The Prayer of the Night Shepherd mw-6

by Phil Rickman

  Ben gripped the wheel. ‘I’ve remarried, in case you failed to notice. I have Amber to consider.’

  ‘Aye, and that—’

  The wind made a grab at Antony Largo’s voice and the folded fabric of the car’s roof flapped violently behind Jane. She sank down in the little seat to hear the rest of the stuff he presumably hadn’t felt able to say inside the hotel.

  ‘—An artist and turned her into a skivvy. You had to prove you didn’t need any of us: “I’m gonnae show these bastards, I’m getting out of London and create a wee paradise and get m’self fit and youthful again and make them all as sick as pigs.” How naive is that? Truth of it is, you do need us, you arsehole.’

  Ben hung grimly on to the wheel, slowing the car, breathing in deeply, swallowing something. ‘The building on your left,’ he said finally, through his teeth, ‘is Hergest Court.’

  Disappointing.

  Like, it should have been bigger. Must have been bigger once, seeing it was built on a motte, an obvious castle mound above unkempt grounds and what might have been an old pond, even a moat. It was about fifty yards back from the road, part stone, part timbered. The stone end had a sloping roof, the timbered end just stopped.

  ‘Like it’s been sawn off,’ Jane said.

  ‘This is only a fragment of what it used to be.’ Ben had reversed into a track of hard mud and turned the car to face the house.

  It looked stark, the way buildings with timber framing rarely did. There ought to be wooded hills rising behind it, but there were only the cold fields and the waxy sky. On the sawn-off side were sporadic trees — a gloomy yew, a bent pine — and then some industrial-looking farm buildings.

  ‘Rather forlorn now, I admit,’ Ben said. ‘Been let out in recent years by the owners. Lived in usually by tenant farmers, and it was even a rural art gallery for a while. You can tell by the mound it’s built on that it used to be fortified, way back.’

  ‘How far back?’ Jane asked, interested now — more so than if it had been tarted up inside some mock-Elizabethan knot-garden.

  ‘Well, thirteenth century at least. That’s recorded.’

  ‘It’s no’ my idea of Baskerville Hall,’ Antony Largo said.

  Ben switched off the engine, and the atmosphere between him and Largo seemed to tauten, like some invisible sheet of cellophane dividing the front seats. Jane hunched into a corner of the back seat and kept her hands in the pockets of her fleece. No other vehicle had passed since they’d arrived. No smoke was coming out of any of the three visible chimneys of Hergest Court.

  ‘By the fifteenth century, it had become the house of the Vaughans,’ Ben said. ‘The most important family in the history of Kington.’

  Antony stretched his legs. ‘And they’re your prototype Baskervilles?’

  ‘There is a long-established Baskerville family in the area, which accounts for the name. But the Vaughans have the history. The central figure is Thomas Vaughan, who switched from the Lancastrian side to the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses. Killed at the Battle of Banbury in 1469. He was known as Black Vaughan.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Antony said.

  Ben frowned. ‘Because of his black hair, apparently. To distinguish him from his brother who had red hair.’

  ‘Maybe you could just not mention that.’

  Jane said quickly, ‘It was Hugo Baskerville in the book, wasn’t it? The guy who was supposed to have brought down the curse on the family?’

  ‘A wild, profane and godless man, according to Conan Doyle’s Baskerville manuscript.’ Ben turned around to face her. ‘Conan Doyle brings his legend forward almost exactly two centuries, to the time of the Great Rebellion — the English Civil War. So both the historical background and Doyle’s created one feature civil wars which tore the country apart. Doyle puts Hugo in the seventeenth rather than the fifteenth century. It’s exactly how an author would muddy the waters.’

  ‘And there was a girl, wasn’t there?’ Jane said.

  ‘A neighbouring yeoman’s daughter whom Hugo fancies and abducts. He drags her back to Baskerville Hall, but she escapes down the ivy from an upstairs room that night, while he and his cronies are getting pissed — the inference being that, hearing their ribald laughter, she suspects that they’re all going to come up and gang-rape her. When Hugo finds that she’s gone, his night’s pleasure denied him, he offers himself, body and soul, to the Powers of Darkness if he can be allowed to catch up with her again. Then he mounts his horse, orders the hunting pack to be unleashed and rides off furiously across the moor, with his hounds, to hunt her down.’

  ‘Across the moor,’ Antony looked around. ‘Do I see a moor?’

  Ben frowned. ‘For which, if we were shooting the scene, we might substitute Hergest Ridge. Which begins’ — he jerked a thumb at where the land rose steeply behind the car — ‘just there. It’s wild, it has its curious features. And Stanner Rocks are surely as brooding as any Dartmoor tor.’

  Antony smiled.

  ‘What happened to the girl?’ Jane asked. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Hugo’s companions go chasing after him,’ Ben said. ‘They’re scared of what he’ll do if he catches up with her. They encounter a night shepherd on the moor who’s in such a state of terror that he can hardly speak. He tells them he’s seen the hounds pursuing the hapless maiden, followed by Hugo on his black mare. And then, silently following Hugo, the worst thing of all.’

  ‘Another hound.’ Antony Largo laid on this melodramatically spooky Scottish voice, like Private Fraser in those old Dad’s Army episodes. ‘Only bigger… and meaner.’

  ‘They eventually find the girl in a clearing, dead of fatigue or fear,’ Ben said. ‘And then they find Hugo. And, standing over him, a great black beast, bigger than any hound—’

  ‘—Ever seen by mortal eyes,’ Antony Largo said.

  Ben finally turned to him. ‘You’ve actually read it, then, Antony.’

  ‘Of course I’ve read it, you tosser, I’m a pro. I do my prep — even for this sh— So, here’s your beastie plucking at Hugo’s throat, and then it finally rips it all away.’ Antony clenched his teeth and growled until his own laughter began to choke him. ‘And it turns on these guys, with its jaws all dripping with blood and flesh and its eyes on fire. And they all shit themselves on the spot and leg it. End of legend.’

  Ben didn’t laugh. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Yeah, OK. From then on, if the Hound is heard howling in the night or seen prowling the precincts, then it’s no’ what you’d call a fortunate omen for the Baskervilles.’

  ‘It means death,’ Ben said.

  ‘We know that,’ Jane said. ‘But, like, how closely does that match the story of this Black Vaughan?’

  Ben didn’t reply. He put his shoulder against the driver’s door, crunched it open and stepped out onto the edge of the road.

  ‘Obviously, not that closely at all,’ Antony murmured.

  Ben leaned against the car. ‘There are actually local people who won’t come down here at night. Don’t smile, Antony, this isn’t the city, this isn’t even the soft country. Vaughan was associated with a black hound, which some sources suggested was in some way satanic. Now, although the spectral black dog is a familiar motif in British folklore, the death connection is less common. But I can tell you that there are still some local people who just won’t come this way for fear of meeting it on the road. I have that on good authority.’

  ‘Say that on camera, will they, pal?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  Jane glanced across at Hergest Court. Nothing was moving. ‘Have people seen something?’

  ‘It’s odd,’ Ben said. ‘You talk to people in town and they’ll say, “Oh, old so-and-so’s seen the Hound, he’ll tell you about it. And then, when you find old so-and-so, he looks blank, never even heard of it. Which is extremely unconvincing and, in my view, the denials prove the fact of it. As I understand it, what’s been seen is a big black dog that disappears into walls, solid th
ings. And there are other related phenomena that I’ll explain about later.’

  ‘But in the book it was a fiery hound,’ Jane said. ‘Which turns out to have been phosphorous paint. Like, when the Hound starts appearing again in modern times — like, Victorian times — it turns out to have been an actual dog that was starved, therefore given a good reason to howl in the night. And painted with luminous paint.’

  Ben nodded. ‘In the novel, the fiery hound is a scam.’

  ‘And in the end Sherlock Holmes just shoots it,’ Jane said. And it was all coming back now. ‘Why did he have to do that? The poor dog’s already been deliberately starved for weeks. I hated him for that.’ She was aware of both men looking at her with curiosity. ‘OK, I was young. I didn’t realize he needed a dramatic finale. I was just sorry for the dog, and that’s all I remembered. And that’s… that’s why I’ve always hated the book. Sorry.’

  A Land Rover Discovery came around the bend quite fast, tyres skidding in a patch of icy mud, and Ben slid quickly back into the MG. ‘Jane actually makes an important point there. Why did Doyle give his novel such a prosaic ending? A real dog and a pot of phosphorous paint?’

  ‘It was a Sherlock Holmes story,’ Antony reminded him. ‘Sherlock Holmes disnae believe in ghosties.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ben hissed, ‘but Doyle did! This is the whole point: a medical man, a scientist… but, for the last twenty years of his life, also a spiritualist! The most famous proponent of spiritism on the planet! The guy was beyond fanatical — tours of Britain and the States, promoting what he considered to be the absolutely proven scientific fact of life after death. In fact, towards the end, Antony’ — Ben put his face to within six inches of Largo’s — ‘Doyle lived for bloody ghosties.’

  Then something caught his eye and he straightened up, looking away, down the lane to where the Discovery had stopped to let two men out.

  ‘Ah,’ Ben said.

  The two men both wore army-type camouflage jackets and baseball caps. One of them pulled open the back door of the vehicle, reached inside and then handed the other something that Jane thought at first was a spade.

  ‘Them,’ Ben said.

  The rear door was slammed shut, and the Discovery moved on, leaving the two men standing in the road. They started walking up the lane towards the MG, heads down like they hadn’t noticed it was there.

  Jane thought, Oh Christ.

  Two men, one shotgun.

  ‘How very opportune,’ Ben said through his teeth. He stepped out into the road.

  Antony Largo raised an amused eyebrow, half-turning and leaning back against the passenger door for a better view. Did he know the history to this? Probably not.

  ‘You know, one thing I’ve always admired about Ben,’ Antony said, ‘is his ability to move into a new situation and form instant and lasting friendships.’

  He folded his arms, waiting to be entertained. Jane looked at Ben, already all worked-up and dismayed because he was fighting for his and Amber’s life, and everything he’d thrown at Antony had been deflected — Antony in his professional body armour and Ben bare-knuckled.

  ‘I’m just so much in the right mood for these scum,’ Ben said. He moved into the middle of the lane and stood there with his legs planted apart, rocking slightly.

  7

  The Healing of the Dead

  It was one of those cottages with very small windows and so few of them that it needed lamps on all day in winter. Merrily counted seven of them, on tables and in nooks, all low-wattage, white-shaded and strung out like a chain of beacons so that you navigated through the house from lamp to lamp. There was a dreamlike feel to this.

  ‘One day, when I’m really old…’ Canon Jeavons was leading her down a cramped passage, like a tugboat on a canal; he was balancing coffee cups and milk and sugar on a tin tray, ‘there gonna be a nice, plain bungalow, with windows so wide you think you living on the lawn.’

  His voice was crisp and biscuity, like on high-quality FM radio. A cathedral voice, too big for a farmworker’s cottage that probably had not been much updated since the wattle first met the daub.

  He ducked through a doorway. ‘You must be the first person in a long, long time I’ve never had to warn to keep their head low till they sitting down.’

  They’d arrived in a room that needed no lamp. It had whitewashed brick walls, a square of white carpet and an uncurtained window, revealing a small, fenced garden, wide fields and a hoary, wooded hill. The room had a sloping ceiling, suggesting that it had begun as a lean-to. A black cast-iron flue pushed through the ceiling at a crooked angle, serving a glass-fronted, pot-bellied stove in which coals glowed agreeably. There was an earthenware coffeepot on the stove. Homely.

  ‘This place used to be for the family cow,’ Jeavons said, ‘or maybe the pig. Sometimes I see just one big pig snuffling around in here — raised like a member of the family, many tears shed at the parting of the ways. Sometimes I feel the presence of a single cow, but mainly the pig. What do you feel, Merrilee?’

  Unrolling her name like ribbon. His accent was a carnival — lazy Caribbean towed by old-fashioned, fruity English clerical. She couldn’t decide how much of it was laid on.

  ‘Cows are good,’ she said carefully. ‘And, er… pigs are even better.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Jeavons beamed. ‘Take a seat.’

  He scooped a huge grey and white cat from a fat lemon-yellow armchair and sank into it, transferring the cat to his knees. When Merrily took a matching chair on the other side of the stove, she found it was so overstuffed that her feet didn’t reach the floor.

  ‘Well now…’ Jeavons sat back, his chins on his chest. ‘Ms Deliverance. This is interesting indeed.’

  ‘It is?’ Merrily looked into the big, squash-nosed, grey-sheened face, wishing she knew more about his personal history. The established facts were that he’d been a canon attached to Worcester Cathedral; the legends told of a seeded tennis player cured of multiple sclerosis and a fire victim whose disfiguring facial scars had vanished within a week.

  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—?’