Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(33)

“Yes, well, that’s— Sorry, have we missed a turning?”

“Metaphorically?”

“No, literally. I could have sworn it was two miles to Swaffham Prior when we started.”

Randolph looked at the waystone. It read, Swaffham Prior, 2 miles.

“The sodding countryside. The last one said that as well.”

“Country miles,” Saul said. “We must have missed a side road, I can’t say I was paying attention. Should we go back? Major Peabody is at Roestock House looking at Mr. Abchurch’s collection, and I told him I was just popping out.”

“We can retrace our steps.” They turned in unison and began to walk back along the long straight road. A few minutes passed in silence. Randolph was grateful for that. He wasn’t in the habit of speaking frankly; he hadn’t meant to spill out nearly so much, still less to speak of his many failures. He preferred to lock those within rather than face sympathy or acknowledge weakness. He wasn’t sure why he had told Saul more than a fraction of this, except that the man was afraid and alone and had needed to know, and it seemed a brutal cruelty to leave him bewildered, even if the price was to make him terrified.

That, and Randolph was alone too.

Which couldn’t be helped, and wasn’t a matter for self-pity or self-indulgence. He’d just wanted to talk, that was all, and Saul was remarkably easy to talk to. Also to look at, but now was not the time for such thoughts, having pulled the rug of reality from under the poor sod’s feet.

“What did you mean about my name?” Saul asked eventually. “Unenlightened whatever it was?”

“How do you feel about soothsayers?”

“You mean, like Joanna Southcott?”

“Yes, except that her prophecies are drivel. In fact I meant Jo Caldwell, Sam’s sibling, a diviner of remarkable gifts and only relative incomprehensibility. Jo wrote to us recently with a warning.”

“Of what?”

“No idea. That’s prophecies for you. It goes, No sign will guide you; no gun will save you; a fool and a knave may do what an emperor could not, and the unenlightened man brings light. What it means I could not say, but gifts like Jo’s are seen once in a century. And you were unenlightened—in name, in fact, and in metaphor—when you went to find those matches. You brought the light back and believe me, the dark was closing in on you.”

“But...” Saul looked as though he was groping for words. “Why would a soothsayer have anything to say about me?”

“God knows. Maybe it isn’t about you at all; I might be wrong. But it doesn’t do to ignore Jo Caldwell.” The sun was warm on the back of his neck. Randolph tilted his hat back at an angle to cast a little more shadow.

“No, really, though,” Saul said. “It doesn’t make sense. Well, none of what you’ve said makes sense, but it particularly doesn’t make sense that this should be about me. I’m not doing anything! And Major Peabody is— What on earth is wrong with these people?”

“Sorry?”

Saul gestured at the waystone in front of them. “For pity’s sake. I’d say it was a practical joke except I can’t imagine going to so much pointless effort.”

Randolph looked at it. The waystone read, Swaffham Prior, 2 miles.

“We turned around,” he said.

“What a bizarre thing.”

“We turned around,” Randolph repeated. “We turned around on a straight road and retraced our steps. Didn’t we?”

“Of course we did.”

“So how is it that the sun was behind us just before we turned, and is behind us now?”

Saul’s hand moved to the back of his neck. “Have we been walking that long?” He pulled out a cheap fob watch, and clicked his tongue. “Blast. It’s stopped.”

Randolph took out his own watch and saw, with a disheartening lack of surprise, that it had also stopped. “Let me take a wild stab in the dark. Yours says twenty-one minutes past eleven?”

“How the devil do you know that?”

Randolph looked down at the shadow that pooled in front of his feet, feeling warmth on the back of his neck, then turned deliberately. The shadow and the heat moved with him. He looked up and, not greatly to his surprise, noted that the sky had a hazy cast that made the sun impossible to see.

Saul hadn’t noticed that yet, though he was turning in a circle too. “I can’t see any town. I can’t see any buildings at all. How the devil— Right, look, it can’t be more than a mile to either Burwell or Swaffham. If we just keep walking we’ll reach one of them.”

Randolph wasn’t nearly so sure of that, but it was worth a try. “Indeed. Which way?”

“Back to Burwell. Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Saul turned again, looking around, and gave a frustrated laugh. “I can’t tell which way we were going. I’ve been less disoriented than this in a desert. Well, if we find ourselves in Swaffham we can hire a car, perhaps, or even telephone the Abchurches so Major Peabody doesn’t think I’ve fallen in a ditch.”

“I’d be delighted to find ourselves in Swaffham,” Randolph said. “Let’s go.” He set off, counting steps, whispering the numbers aloud. Saul gave him a look but didn’t ask him what he was doing, simply paced in silence as they walked, the only figures in this great flat landscape.