Midwinter of the Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  He held out a hand ridged and gnarled as a shrivelled parsnip.

  Jesus Christ was the first exorcist – letters on a white page.

  And Huw Owen on a mountainside in Wales. I don’t want stuff letting in. A lot of bad energy’s crowding the portals. I want to keep all the doors locked and the chains up.

  Merrily nodded.

  She put the cross into Thomas Dobbs’s hand and stepped aside, with her back to a pew-end.

  Jesus Christ was the first exorcist.

  The Boy Bishop stood up, letting his notes flutter to the tiles. He held his crozier at arm’s length, like a spear. His two candlebearers had melted away, but Mick Hunter still stood a few paces behind him. Merrily saw a series of expressions blurring James’s face. She thought of Francis Bacon’s popes.

  She thought that James’s face was not now his own.

  The Cathedral had filled with a huge and hungry hush.

  Thomas Dobbs stopped about ten feet short of the boy – under the jagged halo of the corona. When he spoke, his voice was slurred and growly, dense with phlegm and bile, and the words tumbled out of him, unstoppable, like a rockslide.

  ‘IN THE NAME OF… OF THE LIVING GOD, I CALL… I CALL YOU OUT!

  ‘IN… NAME OF… GOD OF ALL CREATION…

  ‘… NAME OF HIS SON JES… JESUS CHRIST… I CALL YOU OUT…

  ‘I CALL YOU OUT AND…

  ‘BANISH YOU.’

  Merrily watched his pocked monument of a face, only one side of it working. She could almost feel the strength leaving his body, the despair at the heart of his struggle against his own weakness.

  The Boy Bishop let his crozier fall, and ran down the aisle. Merrily saw Dick Lyden squeezing out of his pew, striding after his son. Where the boy had stood, she saw the slightly unclear figure of a slim woman in a long dress, with hair down to her waist, like dark folded wings, and then – as though Merrily had blinked – the woman was no longer there. She saw Dobbs clench his teeth so hard she felt they were going to split and fragment, and she saw his arm winching stiffly upward like a girder, pointing.

  ‘DEVIL… UNCLEAN SPIR… IT!’

  No more than a harsh rasp this time, and then he turned away, stumbling, and he and Merrily came face to face.

  He put up a hand to her.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. She had no tradition.

  Slowly, she bowed her head.

  Felt the heat of his hand a second before his fingers touched her cheek.

  Merrily looked up then, and saw in his old, knowing eyes, a small brilliance, before he died.

  53

  Silly Woman

  LOL GAZED INTO Anna Purefoy’s pale eyes. There was no obvious expression in them: no fear, no alarm. Only perhaps the beginning of surprise, or was he imagining that?

  There was dust in her fine, fair hair.

  No blood at all – Anna’s neck was simply broken. It wasn’t obvious exactly what had done that, but it wasn’t important, was it? Not important now.

  He didn’t touch her. He just stood up. Strangely, although part of the loft had come down, six of the ten candles were still alight. No shadows, other than his own, appeared to be moving.

  He couldn’t look for very long at Tim Purefoy, who was, mostly, still in his chair, the chair itself crushed into the stairs. The black bull-bars had torn Tim almost in half. One of his legs was…

  God! Lol turned away, towards the car. The smell from Tim’s body was hot and foul, and there was still running blood and what might be intestine over the windscreen of the Mitsubishi Intercooler Super-Turbo-whatever the hell it was called.

  And something else, half across the roof, which he thought was Moon’s futon fallen from the toppled loft. Making it impossible to see inside the vehicle. The steaming silence, though, was ominous.

  Also, the old oak pillar. Nothing but old oak or steel would have stopped the bull-barred Mitsubishi. It had torn down the glazed bay like cellophane, exploded the urbane Tim Purefoy like a rotten melon. But the pillar had held.

  He couldn’t make himself go past Tim; he didn’t want to know the details. Instead he squeezed around the back, stepping over the smashed pieces of the chair he’d been sitting in a few minutes ago. If he hadn’t finally lost it… if Anna Purefoy hadn’t pursued him, gleefully taunting him with her knowledge of his obsession for ‘the little woman priest’… he would have been the first to be hit.

  When he reached the other side of the car, he found the driver’s window wound down. Right down – as if that was how it had been when the Mitsubishi rammed the glass-covered bay. As though the driver had needed to hear the impact – and the screams.

  But there had been no screams audible above the engine’s roar and the sounds of destruction. All too fast, too explosively unexpected.

  Denny smiled out at him. ‘Bodged job, eh? I always said it was a… bodged job. They never meant to… turn it into holiday ’commodation. Never planned to renovate it, till… till Kathy showed up. Dead, are they?’

  ‘Mm,’ Lol said.

  ‘But you’re all right. I never… I never thought you’d be here. I thought you were a…’ Denny laughed out some blood. ‘… a bit of a nancy, if I’m honest. No… no… you stay there. Don’t fucking look down here, man. Not having you throwing up on my motor.’

  ‘Shut up now,’ Lol said. ‘I’ll have an ambulance here as soon as I can find the bloody phone.’

  ‘I think on the table – bottom of the stairs. Be part of my fucking sump now.’

  Lol tried the driver’s door. ‘Don’t be stupid, mate,’ Denny said. ‘You open that, I’ll just fall out in several pieces. An Iron Age Celt dies in his chariot. I tell you about my dream? A mystic now, man – finally a fucking mystic.’

  Lol saw that Denny’s earring was gone. Or maybe the ear itself.

  ‘You’re so… indiscreet, Lol. That’s your problem. You don’t trust yourself – always got to tell somebody.’

  Lol sighed. ‘The extension. You heard me leaving that message for Merrily.’

  ‘Been eavesdropping on your calls for weeks, Laurence. Needed to hear what you were saying to Lyden – about Kathy. Could never figure why you weren’t all over Kathy. She attractive, this vicar?’

  ‘Listen,’ Lol said. ‘I’m going over to the farm. I’ll have to break in and use their phone.’

  ‘If that makes you feel better. But if I’ve gone to the ancestors, time you get back…’

  ‘I’ll be less than five minutes. I’ll smash a window in the kitchen.’

  ‘Got a lot to say to those primitive fuckers,’ Denny muttered. ‘To the ancestors.’

  ‘Don’t go away,’ Lol said.

  ‘No. Cold in here, en’t it? Must be the extra ventilation.’

  Denny laughed his ruined laugh.

  Headlights and warblers. Déjà vu. The ambulance cutting across the green again, directly to the north porch. A police car behind the ambulance. Behind that, a plain Rover: Howe.

  ‘Later, Annie,’ Merrily said, ‘please? Is that all right? I need to see that Jane’s…’

  ‘Just don’t go off anywhere,’ Howe said.

  ‘No further than the hospital.’

  ‘No,’ Jane protested, sitting up in the back of the ambulance, a paramedic hanging on to her arm. ‘You’re not coming. I’m not going. This is ridiculous. It’s just like… mild concussion.’

  ‘Could be a hairline fracture, Jane,’ the paramedic warned.

  ‘No way. This guy’s just blowing it up on account of having his hands all over me.’

  ‘I had my hands all over you,’ the boy in white said patiently, ‘because you were on fire.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jane said. Some of her hair was singed, and she had quite a deep cut on her forehead and bruising on the left side of her jaw and under her left eye. ‘And, like, if you’re wearing a dress and your name’s Irene, you think nobody’s going to suspect anything.’

  ‘Eirion,’ the boy said. There wer
e black smuts all over his hands and his white alb.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’ll be here for quite a while,’ Annie Howe told Merrily. ‘We have to talk in depth, Ms Watkins.’ She pulled Eirion away from the ambulance. ‘I think you need to tell me how she got on fire.’

  ‘She was down in the crypt – with a candle. She said she must have tripped, but…’ He hesitated. ‘There was nobody else there when I got to her, OK? But she was face-down and her coat was on fire and… I really think you need to talk to James Lyden.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The Boy Bishop. His parents were looking for him. They’ve probably taken him home. They live in one of those Edwardian houses in Barton Street. And you need to talk to his girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Merrily said, ‘I think you definitely want to talk to James’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Melissa,’ Eirion said. ‘But she seems to have gone.’

  Merrily said, ‘Melissa?’

  ‘I don’t know her other name. James told me she lives with her foster-parents on a farm up on Dinedor Hill. He knows where it is – he’s been up there a couple of times.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Merrily said.

  She went into the Cathedral and stayed away from everyone, even Sophie. Especially from Sophie – she mustn’t be involved.

  Merrily saw that there was a blanket over the body of Thomas Dobbs, and two uniformed policeman guarding it. The nave had a secular feel, like some huge market hall. Spiritual work to be done, here – but by whom?

  Jane had absolutely refused to let Merrily go with her to the hospital, but in the end she had accepted Eirion’s company. Merrily smiled faintly. The boy must have masochistic tendencies.

  Across the nave, over by Bishop Stanbury’s ornate chantry, she saw Huw Owen pacing about, hands deep in the pockets of his RAF greatcoat. She hadn’t spoken to him yet, although George Curtiss had told her it had been Huw who’d brought Dobbs along, after helping him sign himself out of the General Hospital.

  Dobbs’s last stand. Where was the squatter now? Should James Lyden be exorcized, or merely counselled by his father? Where would they go from here? Who would work from the office with on the door? Not a woman, that was for sure.

  A hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t turn round. She knew his smell: light sweat, sex.

  ‘A busy day, Merrily.’

  ‘Indeed, Bishop.’

  ‘Were you looking for me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’

  He came round to face her. He’d changed into his jogging gear. His thick brown hair looked damp with sweat.

  ‘I have to run sometimes, to clear it all away. It’s very calming. I run through the streets and nobody knows who I am.’

  ‘Oh, I think they do, Bishop. They’ve all seen your picture, running. But you can only run so far, can’t you?’

  Mick didn’t smile. ‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we?’

  ‘All right.’

  She followed him out of the south door, towards the cloisters, along a narrow, flagged floor, dim and intimate. She’d left her cloak in the Cathedral and felt cold in her jumper and skirt, but was determined not to show it.

  ‘This farce will be in the papers,’ he said.

  ‘Something will be in the papers.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I imagine you’re excellent at news management.’

  ‘Said in a somewhat derogatory way.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘No, you aren’t. You think I’m just an ambitious administrator, with few spiritual qualities.’

  ‘If any,’ Merrily agreed. What the hell. Jane was going to be all right, Huw was there in the Cathedral. What the hell!

  The Bishop leaned against a door to his left, and the cold bit hard. They were almost outside.

  This was the tourist part of the Cathedral – in summer, anyway. A stone-walled courtyard, a snackbar, steps and benches and tables. The Bishop held open the door for her and followed her out, pulling the door shut behind them. They were on a raised stone path bordered by flowerbeds and evergreen shrubs. There was a circular lawn with a dead fountain in the middle, a picturesquely ruined wall behind it, overhung by decorative trees and vines. Idyllic in summer: you could be miles from the city.

  Deserted now under the icy moon.

  ‘You,’ Mick Hunter said mildly, ‘are an unbelievable little bitch – an incredible cock-teaser.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Merrily shook her head, moving back to the door. ‘This is not what I wanted to talk about.’

  The Bishop placed himself in front of the door, shaking his head slowly. ‘All right, what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Dobbs?’

  ‘You want me to express regret? Very well, I regret it.’

  Merrily folded her arms against the cold. There was no delicate way to put this. ‘When Canon Dobbs was dying, he put out his arm and he pointed, and he managed to say, “Devil… unclean spirit.” And everyone thought he was pointing at James Lyden. But I saw he was pointing at someone standing just to the left of James – in the shadows for once.’

  Hunter didn’t deny it. ‘Does it surprise you that he hated me?’

  ‘Under the circumstances, hardly. When you arrived, he was an old man in bad health. He was due to retire at any time, but you pushed him out. When he wouldn’t resign voluntarily, you chose to humiliate him. Thus antagonizing the Dean and the Chapter and countless other people – people who really counted.’

  ‘One can’t be sentimental about these things.’

  ‘This wasn’t pragmatism, Bishop. This was lunacy. When you told me last night that you’d been advised against appointing a female Deliverance consultant, it didn’t strike me at the time, but later I thought, that’s not the kind of thing he does. He’s a politician. He might appoint me later, when he’s proved himself, but not… I mean, I bet the people who advised you against it were those people whose support you really needed.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘It had never really made obvious sense, but I thought – and Sophie often said – that you were young and radical and a bit reckless. But you’re also clever and cautious. You never put a foot wrong. How would some hot-headed revolutionary ever make bishop under the age of forty-five? How could he ever make bishop at all?’

  ‘Merrily,’ he said. ‘Did it ever occur to you that I simply fancied the hell out of you?’

  ‘God forgive me, it did. It occurred to me you were looking for a nice, safe legover, and what safer option than a female cleric with ambition and no husband? Sure, I thought that for quite a while. I even came to the conclusion I could handle it if we weren’t alone too often.’

  ‘How plucky of you.’ He moved out of the doorway. His face was two-dimensionally gaunt – light and shadow – in the moonlight.

  ‘But I still wondered why it was so important for Dobbs – the hardest, possibly the most uncompromising exorcist in the business – to be out of the way now? And quickly. Who could it possibly help to have a barely qualified novice floundering about? Someone who really didn’t know the score on certain aspects of the situation. Someone whose appointment was politically sensitive. Someone who could be pushed around, blamed, bullied…’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, Merrily. It’s been an emotional few days for you, and you’re—’

  ‘Acting like a silly woman.’

  He said, ‘You know, frankly, I couldn’t believe it when you wouldn’t let me take you home and fuck you that night. It was such an amazing night… with the new snow and the ambulance and that wonderful charge in the air. We were all so high.’

  ‘High?’ She stared at him. ‘High on an old man having a stroke? Wow! Even better tonight, then, Mick. This time he really died. I bet you nearly came in your episcopal briefs.’

  The Bishop slapped her face.

  She said, ‘What?’

  He’d hardly moved his body, simply
reached out and done it. Almost lazily, as if to show that if she really annoyed him he could knock her head from her shoulders without breaking more sweat than it took to circuit High Town.

  ‘There are policemen in the Cathedral,’ Merrily said.

  ‘It’s a cathedral, Merrily. It has very thick walls and windows which don’t open. You aren’t supposed to hear what goes on outside.’

  ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

  ‘You can believe anything you want to believe. You can believe or disbelieve at will.’

  ‘I think we should go, Bishop, before you do or say something else that won’t help your glittering career.’

  She was now realizing how stupid she’d been. She could have told Annie Howe. She could have called Huw over. Earlier, Sophie had offered to come with her. But, as usual, she hadn’t been able to quite believe she wouldn’t be making a complete fool of herself in front of others. And she had thought she’d be quite safe virtually anywhere in the shadow of the Cathedral.

  He seemed quite relaxed, but he wasn’t going to let her through the door. She found she was backing away on to the circular lawn.

  ‘Do you know young James Lyden?’ The Bishop put a foot on to the grass, already brittle with frost.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Not a popular boy. Even I don’t like him awfully. He behaved rather badly today. What do you think’s going to happen to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. His father’s a psychotherapist. Perhaps he’ll be able to handle it.’

  ‘I don’t think so – neither does James. Where do you think he is now?’

  ‘I believe his parents took him home,’ she said cautiously. What was this about?

  ‘Wrong,’ the Bishop said. ‘James gave his old man the slip. The last thing James wanted was to go back home in disgrace – Hereford-cred is Dick Lyden’s raison d’être. The boy’s now undone all the good work for him. I told James he could hang out at the Palace for a while. Nobody knows he’s there. Nobody there but me today, as Val left for the Cotswolds this morning. Rather an unpleasant, maladjusted boy, our James.’