There was a silence, then Jim spoke. “You don’t trust Jack, do you?”
“Would you?”
“Not if we had a daughter like Grace to protect, no,” said Bill, and for once there wasn’t a hint of cupidity in his voice at all.
When Weyland had gone, the imps sat down at the table and finished off their dripping sandwiches.
“So Jack has discovered the dancing,” said Bill. “What a good boy he is.”
“He hasn’t discovered all of it,” said Jim, and both imps giggled about their mouthfuls.
“What do you think we should tell Weyland?”
“Not all of it,” said Jim, and both spluttered with laughter.
And within a breath, fell silent.
“It needs to feed again,” whispered Jim.
“Soon,” whispered Bill. “Soon.”
TWELVE
Copt Hall
Thursday, 7th September 1939
The war was on, but as yet it had little impact on Londoners’ lives.
The war had been expected for almost a year; civil and defence preparations had been complete for months, and evacuations from the city underway for the past weeks (although so far, most people had elected to stay). There had been a frisson of emotion on Sunday when the worst was known, but over the past few days the excitement had died down. London had not been bombed (there had been one or two false air raid warnings), there had been no massed campaigns in Europe, and the world had not ended.
Life went on, largely, as normal.
Jack Skelton spent the earlier part of the week at Copt Hall and its surrounds.
He settled in, altering the hall to his needs, Malcolm proving an invaluable resource. Neither Jack’s nor Malcolm’s presence was ever noted by the four or five servants and gardeners who still worked about the hall, keeping the one remaining wing in some semblance of order and tending the gardens to send flowers and vegetables down to London. When fires were lit in the hearths high in the burned-out walls, no mortal eye saw them; when a gramophone occasionally played music in what remained of the elegant drawing room, they did not hear.
If any had the occasion to walk through the stark remains of the hall, then their feet encountered only grassy earth, not the beautifully patterned rugs, and their hips did not bump into the chairs and tables set about.
Neither did the servants ever notice the Austin convertible parked under the trees, and they did not realise the comings and goings of the major and his valet.
In the mornings they did note the deer spoor along the gravelled front driveway, but so long as the deer kept off the gardens they did not mind their presence.
The strange heart of Copt Hall had awoken about them, and the servants and gardeners had not even a single intuition of it.
Epping Forest had once surrounded Copt Hall completely, but for scores of years now the forest had retreated, and the hall stood some three-quarters of a mile from the main body of the forest. But during the night, when Malcolm would open the front door so the major might set off for his evening walk (his run through the forest) then the forest crowded all about, embracing the hall and its occupants, and Jack could move from front porch into forest depths with a single step.
He spent these nights roaming as Ringwalker, reacquainting himself with forest and land, and stamping his authority back on both. Others—strange creatures not of the Faerie or of the mortal—had tried to nibble away at Ringwalker’s influence in his absence, and on both Monday and Tuesday nights the forest rang now and again with the sounds of battle: brief, fierce, bloody encounters.
Malcolm always had cloths and a bowl of warm water redolent with antiseptic waiting for when the major returned just before dawn.
Jack also ventured into the Faerie. He had seldom been here during the time he’d been away, but little had changed. The Naked, the central sacred hill of the Faerie, still rose in the midst of the forest-covered hills that rolled away towards snow-capped mountains in the vast distance; the Lord of the Faerie’s throne of Faerie wood still sat on the eastern aspect of its summit. The Faerie folk continued to drift in and out of the mists that clung to the hills, and Jack spent hours talking to them or, more often, just sitting in silence with them absorbing the Faerie.
The only difference Jack noted was that the Idyll, Weyland’s creation that had graced the top floor of the house in Idol Lane, now bordered the Faerie. If Jack stood close to the Faerie Lord’s throne on The Naked and looked east, then he could see rising on the horizon the myriad walkways and spires and bridges of Weyland’s extraordinary creation. The Lord of the Faerie told him that he’d walked close to the Idyll, but had never entered.
“That realm is of Weyland and Noah and Grace, all of themselves,” the Faerie Lord had commented.
By mid-week Jack felt he’d done enough to reestablish his dominance over the forest spaces, as well as renew his bond with the Faerie, so on Wednesday he drove the Austin convertible down to London. He spent that day wandering about the city, but came home in the evening none the wiser.
There was something…wrong…but he could not define or isolate it.
On Thursday morning he remarked to Malcolm that they would have visitors in the late afternoon, and could Malcolm please prepare a tea for five guests.
Noah enjoyed driving, and she particularly enjoyed driving the Daimler. She enjoyed even more her success in acquiring it from Weyland for the day, but in truth that had not been at all difficult. When she had said where she was going, and with whom, he’d rolled his eyes and simply handed over the keys.
Grace beside her in the front passenger seat, Noah drove north to Hampstead where she picked up Matilda, Ecub and Erith. None of these three women had been reborn this life. As with Noah, Weyland, Stella and Harry, they had merely moved back into the realm of the mortal from the Faerie, taking as their identities the names each had borne in their original lives. They shared a terrace house in a smart quarter of Hampstead, where they busied themselves in their local community, teaching music, history and botany to private girl students. On some days—the ancient pagan festivals—they joined Noah, and together Eaving and Eaving’s Sisters walked the land, rejoicing in the eternal themes of rebirth and regeneration.
There was a time when Grace had often joined them. For a long time now, she did so very rarely.
The three sisters who crowded into the back seat of the Daimler were in a high mood. Jack was back! Noah was slightly less exuberant, but still cheerful, and Grace was her usual introspective, quiet self, preferring to look out the window than to take part in the animated discussion between the other women. Noah had already spoken to Matilda and Ecub on the telephone, so the women knew of Jack’s sense of something wrong in London and his failure to help Grace, and now they chatted about more inconsequential things, like whether or not Jack could possibly be as handsome as Noah had said, or as charismatic as she intimated.
They arrived at Copt Hall close to five p.m., their arrival—as everything else even faintly connected with the Faerie—totally unobserved by the hall’s mortal servants.
“Mesdames,” said Malcolm at the door, inclining his head as he ushered them through. “Major Skelton is waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Grace was the last to come through, and Malcolm gazed at her a little more curiously than was polite, but Grace was herself looking about with so much inquisitiveness that she did not notice.
Just before he closed the door, Malcolm saw that several deer had emerged from the trees.
In the shadows behind them Malcolm thought he saw three ghostly spears propped against a tree trunk, and he smiled.
My fellows, he said in greeting.
Jack greeted Matilda, Ecub and Erith with evident delight, kissing each on the mouth, but Matilda with perhaps a little more depth and passion than the other two.
Noah received a peck on the cheek—“As you are a married woman,” Jack remarked—and Grace, a similar kiss on the cheek. She gave him no chance to kiss her mouth had he even wanted to, averting her face as he approached.
Jack gave Grace a strange look at that, but he turned away from her almost immediately without a word, and ushered the women to the easy chairs grouped about the fire.
As they settled themselves, Malcolm bore in a large tray, laden with silver pots of tea and hot water and delicate bone china cups and saucers. He set this down on a low table in the centre of the chairs, and then moved a stand filled with cakes and dainties beside it.