Idol Lane, London

Jane worked silently in the kitchen as she prepared the evening meal. Every so often she paused to rub at either one of her legs or her forehead. Both legs and head ached abominably. In the past six months her pox had become infinitely worse. Large sores covered her forehead and cheekbones, fermenting, laying open her flesh to the bone, and weeping foul fluids constantly. The pain of the sores was made much worse by the terrible aches in her lower spine and legs: her bones suppurated as vigorously as did her outer flesh. The flesh over her thigh bones was now hard and reddened and extremely painful to the touch; Jane was terrified that soon lesions would open up there too, great abscesses which would ooze right down to the bone.

Jane spent a great deal of her time either weeping, or wishing she were dead. Anything, to escape this horror.

There was a step in the doorway which led to the parlour, and Jane turned around slowly.

Elizabeth stood there, her face drawn and weary. “Do you need any help, Jane?” she asked. “You have finished for the day?” Elizabeth’s mouth twisted. “There are no more men waiting.”

There was such quiet resignation in Elizabeth’s voice that Jane felt a moment of sympathy. She liked Elizabeth, for the girl never averted her gaze from Jane’s ruined face, nor regarded her with disdain. Elizabeth did not try to avoid Jane, nor did she try to curry favour with her.

She regarded Jane with what Jane had, eventually, and very surprisingly, recognised as a respectful friendship.

“Leave, Elizabeth,” Jane said. “There is no need for you to stay the rest of the day.”

“Weyland will not want me to go so early.”

“I will tell him I sent you back to the tavern cellar. That you were ill. Go now. There is no need for you to…” Jane stopped, unable to complete the sentence. There is no need for you to suffer as I do.

Elizabeth nodded, hesitated, then walked over to Jane and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. “Thank you,” she said, and then she was gone.

Jane stood motionless for a long time after Elizabeth had left, stunned at the simple gesture of affection.

Weyland returned within the hour.

“Where’s Elizabeth?” he said as he sat himself down at the table. “I saw Frances cleaning the stairs, but no sign of the other.”

“I sent her home. Her head ached, and her back.”

He grunted.

Jane looked at him in surprise. She had expected far worse of Weyland than a mere grunt.

But then Weyland had been distracted and distant ever since Midsummer’s Day. Despite finding Brutus-reborn still in Antwerp, the day’s events had patently unsettled him.

Due to the suffering she’d received at Weyland’s hands during that day, Jane herself remembered little save for snatches of extraordinary vision. Brutus and Cornelia (and she dressed as the Mistress of the Labyrinth, as if she had already taken over that office), kissing, making love. Brutus-reborn, throwing a forest into Weyland’s face.

A tiny girl, playing with imps.

Imps? There was another besides hers?

“It’s time,” Weyland said, fairly softly. “His thirtieth year approaches.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for Charles to get his throne back, I think.”

Jane’s breath caught a moment in her chest. “Time to bring Brutus back?”

Weyland said nothing, not even acknowledging her question with his eyes.

“But you’re afraid of him!”

He roared to his feet, and struck her the terrible blow she’d been expecting ever since she’d sent Elizabeth home.

“I am not afraid of him!”

You’re terrified of him! But Jane kept her shoulders bowed, her face averted, and Weyland returned to his seat at the table.

“I have a means of controlling him,” he said.

“Cornelia-reborn,” Jane murmured, shuffling closer to the hearth.

“Yes. Noah Banks now. Living a life of luxury at Woburn Abbey. Well, I hope she enjoys it while she may.”

It took Jane a moment to realise what Weyland meant. “You’re going to bring her here?”

“Aye. And Charles will do anything to keep her safe.”

“How do you think you can control Cornelia…Noah?”

“Have I never told you? I put an imp in her, too, in our last lives.”

Jane gaped, and for a moment she could not speak. In the name of heaven…that is why she’d seen two imps in her visions! “Why? Why? Why torment her as you have me?”

“Because I want the Game, Jane, and Noah is going to give it to me.”

“You want her to find the bands for you.”

Weyland regarded her thoughtfully. “Aye. And I want you to teach her the ways of the labyrinth.”

Jane went cold. Her death lay revealed in that simple sentence. That Weyland might want Noah before he wanted her did not surprise Jane (in all of their lives, everyone seemed to want Noah before Jane). That he wanted Jane to teach Noah the ways of the labyrinth, and to induct her into the mysteries of the Mistress of the Labyrinth did not surprise her. Jane wasn’t even shocked by the idea that Weyland might kill her once he had what he wanted in Noah. What did stun Jane was that she should care so much about death.

She didn’t want to die. Even after all these years of torment and humiliation, she didn’t want to die.

“Of course, I’ll let you go once I have what I need in Noah,” said Weyland, still watching Jane carefully.

Jane swallowed, her mouth so dry she was unable to speak. Of course he would not. She was dead the instant Noah passed the Great Ordeal in the Great Founding Labyrinth.

She blinked, and became aware that Weyland was grinning at her.

Bastard! He undoubtedly knew every thought that was screaming through her head. She spun around, pretending to concentrate on the pot hanging over the hearth.

“Can’t you wait,” said Weyland softly behind her, “to see Noah in my arms? To hear her scream? To know that she shall suffer the same agony which has tormented you all these years?”

Strangely, Jane felt no satisfaction at the thought.

The pox, she decided, must have finally eaten its way through to her brain.