Tonight he would be marked. Tonight he would take that final step into the forest.
Do I really want to do it?
Yes, of course he did. It would give him power beyond knowing, and peace beyond anything he’d ever achieved, if all went well.
Am I frightened?
Yes, of course he was. This was a step that could never be retraced. Never again could he just walk away as he had when he was Louis de Silva.
This was the night that would bind him to the trees. Once and for all.
For the first time since he’d arrived back in England, Jack was not wearing his uniform. Instead, he’d dressed simply in an open-necked white shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a single-breasted jacket of the same material. Loose, elegant, comfortable clothing.
He’d be sore when he came back.
Jack shifted a little in the driver’s seat and forced his train of thought to Walter Herne, hoping that the man would be where planned, at the time planned.
“Just this one thing, Walter,” Jack whispered, “and then you’re a free man. Just this one thing…”
It was just after nine p.m. when Jack pulled into the forecourt of Faerie Hill Manor. Unlike the first night he’d arrived here, the house was now under full blackout conditions. A mere sliver of light showed here and there from behind blackout curtains, but that was it.
Harry was waiting for him, opening the front door as soon as Jack knocked.
They nodded a greeting.
“Is all set?” Jack said.
“Yes.” Harry motioned to the drawing room. “Come on through. There’s time for a talk before you go.”
Jack more than half expected to find Grace huddled by the fire again, as he had the first time he’d walked into this room, but although the fire crackled, the room was empty save for himself and Harry.
“Where’s Stella?” Jack said.
“Gone to the Faerie for the night,” Harry said. “Drink?”
Jack hesitated, then nodded. A drink wouldn’t do him any harm at all.
As Harry walked over to the drinks cabinet, Jack idly glanced at a copy of The Daily Mail lying on a table.
There was a small article partway down the page. The body of another woman had been found under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr.
“What do you know about this?” Jack said, tapping the article with a finger as Harry handed him his whisky.
Harry glanced down, then looked sharply back to Jack. “Why the interest?”
“There was another murder, wasn’t there? The night I arrived. I remember the radio announcer mentioning it just before Chamberlain made the announcement of war. What do you know about it, Harry? Why your interest in my interest?”
Harry sipped at his whisky, taking his time in replying. “There’s been some concern about the two murders at Scotland Yard,” he said finally. “The murders were particularly brutal. Both women had their bellies mutilated—ripped apart. Their wombs were gone.” He paused. “Some wit within the Yard has dubbed the killer the Penitent Ripper…the murders bear some resemblance to the Jack the Ripper murders fifty years ago. You have heard of them? Yes?—but because this time the women are left on the porch of St Magnus the Martyr the ‘Jack’ has been replaced with ‘Penitent’. No doubt the papers will get hold of that sobriquet soon enough. Jack, do you know anything about them?”
Jack shook his head. “It must take a special kind of fury to be that brutal to a woman.” He gave a grunt. “Reminds me of Weyland…”
They fell silent, remembering that horrific day so long ago when, as Charles II and Louis de Silva, they had ridden back into London to hear the screams of Noah and Jane as Weyland tore them apart.
“Not Weyland,” said Harry, “not this time.”
Jack gave a small shrug and set his emptied whisky glass to one side.
“Noah told me that you and she seemed to have…sorted out some of your differences,” Harry said, breaking the small awkward silence that had risen between them.
“We talked,” Jack said. “We didn’t fight.”
“Really?” Harry looked at Jack carefully. “Are you getting on well enough to make the Great Marriage, d’you think?” The Great Marriage symbolised the ultimate union between the land and the waters, bringing all aspects of the land and Faerie into harmony. If Jack and Noah in their capacities as gods of the forest and waters effected the Great Marriage, it would strengthen the land and the Faerie in their battle against the Troy Game.
“We have to do it, don’t we?” Jack said.
“To give yourselves the best chance of saving the land, yes you do. But somehow I thought you’d be more cheerful about the prospect than you seem.”
“I’m sure I won’t find it too difficult, Harry, but I don’t want to talk about that tonight. Nor those murders. Tonight it is just me and the forest.”
At that moment the telephone rang, and both men started. Harry walked over to the desk and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
He listened a moment, carefully turning his back so Jack could not see his face, then said, “I’ll let him know. Thank you for telephoning, Walter.”
“He has not backed out?” Jack took a step towards Harry as he put the telephone receiver back into its cradle.
Harry shook his head. “No. There’s been a bomb scare Hampstead way. A woman out with her boyfriend found what they thought was a UXB lying on the edge of the heath. Everyone panicked, half the neighbourhood was evacuated, the ARP and the Fire Brigade became terribly officious, and the end result is that what with the panic and the evacuation, and all the personnel running about the heath, Walter has been caught up in the fuss and said he won’t be able to leave the area for a couple of hours.”
Jack’s shoulders clearly relaxed. “What was it, if not a UXB?”
“Apparently some schoolboys had made a papiermâché approximation of what they thought a bomb might look like, painted it black, and stored it under a shrub to see if they could frighten evening lovers out for a stroll.”
“So I have an hour or two to spare.”
“Feel free to relax here. I am needed back in the Faerie, although I’ll be back in time for…well, in time for your adornment. Help yourself to another drink. Or two, if you think you need it.”
Jack refilled his glass, wandered desultorily about the bookshelves for a quarter of an hour, then decided he needed space and air. He put the almostuntouched whisky glass down on the table and headed for the set of doors that led to the side terrace.
He slipped through, shutting the doors quickly behind him, and wandered slowly over to the stone balustrade that looked down the side of the hill on which the house stood. It was a lovely night: cool, but not cold, with moonlight filtering through the cloud layer. Jack took a deep breath, staring towards the forest, his eyes picking out individual trees, and the slow movement of the creatures across the forest floor, sniffing out food and scent trails, and…
Jack became aware that he wasn’t alone on the terrace.
It was an unsettling sense, for he felt that the other presence was either fearful or antagonistic, either about to run away or to attack.
He turned around, very slowly, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, as if he were merely taking in the view.
There, to his left. In the shadows where the terrace joined into a hip of the house. Jack strolled casually closer, always looking over the railing at the view, his senses straining towards the shadows on his left.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
He tensed, then turned easily, a smile on his face. “Grace. What are you doing here?”
She was sitting against the wall of the house at an outdoor table and chair setting, looking desperately uncomfortable at Jack’s presence. She was huddled into a coat, so deeply that all that was visible of her was the pale smudge of her face beneath her tousled hair.
“I came to see Stella,” Grace said, her eyes watching Jack’s every move as he walked over to the table, sitting down in a chair opposite her.
He didn’t take his eyes off her, despite realising that she was growing more self-conscious by the moment. “She isn’t here. She’s in the Faerie tonight. That’s where you should find her.”
“Oh.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. Have you come to see Stella, he wondered, or Harry? Come to see your lover?
“I didn’t see another car outside when I pulled up,” he said.
“I didn’t come by car.”
Already nervous at what awaited him later that night, Jack grew even more unsettled at the implications of that response. “Do you often sit out here and scare people?” he snapped.