My eyes must still have been misted with tears, because for a moment all I could see was a blur of brilliant light. Then Jack lifted something from the box and, as I heard Ariadne laugh and my mother gasp, I blinked away my remaining tears and looked at a piece of jewellery that was so extraordinary I simply could not immediately comprehend it.
It was a bracelet of exquisite delicacy. From a thin wrist band of diamond-set platinum, tendrils, or sprays, of diamonds radiated out in a complex and not immediately discernible pattern. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I must have frowned, trying to make it out, for from the corner of my eye I saw Jack smile, and reach out with one hand to take my right wrist and with the other slip the bracelet over my right hand.
The platinum band fitted perfectly about my wrist. From there the tendrils, some fourteen or fifteen of them, spread up my arm like twisted rivulets, some of the tendrils almost to my elbow.
They followed precisely the lines of my scars.
“Grace,” Jack said, “these lines of diamonds track the lines of your scars, but they do not hide them, they celebrate them. Do you know what I’m saying to you? Do you understand?”
I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to think. I had no idea what Jack meant with this gift.
“Grace,” he said, “I know of very few people, I know of no one, who could have survived what Catling has done to you with the same courage and dignity that you have managed. I couldn’t do it, haven’t done it, neither has your mother, nor anyone else who has been caught up in this terrible Game. Everyone has made mistakes, taken missteps, and created havoc as they’ve done it. You’ve managed to exist with a purity and a grace and a clarity that is extraordinary. Grace, these bands,” now he lifted another one from its box and slipped it over my left wrist, where the sprays of diamonds again aligned themselves perfectly with the twistings of my scars, “celebrate your courage and your dignity. The diamonds are for your clarity, your sheer brilliance, the platinum celebrates your courage and dignity.”
And they also replace what I have taken from you, he spoke into my mind. You gifted bands to me, now I gift these to you.
I couldn’t speak.
He smiled, the expression very gentle, very sweet. “Can you see what I’ve done to them? Can you feel it?”
I shook my head. I felt numb. I had no idea what he was going to say.
The grin widened very slightly. “These diamond bands were made by a jeweller in the West End to my design. He thought I was a crazy Yank.” That smile stretched just a little further. “When he gave them to me yesterday morning I brought them to this spot and here I put something else into them. Something of me. A glamour. Grace, if you accept these bands from me they will never come off. They will cleave to your flesh as closely as do the kingship bands of Troy to mine. But what the glamour enables you to do is to hide them or display them as you wish. Do you feel it?”
I was still numb (I was actually thinking that he’d arranged all of this yesterday, and then had taken me to dinner and had said nothing of it), but now he’d pointed it out to me then, yes, I could sense the glamour.
“They will not stop Catling from touching you, Grace, but when she does fire up her hex, and encircle you with agony, then the diamonds will flare into light, and everyone about you will know of your courage and your grace.”
I wished he would stop speaking; I didn’t think I could stand any more.
“I wish I could stop the pain, Grace,” he said, and I saw tears in his eyes. “I wish I could, but I am powerless in that.”
I tried to take a deep breath, felt it tremble alarmingly, and stopped it before I could embarrass myself with tears.
“Will you accept the diamond bands, Grace?”
I looked at him then, and thought of everything we had shared and felt in this magical place on this day.
“Yes,” I said.
THREE
Faerie Hill Manor
Sunday, 22nd September 1940
Noah stood in the drawing room at Faerie Hill Manor and watched as Grace, now dressed in more modern and modest clothing, slipped out the French windows. Noah glanced around the room.
Jack was nowhere to be seen.
She looked back to the French windows. It didn’t take much imagination to work out that Grace had gone to talk to Jack.
Noah was torn. She needed to speak to the two of them, and now would be the perfect chance while everyone else remained in the room, but on the other hand she didn’t want to disturb them.
Noah, as everyone else, save, she thought, the strange enigmatic Malcolm (or Prasutagus, as Jack had called him), had been stunned by what had happened atop Ambersbury Banks. Not merely by Grace’s sheer beauty and power and competence, but by what Jack had done for her afterwards.
Those diamond bands. Stunning. And, oh, their meaning. The gift itself was extraordinary, but Jack could have chosen to gift those bands to Grace at any time. His timing was no fluke, and it was deeply meaningful. What had happened was virtually an exchange of bands, of rings, and all that that symbolised. When it happened between a Kingman and a Mistress of the Labyrinth it added further layers of meaning and symbolism.
Until today Noah had not suspected the depth of what Jack felt for Grace.
Damn, she needed to talk to them both so badly. Noah put down her glass and slowly moved around the room, heading for the glass doors. What was Jack planning? And why was she so concerned? Did her uneasiness come from her role as woman, mother or Mistress of the Labyrinth?
“What a mess,” Noah muttered, and, taking a deep breath, slipped out to the terrace.
Jack, now back in his military uniform, and Grace were standing not very far away and, to Noah’s relief, they weren’t engaged in anything even vaguely intimate. In fact, they were merely standing together, talking.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Noah said. “I wanted the opportunity to speak with both of you.”
Jack looked wary, but Grace smiled, and Noah leaned forward, gave her a hug, then took Grace’s hands in hers, using the opportunity to inspect the diamond bracelets.
“They’re beautiful,” Noah said. She gave her head a little shake in wonderment. “And so powerful. Jack, these are extraordinary. As is what you said to Grace when you gave them to her. Thank you, from my heart. You have done more for her in the year you’ve been back than I’ve managed in three hundred.”
Noah gave her daughter’s hands a little squeeze, then let them go. “Jack, how does it feel, to have four of the bands back?”
Noah was genuinely curious. Jack had hunted and lusted and fought for those bands for well over three thousand years, yet now he seemed so calm. She could sense the change in him, the deepening and shifting of power, but to be so calm? He had changed, indeed.
Jack’s face had relaxed a little. “They feel warm, Noah.” He laughed a little at the expression on her face. “Really. They feel warm against my skin, and they feel…happy. Glad to be home, perhaps.”
“And have they given you a greater understanding, Jack?” Noah asked, and Grace looked inquisitively at Jack as well.
Jack hesitated before replying. “I need to get down to London to see if the bands help any more with untangling the meaning of the strange shadow. But I won’t do that until I retrieve the other two bands.”
“And you’ll do that…when?” said Noah.
“Tomorrow,” Jack said. “The Lord of the Faerie will take me into the Otherworld tomorrow.”
Noah looked at him carefully. It seemed to her that Jack was torn between two competing emotions—excitement and worry.
“Jack,” she said quietly, “where are we going?” Before Jack could answer, Noah hurried on. “Please don’t take what I say amiss. I just don’t know…Jack, what you did for Grace today was wonderful, and I begrudge neither you nor her whatever awaits you…but I don’t know where we, I, stand now with the Troy Game. Grace is a powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth, and she matches you, Jack, anyone can see that, but she can’t help with the Troy Game. Grace,” Noah turned back to her daughter, “don’t think I am trying to—”
“Mother,” Grace said, smiling, “don’t worry. Jack and I were just talking of the same thing when you came out.”
“Grace is pivotal,” said Jack, “but no one seems to know why. You’re right. Grace can’t help with the Troy Game; she’s too tightly tied to it. Catling’s fate is hers.”