Authors: Sara Douglass
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Historical, #Fantasy, #Great Britain, #Epic, #Fantasy fiction, #Brutus the Trojan (Legendary character), #Alternative histories (Fiction), #Charles, #Great Britain - History - Civil War; 1642-1649
Then came a rash, then a fever, then more reddened weeping sores, and in more intimate places.
The day Jane Orr confronted the truth of what had happened to her was one of the worst days of her life, of
all
of her lives, and she thought she had suffered unendurably before this.
But this…the pox. She had contracted the pox. This was to what her pride and ambition, her heritage and promise, her power and beauty had brought her.
The pox.
Given to her no doubt by one of the sailors Weyland had forced on her.
A whore, and now a
poxy
whore.
MagaLlan, Darkwitch, Mistress of the Labyrinth: inheritor of a heritage so proud, so stunning, that few could have comprehended it, and
this
is to what it had brought her.
A poxy whore
. Despised by all who laid eyes on her. That Jane no longer worked the mattresses was of no consequence. Everyone who saw her knew her profession from the open weeping sores on her face. All would despise and pity her, men and women alike.
How could she—MagaLlan, Darkwitch, and Mistress of the Labyrinth—have come to this? A poxy whore
.
The temptation was there to blame Asterion for all of it—for her downfall, for her degradation, for her daily humiliations—but Jane no longer had the energy to evade the truth. She was as much to blame for this as he: her blindness, her stupidity, her damned arrogance…
Oh gods, her ambition to rule the world through the Troy Game. Perversely, rather than hating Weyland, Jane found herself hating Brutus. If it wasn’t for him…if only they hadn’t attempted to create the Troy Game…if only they hadn’t ignored the danger of Asterion…
If only she had never met Brutus, and had lived out her life as MagaLlan and Darkwitch and nothing else. Gods,
then
she would have had the respect of all who beheld her.
Now she lived her life in the house that Weyland had purchased in Idol Lane. She was its mistress, a fact Weyland often remarked upon with a small smile on his face.
You are the mistress only of a whore-house, Jane
. And generally, after that, some crude jest upon the labyrinthine ways of the whore’s bed.
Jane ran the house as well as those pitiable girls that Weyland dragged in from the streets to work for him for a few years. She wasn’t sure where he found them, but find them Weyland did, and he gave them to Jane to feed, wash, manage and advise. They lived and
worked in Idol Lane for a year or two, perhaps three, and then Weyland grew tired of them, and set them loose back into the streets. Where they went from there Jane did not know, but she worried about it from time to time, wondering what kind of lives these girls faced, alone and friendless. Weyland might do many terrible things to those girls, but at least he’d fed them, and put a roof over their heads.
Weyland had no financial need to run a brothel, but Jane suspected that it amused him. Most certainly he enjoyed humiliating and tormenting Jane, and grew fat on her despair.
At least Jane now lived in some manner of comfort. Weyland had moved her here from that terrible, stinking tiny room they had shared for so many years. It was a strange house, growing almost organically as it did out of the bone house of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, and in a state of disrepair when first they’d moved in. Weyland had hired men to fix the roof and to replace the floors and to glass the hitherto unglazed windows, and now the house was not only more than comfortable, but a comfort in itself. Here there were many rooms, places where Jane could exist for hours at a time in some solitude and in some manner of peace.
Her favourite room was the kitchen. How Genvissa and Swanne would have laughed! That they had come to this, a whore who took pride in her kitchen. Kitchen it might be, but the room was one of the largest in the house, and it was comfortable, and warm, and it did not stink of sex for sale. The girls (three at the moment) that Weyland had working for him lived in a tavern cellar on Tower Street (he would not keep them at the house), and fulfilled their duties to Weyland and to every lustful carter and sailor and ironmonger in two rooms on the first floor of this house. They came to the kitchen
to eat, and to rest, and to sit in silence, partaking of the same comfort in the room as did Jane.
Weyland sometimes joined them. He ate in the kitchen, and he usually tormented either Jane or one of the girls while he was there, but generally Weyland was either out in the city, or he was upstairs on the top floor of the house, where he had constructed something…strange.
Weyland had felt it as soon as he had climbed the stairs on that first day he’d wandered into the house from Idol Lane. The first floor was nothing, merely a collection of small rooms that would serve well as bedchambers, the next floor no different, but the top floor of the house…well, that was something special. It was one large open space, and it stank of magic and power. Weyland had spent hours up here that day; firstly, searching the space with his eyes and his darkcraft, making sure it could truly be what he needed and, secondly, trying to scry out the source of the attic’s power. In the end, after hours of seeking, he could not manage to discover the source, but that did not trouble him. Indeed, he felt that the power was not antagonistic to him, but rather in some strange way was actually sympathetic.
This was the place he’d been searching out for so many years.
This would be his home, his sanctuary.
His Idyll.
The instant that damned wool merchant had spoken the word “idyll” Weyland now realised the house had been calling out to him.
Here I am! Here I am!
And here it was indeed. Once the house had been repaired and Weyland moved in, he had made it abundantly clear to Jane and the other girls that the attic space was out of bounds.
“It is my den,” Weyland said to them as they stood in a line before him, faces solemn, hands clasped behind their backs. “My lair, my nest, my shadowy corner of hell. Keep away from it.”
They had. Weyland had infused enough threat into his voice to impress even Jane. He kept the top floor of the house in Idol Lane to himself, and out of this space Weyland fashioned his Idyll.
It took him over a year, and he needed almost every particle of his darkcraft to accomplish it. Weyland knew that so much expenditure of power would bring him to the Troy Game’s attention, and he had been worried for many months. But nothing had happened.
And the Idyll had grown.
It was far better than Weyland ever expected. It
was
his hidey-hole and his sanctuary, but it was also something far deeper. It was Weyland’s expression of self, of what perhaps he might be, given the chance…and the kingship bands.
It was his kingdom.
Yet, even so, Weyland was somehow dissatisfied with his Idyll. Oh, it was pleasant enough and beautiful enough to keep him happy and contented for many a long night, but there was still something missing—some tiny element that Weyland could not quite put his finger on—and that irritated him. He wanted his Idyll to be perfect and to have perfection evade him by a fraction, and to not know what it was that he needed to fill that small, missing space…well, that was frustration incarnate, and those days that Weyland spent hours in his Idyll, studying it, and fretting over what might be needed to complete it, those days were the ones when his temper too often frayed, and either Jane or one other of his whores was likely to feel the full force of his temper in her face.
Weyland understood that he had years to wait until the time was right to make a play for the kingship bands, and he was furious that he might have to spend those years fretting over what, probably, was no more than a small detail of decoration.
He was greater than that, surely.
J
ack Skelton threw his bag into the boot of the car, then jumped in the passenger seat, silently cursing the British preoccupation with tiny vehicles. He slouched down in the seat, reaching for his cigarettes just as Frank put the car into gear
.
“
It’ll take us at least half an hour,” Frank said. “The Old Man’ll be furious. We were supposed to report in at—
”
“
I’ll take responsibility,” Skelton said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, relishing the smoke in his lungs. There were very few things he liked about this twentieth-century world, but this was one of them
.
“
But you are my responsibility,” Frank said. “The Old Man told me to—
”
“
Oh, for gods’ sakes, Frank! Calm down. The ‘Old Man’ will cope if we’re twenty minutes late. Now, get this damned conveyance moving, why don’t you, before we’re twenty
hours
late
.”
Frank’s mouth thinned. He crouched over the steering wheel in that peculiar manner he had and pushed his foot down on the accelerator
.
The car moved forwards, and Skelton slouched down even further. He was getting very tired of Frank, and hoped he didn’t have to work too closely with him at—
A huge black four-door sedan hurtled around the corner ahead and screeched to a halt before them
.
Frank slammed his foot on the brakes, and Skelton muttered an obscenity as he was thrown forward against the dashboard
.
“
Jesus, Frank! Where did the English learn to drive
?”
A slight, fair-haired woman in the uniform of a WREN leapt out of the sedan
.
Frank groaned. “Christ. It’s Piper
.”
Piper hurried to Frank’s window, leaning down to peer first at Frank and then, more curiously, at Skelton. “Hello, Frank!” Piper said, her eyes again slipping to Skelton, who studiously ignored her. “There’s been a change of plans. I’m so glad to have caught you!
”
“
Yes?” snapped Frank. Patently he didn’t like Piper much, which perversely made Skelton like her immensely
.
“
The Old Man’s left London,” said Piper, her voice breathless. “Gone up to his weekend place. Wants to see you and,” yet again she looked curiously at Skelton, “the major there. You’re to report to him for lunch
.”
“
The weekend house, eh?” murmured Skelton, throwing Piper a grin. “If I’d known I’d have brought my tweeds
.”
“
Very well, Piper,” said Frank. “Are you coming as well
?”
“
Oh, yes,” said Piper, and her mouth twisted. “I’ve the Spiv in the back
.”
“The Spiv”,
Skelton thought
. The “Old Man”.
Do the British not once use a cursed name? He looked ahead, trying to see into the back seat of the black sedan, but cigarette smoke obscured his vision, and all he could make out was the vague form of a man, partly hidden behind the newspaper he was reading
.
Piper was walking back to her sedan, and Frank once more put his own car into gear, waiting for Piper to drive off
.
“
So where is it we’re going?” said Skelton. “Where is this weekend house
?”
“
Epping Forest,” said Frank, unaware that Skelton had stiffened at the information. “The Old Man’s got a house there, inherited from some boffin in his family. It’s called Faerie Hill Manor
.”
L
ong Tom, oldest and wisest of the Sidlesaghes, sat by the prostrate white form of the Stag God, Og, as he lay in the glade in the heart of the forest. The flanks of the stag rose and fell with discernible breath, and his heartbeat, not once in millennia, but now at least once an hour, close enough that the watching eye might catch it.
Og was waking, moving towards rebirth. Long Tom kept watch this night, as he did many nights, but this night, that of the first of May, became something unexpected.
As he sat, something moved in the forest which surrounded the glade.
Long Tom raised his head and looked about as he heard a noise coming from behind the trees.
“Who goes there?” he called, wondering if Asterion had gained enough power to dare the heart of the Game.
Then the stag moaned, and something most unexpected walked free of the forest.
Long Tom stared.
The being that had stepped forth smiled, and then it spoke.
Long Tom listened, his large mouth dropping ever
so slightly open. When the being had stopped speaking, he frowned, but then nodded.
“I will see that it is done,” he said.
The chamber, like the house which contained it, was large, yet sparsely furnished. The floorboards were well swept and bare save for a single rug sprawled before the fire. There were two plain elmwood chests pushed against a far wall, and a table of similar material to one side of the room with the remains of a meal scattered over it. Candles sat on both the table and the chest. A fire burned brightly in the grate, and before it, and slightly away from the direct heat, stood five large copper urns, steam rising gently from their openings.
A huge tester bed, again of plain unadorned wood, dominated the room. The bed curtains which hung down from the tester, threadbare and dulled with years of use, had been pushed back towards the head of the bed. The creamy linens and the single blanket—both linens and blanket expertly patched here and there—were piled towards the foot of the bed.
Three people lay on the bed, two women and a man. The younger of the women, perhaps of some twenty-five or twenty-six years, and of a fair beauty, lay stretched out naked on her side, watching the other woman and man make love, occasionally reaching out to stroke the man down the length of his back, or the woman over her breasts. This younger woman watched with gleaming eyes, seeming to receive as much pleasure from watching the lovemaking as she would had she been the recipient of the man’s attentions herself. That she had been the recipient of some man’s attentions, if perhaps not this one’s, was evident in the gentle rounding of her stomach, showing a five- or six-month pregnancy.