Just when he was about to give up and return to Etain, the head dropped from above him and splattered at his feet before rolling into the gutter. On the edge of the roof, Spring-heeled Jack rocked on his haunches, his staring eyes seething. With a flourish, his cloak rose up around him and he was away across the rooftops once more.
‘Right, you bastard,’ Veitch hissed. ‘I’m in a bad bleedin’ mood and it’s all coming down on your head.’
Sometimes it was difficult to see the figure skittering across the rooftops, for the streets were narrow and the buildings high. But once they moved out of the East End it became easier. Past the Tower and St Paul’s Veitch raced, determined Spring-heeled Jack would not outpace him. Finally, the West End rose up around him. There were carriages and people in fine clothes on their way to the theatre or stretching their legs after dinner. Veitch hitched a ride on the back of a carriage, keeping one eye on the roofs.
It was only when the buildings ran out that Spring-heeled Jack came down to ground level, and by then they were in Hyde Park. Ahead, the gleaming majesty of the Crystal Palace stood like a beacon in the night.
7
‘Have you been drinking? Wake up!’
Church opened his eyes to find himself being roughly shaken by Tom. Tropical vegetation swayed all around him. He pulled himself to his feet and discovered that he was buried deep in the greenery near the trees inside the Crystal Palace. Niamh stood nearby looking as anxious as Tom. It was dark and the exhibition was deserted. Only a few lights burned at intermittent stages along the concourse and there was the eerie atmosphere found in all public places locked up for the night.
‘We’ve been searching for you for hours,’ Tom said. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Church could recall talking to Helena Blavatsky and then her disappearance, but nothing more. ‘Something made me black out.’
‘We had to hide in one of the exhibits when they started to lock up so we could carry on looking for you,’ Tom continued with exasperation. ‘What do you mean, something made you black out?’
Church pushed past Tom onto the echoing concourse. An even stranger atmosphere was apparent there, unsettled, like a room before an arrival. ‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.
Niamh nodded slowly. She cocked her head, listening. ‘They come. The Seelie Court come.’
Church wandered along the concourse, feeling the electricity in the air.
Tom chased after him. ‘Let’s leave. Now. We don’t want anything to do with any more of them.’
To Church, it appeared as though the glass and steel walls of the Palace were stretching out into Hyde Park so that the Exhibition encompassed the whole of the open space, then all of London, and finally it seemed there were no walls at all. Church could see the exhibits, the epitome of modern thought and industrialisation, and the statues, and then an impenetrable forest stretching as far as the eye could see underneath unrecognisable constellations in an alien sky.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked. The atmosphere had taken on a dreamy, hallucinogenic quality.
Beside him, Niamh was smiling. ‘They could not stay away.’
Figures were becoming visible amongst the trees, ghostly at first but gaining more substance as they approached.
‘The Seelie Court is one of the twenty great courts, but they remain detached from my brothers and sisters. They prefer their own rules, their own culture, subtly different, unique, perhaps,’ Niamh explained. ‘They are wanderers across the lands, and have no palaces or castles, no walled enclaves. They have no banner and no name but the one the Fragile Creatures gave them. They have always had a great affinity with the Fixed Lands and with your people, but they believed this place was changing and that there was no longer a home for them here.’
Some of the mysterious figures were clearly Tuatha Dé Danann, golden-skinned, ethereal and alluring. Some were grotesque, with strange faces that reminded Church of carvings on Gothic buildings. Others were simply monstrous, all scales and bat-wings, horns and tails and cloven hooves. The Golden Ones who were clearly the king and queen led the stately procession. They came to a halt in front of Church, Niamh and Tom.
‘Sister, we see you again sooner than we expected,’ the king said.
Niamh gave a formal bow. ‘A pleasure, as always, my brother.’
He turned to Church and surveyed him with a curious eye. ‘And you are the Brother of Dragons about whom we have heard so much?’
Mostly Church felt indifferent to the Tuatha Dé Danann and their interference in humanity, but he felt a strange connection with this group. He could tell from the way some of the more monstrous creatures shifted hungrily that they were dangerous, and at the least prone to mischief, but there was something almost paternal about the king. Church bowed. ‘I’m pleased to meet you. My name is Jack Churchill.’