The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  Canon Jeavons and the big cat both looked placidly back at her. ‘Because you’re still not quite sure how to handle it,’ Jeavons said, ‘are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘All of this – the calling, the job. And, most of all, I would imagine, the complexities of Deliverance. It’s a problem of... I was gonna say confidence, but it isn’t that. You have a fear.’

  ‘Lots.’

  Suspicious now. When she’d finally reached him on the phone she’d learned that Sophie Hill had already called on behalf of the Bishop, to make sure that he was still available for consultation. Sophie would have told him a little about her but nothing personal. Sophie didn’t do personal.

  ‘I’d say you have a horror of being considered’ – he looked at her sleepily through half-closed eyes – ‘pious?’

  She thought she must have shaken, physically. ‘What makes you say that, Mr Jeavons?’

  ‘You must call me Lew,’ he said. ‘Now that I’m retired.’

  She didn’t call him anything, she just stared. He wore a linen jacket with wide blue and light-grey stripes, like for punting. Under it was something you always guessed must be available somewhere, but not in any ecclesiastical outfitters: a high-necked black T-shirt with a white dog collar that was part of the design. Maybe he’d got it from a joke shop.

  ‘See, Merrilee, most of the female clergy of my acquaintance, they all very proud of what they achieved for their sex after all these centuries. They wear the dog collar and the clerical shirt on all possible occasions. Maybe they sleep in a clerical nightdress, I wouldn’t know about that. But always, when they come to see a male priest, that’s when it’s extremely important to them that they be seen as equals. You, by contrast – no collar, no shirt. Only a cross, so discreet it could even be an item of jewellery. And you’re not wearing too much make-up or a short skirt, either, so... You’re married?’

  ‘Widowed, for some years. There is... a man.’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyes went into a squint. The cat purred, the coffeepot burbled on the stove.

  ‘He’s a musician. He helps out at a recording studio in the Frome Valley. We see each other... not as often as we’d like, and I’m not sure what to do about that.’

  ‘Your people know about him? In the parish?’ His gut pushed out comfortably, like a flour sack, and the cat nestled into it.

  ‘Some must’ve guessed by now. He used to live in the village. We thought there might be an opportunity for him to move back, but it wasn’t to be.’

  Wasn’t to be – had she conveyed some sense of foreboding in that phrase? Defensive now; this man could pluck away your secrets like specks of fluff.

  ‘What do your prayers tell you about this relationship?’ Jeavons asked.

  ‘I feel it’s the right thing. At this moment.’

  Jeavons nodded. There was a movement outside the window – a cock pheasant on the lawn. Merrily blinked. There was something about the light in here, the white clarity of everything, after the dimness of the rest of the cottage. It was like snow-light; everything was lit. She had the curious feeling of emerging from an initiation.

  She said slowly, feeling the words drawn out of her, ‘Martin Israel, in his book on exorcism, says that some degree of psychic ability is probably necessary to do this job – Deliverance.’

  ‘And you think you don’t have what’s necessary?’ Jeavons said.

  ‘How did you know about me and the word “pious”?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Sophie didn’t let it slip that “pious” was my most unfavourite word in the dictionary and that I have a fear of—?’

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Sophie Hill. The Bishop of Hereford’s lay secretary.’

  ‘Ah. A lady of evident discretion and diplomacy. No, she didn’t tell me that. But then she wouldn’t, would she? You, on the other hand...’ Canon Jeavons gripped the cat, and the cat purred fiercely. ‘Merrilee, you’re an open person. Aspects of you stand out as if you carrying a placard – it’s in your manner, the way you dress, that big old Volvo you drive. No doubt you’re capable of considerable discretion when it comes to the affairs of others, but about yourself... you drop sizeable clues, you know?’

  ‘The word “pious”...’

  Jeavons rocked back, laughing. ‘You ain’t gonna let this go, are you? Listen, it dropped into my mind. Things do that sometimes. If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues come together and a feeling or a word sometimes drops into our minds, just like... like a packet out of a cigarette machine.’

  She frowned. ‘You can also see the nicotine on my teeth?’

  ‘Your teeth are like pearls.’

  ‘And it’s always right, is it, this thing that drops into your mind?’

  ‘Hell, no. Sometimes it’s so far out I feel like a horse’s ass. But when you get to my age, time’s too precious to keep it to yourself and sit and wonder. This, as it happens, is at the heart of spiritual healing: taking the time to know people, making small deductions. How many doctors have the time or the patience to do that now – talking and considering and leaving time for small leaps of inspiration. No, it’s, “Take two of these three times a day”, or, “I’ll make you an appointment to see a consultant... send the next one in on your way out.” One time, minor ailments were resolved without the need for pills, because pills were expensive and time was cheap. And doctors – country doctors, particularly – would often be spiritual people, capable of insight. From insight to inspiration is only a small leap, which may be divinely assisted. Are you following my reasoning?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good. Let’s have some of this coffee.’ He eased himself around the cat and stood up.

  Merrily said, ‘What happened to your wife?’

  He raised an eyebrow, as if she’d turned the tables on him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—’

  ‘God would not permit me to heal her.’ Jeavons lifted the coffeepot from the stove. ‘She died five years ago, around the time they wanted to groom me for bishop. Maybe if she lived I’d have gone for that, if only to see Catherine in a palace. Instead, a row. I said to them, You don’t know a thing about me, you just want me ’cause purple and black go so nice together in New Labour Britain. I said, I’m going away instead. I want to find out for myself why my wife was not healed.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Maybe. Haw, you’re suspicious of me now. You thinking I’m some kind of old-time shaman out of a travelling medicine show. We should start again. Tell me what you want to know.’

  ‘You know what I want. I was appointed as Deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford. Suddenly, whichever way I turn, I’m finding the word “deliverance” linked with the word “healing”.’

  ‘And that would naturally scare you. It scares you like “pious”. Because it would mean people start to see you as wonder-woman.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Difficult,’ Jeavons said.

  ‘The names,’ Ben said. ‘Consider the names.’

  Driving back into town, he seemed re-energized, setting out his case for Arthur Conan Doyle basing The Hound of the Baskervilles on what had happened in Kington, talking about the way the book and this area echoed each other in unexpected ways.

  And the real clincher: the remarkable coincidence of names.

  ‘Key characters in the novel... look at the names. Baskerville – obviously, a prominent family in this area, as we’ve established. But then the others – Mortimer. Dr Mortimer is the local GP, the man who first consults Sherlock Holmes over the case. Now Mortimer – as Jane knows – is probably the most significant name in the middle-Marches. This was the core domain of the Mortimer dynasty of Norman barons. Commemorated in place names like Mortimer’s Cross, which is just a few miles from here, along the Border.’

  Antony L
argo said nothing.

  ‘All right,’ Ben said, ‘you might argue that’s not such an uncommon name. But what about Stapleton? Stapleton, the naturalist who turns out to know rather more about hounds than butterflies. Stapleton, Jane. Tell him where Stapleton is.’

  ‘Oh...’ Jane recalled a fragment of ruined castle on a hill, a farm, a few cottages. ‘It’s a hamlet. Just outside Presteigne. That’s right on the Border, too, isn’t it? Presteigne’s in Wales, Stapleton’s in England – just.’

  ‘Thank you, Jane.’ Ben nodded happily. ‘Baskerville, Mortimer, Stapleton. Key names strung out along the mid-Border. It could be coincidence, but would Holmes himself have bought that? I really don’t think so. Doyle’s delicately encoding the real history, the actual location of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’

  Jane was impressed, but Antony said, ‘So what about the Cabell family of Devon? What about Sir Richard Cabell who’s supposed to’ve followed a spooky hound across the moor on his black mare after making a pact with the Devil?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That story fits pretty damn well, and we know for a fact that Doyle went to Devonshire to research the terrain. We even know which hotel he stayed at.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘See, I found all this on the Net, very easily. Arthur went down to Dartmoor with his golfing pal, Fletcher Robinson, a Devonian. In fact, Robinson himself was said to have come up with the story – for which Doyle insisted on giving him a credit in the Strand Magazine, which serialized his stuff. Am I right?’

  ‘I’m not disputing that, Antony.’ Ben shook the wheel lightly. ‘However – and was this on the Net? – the then editor of the Strand said that he understood Fletcher Robinson obtained the original story from – and I quote – “A Welsh guidebook”. I can show you that reference in two biographies of Doyle. So while I couldn’t deny that he borrowed elements of the Cabell legend to flesh out the scenario, all the evidence still says it starts right here.’

  ‘And the small fact that the coachman Doyle and Robinson employed in Devon was one... Harry Baskerville? How does that equate, my friend?’

  ‘Oh.’ Jane was dismayed. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Perfectly true,’ Ben confirmed. ‘And Baskerville himself assumed that his name had been borrowed. However, Stashower, in his biography of Conan Doyle, points out that Doyle mentioned the proposed title The Hound of the Baskervilles in a letter to his mother before he and Robinson went to Devon – before he even met Harry Baskerville. I can show you the reference.’

  Antony didn’t reply. Jane was delighted. The awkward encounter with the shooters seemed to have given Ben a blast of confidence.

  It had been almost funny – these two guys, with their South Wales accents, up from Ebbw Vale, claiming they’d been hired by a local farmer to get rid of foxes. Well, Jane had realized at once that this was bollocks; the usual situation with rough shooting was that guys like this paid the farmers for the privilege.

  Anyway, the shooters had got totally the wrong idea, assuming that Ben, despite the jogging kit, was some local hunter warning them off his patch. And Ben, being Ben, hadn’t corrected the impression, he’d played to it – Jane could hear his voice changing, acquiring this military edge. Initially, he’d just been rescuing the situation, saving face, but in the end he’d had the Ebbw Vale guys backing defensively away, up the public footpath to Hergest Ridge, bawling after them, ‘Bloody cowboys! Your card’s marked in this area, believe it!’

  He might not have been potentially one of the greats, as Amber had put it, but he was still a bloody good actor. And now he was on a roll, his argument flowing.

  ‘So, like, why did Conan Doyle transfer the whole thing to Dartmoor?’ Jane asked.

  Ben shrugged, lifting his hands from the wheel. ‘Don’t you find that interesting in itself? Also, why did Doyle decide to rubbish the concept of a ghostly hound in the book when in real life he’d have pounced on it with all the enthusiasm he lavished nearly twenty years later on those patently faked photos of the Cottingley Fairies?’

  ‘Right.’ Jane knew those pictures: close-ups of innocent young girls’ faces with these archetypal Arthur Rackham-style fairies frolicking in front of them. Obvious fakes now, but convincing enough in the early days of photography. It wasn’t so much of an indictment of Conan Doyle’s gullibility.

  Ben turned into the tarmac drive leading to Kington church. ‘What’s also interesting is that originally The Hound wasn’t going to be a Sherlock Holmes story at all. Doyle had already killed Holmes by then – dragged over the Reichenbach Falls in the arms of his arch-enemy Moriarty. And then he writes what’s become a famous letter to the editor of the Strand, announcing his plans for The Hound with the words, “I have the idea of a real creeper.” But you see it wasn’t, at that time, going to be a Holmes adventure at all. So when Holmes was brought in, Doyle wrote the story as if it was something that had happened pre-Reichenbach.’

  ‘And did he...?’ Antony eyed Ben thoughtfully – some respect at last, Jane thought. ‘I’m sorry, I know he was a fellow Scot, but my knowledge here is a wee bit scant... Did Conan Doyle write other stories that were essentially supernatural?’

  Ben nosed the car into some bushes, where the ground was still furred with frost. He pulled on the handbrake with a fusillade of ratchet clicks and switched off the engine.

  ‘Yes, Antony. Of course.’

  ‘So when he decided to make it a Holmes tale, he knew that’d be an aspect going out the window, Holmes being the ultimate rationalist. If Holmes is gonnae solve the case, there has to be a rational explanation.’

  ‘Yes. And what I’m wondering... was Doyle specifically asked by the Baskerville family – or someone else – to put in some distance? There’s a traditional belief in this area that he was distantly related to the Baskervilles, who were in turn, way back, related by marriage to the Vaughans. Obviously, there’s still a lot of research to be done here. Hidden connections.’

  ‘He didn’t have to use the name at all, though, did he?’

  ‘Still, hell of a good name, isn’t it? Where would that title be without it?’ Still buzzing, like he’d been snorting coke or something, Ben stepped out onto the frosted grass. ‘Come and meet the Vaughans.’

  There was no tradition of shamanism or the priesthood in Lew Jeavons’s family. He’d come to England from Jamaica as a teenager, his father working on the buses. As a young man he went to New York where he was ordained and met an Englishwoman, on attachment to Harvard, an academic.

  ‘And we found our way back here. Which I always felt was my home.’

  ‘You were... into healing in America?’

  ‘Well, I’ve always thought I was channelling healing.’ He nodded at the big cat on his knees. ‘Talk to Lucius about it. He was run over on the main road at Fromes Hill in the summer. The driver didn’t stop. I’m the next car along, and I pick him up, along with his exploded intestines. Take him along to the vet, who puts back the intestines, shakes his head, takes out his syringe. But I shake my head. Bring Lucius back here, to be my cat for whatever time he has left.’

  ‘He looks brilliant.’

  ‘He limps a little now, that’s all. Cats respond directly to love and hands-on. People are more complex. My wife... she should’ve recovered, that was the point. It wasn’t such a big heart attack, they didn’t think it was a bypass situation. I was convinced she was going to recover fully, and I took my eye off of the ball, and she had a second heart attack. I was leading a healing ministry in Oxford at the time, and we were all full of it: missionary zeal – hey, this is what the Church of England’s been lacking for so long! And in the middle of all this healing frenzy, my beloved wife, she just ups and dies. Happens within a month. What was that saying to me? What was He telling me?’

  ‘You must’ve been... bitter.’

  ‘And bewildered. I didn’t think I was arrogant, I didn’t think I needed bringing down – and there, you see, that proves I was arrogant, my first thought was that
it was because of me that she was taken away – God telling the big healer, You are nothing, man!’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Forty-nine. No age. Yes, I was bitter, sure I was bitter. What do they think – we can’t hate God because we’re priests?’

  Merrily said, ‘The... problem I have with this is the obvious one: some people recover, some don’t. Some people who are prayed for – really, really prayed for, by many people...’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So all the hopes build up and, in the end...’

  ‘It’s a lottery?’

  ‘Or it’s not our decision. Not a decision we can – or should – try to influence, despite what the Gospel—’

  ‘Oh boy,’ Jeavons said. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? We do it because it’s all we do. It’s fundamental: the care of bodies, the care of souls, the care of the living earth. It’s how we develop within ourselves – by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee. A doctor fails to heal someone, he says, Well, hell, I prescribed all the right drugs, I did what I could. But we must suffer. And that isn’t what you wanted to hear, is it?’

  ‘I... don’t know what I wanted.’

  ‘Maybe you just don’t understand about the nature of suffering, and that suffering can be a truly positive state. We should discuss this sometime.’

  ‘Why wasn’t your wife healed?’ Merrily said.

  Jeavons lifted both hands from the cat, held them in the air. Sat there in the white room like a bare rock on a beach freshly washed by the tide. Was the answer one he couldn’t accept? Had he been forced to conclude, in his suffering, that her faith – her faith in him, Lew – had been insufficient? Was that it?

  He opened out his hands, a candid gesture.

  ‘It was because I didn’t understand, at the time, that there was more than Catherine in need of healing in this particular instance. I didn’t know... I didn’t know about the healing of the dead.’