Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(2)

By now there were others running up: a park keeper, passers-by, people demanding whether anyone had called the fire brigade. Saul found himself obliged to repeat his account a dozen times, in the face of blank incredulity to which he could scarcely take exception. There had been no mortar and no lightning strike, and the tree had ignited from the top, its branches burning before the trunk caught, which put paid to the gasoline theory unless an aeroplane had dropped the stuff from the sky. There was no explanation.

“Spontaneous combustion,” said a matronly woman with a firm nod.

“Lot of nonsense,” muttered a man dressed like a shopkeeper.

“It is not. It’s in Dickens,” the woman said triumphantly. “Spontaneous combustion, that’s what this is.”

“You mean, it caught fire?” Saul asked.

“That’s right. Spontaneous combustion.” She evidently relished the term. “That’s what happened here.”

Saul didn’t agree that It caught fire answered the question Why did it catch fire? in any satisfactory way, but the nods around him suggested he was in the minority. He glanced to the saturnine man, feeling he might see something of his own disbelief on that lean, compelling face, and saw with a slight feeling of anticlimax that the fellow had gone. He must have slipped away some time ago, for though Saul looked around, he could see no sign of a departing form.

There was an elderly man standing some way apart. His arthritic hands were clenched on the stick on which he leaned, and he looked as though he was close to tears. Saul sidled up to him and asked, softly, “Sir? Are you all right?”

“The tree,” the old fellow said. His mouth was working with palpable distress. “Her tree. Why?”

“It seems to have been some strange chance—”

“That was no chance,” the old man said vehemently. “Not her tree.”

“Whose tree?”

“The Woman Clothed by the Sun.”

Saul could all but hear the capital letters, and the expression seemed vaguely familiar. “The...?”

“The Woman Clothed by the Sun. The Prophet. Mrs. Southcott.”

“Mrs... Joanna Southcott?” Saul asked.

“This was her tree. Time and again she sat under it vouchsafing unto her followers the revelations of the Lord.”

“Of course.” As a normal sort of Englishman, Saul’s reaction to religious enthusiasm was usually to remove himself from the conversation as quickly as possible. He couldn’t. Major Peabody was going to be overjoyed by this. He smiled at the old man. “Tell me more.”

*

The Major’s reaction was all Saul could have desired. “Would that I had been there!” he kept repeating. “Would that I had seen it for myself! I must have observed some detail that would allow us to place this in its true context. You know Mrs. Southcott’s work, of course, Lazenby?”

“You have mentioned her, sir. And my informant told me a great deal.”

Major Peabody ignored that. Once he had decided he wanted to say something, a staff sergeant bellowing Yes, I know! in his ear would make no difference. “An ordinary servant girl who in the noonday of her life was touched by the gift of prophecy. She proclaimed herself to be the Woman of the Book of Revelation—”

“And visited East Barnet often, so her devotee told me,” Saul put in. “He says the tree was widely known as Mrs. Southcott’s tree. I confirmed that with the park keeper.”

“Mrs. Southcott’s tree,” Major Peabody repeated. “A true case of spontaneous combustion to which you can bear eye witness!”

“Well, I saw a tree burst into flame, and could not find any reason for it.” Saul would not put his name to any supernatural claim, but he had a sinking feeling that Major Peabody might do that for him.

“Yes, that is what I said. A remarkable phenomenon. I believe I begin to see. This confirms everything I have learned.” He hurried to his map. Saul rubbed the bridge of his nose and wondered what he had started.

“I should like to examine the box,” the Major muttered. “I must see the box.”

Joanna Southcott, the prophetess—or the crazed old woman who spouted nonsense, according to point of view—had left behind a sealed box of secret prophecies, only to be opened at a time of national crisis and in the presence of twenty-four bishops of the Church of England. Despite strong representations from her band of followers, this had not been done during the war. Major Peabody said the bishops had been intimidated by the responsibility, which Saul translated as declined to participate in such a farce.

“You think the box should be opened? Is there a national crisis?”

“I shouldn’t presume to decide when the box is to be opened,” the Major said testily. “But if Mrs. Southcott’s tree has spontaneously combusted, the box itself may display signs of supernatural activity.”

“Does it really exist?” Saul asked thoughtlessly. The Major gave him a hurt look, and Saul altered that to, “Can it be seen? Who has it?”

“That, I do not know. Perhaps you might investigate. Yes, find out for me, Lazenby. I must think about the implications of today’s event.”

Saul had heard about this job a year ago, from a man whom he had once counted a friend, and who had put the notice his way out of pity. A lunatic, harmless enough, but quite convinced by every piece of fantastical nonsense he hears. According to him, London is a hotbed of magical powers, haunted temples, and secret societies. He’s a ridiculous crank, but he’s rich, he’s offering good money for an archaeologist to act out his games, he’d be delighted by a man of your educational accomplishments, and it’s not as though you have anything to lose.