To Dream of the Dead (MW10)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘God, Sophie, is this a good idea?’

  ‘It was either that or some family liaison officer in the house. Besides, I’ve discovered I’m fairly competent at driving the media from my doorstep. Wanted us – neighbours – to talk about Clement. On television.’

  You could feel the shudder in the phone.

  ‘I noticed you went off with the police,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Bliss.’

  ‘And what did you learn?’

  ‘He seems to be looking for a connection with Clement Ayling’s council work. Fairly obvious, I suppose. Councillors make enemies.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sophie sounded calmer. ‘You were right. They begin by eliminating the spouse. And then they get to the heart of it.’

  ‘Which is . . . what?’

  ‘It seems that Clement had been receiving abusive letters and phone calls. In relation, as you say, to his council work. Or a particular aspect of it.’

  ‘What – rage against school closures? That kind of thing?’

  ‘Road rage, actually,’ Sophie said.

  Jane insisted that a Christmas tree should only be borrowed from the earth. By the time Merrily finished on the phone, she had the tree up in the hall, surprisingly perpendicular, in one of the stone tubs from the garden. Damp soil and stones around the roots – cold enough in here to ensure survival well beyond Twelfth Night.

  ‘Sunday, then?’ Jane was sitting on the stairs with her mobile. ‘No, that’s fine . . . Yeah, it will be.’

  Eirion, evidently. Merrily sensed Jane trying not to sound too affectionate. She waited in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Sure. I’ll certainly tell her. No, couldn’t make it up, could you? Bloody hell. Yeah, right. Bye.’ Jane looked up. ‘He says it’s really good of you. He wanted to thank you himself, but I said you were working. Mum, look, there’s something else you—’

  ‘Spare me a few minutes, flower?’

  ‘Sure.’ Jane sprang to her feet. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Jane was happy, hadn’t even objected to being addressed as ‘flower’. She stood up. Open boxes of tinsel and tree-lights sat at the foot of the tree, Ethel checking them out, pawing delicately at a coloured ball, then dancing away.

  No point at all in keeping quiet about this, now Clement Ayling’s name had been released. Of course, it was nothing to do with her really, but with Sophie involved . . .

  ‘Could I consult you about something?’ Merrily said. ‘Something you know much more about than I do.’

  ‘Fine wines? Jane Austen? Vampire Weekend?’

  ‘The Rotherwas Ribbon.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Or as you probably know it, the Dinedor Serpent.’

  ‘Say no more.’ Jane came downstairs, shedding her smile. ‘What can I tell you about those bastards?’

  16

  Patio Gravel

  A FUZZ OF viridian forestry, a band of lime-green field and, in the foreground, a vast open spread of red clay where the surface had been peeled away by the road contractors.

  Sitting at the scullery desk, Jane had opened up the picture to full-screen. You couldn’t see the top of Dinedor Hill, where tall trees enclosed the Iron Age camp, but you could see the Dinedor Serpent. For what it was worth.

  ‘This is what it was like before they covered it up again,’ Jane said.

  In the middle of the exposed clay, a greyish trickle of small pebbles.

  Merrily said, ‘That’s it?’

  You might not agree with him, but you could see where Ayling had been coming from. Clement went with a delegation to view the site, Sophie had said. Afterwards, he was quoted in the Hereford Times as saying it just looked like, ah . . . patio gravel.

  Succinct. And probably forgivable, if you weren’t an archaeologist. His opinion was that anyone who thought a vital relief road should be abandoned or even diverted to preserve that must be quite insane. He said that, even if it was preserved, it was hardly going to be a tourist attraction. Adding that Herefordshire Council couldn’t let itself be dictated to by hippies and outsiders.

  An old-style local politician. Like Bliss said, Clem Ayling’s younger colleagues would have been crouching behind some trite press statement. Ayling would hold forth . . . railing against the idiots and the cranks.

  Jane, of course, had been following the story from the other side, with frequent explosions of Jane-rage: another example of the jackbooted bastards at County Hall sacrificing Herefordshire’s sacred past in the cause of dubious progress. A crime against history and the environment.

  But it still looked like patio gravel.

  ‘You’re not getting the full picture here,’ Jane said. ‘That’s not possible with hardly any of it uncovered. Take it from me – if it was fully exposed, this could be the most amazing archaeological discovery of the last century. Anywhere in the country. And far, far, far more important than another stretch of crap tarmac.’

  She’d found the images on the website built by the protesters: SAVE THE SERPENT. On its homepage was a picture of what was said to be one of the only comparable monuments in the world – a hillside seen from above, with sculpted mounds on it protected by new walls. Above the picture, it said:

  This is the imaginatively preserved and presented Ohio Serpent.

  And below:

  Imagine what would happen to it if Herefordshire Council were in charge.

  ‘The Ohio Serpent mound is probably the only comparable monument anywhere in the world,’ Jane said. ‘That tells you how significant this is.’

  ‘The Dinedor Serpent’s not actual mounds like this, though, is it?’ Merrily leaned over the back of Jane’s chair. ‘It just looks like . . . chippings.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s what they thought at first – that it was a road, a prehistoric pathway, maybe going all the way to the top of Dinedor Hill. A ritual pathway, for ceremonial processions.’

  ‘Like your pathway to Cole Hill.’

  ‘Except Cole Hill’s only an alignment, with no actual visible path, other than the one across the meadow. And that’s a straight line, whereas the Serpent is . . . serpentine. But the archaeologists decided it couldn’t’ve been an actual pathway, because it has nothing under it – no base, no support. If people had walked on it, the stones would just’ve been trodden in. Wouldn’t’ve lasted a year, never mind a few thousand.’

  ‘So if it’s not the remains of a road or a track . . .? I’m sorry, I should know this, shouldn’t I?’

  Ought to have paid more attention to the Serpent dispute, but other things had been happening at the time. Also, access to the site had been restricted because of the work on the new road, so few people had actually seen it. Not even Jane, apparently.

  ‘Everybody should know about this, but most people don’t,’ Jane said. ‘The truth is totally magical. Archaeology to die for.’ She looked up. ‘You OK, Mum?’

  Sophie had said Helen Ayling remembered her husband receiving at least half a dozen angry phone calls and several abusive letters, half of them unsigned. How many had been actual threats she didn’t know. If Clement took the call, he simply hung up and wouldn’t talk about it afterwards. The letters he burned. Nothing to worry about. Part and parcel of local government service.

  Bloody cranks, he’d say. As if we’d block the city’s economic development for their juvenile fairy stories.

  Actually sparing the time, for once, to explain to Helen why the Rotherwas relief road was of such strategic importance, issuing as it did from Hereford’s primary industrial sector and perhaps eventually forming part of the city’s long-needed bypass.

  Opening up this side of Hereford, the commercial possibilities were enormous, Clem said. Only cranks and drug-addled hippies would even want to get in its way, and at least they were relatively harmless. Sophie said Helen had been less convinced of this – recalling coming home one evening, about four months ago, and finding a message on the answering machine warning Clem to stay away from Dinedor Hill if he didn’t want to be buried ther
e.

  Dinedor Hill: implications here. The city’s mother hill, the site of its Iron Age origins. Aligned with the Cathedral in the same way that Cole Hill was aligned with Ledwardine church, but on an altogether more impressive scale. Some people in Hereford felt an almost obsessive attachment to Dinedor. Running a new road too close, cutting off the city from the mother hill, was always going to cause unrest. And if the roadwork itself had exposed even more evidence of Dinedor’s sanctity . . .

  Sophie said Helen had been concerned enough by the tone of the message on the answering machine to hang on to the tape. Had thus been able to present the evidence to Howe when Howe brought up the issue.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily had said. ‘I don’t understand. Howe brought this up?’

  ‘Well, yes, I think so. She seems to have specifically asked Helen if Clement’s attitude to the Dinedor Serpent had led to threats.’

  ‘As if she already had reason to suspect the murder was Serpent-related?’

  ‘I thought I’d made that clear,’ Sophie said.

  Merrily looked down at the seated Jane from behind, really not liking where things were going.

  ‘So when the Council decided to go ahead with the road . . . people were very angry?’

  ‘You think they didn’t have good reason to be?’ Jane turned her chair round. ‘Soon as the council learned about the Serpent, they hushed it up. They didn’t want it to come out until they knew they could bulldoze the road through regardless. One guy chained himself to a machine.’

  ‘You sure about that – that they were hushing it up?’

  ‘It’s obvious. They didn’t even want to hear any arguments. Wouldn’t allow any public debate. It was discussed by the so-called Cabinet behind closed doors. All we heard was this reactionary old bastard Clement Ayling going on to Midlands Today and the Hereford Times about how crap the Serpent was anyway and how it wasn’t even worth preserving.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘They didn’t even take any steps to protect bits of the Serpent they’d uncovered – like against the elements? So it was all filling up with water during heavy rain, causing untold damage.’

  ‘But as I understand it, that’s why it needed to be covered up again, even if it was by a road – to protect it against bad weather.’

  ‘And people nicking stones as souvenirs, sure. But you could cover it up and still make a feature out of it. Look at Ohio. No, it was the way this was done – hushed up. And like when a few civilised protesters turned up at the council offices and refused to leave they were actually arrested? By the cops? You must remember that.’

  ‘Well, I do, but it came to nothing, surely? Nobody was charged.’

  ‘Mum . . . they were thrown into police cells! These were just ordinary people disgusted at the way the council was behaving. And two of the ones arrested, they were, like, over eighty?’ Jane’s eyes wide now, with outrage. ‘And some of them got taken all the way to Worcester because like there weren’t enough spare cells at Hereford? OK, the charges were withdrawn, but banging elderly people up in cells just for standing up for some kind of democracy . . . Like they were terrorists or something?’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Why do you keep saying that? Of course I’m sure. And the reason I’m sure is because some of the protesters are also members of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society. Same problem, same council. I’d’ve been with them myself if it hadn’t been a school day – wow, does that sound pathetic or what?’

  ‘Actually, it sounds sensible. If you can cope with sensible.’

  ‘I should’ve been there. Wimped out.’

  Jane turned back to the computer and brought up another SAVE THE SERPENT page, which said:

  Please support by adding comments and taking online actions including a petition to the Prime Minister.

  Merrily stood looking at it, but not seeing it. Seeing the greater pattern. Dinedor Serpent/Coleman’s Meadow. The trouble with this county, it was just too damn small. Everything interconnected. Everything eventually trickling down into your own community, your own home, your—

  ‘Mum! You’re digging your fingers into my shoulders!’

  ‘I . . . sorry.’

  ‘OK.’ Jane stood up. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You mentioned Clement Ayling.’

  ‘Fascist of the first order. We truly live in a police state, you know? Nobody’s allowed to object to anything any more. I mean, you only have to look at pictures of Ayling with his phoney smile, the smug, fat, arrogant—’

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sit down, huh?’

  17

  River of Light

  THEY DRESSED THE tree. A pagan ceremony, Jane always used to say, and she was probably right.

  Merrily climbed on a chair to attach their slightly frayed Christmas fairy, or maybe angel, to the topmost branch. She thought of the offerings at Whiteleafed Oak in the Malverns. She thought of the little lights that were supposed to be visible in the orchard here in Ledwardine, where cider apples known as the Pharisees Red had been grown. Pharisees from farises – local slang for fairies.

  As if we’d block the city’s economic development for their juvenile fairy stories.

  Jane was applying herself, with serious, numbed concentration, to the decoration of the tree. When she’d spoken it was only to point out that they needed more glass balls or strands of tinsel.

  You could almost hear her mind turning over and over like an engine trying to start. And then she said, as if the words had just drifted out, ‘Do what thou wilt, though it harm none.’

  She had the Christmas tree lights stretching up the stairs to untangle the wire.

  ‘That would be the motto of the Pagan Federation?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Actually, it’s a Wiccan saying. But, yeah, if they had a motto it would be something like that.’

  ‘Right.’

  If you were a vicar, a parish priest in the Christian faith, and you were fully aware that your daughter was wearing, next to her skin, a fine silver necklace with a pentacle hanging from it, what were you supposed to do about that? Come over all Shirley West? Ban her from keeping pagan books in your vicarage? Watch her every move, find out who she was meeting, phoning, keep a check on her emails and pray for her deliverance from the arms of Satan?

  Or did you, seeing through to the person underneath, remember when you were a teenage Siouxie and the Banshees fan in black lipstick and let it, for God’s sake, lie?

  ‘Mum, these lights are just not coming on.’

  ‘They never come on first time. You have to go round screwing every one in tight, and then . . . pray.’ Merrily came down from the chair. ‘So what you’re trying to say is . . . no supporter of the Dinedor Serpent or the Coleman’s Meadow stones – and certainly no modern British pagan – would even contemplate something so brutal and barbaric.’

  ‘You think they would?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Jane. Some of the modern pagans I’ve encountered, it would be difficult to imagine them sacrificing lunch. But if you look at their forebears in the Dark Ages . . .’

  ‘Which weren’t dark, but go on.’

  ‘If you look at ancient Celtic paganism, as practised, presumably, by the Iron Age people who lived in their round huts on the top of Dinedor Hill . . . and Cole Hill, come to that—’

  ‘So that would be like two thousand years ago? Three thousand?’

  ‘Whatever, they were very into removing heads, the old pagans, weren’t they?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘All I’m—’

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Jane glared down from the stairs, holding the dead lights. ‘I don’t know anyone who could do that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t either, so let’s not worry too much about it. It’s all circumstantial, anyway.’

  ‘These are gentle people. Well-meaning.’ Jane looked down at the limp necklace of bulbs. ‘They’re just people who think we should be aware of ou
r origins.’

  ‘Well, me too, but—’

  ‘And like just pushing out cities and towns and villages in all directions, ruining the countryside for more and more houses and factories that close down after a couple of years . . . that’s just mindless. Building that road is . . . thrusting a spear into the countryside.’

  Merrily sighed.

  ‘It’s like nobody ever really thinks any more,’ Jane said. ‘Like the way they just went into Iraq and nobody considered the consequences. Nobody thought.’

  Tears in Jane’s eyes.

  The fairy lights blinked once and then came on, like jewels on her fingers. She looked down at them.

  ‘God, it’s just like the Serpent.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s like . . . I never told you, did I? Let me show you, OK?’

  Jane picked up the end of the wire and dragged the lights up the stairs to the first landing, where she took off one of her trainers. She wrapped the end of the wire around it to hold it firm on the landing, and then came downstairs backwards, arranging the lights.

  Somehow, they all stayed on.

  ‘This is how it worked, right? The theory is that the Serpent may run all the way from the top of Dinedor Hill down to the River Wye.’

  ‘How far’s that?’

  ‘Not as far as you’d think. So it’s connecting what, in ancient times, would have been the two main features in the landscape, pre-Hereford – the biggest hill and the river. The most important river in the west of England and Wales, so very sacred. And the wavy pattern of the Serpent is actually simulating the meandering of the river.’

  ‘Who’s saying that?’

  ‘That’s come from the archaeologists themselves – the guys in charge of the rescue excavation. I got it from Coops. Obviously, they’ve only uncovered a small section of the Serpent, but that’s what they reckon. These guys don’t say anything until it’s looking pretty solid.’