NOAH SPEAKS

I am not sure what stunned me the most: Long Tom’s precipitous appearance from behind the tree, or the fact that John Thornton could see him as well as I. It was then, at that precise moment, I knew my intimacy with Thornton had gone too far. I had taught him too much, or he had learned too much.

Lady Anne was completely unaware of Long Tom’s presence. She had a slightly distracted expression in her eyes, and her breathing was stilled to the point of non-existence. I realised Long Tom had cast some kind of enchantment upon her.

Long Tom stepped forward, nodded at Thornton, then looked beseechingly at me, as only a Sidlesaghe could.

“Eaving,” he said, “go to Hampstead. Please.”

I shook my head slowly from side to side, although I was not sure what I was denying. I think my thoughts were more with John than they were with whatever Long Tom was trying to say to me.

“Eaving?” said John. Then, “Noah, who is this?”

“I am Long Tom,” said the Sidlesaghe, most obligingly. He held out his hand.

John looked at it, looked at me, then shook Long Tom’s hand.

“Well met,” said Long Tom.

“Aye,” said John somewhat doubtfully.

“Eaving,” Long Tom’s attention had switched back to me, “you must go to Hampstead.”

“It is time?” I whispered. Time to take my place as Asterion’s whore?

“No, no!” Long Tom said, and his face wrinkled up almost as if his anxiety to soothe me had reduced him nigh to tears. “Not at all. It is time to heal the wounds between you and Brutus.”

Time to heal the first wound.

Time to bridge those terrible rifts Brutus and I had created between us. Could it be done?

“Of course,” said Long Tom.

“But why Hampstead?”

“Hampstead is where it needs to be.”

“It is too dangerous,” I said. London was only a few miles south from Hampstead. Asterion would be close. “He will know I am there.”

“We will distract him,” said Long Tom. “Eaving, this wound needs to be healed, and it needs to be done now.”

Why now? I wondered into Long Tom’s mind. Thornton must be having a hard enough time with this conversation, and I thought the less said verbally the better.

While Long Tom understood me well enough, he ignored the implicit request.

“It must be now,” he said. “It is as the Game asks.”

“Noah?” John said.

“All is well, John,” I said, trying to give him a smile and, I am afraid, failing miserably. “Long Tom is an old friend and he only wants to aid me.”

“Why does he call you Eaving?”

“It is an old and dear name to me.”

“And as an old and dear friend,” Long Tom said, “I am asking you, Eaving, to agree with your lady companion—”

Oh, how I liked that! Lady Anne was my companion, rather than I hers. I suppose Long Tom could see it no other way.

“—and to travel with her to Hampstead.”

The imp? I spoke into Long Tom’s mind (this, of all things, could not be said before John!). The imp had lain quiescent thus far, but I had no idea what it would do if I transported it closer to its master. I well knew it would not lie quiescent all this life. It had a task, and it would attend to it the moment its master informed it of its necessity.

We will manage the imp, Long Tom replied, and I blessed him that this time, at least, he had not spoken the words aloud.

Gods, I hoped so. I felt the first flutter of excitement. Brutus would be in Hampstead. Somehow. Somewhere.

“Will it be safe for him as well?” I said. How in the world would Brutus manage to travel to meet me there? Did he think he could wander the roads unrecognised?

From the corner of my eyes I could see John frown, and I wished I had not said that verbally.

Long Tom hesitated, which reassured me not at all. “You shall both need to take risks. There is no other way.”

I nodded, finally, although frankly I was almost as nervous about meeting with Brutus-reborn as I was about being so close to Asterion. Would Brutus want to reconcile with me? Did he not hate me still? I remembered his anger when he had confronted me in our ancient tomb under Tower Hill and told me that I had been duped by Asterion, and turned into his whore. I had felt Brutus’ presence whenever Coel, Ecub, Erith and he had formed the Circle they used to reach out to me, but I’d never been able to glean more from that than his presence. They were there, they were intimate, they wanted me to know they loved me…but what did Brutus want me to know? Did he merely acquiesce to the group in these matters, or did he truly wish me well, too?

How would I ever discover how he felt, save by meeting him?

“I shall go to Hampstead,” I said, and Long Tom smiled.

Somehow we got through the rest of that walk through the park, Lady Anne blinking back into awareness the instant Long Tom vanished. I smiled, and said that of course I would accompany her to Hampstead. Lady Anne professed herself well pleased, and John, the dear man, kept his own counsel although I felt his eyes boring into my back as we made our way to the abbey.

That night I went to him, for I owed him that much at least. Far more, truly, but I did not know how ever I could repay him.

Unusually, he did not move instantly to disrobe me, and make love to me. We often talked far into the night, but always the physical intimacy came first, so that we might the more easily establish the greater intimacy later.

Instead John took my face between his hands, and regarded me soberly.

“I have put many things to one side for you,” he said. “My loyalty to my patron, the earl. My moral righteousness. My duty to God. My very faith in God! Everything you are, and everything you have shown me over the past years, has turned my world upside down…and what do I have for that? Your love? No, I do not have that. Your hand in marriage? No, that even less. I have merely been a dalliance for you—”

His voice had turned black with bitterness, and I went rigid, and tears filled my eyes.

“—a means by which to pass the time.”

“No! You have given me so much comfort and friendship—”

“Comfort and friendship? Comfort and friendship? For almost ten years you have twisted my heart and wrung it dry, and yet for that you will give me nothing in return. Not your love, not—”

“I do…” I stopped. I couldn’t lie to him.

He saw it, and his mouth twisted even more than it had thus far. “You do love me?” He shook his head. “Nay. You don’t. You wanted a lover, and so you took me. I was convenient, Noah. Admit it.”

I said nothing, admitting everything with my silence.

“Marry me,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t leave me.”

“I would destroy you if I did that. I’m so sorry, John.”

John pulled my face towards his, but he did not kiss me. Instead he rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed, and for a long time we stood there like that, leaning into each other, silent.

“Will you come back from Hampstead?” he said eventually, so softly I could barely hear him.

“I hope so,” I said, “more than you can imagine.”

Much later, after we had made love with a desperation that made me weep, we lay sleepless. He was as lost in his own thoughts as I was in mine.

I was thankful he did not inquire as to what I pondered, for I thought of nothing but Brutus.

Brutus would be there, in Hampstead.

I’d had time to think how his presence might be accomplished, and I’d reached the conclusion that Brutus-reborn would not travel physically to Hampstead. Brutus would not dare to set foot in England for the same reason I was terrified of setting foot in London: Asterion. The Minotaur had more power than ever, and I don’t think Brutus had the power to confront him.

No, he and the others would use the power of the Circle to send him to me. It was dangerous, but it could be done.

I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Long Tom had come to me and told me to go to Hampstead just after the Circle had failed to reach out to me on May Night. I’d been worried about that, but now I think I knew the answer.

Long Tom had gone to them, probably using their power as they formed the Circle to catapult himself into their midst. They’d formed the Circle, intending to touch me, and instead had received Long Tom for their troubles.

I smiled a little to myself in the dark. Had Brutus been disappointed?

At this further thought of Brutus I stiffened in excitement, fool that I was, and John felt it.

“Who is he?” he whispered in my ear, one hand on my breast. “Who is he that you long for so desperately? Who is it you are going to Hampstead to meet?”

What could I say?