Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(26)

“But the people loathed him for his cruelty and arrogance, and at last his pride became too much for the King. He was arrested and given a choice: execution, or giving up his lands and his castles—which meant breaking his word. For Geoffrey had sworn as he hoped for salvation to serve as Master of London and Custodian of its Tower, and to renounce that oath put his soul at hazard.

“Devil in man’s form as he was, Geoffrey chose disgrace over death. He gave up his castles and his honour with them, and fled to the Fens, raising an army of cut-throats and murderers as he went. Since he could no longer live as a lord, he chose to live as a monster. He seized the city of Ely, and from there took Ramsey Abbey itself, murdering the monks and driving out the Abbot, who rained down curses as he fled. Geoffrey’s killers used the Abbey as their lair, plundering and ransacking the lands around, dragging innocents back to the sacred ground for ransom, rapine, and torture. The very statues in the church covered their faces from what they saw, and as Geoffrey passed along the cloisters, the stone walls wept blood.”

His voice had taken on the cadences of the storyteller, with extraordinary effectiveness. Saul felt all too conscious of the house’s lonely position in this bleak land. The fire and candles seemed less comforting now, more of a fragile bubble of warmth and light in the midst of a very great darkness. He could hear the wind, a mindless howling that whipped and tugged at the walls.

“As Geoffrey was more devil than man, so his hordes became monstrous in their cruelty and appearance. They were beasts of the Fens, poised between man and animal, land and water. They ravaged the land so that not an ox could plough, a man dig, or a woman spin her wool in safety for thirty miles around. The people cried out for help, but no army could make its way through the watery Fens to defeat Geoffrey’s evil.

“At last the King decreed that a great castle should be raised at Burwell, and garrisoned against Geoffrey’s monstrous horde. Geoffrey in his pride attacked the castle, holding that he and only he was master of the Fenland. The dispossessed Abbot of Ramsey blessed the arrows that were handed out to the archers of the King as they defended Burwell, and as Geoffrey’s howling horde descended on the castle, a single bowstring was pulled. The arrow flew true, and struck Geoffrey in the head. Yet he did not die, but crawled away into the marshlands, begging for the rites that would save his soul as his beast-men fled. But no man would help him, monster as he was; no priest would pray for him, excommunicate as he was.”

Candlelight danced on Mr. Abchurch’s spectacles, making his eyes a sheet of flame.

“As Geoffrey lay dying, a party of holy knights came by, wearing the red crosses of their order. They were knights of London, and some say they had been set to kill the oathbreaker. They laid a surplice on Geoffrey, claiming him for their order, and took his body back in solemn procession to London. There they encased him in a shroud of lead and suspended him from a tree in the orchard of London’s ancient Temple, for they dared not bury a body whose soul the Church had refused. And there we leave him, whether buried or not buried, damned or saved, I do not know; I cannot tell.”

He sat back. Saul couldn’t speak. His mind was full of pictures, of medieval knights and fur-draggled man-beasts dripping with slime, statues that hid their faces and walls that bled, and the bleak endlessness of the untamed fens.

Major Peabody licked his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, and the lights went out.

Every light. The candles on the dining table; the fire in the hearth. The electric light in the corridor that had limned the door with its brightness. It was dark, and it was as cold as though the fire had never burned, and damp too, with the cold, wet, stinking breath of the fen.

Mr. Abchurch, or possibly the Major, made a strangled noise. Saul jerked out, “What the—” and managed to stop himself. Mrs. Abchurch shrieked, a high shrill sound.

Something outside chuckled.

It was deep, slow, and huge, a laugh without joy or pleasure, and it came from all around at once. Outside, Saul told himself. It’s outside.

“What was that?” Mrs. Abchurch asked. “What was that?”

“A b-bird,” her husband said. “A bittern?”

“That wasn’t a bittern!”

“The lights,” Major Peabody said. “Something must have—have fallen down the chimney.”

“Yes. Yes, it must.”

“If you get the matches, dear,” Mrs. Abchurch said, in a voice that was very nearly calm. “We could relight the candles if you get the matches.”

“They’re on the mantelpiece,” Mr. Abchurch whispered, in quiet horror.

Saul felt it too. He didn’t want to get up from the table, because to move would be to draw the attention of whatever was outside, whatever was wrapping its breath and cold fingers around the house, pressing in. The smell of wet rot was unbearable.

If he lit a candle, he might see something in the room.

The thought gripped him with a terror so cold and all-encompassing that he had to speak, just to know he was still there. “I’ll get them.”

“No!” Major Peabody said sharply. “Don’t get up!”

Christ, Saul thought. He feels it too.

“We’ll just wait,” Mr. Abchurch said. “I’m sure if—if we wait a moment, the electricity will come on.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Mrs. Abchurch’s voice was thin. “What if it doesn’t come on? What if it doesn’t ever—”