Druids Sword (23 page)

P
eter de Colechurch, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch in Cheapside, was a worried man. Peter’s duties as chaplain were only nominal, for the greater part of his day was taken up in his duties as Bridge Master of London Bridge. Peter had been delighted when Henry II offered him the post of Bridge Master seven years earlier, but the intervening years had witnessed Peter’s enthusiasm wane.

London Bridge was nothing but trouble.

The troubles had started more than a century ago when the ever-cursed Norsemen had pulled the damned thing down. A wooden bridge was quickly erected to replace the one that the Norsemen had destroyed, but that succumbed to fire within a few years. A new bridge was built, but that was swept away in floods within a year.

It took fifteen years to secure the funds to rebuild the bridge and misfortune claimed it within four years. When Peter first came to the post of Bridge Master in 1163 his initial task was to rebuild the bridge yet again. Peter was an engineer of rare skill, which was the reason he had secured the post in the first instance. Over the course of two years he designed and supervised the building of a beautiful bridge made almost entirely of elm wood, known for its strength and resistance to rot.

It had been up less than seven years, but already it was badly cracked and beginning to lean.

It would need to be replaced soon.

Henry II was demanding answers. Moreover, he was starting to murmur publicly about finding an engineer who could build a bridge that would last longer than a season. As much as Peter liked to moan quietly that the entire bridge was cursed, it was hardly an excuse he could present to the king.

Today Peter was walking the length of the bridge, something he did twice a day. He walked from London over to Southwark, pausing to lean over the balustrade every so often to wince at the fresh cracks which had appeared overnight, and was now on his return trip.

Halfway across he paused to look at St Paul’s.

The cathedral was itself in the process of being rebuilt, and the steeple was just starting to rise above the body of the nave.

Peter looked, awash with admiration. How he wished he could work on a cathedral…

“
Why not?” said a little girl’s voice.

Peter looked down. A five- or six-year-old girl in a black dress stood at his side, regarding him gravely. She was very pretty with her black hair and eyes, although her face appeared so cold that she might have stepped from the grave not a moment since.

Peter repressed a superstitious shiver.

“
St Paul’s needs
something
to rival it,” the little girl continued now that she had Peter’s full attention. “It needs
something
to balance it out. Why don’t you build a bridge to rival St Paul’s beauty?
”

“
Little girl…” Peter began.

“
Oh, I’m not really a little girl, you know,” said the creature standing so close. “This form just amuses me. What would really thrill me is if you build me a house, right here on the bridge. One that will rival St Paul’s in beauty and power.
”

Peter was very slowly backing away. She was a devil, a malign fairy, a
—

“
All I want is a chapel,” said the girl. “Is that so bad?
”

“
A chapel?” Peter said, coming to a halt.

“
Indeed,” the girl said. “Imagine, if you will, a beautiful stone bridge, soaring over graceful stone piers
—”

“
It can’t be done. No one can build the kind of piers, in this river, needed to support a stone
—”

“
What if I showed you how?” the girl said.

While Peter de Colechurch knew perfectly well that this apparition was a spirit of some kind, he was now wondering if, perhaps, it was an angel sent from God to guide him rather than a devil sent to tease him.

After all, what devil would want a chapel?

The little girl smiled, deepening the coldness on her face. “I will show you how to build this bridge,” she said, “and Henry will shower you with favours, and your name will ring down the centuries. All I want is a chapel, Peter. In the middle of the bridge. You can dedicate it to whomever you wish. I’m not fussed. There is just one little thing I need in this chapel.
”

“
Yes?” said Peter, his suspicions again flaring.

The little girl smiled sweetly. “A crypt, Peter de Colechurch, with an altar laid out and dedicated to God. Do we have a deal?
”

“
Show me first how to build these piers,” said Peter, and the little girl laughed, and agreed.

She knew Peter was hers.

T
he worst winter in decades gripped the land. Snow lay in great drifts, blocking many roads and making communications difficult, and ice formed over rivers, even freezing the upper reaches of the Thames. Frosts crippled the fields, and raging winter seas washed mines ashore where they killed boys with too-curious fingers. Life continued as close to normal as possible under the twin weights of the cold and the war, but most outdoor activities had to be curtailed, if not stopped completely, and people shivered within their homes under the restrictions of the severe winter and fuel shortages. When the ice and snow and frosts had done, floods devastated large portions of south-eastern England.

In late February and early March the IRA commenced a series of bombings in London. No one was killed, but a number of people were injured and the bombs caused extensive property damage.

While the war raged in Europe, many people in London, and Great Britain generally, had begun to lose their initial fear of invasion, massive bombings and gas attacks. Most Londoners had stopped carrying their gas masks everywhere, those who had built air raid shelters in their back gardens had to spend an hour every fortnight dusting away the cobwebs from their doors, and Noah and Eaving’s
Sisters had garaged their mobile canteen for the moment. London had suffered no attacks (although there had been several false air raid warnings), Britain had suffered no invasion, and on the fifth of April, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, went so far as to announce that he thought Hitler had “missed the bus” and that a German invasion of the West was now highly unlikely.

It wasn’t a view that the Lord of the Faerie shared. One frosty March morning he arrived at the door of Copt Hall and asked Malcolm to fetch Jack.

“Coel?” Jack said. It was still very early, and he’d only just risen. He was dressed, but his jaw was still unshaven, and he gratefully took the cup of tea that Malcolm offered.

The Lord of the Faerie shook his head when Malcolm asked him if he wanted tea, then waited until the valet had left the drawing room before speaking.

“Jack, we have a problem in the Faerie.”

Jack drained his cup of tea and set it aside. “Yes?”

“It is better if you come. You have barely set foot in the Faerie since your return, and this you need to see.”

Jack gave the Lord of the Faerie a long look, then nodded, fetched his coat, and led the Lord of the Faerie to the front door.

From the front door they walked straight into the Faerie.

The Lord of the Faerie was right, Jack thought, as he gazed over the misted wooded hills rolling away into infinity. He should come here more often. The instant his foot stepped onto the magical soil, Jack felt a sense of wellness, almost of nurturing, envelop his being.

And something else. Something…not quite right.

His marks moved slightly, drawing icy trails across his shoulders. “Coel?” he said.

In response the Lord of the Faerie led him towards the edge of the woodlands that led into the first of the forested hills. At first glance the trees and plants seemed healthy enough, but the Lord of the Faerie pointed to a shrub, and then the lower branches of a tree.

“See…here, and here,” he said.

Jack stepped closer. There were patches of blackness on the lower leaves of the tree, and many of the leaves over the top of the shrub were similarly dead. “What is it?” he said.

“Frost,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “The iciness which grips the land has started to penetrate into the Faerie.”

Jack picked one of the blackened leaves of the shrub. It crumbled into dust between his fingers. His marks moved again, and Jack’s uneasiness increased.

The Faerie was cut off from the mortal world. The infections of the mortal world simply should not touch the Faerie.

“Catling,” Jack said. What else could explain it? “Why?” he said. Catling already knew that Jack would do nothing until the Great Marriage on May Day, so why send these tendrils of attack into the Faerie now?

“Why not?” said the Lord of the Faerie, then he sighed, and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “It might be Catling, or it may be an indication of how sick and weak the land has become. Either possibility terrifies me, Jack.”

“I’d lean towards the latter,” said Jack. He touched another leaf, watching it crumble. “I just don’t think Catling would move this early.”

“If it is the latter, Jack, we need the Great Marriage sooner rather than—”

“It should wait until May, Coel.”

“
Why?
”

“Damn it, you know why! Done that day, during spring resurgent, it will have the greatest effectiveness possible!” Jack sighed, and moderated his tone. “My friend, I am not delaying, only wanting to wait until the marriage will be its most potent.”

“I know, I know. It is just that when one of the Sidlesaghes pointed this out to me this morning…” The Lord of the Faerie looked up towards the summit of The Naked. “Noah tells me that Weyland is not…happy.”

“Ah. I should have spoken to him sooner. I will, Harry. I will.”

The Lord of the Faerie nodded. “Do that. Jack, there is something else.”

Jack raised his eyebrows.

The Lord of the Faerie nodded to something over Jack’s shoulder. “Look.”

Jack turned.

When he’d come into the Faerie previously, he’d remarked to himself on the Idyll which stood at the borders of the Faerie. Now he could still see the Idyll, but it appeared to have retreated. Between it and the Faerie was a blue haze, almost like a mystic ocean.

“The Idyll is retreating,” the Lord of the Faerie said, very softly. “It no longer wants to touch the Faerie. Something is very, very badly wrong, Jack.”

Weyland had put his name down for warden duty within the ARP as soon as they had called for volunteers when war loomed. He wasn’t able to say why he had done it—the last thing that the Minotaur Asterion was likely to do was to volunteer his services in defence of something he had spent thousands of years trying to destroy—but Weyland found a curious kind of peace when he was on the roof of the Savoy watching for enemy aircraft.

It felt almost like making amends, but that notion was so alien to him that Weyland tended to shy away from it.

Weyland stood duty one or two nights a week, as needed. As usual, on this night he was alone. Initially, the Savoy had posted two or three men (either employees who had volunteered, or similarly minded permanent residents), but as the early months of the war had dragged on, and London had suffered nothing more than a scare or two, the manager of the hotel had decided that only one man need sit up each night.

And, being the Savoy, that man was well supplied with thermoses of the best coffee, thick sandwiches, and the lightest of sponge cakes.

Weyland enjoyed his nights alone atop the Savoy.

He’d settled himself down in a small canvas shelter, almost like a game blind, that the hotel manager had caused to be erected. Canvas it might be, but it was triple-layered canvas, and there was a small kerosene heater inside that kept the occupant cosy, and an armchair to keep him comfortable. There were small windows cut at eye level in its four walls and door, and the warden on duty need only scan the sky with his binoculars through these cutout windows, rather than actually venture out in the cold to wander the roof.

The shelter was also quite roomy (having been built originally to house two or three men), but even so, Weyland had nowhere to go when the door suddenly lifted up and Jack stepped in.

“May I sit down?” Jack said, indicating a stool set to one side.

“What are you doing here?”

Jack sat down on the stool. “I thought you might like some company.”

Weyland grunted.

“And I wanted to talk to you. About the Great Marriage.”

Now Weyland shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t really want to—”

“When I leapt into the Idyll, when Grace was just a baby, and said that Noah would betray you—that betrayal was in her very blood—I was wrong, Weyland.”

Weyland remained silent. He was staring out one of the windows in the canvas, carefully not looking at Jack.

“It was a stupid thing to say, and I was angry beyond belief,” Jack said. “You
know
I was wrong.”

Weyland sighed, and moved his head so that he was almost—but not yet quite—looking at Jack. “You had every right to be angry. And you had picked your moment too well. I was livid with fury as well, and when you appeared…”

When Jack—in his form as Ringwalker—had appeared, Weyland had leapt for his throat, and both men had engaged in a bitter, hateful, brutal struggle.

“We engaged with disaster, Weyland,” Jack said. “While we battled and Noah watched us, Catling placed her hex on Grace. We can’t afford to have that happen again.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we are at odds, if we wallow in misunderstandings and jealousies, then we are fractured and vulnerable. Weyland, you were right when we met on the night Noah set the Great Fire. She and I never had a chance. Whatever we might have had was doomed from the start.”

“But you still love Noah.”

Jack gave a wry smile. “Oh, yes. I do. I will never stop loving her. But I am
tired
of loving her, Weyland. It has only ever hurt, and I know full well that I could never keep her.” He gave a short,
humourless laugh. “Do you remember the day that Noah first came to you in your house in Idol Lane?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know what happened in your house that night, Weyland, but John Thornton and I met in a tavern called the Broken Bough on the Strand. There I drank myself into almost-oblivion, and Thornton sat there and pitied me. We agreed on one thing, Weyland, and that was that we were both lovesmitten fools who would never, ever have the woman we both craved so much. I hadn’t come close to accepting it at that point, but that was, I think, the start of it.”

Weyland finally looked Jack full in the face. “And you
have
accepted it now?”

Jack hesitated fractionally before replying. “Yes.”

“Of course you have. Nonetheless, you will happily engage in the Great Marriage with her.”

“Certainly. But, Weyland, the Great Marriage doesn’t have to involve sex.”

“Don’t feed me lies. What kind of fool do you think I am?”

“I was just trying to make it easier for you,” Jack snapped.

Weyland sighed, looking away. For a long minute there was silence.

“I don’t want to lose her,” Weyland murmured eventually.

“And you won’t,” said Jack, and surprised himself by sounding as if he meant it. He made a move then, as if to rise, but Weyland forestalled him.

“Don’t leave just yet,” Weyland said. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Jack sank back onto his stool.

“The murders,” Weyland said.

Something cold and black coiled about Jack’s stomach.

“The imps are doing them,” Weyland said.

“
“What?
”

“I had suspected them, but Silvius came to see me a week or so back, and mentioned something to me.”

“And that was…?”

“Remember how the imps tore themselves out of Jane and Noah?”

Suddenly what had been worrying at Jack’s mind about the murders fell into place. “They’re re-creating their own births!”

Weyland inclined his head in agreement.

“Why?” said Jack. “What are they about?”

“I don’t know,” said Weyland, “but I intend to discover it.”