I grew increasingly uncomfortable as the morning wore on. I felt as if I were being watched the entire time. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, as both Matilda and I were too well dressed to go totally unnoticed amongst the East Enders, but I didn’t feel as if it were human eyes watching me. I thought initially it was Catling…but it didn’t feel like her, either.
It didn’t have her malevolence, but it was watchful, cold, judgemental, greatly discomforting.
Matilda kept an eye on me. She knew something was unsettling me, but she didn’t probe, for which I was grateful.
As the day passed I gradually expanded my senses, using all the added knowledge and understanding that working with Ariadne had given me.
Finally, about midday, with a sickening turn of my stomach, I realised that the feeling of being watched was caused by the shadow itself. It was watching me.
And it was whispering to me. That scared me so much that the instant I first realised it I gasped and leaned against the brick wall Matilda and I were passing. We’d been wandering along St George Street close to where it turned into Shadwell High Street, moving towards a community hall a few blocks further up, when suddenly I realised that all the “strangeness” I’d been feeling, and increasingly so for the past hour or more, was in fact soft words whispered at a frantic pace into my mind.
GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace
I leaned against the wall, my stomach now heaving over, and barely stopped myself from gagging. Along with the whispering I could sense the shadow, as if it were leaning close. The feeling was similar, if not quite as horrifying, to what I’d felt on the night the imps attacked me.
GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace
“Grace?” Matilda slid an arm about my shoulders. “Grace?”
WatchmeGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGracewat chmeGrace
“Oh, gods, Matilda…” I whispered, desperately wanting her to stay near and yet not sure I could actually force out the words to tell her what was happening.
GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace
“Grace?”
WatchmeGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGracewat chmeGrace
I finally managed to dampen the noise a little, for which I was profoundly grateful. At least I could do that.
“Grace?” Matilda all but hissed.
“Matilda…the shadow is whispering to me. I don’t believe it…sorry, I only just realised what was happening and it overwhelmed me.”
She was silent for one long shocked moment. “What is it whispering?”
“It calls my name over and over, and begs me to watch it.”
Both of us at that moment firmly fixed our eyes on the pavement. Neither of us wanted to look up, although gods alone knew what we might have seen. The shadow was not visible as such; it could only be sensed.
The whispering continued—
GraceGraceGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGrace
—but I found it far more bearable now I’d dampened it down.
“What do you want to do, Grace?”
What did I want to do? “Continue on, I think, Matilda. I don’t want this to stop us.”
Matilda looked at me searchingly, but eventually she nodded, and we managed to continue walking down St George Street towards the community hall.
The whispering continued over the next few days. Sometimes it was barely there, sometimes it was almost a scream in my head. On those occasions I shut it out completely, closing myself off from my powers as a Mistress of the Labyrinth as a last resort.
It called my name, it begged me to watch it.
And it asked me to come to St Paul’s.
That last made me revise my initial belief that it wasn’t Catling. The shadow must be her—why else would it try to get me close to St Paul’s?
There wasn’t much else I could discover about the shadow, but the whispering was enough for me.
I rang Copt Hall that first day, in the evening, when I’d returned to Ariadne’s apartment. Jack was out. Malcolm was vague about where he was, but I gathered he was in the forest somewhere.
Jack rang me back the next evening, and we arranged to meet the following night. He’d wanted to come straight down to talk to me, but I’d demurred. It was late, I had a terrible headache, and I didn’t want Jack to think he had to dash down to save me from every bump in the night. I told him what the shadow was saying to me (just calling my name, begging to meet me at St Paul’s), and he reluctantly agreed to leave it until the following evening.
I was a little surprised by how pleased I was to see him waiting outside the White Queen Cafe. As I approached he turned, saw me, and grinned, taking my hands (then running his own a little way over my wrists and up my forearms) and planting a soft kiss on my cheek.
We sat once again at the back table, Mrs Stanford hovering happily in the background, feeding us marmalade cake and forcing us to listen to another execrable variety show on the radio. As before, there was no one else in the cafe apart from us.
“What do you think, Jack?
He looked at me with worried eyes and shook his head slowly. “I have no idea. I can’t hear it.”
“It is Catling. It must be.”
“Perhaps.”
“Jack.”
“I know, I know. I haven’t shut myself off to the idea that this entire shadow is Catling’s construction, Grace. But…why would she want you to come to St Paul’s?”
I shrugged. Now that I was settled in the cafe and the initial euphoria of seeing Jack had passed, I felt close to tears. The past few days of listening to the constant whispering had worn me down.
“I’ll come out with you tomorrow,” Jack said. “Maybe together…”
I nodded. Maybe together…
At that moment, we both heard the whispering.
GraceJackGraceackrajacgrajackjacejracegrajace
Jack went white, and without thinking I reached out and took his hand.
Yes!Yes!Yes! GraceJackGraceJack…Come to St Paul’s. Come to St Paul’s.
Now that it had both of us together (hand in hand) the whispering became clearer, less urgent.
Come to St Paul’s, Grace. Come to St Paul’s, Jack. Come to St Paul’s together, GraceJack.
Why? whispered Jack.
Because I have something to show you.
Hours later we still sat in the White Queen Cafe. Mrs Stanford had come out to refresh our tea, and to call us her best customers, although I was starting to think we were her only customers.
No one else had entered in all this time.
“I don’t know if I want to go,” I said.
Jack was looking down at the snowy linen tablecloth, slowly drumming the fingers of one hand.
“I don’t think it is Catling,” he said.
I closed my eyes in mingled horror and desperation. “Jack—”
“Sweetheart,” he said, that hand now sliding across the tablecloth and taking mine, “I don’t think it is Catling.”
My heart turned over when he called me sweetheart, but considering my stomach was also doing slow, queasy turns in fear the mingled effect wasn’t particularly pleasant. I knew I should trust him—gods alone knew Jack had so much more experience with the Troy Game than I did—but, oh, the fear…
“Please,” he whispered, “trust me.”
Gods help me, I did. “All right,” I said, and his hand tightened about mine.
In the kitchen the White Queen smiled, and the pot of marmalade dropped from her fingers and shattered over the floor.
We went to St Paul’s the next week. Having made the decision, we then lingered. Partly this was because of the weather, which had closed in (a poor excuse!), and partly because both of us were more than a little hesitant.
Strangely, even though we took our time about arriving at the cathedral, the whispering stopped completely the night we’d made the decision to go.
We would arrive, eventually, and the shadow was content.
The night we did go, Wednesday, was a cold, blustery night. Jack picked me up from outside Ariadne’s apartment at ten o’clock (we hadn’t wanted to go during the day when we might disturb the cathedral worshippers), then drove to a street two or three away from St Paul’s where he parked and turned off the ignition. We were both so tense we hadn’t even spoken when I got in the car, and now, as we sat in the cold and dark, listening to sleet pelting against the car windows, we remained silent for long minutes. I had my hands thrust deep into my coat pockets; Jack had his still resting on the steering wheel of the Austin, as if he wanted to be ready to drive off at a moment’s notice.
Eventually he sighed, and looked at me. “Ready?”
“No,” I said.
He gave a faint laugh. “That’s good enough for me. Grace, Catling won’t hurt us. Neither of us. We’re too important to her. She can taunt, but she won’t hurt us.”
I turned my head so I could look at him. Maybe he was right, maybe not, but we were here now, and we might as well get on with it.