NINE

London
Tuesday, 24^th September to Wednesday, 9^th October 1940

GRACE SPEAKS

Ifelt somewhat guilty that Jack had to ask me to go out into London again and see what I could discover about the shadow. Since I’d been living at Ariadne’s, I’d done little more than to work with her, and to explore and develop my abilities with the labyrinthine harmonies by myself. I’d also been so involved with Jack’s growing presence in my life that I had put virtually everything else aside. These were, however, pitiful excuses when considering the desperate battle we were all involved in, and I should not have needed Jack’s prompting.

I went out the very next day. Much had changed, not merely in the city, but in me. Ariadne’s training had deepened my power and my perception, but Jack’s influence had bolstered my self-confidence and courage. I walked into a city that I saw with different eyes, and I walked with bolder steps than I had ever done hitherto.

Jack’s diamond bracelets felt warm and comforting, a constant reminder not only of him, but of my own abilities. I didn’t allow them visibility when I walked the streets, but they were always there, part of my flesh as the four bands of Troy had once been a part of me.

I did not fear Catling as once I had. I was still very much aware that she held my fate in her hands (or, bound by my wrists, as it were), and I very much respected her power and malevolence, but fear of her no longer dominated my life. Jack had taken my scars, and my feelings of shame and failure and burden, and (with his belief in me, more than his gift) gave me back my life and my heritage.

Neither did I fear the imps. It had been weeks since their last murder, and I wondered if they had grown tired of their deadly activities.

For the sake of the young women of London, I hoped so.

Thus, with my new-found abilities and confidence, I discovered a new city. It opened up to me in a way it had never done before. I was far more aware of the labyrinthine shadow that hung over London, but I was also aware of all the labyrinthine twistings of the city itself, the paths and harmonies and strange meanderings that gave the city its life. I looked at the way cars and lorries and people moved about the city and saw underlying patterns and purposes. I watched the way racing pigeons flew in their flocks about the tops of the buildings, and saw a reflection of the way a Kingman danced about the labyrinth. I looked at the barrage balloons moving in the breeze, and saw new possibilities of manipulating harmonies.

Suddenly I was more than Grace. I was a Mistress of the Labyrinth, and I was a Darkwitch, and I had the power to create my own future, rather than allowing others to create it for me.

I encountered difficulties as well as new possibilities, though, and those mainly due to the war. “Wandering about” was no longer quite so easy as once it had been. Large areas had been bombed and were closed (or were too difficult to access). Other areas were officially off limits (although it was a simple matter for me to assume a glamour and wander unseen); yet more areas were unofficially off limits. These were areas where there was so much residual pain and fear and distress from bombing that I found myself walking past them quickly. I hadn’t been affected by the sorrow and pain of others before, and I realised just how introspective (even selfish) I’d been before Jack arrived.

I still disguised what I was doing as much as possible. Catling appeared to have no idea of this shadow hanging over London (and I admit that this bothered me deeply, and made me wonder if I was right in thinking the shadow was Catling’s trap; perhaps it might be something else and I didn’t want to be the one to make her suspicious). The war made disguising the true purpose of my meanderings easy. There were many people, all over London, who needed comfort and relief and help, and I spent a great deal of my time with either my mother or Matilda and Ecub (I was finally feeling more confident with them, as I was with my mother), travelling around with my mother’s mobile canteen in the evening and night, and visiting those who needed comfort during the day. It all gave me a chance to get out and about, and to open myself up to this shadowy possibility overhanging the city, but I also enjoyed meeting people, and laughing and crying with them.

Again, it was all part of this new experience for me…living.

Mostly I kept to the central areas of London—both Jack and I were well aware that the shadow spread over the entire Greater London area—but it was at its most potent over the old City. It would be here, I thought, that I’d have more chance of discovering anything of its nature.

For a week I walked here and there, visiting a shop in this street, helping out at a shelter or a kitchen for the homeless in the next. On one occasion Ecub came with me, on another my father accompanied me. For that week I concentrated on opening myself up as much as possible. As each day passed I became more and more sure I was on the verge of a breakthrough. Each day the shadow seemed “closer”—not in a physical sense but almost in an emotional one. I felt as if I would discover something significant, very soon.

I was only slightly wrong. I didn’t discover anything. It discovered me, and once it did, my new-found serenity shattered completely.

One day I met Matilda at Leman Street Station. We meant to walk through the East End to see if we could be of any assistance. Both of us had spare food coupons (gods alone know where my mother had “found” those), cards giving directions to hostels for the homeless, and, we hoped, a store of sympathy and empathy for the wretched people of the East End who had borne the brunt of the bombing thus far. As the morning wore on, we moved through that part of the East End closest to the Tower of London, stopping here and there to help as we were able.

I grew increasingly uncomfortable as the morning wore on. I felt as if I were being watched the entire time. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, as both Matilda and I were too well dressed to go totally unnoticed amongst the East Enders, but I didn’t feel as if it were human eyes watching me. I thought initially it was Catling…but it didn’t feel like her, either.

It didn’t have her malevolence, but it was watchful, cold, judgemental, greatly discomforting.

Matilda kept an eye on me. She knew something was unsettling me, but she didn’t probe, for which I was grateful.

As the day passed I gradually expanded my senses, using all the added knowledge and understanding that working with Ariadne had given me.

Finally, about midday, with a sickening turn of my stomach, I realised that the feeling of being watched was caused by the shadow itself. It was watching me.

And it was whispering to me. That scared me so much that the instant I first realised it I gasped and leaned against the brick wall Matilda and I were passing. We’d been wandering along St George Street close to where it turned into Shadwell High Street, moving towards a community hall a few blocks further up, when suddenly I realised that all the “strangeness” I’d been feeling, and increasingly so for the past hour or more, was in fact soft words whispered at a frantic pace into my mind.

GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace

I leaned against the wall, my stomach now heaving over, and barely stopped myself from gagging. Along with the whispering I could sense the shadow, as if it were leaning close. The feeling was similar, if not quite as horrifying, to what I’d felt on the night the imps attacked me.

GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace

“Grace?” Matilda slid an arm about my shoulders. “Grace?”

WatchmeGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGracewat chmeGrace

“Oh, gods, Matilda…” I whispered, desperately wanting her to stay near and yet not sure I could actually force out the words to tell her what was happening.

GraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGraceGrace

“Grace?”

WatchmeGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGracewat chmeGrace

I finally managed to dampen the noise a little, for which I was profoundly grateful. At least I could do that.

“Grace?” Matilda all but hissed.

“Matilda…the shadow is whispering to me. I don’t believe it…sorry, I only just realised what was happening and it overwhelmed me.”

She was silent for one long shocked moment. “What is it whispering?”

“It calls my name over and over, and begs me to watch it.”

Both of us at that moment firmly fixed our eyes on the pavement. Neither of us wanted to look up, although gods alone knew what we might have seen. The shadow was not visible as such; it could only be sensed.

The whispering continued—

GraceGraceGracewatchmeGracewatchmeGrace

—but I found it far more bearable now I’d dampened it down.

“What do you want to do, Grace?”

What did I want to do? “Continue on, I think, Matilda. I don’t want this to stop us.”

Matilda looked at me searchingly, but eventually she nodded, and we managed to continue walking down St George Street towards the community hall.

The whispering continued over the next few days. Sometimes it was barely there, sometimes it was almost a scream in my head. On those occasions I shut it out completely, closing myself off from my powers as a Mistress of the Labyrinth as a last resort.

It called my name, it begged me to watch it.

And it asked me to come to St Paul’s.

That last made me revise my initial belief that it wasn’t Catling. The shadow must be her—why else would it try to get me close to St Paul’s?

There wasn’t much else I could discover about the shadow, but the whispering was enough for me.

I rang Copt Hall that first day, in the evening, when I’d returned to Ariadne’s apartment. Jack was out. Malcolm was vague about where he was, but I gathered he was in the forest somewhere.

Jack rang me back the next evening, and we arranged to meet the following night. He’d wanted to come straight down to talk to me, but I’d demurred. It was late, I had a terrible headache, and I didn’t want Jack to think he had to dash down to save me from every bump in the night. I told him what the shadow was saying to me (just calling my name, begging to meet me at St Paul’s), and he reluctantly agreed to leave it until the following evening.

I was a little surprised by how pleased I was to see him waiting outside the White Queen Cafe. As I approached he turned, saw me, and grinned, taking my hands (then running his own a little way over my wrists and up my forearms) and planting a soft kiss on my cheek.

We sat once again at the back table, Mrs Stanford hovering happily in the background, feeding us marmalade cake and forcing us to listen to another execrable variety show on the radio. As before, there was no one else in the cafe apart from us.

“What do you think, Jack?

He looked at me with worried eyes and shook his head slowly. “I have no idea. I can’t hear it.”

“It is Catling. It must be.”

“Perhaps.”

“Jack.”

“I know, I know. I haven’t shut myself off to the idea that this entire shadow is Catling’s construction, Grace. But…why would she want you to come to St Paul’s?”

I shrugged. Now that I was settled in the cafe and the initial euphoria of seeing Jack had passed, I felt close to tears. The past few days of listening to the constant whispering had worn me down.

“I’ll come out with you tomorrow,” Jack said. “Maybe together…”

I nodded. Maybe together…

At that moment, we both heard the whispering.

GraceJackGraceackrajacgrajackjacejracegrajace

Jack went white, and without thinking I reached out and took his hand.

Yes!Yes!Yes! GraceJackGraceJack…Come to St Paul’s. Come to St Paul’s.

Now that it had both of us together (hand in hand) the whispering became clearer, less urgent.

Come to St Paul’s, Grace. Come to St Paul’s, Jack. Come to St Paul’s together, GraceJack.

Why? whispered Jack.

Because I have something to show you.

Hours later we still sat in the White Queen Cafe. Mrs Stanford had come out to refresh our tea, and to call us her best customers, although I was starting to think we were her only customers.

No one else had entered in all this time.

“I don’t know if I want to go,” I said.

Jack was looking down at the snowy linen tablecloth, slowly drumming the fingers of one hand.

“I don’t think it is Catling,” he said.

I closed my eyes in mingled horror and desperation. “Jack—”

“Sweetheart,” he said, that hand now sliding across the tablecloth and taking mine, “I don’t think it is Catling.”

My heart turned over when he called me sweetheart, but considering my stomach was also doing slow, queasy turns in fear the mingled effect wasn’t particularly pleasant. I knew I should trust him—gods alone knew Jack had so much more experience with the Troy Game than I did—but, oh, the fear…

“Please,” he whispered, “trust me.”

Gods help me, I did. “All right,” I said, and his hand tightened about mine.

In the kitchen the White Queen smiled, and the pot of marmalade dropped from her fingers and shattered over the floor.

We went to St Paul’s the next week. Having made the decision, we then lingered. Partly this was because of the weather, which had closed in (a poor excuse!), and partly because both of us were more than a little hesitant.

Strangely, even though we took our time about arriving at the cathedral, the whispering stopped completely the night we’d made the decision to go.

We would arrive, eventually, and the shadow was content.

The night we did go, Wednesday, was a cold, blustery night. Jack picked me up from outside Ariadne’s apartment at ten o’clock (we hadn’t wanted to go during the day when we might disturb the cathedral worshippers), then drove to a street two or three away from St Paul’s where he parked and turned off the ignition. We were both so tense we hadn’t even spoken when I got in the car, and now, as we sat in the cold and dark, listening to sleet pelting against the car windows, we remained silent for long minutes. I had my hands thrust deep into my coat pockets; Jack had his still resting on the steering wheel of the Austin, as if he wanted to be ready to drive off at a moment’s notice.

Eventually he sighed, and looked at me. “Ready?”

“No,” I said.

He gave a faint laugh. “That’s good enough for me. Grace, Catling won’t hurt us. Neither of us. We’re too important to her. She can taunt, but she won’t hurt us.”

I turned my head so I could look at him. Maybe he was right, maybe not, but we were here now, and we might as well get on with it.

I took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped out into the freezing wet.

One of the aisle doors in the west face of the cathedral was ajar. A member of the cathedral Watch stood just inside, and looked at Jack and me incredulously as we entered and shrugged off our wet coats.

“There’s an air raid on,” he said. “Are you sure you want to come in? There’s a shelter on Ludgate Hill.”

“We’d like to stay for just a while,” Jack said, “if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged, and we were in.

This was the first time I’d ever been in St Paul’s. The first time, that is, since I’d gone down into the dark heart of the labyrinth where Catling had imprisoned my parents while London burned in 1666, but that had been a different cathedral entirely.

After that occasion, when Catling had first revealed the horrific extent of her hex, I’d not been back. I’d had no desire to visit, and neither of my parents had ever suggested it. I had, of course, been completely terrified of the cathedral, and I wasn’t feeling much more confident now.

We walked very slowly down the south aisle, Jack taking my hand as soon as we’d passed the sentinel by the door.

I was getting used to this holding of hands, getting used to being with Jack as a matter of course, getting used to being comfortable with him.

What I was not comfortable with was being inside this beautiful, terrible cathedral.

I shrank closer to Jack as we walked, wanting the comfort of his height and warmth and strength. To our left lay the nave, but we didn’t enter it, keeping instead to the aisle.

Everything was dim. A few lights shone, mostly in the aisles, but they were spaced far apart, and there were pools of darkness between them. Every time we walked into one of those pools of darkness I’d shrink even closer against Jack and hold my breath until we’d regained the light. From the tenseness of Jack’s body, I guessed he wasn’t feeling much better.

We couldn’t see anyone else, although we could sense that there were some fifteen or more men of the cathedral Watch either in the crypt or patrolling the cathedral’s upper spaces. Occasionally we heard a soft step in the far distance, but it was always too distant to trouble us.

We continued to walk down the south aisle, pausing occasionally to look around, until we reached Sir Christopher Wren’s great dome.

Here we halted, just where the dome met the south transept, and stared upwards.

The top of the dome was hidden in darkness, but we could feel it.

“So much has happened here, in dream and vision,” Jack said softly. “Here, in Cornelia’s stone hall.”

I had heard some of this from either my mother or Ecub over the years, but I am certain they had never told me the full extent of my mother’s and Jack’s meetings in here.

I wondered what had gone on; if they had made love under this dome.

“I have shouted words of hate and love to Noah here,” said Jack, his voice now so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “I have seen your father make love to her here.”

That was new to me, and I lifted my face and studied his.

“Your mother, whether as Cornelia or Caela or Noah, also saw visions of the little girl she thought was her daughter in here, running towards her, calling her name…and all that little girl ever was was a lie we now call Catling.”

I shivered, and he squeezed my hand.

“And to think,” he said, “that this was my creation. Mine and Genvissa’s.”

“Well,” I said, thinking I had to say something, “it is very big.”

He started to chuckle.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and he laughed the harder, pulling me back into the south transept where there was but one weak lamp glowing amid all the vast darkness.

He dampened his laughter and took my face in his hands. “That’s one of the things I like most about you, Grace,” he said. “Your terrible, terrible sense of flattery.”

I grinned. “That’s my Granny Ariadne coming out.”

His thumbs were stroking along the side of my face, and I have to admit they felt good. I decided to take my courage in hand and, standing on my toes, kissed him softly on the mouth.

“Very sweet. I have to admit, I didn’t predict this particular development.”

We sprang apart, although Jack snatched at my hand to stop me from darting off into the vast dark spaces of the cathedral.

Catling laughed. She was somewhere in the darkness, but neither Jack nor I could quite make out the direction of her voice.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “Come to pray?”

“Come to walk the cathedral,” I said, “to measure your worth.”

Catling drew in a theatrical breath of shocked surprise. “Ooooh! Such brave words from such a faint-hearted girl! Come on then, what do you here, eh?”

Footsteps sounded from the dome, shuffling closer and closer to us, but they kept to the dark spaces, and still we couldn’t see the hateful creature.

“Come to measure your worth,” said Jack in a voice flat with hatred, “and to measure our courage.”

“And do you have such measure?” she said. “Of both worth and courage?”

“The visit has firmed in my mind,” he said, “the conviction that I would do anything to save Grace.”

Catling laughed again, and I wondered if there was a hint of relief in the sound.

“Good. That’s good, Jack. You’ll do anything to save Grace. And you know there’s only one way to do that, don’t you, Jack?”

Silence. “Don’t you, Jack?”

“Aye,” he said, his voice still flat. “Aye. I know that.”

“Good,” Catling said, “then your visit was worth it. Stay a while, why don’t you, and enjoy the ambience.”

And then she was gone. Although we could not see, we knew it instantly.

Catling had left us alone.

An age seemed to pass while we stood there, silent, staring into the dark.

“Was that why we were supposed to come, I wonder?” I said eventually.

No, Jack said into my mind, she knew nothing about it. Be careful what you say, Grace.

I bit my lip. If the shadow is connected to Catling, I said, then perhaps she has delivered the message she wanted.

“She could have done that at any time,” said Jack, his own voice irritated now. “Look, Grace, let’s stay a while longer. At least the place is full of benches.”

He led me into the space under the dome, then into the nave. “Here,” he said, pulling me towards the vast acreage of benches and pews in the nave. “We can sit here.” And wait.

What if nothing happens? I said, sitting down next to him on a pew some three or four back from the dome. “What if—”

“Then we can just sit, Grace. Okay?”

We sat in silence for some time, both of us looking forward. I began to hope that nothing would happen, because even though we sat in St Paul’s under Catling’s eye, and even though Jack was in a tired and cross mood, I was enjoying this stillness and silence with him, feeling his warmth and his slow breathing next to me. Just enjoying being with him. Normally I hated it when someone became cross and irritable, but Jack’s mood didn’t bother me this time, or spoil my enjoyment of being with him.

After a while, Jack sighed, slid an arm about my shoulders, and pulled me close. “Go to sleep, if you want, Grace,” he whispered. I will keep watch.

But I didn’t sleep. I didn’t want to. I much preferred staying awake, feeling his warmth and closeness, feeling his chest rise and fall under my cheek.

We waited.

Hours passed. I don’t know how many, but long enough for both of us to grow chilled and stiff. I had fallen into a limbo somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, and I think he had, too. Even the commencement of bombing for that night did not make us stir. We were far too used to it.

Time passed.

GraceJack! GraceJack! Are you awake?

We were both startled.

Look up, GraceJack. Look up.

We looked up.

It was as if the entire roof structure and dome of the cathedral had vanished. We could see the night sky—the churning clouds of the weather and the successive rolling waves of rain, although they did not touch us.

And we could see something else, something so faint we had to strain our eyes.

We saw faint luminescent lines tracing through the sky.

“Jack?”

Shush. Use your mind voice, Grace.

Damn it! Jack, what are those…I wouldn’t say it. I knew he could see them as well as I.

I don’t know.

Watch, came the unknown whisper, and the clouds parted as if by a divine hand, and we could see far, far into the night; so far, that we could distinguish the bombers circling overhead.

As the bombers appeared more clearly, so the faint luminescent lines (of the shadow! We were being shown the shadow!) glowed ever brighter, as if they were taking sustenance from the German aircraft.

Jack fumbled for my hand, and I clung to it. It’s the shadow, I whispered into his mind, and he gave a terse nod.

A bomb came down.

We knew there were many bombs coming down, but we saw only one. It twisted lazily through the sky, gusting this way and that as the wind caught it, and, as we watched, it seemed to be that the luminescent lines reached out to the bomb, and brushed against it.

Turning it now this way, and now that.

As the lines touched the bomb, they glowed anew, as if taking strength from the weapon.

I had eyes for nothing but the bomb, falling straight for the cathedral.

“Grace!” Jack said, then lurched to his feet, pulling me with him.

We stared a moment longer, mesmerised by the deadly sight, then Jack grabbed at my hand and arm, tugged so hard I felt my shoulder joint groan and almost give way, and then we were running down the nave, running back towards the west doors, running for our lives…

This was a trick of Catling’s, after all. She’d merely been toying with us. Playing with us for her own amusement.

We’d almost got to the doors when we stopped, and turned around. I don’t know why we did this, but we both seemed impelled to turn around right at that moment.

There was a terrible crashing and thundering noise, and then we saw the bomb, saw it as if it were only a few feet away, tumbling through the roof above the quire, then falling free of slate and rafters and stone, falling through the air.

And striking the High Altar, where it exploded.

The blast threw Jack and me off our feet. My head hit something, and I blacked out.