The Lost Queen (20 page)

“Do they pursue?” Zara gasped, staring back the way they had come.

“Not yet,” Cordelia panted. “But I would put distance between us ere we take rest.”

Edric rattled the black gate. It was padlocked. “Up and over,” he said. He sprang onto the gate and climbed to sit astride it. He reached down a hand. Cordelia took
it and jumped easily down on the far side.

It was not long before all the princesses were on the pavement on the other side of the gate. Tania didn't recognize where they were, but she knew it wasn't Spenser Road; they must have emerged on the far side of the Forum. Still, it wouldn't take long for them to find their way back to the main streets and get the first tube train out of here.

Sancha was leaning against the wall, looking dazed.

“Are you okay?” Tania asked, putting her arm around her sister's shoulder. “Did you have time to find anything out before the knights came?”

“I am unhurt,” Sancha said. “The knights were swift upon our heels, but I did manage to glean some knowledge before the sky fell on me!”

They all stopped, turning to look at Sancha.

“What did you learn?” Zara breathed.

“All that you would wish!” Sancha said. “I learned where the woman named Lilith Mariner lives. I know where our mother has made her home!”

The summer afternoon had given way to a warm, shadowy evening. The cloudless sky was a grainy gray-blue and seemed to shimmer like water reflecting off a shield of brushed steel. Tania and Edric and the princesses were standing in the shade of a long brick wall, gazing across the road at a four-story block of flats set back off the street behind tall poplar trees and hedges of privet and fuchsia and yew.

The elegant block was of warm brown brickwork, with balconies and angular bays and wide white-framed windows.

Traffic moved steadily along the road. A sign stood above a low brick wall that fronted the hedges and trees.

 

Dover Court

Park Lane

Hampton Wick

Kingston-Upon-Thames

 

If Sancha was right, then Lilith Mariner owned flat 7 in this block.

They were very close to Hampton Court Palace—the diminished mortal echo of the great Royal Palace of Faerie—but they had not come here via the direct route from Richmond. Once on the Underground they had headed north, taking the first train and changing three or four times, moving from the District Line to the Piccadilly Line to the Northern Line and then doubling back and heading south of the Thames to Waterloo, where they caught an over-ground train to Hampton Wick, a five-minute walk from where they were now standing.

Their travels had taken several hours, but they had to do everything they could to try and throw the Gray Knights off their track.

“A grand house, indeed,” Sancha said. “A worthy residence for a Queen of Faerie.”

“She won't own the whole place,” Tania explained. “Just one flat.”

Sancha gave her a puzzled look. “One
flat
?”

“Lilith Mariner's apartment will be only a few rooms in one part of the block,” Edric said. “The rest will belong to other people.”

“Servants and attendants and courtiers, yes?”

“No, people don't live like that here,” Tania said. “At least hardly anyone does these days. I think we should
go over there and check whether she's home yet.”

“And if she is not?” asked Zara.

“Then we'll leave her a letter,” Edric said.

“And trust that her response is swifter than the steeds of Lyonesse,” Sancha murmured. She turned to where Cordelia stood, slightly apart from them, her fingers tight around the black iron bars of a gate set in the long wall at their backs. “Cordelia? Come, we are departing now.”

Cordelia pulled her gaze with obvious reluctance from whatever she had been looking at through the gate, and Tania saw that tears had left shining pathways down her freckled cheeks.

Tania was the first to move toward her, but the others were close behind.

“Cordie? What's wrong?” She peered through the gate's filigree of twisted and shaped wrought-iron, seeing a wide flat area of rough grassland traversed by paths and scattered with slender trees. “It's Bushy Park,” Tania said. “Why has it upset you?”

Cordelia wiped a sleeve across her eyes. “Do you not recognize where we are? In Faerie it is upon this very ground that the menagerie stood. Here I tended the hounds and gave food and shelter to the animals that chose to dwell with me: The otters and the swans and the deer and the unicorns and ravens. All the houseless creatures of Faerie.” She turned her face away. “I cannot bear it,” she said quietly. “Where the clamor and filth of mortals hold sway, there I see no image of Faerie, but here, where some small part of
nature is allowed to survive in chains and fetters of concrete and iron, that is when I see a glimpse of home, and it pierces my heart.”

Zara turned to look across the road at Dover Court. “And it is here that our mother chose to dwell,” she said thoughtfully. “So close to home, but yet so very far away.”

They crossed the road and walked through a gap in the low wall that surrounded Dover Court. They made their way down wide steps into an attractive sunken garden circled with shrubs and flowering plants and containing wooden benches and a stone fountain. The noise of the traffic seemed less intrusive down here behind the screen of trees.

They walked through the garden and came to the main doors leading into the apartment block. They were white with frosted-glass panels.

Edric gave them a push. “Locked,” he said.

Tania was standing to one side of the entranceway, running her finger down a series of labeled buttons on the brass plate of an intercom system.

7.
L
.
MARINER
.

She pressed the button. An electronic buzzing came from the slotted grid at the top of the intercom.

“Yes?” A metallic, rasping voice; the speaker was female, but that was all Tania could tell.

“Ms. Mariner?”

“Yes.”

Tania's mouth was suddenly bone dry. “It's Tania….” she croaked. She brought her mouth
closer to the microphone. “It's
Tania
.”

There was no response.

She looked at the others. “I'm not sure….”

An electronic growl sounded from the doors. Edric pushed at them and one swung open. He walked through, followed by Cordelia, Zara, and Sancha. Tania followed, not quite able to believe that this was really happening. The door swung shut at her back and the lock clicked.

They were in a clean white vestibule. Corridors stretched off to the left and the right. To one side a stairway led up. A sign fixed inside the doorway showed on what floors the various flats could be found. Flat 7 was on the fourth. Directly ahead of them was an elevator. Edric pressed the small square panel and a white triangle lit up above the door. A few moments later the metal door slid open and the five of them stepped inside.

Tania pressed 4 and the door glided closed.

She didn't look at the others—they all seemed enclosed in private bubbles of silence, as though they were afraid that if they spoke of their hopes, it might somehow ruin everything.

The elevator came to a halt. The tension was unbearable.

The door swished open.

A woman stood facing the elevator, bare-legged and barefoot, wearing a knee-length, dark green suit skirt and a lime green blouse. Her long curling red hair was tied back off her face. Her hands were up,
almost as if in prayer, covering the lower half of her face, but above her long, elegant fingers finely sculpted cheekbones and wide green eyes were visible. The expression in her eyes was both eager and wary, as though she feared to trust the truth of what the opening elevator door might reveal.

For a moment there was a silence so profound that Tania could hear the blood beating in her head. Then Edric stepped forward and fell to one knee at the woman's feet, his head bowed.

“Your most gracious Majesty.”

His words shattered the airless silence.

“My daughters!” The woman gasped, reaching out her arms toward the girls, her face full of an impossible joy. “My beloved daughters!”

Zara, Sancha, and Cordelia ran from the elevator and fell into their mother's arms with sobs and muffled cries.

Tania hesitated, stepping out of the elevator as the doors closed but holding back, staring in confusion and uncertainty at the Queen of Faerie. It was not that Titania resembled her so closely—she had been prepared for that, up to a point. What pulled her up short was the heart-wrenching realization that she was finally face-to-face with the woman who was her Faerie mother, the woman who had given birth to the Faerie part of her nature as surely as Mary Palmer had brought her mortal half into this world.

Tears of pure joy were running down Titania's face as she hugged and kissed her daughters. And
Tania was suddenly aware that warm tears were running down her own cheeks and that her chest hurt and her throat was full and that a bird seemed to be fluttering wildly in her heart.

Titania lifted her head from her other daughters and looked at her—and in her face was such devotion and relief and happiness that all doubt and fear drained from Tania's body and she found herself stumbling forward.

“Tania! My darling child!”

Tania came into her mother's embrace, pressing her face into the warm neck, breathing in the Faerie scent of her.

“Why did it take so long?” Tania sobbed. “Why so many years?”

“Ah, I don't know, my beloved girl. I don't know why,” Titania murmured, kissing Tania's face and caressing her hair. “It's been such a long journey for the two of us. But it's all done now. All done.”

“Oh, mother,” cried Sancha. “Would that this moment could be perfect, but we bring terrible news!”

A spasm of pain crossed Titania's face. “I felt there was something wrong,” she said. “Three days ago I had a sense of some evil thing coming to life, but I didn't know what it was.” She looked at Edric, who had risen to his feet and was standing quietly to one side.

“Well met, Master Chanticleer,” she said. “Is it by your master's Art and charity that I am reunited with these four of my children?”

Edric looked up at her. “I am no longer in Lord Drake's service, Your Grace.”

Titania's eyes narrowed. “I see,” she said. “Come, we can speak more freely behind closed doors. It seems there is a lot that I need to know.”

Lilith Mariner's living room was airy and clean, but strangely impersonal. The walls were white, and the floor stripped pine. The furniture was elegant but functional and there were no ornaments, nor pictures on the wall, nor any other objects that might give any hint as to the character of the woman who lived there.

Titania sat on the couch with Zara at her feet, Sancha and Cordelia to either side, and Tania in one corner, holding tightly on to her Faerie mother's hand. Edric was perched on the edge of an armchair facing them. Tania could hardly bear to look at Titania's face as the long, terrible story of the past few weeks was revealed to her.

Her eyes closed tightly as she was told of Rathina's treachery, a single tear escaping and running down her cheek. “Poor child,” she whispered. “The poor lost child.”

“You cannot feel sympathy for her, Mother,” Cordelia said. “She betrayed us all of her own free will. I will never forgive her. Never.”

“No, no, Cordelia,” Titania said sadly. “Rathina is my daughter. I still love her, even though I hate what she has done.”

“It may be that a mother must love her children, even though they become demons,” Sancha said. “But
Rathina's actions have loosed a great peril both to our own Realm and to this world. The great traitor Drake has led Gray Knights here, and they are pursuing us with a deadly loathing.”

Titania looked at Edric. “Your former master has become a dark and corrupt being,” she said. “I'm glad you parted with him.”

“I had to, Your Grace,” Edric said. “For Princess Tania's sake.”

“And for the sake of the love that has grown between you,” Titania added. She squeezed Tania's hand. “You can tell me more about that later but first we have to decide what to do next.”

“Can you guide our footsteps back into Faerie?” Zara asked. “We hoped that you might be able to teach Tania how to break the iron barrier that Lyonesse has raised between our worlds.”

Titania shook her head. “I don't have those kinds of skills,” she said. “I can't help Tania turn her gift into a weapon against the Sorcerer King's enchantments.”

Tania felt all her hopes shriveling away as Titania gently eased her daughters aside and stood up. The Queen walked to the window and stared out into the gathering night.

“I chose to live here because from this window I can see the Palace at Hampton Court,” she said. She pointed. “The towers and roofs are visible over there, beyond Bushy Park.” She sighed. “After five hundred years in the Mortal World, I was afraid that I might
forget my real home…and maybe even forget who I really am.”

“Could you not have made a water-mirror and viewed it from afar?” Sancha asked. “Has your gift deserted you?”

Tania remembered Sancha mentioning that Titania had the gift to see faraway things by looking into pure, still water.

Titania gave a sad smile. “There is no water in this world pure enough to form an image,” she said.

“I do not doubt it,” said Cordelia. “How have you survived for so long in this benighted world, Mother? We have been here but a few hours, and already the horror of it gnaws at my heart.”

“And how have you survived the touch of Isenmort?” Zara asked. “We carry jewels of black amber with us at all times, but what protection have you used against the poison of metal?”

Titania opened the collar of her blouse and drew out something that spun slowly at the end of a long fine chain. She held it up for them to see. It was a ring of white crystal, and set into it was a black jewel that flashed in the light.

“Your father gave this ring to me on our wedding night, as a token of his undying love,” she said. “The stone is black amber. Don't you remember it?”

“Yes, of course,” Sancha said. “The Troth-ring of Tasha Dhul.”

“It protected me from Isenmort,” Titania said. “And as for all the other dangerous things in this
world, I used my knowledge of herbs and healing to fend off the worst diseases, and I was lucky not to suffer any life-threatening accidents.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “I was probably in the greatest danger of death when the Great Plague hit London in 1665. A lot of people died then—a third of the population—but I couldn't just run away and hide. I knew enough about medicine to be able to help some of them. And I was lucky; I never caught the disease.”

“But how have you hidden your true identity for so long?” Sancha asked.

“It was never easy,” Titania replied. “A few years would pass, and the friends that I had made would start commenting on the fact that I never seemed to grow any older. And then in time, the comments would change to suspicion and fear and I would have to disappear and reappear in another part of London with another name and another trade. It was hard in the early times, having to start from scratch over and over again, building a life, losing it, always on the move, or that's how it felt at the time.” She smiled. “But these days that is less of a problem. I have been Lilith Mariner for almost thirty years and the only thing people ask about the way I look is the name of my cosmetic surgeon.”