The Strand, London

Thornton opened the door to The Broken Bough and surveyed the noisy crowd inside. Once he’d left Noah at the house in Idol Lane, Thornton had thought that all he would want to do was settle himself into the Bedfords’ townhouse and go to bed early to try to ease his sore heart. But once Thornton had actually arrived at the townhouse and attended to his duties there, he’d discovered that he felt too unsettled to try and sleep.

So, uncharacteristically for him, he’d decided to visit a tavern, ease himself with a few tankards of beer, and then return for whatever sleep he could manage. Before he’d left Woburn the earl had recommended to him an establishment called The Broken Bough. Instead of the usual labourers, apprentices and roughened seamen looking for drunkenness and trouble, the tavern attracted the house servants of the nobles who had their townhouses along the Strand, the lawyers and barristers of the nearby Inns of Court, as well as the occasional diplomat or ambassador visiting Whitehall.

Up-market clientele or not, the tavern was nonetheless noisy and crowded, and Thornton hesitated in the doorway.

A well-dressed man, a German from the cut of his clothes and moustache, brushed passed him. He was carefully carrying several large tankards of beer, and the scent of the spiced and buttered alcohol instantly reminded Thornton of the previous night spent with Noah.

For no other reason, Thornton allowed the door to swing shut behind him, and made his way as best as he could through the crowd of well-dressed patrons to where the tavern keeper took orders. There he parted with tuppence for a tankard brimful of delicious buttered Lambeth ale—a rich, heady mixture only available to Londoners or those wealthy enough to import it into their locality.

“D’you know if there’s a quiet corner somewhere?” Thornton asked of the tavern keeper, taking a sip of his ale.

“Here?” said the man, and laughed. He was very thin, with a face which reminded Thornton of an old, genial horse: all long-nosed and -cheeked, and with so many folds about the corners of his mouth that it looked as though he’d been suckled as a baby on the hard steel of a bit.

Then, as Thornton took yet another sip, the man seemed to reconsider. “Well,” he said, “there’s the space tucked away under the stairs. Room for a table and a couple of chairs. Warm place. Cosy. Usually. Late this afternoon, though, a damned Frenchman came in, ordered some spiced beer, and sat himself down there. Queer one, that. Cold. No one’s been keen to take the spare seat at his table. That Frenchman’s sat there for the past four hours, drinking beer after beer—and that having as little effect on him as if he’d been drinking water—and just sitting, glowering.”

The tavern keeper shrugged, the lines about his mouth folding deep in disapproval. “If you think you can bear the chill emanating from his person, and the glower in his eyes, then I’m sure that corner shall be quiet enough for you.” Another pause. “Sweet Jesus, I hope he’s not sickening for something. The last thing I need in here is a plague bearer.”

Thornton thanked the tavern keeper, and decided to try his luck with the seat under the stairs anyway. A companion in melancholy, plague bearer or no, sounded like the kind of companion Thornton needed.

At least he wouldn’t try to engage Thornton in drunken, frivolous conversation.

Thornton eased his way through the throng, his ears catching the languages of a dozen different countries as he passed, heading for the rise of the stairs at the back of the tavern. When he’d got to within eight or nine feet, the final few bodies between him and his destination parted, and Thornton found himself staring at a man about thirty, half slouched in his chair under the stairs, looking directly at Thornton.

The first impression Thornton had of the man was that he commanded great presence. He had an aura of authority about him—an aura so deep and so overwhelming that Thornton thought it should have been commanded only by a king or emperor.

The second thing that struck Thornton was the sheer physical presence of the man. The Frenchman was handsome enough with an elegant body—long and lithe—exotic features and dark hair, although his sheer physical charisma went far beyond his comeliness. His black eyes burned, and Thornton thought that anyone spending any time with this man would eventually want only one thing—that those eyes should burn with fervour for he or she who beheld them.

The third thing that struck Thornton was that the Frenchman was almost as impressed by him as Thornton was by the Frenchman. As Thornton looked, the Frenchman straightened himself in his chair, twisted his mouth almost as if he were about to snarl, and then tipped his head at the empty chair opposite.

“You’ve taken your time,” said the Frenchman in good English and in a voice clear enough to reach through the noise of the tavern to Thornton. “I’ve had to drink the establishment half dry in my wait for you.”

Thornton went cold. He almost turned and walked away.

“I want to speak to you of Noah,” said the Frenchman, and Thornton, despite his reservations, made his way to the small table where, watching the Frenchman carefully, he sat down in the spare chair.

“What do you know of Noah?” said Thornton.

The Frenchman took a long draught of his beer—to one side of the table he had his own small bowl of spices and sugar to add as he wanted. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, and set his tankard down.

“My name is Louis de Silva,” he said. “The name will be meaningless to you, for I am but the bastard get of a feckless young count.”

Thornton said nothing, simply gazing steadily at de Silva.

“I have been befriended by your king, Charles,” said de Silva, “and I am a good friend to him.”

Still Thornton said nothing, but his thoughts were racing. Charles’ court in exile! Suddenly, devastatingly, he knew who this de Silva was. “I sent a letter to Charles from Noah some two years hence,” said Thornton. “You know, I presume, what it contained.”

“Aye. The king has bastards everywhere.”

Thornton winced, suddenly angry. “What do you want?”

“I want to know how you felt when you abandoned Noah this afternoon.”

“I only did what she wanted.”

“How did you feel, Thornton?”

“I felt desperate! Is that what you wanted to hear? Is it? I am a married man, de Silva, but I have loved Noah since she was sixteen. I felt desperate this afternoon, and I am desperate for her, as I have been for too many years to count, and yet I know I shall not ever have her. I wish I’d never met her, de Silva, for then I could have continued on my benumbed way through life, and never known what it was to love her, and to love life…and what it meant to love this land.”

At that last de Silva’s eyes narrowed a little. “The land?” he said. “What could you possibly know about the land?”

“That Noah is the land in some ancient faerie way I cannot truly understand. De Silva, tell me, what do you know of Noah?”

“That you and I are companions in misery, John Thornton. You love her, and live in desperation that you shall never have her. I love her, and live in desperation that I shall never have her.”

De Silva stopped, his eyes now on his tankard of half-drunk beer, his hands turning it this way and that.

Thornton waited.

“I first met her when she was only fourteen or fifteen, Thornton,” de Silva said, lifting his black eyes to meet Thornton’s. “I loved her, too, although it did me little good but to cause misery and heartache.”

Again Thornton felt a chill go through him. He recalled what Noah had said to him the night she’d told him of her pregnancy. A previous life, a lover, misery and heartache.

“And yet,” de Silva continued, “there is a greater misery and heartache to come. I can feel it, here.” He tapped himself on his chest. “Forget her, Thornton. Walk away from this. Walk away from London. Neither of us can do anything for Noah now. We’re all far, far too late.”

Thornton suddenly realised that de Silva was actually very drunk, although he showed little physical sign of it. But whether he was drunk from alcohol, or from despair, Thornton could not tell.

“Nothing counts in this life but that the Stag God rises,” said de Silva. “Nothing. Not you, not me. Hardly even Noah. Nothing counts but that Charles rises anointed by more powerful and more ancient magic than your archbishop shall daub on his brow. We’re all irrelevant, John Thornton, save for Charles.”

Thornton did not know what to say to the man. The depth of his despair appalled him.

He rose, his buttered beer forgotten. “May the land rise to greet you, Louis de Silva,” he said, and as those words fell from his mouth, an unexpected vision filled his mind.

A great white stag with blood-red antlers raged across the sky, treading uncaring through the stars, and as he ran, so the land literally did rise up to meet him, filling the sky with forests and rolling meadows.

“Be well,” Thornton said, as a final benediction, and then he was gone.

Behind him, Louis de Silva’s head sank slowly until his forehead rested on the table.

Then, after a moment, he too rose and left The Broken Bough.

Louis wandered the darkened alleyways off the Strand as it wound down towards Charing Cross. The day’s events had exhausted him. He had failed to rescue Noah, he had been abducted by ancient giants and shown that he had no role to play in all that lay ahead —no role to play in Noah’s life—and he had just been pitied by John Thornton, Noah’s lover.

Could the day get any worse?

He’d wanted to castigate Thornton, but in the end had not.

He’d wanted to show him to what it was he’d left Noah—in the arms of the Devil himself—but in the end had been unable to.

What point driving Thornton into as deep a despair as himself?

Gods, what was he going to tell Charles?

Far away, on the other side of London, Noah twisted and turned in her sleep on her pallet in the kitchen of the house in Idol Lane.

She dreamed twice.

First she dreamed of the running stag, and of the forests and tumbling streams, and of all that could be, if only she endured.

The second dream seemed an extension of the first, for she stood on The Naked. She was alone, but was trembling in anticipation.

Soon a great faerie lord would be striding up the hill, striding to meet her. He was strong and powerful and humorous, and he loved her more than life itself.

And she him.

She felt him approaching, and she cried his name.

And then woke in shock at the sound of that name.