by Phil Rickman
‘What’s a priest look like?’
Mr Corey was the new type of ex-public-school painter and decorator, working out of this tasteful Georgian town house in Broad Street, which sloped to the old town gate and then to the river at the Horseshoe Weir where Mrs Mumford had drowned. The office was the size of a small ballroom, with blue-washed walls and four long Georgian windows. Trestle tables displayed leather-bound catalogues and samples of moulding and dressed stone.
‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘I can see I’m putting you in a difficult position. I’ll go. Thank you for seeing me, Mr Corey.’
‘No, look—’ He came half out of his chair. ‘Wait… sit down. I just wondered… how the Church came into it. We… we’ve done some work for the Church.’
‘One word from me and all that would be over for good.’
He looked startled for a moment. Merrily smiled.
‘Joke, Mr Corey. OK, how do we come into it? Well… there’ve been incidents in St Laurence’s. We don’t like to involve the police if we can deal with these things ourselves. And I’d be grateful if this wasn’t blabbed all over town either.’
A glass-fronted cast-iron wood-burning stove was burning low, more for effect than heat at this time of year. Callum Corey pulled his chair away from it.
‘It wasn’t our job, originally. The Weir House was a project by the Raphaels — hit-and-run restorers. Move into a place, do it up, sell it, move on. Except in this case they virtually had to build from the foundations up. One of the old Palmers’ Guild houses. Look, please sit down. Would you like something to drink?’
‘Just had lunch, thanks.’ She sat down across the desk from him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the Palmers’ Guild.’
‘Name’s now been appropriated by Mrs Pepper for a conservation trust she’s setting up. I’m afraid I’ll believe that when I see it. Originally, they were well-off pilgrims to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Brought a palm leaf back to prove it, something like that. That was how it started. Then they became a sort of cooperative movement that employed priests exclusively to pray for the immortal souls of their members. They became immensely wealthy and lasted for several centuries.’
‘Just in Ludlow?’
‘Began in Ludlow, spread over a wide area. Put huge amounts into the fabric of the church and financed the building of about fifty houses in the town. Including the ruin that the Raphaels renamed The Weir House.’
‘Mrs Pepper bought it off these Raphaels?’
‘Very quickly, apparently. There were still bits and pieces left to complete — but that’s always the case with these quick-bodge merchants. It’s all about appearances.’
‘So Mrs Pepper hired you to finish it off.’
‘Perfect it,’ Callum said. ‘There’s an impressive central room with an immense stone fireplace. One wall had been improperly finished and was miasmic.’
‘You mean it was damp?’
‘They’d used a gypsum mix on top of the stones but it hadn’t worked. What it needed was something more sympathetic.’
‘Like lime?’
‘Exactly.’ He looked surprised that she’d know.
‘I live in a four-hundred-year-old vicarage.’
‘Ah. We’re asked to renovate churches, but rarely touch vicarages and rectories still owned by the Church. They don’t seem prepared to spend too much money on dwelling houses.’
‘Unlike Mrs Pepper.’
‘Mrs Pepper didn’t quibble at all about the price. However, she had in mind certain… refinements of her own. Originally, horsehair was often mixed with the slaked lime. Did you know that?’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘Mrs Pepper had something similar in mind. But she wanted to use… her own hair.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m not sure you do, actually.’ Callum looked down at his unused blotter. ‘We do get a few odd requests of this nature sometimes — the craze for feng shui, fuelled by those dreadful TV make-over programmes. Some of the proposals contravene listed-building regulations, but we do what we can to satisfy the customer.’
‘So you went along with it.’
‘I did the work myself. She said too many people trampling around the place… that would not be acceptable.’
‘For reasons of privacy.’
‘I thought so, yes. I didn’t realize quite… Well, anyway, she presented me with a cardboard box with hair in it. Her own hair is blonde — whether it’s dyed or not, I’m not qualified to say. But this hair, um, wasn’t. It was darker and clearly of a different… consistency.’
‘It was someone else’s hair?’
Callum stood up and walked over to one of the long windows which overlooked not Broad Street but a small, flagged courtyard with a tall cedar tree at the bottom.
‘That wasn’t the impression I had,’ he said. ‘My impression, by the lack of length and the, er, texture of the hair was that it… hadn’t been taken from her head.’
‘Oh. And did you go ahead with the job? Did you mix it in?
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And was she happy with it?’
‘Er… very happy. She insisted on helping me. She got the plaster all over her hands. I did suggest she wear gloves, but she… seemed to want it on her skin. She then… at some point… she asked me if I would also like to add something of myself to the wall. As it were. I was quite wary by this time. I don’t really like working alone in houses where there’s only a woman at home.’
Merrily smiled. ‘I always thought you builders were men of the world.’
‘I am not a builder. Well, I am, but… This is a small town, and we’re a respected company, and my father’s a town councillor.’
‘You made an excuse and left?’
‘I did. Wasn’t just that she was old enough to be my mother, she… it wasn’t healthy.’
‘She lives there on her own?’
‘She has a cleaner and a gardener who come in. Seems to have most of her meals in restaurants in the town.’
‘That must be costly.’
‘Not a problem, it seems, for Mrs Pepper. The house is filled with… “antiques” would perhaps not be the word. There’s a sink, for instance, fashioned from what appears to be a stone coffin. They become available sometimes when old churches are converted into houses.’
‘So she had a wall plastered with hair… not from her head. Anything else she… wanted you to do?’
‘I’m not going to elaborate on what she invited me to add to the mix.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Corey.
27
Carrying a Light
It was just after three p.m. when Merrily left Corey’s, walking, more or less aimlessly, up Broad Street, past de Grey’s café and then the clothing shop which Bernie Dunmore had told her had been retail premises since the fourteenth century.
She started imagining Robbie Walsh drifting this way, his self-educated inner vision replacing tarmac with cobbles, delivery vans with wooden carts, coats with cloaks, Levis with leggings. Ending the exercise when, without trying too hard, she was able to turn a man with a charity tin on the steps of the Buttercross into a leper in rags with a peeling face and wretched, burning eyes.
There’s some places with more resonance than others, Jon Scole had said. All it would take would be a moment of slippage, a mental stumbling, and she’d be seeing through Mrs Mumford’s eyes: dead Robbie shivering in sun-splashed glass.
She hurried away and didn’t look into shop windows.
There were times when you needed spiritual advice. Back in the car, she rang Huw Owen at his rectory in the Beacons, and, thank God, he was there.
‘How old is she, lass?’
‘Late forties, fifty, hard to say exactly; she’s wearing well.’
‘Been around?’
‘In every sense. She seems to have had a fairly nomadic existence, maybe not able to settle anywhere until she found this place.’
&n
bsp; ‘That would figure. Feels she’s come home at last. This is the place she should always have been. She has to make up for lost time.’
‘I think that’s exactly right. She’s bought a rebuilt medieval house on an old site. When a wall needs replastering, she gets the builder to mix in some of her own hair.’
‘Instead of horsehair.’
‘Exactly. Only, this is evidently pubic hair.’
‘Nice touch,’ Huw said.
‘What are we looking at here, then? Sympathetic magic?’
‘All magic’s sympathetic magic, lass. But this goes back to folk custom. When I were a lad, I remember an owd bloke saying that if you wanted to really make a house your own, you and the missus should make sure you use every room. “Use” being the operative word.’
‘That would figure, too, from what I hear.’
‘You’d probably also find that she’s drawn some of her own blood and mixed it with paint or varnish,’ Huw said. ‘Or she might use urine or… any other bodily fluids that come to hand.’
Merrily wrinkled her nose. ‘So it’s about belonging.’
‘Or, if she feels the house is haunted — say a presence from the past appears to be the dominant force there — then, by infusing her own essence into the fabric of the place, she’s making it clear who’s possessing who.’
‘You’re good, Huw.’
‘Ah, you know all this yourself, really, lass. This is just belt and braces.’
‘It’s what I need right now.’ She told him what Bernie Dunmore had suggested about Siân Callaghan-Clarke. ‘All rumour and conjecture, of course.’
His voice grew concerned. ‘So you’re really working privately for bloody Dunmore…’
‘Not as such. Just that we haven’t told anybody.’
‘Serving his agenda, though, not yours. I’d go home if I were you, Merrily. Keep your head down. Not the time for being a maverick. I’m not kidding. There’s summat here needs looking at. What’s that woman after? Why you?’
‘Dunno. I do, however, want to find out how Belladonna ties in — if she does — to the death of Robbie Walsh. And then I’ll back off. I’ve got your support, haven’t I? Counts for a lot, Huw. It’s kind of strengthening. Can I tell you the rest?’
‘There’s more?’
‘The house is only the beginning. She’s operating on a much wider scale. I think this is all about acceptance by the town itself, on all kinds of levels.’
She was already halfway to working this out. It was always fascinating to watch incomers and how they tried to get themselves accepted, grab a stake in the community — like, in Ledwardine, it was always the new people who organized the festivals, usually for the benefit of other newcomers. It drove Jane mad.
‘But of course Belladonna’s already famous, a bit notorious, and she doesn’t want to advertise her presence. Definitely doesn’t want to be a tourist attraction.’
‘But knows she’s a stranger,’ Huw said, ‘and that’s how people regard her — a newcomer… doesn’t fit and not entitled to. Has to earn her place.’
‘We know she’s already given a lot of money for conservation. Saved some land from possibly unsympathetic development.’
‘That’ll happen win her more friends than enemies — but some enemies.’
‘But I think that being accepted by the living people, Huw — that’s only a small part of what she wants, because… OK, this is what she does: she walks the streets alone at night, dressed in a long cape, burning candles. Following a specific route, it looks like, through the oldest parts of the town. Some people find it eerie, but they’ll accept it without too many questions, because…’
‘Poor folk are mental cases, rich folk are merely eccentric.’
‘Mmm. And then… here comes the sexual element again.’ She told him about St Leonard’s graveyard and what Jon Scole had said. ‘But that could be gossip.’
‘He could be right, though — fusing her own energies with the energies of the place. In the same way as witches’ll use sex at the culmination of a ritual at a sacred site — stone circle or whatever. Who was the partner?’
‘No idea.’
‘He should be local, for maximum benefit.’
‘Or she, apparently.’
‘Ah. Interesting. See, this is all very practical, Merrily. Your woman’s found the little town she wants to stay in for the rest of her life. If she’s carrying a light from her home, all the way around the town and back again, passing through the most ancient and holiest places, on a ritual basis — time and time again — she’s taking her spirit into that town, isn’t she?’
‘And becoming accepted by the spirit of the town? Or spirits…’
‘Which spirits?’
‘We know she’s been milking Jon Scole and anyone else for information about the best-established ghost stories — and there are quite a lot of them here, Victorian, Tudor, medieval… She wants to know who they are, and where they walk.’
‘Happen she sees the ghosts as the oldest permanent residents. Gain their acceptance and you’re in.’
‘There’s another thing, too… damn…’
‘Take your time. Put the mobile to your other ear for a bit, don’t want to fry your brains.’
‘No. Quite.’ She switched ears and leaned back in the driving seat, eyes closed. ‘Ah… I know… the church.’
‘It’s old and it’s big.’
‘And it has some famous misericords. On several occasions, Belladonna appears to have left a… tampon or a pad pushed down the side of one of them. This is blood again, isn’t it?’
‘Even better, this is menstrual blood. The deepest power of womanhood. Fertility on every level. A woman is at her most… fearsome, if you like… when she’s menstruating — as most fellers find out, to their cost. In the ancient world, you’d have a lot of ritual centred on menstruation — its connection with the moon.’
‘Ah,’ Merrily said.
‘But you knew that, anyway.’
‘You have a great ability, Huw, to make me aware of the significance of what I already might have known.’
‘Just be careful,’ Huw said. ‘Keep looking over your shoulder.’
‘Yes.’
There was still ten minutes to spare before Merrily was due to meet Jon Scole at the entrance to the car park. She walked back into Castle Square, where the historic buildings fell away and the timeless, grey-flecked sky opened up.
The castle gateway was guarded by a huge old cannon and a line of recently pollarded trees. There wasn’t time to go in now; she crossed the square towards the shops: Woolworths, the Castle Bookshop. She was looking in the bookshop window when worlds collided again.
There, on the fringe of a display of books on local history, was a large-format paperback with a red and white cover and heraldic symbols in each corner. In one of those moments of total awareness of everything around her, she went into the shop.
‘Could I… just have a copy of that book in the window: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures?’
She heard the bookseller saying that he thought it was the last copy, making a note to reorder some as she pulled out her purse.
Somebody had laid a wreath at the foot of the yew tree where they’d found Jemima Pegler. No name on it, no identifying card. Some of the pink and white flowers were already browning, petals picked off by the wind.
Merrily looked up into the denseness of the yew tree which was said to have grown on the spot where the body of Marion de la Bruyère had come to rest. The tree threw a circle of darkness. It was probably hundreds of years old, its leathery trunk knobbed and warted and suggestive, here and there, of twisted faces. Behind it was the dizzying sheerness of cliff… wall… tower… sky. About a dozen black window spaces had been punched in the tower walls, irregular, like holes in cheese.
‘This girl Jemima came out of one of them,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Didn’t look too bad, according to what people say. I’ll have to use her, eventually. She’ll beco
me part of the myth. You think that’s tasteless?’
‘It’s what you do,’ Merrily said.
Walking down from The Linney — very steep, too narrow for cars, old houses on one side built up against the castle walls — he’d told Merrily about his efforts to get some kind of relationship going with Bell Pepper, whose Weir House was below them, hidden in the bristle of pines above the river.
Seeing the look on her face, he’d gone backing off, hands up, tangled blond hair bobbing, chains jangling.
‘Whoa! No, not that kind of relationship. When I’m with her, I’m dead careful to make sure we don’t accidentally, like, touch. No blue sparks.’
‘Blue sparks?’
‘Apart from us being not exactly contemporaries, Mary, it would probably ruin any chance of a business arrangement.’
He was probably right to be cautious. It was unlikely, for instance, that Callum Corey would be lured back to The Weir House, no matter how much money was on the table.
‘What kind of business arrangement did you have in mind?’
‘Dunno, really. But if I can’t make a few quid out of her, who can?’
‘You selling her albums in the shop?’
‘Sore point, Mary. I started selling the albums — Nightshades, very moody cover — and then Doug Lackland, George’s elder son, he drops in one afternoon for a discreet word.’ Jon did the accent. ‘ “Now, we don’t want to underline that she’s livin’ here, do we, Jonathan?” CDs quietly disappear. Dougie bought the lot. No skin off my nose, but it’s not on, is it?’
They’d followed the rising stone wall to the walkway below the castle along which, Jon said, demure Edwardian ladies with parasols had once paraded. As distinct from a volatile Viking in a motorbike jacket and a scruffy little vicar in jeans, a well-worn fleece and tinted glasses.
‘See where that shelf of rock projects?’ he said now. ‘Back of Jemmie’s head hit that with some force, so that were a bit messy, you know, but her face wasn’t damaged. That’s what they say. It’s kind of a — what would you say? — an elemental way to go.’
‘People say you’re dead before you hit the ground,’ Merrily said dully. ‘Or maybe that’s when the parachute doesn’t open.’ She looked up. ‘It doesn’t seem far enough for that.’
