Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(7)
“No doubt,” Randolph said. “I have been dealing with the Southcott woman’s gibberings recently; Jo is a marvel of clarity by comparison, and at least they don’t insist on rhyming.”
“You didn’t say what happened there,” Sam put in. “The Southcott business.”
“With the tree, or the box?”
“Either.”
“Nothing.”
Sam exhaled audibly. “Could you do better, please?”
Randolph shrugged. “The Southcott tree burned. I don’t know why. Mrs. Denton, who holds the Southcott box, reported that it grew very hot to the touch but that the clasp held. I don’t know why. Does that help?”
“Randolph...”
“There’s really no point asking me; it was Aunt Clothide’s area. All I’ve ever known about the damned box is the importance of not opening it without at least two dozen holy people present in case it provokes a national calamity.”
“I thought it was meant to save us all.”
“God, you’re optimistic,” Randolph said. “On that note, and going back to our previous conversation, does the issue in Cock Lane suggest human activity, or might it be the state of the veil?”
“Let’s have that again?” Barney asked a little hopelessly.
Randolph sighed. “From the beginning, then. Once upon a time, the divisions between this world and what lies outside were sufficiently substantial that one could use a scrying glass without having something tear one’s eye out.”
Barney was giving him a look. “We do know that much, thank you.”
Randolph ought not to be impatient with Barney and Isaacs’ ignorance, although he was. The soldiers been thrust unwillingly into this game, and had survived their abrupt introduction to the supernatural world without descending into terror and madness apparently by thinking about it as little as possible. He’d never known two people less inclined to introspection or study; they just got on with things. It worked as well as anything could in their situation, but meant they were mostly useless and somewhat trying when it came to theoretical discussion.
“Well, it’s the crux of the matter,” Sam said. “Before the War, it was hard to get through, in either direction. An entity turning up—well, before the War that wouldn’t happen without a great deal of effort on someone’s part to invite it in. And perhaps that’s what’s happened now. But the veil is in tatters and Cock Lane’s a funny spot, and what Randolph and I are wondering is if something’s arisen without being summoned. I can’t say it’s impossible. And that would be worrying,” he concluded with admirable understatement.
Barney gave a vague shrug, mirrored by Isaacs. Sam sat back. “With any luck it’s just someone buggering about, but I wish you’d take a look, Randolph. You’ll have a better chance than me of telling if something’s seriously wrong.”
“I’m flattered you think so,” Randolph said, almost meaning it. Sam had been brought up a practical ghost-hunter rather than an arcanist, but he was learning fast. “Sadly, the definition of wrong is changing so quickly these days I can barely keep up.”
Sam grimaced. “Well. Nothing’s how it used to be.”
“Too true,” Barney muttered.
It was seven years since the War, and the War Beneath, had ended. That was far too short a time for memories to lose their bite; quite long enough for the world to be turned on its head. Old families whose sons had died in Flanders sold their stately homes to war profiteers; the land was dotted with half-empty villages where the young men were dead and the young women gone; the cities and towns were full of hungry-eyed jobless men; the Empire that had covered a full quarter of the earth was beginning to look less like an immutable and unchanging truth and more like hubris, with nemesis attendant. And the veil between this world and the other, repeatedly slashed and burned by the Great Summonings of the War Beneath, was slowly, inexorably tearing apart.
Not everyone recognised that as truth. Some believed the damage mankind had inflicted would repair itself. But Randolph had lost almost every relation, professional colleague, and teacher he’d ever known in the War, just as Sam had lost his entire family, and Barney and Isaacs had near as dammit lost their souls. He was no longer prepared to believe that things would work out for the best.
“Right, well, one foot after another,” he said briskly. “No sign will guide you, eh? How fortunate I already know the way to Cock Lane; I should be quite nervous to consult Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas, under the circumstances.”
*
He went the next day. Cock Lane was an alley of no account near the great Smithfield meat market, famous only for the notorious fraudulent haunting of a previous century. Randolph felt such a delightfully named thoroughfare was missing a trick; one should surely have been certain of picking up a telegraph boy or a guardsman there.
Not that he had the energy. He’d rather liked the way it had been in his war: casual encounters when one had the time and inclination, to which the authorities turned a blind eye because there weren’t enough occultists to waste any over petty morality; no tiresome obligations afterwards, since there were more important matters afoot and anyway half the men one fucked would be going back to wives or sweethearts. He didn’t have the strength for dodging around dark alleys any more, let alone the tedious palaver of winks and nods to ascertain shared inclinations. He’d nearly died for his country a great deal too often; if that country was as grateful as it claimed to be, it could demonstrate that by leaving him alone.