Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(18)
Which sounded very grand, but he knew what standing heroically alone and clinging to your principles in the face of overwhelming force looked like. It looked like his father’s last stand at Ypres, attempting to hold back hell, dead within three minutes.
“You’re right,” he said. “Someone ought to take it on. I know. But Camlet Moat matters too much, and we’ve already been criminally careless, and I’ve nothing to give. I wondered about passing it to Syrena Phan, actually, as the most practical academic I’ve ever met, but we need her work on the veil.”
“Lord, please don’t try,” Sam said. “She’s burning the candle at both ends as it is, and has hauled her mother out of retirement too. If you offer her any more work, your hand will come back a stump.”
“As I suspected. I don’t suppose you’d care to do it?”
“Ha, no. I’m a ghost-hunter. Don’t come to me for ancient sacred ritual, you might as well give it to Barney. Um... I admit that nobody’s leaping out at me. You need to think about this a bit more.”
“How ineffably useful. Thank you so much.”
“And meanwhile, what about the immediate problem?” Sam asked. “Jack-in-the-box man?”
“Lazenby. I don’t know, except that he keeps turning up, supposedly on his eccentric employer’s whims.”
“An undiagnosed prophet? Instincts he doesn’t understand?”
“Possibly. Or it might be simple coincidence.”
“Uncle Simon had very strong views on coincidence,” Sam said. “Mind you, Uncle Robert said it was the driving force of literature and indeed humanity, so there you are.”
Uncle Simon and Uncle Robert. Randolph had never met the writer Robert Caldwell who had lived and died with Feximal, giving Sam his surname on the way. He’d heard muttered imputations about the pair; he’d also heard Sam coupling their names for three years. He’d never asked—it was no more his business than Glyde secrets were Sam’s—but something propelled him to remark, “This must have been an unusual home in which to grow up. With Mr. Feximal, I mean. He was the most intimidating man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Uncle Simon was deeply chivalrous and deeply kind,” Sam said, instantly defensive. “He could be alarming when he wanted, but Aunt Theodosia was the one to fear.”
“God, wasn’t she.” Randolph turned to the bookshelves, since he ought to be working if they were going to indulge in chit-chat. “Did I ever tell you how I first met them both? I had just turned twenty-one and my father took me to the Remnant to introduce me as the Keeper of the Words, heir to England’s occult aristocracy, all that. It was something of a procession, impressing the greatness of my inheritance and my duty on me, and the greatness of the Glyde name on everyone else. Well, we came across Miss Kay and Mr. Feximal in the display hall, and my father presented me as if he rather thought they might wish to kiss my hand, and I have never seen such withering contempt on human faces. Mr. Feximal just looked at me, and Miss Kay pointed at me with those dreadful nails of hers, and said, ‘You should beware of arrogance, young man.’ My father asked if that was a divination, and she said, ‘No, just his face.’”
Sam threw back his head and laughed. “That sounds like Auntie Theo.”
“I was crushed,” Randolph assured him, smiling, although it was entirely true. “It was salutary. My father was very much of the old guard, the equivalent of those military men who thought bright red was a jolly good colour for war and regarded wearing khakis as a form of cheating. He considered Mr. Feximal as little more than a tradesman, and the German war machine as an insult to the occult craft.”
“I thought they were rather good,” Sam said drily.
“Oh, but mechanised, dear boy,” Randolph drawled. “The occult ought to be the preserve of gentlemen, you see. Hand-crafted, with all incantations said in the right accent, and only the most elevated spirits to be dealt with.”
Sam gave him a sideways look. “That doesn’t sound entirely unlike you.”
“Father and I were always in full agreement that a rapier is a more gentlemanly weapon than a Sten gun. The difference is, when our opponents started using Sten guns, I was happy to sacrifice centuries of Glyde tradition on the altar of survival. He was not.” He flicked through the book, replaced it, and took down another. “Mr. Feximal made it through almost to the end, didn’t he? I never crossed his path out there.”
“Mmm. They were listed as missing in action after Passchendaele.”
They. Randolph allowed his curiosity to get the better of him. “He and Mr. Caldwell were inseparable, I believe.”
“Entirely, for twenty-three years. I miss them both appallingly but I’m glad they’re together.”
Randolph contemplated the book he held, not really looking at the pages. He’d never seen that kind of thing, or perhaps he’d seen it and hadn’t noticed it. He’d certainly never considered the kind of relationship that Sam was talking about for himself.
Before the War, his future had been mapped out. He would marry his cousin Theresa, who was a superb dancer, ornament of the most fashionable boites de nuit, and a brilliant arcanist, and they would carry on the Glyde family line. That was a cold-blooded way to look at things, perhaps, and it wouldn’t have been a love match in the normal sense, but they’d both been happy with a practical arrangement, pleasure to be taken elsewhere. Randolph’s childhood had been ruled by his parents’ mutual hatred; he and Theresa would have been married friends. Not Darby and Joan, not a lifetime romance, but he’d never have had that anyway, and really, who did?