Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(45)
Theresa was almost solid to his eyes, her face and hands nearly real, her mouth on Saul’s. She was kissing him, or breathing into him, and Randolph’s other sight could see the tendrils of ivy snaking from her ears and eyes and mouth and fingers, snaking into Saul.
If Saul wasn’t screaming, it was only because he couldn’t. Randolph’s own mouth tasted of green leaves and green wood. And he couldn’t stop this, wouldn’t if he could, because Theresa knew her business, and Camlet Moat needed a Walker. No matter what that did to Saul, already chewed up and spat out by one war, being dragged into another, and both times by a kiss.
All Randolph could do for the woman he loved and the man he wanted was to make it work. So he brought the light until the marrow of his bones ached, until he could smell the ancient stone around him and the gibbering fen-things were fleeing from the barrage, until Theresa was nothing more than a faded wisp of fog over Saul’s slack face.
“Tee?” he rasped. “Saul?”
Saul turned, or was turned, because it didn’t look like his muscles were working, and for just a second as the light faded Randolph saw Theresa’s eyes smiling from Saul’s face. He took an urgent step forward, grasping Saul’s arms, and Theresa leaned in and kissed him on the lips. The kiss they would have exchanged on their wedding day, the one he’d never given her.
Dearest, the wind breathed. Good luck. Take care of him.
And then she was gone, and it was dark except for the silver castle that blazed around them, and Randolph was kissing Saul. Holding him, or holding him up, and as he realised that, Saul slumped in his arms, unconscious.
CHAPTER NINE
SAUL WOKE UP IN THE light. White light, light all around him, with an odd feeling of heaviness, and a desperate, agonising thirst that was only matched by the equally desperate fullness of his bladder.
That urgency drove him to sit up as nothing else could have. The heavy sensation turned out to be a couple of quilts, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw he was in a room. A small whitewashed room with a rag rug, a dresser, an old-fashioned china commode. He stood cautiously, blinking at the dizziness that threatened to send him stumbling, hung onto the walls to work his way round to the necessary, propped himself up with one hand, and pissed like a horse.
He was wearing pyjamas, blue and white stripes, and he seemed to be clean judging by his feet. He last remembered them streaked with the dried remnants of fen-slime.
If that had happened.
There was a jug of water and a tumbler on the dresser. He poured himself a glass, downed it in two swallows, poured another, and ended up emptying the jug as his body clamoured for water.
He sat back on the bed once he’d finally finished and propped his head on his hand, trying to think.
He remembered meeting Randolph in the church, and walking along the road. Those things had happened, he was sure. After that, he remembered it all in a dreamlike way that would have persuaded him it wasn’t real, except that it had been dreamlike as he’d lived it. The weird timelessness, or time running in fits and starts. The impossible landscape. The thing in the fens. The darkness.
Randolph kissing him. He could feel the sensation still: Randolph’s lips, his oddly calloused hands. The feel of his finger in Saul’s mouth, that blissful anticipatory thrill as his hand had moved to between Saul’s legs. He’d been so afraid he could barely breathe and it had been all he could do to feign some sort of calm, and he’d wanted Randolph with a terrified world’s-end desperation—
No, it was more than that. Far more. It was Randolph’s kindness, which came wrapped like a pass-the-parcel in so many layers of irony that one might almost not realise it was there at all. It was his clear-sightedness; his sense of duty that demanded much and gave everything; his implacable grip as he dragged Saul away from horrors, and the burning-cold fury in his voice as he stood and fought.
Saul had wanted it all then, and he wanted it—wanted Randolph—now.
Sodding fen-grendels getting in the way. Apart from anything else, if Randolph had fucked him, he’d have unmistakable proof of the experience, considering they hadn’t had anything to ease the way but spit. He hoicked up his pyjama leg where the marsh thing had clutched him and saw unmarked skin with what might have been a faint bruise, or might not.
He needed to know where he was—and indeed, where Randolph and Major Peabody were. “Unless they’re both figments of my imagination,” he said aloud. He also needed food, since, now his thirst was slaked, he was becoming aware of intense hunger. As though—
As though he hadn’t eaten for a day or more.
There was a dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. Saul donned it, tried the door with a sudden qualm, and was relieved when it opened. It would not have been pleasant to discover he was locked in a sanatorium.
He found himself at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. He made his way down, and came to a landing with a large window, giving a good view of flat grey-green lands. The Fens. That, at least, was where he should be.
There was a throat-clearing cough. Saul turned sharply, and saw an elderly man in black offering him a slightly worried smile. “Ah, Mr. Lazenby, you’re awake. My name is Herbert, and I’m the vicar here. Of Burwell, that is. St. Mary’s. I imagine you’re hungry, and probably rather confused?”
“Very,” Saul said. “Both.”