Spectred Isle (Green Men Book 1)

by K.J. Charles

London, April 1923

Saul Lazenby

Oakleigh Park station, up in the wild suburban highlands of B...

Major Peabody’s

Oak Hill Park, still a wild expanse of heath despite London’s unstoppable crawl outward over the towns and villages in its path.

Trees were ever a comfort to Saul.

He’d loved the harsh desert landscapes of Mesopotamia and the unforgiving sun; he loved dry bricks and ancient stone and the feel of millennia-old earth on his fingers; but there was something profoundly sooth...

clea...

1923 london had clean air?

A burial, a standing stone, a sacred grove. A historical artefact or a local legend.

Saul’s professional instincts were shaped by his doctorate in archaeology from Oxford and two years working on excavations in Mesopotamia.

There was no sign of any sacred Druidic grove or whatever bee was in the Major’s bonnet this time, but there was a truly magnificent oak dominating the landscape not far ahead.

depending on the age of the oak, that might be the druidic site

it burst into flame.

How in God’s name did a live tree burn like that?

a thoroughbred aristocrat, effortlessly superior, endlessly disdainful.

“It is not. It’s in Dickens,” the woman said triumphantly. “Spontaneous combustion, that’s what this is.”

bc dickens was never full of shit

“The Woman Clothed by the Sun.”

“The Woman Clothed by the Sun. The Prophet. Mrs. Southcott.” “Mrs... Joanna Southcott?”

As a normal sort of Englishman, Saul’s reaction to religious enthusiasm was usually to remove himself from the conversation as quickly as possible.

herself to be the Woman of the Book of Revelation—”

The Woman of the Apocalypse (or Woman clothed in the Sun, γυνὴ περιβεβλημένη τὸν ἥλιον; Mulier amicta sole) is a figure described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation (written c. AD 95). The woman gives birth to a male child who is threatened by a dragon, identified as the Devil and Satan, who intends to devour the child as soon as he is born.[1] When the child is taken to heaven, the woman flees into the wilderness leading to a "War in Heaven" in which the angels cast out the dragon. The dragon attacks the woman, who is given wings to escape and then attacks her again with a flood of water from his mouth, which is subsequently swallowed by the earth.[2] Frustrated, the dragon initiates war on "the remnant of her seed", identified as the righteous followers of Christ

“A true case of spontaneous combustion to which you can bear eye witness!”

i mean, i wanna have a quibble bc spontaneous combustion is an in-to-out sorta endeavor & this was an out-to-in kinda thing

Joanna Southcott, the prophetess—or the crazed old woman who spouted nonsense, according to point of view—had left behind a sealed box of secret prophecies, only to be opened at a time of national crisis and in the presence of twenty-four bishops of the Church of England.

intimidated by the responsibility, which Saul translated as declined to participate in such a farce.

London is a hotbed of magical powers, haunted temples, and secret societies.

Leonard Woolley.

He believed every bit of folklore that came his way, every medieval myth or Victorian fantasy of the past.

If Saul had harboured any hope of returning to a career in archaeology, working for Major Peabody would have destroyed it. He had, repeatedly, to remind himself that he had and deserved no such hope.

Death duties had hit the great landed estates very hard, and the newspapers were filled with stories of the newly labouring aristocracy. The heirs to earldoms were becoming radio announcers and photographers, while the daughters of dukes took up as mannequins or wrote pieces for magazines.

Randolph Glyde,

*coughcoughcough*

tarradiddles?

He’d been underfed for some years, between a Mesopotamian gaol and unemployment in London, and Glyde looked to be in hard training.

Specifically what was wrong with Peckham was a corpse that had signally failed to lie down and be dead, and that’s the second one this week.

whines and spirits.

If only more of his work involved sinewy, sunburned, sensitive men, rather than people who lacked the common decency to die properly. He downed the remaining whisky, topped up his glass, and said, “So how was everyone else’s day?”

minor-public-school way of his.

“Go on, tell us. Unless we’re to understand from your unaccustomed indulgence that you have seen horrors the like of which no mortal man can bear.” “Nah,” Isaacs said. “That was Wednesday.”

Isaacs completed Barney’s sentence for him, as he so often did. Two minds with but a single thought, alternately expressed in the civilised English of Eton and Sandhurst, and a Cockney rasp.

Cock Lane Ghost,”

“Yes, we’re aware it was a fake,” Barney said. “Now it’s real.”

Malice, accusation, a mood of growing discomfort and distrust among neighbours—”

genius loci?”

the prevailing character or atmosphere of a place the presiding god or spirit of a place

Barney remembered some Latin from his expensive education, but possessed only the slightest, scrabbled-together knowledge of the arcane; Sam knew more about the theory and practice of ghost-hunting than anyone Randolph had ever met, but had barely darke...

“Genius loci, a spirit of place. One of those manifestations that arises from the atmo...

Syrena Phan,

If there was one principle that united their little band, it was refusal to do Government work. The thoroughly decent Barney would unquestionably kill before he let bureaucrats get their soft, unaccountable hands on Isaacs again, while Sam, whose family had been destroyed by the War, regarded the British state with all the hatred of which his cheerful nature was capable.

The Shadow Ministry would like us to know it’s time for a united front.”

“Nothing fills my heart with more optimism than the British ruling classes establishing a Front,” Randolph said. “It was such fun last time.”

Randolph had never met Jo, Sam’s foster-sibling and the most talented soothsayer England had produced in a century, but he’d heard a fair bit, including that Jo, like many of the greatest seers, was neither man nor woman in the conventional sense, and should be referred to as “they”. Jo had left Britain before the War, disappearing to an undisclosed location abroad rather than permit their prophetic powers to be used as a military weapon. They had never returned, for fear of detention; Sam couldn’t visit them in case he was followed; even letters had to go through a complex poste restante system. If Jo had written, something was up.

“How is they?” added Barney, who did his best. “Well, I hope?”

The veil is so thin and hangs in tatters in too many places. I must tell you this: 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.”

well, here we are w the foreshadowing

“They won’t know. They aren’t obscure on purpose, believe me. If they could write, Watch out for a fellow called Smith who’s going to pick your pocket next week, let alone, The monarchy will fall, they would.”