Something happened in Walter’s face. A deep emotion flittered over it. Jack thought for a moment it was fear, then remembered how the Lord of the Faerie—when Charles II—had told him that James (as Walter had been named in that former life) had been deeply excited at his return to England after all his years in exile, however much he professed a devotion to Christ, and Jack realised it was excitement he could see in Walter’s face now.
Whatever Walter said, the core of his being still vibrated to the ancient rituals.
“Do you dare, Jack?” Walter said, and Jack grinned.
He glanced down at the top of the stump and saw what Walter had laid out there.
A surgical scalpel. Three razor-edged blades. Gauze swabs.
The mortar and pestle, and the dirt, leaves and berries within the bowl of the mortar.
“Shall we begin?” Walter asked, and Jack jerked his eyes back to the man’s face.
“Do you remember, Walter, how once we battled it out in the heart of the labyrinth atop Og’s Hill?”
“How could I forget? I battled to save the land from you and your foreign magic. You battled to save your labyrinth. And you broke my spine.”
“How stupid we were,” Jack said softly, “when all the time we should have been standing here.”
Walter moved away a little, fiddling with the instruments he’d laid out. “Let’s get this done,” he said, “and then let me walk away.”
Jack gave a terse nod, then turned about—and jumped slightly in startlement. While he and Walter had been speaking, the Lord of the Faerie had moved about silently and now stood directly facing Jack.
“How at home are you with the Ringwalk, Jack?” the Lord of the Faerie said.
“I feel it as if it is my own flesh,” Jack replied.
“Really?” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Really?”
SIX
Epping Forest
Sunday, 10th September 1939
GRACE SPEAKS
I followed. Of course I did. I knew something was happening tonight, and I knew it involved Jack, and I knew also that Harry was somehow concerned. I knew that Harry and Jack had been planning Jack’s marking, together with Walter. I knew that my parents knew something about it, but they did not speak of it to me. I’d never felt more the “outsider” than I had over the past week as I watched the small glances, and the occasional significant words, pass to and fro. It wasn’t much said or done, but there was enough.
Oh, gods, I so much wanted to be a part of something, to not be continually pushed to the outer.
To share.
I was also terrified of what might be about to happen. I was so unsure of Jack, and of the desperately fine balance he could (almost certainly would) upset, that this sense of something momentous happening was enough to set my nerves on edge.
As well, over the past three nights Catling had sat grinning with such apparent satisfaction from her shadowy corner of my bedroom that I was certain something terrible was imminent.
So, while my mother was out with her Sisters, and my father had taken his shift atop the Savoy on ARP duty (earlier in the year he had volunteered as a warden), I had sat in our apartment feeling such an ominous weight of dread about my shoulders that I could no longer bear it.
I used my Darkcraft.
I rarely touched it, but tonight I was prepared to risk using it. To be honest, I think I might have torn my hair out if I’d been forced to use the trains or buses to get to Epping Forest (I had no doubt that Jack’s marking would take place there), not to mention the walk I’d then be forced to take to reach Faerie Hill Manor once I’d arrived at either train station or bus stop. I did not drive, so I could not take one of my father’s cars.
So I used the Darkcraft. I sat on my bed in our apartment, wearing the first thing I’d found to throw about me, and allowed the Darkcraft to well up and consume me.
It was terrifying, if only because I thought Catling might reach out and bite. But she let me be, and I surrendered to the Darkcraft, closing my eyes against its power…
And opened them on the terrace of Faerie Hill Manor to find myself looking at Jack’s back as he stood on the terrace. I knew he’d intuited my presence, and so I spoke, and he came over and sat down to talk to me.
I was more unnerved than ever, because I could feel his deep unease. He had, of course, wanted to know why I was there…I could hardly tell him it was because I was morbidly curious about this marking, and so I rattled on senselessly about my mother and how I feared he was going to upset things and…
Oh dear. I must have come across like a stupid young girl. I knew I’d come across as a stupid young girl because Jack had snapped at me, and all I’d wanted to do was to run away, to cease to exist, because he was so angry at me, and I was so mortified.
Then he’d been apologetic (and appeared as if he meant it, too), and from then on the conversation had oscillated between fear and candour and suspicion. I was furious with myself for allowing him to realise I’d been trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth; he was furious to discover it.
And, I think, disappointed. He must have thought I was a pathetic Mistress of the Labyrinth.
I don’t know why I told him about Catling sitting with me at night. I’d told no one for hundreds of years—why him? Jack had a terrible habit of just sitting and watching me from behind the smoke dribbling from his cigarette, and words seemed to tumble from my mouth.
Anything, to fill the silence.
We’d gone back inside eventually, and Harry, just arrived back from whatever he’d been doing in the Faerie, professed some surprise at my presence. He’d told me to spend the night, and that he’d have me driven back to the Savoy in the morning, and then he and Jack had, separately, left.
I waited ten minutes after Jack had left, then followed.
I followed Jack, rather than Harry. Harry had vanished from my perception, but I could sense Jack’s movements through the forest, although I don’t know what power I used to do so. It was hardly as if I had any natural connection with the forest, or with Jack himself, but once I left Faerie Hill Manor I turned about slowly in the driveway…and I felt a glimmer of Jack’s movement to my north.
And so I trailed him. Very quietly, using every ounce of natural and magical quiet I could (although I was very circumspect in using my Darkcraft).
The forest was very dark and, for me, very unknowable. I rarely spent much time here at all. I’d been to Faerie Hill Manor a handful of times in the past few years, and I don’t think I’d ever walked in the forest itself. As soon as I stepped beneath the trees and felt the “foreignness” of the forest, its deep, mystical power, I realised how much of my life had been spent tucked away in some quiet room in whatever house or apartment my parents had at the time. I’d been so sheltered (by both parents, although of course my mother had been the better at it) that I’d experienced very little of the outside world, let alone the Faerie magic of a place like Epping Forest.
I hadn’t even been back to the Faerie since I was a baby. I think everyone had thought it might be unwise. Think of all the damage that Catling might wreak there through me.
I’d spent my life huddled in rooms, as if I were a prisoner.
Yet now, here I was, creeping through a forest which seemed to watch every movement I made.
I was more unnerved than ever, but paradoxically more determined. I would not be frightened. I had the Darkcraft. I could keep silent. Harry and Jack would never know I was following them.
I could participate, even if silently and unknowably, rather than be told six weeks after the event.
The journey through Epping Forest in Jack’s trail took about half an hour, I suppose. We were heading north towards the town of Epping, and I did not know if Jack meant to go all the way to the town, or if he had a destination somewhere closer.
Somewhere closer, as it turned out.
I became aware eventually that he’d stopped moving, that he’d arrived at wherever he needed to be, and my own movements became far more cautious. I crept as best I could, every nerve straining for danger or chance of discovery, my Darkcraft simmering, begging to be allowed full rein.