And from where had Grace got such nerve? What was she thinking?
In the end Catling decided on, not rage or dread, but action. Jack had ignored all her warnings. Very well. Perhaps now it was time to demonstrate to both him and Noah just how vulnerable they were.
And it wouldn’t hurt to destroy Grace’s irritating new-found confidence, either.
Catling retreated into the dark heart of the labyrinth and began to marshal her powers. For two days she sat, motionless save for the winding of red wool between her fingers.
On the third day she moved, as deadly as a viper.
ELEVEN
The Faerie, and Stoke Newington, London
Sunday, 13th October 1940
Long Tom, like most of the Sidlesaghes, had buried himself so deep within the Faerie to escape the war that it took Noah three days before the Sidlesaghe answered her call. They met in the Faerie, on a hill five removed from The Naked, under a great stand of trees where the Sidlesaghe felt safe.
Noah almost wept when she saw Long Tom. He looked totally despondent, far different from his usual forlorn demeanour, and she hugged him tightly in greeting.
“Has the war stopped yet?” Long Tom said.
“No, my friend. I wish I had better news for you.”
Long Tom sighed. “The land suffers.”
Now the tears did come to Noah’s eyes. “I know, Long Tom.”
“What do you here, Noah?”
“Tom…there is something strange happening in London.”
Long Tom looked nervous, and Noah laid a hand on his arm. “We need your help. Please.”
Long Tom sighed again. “In what manner ‘strange’?”
Noah told him as best she could about the shadow, its labyrinthine quality, and the voice, the being, which had communicated with Jack and Grace.
“Long Tom,” she concluded, “we have no idea what this shadow is, or what is its purpose. Moreover, we do not know who this voice belongs to. Is it a creature of the Faerie, perhaps? Do you know, Tom?”
The Sidlesaghe hung his head and took a long time over his answer.
“I have heard whispers,” he said eventually.
Noah almost ground her teeth at the obtuseness of his answer, but instead managed to infuse her voice with nothing but light query. “You have actually heard these whispers? Or you have heard whispers of this creature’s identity?”
“I have heard whispers of the woman who calls to Grace and Jack.”
Noah waited for as long as she could bear it. “Yes?”
“Some say it is the White Queen.”
Noah frowned. The White Queen? She searched the ancient memory bequeathed to her by Mag, and found only elusiveness.
“Who is the White Queen, Long Tom?”
“She who has not lived.”
“Tom, what do you mean?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I do not know what I mean, Noah. All I know is that some Sidlesaghes, and some others among the Faerie, have for many years been aware of a woman who is so unknowable that no one has managed to understand her. She is fleeting. She is a shadow. She has become known as the White Queen because her cold, white face reminds all who see it of the winter landscape. Black eyes like the night. She’s cold, cold, cold. Never lived. We don’t know who she is, but some among us think she may be the one who has raised the shadow over London and who whispers to Grace and Jack.”
Noah stared at Long Tom, unable to make any sense out of what he was saying. “Why haven’t I seen her? Why don’t I know her?”
“She is lost to you, Noah.”
“What do you mean, Tom?”
“I don’t know what I mean, Noah.”
“Damn it, Tom—”
“I have to go, Noah. I don’t like it here. There’s trouble afoot. Magic and murder. I don’t like it at all.”
Suddenly he was gone.
Noah walked along the road leading from Epping Forest towards London. Soon she would use her power to transport herself to the mobile canteen, which was working the northern suburbs, but for the moment Noah just wanted to rub her head and walk and think.
Long Tom had a history of being obtuse, but this time Noah didn’t think he was deliberately trying to be vague. He simply did not know any more than he’d told her.
He was also scared, although Noah had no idea whether of this White Queen or of the general situation.
“Gods alone know our general situation is pitiful enough,” Noah mumbled as she wrapped herself in her coat and strode along the verge of the road. It was cold, just gone night, and even from this distance Noah could hear the drone of bombers over London.
It was going to be another bad night.
Even worse than it currently was? She and Jack and Grace, as everyone else, had wrestled with the problem of what the shadow was, and no one (save Grace) had considered the possibility it might be something of which to be afraid.
Noah did not like the sound of this White Queen very much at all. She was too secretive—and why be secretive if you had nothing to hide?
A cold, cold, fleeting shadow.
Noah shivered.
There’s trouble afoot. Magic and murder. I don’t like it at all.
Noah’s head sprang up and her eyes blazed.
The next instant she was gone.
Grace had come out to help Matilda, Ecub and Erith with the mobile canteen. She didn’t want to have to think any more, didn’t want to have to speculate about what the shadow might be and what the bomb may have meant. She just wanted to do something, and Noah’s Ark seemed like just the thing. Mindless work, offering pleasant companionship, and it took her out of Ariadne’s apartment, which Grace was beginning to find a trifle claustrophobic.
She didn’t know where Jack was tonight. They’d spent yesterday together, wandering aimlessly, talking of little, and they’d parted without making arrangements to meet again. He’d seemed preoccupied, and Grace thought he may have gone back to stand outside St Paul’s (temporarily closed to the public for repairs) and stare up at the sky, and wonder.
“Grace?”
She jumped a little, then laughed guiltily. Matilda had come upon her, standing at the back of the open van, staring up at the night sky.
“Do you think you should go look for him?” Matilda said.
“No,” Grace said. “I’d waste my time if he doesn’t want to be found. Now…sandwiches or the coffee?”
“Bring the sandwiches,” Matilda said. “Half of the people in the shelter are children, and most are starving.”
Grace looked up at the block of flats. They were a dreary lot: blank walls, featureless windows and architraves. Clean and comfortable no doubt, but such a heaviness of spirit lay over the building that Grace wondered how any soul could thrive while living here. The block’s shelter was in the basement, and Grace thought it must be gloomy indeed, if above-ground was so dreary.
“Sandwiches it is, then,” she said, and hefted a large tray in her arms.
“This way,” said Matilda, and Grace followed.
She glanced up at the street plate on the building.
Coronation Avenue.
For no reason—it was such an innocuous name—Grace shuddered.
Then, tray in hand, she walked towards the entrance, trailing Matilda by a few steps.
They were halfway down the stairs to the basement when the bomb hit.
It came straight in the roof, piercing through five floors with a terrifying noise before it detonated just inside Public Shelter No. 5 of Coronation Avenue.
Following immediately on the blast, the full weight of five floors of concrete, mortar, furniture, bricks and other debris plummeted downwards and, along the way, broke every water and sewer pipe that serviced the building.
Half the people inside the shelter were killed instantly. The rest were left trapped under tons of rubble that had sealed every exit.
Water and sewage started to trickle down into the basement.
The bomb struck the
same instant Noah was materialising on the roadway just outside Coronation Avenue. It threw her off her feet, covering her in blast dust and shards of glass. For long moments she lay completely stunned, not merely by the physical effects of the blast, but by a sense of loss so powerful it completely overwhelmed her.
All she could sense from the ruined building not thirty feet away was death. Intimate death. The death of someone she loved.
She felt a sudden, terrible iciness, and knew the paths of the Otherworld were opening up.
“No!” she screamed, and, unable to rise, began to crawl painfully through the dust and debris towards the building.
Jack had been wandering Epping Forest, Malcolm at his side. He’d been doing nothing in particular, just walking, thinking, exchanging the occasional word with Malcolm, when he, also, was hit with a wave of loss so stunning he became literally nauseated.
“Who?” said Malcolm, grasping at Jack’s arm as he bent over, dry-retching.
“Sweet Jesus…” whispered Jack.
“Who?” Malcolm snapped.
“Just about everyone,” Jack said, but there was only one name consuming him.
Grace.
Noah heard the sirens of the approaching fire engines, but she didn’t care. Her hands and arms and knees were bleeding where they had shuffled through shattered glass, but she didn’t care about that, either. She could feel Weyland and Jack coming closer, both using their power to transport themselves to the disaster, and she almost didn’t care about the fact that both men who meant so much to her would shortly be here to help. What use they, when so many were dead?
Or dying.
Grace was aware only of the weight surrounding her, and of the fact she could barely breathe. Every intake of air was a gigantic struggle, every exhalation made her head swim with agony. Her chest and abdomen hurt terribly, the air was thick with brick and concrete dust, and moving this thick, gritty air in and out of a chest which itself barely condescended to move required every ounce of will that she possessed.
Weight packed in about her. Her legs felt both warm and dead at the same time. She couldn’t move them. Her left arm was trapped under a weight (the same weight which made breathing so difficult), her right lay spread outwards from her body, white with dust.
Her face lay cushioned on a pillow of gritty sandwiches, and Grace’s first coherent thought was that she had dropped the damn sandwiches, and wasted so much valuable food.
Matilda would be cross.
Matilda?
Grace opened her mouth and croaked. She wet her lips, spat out some grit, and tried again.
“Matilda?”
“Noah!” Weyland grabbed her about the waist and lifted her into his arms.
She wailed as he did so, her bloodied arms reaching out towards the mountain of rubble, but Weyland ignored her plea and carried her some fifty or sixty feet away, to a clear area of roadway.
He didn’t need to ask where their daughter was.
“Matilda?” Grace couldn’t see a thing, but she could move her right arm very slightly, and she felt about with her hand.
She gasped—and then flinched at the pain in her chest—as two of her outstretched fingers touched flesh. “Matilda!”
There was no reply, and Grace could not tell by touch whether Matilda was alive or not. She tried to reach out with her power, but it failed her, and Grace wondered if she had been so terribly injured that all her abilities were draining away with her blood.
Oh, she suddenly thought, no wonder my legs are so warm. All my blood is escaping.
With that thought Grace gave Matilda’s face (at least, she hoped it was Matilda’s face and not a stranger’s dismembered limb) a final tap with her fingers, then she sighed, and drifted off into a welcome unconsciousness.
Jack ran to where Weyland crouched over Noah. “Is she…”
Death lay all around, and for the moment his sense of loss was so immense he couldn’t distinguish who it was had died, and who survived.
As Jack spoke to Weyland, he glanced over to the huge smoking pile of rubble that had once been a block of flats, and his stomach turned over in horror.
No, no, surely they weren’t beneath that!
“She’s alive,” Weyland said, his face and voice flat with what Jack assumed was combined hatred and pain. “She’s alive, but the others…oh, gods, all I feel is death.”
Jack stared at him in horror. “No…” he whispered. “No.”
Weyland sprang to his feet. “My daughter is under that!” he screamed in Jack’s face. “What have you done?”
“I haven’t…I…” Jack turned once more to the rubble, his mind registering dimly that several fire engines, ambulances and police cars had screeched to a halt and that emergency personnel were now scurrying over the site.
He still couldn’t think clearly. Everything overwhelmed him: Weyland’s anger and distress; his own sense that death had taken someone very important to him, and was hovering over others; Noah’s tears and faint cries; her blood-covered limbs; the massive pile of smoking rubble; the remains of Noah’s mobile canteen, blown over fifty feet away and now nothing but a twisted pile of blackened metal.
Where was Grace? No, please, gods, she wasn’t under that! Please, please, please…
“Gentlemen? Madam?” One of the firemen had come over. “Madam, how badly injured are you? Sir…you’re her husband? Good, then best get her to the ambulance over there. I—”
“My daughter is under there!” Noah cried, struggling to rise. “And my friends, my friends…”
Oh, Jack thought. That’s what I can feel. The death. Eaving’s Sisters. Were they dead? He couldn’t feel it, couldn’t isolate all the different strands of loss that had twisted about his soul to determine who was alive and who was dead.
The fireman glanced over at the rubble, and the look in his eyes made both Weyland and Noah cry out. “No!”
“Madam,” the fireman said, “sir. You can do nothing here, and, ma’am, you need those cuts looked at. We’ll get her out. We will.”
Weyland gave the man a long stare, then picked Noah up in his arms again and carried her towards one of the ambulances. Jack started towards the rubble, thinking only that if he just moved one piece, and then another, and then one more, then maybe he could reach down, and grasp Grace’s hand, and pull her out.
“You won’t, you know,” said the fireman, and Jack stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve buried them very, very thoroughly.”
Jack’s head swam, and for an instant he almost fainted with horror.
The fireman now wore Catling’s face.
TWELVE
Stoke Newington, London
Sunday, 13th October 1940
“That bomb was too much,” said Catling, stepping closer to Jack. “What did you think you and Grace were doing? Did you think you would actually hurt me? Did you—”
“You wouldn’t have done this if you weren’t scared.”
“I did it because I have grown tired of your lies and procrastination. Listen to me, Jack: Grace is trapped in there. She won’t die—she can’t, because I don’t particularly want to wink out of existence just yet—but I’ve injured her quite badly. Terribly, in fact. And no one can get to her. Can you see the rubble? There are five floors of bricks atop her, Jack. It is going to take a while to dig through all of that, yes? Now, I could hurry along the process, but I’ll do it under one condition only.”
Jack could barely breathe for fury. He hadn’t been responsible for the bomb, but there was little point in arguing the matter with Catling.
“And that condition would be?” he ground out. He was aware that his fists were clenched, and only the realisation that somewhere beneath this mask of vileness a real man lived stopped him from hitting Catling with all his might.
“I want you and Noah to vow, here and now, to complete me. No more dilly-dallying trying to find a way to destroy me. Set a date, Jack. Until I get that vow Grace will remain trapped, and Londo
n will suffer more horribly than perhaps it need do under the German bombs. I’m going to make her suffer, Jack, and, while I’m at it, I’ll make London suffer. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually as well. She’s not going to be the same girl when she comes out. If you want the girl that you love, then promise me a date of completion. Now!”
Jack found it difficult to believe he was still standing still. All he wanted to do was to wrap his fingers about Catling’s throat…
“You’ll kill her if you do that, Jack. Now, where’s that promise, then?”
Oh, gods, what had he done? For an instant Jack recalled his brash, stupid belief as Brutus that the Troy Game would be so wonderful, would make him immortal, grant him so much power.
The promise, Jack.
“I don’t have all the bands,” he said.
Catling’s face twisted. “I think you do. I think you’re just saving them for the right moment to use against me.”
“For gods’ sakes—”
The promise, Jack.
“I need to speak with Noah. She will need to agree.”
“Make sure she understands. Make sure she understands her little girl is going to be in agony every moment she delays. Make sure she knows that there are many more I can kill the longer you delay. All these deaths, as Grace’s agony, are your responsibility, Jack.”
And then Catling was gone and the fireman was back, his eyes blinking in confusion.
Grace came to slowly. She fought against waking because the pain was so bad. It wasn’t like the agony caused by Catling. In some measure she’d grown accustomed to that, and had inured herself against it, but the weight of tons of rubble on your chest and crushing your legs was so different, so final, that Grace didn’t think she could bear it. This was not something she need endure until Catling grew tired of it, this was something she’d need to endure until someone physically came along and pulled the weight of the rubble off her.