Jack, ancient, gauntly beautiful, hurling a ball of fire through a window. Jack, James Swinton, but several hundred years old. ‘Not my uncle at all. It can’t be true.’

‘You’ve seen a lot already, Tommy boy. Why not believe this too?’

There was a sound outside on the lawn, a brief shout and a rustling, hissing noise.

‘Right on time. Always a stickler for punctuality, Jack Swinton. Now,’ she said, ‘come with me and look out onto the lawn and you’ll see.’

They leant on the windowsill and peered down through the glass. Tom was still reeling from his new knowledge, as it flowed through him like wine, making him giddy and sick.

Jack was standing there on the lawn, and someone was with him. Someone Tom had not seen before, tall and longer than a human, with long, dark plaited hair, wearing a long black fur around her neck and a white robe embroidered with silver. She looked ill and pale, her cheeks hollow, her eyes sunken. Iron manacles were clasped around her hands and feet, joined with heavy silver chains.

Though he could see nobody else outside, Tom had the sense that a hundred eyes were watching, from trees, from bushes. Something flashed in the forest – a hare, perhaps, darting away, or a deer.

Jack pushed the prisoner down onto her knees and held up a jagged iron bar. He brandished it, holding it out in all four points of the compass, and the trees rustled and stretched their branches.

‘See this. See this.’ He barked the words twice.

Then, as gently as if he were stroking a dog, he passed the iron bar over the prisoner’s arm.

The prisoner screamed and shook bodily, as if she were having a fit, and Jack stood triumphant. For a moment Tom saw, instead of trees and bushes, hundreds of tall warriors, all watching, all armed with bows and arrows, all intent upon this one moment; and then it passed, and Jack had taken the prisoner inside, and the lawn and the fields and the trees were empty.

‘You see,’ said Zita. ‘You see. The iron. They can’t abide it. Never could. It hurts them, like fire would hurt us, like poison. He’s got them where he wants them. They can’t cross over the moat, and it’s almost impossible for them to break the wards. But sometimes … they can.’

‘Why did you stay? Why do you stay? How can you stay here?’ Tom looked wildly around the room. ‘We’ll go, today, this evening, when he’s asleep, we have to go, we have to.’

The silver bracelet on her arm was digging into her skin. Zita brushed her hair away from her face.

‘You try to leave, darling,’ she whispered, looking up at him with her gentle, shining eyes. ‘Just you try.’

Chapter 9

1st June, 1846