“Stella,” Harry said, walking over to Jack and taking his glass to put on the tray on the side table with his own, “Jack is tired. He has only just arrived and he needs to rest and find his balance. And we will all need to decide what to do. It is not up to a single one among us, but all of us, to find a way out of the disaster that threatens. Jack, what do you want to do tonight? You can have a room here, or…”
Thank the gods, Jack thought, that Harry had so adroitly salvaged this conversation. “Did you manage to obtain the lease I sent word to you about?”
Harry smiled, just slightly, the movement enough to crinkle the skin about his eyes. “Yes. Copt Hall is yours.”
Jack nodded, and would have said something, but Walter exclaimed first.
“Copt Hall? But that is a ruin!”
Harry’s smile broadened a little, and he walked over to a desk and opened a drawer. He drew out a vellum indenture, rolled up and bound with a soft pink light, and handed it to Jack.
“The lease agreement is between yourself and the Faerie,” he said. “It has no binding on the hall as it stands within this mortal realm, but only how it stands within the Faerie. It was a good choice, Jack, and I was pleased to execute the arrangements for you.”
“Thank you,” Jack said as he took the indenture and slid it inside one of the pockets of his greatcoat, which he shrugged on.
He stood a moment, looking about the room, meeting the eyes of everyone there (save Grace, who still had her face averted). “I don’t know what I am going to do,” Jack said softly. “I don’t know where to go and to whom to turn. I don’t know what awaits any of us. All I know,” he stepped back a pace, “is that I need some solace, and I have no idea where I can ever find it.”
With that, he walked over to the door leading to the terrace, and let himself out.
“Jack! Wait!”
Jack stopped just as he’d been about to walk down the steps leading to the lawn. He turned around.
Harry was hurrying towards him.
“Jack, we need to talk about—”
“For gods’ sakes, Harry, I’m as tired as hell. Can’t it wait?”
“I’m sorry. We can leave it until tomorrow, but I thought that as Walter will be leaving after breakfast, and we’d need to talk to him before then, I’d—”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s talk now then, if you insist.”
“Jack, you still need to take one more step to assume your full powers as Ringwalker—you need to be marked. Damn it, the forests—the land—need you. Don’t snarl about it.”
All Jack wanted to do was to fall into bed and sleep, and hope that tomorrow would be a better day. But no, here was Harry fretting at him. Still, that gave Jack a chance to voice something that had been worrying him.
“Harry,” he said, “I understand this needs to be done, but I also have concerns about it.”
“In what way?”
Jack managed to keep the stunned surprise off his face. In what way? Coel had truly been subsumed in the Lord of the Faerie if he needed to ask that. “I like who I am, Harry. I don’t particularly want to become a bloody deer full-time.” Jack had assumed the role of the Stag God, who watched over the forests and who was closely associated with the health of the land, from Og, a magnificent white deer with bloodred antlers.
Harry burst out laughing, and Jack imagined he could hear the faint rumble of conversation within the drawing room stop at the sound.
“You can be who you like,” Harry said. “Og was a deer to begin with, so that is the form he assumed as god of the forests. You can keep your far prettier form, if you want.”
Now it was Jack who gave the wry smile. “Am I the first man to hold the job?”
“Actually, you are. The forests shall have to get used to the idea. Jack, I hadn’t realised you were worried about it.”
Jack gave a slight shrug. “Do you think Walter will be willing to help in the marking?”
“Walter will do whatever he needs to in order to escape his past. Is there a place you have in mind?”
Jack thought of the times he had roamed Epping Forest when he’d lived as Louis. “Yes,” he said. “Ambersbury Banks.”
Harry nodded. “It is a good site, if a little stained by blood. This needs to be done fairly soon, Jack.”
He’d been such good friends with this man, Jack thought, Brothers, almost. But now he realised that much of that friendship had vanished. Coel—Harry—was now far more the Lord of the Faerie than anything else.
Jack felt a great sadness overwhelm him. “I’ll speak to Walter about it.”
Harry nodded. “Good.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder briefly. “Sleep well in your new home, Jack. Oh, and Jack? Join us for breakfast in the morning. The table is laid from eight.”
At that he turned, and went back into the house.
Inside the drawing room, Noah carefully avoided everyone’s eyes as she walked over to the drinks table, poured herself a whisky, and drank it straight down.
Just then, as they heard Harry’s steps coming across the terrace towards the door and Jack’s steps retreating towards the lawn, Grace gave a gasp of sheer relief.
The fiery bracelets had vanished with Jack.
Catling’s little lesson for the night had ended.
FIVE
Copt Hall and Faerie Hill Manor
Sunday, 3rd September 1939
Copt Hall stood silent and broken in the still, frosted night. The wrought-iron gates hung slightly askew and, while the lawn before the hall appeared to be neatly trimmed, the blades of grass had been cropped by the hungry mouths of rabbits, not the scythes of tending gardeners.
A hall had stood on this site at the north-western edge of St Thomas’ Quarter of Epping Forest for almost eight hundred years. Kings and queens had either banqueted or hidden here; families had been raised within its walls, and families condemned within them; a community had thrived, their babies welcomed and their weary funeralled.
Four-storey walls reared into the night sky, a shifting mass of purples and silvers and greys in the faint moonlight.
The walls had no roof, nor glass to fill their gaping windows. Staircases wound upwards into nothingness; fireplaces sat in walls with great chasms plunging just beyond their hearths. Mice nested in the drains, and foxes in the cellars.
Smudges of soot left over from a disastrous Sunday morning fire in 1917 still besmirched the turrets.
Once, long, long ago, Copt Hall had lived.
Now it was a broken shell.
Once, deer had trodden softly through the gardens.
Now deer gathered again. One or two at first, moving nervously across the still-gravelled but weedpocked drive. Then two or three more, emerging from the shadows of derelict outhouses. Then a dozen, trotting apprehensively forward from the overgrown Italianate garden at the rear of the hall.
The night grew even more still than it had been, and the ears of the deer twitched as they stared at the iron gates.
Then, as one, they started and wheeled away to the right, away from the hall and towards the forest.
At its edge they stopped, and stared once more to the gates.
A man stood there. He was dressed in a greatcoat with a military cap pulled down low over his brow, a holdall in his hand.
He stared at the hall, then took off his cap so that his face became clear in the moonlight.
The deer, as one, let out a great sigh.
“Well,” said Stella, sitting herself down in a chair and crossing her elegant legs. She had lit a cigarette and was looking at the others, smoke drifting lazily about her face. “I think that all went rather well.”
“For gods’ sakes, Stella,” Noah said, “it was awful.”
“Well, for you maybe,” said Stella, “but then he and I didn’t part on such bad terms in the last life as you and he. What did you think, Grace? Brutus returned. You’re the only one here who hadn’t met him.”
Grace had her legs curled under her in the chair, and she gave an indifferent shrug in answer to Stella’s question.
“Are you tired, darling?” Noah said. “Do you want to go to bed?”
“Oh, Noah,” Stella said, “she’s not a child!”
Noah flushed, and might have said something, save that Weyland shot her a cautionary look. He poured Grace an inch of whisky and handed her the glass without a word, ran his fingers lightly through his daughter’s loose curls, then went and sat on the sofa, accepting a cigarette from Stella.
“He’s angry,” Weyland said, as he drew deeply on the cigarette.