Druid's Sword

  “What do you think passing boatmen shall see?” said Grace as she stepped over the side of the boat and onto the first water step. Surprisingly, it felt firm and dry beneath her foot.

  “I suspect they will see nothing but an abandoned rowboat bobbing about in the river,” said Jack. “After last night’s raid, the odd boat floating free will surprise no one.”

  He stepped out of the boat himself, putting his hand on Grace’s shoulder for balance and inching past her down the water staircase. “Let me go first.”

  They walked down the stairs that twisted round the circular water-well. When Jack got to the stone floor, he held out his hand for Grace, and helped her down the final step.

  Still holding hands, they turned to the left where stood a stone-arched doorway…and looked through into the long-forgotten crypt of St Thomas’ Chapel.

  Although Jack and Grace had read that the crypt had run the entire length of the chapel, they were still surprised at its sense of space. They walked slowly through the doorway, still hand in hand, stopping a few paces inside, craning their heads to look at every aspect of the crypt.

  The ceiling was fan vaulted in stone, and very high, perhaps fifteen feet at its lowest, the peaks of the fans almost twenty feet high. There were two rows of columns running along the length of the crypt, supporting the fan vaulting.

  At the far end of the crypt, the east end, was a semicircular wall into which had been fitted the altar. There were tall, fat candles burning to either side of several objects lined up on the linen-draped altar, although neither Jack nor Grace could make them out from this distance.

  Standing to one side of the altar, hands folded before her, was the White Queen.

  The instant that Jack and Grace saw her, neither could move their eyes away.

  Her long black hair hung down her back, drifting over one shoulder, framing her cold white face, but instead of the black dress she now wore a white one: sleeveless and loose-fitting, it draped softly to her feet.

  In her face, her eyes burned black, their intensity extraordinarily discomfiting.

  Neither Jack nor Grace knew what to say.

  The White Queen inclined her head towards the altar, inviting them to walk closer to see what lay there.

  Jack drew in a deep breath and led Grace forward.

  They stopped a yard away from the altar, keenly aware of the White Queen standing only a few feet to their right.

  “Oh,” said Grace as she saw what the White Queen had laid out on the white linen.

  A plate with four slices of marzipan pear on it.

  A tray with a decanter of brandy and two glasses.

  The receipt for the room Jack and Grace had shared the previous night.

  “Do you remember these articles?” said the White Queen.

  Grace nodded. “The marzipan fruit…it was Christmas night and Catling had attacked me. Harry and Jack sat with me outside on the terrace of Faerie Hill Manor. The brandy and glasses are from the day I came out of my coma, and went to Copt Hall, and Jack washed me in the bath. The receipt from last night.”

  “Very good,” said the White Queen. “What does this collection mean, do you think? Grouped like this?”

  Jack turned a little towards her, at the same time raising one hand to Grace’s shoulder. “It represents Grace’s and my growing together. Our developing ‘togetherness’.”

  The White Queen laughed, although it sounded particularly humourless, and clapped her hands, three times, slowly. “Indeed! Did I not tell you that the best marriage you could ever make would be in my dark heart?”

  “Our marriage we made last night,” Jack said.

  “Ah,” said the White Queen, “but you made it using the power I spun for you out of this dark, forgotten crypt.”

  The power of the air raid. Jack wanted to address that, but Grace spoke before he could open his mouth.

  “Why group these items?” said Grace. “Why collect them? Why place them here?”

  “To give them power, of course,” said the White Queen. “To cement your union, the strongest way possible. Ah,” she looked at Jack, “my father is uncomfortable. What makes you worry, father?”

  “This,” Jack said, waving his hand first at the altar and then around the entire crypt. “You. I don’t know what you want. I don’t like the power you want us to use. The war. Did you have to—”

  “Jack.” Grace put a hand on his arm.

  “Do you want the Troy Game contained or not?” said the White Queen.

  “Yes,” Grace said, her hand tightening about Jack’s arm to silence him.

  “Then use what I have given you,” the White Queen said.

  “Why are you doing this?” said Jack. “Why help us? The gods know you have no reason to love—”

  “I do not love you, nor care for you in even the least possible way,” the White Queen said. “Please do not think I do this out of any familial sentiment.”

  “Then why?” Jack said.

  “Because I loathe the Troy Game,” the White Queen said. “Because I wanted to live and couldn’t, and it was the Troy Game’s fault.”

  “You don’t blame me?” said Jack. “After all, I was the one who started the Troy—”

  The White Queen stepped closer, and Jack had to restrain himself from taking a step backwards. She placed a long, pale finger on his chest, and if Jack managed to restrain taking a step back, he could not stop his flinch.

  “Oh, I blame you, father-Jack,” the White Queen said, “and I loathe you for what happened to me. If only you had cared. Even a little. Just a tad. But now it is too late to think of what might have been. I need you to spring the trap for me. You’re the only Kingman who can do it. I’m stuck with you. Please don’t think that I built this Game out of love for you.”

  “Jack and I have studied this Game of yours,” Grace said after an awkward moment’s silence. “You have built it exceedingly well, if nightmarishly.”

  “Why build a Game on murder and the horrors of war?” said Jack.

  The White Queen regarded him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Isn’t that what you built the Troy Game on?” she eventually said. “Whatever have I done that you haven’t, Jack?”

  Jack blanched.

  “Well,” the White Queen continued, “at least you’ve discovered how to use it.”

  “The Game is designed to destroy the Troy Game?” Grace said.

  “No,” the White Queen said, “my Game is designed to trap her. Contain her.” One of her feet tapped at the floor of the crypt. “In here.”

  “Why not unwind her completely?” said Jack. “Why not destroy her?”

  “Then you design a Game for that purpose!” the White Queen said. “Can you fix it so that the Troy Game can be destroyed? No? Can’t do it? Then take what I offer and accept it.”

  She took a deep breath, visibly steadying herself. “The Troy Game is too powerful for you, and too powerful for me. But if I built right, and if you and Grace execute right, then we can trap it within this dark heart. If the Game is worked right then the Troy Game won’t be able to escape. I built a Game to contain a Game. It was all I could do.”

  Jack felt Grace move slightly, and he looked at her.

  “We’ll take it,” Grace said. “Thank you.”

  Grace was right, Jack thought, nodding to his daughter as acknowledgement of his own appreciation. The White Queen had managed far more than anyone else.

  “What I don’t understand,” Jack said, “is how this Game saves Grace. As I’m sure you know, she’s tied by hex to Catling, and—”

  “When I began to build this Game, thousands of years ago,” said the White Queen, “I had no idea that one day Grace would exist, or that she would be tied to the Troy Game’s fate. Or that Catling would tie everything that Grace had touched—you, the land, the Faerie—to her fate. During the execution of the final Dance of the Flowers, the intricacies of my Game can break Catling’s hex tying everything Grace has touched to Grace’s and C
atling’s shared fate, but it can’t do anything else. So the answer to your question, father-Jack, is that my Game doesn’t save Grace, although it will save the land, the Faerie, and you, and everything else and everyone else that Grace has touched—that part of Catling’s hex was always the far weaker part and it will shatter during the final working of my Game. But the hex Catling put on Grace…that is too powerful for either me or for my Game. It’s just one of those things. When Catling is trapped inside this dark heart…then so, too, will Grace be trapped.”

  Jack felt his world fall away. “No! I—”

  “If you want her saved, father-Jack, then you do it!”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jack said. “It doesn’t make sense. Catling, and thus Grace, will be trapped inside your Game during the raising of the Flower Gate. Grace will be inside the dark heart.”

  With Catling, but this Jack did not say. He couldn’t. The pain would have murdered him.

  “And if Grace is inside the dark heart,” Jack continued, his voice growing firmer, “then the Game can’t be completed and Catling won’t be trapped. So there must be a way to prevent Catling’s hex dragging Grace inside the Game. There must. If Grace is to partner me to finish your Game, then she can’t be trapped inside with Catling.”

  The White Queen shook her head, her eyes never leaving Jack’s face. “There is no reason why Grace can’t continue her part of the dance when she is inside the dark heart of the Game. She can still partner you. Your powers can still connect. She will only lose power once the Game is completed. Then no one can reach her.”

  For one long, frightful moment, Jack could not believe, nor even comprehend, what the White Queen had said. The White Queen thought that Grace, once dragged into the dark heart of the Shadow Game with Catling, would continue to dance the enchantment that would trap her inside, with Catling, for eternity?

  “Grace couldn’t possibly continue a dance which would trap her for eternity,” he said. “She can’t. No one could.”

  “I am sure Grace will do the right thing,” the White Queen said. “If it is a choice between stopping the dance so she can escape, and thus allowing Catling to escape, or continuing the dance and making certain the world is free of the Troy Game’s malevolence, then I am sure she will continue the dance. Won’t you, Grace?”

  Jack turned to Grace. She was staring at the White Queen, her face ashen, and Jack was appalled to see

  once more in her eyes that terrible, haunted, lost look he’d seen when first he’d met her.

  He slid an arm about Grace’s waist, holding her against him.

  Was this his daughter’s revenge? This her repayment for his lack of care so many thousands of years ago?

  “Then why sit with her at night for so many years?” he said to the White Queen over the top of Grace’s head. “Why grow with her? Why—”

  “I watched Grace because I needed to be sure,” the White Queen said, very low, “that she was of strong enough character that she would continue to close the Game, even though she was trapped inside it. Imagine, father-Jack…I realised very early on that Grace would be your perfect partner, and thus the ideal Mistress to close out my Shadow Game with you. What you and she could do together…ah, the entrapment would be so powerful. But she was hexed to Catling! So I needed to sit with her, and watch what kind of woman she grew into, to make sure she would do what was right.”

  “That’s why you asked me if I would die for Jack,” Grace said.

  The White Queen inclined her head.

  “And why you set the shadow and imps to frighten her,” Jack said, his tone wooden. “You needed to further test her courage.”

  “And if I hadn’t had the right mettle?” Grace said. “If you’d doubted me?”

  “Then I would have arranged that Noah,” said the White Queen, “or perhaps Ariadne, would do as father-Jack’s partner.”

  “You manipulative little—” Jack began.

  “Jack,” Grace said. “Don’t. Please.”

  “ Why make Grace a part of this, if it will only condemn her?”

  “If you regret not saving me, father-Jack, then redeem yourself by saving Grace.”

  Grace pulled away from Jack’s tight embrace. “Jack, it is all right.”

  “It is not all right! Not! Damn you…” Jack stopped, unable to continue, remembering yet again Boudicca’s words: I am here to deliver to you a warning. Be careful. Look out for the return swing of the sword, because it may take your head.

  “Jack.”

  Jack dragged his eyes back to Grace. Oh, gods, Grace…what had he done?

  “Jack,” Grace said, her voice stronger and steadier than it had been. “We will manage. We will find a way.”

  Jack could hardly bear it. Now she was trying to reassure him.

  “Save her,” said the White Queen, “and you save me. We are both, in our own way, tied to the Troy Game. I by death, Grace by hex. Save us both, father-Jack.” She paused. “But be warned. Catling is using the power of the air raids as much as my Game does, or as much as you can. She is strengthening the power of the hex that binds her to Grace. It may be that nothing can save Grace from her fate, Jack. Be prepared for that.”

  Jack was silent a very long time. He felt numbed, his mind unable to process even the most mundane of thoughts.

  “This is the final tragedy,” said the White Queen. “Just this one, Jack. Solve this, and there will be no more. Solve this, and you can walk away.” And I with you.

  Jack took a deep breath, shocked at how it shuddered in his throat. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to force his mind back into logical thought.

  “If Grace…” he said, then tried again. “When Grace and I open this Game, will Catling know?”

  The White Queen shook her head. “This Game has been tied into her so tightly and so intricately, and has been created as her shadow, that I doubt she will feel the commencement of my Game.” The White Queen gave a short laugh. “Your name for it is very appropriate; my Game shadows her every move, and she will feel little difference between it being potential, and being alive.”

  “Define ‘I doubt’ and ‘little’,” said Jack.

  “Pick a night like last night,” said the White Queen, “a great raid, and the slight murmur, the almost indiscernible shudder, that will go through her being as the new Game is opened, she will put down to the power of the raid. You may not like what I have done to make this possible, father-Jack, but it is the only way it will be possible. The war grants you both power and camouflage.”

  “But once the Shadow Game starts to wind the Troy Game in, and entrap it,” said Grace, “then it will be aware.”

  “Oh yes,” said the White Queen, “and then you will need to be very, very careful. The night that you close the Game will be the hardest night of your lives. The Troy Game will fight with everything it has…and that is a great deal of black power, indeed. Remember, Catling has been feeding, too.”

  Jack had heard enough. He increased the pressure of his arm about Grace’s waist a little, thinking to turn for the door, but Grace resisted.

  “White Queen,” Grace said, “I have a message for you from your mother.”

  “Yes?” the White Queen said.

  “Your mother loved you, very greatly. She wanted you to know that.”

  For a long minute the White Queen looked at Grace, her face expressionless.

  “It was a long time ago,” the White Queen said eventually. “Too long. It makes no difference now, as it made no difference then. I was a dream for her, nothing more. A hope. A fantasy. What I am now is nothing Noah could comprehend; all she would try to see is the daughter she lost. Tell her that I am sorry, but that she is meaningless to me.”

  Jack thought that that would be the last thing he would tell Noah. “Does anything mean anything to you?” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” said the White Queen. “The Troy Game’s demise. That is all I exist for.”

  Grace stared at the White Queen. “And
when the Troy Game is trapped? What then for you?”

  The White Queen gave a smile of infinite sadness. “Why, then I will be free, but who knows what that freedom might encompass.”

  Much later that day Jack and Grace sat in the drawing room of Copt Hall. After leaving the crypt and returning to the car, they’d driven in complete silence, both too wrapped in their own thoughts to want to talk. Malcolm had met them at the door, taken one look at their faces, and vanished back to the kitchen to make tea.

  Now they sat, their tea growing cold, both staring at the fire.

  Jack was finding very little comfort in the flames. He felt terribly responsible. More than anything he wanted to be able to hate the White Queen, but he couldn’t. She had built a Game centuries before Grace had been born and trapped. There was no reason to suppose that she could also magically produce out of her hat the spell that would shatter Catling’s hold on Grace.

  He dragged his eyes away from the fire to Grace. Oh, gods, he felt so guilty. Over the past year she had blossomed into such an amazing woman, so full of confidence, and then to see it shattered so easily in that crypt at the thought of being entombed for an eternity with Catling…

  “I will find a way,” he said, relieved his voice sounded a great deal more confident than he felt.

  Grace turned her eyes to him. She had recovered remarkably well from that terrible moment, having regained most of her poise, but still there lingered that haunted air in the shadows of her eyes.

  “Jack, even if you don’t—”

  “I will find a way.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and he was instantly contrite and filled with hatred for himself at the same time. If only…if only…if only…

  He rose and walked over to Grace’s chair, and, taking her hands, pulled her up into his arms. “I will find a way,” he whispered into her hair.

  Part Eight

  DANSE MACABRE

  London, 1941

  “What do you think will happen?” said Jim. He was sitting with his brother and the White Queen on the tomb of the Trandescants in St Mary-at-Lambeth, both imps having returned from Europe the previous night. Once they would have sat on old London Bridge, but that had been demolished a century ago. All of them sat with their arms about their drawn-up legs, chins resting on knees. Air raid sirens sounded dimly from the north and east.