The Lost Queen (21 page)

“But why did you choose to live in this dreadful place?” Cordelia asked. “Were I lost in this world, I would seek out the remote wildernesses where I would be free of the clamor of mortal-kind.”

Titania came back from the window. “I had to be
within reach of your sister,” she said, taking Tania's hand again. “It took me a while to find her. For two years I roamed the city in search of her, and then one day I finally came close enough to be able to sense her Faerie Spirit. It was like a warmth in my heart when I felt she was near to me, even though the Spirit was trapped in the body of a sickly mortal girl.”

Tania stared at her. “Was her name Ann Burbage?” She remembered her Elizabethan flashback—five hundred years ago she had been called Ann, and her father had been called Richard Burbage. Was she the sickly child that Titania meant?

“How did you know that?” Titania asked, frowning at her. “I didn't think you had any memory of your previous lives once you were born again.”

“I didn't,” Tania explained. “It's only been happening recently. I get these brief flashbacks. I was Ann Burbage, and I was a little girl called Gracie, and I was Flora Llewellyn. My father was a Victorian inventor called Ernest.”

Titania nodded. “Yes, I remember all those children,” she said. “And I remember the girl you were before you became Anita Palmer. Your name was Barbara and you were born twenty-seven years ago in Dulwich.” She gave a deep sigh. “But you were run down by a car on your way home from school when you were eleven years old.” Sadness filled her voice. “I read the details of it in the local newspaper. It took me eighteen months of searching before I discovered you again in the body of a baby girl called Anita Palmer. In
Faerie the gifts of the Royal Family come alive at the age of sixteen. I was sure that if only you could survive for sixteen years in a mortal body, then the Faerie part of your nature would wake up and you would know who you were.”

“And that's why Your Grace sent Tania's Soul Book to her,” Edric said.

“That's right,” said Titania. “I became more and more excited as Anita Palmer got closer to her sixteenth birthday, although my work prevented me from watching as constantly as I'd have liked.” She looked quizzically at Edric. “Otherwise I would certainly have recognized Lord Drake's servant when he appeared in London disguised as a mortal.” She turned to look at Tania. “I posted the book to you so that you'd get it on your birthday, and once you'd had a chance to read some of it, I was going to come to your house and speak to you.”

“And you did,” Tania said. “But by then I was gone.”

“When I heard that you'd gone missing, I was certain that you must be dead.” She shuddered, gripping Tania's hand fiercely. “I thought I'd lost you again, and I thought I'd also lost the only real thing that linked me to you, your Soul Book.” She sighed. “I can't begin to tell you how I've ached for this moment, how I've longed to be with my children again.”

“And we with you, Mother,” Sancha murmured.

“I must have faith that Hopie and Eden are alive and well,” Titania said. She hugged the girls to her. “I
wish that our reunion could have been under better circumstances, and I wish I knew how to defeat the evil of Lyonesse. But I don't know how to fight the Gray Knights, and I don't know how to get us back to Faerie.”

Zara's eyes widened in alarm. “Then are we trapped here forever?”

“Not forever, I fear,” Sancha said. “For how long may we escape the Gray Knights of Lyonesse?”

“We can't just run and hide from them,” Edric said. “We have to fight back.”

“And we have to find a way of getting into Faerie,” Tania said. “I could try again. Perhaps now we're all together, it might work.”

“I do not think so,” Sancha said. “Faerie lies behind a barrier of Isenmort. The Sorcerer King's enchantments cannot be so easily broken.”

“Black amber is ever a protection against Isenmort,” Zara said. “Could it not be turned into a weapon? We have your crown, Mother. There are yet eleven black amber stones upon it—can they not be used against Lyonesse?”

“A blade shaped from black amber might be sharp enough to cut a way between the worlds,” Sancha said.

“Black amber can be melted if it's heated carefully,” Titania said. “But even then, a knife forged from molten amber would be too small to cut through into Faerie.”

“Your Grace, what if we could melt it so that it made a coating over a crystal sword?” Edric asked.
"The princesses brought four swords into this world. Could one of them be used?”

“It's possible,” Titania said. “A crystal sword coated with a layer of black amber might be powerful enough.” She looked at Tania. “If it was in the hands of the right person. But it takes a lot of heat to melt black amber, more than we could create without finding a furnace or something similar.”

“How about an oxyacetylene torch?” Tania asked. “Would that give a hot enough flame?”

“I should think so,” Titania said.

“What is this of which you speak?” asked Sancha.

“It's an apparatus that allows you to make a very small, very hot flame,” Tania explained. She looked at Edric. “Do you remember what Jade's dad's hobby is?”

He frowned. “Messing about with old motorbikes, isn't it?”

Tania nodded. “Their basement is full of bits and pieces of old bikes. He's forever cutting up bikes and welding them back together, and sometimes he uses an oxyacetylene torch. I've seen it down there.”

“But have you seen him use it?” Titania asked. “Do you know how to work it safely?”

“Not exactly, but he's the kind of person who'd keep the instruction manual,” Tania said. “We'll be able to figure it out from there.”

“Must we then return to your friend's house?” Cordelia asked. “Is that not perilous?”

“All choices are fraught with peril,” Zara said. “But inaction is the most perilous of all. At the very least, we
shall put up such a fight that any Gray Knights that outlive us will long remember the battle.”

“Pray that it does not come to that,” said Sancha. “Mayhap it were safer for only one or two to go to the house and for the rest to remain here?”

“No,” Titania said. “We have to keep together now, whatever happens. My car is in the underground parking lot. I'll drive us all over there, if you'll tell me the way, Tania.”

“I think I can do that,” Tania said.

“Ere we depart, let me learn the lie of the land,” Cordelia said. She got off the couch and walked to the window. Edric went with her and undid the latch.

Cordelia threw the window open. A gentle breeze wafted into the room.

“Can you smell the stink of the Gray Knights?” Zara asked.

Cordelia took a long, deep breath. “Nay,” she said. “They are not near.” She leaned out of the window and let out a series of whistles.

Tania got up and stood behind her, peering out into the night. She heard a distant whirring and fluttering sound that grew nearer and louder—and soon dark shapes began to swoop through the darkness toward the window.

Birds. Scores of birds, coming from every direction at Cordelia's call. Swifts and swallows and tits and sparrows and rooks came in wheeling formation, darting this way and that across the glass, circling in front of the window. A flock of pigeons flew noisily over the
rooftops. Some birds landed on the sill, jostling for space as more and more arrived. Starlings and blackbirds and jays and magpies sped through the air. An owl flapped slowly up, landing heavily on the sill, dislodging most of the others as it caught its balance and folded its great brown wings.

Tania gazed into the eerie luminous eyes of the owl as it bobbed its round head and ruffled its feathers.

“My friends,” Cordelia called. “A dreadful evil is at large in this place. Twelve gray monsters upon twelve undead steeds. Have any of you seen these creatures, or do you have any knowledge of them?”

The air was suddenly full of the voices of birds, whistling and cheeping and trilling and chirruping and croaking. The owl hooted several times.

It sounded chaotic to Tania, but Cordelia listened intently.

“Thank you, my friends,” she said when the noise died down. “Do not put yourselves in peril. If you chance upon these creatures, flee them. Go now, and the blessing of all good things be upon you.”

The owl bobbed its head again, then turned clumsily on the sill and launched itself off. It dropped like a stone for several yards, then its wings spread and it was suddenly elegant, brushing the treetops as it soared away and was lost in the night. All the other birds scattered, too, filling the air with noise and hectic motion as they went, gliding and swooping, high and low, until they spread out across the dark sky and were gone.

Cordelia closed the window. “Many of them have smelled the creatures on the air and some have seen gray shapes, like shrouds of walking mist in the streets. But there are no Gray Knights near this place.”

“I suggest we stay here and rest for a few hours,” Titania said. “Then I'll drive us to the Andersons' house. Maybe the Gray Knights will be less alert when the night is at its darkest.”

“Let's hope there won't be any Gray Knights between us and Jade's house,” Tania said, tightening her fist around an imaginary hilt. “I want to have a sword in my hand next time we meet up with them!”

Titania parked her dark blue BMW about fifty yards down the street from the Andersons' house.

“That wasn't so bad,” she said.

The journey from Hampton had passed without incident. There had been no sign of the Gray Knights and Cordelia had not been able to sense the presence of their steeds in the air. They arrived in the Kent House area of London in the small hours of the night. The street where the Andersons lived was quiet and empty and shrouded in darkness, save for the pools of orange light that cascaded from the streetlamps.

“Wait here till I beckon you,” Tania said, peering through the windshield. “Then come one at a time. If you hear anyone or see any movement from the other houses, just walk straight past, okay?”

She got out and walked alone along the pavement. There were no lights on in the neighboring houses;
the street was deserted. At the gate of Jade's house Tania turned and raised her hand as a sign for the next person to follow. Then she slipped in through the gate and sprinted up the path to the door.

Standing under the shadow of the porch, she watched as Sancha appeared. She heard the clump of fast-moving shoes—not Sancha's. Someone on the pavement. Obeying Tania's instructions, Sancha walked on past the gate. A few moments later a young man went past, plugged into an iPod, walking quickly with his head down and his hands in his jacket pockets. Fifteen seconds later Sancha reappeared and this time she came in through the gate and ran to join Tania.

Gradually they all arrived unseen at the house.

“No lights,” Tania warned them. She looked at Titania, suddenly realizing she had no idea how to address her. “Titania” didn't sound quite right in the circumstances, “Your Grace” was too formal, but “Mother”? No, it was far too soon for that. “The others will show you where the kitchen is,” she said, managing to avoid calling her anything. “Maybe you could make us all some drinks? I'm going down to the basement with Edric. I won't be long.”

At least in the windowless basement room, they were able to put on some electric lights. The basement was mostly filled with the usual piles of household items and discarded junk, but one large corner was given over to Mr. Anderson's hobby. There were three complete motorbikes there, as well as a wide scattering of parts: Wheels and shafts and engine parts and
mudguards and handlebars and other miscellaneous chunks of metal. A locked and bolted door at the far end of the basement led to a concrete ramp that Jade's father used to wheel his bikes to and from ground level.

The oxyacetylene equipment was carefully stacked in a corner, and in the top drawer of a nearby cabinet they found an instruction and safety manual. Edric started reading it while Tania went back up to check on Titania and the princesses.

 

Tania sat on the living room carpet, her ankles crossed, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, and her chin on her knees. She watched her Faerie mother and her three sisters sitting close together, talking about past times in Faerie.

“Do you remember the morning of Cordelia's sixteenth birthday?” Sancha said. “How she came running to the breakfast table in her shift to tell us that a linnet had flown in at her window and wished her a happy birthday!”

Zara clapped her hands. “Yes!” she cried. “And she would not be persuaded to dress, but insisted on going out into the gardens as she was and speaking to every animal she met.”

Cordelia smiled at the memory. “I did not understand more than a few words of their languages,” she said. “They must have thought me a great fool!”

“Do all the different animals have their own
languages, then?” Tania asked, eager to find a way into the conversation.

Cordelia nodded. “Some have only a few words, but others speak a language even richer and more varied than our own.”

“And you know them all?”

Cordelia laughed. “Indeed not,” she said. “That were a study of ten thousand years. But I can understand many of the beasts and birds of Faerie—those that will speak with me—and I know at least enough of their tongues to bid them good day and to ask after their well-being. And that is sufficient. I would not tame them with familiarity. They must remain true to themselves—they must remain…wild.”

Tania lapsed into silence. Things weren't going quite the way she wanted. She had hoped that finding Titania might have helped her to find the lost part of herself. She had imagined that her Faerie self, all her Faerie memories, would come flooding back into her mind the first time she saw the Queen.

It hadn't happened.

A peal of laughter from Zara broke into her thoughts. They were discussing a picnic by the lake that lay north of the palace, the lake where Oberon had built Titania's mausoleum. Zara had been a toddler; she had tried to ride a swan, but the bird had swum away and she had been reduced to tears.

“And although Eden was but green in the Mystic Arts,” Zara continued, “she used such powers as she had to form the reeds into a boat shaped as a swan
and I paddled my swan-ship on the lake till long after nightfall.”

“And you wouldn't come when you were called,” Titania said. “I remember it very well.” She looked at Tania, and her eyes were troubled. “Is something wrong, Tania?”

Yes! Why don't I remember any of this!

She managed a smile. “I was just wondering how Edric was getting on,” she said, getting up. “I think I'll go and see if he needs anything.”

She opened the basement door. A sharp smell hit her, along with a wave of hot air and a fierce hissing sound.

Cautiously she walked down into the basement. The hissing noise got louder, becoming an intense roar.

Edric was crouching with his back to her in a cleared space on the concrete floor. He was wearing protective goggles and his body was in deep shadow, lit up all around by a corona of intense blue-white light that made his hair shine like spun filaments of silver. A metal cylinder stood a little way off with tubes leading from it. Plumes of gray smoke rose above him and coiled across the ceiling.

The crystal sword and the black amber stones lay nearby. It didn't seem like a good time to disturb him. She walked quietly back up the stairs and came into the darkened hallway again. She could hear Titania and the princesses talking from the living room.

She had a sudden desperate urge to phone her
mum and dad. To hear their voices, to reach out and make contact with something that made absolute sense to her.

Mum? Remember when…?

Yes, of course, dear.

So do I! Isn't that wonderful! I remember it, too!

But she couldn't call them, because then they'd know she wasn't in Florida. For a moment, Tania felt more alone than she had ever been in her life….

She listened to the Faerie voices. Wishing…

Wishing without even knowing what she was wishing for.

To be Anita Palmer again?

No, not that.

To be Princess Tania?

“No!” she said under her breath. “That's not it, either. I don't know what I want.”

She ran up the stairs. In the dark of the upper landing she opened the door to Jade's room and went in. She sat at the desk, pressing the button that would start up the computer. She felt that her sense of her own identity was somehow slipping away from her.

Crazy
,
really
, she thought,
considering I've had more lives than anyone!

But she wanted those past lives to become more real to her. Maybe she'd have a firmer grip on her own identity if she could find out about her previous selves. And she thought she had a way into at least one of them.

She went into a search engine and typed:
ERNEST LLEWELLYN
.

She gave a breathless laugh of surprise as the results showed over two hundred thousand hits.

“What are you doing?” The voice startled her. Sancha was standing in the doorway.

“I told you about the flashback I had of the Victorian family when Zara and I were on our way here,” Tania said. “I'm seeing if there's anything about them on the Net.”

Sancha moved into the room and stood behind her, her hands on Tania's shoulders. “I see,” she said. “And this ‘Net,' will it help you to catch this family as the net of a fisherman catches the fish in the sea?”

Tania smiled up at her. “That's exactly how it works, like a big electronic fishing net.”

“I would learn more of this
electricity
,” Sancha said. “It is strange and perplexing, but you do not fear it, so neither shall I.” She took the chair from in front of Jade's dressing table and drew it up to the computer desk. “Show me wonders, Tania; teach me how this mortal marvel fishes for knowledge.”

“Okay,” Tania said. “First of all I'll have to narrow the search parameters.” She typed
ERNEST LLEWELLYN LONDON
and pressed
SEARCH
.

95,7001 hits.

“See that?” she said, pointing to the top of the page. “That's how many times those words have been found.”

“It is a vast ocean, indeed,” Sancha said.

“And getting bigger all the time,” Tania said. “But I think this might be the one we want.” She moved the curser to the third name down on the list.

A new page came up. White with blue writing.

 

Ernest Llewellyn

1831–1869

 

There was a block of text alongside a faded black-and-white photo of the man in the attic room. In the photo the man's face was set and severe, and he was holding a stiff, unnatural pose, but she could tell it was the same warm-hearted man who had swung little Flora up into his arms.

“That's him,” she said breathlessly. She began to read aloud.

“Respected amateur scientist and inventor. Born the son of a blacksmith in North Wales, Ernest Llewellyn had little formal education, but his family moved to Kent when he was ten years old where he became apprenticed to a London chemist. He acquired a store of scientific and chemical knowledge by voracious reading and by attending the lectures of the prominent men of science of his day. Llewellyn's experiments yielded some of the most significant principles…” She turned to Sancha. “There's a lot of stuff about his work and all that, but I really want to know more about the family.” She scrolled down the page, ignoring the line drawings of various strange
scientific devices and bypassing boxes that contained complex chemical formulas.

“There!” she said. “That's them.” It was a family portrait. Again, the people were posed in a slightly awkward and very formal way, but they were all there, photographed in what looked like their very best clothes against a painted backdrop of trees and fields. Ernest stood with one hand clasping the lapel of his frock coat and the other on his wife's shoulder as she sat in front of him with a toddler in her lap. The oldest son stood in front of his father—he had been the boy that Tania had seen on the couch with the sleeping toddler across his knees. Two younger children stood side by side on the other side of the mother's chair—the boy and girl who had been lying in front of the fireplace.

Sitting cross-legged in a foam of white lace at her mother's feet was little Flora Llewellyn, staring intently into the camera with her hands clasped in her lap, her impish face full of life and curiosity. It felt strange to see her from the outside, knowing how it had felt to be behind those sparkling eyes.

“Yes, that's exactly how they looked,” Tania said.

“Tania?” Sancha's voice was subdued. “Have you read the words beneath the picture?”

“Not yet.”

“Read them,” Sancha said. “Read of the fate of this family.”

Puzzled by the tone of Sancha's voice, Tania tore her eyes away from Flora's face and read the caption below the photograph.

A biting coldness seeped into Tania's chest.

No! They couldn't have died. Not
all
of them.

“You knew the child could not have lived to adulthood,” Sancha said gently. “Do you not recall what our mother said? That you had never before reached the age of sixteen.”

Tania's throat hurt and tears were stinging her eyes. She slammed her hand on the computer's main control button, so upset that she didn't even bother to shut it down properly. The soft hum of the machine died instantly and the photograph vanished as the screen went blank.

“Not all knowledge brings joy,” Sancha said. “But in the Mortal World is death not made endurable by new birth?” She lifted her hand to Tania's cheek and gently turned her face toward her. “That child needed to die so that you could be born.” She gave a faint, sympathetic smile. “I would not have you dif
ferent from who you are now, sweet sister, and you are only that person because of what happened in your past—both the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful.”

“But they were so happy,” Tania whispered. “It's horrible to think that they all died…maybe only a few days or weeks after I saw them.” She stared in horror at her sister. “Maybe even on that same night. If Flora had been able to persuade him to stop his work, the fire might never have happened.”

“My poor sister,” Sancha said. “Such a burden you bear! Such a heavy weight!”

Tania threw her arms around Sancha's neck and buried her face in her dark hair, sobbing and sobbing as the agony of her past lives broke out of her like a great churning flood of dark water. All those children! Weak, sickly Ann Burbage. Poor drowned Gracie. Flora Llewellyn with her golden hair and her angel face. And how many others? How many more lives had been lost before Anita Palmer had been born?