Elizabeth Castle, Jersey

Marguerite tossed in her sleep. It was a warm night, and Charles more than half lay over her, but neither the oppressive heat nor her lover’s weight caused her restlessness.

Instead, Marguerite dreamed of Pen Hill, where, during her last life, she’d spent so much time as prioress of St Margaret the Martyr.

At least, Marguerite thought this was Pen Hill.

It was of a similar height and aspect, with the same gentle rounded grassy knoll ringed by the standing stones (Sidlesaghes). But the hill did not overlook London, as had Pen Hill, and there was something very different about the stones, and Marguerite knew she had to concentrate on them.

Pen Hill had a score or more of stones on its peak, but now that Marguerite focussed, she saw that this hill only had two stones, standing on opposite edges of the summit. Marguerite could feel the wind rush through them, and she knew she was being shown the rushing of this wind for some reason.

Something changed. A third stone materialised at the edge of the knoll, and the two stones already there somehow shifted their position so that there was now an equal distance between each of them.

The wind no longer rushed through.

The dream stilled, and Marguerite knew that at this point an understanding was being demanded of her.

The wind no longer rushed through…

Where two stones had formed no barrier at all, the presence of a third had formed a barrier.

The wind no longer rushed through, but was contained within the grassy knoll.

Contained within the circle of the stones.

Two cannot form a circle.

Three can.

The wind was power…held within the Circle.

Marguerite gasped, her body jerking in its sleep so that Charles murmured and shifted.

Now something was happening within the Circle on the hill. Something momentous.

Something in the grass.

Something in the turf.

A face was forming…a girl’s face on the verge of womanhood.

Marguerite woke with a half-shriek, sitting up so abruptly that Charles rolled away to the other side of the vast bed.

“Gods, Marguerite…what’s—”

“Get Louis,” she said. “Get him now!”

Charles slid out of the bed and stood, staring at her. “Marguerite?”

“Get Louis. Now. Please, Charles, please. Get him now!”

He gave her one more uncomprehending look, then he strode to the door, flung it open, and shouted his valet awake. “Fetch Monsieur de Silva. Now! Fetch him to this chamber!”

When Louis entered the chamber, confused, more than a little concerned, and still blinking away the sleep from his eyes, he saw that Charles stood naked by the shuttered window, staring at the bed where sat Marguerite, similarly naked.

“Thank the gods,” she said as Louis closed the door behind him.

“Charles?” said Louis.

Charles shrugged. “Marguerite will not tell me what ails her. She insisted you come to this chamber.”

Marguerite made a gesture of impatience. “I know how to reach Cornelia,” she said.

“What?” said both men together, each taking a step towards the bed.

“We have a hill,” said Marguerite, patting the bed. “And Louis makes the third we need to form a Circle. James would never have done. But Louis will.”

Now the men looked at each other, bewildered.

“A Circle,” said Marguerite. “A Circle of power, drawn from the land itself.”

The men continued to stare at her, then Charles’ face, finally, showed some comprehension. “The turf…” he said.

“Aye,” said Marguerite, “that piece of turf. Where is it?”

“Where is what?” said Louis.

“This,” said Charles, who bent down to a chest, opened it, and pulled forth a small box. “When I was forced to flee England, I brought this with me.” He opened the box, and held it out.

Louis walked over, looking inside where lay a lump of browned turf still attached to a clod of crumbly dirt.

Louis lifted his eyes to Charles. “England.”

“The land,” said Charles. “Aye.”

“We form a Circle on this bed, this hill,” said Marguerite, again patting the sheets, “and we use the turf, the land, to find Cornelia-reborn.”

Louis looked uncertain. “Are you sure that I should be here?”

“Never more sure,” said Marguerite. “You are welcomed among us, Louis.”

“But the land, its power…I am not—”

“It was the land which showed me the way,

Louis,” she said. “The land was waiting for you to join us.”

“You have as much right to touch Cornelia-reborn as any of us, Louis,” Charles said very gently. “Marguerite is right. The land waited only for you to join us before it showed Marguerite the way.”

Louis sighed, then nodded. “What is this Circle, then?”

“It is the living embodiment of the Stone Dances,” Marguerite said. “It commands the same power.”

“And as prime among Eaving’s Sisters, and the one who watched over Pen Hill in our last life,” said Charles, “you are the one to lead the Circle.”

“Yes,” she said. “Louis, you shall need to disrobe. We come into this naked, as do the stones. Charles, bring me the box.”

Louis removed his shoes, then shrugged off his hastily donned shirt and breeches, dropped them to the floor, then walked naked to the bed, climbed into it, and sat cross-legged where Marguerite indicated.

She and Charles also sat, cross-legged, equidistant from Louis and each other, and Marguerite took the box, opened it, and removed the turf.

Taking a deep breath, she held it reverently in her hands, then suddenly cast it upwards, towards the ceiling, calling out at the same time a word that the two men could not quite make out.

The turf hit the plaster with a distinct thud, then fell back towards the bed and, as it did so, transformed.

Marguerite, Charles and Louis gasped. The turf shimmered, then flattened and expanded all at once until it became a large circle of lustrous emerald green silk, fluttering gently towards the bed.

It settled in the centre of the Circle, stilled for a single heartbeat, and then began to rumple, rising and falling into hills and valleys, moors and fields until it represented a relief of the land of England.

Marguerite reached out a hand. It trembled a little, and she had to clutch it momentarily in order to still it. Then she said, “Eaving? Eaving? Where are you?”

The emerald silk again moved, now forming a lake, and then it shimmered once more, and its surface became opaque, then clear until an image formed within it.

A great house that sat nestled in rolling hills.

“Woburn Abbey,” Charles said.

“You know it?” said Louis.

Charles nodded. “Aye. I’ve been there twice as a child. Woburn Abbey is home to the earls of Bedford. Gods…Eaving? Are you there?”

Again the silk shimmered, and the image of the house rushed towards them until a single window occupied the entire silken lake, and in the window…in that window…

In that window a girl of some sixteen years lay in a bed. As if she felt the weight of their regard, she woke, and rose so that she sat staring out of the window. She was beautiful, her heavy hair framing a face made almost luminous by its pale, translucent skin, and containing the most wondrous pair of deep blue eyes.

Her mouth moved, forming soundless words, but each of the three watchers heard them in their minds.

Brutus? Brutus? Is that you, Brutus?

The image faded, and Charles put his face into his hands, and groaned.

Marguerite hesitated, then picked up the silk and folded it into a tiny square in her hands where, once again, it became the piece of browned turf and crumbled soil.

They sat a very long time in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, until finally Charles stirred himself.

“She is in Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire,” he said.

“Far from London,” said Louis.

“Far from Asterion,” said Marguerite. “For now.”

She put the turf back in its box, put the box into the centre of the circle they still formed, and for the rest of the night they sat there, staring at it, their thoughts filled with Eaving.