A Crown of Lights

by Phil Rickman

  28

  A Humble Vessel

  THERE WAS NO doorbell, so she knocked twice, three times. She was about to give up when he answered the door.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Reverend Watkins.’ Registering her only briefly before bending over the threshold, apparently to inspect the candles in the neighbouring windows. ‘Good.’

  Meaning the candles, she guessed.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Ellis...’

  ‘They told me you’d be dropping in.’ He shrugged. ‘I accept that.’

  ‘I feel a bit awkward...’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you must do. Do you want to come in?’

  She followed him through a shoebox hall which smelled of curry, into a small, square living room which had been turned into an office. There was a steel-framed desk, two matching chairs. A computer displayed red and green standby lights on a separate desk, and there was a portable TV set on a stand with a video recorder underneath.

  ‘The war room,’ Nicholas Ellis said with no smile.

  His accent sounded far more transatlantic than it had during Menna’s funeral service. He wore a light grey clerical shirt, with pectoral cross, and creased grey chinos. His long hair was loosely tied back with a black ribbon. His face was windreddened but without lines, like a mannequin in an old-fashioned tailor’s shop.

  He waved her vaguely to one of the metal chairs.

  ‘Not much time, I’m afraid. I’ll help you all I can, but I really don’t have much time today, as you can imagine. Events kind of caught up on me.’

  When he sat down behind his desk, Merrily became aware of the aluminium-framed picture on the wall behind him, over the boarded-up fireplace. It was William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Sexually charged, awesomely repulsive. Ellis noticed her looking at it.

  ‘Revoltingly explicit, isn’t it – shining with evil? I live with it so that when they look in my window they will know I’m not afraid.’

  They? The war room?

  Merrily sat down, kept her coat on.

  ‘So...’ he said, as if he was trying hard to summon some interest. ‘You are the, uh... I’m sorry, I did write it down.’

  ‘Diocesan Deliverance Consultant.’

  It had never sounded more ludicrous.

  ‘And the suffragan Bishop of Ludlow has sent you to support me. Well, here I am’ – he opened his arms – ‘a humble vessel for the Holy Spirit. Have you ever truly experienced the Holy Spirit, Merrily?’

  ‘In my way.’

  ‘No, in other words,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t happen in your way, it happens in His way.’

  ‘Damn,’ Merrily said, prickling. ‘You’re right.’

  He looked at her with half a smile on his wide lips. ‘Diocesan... Deliverance... Consultant. I guess you’re like one of those young female MPs... what did they call them... Blair’s Babes? I suppose it was only a matter of time before we had them in the Church.’

  ‘Like woodworm.’

  He didn’t reply. He’d lost the half-smile.

  ‘Meaning I look vaguely presentable,’ Merrily said, ‘even though I must know bugger all.’

  ‘And you feel you must throw in the odd swear word to show that the clergy doesn’t have to be stuffy and pious any more.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Merrily said, ‘it doesn’t take you long to get the measure of a person, does it?’

  Ellis smiled at last. ‘My, we really aren’t getting along, are we? You aren’t going to want to “support” me at all, are you? Well, other priests tend not to, as I’m a fundamentalist. That’s what the Anglican Church calls someone who truly believes in the living God.’ He leaned back. ‘I’m sorry. Let’s start again. How do you propose to support me?’

  ‘How would you like to be supported?’

  ‘By being left alone, I guess.’

  ‘That’s what I guessed you’d say.’

  ‘Aren’t you clever?’

  He was looking not at her, but through her, as though she was, for him, without substance – or at least insufficiently textured to engage his attention. It made her annoyed, but then it was designed to.

  She pressed on, ‘Um... you said “war room”.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, obviously, quite a few people here seem to agree with you on that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it all looks quite dramatic and everything.’

  ‘You make it sound like a facade. It’s an initial demonstration of faith in the Lord. It will spread. You’ll see twice as many candles on your way out.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit... premature to call this a war zone? One story in a newspaper? Two amateur witches in a redundant church? Unless...’

  He gave her just a little more attention. ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless this goes back rather further than this morning’s Daily Mail.’

  ‘It goes back well over two thousand years, Merrily. “The satyr shall cry to his fellow. Yea, there shall the night hag alight, and find for herself a resting place.’

  ‘Isaiah.’ Merrily remembered the taunts of the industrial chaplain, the Rev. Gemmell, in the Livenight studio, inviting her to stand up and denounce Ned Bain as an agent of Satan in front of seven million viewers. ‘Meaning that, whether they accept it or not, all followers of pagan gods are actually making a bed for the Devil.’

  ‘In this case,’ Ellis said, ‘to reflect the imagery of the Radnor Forest, a nest for the dragon.’

  ‘Because the former church here is dedicated to St Michael?’ Merrily glanced up at the Blake print, in which the obscene and dominant dragon, viewed from behind, was curly-horned and not really red but the colour of an earthworm. It was hard not to believe that William Blake himself must have seen one.

  ‘One of five churches positioned around Radnor Forest and charged with the energy of heaven’s most potent weapon. Cefnllys, Cascob, Llanfihangel nant Melan, Llanfihangel Rhydithon, Old Hindwell.’

  ‘The Forest is supposed to be a nest for the dragon? Is that a legend?’

  ‘No legend is simply a legend,’ Ellis said. ‘We have the evidence of the five churches dedicated to the warrior angel. If one should fall, it creates a doorway for Satan. You see merely two misguided idiots, I see the beginnings of a disease which, unless eradicated at source, will spread until all Christendom is a mass of suppurating sores. This is what the Devil wants. Will you deny that?’

  ‘Hold on... You say there’s a legend that if one of the churches falls, et cetera... Yet you’re not interested in preserving churches, are you? I mean, as I recall, when the Sea of Light group was inaugurated, someone said that the only way faith could be regenerated was to sell off all the churches as museums and use the money to pay more priests to go out among the people.’

  ‘Correct. And in the village here, a resurgence of faith has already restored a community centre which had become derelict, a home for rats. Look at it now. Eventually, the church will move out, put up its illuminated cross somewhere else. But in the meantime, God has chosen Old Hindwell for a serious purpose. I can see you still don’t understand.’

  ‘Trying.’

  ‘You see a ruined church, I see a battleground. Look...’

  He stood up and strode to the computer, touched the mouse and brought up his menu, clicked on the mailbox icon. His in-box told him he had two unread e-mails. One was: From: warlock. Subject: war in heaven. He clicked. The message read, ‘I am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls.’

  ‘Book of Job,’ Merrily said.

  Ellis reduced and deleted it. ‘There’s one every day.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘They like to use that Internet provider, Demon. Today’s is a comparatively mild offering.’

  ‘You reported this to the police?’

  ‘The police? This is beyond the police.’

  ‘They can trace these people through the server.’

  ‘It’ll only turn out to be some fourteen-year-old who received his ins
tructions anonymously in a spirit message from cyberspace, and the police are gonna laugh. I would hardly expect them to understand that there’s a chain of delegation here, leading back, eventually, to hell. That, of course’ – he nodded at the computer – ‘is Satan’s latest toy. I keep one here, for the same reason I have that repulsive picture on the wall.’

  Masochism, Merrily thought. A martyrdom trip.

  ‘I’m a defiant man, Merrily. Don’t go thinking this began with the arrival of the Thorogoods. I’ve been set up for this. I’ve been getting poison-pen letters for months. And phone calls – cackling voices in the night. Recently had a jagged scratch removed from my car bonnet: a series of vertical chevrons like a dragon’s back.’

  ‘Maybe you do need support.’

  He hit the metal desk with an open palm. ‘I have all the support I will ever need.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’

  ‘God shall cast out the dragon – through Michael. I made a civilized approach to Thorogood. I told him I wanted to perform a cleansing Eucharist in the church. He put me off. He can’t do that now. He faces the power of the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘And the cold shoulder from the people of Old Hindwell.’

  ‘You mean our Demonstration of Faith? You disagree with that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Candles are harmless. I just hope that’s where it ends.’

  ‘My dear Merrily’ – Ellis walked to the door – ‘this is where it begins. And, with respect, it’s not your place to hope for anything in relation to my parishioners.’

  ‘Aren’t the Thorogoods also your parishioners?’

  He expelled a mildly exasperated hiss.

  ‘And if they’re trying to make a point about reclaiming ancient sites, hasn’t it occurred to you that you’re just helping to publicize their cause?’

  ‘And what’s Bernard Dunmore’s policy on the issue?’ Ellis demanded. ‘Say nothing and hope they won’t be able to maintain their mortgage repayments? Try to forget they’re there? Is that, perhaps, why the Church is no longer a force in this country, while evil thrives unchallenged? Perhaps you should find out for yourself what kind of people the Thorogoods really are. Maybe you could visit their property. Under cover of darkness again?’

  Damn! She stood up. ‘OK, I’m sorry. It was a private funeral, and I had no right. But I was looking for someone. Someone who, as it happens, has now been reported missing from home.’

  ‘Oh?’ For the first time, he was thrown off balance.

  ‘Barbara Buckingham, née Thomas? Menna’s sister?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her. I didn’t even know Menna had a sister.’

  Merrily blinked. ‘Didn’t you ever talk to Menna about her background?’

  ‘Why should I have probed into her background?’

  ‘Just that when I have kids for confirmation we have long chats about everything. Rebaptism, I mean. I’d have thought that was something much more serious.’

  ‘Merrily, I don’t have to talk about this to you.’

  She followed him into the hall. ‘It’s just I can’t believe you’re one of those priests who simply goes through the motions, Nick.’

  ‘I do have an appointment. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Splish, splash, you’re now baptized?’

  When he swiftly lifted a hand, she thought, for an incredible moment, that he was going to hit her and she actually cringed. But all he did was twist the small knob on the Yale lock and pull open the front door, but when he noticed that momentary cower, he smiled broadly and his smooth face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.

  She didn’t move. ‘I still don’t fully understand this, Nick.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And you must ask yourself why.’

  ‘I mean I don’t understand why you’re using the enviable influence you’ve developed in this community to put people in fear of their immortal souls. You didn’t have to make that inflammatory statement to the Mail.’

  He looked at her as if trying, for the first time, to bring her into focus and then, finding she was too flimsy to define, turned away. ‘I can’t believe,’ he said, ‘that you have somehow managed to become a priest of God.’

  She walked past him through the doorway, glanced back and saw a man with nothing much to lose. A man who had stripped himself down to the basics: cheap clothes, a small council house, a village hall for a church, and even that impermanent. There was something distinctly medieval about him. He was like a friar, a mendicant.

  ‘Of course,’ she said from the step, ‘they’re also helping to publicize you. And maybe the villagers aren’t afraid for their immortal souls at all, they’re just assisting their rector to build his personal reputation. If you were in a town, virtually nobody would think this was... worth the candle.’

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ Nick Ellis said. ‘I have people to see.’

  The door closed quietly in her face.

  Merrily stood on the path. She found she was shaking.

  She hadn’t felt as ineffectual since the Livenight programme.

  29

  Dark Glamour

  AS MERRILY GOT back into the car, Gomer pointed to the mobile on the dash.

  ‘Bleeped twice. Third time, I figured out how to answer him. Andy Mumford, it was, that copper. Jane gived him your number. He asked could you call back.’

  ‘He say what about?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  She picked up the phone, entered the Hereford number Gomer had written on a cigarette paper, having to hold the thin paper close to the window because it was beyond merely overcast now – and not yet one p.m. Three fat raindrops blopped on the windscreen. This was, she told herself, going to be positive news.

  ‘DS Mumford.’

  ‘It’s Merrily Watkins.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Has she turned up?’

  ‘Afraid not, Mrs Watkins.’

  ‘Oh.’ She heard Ellis’s front door slam, and saw him coming down the path. He was carrying a medium-sized white suitcase. He walked past her Volvo without a glance and carried on towards the village centre.

  ‘But I’m afraid her car has,’ Mumford said. ‘You know the Elan Valley? Big area of lakes – reservoirs – about thirty miles west of Kington? They’ve pulled her car out of one of the reservoirs.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Some local farmer saw the top of it shining under the water. Been driven clean through a fence. Dyfed-Powys’ve got divers in there. When I checked, about ten minutes ago, they still hadn’t found anything else. Don’t know what the currents are like in those big reservoirs. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Reverend, but I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘If I hear anything else, I’ll get back to you. Or, of course, if you hear anything. It’s been known for people to...’

  ‘What, you think she might have faked her own death?’

  ‘No, I’m a pessimist,’ Mumford said. ‘I tend to think they’ll pull out a body before nightfall.’

  It began as a forestry track, then dropped into an open field with an unexpected vista across the valley to the Radnor Forest hills of grey green and bracken brown, most of which Gomer knew by name.

  And strange names they were: the Whimble, the Smatcher, the Black Mixen. Evocative English-sounding names, though all the hills were in Wales. Merrily and Gomer sat for a moment in the car and took in the view: not a farm, a cottage or even a barn in sight. There were a few sheep, but lambing would come late in an area as exposed as this: hill farming country, marginal land. She remembered Barbara Buckingham talking about her deprived childhood – the teabags used six times, the chip fat changed only for Christmas. As they left the car at the edge of the field, she paused to say a silent prayer for Barbara.

  She caught up with Gomer alongside a new stile which, he said, had been erected by Nev for the archaeologists. This was where the track became a footpath following the line of the Hindwell Brook, which was flowing unexpectedly
fast and wide after all the rain. It had stopped raining now, but the sky bulged with more to come. Gomer pointed across the brook, shouting over the rush of the water.

  ‘Used to be another bridge by yere one time, but now the only way you can get to the ole church by car is through the farm, see.’

  ‘Where was the excavation?’

  ‘Back there. See them tumps? Nev’s work.’ He squinted critically at a line of earthmounds, where tons of soil had been replaced. ‘Boy coulder made a better job o’ that. Bit bloody uneven, ennit?’

  She went to stand next to him. ‘You’d like to get back on the diggers, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Minnie never liked it,’ Gomer said gruffly. ‘Her still wouldn’t like it. ’Sides which, I’m too old.’

  ‘You don’t think that for one minute.’

  Gomer sniffed and turned away, and led her through an uncared-for copse, where some of the trees were dead and branches brought down by the gales had been left where they’d fallen.

  ‘Prosser’s ground, all of this – inherited from the ole fellers. But he don’t do nothin’ with it n’more. Muster been glad when the harchaeologists come – likely got compensation for lettin’ ’em dig up ground the dull bugger’d forgotten he owned.’

  ‘Why’s he never done anything with it?’

  ‘That’s why,’ Gomer said, as they came out of the copse.

  And there, on a perfect promontory, a natural shelf above the brook, on the opposite bank, was the former parish church of St Michael, Old Hindwell.

  ‘Gomer...’ Merrily was transfixed. ‘It’s... beautiful.’

  The nave had been torn open to the elements but the tower seemed intact. A bar of light in the sky made the stones shimmer brown and grey and pink between patches of moss and lichen.

  ‘It’s the kind of church townsfolk dream of going to on a Sunday. I mean, what must it be like on a summer evening, with its reflection in the water? How could they let it go?’

  Gomer grunted, rolling a ciggy. ‘Reverend Penney, ennit? I tole you. Went off ’is trolley.’

  ‘Went off his trolley how, exactly?’ She remembered that Bernie Dunmore had made a brief allusion last night to the rector at the time actually suggesting that Old Hindwell Church should be decommissioned.