Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(17)

“Ah,” Sam said. “One of those. Was that why you hared off yesterday?”

Randolph made a face. “I had a very strong feeling that I needed to go to Camlet Moat, and when I arrived, that Lazenby character was there. The one who was at Cock Lane and the Southcott tree.”

Sam put his pen down. “Again? Who is this chap? He couldn’t be Shadow Ministry, could he?”

Randolph hadn’t thought of that possibility. “Surely not. My God, if they’re interfering at Camlet Moat— No, I can’t think it. And he drank the water.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up. “He drew it himself?”

“I gave it to him.”

“Did you. And if there had been a repeat of the incident with Dennis Whetstone—”

“Nasty piece of work, Dennis. I always thought so.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but he lost half his tongue.”

“If someone buggers around at Camlet Moat, they can take the consequences,” Randolph said. “It is my duty to prevent buggering around at Camlet Moat. That was how I did it.”

“If you say so. How was the water?”

“Good and plentiful.”

Sam made a face. “Could be worse, then.”

“It probably is worse.” Randolph leaned back against a bookshelf, shutting his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on. I met Lazenby’s employer, Peabody, and I would swear the man’s as hopeless as he looks. But the Southcott Oak burns and Lazenby pops up to see it, on, he claims, this man Peabody’s instructions. An entity takes advantage of a rent in the veil at Cock Lane, and Peabody and Lazenby are there again. I used Wayland’s words, did I tell you?” Sam whistled. “Indeed. Then yesterday I feel compelled to go to Camlet Moat and there Lazenby is again, this time with de Mandeville’s connection to Temple Church as the paper-thin reason du jour. It can’t be coincidence. But I gave him the water and I—” He didn’t want to tell Sam about the washing. That felt intensely private. “I don’t quite know why. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable,” Sam said. “That’s not the word, is it? What do you fear?”

“I don’t know.”

“Randolph—”

“I don’t know what I fear,” Randolph said, “because I don’t know a fucking thing about Camlet Moat. As you are well aware.”

“I am. And you know what I think about that.”

They’d had this argument all too often. “I can’t let someone else do it. I have to be the Walker. It’s my family responsibility.”

“Your family are dead.” Sam was a cheerful, likeable, undistinguished sort of chap in appearance, and the more Randolph got to know him, the less he’d have liked to square off against him. “You can’t carry all their responsibilities yourself, even if you knew how. You have to give this one to someone else.”

“I don’t have anything to give. Theresa was trained to be the Walker of Camlet Moat, not me. She knew the secrets. All I have to justify investing myself Walker in her place is that I’m a Glyde with twenty-three generations of service behind me; someone else wouldn’t even have that.”

“Then someone else needs to start again from scratch,” Sam said. “It’s no good telling me about hereditary responsibilities when you’re all out of heredity. The Glydes are done with, Randolph. You know it as well as I.”

“I know I’ll be the last, thank you. I’m well aware I’ve already failed. It’s just a matter of discovering how badly.”

Sam exhaled. “If your upper lip got any stiffer you wouldn’t be able to speak. It isn’t your fault your family is dead, their duties undone. You didn’t create this problem any more than the rest of us did. But we need to fix it. Not the last lone Glyde. We.”

“Do you know how long—”

“Twenty-three generations,” Sam said over him. “You’ve mentioned it. Do you know how little I want to share Jo’s prophecies with you when it should be my family talking about them, or how it feels to live here without Uncle Simon and Uncle Robert? I assume you’ve noticed how much Barney and Max hate what they’ve become? None of us wanted the world this way, but we’re stuck with it, and you don’t have the luxury of being the great and noble Heir of Glyde any more. The Shadow Ministry’s right about that, I’m sorry to say.”

“I shan’t be handing over my family’s responsibilities to Whitehall,” Randolph snapped. “You may be sure of that.”

The thought of submitting his duty to a civil servant or even an arcanist in bureaucratic service was profoundly wrong, and all too possible. With most of Britain’s senior occultists dead in the War Beneath the War, Whitehall had taken control of much, and wanted all. Randolph had been informed on several occasions that he was obliged by family responsibility, national obligation, and patriotic duty to report to the Department of Special Affairs, known as the Shadow Ministry, and take orders therefrom.

Be damned to that. The Glyde family held royal warrants, the first signed by Queen Elizabeth on the advice of Dr. John Dee, and reported to the monarch alone, not that anyone had asked them to do so since Charles II. Randolph might be the last Glyde, but he would keep the secrets with which he had been entrusted and take them to his grave rather than hand them over to the people who had run that fucking, fucking war.