ariadne, “you forget that once I was MagaLlan of this land. I may not have been particularly devoted to the land, but I learned well and true. If you bring into this devising the power of the land, then I can understand it, and wield it.”
“And you forget that for countless centuries I lay in the heart of the labyrinth with the dying Og,” said Silvius. “The power of the land is not as foreign to me as I think you assume.”