Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(41)

CHAPTER EIGHT


OF ALL THE WAYS ONE might recline against a grassy bank with a beautiful half-naked man in one’s arms, Randolph reflected, this was perhaps the least satisfactory he could imagine.

Saul was cold, stinking of the weed-rot of the fens, and terrified. And brave, painfully so. How he’d got through the last—however long it was, the period since his life had turned supernatural chaos—Randolph couldn’t imagine, except that he’d seen the man’s core already. Heart of oak, as the song said, enduring whatever might assail it.

Morally, at least. Saul wasn’t equipped to fight off nightmares from the waterland, nor should he be. That was Randolph’s job.

He looked around. The castle grounds were barely anything to normal eyes: a couple of ruined stone walls on a rectangular raised bit of ground. The edges rose a little where the foundations of defences had been, and dipped down to the vestiges of a moat. It had never been finished.

Randolph saw differently. He saw the great wooden stockades that kept the outside firmly out, the wide expanse of moat beyond it, the stone buildings rising around him. All of it limned in moon-silver, translucent, the spidery image of what once was or might have been.

They’d be safe here, probably. The monster whose legend haunted the fens had taken a mortal wound on this ground, and that couldn’t be forgotten.

He’d taken a mortal wound, and been carried back to Temple Church and hung off a tree like a side of beef. Randolph would put money he’d been trapped that way, the Master of London’s foul soul eternally enslaved to the city’s good. He didn’t approve of that sort of thing as a general rule, but de Mandeville had clearly had it coming.

The ghastly man had been Custodian of the Tower, too, all too close to another crucial protection. Randolph didn’t like any of this, except the part that put Saul Lazenby right here next to him, barely clothed, breathing steadily.

He looked. He shouldn’t, but he did, and saw Saul faintly silvered, as though his skin were luminous. Randolph could see the spidery webs and trails of his jacket, but he was only interested in the man under them. Long lean legs, dark-bright eyes, naked and glowing.

“I feel as though you’re looking at me,” Saul said.

“I am.”

“Any reason?”

“You’re worth looking at.”

Saul gave a ghost of a laugh. “That’s a ringing endorsement. All cats are grey in the dark.”

“I can see,” Randolph reminded him.

Pause. “That puts me at rather a disadvantage, no?”

“Only if I were planning to take advantage.” And Christ, wouldn’t he like to. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Saul said seriously, as though assessing the state of some ancient artefact. “I’m entirely confused, and rather frightened, and hopelessly reliant on you, but—well, you’re a good chap to rely on.”

“I’m doing my best,” Randolph said. “Let’s say, you won’t come to any harm that I can avert.”

“I’m sure of that. Thank you.”

After whatever Saul had endured in the war, the years of trying to get back on his feet, it could hardly be pleasant to be rendered helpless yet again. There wasn’t much to be done about that now, although Randolph made a vengeful resolution to put an extra few nails in the coffin of whoever or whatever was behind this charade once he got it under control.

“May I ask,” Saul said. “Why is the castle safe? In that we’re not behind any walls that I saw.”

“It’s where our twelfth-century friend lost his last battle. I felt that if it was here at all, it would be standing against him.”

“And we are still, er, east of the sun and west of the moon? What I mean is, when dawn comes, am I going to find myself bare-arsed on Burwell Castle’s remains, and a lady antiquarian belabouring me with her parasol?”

“I can only pray you will. First, it would mean we were home, and second, I’d pay to see that.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about you public-school sorts.”

Randolph laughed aloud, throwing his head back. Saul was shaking silently in his arms, laughing in the dark, and Randolph found himself unreasonably delighted. “Arse. Where did you go to school?”

“The local grammar, then St. John’s Oxford. You?”

“Eton, then St. John’s Cambridge.”

“Ha. Two John’s men.”

“That’s not all we have in common,” Randolph said. “I find myself in an invidious position. I can see in the dark, among other talents you don’t share, and while I have no idea what’s going on now, I’m used to this sort of thing in general. Whereas you are, for the moment, in a rather dependent situation.”

“And therefore?”

Randolph took a deep breath. “And therefore it would be villainous of me to suggest any of the things I’ve had in mind more or less since setting eyes on you.”

“Villainous is rather harsh,” Saul said. “Ungentlemanly, perhaps. What things are those?”

“Villainous,” Randolph said firmly. “You have my word I would take refusal with grace, needless to say, but we both know men are liars. Ah...a number of things but dear God, I’d like to find the places that make you moan. You seem to me a man who could be usefully lavished with attention, and also tongue.”