Do you know where we are?
Jack blinked, and his chest jerked in a long, shuddery breath. Epping Forest, yes, but…
“We’re approaching Great Monk Wood to our right,” he said.
“Indeed,” said Silvius. “Great Monk Wood is where Harry built Faerie Hill Manor.” As he spoke he turned the car right, off the A11, onto a dirt lane that led to the higher-ridged ground to the east, and a few minutes after that—long, terrifyingly nervous minutes for Jack—they entered a cleared space at the top of a ridge that sat deep within Great Monk Wood.
Silvius pulled the car to a halt as soon as they’d left the trees and turned off the engine.
They sat there, all three men, listening as the cooling engine ticked in the night, and stared ahead.
Faerie Hill Manor appeared as in the dreams and visions Jack had experienced over the past months: a sprawling, fanciful nineteenth-century over-the-top Gothic citadel, all turrets and spires and soaring windows set amid grey stonework. Again, as it had appeared in his dreams, the building sat atop a small grassy knoll, both house and knoll apart from and yet integral to the encircling forest.
Though it was a cloudy night, the house and knoll were bathed in a faint silvery luminescence.
Golden light shone from every window, and as Jack, Silvius and Walter watched, the double front doors opened and two figures walked out.
Jack blinked, and everything changed.
Faerie Hill Manor and the knoll still shimmered within that unearthly luminescence, but whereas the grass slopes leading up to the house had previously been bare, now there were a score of cars and a lorry all parked at varying angles to one side of the house.
There came a rap at Jack’s window, and he jumped.
A policeman stood there. “Your papers, if you please, sir,” he said as Jack rolled down the glass.
Jack sighed, and withdrew a thick sheaf of papers from the breast pocket of his greatcoat, handing them to the policeman who studied them for a few long moments by the light of a small torch and then handed them back.
“Very good, Major,” he said. Then he nodded to Walter in the back, “A good evening to you, Reverend,” and smiled at Silvius, “and to you, Mr Makris.”
“The children well, Tony?” Silvius said.
“Very well, Mr Makris, thank you for enquiring. You may drive on. Forgive the extra security, but—”
“I know who is here, Tony. A good night to you.” Silvius started up the car and drove the fifty or so yards to the gravelled drive directly in front of a set of sweeping steps that led to the front terrace.
As the car pulled to a halt, Jack took a deep breath, then opened his door, and stood on the drive looking up the steps to the terrace.
Brigadier Sir Harry Cole and Stella Wentworth stood there.
The Lord of the Faerie and his Faerie Queen, the Caroller.
“Welcome home, Jack,” Harry whispered, and it did not surprise Jack in the least that his whisper reached all the way down the steps and into his heart.
Welcome home.
Jack gave a small nod, acknowledging Harry’s welcome, then, without waiting for either his father or Walter, took the steps two at a time until he stood before Harry and Stella.
There he paused, just a step away, and studied them.
Harry was much as Jack remembered from his dreams. Early fifties, greying fair hair, a face somewhat lined with care and faded blue eyes. He was dressed in a combination of military and civilian: khaki trousers and a military button-down shirt and tie underneath a hand-knitted ribbed pullover.
Stella…Jack looked at her. She was no different from his visions of her, either. Beautiful (far more so than when she had been Jane, and as much as she had been as Swanne) with dark wavy hair carefully caught in a clip at the nape of her neck, pale skin, dark eyes, and a slim, elegantly clothed figure. Everything about her exuded sophistication.
There was a faint air of distance and haughtiness about her, but Jack decided that was nothing new. That was Genvissa-reborn all over.
His eyes slid to Harry, then he smiled and moved forward and both men embraced fiercely.
“Have I stepped into a maelstrom?” Jack asked softly as he finally moved back.
Harry gave a small, humourless smile. “When have you not, Jack?”
“Stella.” Jack gave her a small nod. It wasn’t much, considering their past (lovers, enemies, allies), but Stella didn’t look approachable enough for a hug, nor even a quick peck on the cheek.
Her eyes crinkled in amusement, and Jack instantly regretted his initial assessment of her.
“A singularly low-key entrance for you, Jack,” she said. “Where the invasion fleet? Where the pageantry, the triumphal entrance into London?”
“Burned in the ashes of all our ambitions,” Jack said, but he said it with an answering glint of humour in his own eyes, and was rewarded with a small smile from Stella.
“There are people waiting for you inside,” she said as Silvius and Walter joined them on the terrace, and when Jack took a deep breath no one could mistake the nerves behind it.
“Well, let us inside,” Jack said, taking his cap off and sliding it under his left arm, and with that, Harry beckoned Stella to go ahead of them and they walked through the magnificent cedar and cut-glass doors into the entrance hall of Faerie Hill Manor.
A man walked down the sweeping staircase to meet them.
Jack stepped forward and shook the man’s hand with a slight bow of his head.
“Your majesty,” he said.
George VI gave a small smile. “I think we can dispense with the formalities, Jack. But, by gods, I am glad you are here. I cannot stay much longer, a few minutes only, and I had feared to miss you.”
Jack nodded. That the king was here to greet him was amazing in itself, considering that Britain stood on the brink of war.
“Are you a happy man, John Thornton?” he asked softly, finally letting the king’s hand go. “When last we met we were both somewhat upset.”
Images of the Broken Bough, a tavern on the Strand in seventeenth-century London, filled both men’s minds. They’d met there the night Noah had gone to Asterion. Jack, as Louis, had been distraught at losing Noah to the horrors of Asterion; Thornton had been despondent at knowing she would never love him. Two men, desperate for a love they’d both lost.
“Careworn at the present,” George VI replied, “for these are difficult times, but I am loved, and love, and I never had thought to find that. So, yes, I am a happy and most contented man.”
There were steps behind the king on the staircase, and Jack looked up. Several men were running lightly down the stairs—two military attachés, a policeman, and a well-dressed man with a decidedly aristocratic air.
The aristocrat glanced at Jack, dismissed him in that glance, and spoke to George VI. “Sir, we must leave. Mr Chamberlain has requested that he meet with you tonight, and we face a long drive back to the palace.”
“Ah, yes, the Prime Minister.” George VI’s face suddenly looked even more careworn and tired than it had a moment earlier. He reached forward and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Finish it this time, Jack. Finish it.”
Then he was gone, surrounded and hurried by his entourage. A moment later Jack heard car doors slam and the sound of engines starting up.
“So now we have the house to ourselves,” said Stella.
“There’s no one else here?” Jack said, turning to look at her. Noah wasn’t here? He didn’t know whether to feel an overwhelming sense of relief or a gut-wrenchingly vast disappointment.
“Oh yes,” Stella said, “there are others here. Noah, too. But they’re all ‘ours’. George’s entourage were outsiders.”
“Come this way, Jack,” Harry said, and he led the group to a set of double doors to the right of the entrance hall. He opened one of them and gestured Jack inside.
Jack walked through into the large, panelled drawing room, then halted, transfixed by what he saw against the far wall, even though he should have expected it.
Weyland Orr, Asterion-reborn, standing by a wing-backed chair set by a great fireplace in which flickered a small fire. He looked just as he had when Jack had last seen him in the seventeenth century, fair hair slicked back over a strong handsome face, but clothed in a modern suave man-about-town style.
To one side of him, and slightly distanced from the chair, stood Noah, also wearing the same face that Jack remembered. She stared at Jack with a clearly recognisable tension, her beautiful features strained and pale. She was also elegantly dressed, in a wellcut suit of pale green with matching high-heeled pumps, her dark hair carefully waved and set into a bun at the back of her neck.