It was already long past midnight, but I smiled, and thanked him, and walked back down the steps to take the plate from his hand.
As I did so I looked over to where Harry stood by the door leading to the drawing room.
As our eyes met, he gave a small, sad smile, then turned his back and walked through the door.
I looked at Jack, who was watching me with eyes so unreadable they had become as mysterious as the strange shadow that hung over London.
Suddenly uncomfortable, I took the plate and walked up the stairs.
When I got to my room, I put the plate on my nightstand, thinking that I might eat some marzipan pear if I woke during the night.
But I slept the night through, more soundly than I have slept in years, and when I woke in the morning both the plate and its contents had gone, and I thought that one of Harry’s servants had been in early and had cleared it away.
I felt a small twinge of disappointment, but then forgot it within moments.
Within the dark crypt, the White Queen put the plate with its sliced marzipan pear atop the altar. She stood a long moment, staring at it.
Then she gave a soft smile and touched the marzipan fruit briefly, as if caressing it. She had been working so long for this, so long, and finally…
Then the White Queen’s face lost its warmth, and grew cool and distant once more.
All depended on whether or not Grace would be prepared to offer her life for Jack.
So tell me, Grace,” the White Queen whispered into the chilly, dank air of the crypt. “Is he sweet enough to die for? Are you prepared to offer your neck to the return swing of the druid’s sword?”
FOURTEEN
Hampstead and Kensington
New Year’s Eve, December 1939
Jack spent New Year’s Eve with Matilda, Ecub and Erith at their house in Hampstead. Situated on Heath Road, the house had a commanding view of the heath, and once he’d parked the Austin, Jack spent several minutes standing, looking out over the landscape.
He could remember riding through here, sitting behind Genvissa on her pony, as she took him to the Llandin, Llangarlia’s most sacred hill. He could remember becoming drunk on her dreams of power, remember being drunk with lust for her.
And here he was, so many thousands of years on, more powerful than perhaps he could have imagined then, and yet so different, and coming to visit women who, as Brutus, he had despised.
Jack sighed, and turned for the house.
It was a modern brick house, sprawling and comfortable, and Matilda opened the door just as he raised his hand to knock.
“Lost in memories, Jack?” she said softly as she leaned forward to kiss his cheek.
“I have learned to hate memories,” he said.
Matilda grinned. “Not all of them, I hope.”
He laughed, and kissed her mouth. “No. There are a few I treasure.”
It was an enjoyable evening. Despite what Jack had said to Matilda, the four of them spent several hours reminiscing. They did not discuss the great events that had consumed their several lives, nor did they mention the Troy Game, but, rather as Jack and Harry had done on Christmas Eve, they remembered the little things that had made life enjoyable and worthwhile: fabrics and foods; walks and glades; jests that had survived through the centuries. They recalled their time spent in exile on the Continent when Jack had been Louis, and the other three the wife and mistresses of Charles II, and they slipped naturally back into the closeness that all four had shared during that life.
“Sometimes I wish,” Jack said as the hands of the clock crept ever closer to midnight, “that we could just sideslip into one of the harmless, comfortable times that we have all experienced, and leave the Troy Game and all that it implies behind us.”
“If we did that,” said Erith, “then we would lose too much.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, then shut it, realising she was right. The good times they had shared would be as nothing if they were not all bonded by the terrors as well.
“I thought you might have been at Faerie Hill Manor tonight,” Ecub remarked, glancing at the clock. It lacked but a few minutes until midnight. “Noah and Weyland will be there, and Silvius too, perhaps. And Grace.”
“I ruined Weyland’s Christmas,” Jack said. “I thought I’d leave him to his family for New Year’s.”
“I hear from Noah,” Ecub said, “and from Grace herself, that you have been spending time with Grace. That is well done, Jack. Inch by inch, Grace is emerging from her shell.”
“I am not being charitable,” Jack said, a little annoyed by Ecub’s words. “Grace is somehow connected to this shadow. She can trace it. If I am to discover its true nature, then I need Grace.”
“Let us not talk of this shadow tonight,” Matilda said, rising from her chair to top up their glasses. “Look, midnight is upon us, and we need to farewell the past and look only into the future.”
As the clock chimed, they toasted the New Year, sharing laughter and kisses, then Erith and Ecub excused themselves, saying they were tired after so much conversation and alcohol and needed their bed.
Jack laughed softly as the door closed behind them. “They are not terribly subtle. Did you ask them to do that, Matilda?”
“No,” she said, “but they knew I would like time alone with you.”
She moved to sit on the arm of his chair. “Jack, can I see your markings?”
He put his glass down, slipped off his jacket and tie, then his shirt, then took a deep breath as Matilda slid her hands over his chest and shoulders.
“They are very beautiful, Jack. Very powerful.”
“Matilda—”
“Will you stay the night with me, Jack?”
It was tempting. Matilda’s hands were firm and inviting on his body and, oh, how he’d missed both her body and her advice in his bed. Spending the night with Matilda meant not only making love with her, but spending hours in talk with her, confiding his fears and hopes, asking her advice, and all the while running his hands over her body…
Matilda smiled slowly as she saw his eyes darken. “Just this once,” she said. “Just for comfort.”
Jack’s hands moved about her waist, then up her back. She leaned down and kissed him, and his hands firmed about her body and slid her down onto his lap.
“Thank the gods,” she whispered. “For a moment I thought all you had come for tonight was tea and cake and conversation.”
Suddenly all Jack could see was Grace sitting opposite him in the Lyons teashop as the tea lady fussed over Jack, and then Grace’s jesting about the occasion at Christmas.
“I’m sorry, Matilda,” Jack said, leaning back, his hands falling away from her body. “I really should be going.”
Jack’s father, Silvius, had no such qualms about refusing the invitation offered him the same night. By one a.m. he lay in bed in a luxurious Kensington apartment, running one hand softly over the waist and hip of the woman lying next to him, sated both with love and with alcohol.
Ariadne smiled, kissing Silvius softly, and running her hand behind his head, tangling her fingers within his black curls.
“It was nice of you to keep a pariah like me company on New Year’s,” she whispered.
“It was an invitation I could not resist.”
Her hand shifted from the nape of his neck to his bicep. “I can still feel the ghost of the kingship bands of Troy about your flesh,” she said, then leaned forward and gently kissed his arm.
“Ah,” Silvius said, grinning. “It was not me you desired at all, then, but the gold I once wore.”
“Indeed,” said Ariadne, arching one of her beautiful eyebrows. “Think that I wanted you?”
“The things you have to put up with, eh, to remember your past glory days?”
Ariadne briefly considered being offended (past glory days?) but then decided she preferred laughing with this man than being irate. “I wish I’d met you a long time ago,” she said.
“If you could have dragged me away the instant before Brutus plunged that arrow into my eye, it might have saved everyone a great deal of trouble.”
She smiled and kissed him, and for a few minutes there was little said between them at all. Just as Ariadne was sure that Silvius was thinking of nothing more than furthering his discovery of her body, he pulled his mouth from hers and leaned back just a little.
“I was talking to Weyland this morning, and—” he began.
“For all the gods’ sakes, Silvius, if you must talk then let us not talk of him!’
She sounded truly waspish, and Silvius apologised to her. “I am an old man, Ariadne, and you know how old men’s minds wander at the most inappropriate moment. I’d started thinking about how Brutus murdered me, setting into motion all the events that led to the Troy Game, and then…well, witless fool that I am, I forgot what a treasure I held in my arms.”