The red wires that glowed about my wrists were merely the external manifestation of pain. The real pain—that was inside. The continual tearing upwards; the continual causing of the wound. Most people only saw the red-hot wires glowing about my wrists, but I think that when Jack Skelton first walked into the drawing room of Faerie Hill Manor he actually saw inside, saw the wounds in the making.
And, in the seeing, did not pity me.
Then, today, when Catling bit while the deer were sniffing me, he came to me, and bent down, and whispered in my ear, I know. I’m not too sure that he really did, but the words were better than anything anyone else had ever spoken to me. And so, before my mother could fuss, he ushered Malcolm and me towards the kitchen.
There, while he and my mother wandered off among the trees, I sank down in a corner. I didn’t want a chair, I didn’t want to sit in front of the stove. I wanted cold to somehow provide comfort against the raging agony in my wrists, and I wanted solitude in order to find the strength to bear it, and the corner of the kitchen seemed like the best place available.
Malcolm paid me the compliment of ignoring me, wandering about from table to Aga, then to the sink, clearing away the tea dishes that someone—Matilda, I think—had brought in. He didn’t speak to me, and he didn’t look at me. I knew he was very aware of both my presence and my pain, but was not made uncomfortable by either.
Always I kept to myself when Catling struck. I never wanted anyone near me. The only reason I’d stayed in that drawing room for Jack’s arrival was because I had refused to allow Catling to drive me away on this momentous occasion.
So I should have hated it, having this strange man as witness to my humiliation. But I didn’t. I found his presence…comforting and consoling.
Despite the agony, and the humiliation, and the terrifying sense of being out of control that always accompanied these attacks, it was a good time for me. For the first time in many long years I really didn’t feel quite so alone. For too long too many people had fussed, and then Jack had appeared to know just what I needed.
Then Jack ruined it all by returning from his little walk in the woods with my mother. Returned with his arm linked with hers, and there was a glow to her face and a light in her eyes that terrified me. I didn’t want my father to be hurt, and I could see his devastation written all over my mother. I looked into her face and saw there the disintegration of our life. A delicate balance, that had so long preserved us against utter ruin, was broken.
My mother, of course, hurried over to where I was standing. “Grace?”
“I am well enough, mother. Don’t fuss.”
She didn’t. She turned directly away from me and back to Jack. “You have been very kind, Jack. Thank you,” she said, and then gave him a lovely smile that I’d only ever seen her give to my father…and that not recently.
I was certain then that she still loved Jack, and I cursed her silently. Not merely for what she would do to my father, but what she would do to all of us. My world was fracturing about me as I had feared it would the moment I heard Jack Skelton was returning.
“I want to go home,” I said. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Oh, gods, I sounded childish and selfish, but I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Thank you,” I said to Malcolm as I walked towards the door leading outside. Then, over my shoulder to my mother, “I’ll wait in the car.”
“That was rude, Grace,” Noah said as she drove us to London. She’d marched back to the car a few moments after I had left, where Matilda, Ecub and Erith waited. Jack and Malcolm had remained in the house.
“Father will be waiting for us,” I said.
“Jack was kind to you,” Noah said, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “The least you could have done was to thank him.”
She was right, of course, but I didn’t reply, for if I had I thought I would have burst into tears. I loved my parents; they provided the only constant and stability in my life. I didn’t want to see them tear apart, and I was terrified that my mother wouldn’t be able to help herself.
If they tore apart, then everything would tear with them. I was sure of it. Catling had set her trap, and Jack and my mother were falling into its clutches. My life as it was up to this point had been terrible enough, but it was a life, and I felt that with Jack’s arrival I had been sat down before some glum-eyed medical specialist who would fold his hands, look over the top of his glasses, and say, “I’m sorry, my dear, but there’s no hope. There is nothing to be done. I would give you six months only.”
My mother and Jack Skelton were going to murder all of us with their disastrous love. Why couldn’t they have learned that lesson a millennium ago?
Ah, but why should I hate them for that? We’d all been murdered, so long, long ago. There never was such a thing as hope, and I’d been foolish to ever believe it.
There was only ever the Troy Game, victorious.
TWO
Copt Hall
Thursday, 7th September 1939
“What were you doing with Grace, Malcolm?” Jack said. He was leaning against some cupboards, arms folded, his gaze steady on Malcolm, who was still at the sink. Outside he could hear Noah’s car pull away.
“I was introducing her to some of my companions.”
“They weren’t deer, Malcolm.”
Malcolm turned around at that, drying his hands on a tea towel. “Frankly, I thought I’d done a good job of disguising them.”
Now Jack’s gaze verged on the openly hostile. The disguise had been good—good enough to fool everyone else—but when Jack had come downstairs and seen the deer close, their forms had appeared false.
Transparent.
A disguise.
There had been three men standing there. Warriors, wearing tartan kilts and a terrible expression of loss in their eyes.
And Malcolm had allowed one of them to stroke Grace’s arm.
Jack was furious, but wasn’t quite sure why. Because Malcolm was something other than he’d thought? Because Grace had been in danger?
“Who are you, Malcolm?”
Malcolm gave Jack a long, considered look. “You thought I was a Sidlesaghe.”
“ Who are you, Malcolm?”
“My ancient name was Prasutagus,” he said. “I was king of the Iceni.”
Jack’s mind raced. As a man he did not know the name, but as Ringwalker…oh yes, the name was familiar. He could feel its significance seeping up from the soil beneath the foundations of the hall.
“You were Boudicca’s husband,” he said.
Malcolm gave a small smile. “I was far more than that.” He shifted slightly, making a slight movement with one hand, and suddenly Jack saw standing before him a tall, thin man who, though he continued to wear Malcolm’s clothing, exuded an aura of ancient power.
Faint blue lines marked his face—the woad markings of one of the ancient priests of the land.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “A druid, no less. So tell me, Druid Prasutagus, what were you doing with Grace? And why are you here,” one shoe tapped the floor, “in Copt Hall?”
“I am here to help save the land,” Malcolm replied.
From the infection you brought to it. Jack didn’t so much as hear that thought from Malcolm, but feel it.
“Should I trust you?” Jack said.
“Yes.”
“What do you know?”
“Enough.”
“That’s no answer,” Jack snapped. “And you have not told me what you were doing with Grace. Why show her to those warriors? Why allow them to touch her?”
“I wanted to know if I could trust her,” said Malcolm, “and if I could trust her with you. So I introduced her to some of my warrior-priests, men whose opinions I respect before any other. They instinctively trusted her.”
“There is more to Grace than meets the eye,” Jack said, wondering why Malcolm needed to be able to trust Grace.
“Oh, I know that,” said Malcolm. “Jack, I am not your enemy. I am your servant. I know who you are. I can do nothing but serve you. Don’t make me the enemy.”
Jack relaxed a little. “And your wife? Should I expect to see her dusting the stairs one day?”
“Boudicca still rests in death,” said Malcolm. “She has not returned to this world to live.”
Perhaps they needed someone in the Otherworld for whatever it was they were about, Jack thought. “What is the bond between you and Copt Hall?”