A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  Halfway down the steps, Merrily encountered Gomer coming up. There were now a lot of things she needed to ask him. But, behind his glasses, Gomer’s eyes were luridly alive.

  ‘It’s on, vicar.’

  ‘The march?’

  ‘Oh hell, aye. Tonight. No stoppin’ the bugger now. Somebody been over to St Michael’s, and they reckons Thorogood’s back. En’t on his own, neither.’

  Merrily felt dejected. All she wanted was to get home, do some hard thinking, ring the bishop to discuss the issue of internal ministry. She didn’t want to even have to look at Nicholas Ellis again tonight.

  ‘Bunch o’ cars and vans been arrivin’ at St Michael’s since ’bout half an hour ago. One of ’em had, like, a big badge on the back, ’cordin’ to Eleri Cobbold. Like a star in a circle?’

  ‘Pentagram,’ Merrily said dully.

  ‘Ar,’ said Gomer, ‘they figured it wasn’t the bloody RAC.’

  ‘How’s Ellis reacted?’

  ‘Oh, dead serious. Heavy, grim – for the cameras. Man called upon to do God’s holy work, kind o’ thing.’

  ‘Yeah, I can imagine. But underneath...’

  ‘Underneath – pardon me, vicar – like a dog with two dicks.’

  ‘I don’t need this,’ Merrily said.

  32

  Potion

  BETTY LEFT MRS Pottinger’s lodge in weak sunshine, wanting nothing more than to collapse in front of that cranky farmhouse stove and pour it all out to Robin.

  Except that Robin would go insane.

  She called for a quick salad at a supermarket cafe on the outskirts of Leominster. By the time she reached the Welsh border, it was approaching an early dusk and raining and, in her mind, she was back in the shop with Mrs Cobbold and the slender man with the pointed beard.

  Oh, good morning, Doctor.

  A sharp day, Eleri.

  Dr Coll.

  She needed to tell somebody about Dr Coll and the Hindwell Trust. She wished it could be Robin. Wished she could trust him not to go shooting his mouth off and have them facing legal action on top of everything else.

  The Hindwell Trust, Juliet Pottinger had explained, was a local charity originally started to assist local youngsters from hard-pressed farming families to go on to higher education. To become – for instance – doctors and lawyers, so that they might return and serve the local community.

  A local people’s charity.

  Juliet Pottinger had come to Old Hindwell because of her husband’s job. Stanley had been much older, an archaeologist with the Clwyd-Powys Trust, who had continued to work part-time after his official retirement. He was, in fact, one of the first people to suspect that the Radnor Basin had a prehistory as significant as anywhere in Wales. His part-time job became a full-time obsession. He was overworking. He collapsed.

  ‘Dr Collard Banks-Morgan was like a small, bearded, ministering angel,’ Mrs Pottinger had said wryly. ‘Whisked poor Stanley into the cottage hospital. Those were the days when anyone could occupy a bed for virtually as long as they wished. Stanley practically had to discharge himself in the end, to get back to his beloved excavation.’

  And while Stanley was trowelling away at his favoured site, a round barrow at Harpton, Dr Coll paid Mrs P. a discreet visit. He informed her, in absolute confidence, that he was more than a little worried about Stanley’s heart; that Stanley, not to dress up the situation, had just had a very lucky escape, and he could one day very easily push the enfeebled organ... just a little too far.

  ‘Oh, don’t tell him that. Good heavens, don’t have him carrying it around like an unexploded bomb!’ said Dr Coll jovially. ‘I shall keep tabs on him, myself.’ Chuckling, he added, ‘I believe I’m developing a latent interest in prehistory!’

  Dr Coll had been discretion itself, popping in for a regular chat – perhaps to ask Stanley the possible significance of some mound he could see from his surgery window or bring him photocopies of articles on Victorian excavations from the Radnorshire Transactions. And all the time, as he told Juliet with a wink, he was observing Stanley’s colour, his breathing, his general demeanour. Keeping tabs.

  She thought the man’s style was wonderful: perfect preventative medicine. How different from the city, where a GP could barely spare one the time of day.

  And Betty was rehearing Lizzie Wilshire: Dr Coll’s been marvellous... such a caring, caring man.

  Juliet Pottinger had said as much, without spelling anything out, to their most solicitous solicitor, Mr Weal, who was handling their purchase of a small strip of land – ‘for a quite ludicrous amount’ – from the Prosser brothers. How could she possibly repay Dr Coll’s kindness?

  Oh, well, said Mr Weal, when pressed, there was a certain local charity, to which Dr Coll was particularly attached. Oh, nothing now, he wouldn’t want that, he’d be most embarrassed. But something to bear in mind for the future perhaps? And please don’t tell Dr Coll that he’d mentioned this – he would hate to alienate a client.

  It was two years later, while they were on holiday in Scotland – a particularly hot summer – that Stanley, exhibiting symptoms of what might be sunstroke or something worse, was whisked off by his anxious wife to a local hospital. Where two doctors were unable to detect a heart problem of any kind.

  ‘Stanley died three and a half years ago of what, in the days before everything had to be explained, would have been simply termed old age,’ said Mrs Pottinger.

  ‘And did you ever take this misdiagnosis up with Dr Coll?’ Betty was imagining Juliet waking up in the night listening for his breathing, monitoring his diet, being nervous whenever he was driving. It must have been awfully worrying.

  ‘I took the coward’s way out, and persuaded Stanley to move somewhere else, a bit more convenient. I said I was finding the village too claustrophobic, which was true. By then I’d discovered that Dr Coll had... well, appeared to have created a... dependency among several of his patients, and all of them, as it happened, incomers to the area. People who might be feeling a little isolated there, and would be overjoyed to find such a friendly and concerned local GP.’

  ‘Making up illnesses for them, too?’

  ‘I don’t know. People don’t like to talk about certain things. People are only too happy to praise their local doctor, to boast about what a good and caring GP they have. Perhaps ours was an isolated case. Certainly, some of them did die quite soon. One rather lonely elderly couple, childless and reclusive, died’ – her voice faded – ‘within only months of each other.’

  ‘And did they by any chance leave money,’ Betty asked her, ‘to this...?’

  ‘The Hindwell Trust. Yes, I rather believe there was a substantial bequest.’

  ‘Did you never say anything?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Mrs Pottinger snapped. ‘Was I supposed to go to the police? I’d have been a laughing stock. I believe Dr Coll even helped out as a police surgeon for some years. Yes, I did, when we were about to leave the village, suggest to the Connellys, who’d bought a rather rundown smallholding... but... No, it was a waste of time. Dr Coll is a very popular man: he has five children, he hosts garden parties at his lovely home on the Evenjobb road. Even now, I don’t necessarily believe—’

  ‘What about the solicitor?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Weal and Dr Coll go right back. Fellow pupils at the Old Hindwell Primary School. In fact, Mr Weal administers the Hindwell Trust – and its trustees include Councillor Gareth Prosser. You see?’

  I see. Oh yes, I do see.

  Such a caring, caring man.

  Driving out of the hamlet of Kinnerton, Betty felt a rising panic, an inability to cope with this news on her own. The Radnor Valley was all around her, a green enigma. Abruptly, she turned into a lane which she already knew of because it led to the Four Stones.

  She stopped the car on the edge of a field beyond Hindwell Farm – Hindwell, not Old Hindwell. Different somehow – placid and open and almost lush in summer. She could see the stones through the hed
ge. She loved this place, this little circle. She and Robin must have been here ten or fifteen times already. It was still raining, but she got out of the car and climbed eagerly over the gate. It felt like coming home.

  The Four Stones were close to the hedge, not high but plump and rounded. Betty went down on her knees and put her arms around one and looked across the open countryside to the jagged middle-distant hillside where stood the sentinel church of Old Radnor. She hugged the stone, surrendering to the energies of the prehistoric landscape.

  This was the religion – and the Radnorshire – that she understood.

  The rain intensified, beating down on her out of a blackening sky. Betty didn’t care; she wished the rain would wash her into the stone. When she stood up, she was pretty well soaked, but she felt better, stronger.

  And angry. Bitterly angry at the corruption of this old and sacred place. Angry at the bloody local people, the level to which they appeared to have degenerated.

  She drove to the end of the lane and, instead of turning left towards Walton and Old Hindwell, headed right, towards New Radnor, against the rain.

  Even if the woman’s bungalow was strewn with copies of the Daily Mail, she would charm Lizzie Wilshire around to her side. She would ask her directly if the Hindwell Trust was mentioned in her will.

  ‘Above all,’ Max said, pouring himself a glass of red wine, ‘we can challenge them intellectually.’

  Max had this big, wildman beard. You could’ve lost him at a ZZ Top convention. But any suggestion of menace vanished as soon as he spoke, for Max had a voice like a one-note flute. He was a lecturer someplace; he liked to lecture.

  ‘St Michael equates with the Irish god Mannon, of the Tuatha de Danaan. Mannon was the sea god, and also the mediator between the gods and humankind and the conductor of souls into the Otherworld. In Coptic and cabbalistic texts, you will find these roles also attributed to Michael. Therefore, every “Saint” Michael church is, regardless of its origins, in essence a pagan Celtic temple. Which is why this reconsecration is absolutely valid.’

  Normally, even coming from Max, Robin would have found this amazing, total cosmic vindication. Right now he really couldn’t give a shit.

  Because it was close to dark now, and still Betty had not returned, had not even called.

  He walked tensely around the beamed living room, which they had taken over, stationing candles in the four corners, feeding gathered twigs to a feeble fire they’d gotten going in the inglenook where the witch-charm box had been stored. When George and Vivvie had come down, the first weekend, Betty had stopped them establishing a temple in this room. But now, in her absence, they’d gone right ahead.

  Altar to the north – some asshole had cleared one of the trestle tables in Robin’s studio and hauled it through. Now it held the candle, pentacle, chalice, wand, scourge, bell, sword.

  There had to be a power base, George said. There would be negative stuff coming at them now from all over the country. It was about protection, George explained, and Betty would understand that.

  If she was here. She’d never been away this long before, without at least calling him. Robin imagined the cops arriving, solemn and sympathetic and heavy with awful news of a fatal car crash in torrential rain.

  Never, for Robin, had a consecration meant less. Never had a temple seemed so bereft of holiness or atmosphere of any kind.

  ‘She’ll be back, Robin.’ A plump middle-aged lady called Alexandra had picked up on his anxiety. She’d been Betty’s college tutor, way back, had been present at their handfasting. Her big face was mellow and kind by candlelight. ‘If anything had happened to her, one of us would surely know.’

  ‘Sure,’ Robin said.

  ‘I just hope she’ll be happy we’ve come.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Robin said hoarsely. See, if she’d only called, he’d have been able to prepare her for this. He knew he should have held them off until he’d consulted with her. But when George had come through on the mobile, Robin had been already majorly stressed out, beleaguered, and it hadn’t immediately occurred to him that they would have to accommodate a number of these people in the farmhouse, with sleeping bags being unrolled in the kitchen, and more upstairs.

  And kids, too. Max and Bella’s kids: two daughters and a nine-year-old son called Hermes – Robin had already caught the little creep messing with his airbrushes. At least they weren’t gonna sleep in the house; the whole family were now camped in the big Winnebago out back. It had a pentagram in the rear window, the same place Christians these days liked to display a fish symbol.

  Robin went over to the window again, looking out vainly for small headlights.

  Sometimes suspicion pierced his anxiety. He wondered if this whole thing had been in some way planned. While George was into practicalities like dowsing and scrying, Vivvie was essentially political. For her, Robin sometimes thought, paganism might just as easily have been Marxism. And it was Vivvie who had accidentally, in the heat of the moment, let it out on TV. He never had entirely trusted Vivvie.

  And now they were looking at a serious showdown with some seriously fanatical fundamentalist Christians. Two of the Wiccans, Jonathan and Rosa, had been down to the village to take a look, and had seen a gathering of people around a man in white. Ellis? This confrontation, Max said, must not be allowed to get in the way of the great festival of light. But George had grinned. George loved trouble.

  ‘What is terrific about this,’ Max piped, waving his wineglass, ‘is that only two deities were directly filched from the Old Faith by Christianity. One was Michael, the other was the triple-goddess, Brigid, who became associated with Saint Brigid, the Abbess of Kildare – who was, in all probability, herself a pagan worshipping in an oak grove. So, as we know, Imbolc is the feast of Brigid, Christianized as Candlemas – the feast of Saint Brigid...’

  Max beamed through his beard in the candlelight. There was no particular need for him to go on; they all knew this stuff, but Max was Max and already a little smashed.

  ‘Therefore... it is absolutely fitting that this church should be reconsecrated on that sacred eve, in the names of both Mannon and Brigid, with a fire festival, which will burn away...’

  Jesus. Robin stared out of the window into the uninterrupted night. He wondered if Betty, once away from here, had decided never to come back.

  There was a green Range Rover parked in front of Lizzie Wilshire’s bungalow, so Betty had to leave the car further down the lane, under the outer ramparts of the New Radnor castle mound, and run through the rain. It didn’t matter now; this was the same rain that was still falling on the Four Stones.

  When she reached the Range Rover, the clear, rectangular sign propped in its windscreen made her stop. Made her turn and walk quickly back to her car.

  The sign said, DOCTOR ON CALL.

  She had to think. Was this a sign that she was supposed to go in there, tackle Dr Coll face to face?

  Betty sat in the driving seat, thankful for the streaming rain obscuring the windscreen and her face from any passers-by.

  She went over it all again in her head. Dr Coll, who was here. Mr Weal, the solicitor whose home was not so far from St Michael’s Farm and whose wife had recently died.

  So how did Mr Weal become your solicitor?

  He’s simply there. He becomes everyone’s solicitor sooner or later. He’s reliable, it’s an old family firm, and his charges are modest. He draw up wills virtually free of charge.

  I bet he does.

  I don’t suppose any of this will affect you at all. You’re too young: you’ll see both of them out. It probably wouldn’t have affected Major Wilshire, either. He was ex-regiment, a fit man with all his wits about him.

  Lizzie Wilshire: Bryan had a thing about the medical profession, refused to call a doctor unless in dire emergency. A great believer in natural medicine, was Bryan.

  All his wits about him.

  ... it was, unfortunately, entirely in character for Bryan to attempt such a job alone
. He thought he was invulnerable.

  A light tapping on the rain-streaming side window made Betty jump in her seat. She was nervous again, and the nerves had brought back the uncertainty. She could be getting completely carried away about this. She hurriedly wound down the window.

  ‘Mrs Thorogood?’

  Betty was unable to suppress a gasp.

  Raindrops glistened in the neat, pointed beard under his rugged, dependable face.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Wilshire wouldn’t want you hanging around out here in the rain. Why don’t you come into the house?’

  ‘I didn’t want to intrude,’ Betty said. ‘I was going to wait till you’d gone.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Dr Collard Banks-Morgan. ‘As much as anything, I’d very much like to talk to you about the herbal medicine you so generously prepared for Mrs Wilshire.’

  He held open the car door for her. He was wearing the same light-coloured tweed suit, a mustard-coloured tie. On his head was a tweed hat with fishing flies in it. He had an umbrella which he put up and held over her, guiding her briskly past his green Range Rover and up the path to the bungalow.

  For a moment, it was almost like an out-of-body experience – she’d experienced that twice, knew the sensations – and she was watching herself and Dr Coll entering the porch together. As though this was the natural conclusion to a sequence of events she’d set in motion when she’d decided she had to leave Robin at the mercy of the media and seek out Juliet Pottinger.

  She was now being led into a confrontation with Collard Banks-Morgan, in the presence of Mrs Wilshire. Bright panic flared, she was not ready! She didn’t know enough!

  But something evidently had taken over: fate, or something. Perhaps she was about to be given the proof she needed.

  Betty could hardly breathe.

  ‘Won’t be a jiff.’ Dr Coll stood in the doorway, shaking out his umbrella. ‘Go through if you like. Mrs Wilshire’s in the sitting room, as usual.’

  Betty nodded and went through. Though it was not yet three o’clock, the weather had made the room dark and gloomy, so that the usually feeble-looking flames in the bronze-enamelled oil stove were brazier-bright, making shadows rise around Mrs Wilshire, in her usual chair facing the fireplace. She didn’t turn when Betty came in.