TWO

Copt Hall
January-February 1941

GRACE SPEAKS

Alittle harder than it sounded, as it transpired, but at least Jack and I could bury our disquiet about the White Queen by hunting for the book. After all, what harm could a book do?

Very quickly we discovered that Londina Illustrata had been written by a man called Robert Wilkinson in the early nineteenth century. The late Georgian period witnessed the emergence of a number of antiquarians and engravers intent on recording what was left of ancient London before it was lost forever to development. Wilkinson was on the outer fringe of this group, never achieving the same public recognition as men like John Thomas Smith or Thomas Shepherd, and thus never achieving the same depth of subscriptions needed to publish his work. Eventually Wilkinson didn’t publish a book as such, but a collection of some two hundred folio pamphlets dealing with largely unknown parts of London which he put out over a twenty-year period. Subscribers could collect these individual pamphlets and have them bound into a book, if they so wished, and if they were inclined to pay a book binder. Ever helpful, Wilkinson actually provided a title page for those who wanted to do this; in fact Wilkinson published so many pamphlets, he felt it prudent to issue two title pages. Subscribers could bundle the pamphlets dealing with monasteries, churches and schools into the first volume, and those dealing with everything else (primarily, but not exclusively, the theatres of London) in the second.

Copies of the two-volume Londina Illustrata abounded.

Unfortunately, they were all different.

Twenty years is a long time to expect subscribers to collect every single pamphlet Wilkinson put out, to keep them, and then to decide they wanted to pay to have them bound themselves. Some subscribers died partway through the process, some only gained interest when Wilkinson got to the theatres, others lost pamphlets when they were moving house, or to the jaws of ravenous babies and cats, or they mislaid one or two (or thirty or forty), or they simply missed acquiring a few of the pamphlets as they came out. Other collections were lost during the passage of time.

After all, Wilkinson was hardly a household name, no one thought these pamphlets were valuable and, in the subsequent Victorian craze for modernisation (involving the wholesale destruction of what remained of ancient London), who really cared about a few musty pamphlets about the odd buried crypt or laneway?

Indeed, no one actually knew how many pamphlets there were in total, and we were faced with the realisation that we might not recognise the “complete” Londina Illustrata should it be thrust under our noses.

Jack and Harry (who had the contacts) set themselves the task of finding that elusive, complete copy while I continued my convalescence at Copt Hall.

All they could hope for was that something had survived the wholesale bombing and firestorming of London, but, in the end, they encountered a different and far more frustrating problem.

Rather than having been destroyed (although some, indeed, had been) the majority of collections of books and manuscripts had been removed from London in the year preceding, and in the months just after, the outbreak of war. The great collections of the British Museum, of the various record offices, of the book dealers and clubs and societies and public libraries of London, all of which might reasonably have been expected to have copies of Londina Illustrata, had been scattered all over Britain. Many were not accessible, either because they were too far away, packed behind blast-proof concrete walls or deep in mines…or had been broken up to be stored in the attics and cellars of the houses of the gentry.

And, unbelievably, no one actually had a list of what had gone where.

After all, everything had been done in such a rush.

One day Jack and Harry arrived back at Copt Hall so frustrated I could hear them banging car doors, and then cursing as jackets got caught in those slammed doors, from my bedroom on the first floor.

They thumped up the stairs, and came to sit on either side of my bed.

Jack tapped out two cigarettes from his pack, lit them, and handed one to Harry. If I had needed any indication that they’d had a bad day, then this was it. Harry rarely smoked, and Jack mostly tended to do so only when he was nervous or severely annoyed.

“No luck, huh?” I said, trying a smile to ease the tension. Jack and Harry had been searching for the damned book for over three weeks now, and I think they must have harassed most librarians and book dealers within a hundred-mile radius of London.

Jack muttered something unrepeatable, and it was Harry who was left to explain.

“Someone suggested we try the Admiralty as all the sons of the gentry and nobility who served in the Navy tended to leave their book collections, along with tidy sums of cash, to the place. So we went to the Admiralty. Their librarian checked his cards, and, yes, they actually had twelve different sets of Londina Illustrata. But their collections were removed into the country about six months ago.”

“They waited,” said Jack, and I could almost hear his teeth grinding, “until the bombs started to fall, and then decided to do something about it. Utter panic. Witless fools!”

Harry shot him a glance, and resumed the tale. “Indeed, utter panic. They had no plan about what to do, all they wanted was to get everything into the safety of the countryside. So they requisitioned trucks from everyone they could think of. But they didn’t have enough trucks, and the bombs were beginning to get closer and closer.”

“So,” said Jack, blowing a plume of smoke towards the ceiling, “they sent clerks rushing into the streets, to ask passing motorists to help.”

“Scores of motorists stopped,” said Harry, “and tons of books and manuscripts were loaded into the boots and back seats of private motor cars and the trays of passing vegetable lorries.”

“And no one, no one,” said Jack, “thought to take down the names of these people, or ask them for their addresses. The stuff has just vanished into the barns and attics of innumerable private houses around the home counties…and no one knows where it is.”

I didn’t need to ask. The twelve sets of Londina Illustrata had gone into one, or many, of those private motors.

“Oh,” I said.

Jack saw the expression on my face. “Don’t worry, Grace. If Harry and I can’t find a copy of this damned book then we’ll just have to demand one from the White Queen.”

I smiled for him, but I doubted the White Queen was about to pop a set of Londina Illustrata in the Royal Mail for us. In the weeks since I’d risen from my coma and had come to Copt Hall I had woken on many occasions through most nights, and I’d never found her sitting by the side of my bed.

Neither had she manifested herself to me in any other fashion, or made it known how we might contact her. I had tried to reach out with my power, but it was at such a sad ebb because of my physical weakness and my exertions on the night of the twenty-ninth that I had no luck. I don’t know if the White Queen would have allowed the contact, in any case. Having spent almost four thousand years at a distance, I do not think my newly found sister was going to become chummy all at once…if ever. I don’t know what she wanted, and thought it highly possible that she had become so used to her solitary state that she didn’t want it disturbed.

She certainly showed little inclination to contact her long-lost parents (save, of course, for those brief appearances she made to Jack over the past year).

Noah came and sat with me several days a week. She tried not to ask about the White Queen, but inevitably did, and I told her everything I knew. Much had changed for my mother—Jack’s slow turning to me, my place at his side as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, the return of a daughter she thought she had lost and who she had yet to touch—but I think she was, although very slowly, coming to terms with it. For thousands of years Noah had fought her battles centre stage. Now (hard words, but I don’t know how else to phrase it) it appeared I was to take that place…

How did I feel about this? Oh, my Lord, how my life had changed since Jack had returned to London. I had thought to resent and dislike him, had been afraid of him and all he could do to me, and, yes, he had turned my life topsy-turvy, but it had not been as frightening or as disastrous as I had feared. Jack had taken my cage, opened its door, then shaken it violently and tipped me out. In doing so, he’d taught me to live, not so much through any action, but through his simple belief that I was capable of it. Jack had been the first person to really believe in me, to treat me no differently than anyone else, to rage and rail at me as he raged and railed at everyone else…and to smile at me, and laugh with me, to grant me respect, and, the greatest compliment, to learn from me.

How everything had changed. How I had changed.

The period that I spent convalescing at Copt Hall was a time of not merely gaining in strength, but in much reflection. It was also a time of growing. The first month, all of January, I spent mostly in bed. Jack sat most nights in the wing-backed easy chair by my bed, alternatively sleeping (and snoring softly as his head tipped against one of the wings of the chair) or, when he was awake, reading or watching me. I would often wake in the night, and see him there, and I felt so cared for, so protected, that I felt as if nothing could ever touch me.

During the days when Jack was out and about, often with Harry, trying to track down a copy of Londina Illustrata, or trying to discover as much as he could about this new Game, Malcolm sat with me. We talked about his wife, Boudicca, and what had happened two thousand years ago, and what had happened on New Year’s Eve when Boudicca came to me, and one day he asked me if I were afraid.

I smiled. “Afraid? No, Malcolm, I am not afraid. I am at peace, mostly, with both the world and with myself.”

“Not afraid of Catling?”

“No. What happens will happen. But she has no power to terrify or terrorise me now.”

“And what of your sister, the White Queen?”

I fell quiet at that, because, to be frank, she did disturb me. I could not help remembering that night, so long ago now, when she’d asked if I would die for Jack.

And I had said yes. I would say it again, but, oh, I wished I knew what she had meant by it.

Of course, Boudicca’s little warning hadn’t exactly calmed my disquiet, either.

“Be wary of the White Queen,” Malcolm, said. “Trust what she says, but always be wary of it.”

“Oh, come now, Malcolm! What kind of advice is that?”

He just shrugged, annoying me.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, irritated with him for unsettling me, and wanting to put a stop to the conversation, “and I need your arm to help me get there.”

By February I was feeling much better. I’d gained weight, and my flesh had started to plump out from my bones. My strength had largely returned, and I spent more time out of bed than in it.

Even though it was cold, I spent an hour or two each day, wrapped well in a coat and scarf, my breath frosting about me, the frozen leaf litter crunching under my boots, walking Epping Forest with Jack.

These were good hours. Jack and I grew day by day into a deeper intimacy. It wasn’t sexual—we had not become lovers—but something far greater: a sharing and trusting, an ever-deepening understanding and friendship. We explored each other in a way I think few people do, exposing our sins and our hopes, our frailties and the strengths we have made of them. We explored our powers, the depths and possibilities inherent in those abilities and in each other.

We each understood the other, and we were completely, utterly, at peace.

What we were doing was forging a partnership. This process had been in progress for at least a year, but it solidified during the early months of 1941. By the end of February neither of us had any surprises left unknown to the other, only an infinity of possibilities.

Our intimacy was extraordinary, and I felt blessed by it. One day, when we were atop Ambersbury Banks, I turned to him, and tried to put into words what I was feeling.

“Jack…” I said. “Jack…”

I could have felt like a fool then, standing there with my face all pinched with the cold, my hands thrust deep into the pockets of my coat, staring at the man standing before me, and once I would indeed have felt like a fool. But today I didn’t. I knew he would understand.

He did. He smiled, so gently, and stepped forward and kissed my forehead, then just gathered me to him.

We stood there for almost an hour, not speaking, just standing close, the forest watching, the leaves frosting under our feet, fallow deer rummaging about in the trees for whatever nourishment they could find, and felt the land turn about us.

We’d both had disastrous lives, and we stood in a place where once the people of this land had met a disastrous fate at the sword of an invader.

We’d both been marked, one way or another, by the land, and those who had lived on it.

We both hoped, more than anything, that we could walk away from this place of death, and this time turn all the disasters that had nourished us into something triumphant.

At the very end of February Harry sent word that a book dealer by the name of Lionel Sutherland was making a brief trip back to London to see a relative. He was one of London’s premier rare book dealers, but had fled, together with all his stock, some three or four months before the declaration of war (being a man of caution, Sutherland was taking no chances with what had taken him a lifetime to acquire). Sutherland had heard from various sources in the book world that Harry had been searching out a copy of Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata for friends, and Sutherland had what he claimed was “an almost” complete copy.

“The best you’re ever going to get,” was what Harry told Jack and me the man had said.

And Sutherland was bringing the set to London, if perchance Harry’s friends wished to view it.

Jack and I looked at each other. “Almost complete” was not quite what we were after, but this wasn’t a chance we wanted to ignore.

“When can we meet him?” Jack asked.