Mildly mollified, but not yet prepared to forgive him entirely, Ariadne sat up in bed, reaching for her cigarettes. “Want one?”
Silvius repressed a sigh—whose fault was this, but his?—and sat up as well. “Yes, thank you.”
Ariadne lit two cigarettes, handing one to Silvius. She drew deeply on hers as she leaned back against the pillows. “All right then, so you have managed to drag Weyland into our bed. What did you wish to say about him that was so important you could interrupt a loving with me?”
She was still annoyed, but Silvius was relieved to hear a hint of amusement in her voice.
“He’s set the imps to watching Jack,” Silvius said.
Ariadne gave a small snort. “Fool.”
“He fears for his family,” Silvius said. “For his marriage…for his daughter.”
“And so he has set those black imps to scurrying about after Jack?”
“They’ve grown up into private investigators,” said Silvius, amusement riddling his voice.
Ariadne laughed at that. “What? Chasing down mischievous husbands?”
Silvius smiled, happy that Ariadne had finally relaxed enough to laugh. Gods alone knew what she might have done to him had she been truly annoyed. He spent a moment or two smoking before mentioning what had really bothered him about his conversation with Weyland.
“Weyland thinks the imps are involved in the Penitent Ripper murders,” he said.
“Gods, Silvius!” Ariadne said, turning to look Silvius in the face. Details of the murderer’s grisly method of ripping out the women’s wombs had been leaked, if not into the press, then into enough ears that it had become the talk of London. Those details had been niggling at the back of Ariadne’s mind, but it wasn’t until Silvius mentioned the imps that they firmed into horrifying clarity.
“What’s wrong?” Silvius said.
“The imps!”
“What about the imps, woman?”
“The imps are doing the murders!”
“How can you know?”
Ariadne drew in a shaky breath, and, concerned, Silvius took her cigarette and stubbed it out with his in the ashtray on his bedside table.
“Silvius, have you not heard the story of how the imps were born?”
“Perhaps, Ariadne, but it would have been so long ago that—”
“Weyland put both imps into Jane’s—now Stella—and Noah’s wombs. Then, when Charles and Louis entered London, he commanded the imps to tear themselves out of the women’s wombs…Silvius, those imps tore and chewed their way into life! Both women should have died, save that Weyland forced them to live.”
Silvius remembered now—Stella had told him of this many, many years past. “The imps are recreating their own birth,” he said, horrified.
“Tearing the women apart,” said Ariadne, “save that these women die, they do not survive, as did Jane and Noah.”
“But…why? Why?”
“Sheer damned bleakness,” said Ariadne. “They are, after all, Weyland’s creation.”
She earned a sharp glance from Silvius at this, but he did not comment on it.
“Why didn’t Weyland see the connection?” he said, after a moment.
Ariadne’s only answer was to shrug and reach for another cigarette.
Part Three
THE GREAT MARRIAGE
London, 1170
Peter de Colechurch, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch in Cheapside, was a worried man. Peter’s duties as chaplain were only nominal, for the greater part of his day was taken up in his duties as Bridge Master of London Bridge. Peter had been delighted when Henry II offered him the post of Bridge Master seven years earlier, but the intervening years had witnessed Peter’s enthusiasm wane.
London Bridge was nothing but trouble.
The troubles had started more than a century ago when the ever-cursed Norsemen had pulled the damned thing down. A wooden bridge was quickly erected to replace the one that the Norsemen had destroyed, but that succumbed to fire within a few years. A new bridge was built, but that was swept away in floods within a year.
It took fifteen years to secure the funds to rebuild the bridge and misfortune claimed it within four years. When Peter first came to the post of Bridge Master in 1163 his initial task was to rebuild the bridge yet again. Peter was an engineer of rare skill, which was the reason he had secured the post in the first instance. Over the course of two years he designed and supervised the building of a beautiful bridge made almost entirely of elm wood, known for its strength and resistance to rot.
It had been up less than seven years, but already it was badly cracked and beginning to lean.
It would need to be replaced soon.
Henry II was demanding answers. Moreover, he was starting to murmur publicly about finding an engineer who could build a bridge that would last longer than a season. As much as Peter liked to moan quietly that the entire bridge was cursed, it was hardly an excuse he could present to the king.
Today Peter was walking the length of the bridge, something he did twice a day. He walked from London over to Southwark, pausing to lean over the balustrade every so often to wince at the fresh cracks which had appeared overnight, and was now on his return trip.
Halfway across he paused to look at St Paul’s.
The cathedral was itself in the process of being rebuilt, and the steeple was just starting to rise above the body of the nave.
Peter looked, awash with admiration. How he wished he could work on a cathedral…
“Why not?” said a little girl’s voice.
Peter looked down. A five- or six-year-old girl in a black dress stood at his side, regarding him gravely. She was very pretty with her black hair and eyes, although her face appeared so cold that she might have stepped from the grave not a moment since.
Peter repressed a superstitious shiver.
“St Paul’s needs something to rival it,” the little girl continued now that she had Peter’s full attention. “It needs something to balance it out. Why don’t you build a bridge to rival St Paul’s beauty?”
“Little girl…” Peter began.
“Oh, I’m not really a little girl, you know,” said the creature standing so close. “This form just amuses me. What would really thrill me is if you build me a house, right here on the bridge. One that will rival St Paul’s in beauty and power.”
Peter was very slowly backing away. She was a devil, a malign fairy, a—
“All I want is a chapel,” said the girl. “Is that so bad?”
“A chapel?” Peter said, coming to a halt.
“Indeed,” the girl said. “Imagine, if you will, a beautiful stone bridge, soaring over graceful stone piers—”
“It can’t be done. No one can build the kind of piers, in this river, needed to support a stone—”
“What if I showed you how?” the girl said.
While Peter de Colechurch knew perfectly well that this apparition was a spirit of some kind, he was now wondering if, perhaps, it was an angel sent from God to guide him rather than a devil sent to tease him.
After all, what devil would want a chapel?
The little girl smiled, deepening the coldness on her face. “I will show you how to build this bridge,” she said, “and Henry will shower you with favours, and your name will ring down the centuries. All I want is a chapel, Peter. In the middle of the bridge. You can dedicate it to whomever you wish. I’m not fussed. There is just one little thing I need in this chapel.”
“Yes?” said Peter, his suspicions again flaring.
The little girl smiled sweetly. “A crypt, Peter de Colechurch, with an altar laid out and dedicated to God. Do we have a deal?”
“Show me first how to build these piers,” said Peter, and the little girl laughed, and agreed.
She knew Peter was hers.
ONE
Within the Faerie and atop the Savoy
January to April 1940
The worst winter in decades gripped the land. Snow lay in great drifts, blocking many roads and making communications difficult, and ice formed over rivers, even freezing the upper reaches of the Thames. Frosts crippled the fields, and raging winter seas washed mines ashore where they killed boys with too-curious fingers. Life continued as close to normal as possible under the twin weights of the cold and the war, but most outdoor activities had to be curtailed, if not stopped completely, and people shivered within their homes under the restrictions of the severe winter and fuel shortages. When the ice and snow and frosts had done, floods devastated large portions of south-eastern England.
In late February and early March the IRA commenced a series of bombings in London. No one was killed, but a number of people were injured and the bombs caused extensive property damage.
While the war raged in Europe, many people in London, and Great Britain generally, had begun to lose their initial fear of invasion, massive bombings and gas attacks. Most Londoners had stopped carrying their gas masks everywhere, those who had built air raid shelters in their back gardens had to spend an hour every fortnight dusting away the cobwebs from their doors, and Noah and Eaving’s Sisters had garaged their mobile canteen for the moment. London had suffered no attacks (although there had been several false air raid warnings), Britain had suffered no invasion, and on the fifth of April, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, went so far as to announce that he thought Hitler had “missed the bus” and that a German invasion of the West was now highly unlikely.