Druids Sword by Sara Douglass Page A

silent affair, punctuated only with some self-conscious conversation, and the sound of plates being pushed away, their contents barely touched.
    It had been a bad day for eating, Jack thought, and was torn between wanting desperately to make his excuses and return to Copt Hall and needing to have a quiet word with Noah. She was visibly upset, andJack knew she’d allowed herself to believe that Jack could help her daughter.
    Eventually the meal was over, and Harry said diplomatically that he and Jack were tired, that it had been an emotional day for everyone, and that if Weyland was still willing to hand a car over to Jack, perhaps he, Harry and Jack could repair to the garage?
    The sound of chairs scraping back from the table was indecently loud. Before Grace had a chance to bolt for her room, Jack managed a quick moment with her.
    “I am sorry,” he said again.
    She looked at him with emotionless eyes, then turned her back and walked away.
    What do you know? Jack thought, watching her, remembering what he’d felt from her arms. And what are you?
    Friend, or foe?
    Victim, or trap?
    “Jack?” said Weyland, jangling a set of car keys in his hand.
    Jack finally managed to have a hurried conversation with Noah as she helped him on with his coat.
    “Noah, how did the four kingship bands make it into the Faerie?”
    “Why do you want to—”
    “Noah, please, just answer.”
    “I turned them into golden ribbons and tied them about Grace’s arms and legs. Then the Lord of the Faerie carried Grace, and the bands, into the Faerie. Why?”
    Jack stared at her, but before he could answer Weyland walked up.
    “Jack? Are you coming, or not?”
    The Savoy’s garage was situated within the basement of the hotel. It was filled with such an array of luxury vehicles that Weyland’s Daimler appeared almost ordinary. Weyland led Jack and Harry to a spot partway down the garage. Here was his Daimler, and beside it a pale grey-green Austin convertible, its cloth hood folded back.
    Jack stepped close, running his hand admiringly over the soft leather of its seats.
    “You would trust me with this?”
    Weyland tossed him the keys, and Jack had to twist quickly in order to catch them.
    “If it means you are gone from here,” Weyland said, “then, yes, I will trust you with it.”
    He turned, walking away a few steps before halting and again addressing Jack. “I don’t know what you did to Grace this afternoon, Jack, but I can’t help feeling that she’d have been better off without you.”

E LEVEN
Clapham
Sunday, 3 rd September 1939
    W eyland didn’t go back up to Noah and Grace once Jack and Harry had left. Instead he stood, staring blankly at the space where the Austin had been parked, before cursing under his breath and opening the driver’s door of the Daimler.
    He drove to a narrow, sad side street running off High Street in Clapham. Empty crates and overflowing rubbish bins lined the footpaths, most of the windows on the buildings had been boarded up, a small, thin dog lay curled up, shivering, in a doorway, and puddles of something thick and vile lay glinting on the road surface.
    Weyland had never been here before, but he had long known of the street’s most shadowy residents. Having locked the Daimler, Weyland walked up to a door and knocked softly.
    Someone had tacked a wooden plaque to the wall by the door, and Weyland glanced at it as he waited.
    Philpot Investigations
James Philpot and William Philpot,
Proprietors
    Footsteps crept cautiously towards the door, and Weyland tensed slightly.
    “Come on, come on,” Weyland muttered.
    The footsteps halted on the other side of the door.
    Weyland banged his fist on the door.
    “We’re closed,” came a whisper.
    “You’re bloody not closed to me,” Weyland said. “Open up!”
    “We don’t work for you any more, Weyland,” the voice whispered.
    “Do you work for money?”
    The voice hesitated. “Yes,” it whispered eventually, the word riddled with