“Silvius made one other suggestion to me,” Jack said as we walked past Lambeth Palace.
“Yes?”
I saw him smile from the corner of my eye.
“He suggested I hand you the sky, Grace.”
After that strange statement there was nothing said for a while. At the end of Lambeth Palace we turned east away from the river towards the little church of St Mary-at-Lambeth that crowded against the palace’s southern wall.
I thought we were to go inside the church, but Jack led me towards the gate in the dilapidated paling fence that encircled the churchyard.
“Why—” I began.
“Wait,” he said, leading me into the graveyard.
The wind continued to blow icy and uncomfortable, but the rain had dissipated. Even so, the graveyard of St Mary’s was a singularly cheerless place. It was unkempt: roses and weeds competed for space between dirty, leaning headstones, while broken shards of headstones past had been used to make an uneven path which wound through the graves and around the church.
“Jack?” I murmured.
He didn’t answer, merely leading me further along the path until we had come to the back of the church. Here there were several large tombs, and we wandered past them.
I pulled Jack to a halt at one.
“Captain William Bligh,” I said. “This seems such a sedate home for him.”
“Far from the wind-tossed mutinous seas,” Jack murmured, and led me to the next tomb.
This one made me shiver, for it was decorated in part with verdant trees and acorns, and in part with a multi-snake-headed monster writhing triumphantly over a skull.
“It is the tomb of the two John Tradescants,” Jack said.
“And they were…?”
“Famed gardeners of the late-sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries,” Jack said. “Many of the plants now so beloved of English cottage gardeners were originally imported by the Tradescants.”
“Why are you showing me this, Jack?”
He didn’t immediately respond, reaching out with one hand to touch the carved flowers on the Tradescant men’s tomb. “Look at this,” he said, his fingers now running over the snake-headed monster. “Amid the flowers, the monster.”
I was feeling more unsettled than ever. “Jack?”
“It reminds me of the Flower Gate,” he said, glancing at me. “You know what that is?”
“Of course. Catling needs you and Noah to dance the Flower Gate enchantment which will finally complete the Troy Game.”
He grimaced, lifting his hand away from the tomb. “Amid the flowers, the monster,” he repeated.
It was now starting to grow dark, and colder with every passing moment. What in the gods was Jack up to?
He looked at me directly. “Could you dance the Flower Gate into existence, if I asked, Grace?”
The world stopped about me. I don’t think I even breathed for a very long minute. “I can’t do that.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Can’t and won’t, Jack. I’m just not good enough. And, for gods’ sakes, you have my mother. She’s the powerful one! I can’t do it! I can’t. I’m bound to Catling, and I can’t—”
He pressed his hand against my mouth, stopping the flow of my fear.
“If I handed you the sky, Grace, would you dare to fly?”
What was he suggesting?
“Grace, if I asked you to deepen your training and experience of the labyrinth, would you do it for me?”
He finally removed his hand, and I could speak. “Why? I mean, why would you want me to do that? I can’t—”
He made an exasperated sound. “Grace, you could dance both Ariadne and Stella into the dust, if you so desired, and I suspect your mother also. I want you to fly, just for the sheer beauty of it, and because I think you’re going to be so damned, cursed useful that…”
He stopped, looking away, a muscle moving slightly in his jaw.
Then he turned back to me, took my hands in his, and slid his hands up my arms, rucking up my coat sleeves.
“Grace, there is something I suspect you are not truly aware of.” His fingers were running up and down each of my forearms, and now they halted just above my elbows. “Don’t you know what you have? Don’t you know what you hide?”
I frowned at him. The wind was frigid now, and the churchyard dark, and all I wanted was to get back to the Savoy and think over everything he had said, search out every hidden meaning, discover what he might have—
“Grace, within the flesh of your upper arms and your forearms, you carry four of the golden kingship bands of Troy. Did you not know that?”
I shook my head slowly, not believing, not even understanding, what he had just said. “Those bands are in the Faerie.”
“No. Those bands are in you.”
“No.”
“Yes,” said another voice.
I gave a low cry, and spun around—or as far as Jack’s grip would allow me.
Ariadne stepped into view. She was closely bundled in a fur coat, with a silk scarf over her carefully coiffured hair. “You wore the bands as ribbons into the Faerie,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “but then…”
But then what? I couldn’t remember. I was a very aware baby, and I remember when my parents met with the Lord of the Faerie on London Bridge, and my mother handed over to the Lord of the Faerie the four kingship bands of Troy that she possessed. The Lord of the Faerie, I think, had turned them into ribbons about my limbs, and had taken me into the Faerie…but then everything had collapsed: Catling had caught my parents during the Great Fire and pulled them into the dark heart of the labyrinth, tortured them, tortured me when I went to save them…
What had become of the bands?
“They never left you, Grace,” Jack said gently. “Don’t you feel them?”
For the moment the idea that I held four of the golden kingship bands of Troy within my flesh was too much to even begin to comprehend, so I concentrated instead on Jack’s request for me to deepen my training in the arts of the labyrinth. “So that’s why you want me to learn greater skills with the labyrinth,” I said. “You need the bands back.”
I want a great deal more from you than those four bands, Grace.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Ariadne said. “Stop doubting yourself. The bands didn’t just forget to leave; they picked you to hand them back to Jack. They’ve been matchmaking. None of this is a mistake, or an error, or something we’ll all regret horribly in the morning. Just say you’ll come train with me, Grace, and let me get out of this godforsaken graveyard before I freeze to death.”
I gave a little smile. “Does Catling know about the bands? Is that why she’s been sitting with me all these years?”
“Catling thinks they are in the Faerie,” Jack said. “I don’t think she has any idea that they never left you.” He gave a slow smile. “Imagine, something she doesn’t know.”
I laughed. Just a little bit, but I laughed. He was teasing me gently, knowing that I would think that he would use Catling’s misconception as a further indication of her weakness.
“All right,” I said. I looked at Ariadne, and, for the first time in centuries, remembered what it had felt like as she talked me through what I needed to do when St Paul’s burned down in 1666. The power, the strength, and the sense that, both literally and metaphorically, I did not walk alone. “If Ariadne agrees to deepen my training, then I’m willing.”
Jack grinned and Ariadne laughed, clapping her hands.
“Come with me tonight, then,” she said, “and let me drag you down into darkness!”
“You have such a way with words, Granny Ariadne,” I said, “but I’d prefer to leave it until tomorrow when I’ve had time to have a bath and warm up.”
So there it was. Jack wanted to “get to know me better”, having declared he found my mother “not quite what he was after”, and Ariadne was going to deepen my training in the arts of the labyrinth.
I went back to the Savoy that night very, very happy. Overall I felt useful, but I also felt wanted.
I felt valued. Not just by Jack, but by the kingship bands as well.
I sat in the bath that night, and ran my hands slowly up and down my arms. Jack had told me that the ribbons had appeared on all my limbs, but the four bands Noah handed over to the Lord of the Faerie had been the four armbands, and these had buried themselves in the flesh of my arms, above and below my elbows.
I pressed against the flesh, and imagined I could feel them.
I was the one to hand them back to Jack.
Once I would have worried about that. Worried that somehow I’d mess it up, or worried that somehow I’d corrupt the ritual because of my ties to Catling.