A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  She went back to the sitting room, still holding the cat, and replayed the tape she had recorded of the Old Hindwell story on the TV news.

  There was a shot of the church from across a river. The male voice-over commented, ‘The last religious service at Old Hindwell Parish Church took place more than thirty years ago. Tomorrow night, however, this church could be back in business.’

  Cut to a shot of a dreary-looking street, backing onto hills and forestry.

  ‘But the people of this remote village close to the border of England and Wales are far from happy. Because at tomorrow night’s service, the ancient walls will echo to a different liturgy.’

  Ancient black and white footage of naked witches around a fire, chanting, ‘Eko, eko, azarak...’

  ‘And to one local minister, this is the sound of Satan.’

  Talking head (Eirion had taught her the jargon) of a really ordinary-looking priest, except that he was wearing a monk’s habit. The caption read: ‘Father Nicholas Ellis, Rector’.

  This Nicholas Ellis then came out with all this bullshit about there being no such thing as white witchcraft. His voice was overlaid with pictures of candles burning in people’s windows – seriously weird – and then they cut back to Ellis saying, ‘It’s out of our hands. It’s in God’s hands now. We shall do whatever he wants of us.’

  Over shots of their farmhouse, the reporter said that Robin and Betty – Betty, Jesus, whoever heard of a witch called Betty? – were in hiding today, but ‘a member of their coven’ had confirmed that the witches’ sabbath would definitely be going ahead tomorrow at the church, to celebrate the coming of the Celtic spring.

  ‘The Diocese of Hereford says it broadly supports Father Ellis, but seems to be distancing itself from any extreme measures.’

  Then up came Mum: ‘Personally, I don’t care too much for witch-hunts.’

  On the whole, Jane felt deeply relieved.

  She called Eirion again. This time it rang, and she prepared to crawl.

  Eirion’s stepmother, Gwennan, answered – a voice to match the house, or maybe it just sounded that way because she answered in Welsh. Jane almost expected her to hang up in disgust when she found it was someone who could only speak English, but the woman was actually quite pleasant in the end.

  ‘He’s in his room, on the Internet. Seventeen years old and still playing with the Internet, how sad is that? Hold on, I’ll get him.’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry,’ Jane said when he came on. ‘I am so totally sorry. Everything I said... I’m brain-damaged. I make wrong connections. I don’t deserve to live.’

  ‘I agree, but forget that. Listen...’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Are you online yet?’

  ‘No, I keep telling you. Mum’s got the Internet at the office in Hereford. If there’s anything I need, I look it up there. Too much surfing damages your—’

  ‘I was going to give you a Web site to visit.’ Eirion sounded different, preoccupied, like something was really getting to him. ‘I’d like you to see it for yourself, then you’ll know I’m not making it up.’

  ‘Why would I think that?’

  ‘I mean, the Web... sometimes it’s like committing yourself into this great, massive asylum.’

  ‘Irene...?’

  ‘I was checking out pagan Web sites, trying to find out what I could about Ned Bain and these other people, OK?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m off school and I got fed up with walking the grounds contemplating the infinite.’

  ‘And where did it get you?’

  ‘To be really honest, into places I didn’t think existed. You start off on the pagan Web sites, which are fairly innocent, or at least they seem innocent afterwards, compared with the serious occult sites you get referred to. It’s like you’re into a weedingout process and after a while it’s kind of, only totally depraved screwballs need apply, you know? Like, you can learn, among other things, how to effectively curse someone.’

  ‘What’s the address for that one? Let me grab a pen.’

  ‘Jane,’ he sounded serious, ‘take my word for it, when you actually see it on the screen it suddenly becomes less amusing. It’s like getting into some ancient library, where all the corridors stink of mould and mildew. All these arcane symbols.’

  ‘Sounds like Dungeons and Dragons.’

  ‘Only for real. You start thinking, Shit, suppose I pick up some... I don’t know... virus. And periodically you get casually asked to tap in your e-mail address or your name and your home address... or maybe just the town. And sometimes you almost do it automatically and then you think, Christ, they’ll know where to find me...’

  ‘Wimp.’

  ‘No. Even if you put in a false name, they can trace you, and they can feed you viruses. So, anyway, I got deeper and deeper and eventually I reached a site called Kali Three.’

  ‘You mean, like...’

  ‘Like the Indian goddess of death and destruction. That Kali.’ Eirion paused. ‘And that was where I found her.’

  Found her? For some reason, Jane started thinking about Barbara Buckingham. A shadow crossed the room and she sat up, startled.

  It was Ethel. Only Ethel.

  Jane said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mum,’ Eirion said. ‘Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, UK.’

  ‘Wha—’

  ‘She came up on Kali Three pretty much immediately. There was a picture of her. Black and white – looked like a newspaper mugshot. And then inside there was kind of a potted biography. Date of birth. Details of the parish in Liverpool where she was curate. Date of her installation as priest-in-charge at Ledwardine, Herefordshire. Oh... and “daughter: Jane, date of birth...” ’

  ‘Picture?’ Jane said bravely.

  ‘No. But there’s a picture of your dad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Another black and white. Bit fuzzy, like a blow-up from a group picture. Sean Barrow. Date of birth. Date of... death. And the place. I mean the exact place, the flyover, the nearest junction. And the circumstances. All of what Gerry said at Livenight and more. It says “Sean and Merrily were estranged at the time, which explains why she afterwards retained the title Mrs but switched back to her maiden name.” It says that “She is”... hang on, the print goes a bit funny here... yeah, that “she is still vulnerable”... something... “the death of her husband. Without which she might have found it harder to enter the Church.” ’

  Jane exploded. ‘Who are these bastards?’

  ‘I don’t know. There are several names, but I don’t think they’re real names. I think it’d take you a long time to find out who they are – if you ever could. They could be really heavy-duty occultists or they could just be students. That’s the problem with the Net, you can’t trust anything on there. A lot of it’s lies.’

  ‘But... why? What kind of...?’

  ‘That’s what scares me. There’s a line at the bottom. It says, “The use of the word ‘Deliverance’ is the Church’s latest attempt to sanitize exorcism. Having a woman in the role, particularly one who is fairly young and attractive, is an attempt to mask what remains a regime of metaphysical oppression. This woman should be regarded as an enemy.’

  Jane felt herself going pale. ‘Mum?’

  ‘And there are all these curious symbols around the bottom, like runes or something – I’ve no idea what a rune looks like. But it – this is the worrying bit – it points out that “Anyone with an interest can see Merrily Watkins on the Livenight television programme”, and it gives the date, and it says that the programme will be coming live from a new Midlands studio complex, just off the M5. So that’s out of date now, but it must have been there before the programme took place, obviously. And it says that if anyone is interested in further information, they can get it from... and then there’s a sequence of numbers and squiggles which I can’t make any sense of, but I don’t think it’s another Web site, more like a code, so... Jane?’<
br />
  ‘Yeah.’ A whisper.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to hear it like this, because I could be making it up, couldn’t I? To support the stuff you were rubbishing this morning.’

  ‘Irene... what am I going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. What happened... happened to other people. It’s not even a good coincidence. I mean, who believes in any of this crap?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I do or not. And anyway, I’m just a fundamentalist Welsh Chapel bigot.’

  ‘Were there any other people mentioned on this Web site, apart from Mum?’

  ‘Probably. I didn’t look, to be honest. What if there’d turned out to be a whole bunch of names and biographies of people and they were all recently dead or...? Shit, that’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it? Preying on your mind?’

  ‘Like, suppose there was this big hex thing and people... all over the country... the world... were being invited to, like, tune in and focus on Mum, the enemy, to put her off. Because, we both know how rubbish she was on that programme. I mean, she was fine on TV tonight, wasn’t she? Kind of cool, almost. Suppose it wasn’t just nerves that night. Suppose there were hundreds – thousands – of people sending her hate vibes or something. And then they all started focusing on that piece of road, where Dad... It’s horrible!’

  ‘It’s also complete crap, Jane. We’re just stretching things to fit the facts. We’re playing right into their hands.’

  ‘Whose hands?’

  ‘Anybody who frequents the Web site – including, presumably, Ned Bain, if he was the one putting it round about your mum. That doesn’t mean he’s behind any of it. It just tells us where he got his information.’

  ‘It’s still creepy.’

  ‘It’s meant to be creepy.’

  ‘Can you tell when it was originally pasted on the site?’

  ‘Somebody else might be able to, but not me. For all I know, somebody could have pushed it out after the show, to make it look... I don’t know. It’s all crap, and it makes me mad.’

  ‘Irene, I’m going to have to tell her.’

  ‘I think you should. I’ll try and find out some more.’

  ‘You’re wonderful,’ Jane said. Whoops. ‘Er... how’s the whiplash?’

  ‘Well, it just kind of hurts when I look over my shoulder.’

  Jane instinctively looked over hers and shivered, and it wasn’t an exciting frisson kind of shiver. Not now.

  35

  This is History

  ‘A MARTYR?’ THE rain had eased. Merrily pushed back the dripping hood of her saturated, once-waxed jacket. ‘With his chest all splattered. Perhaps that was what he wanted.’

  When the police had gone in, she’d walked away from it all. Her first instinct had been to stay on Robin Thorogood’s side of the fence, maybe go and talk to him, but now the cops were doing that. Journalists and cameramen were together in another group by the gate at St Michael’s Farm, waiting for someone to emerge.

  Ellis had been driven away in a white Transit van, the cross and the torches packed away in the back. His followers watched the white van’s tail lights disappear along the end of the track, talking quietly in groups. There was an air of damp anticlimax.

  ‘For just one moment,’ Merrily said to Gomer, ‘I thought—’

  ‘Coppers thought that, too. Out o’ their car in a flash.’

  ‘It looked like blood.’

  ‘Shit does, in a bad light.’

  ‘It really was?’

  ‘Sheepshit, or dogshit more like, stuck on a bloody great lump o’ soil. He din’t smell too fragrant then. Likely the real reason he’s buggered off so quick.’

  ‘Whoever threw it... that wasn’t a great idea. Thorogood was winning their argument.’

  ‘Young kiddie, it was. ’E had it on the end of a spade. Seen him come up behind the boy in the T-shirt.’

  ‘Still look good in the press, though,’ Merrily said glumly. ‘On their pictures he will look like a martyr. I...’ She glanced over the gate to where two police were still talking to Thorogood.

  ‘Look out, vicar,’ Gomer murmured.

  Judith Prosser was heading over, without her Gareth. She wore a shiny new Barbour, a matching wide-brimmed hat.

  ‘They’ve found Barbara’s car, then, Mrs Watkins.’ She spotted Gomer. ‘Ah... I see you have your informant with you.’

  ‘’Ow’re you, Judy?’

  ‘Gomer. I heard your wife died. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Things ’appens,’ Gomer said gruffly. He shook his head, droplets spinning from his cap.

  Judith nodded. ‘So what about Barbara, Mrs Watkins? She down there, in Claerwen Reservoir, is it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know those reservoirs, Mrs Prosser. But I think if Barbara’s body was in there, they’d have found it by now. I reckon the answer to that mystery’s much more likely to be found here.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘You like a mystery, do you?’

  ‘How’s Marianne?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Mrs Starkey is quite well’ – wary now – ‘I assume.’

  ‘Those lustful demons can be difficult to extract.’

  The caution was suddenly discarded as Judith laughed. ‘Don’t you believe all you hear.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘All kinds of nonsense gets talked about, Mrs Watkins. Be silly for you to start passing on rumours, isn’t it? I certainly haven’t heard anything to upset me.’

  She smiled; she had good teeth.

  ‘In that case, you must have a strong constitution, Mrs Prosser,’ Merrily said.

  Left to himself, Robin would have kicked the kid’s ass.

  Hermes, nine years old, brother of Artemis, twelve, and of Ceres, six and a half.

  Max and Bella did not kick Hermes’s ass. They were not the ass-kicking kind. They would, presumably, explain to him later, in some detail, what effect having tossed shit at the Christian priest might have on him karmically.

  No hassle from the cops for Hermes, either. Soon as they found out this was a kid, and that they didn’t get to lean on a grown pagan, they didn’t hang around. Soon as the cops had gone, the media went off too, back to the Black Lion. None of them came to the house.

  Robin peeled off his sodden T-shirt, towelled himself dry, stood in front of the cheery fire with a bath towel around his shoulders.

  ‘They’ll be back tomorrow night,’ George said with a good lashing of relish, ‘when we’re in the church. And this time there’ll be hundreds of them. It’s going to get really, really interesting, man.’

  Robin said, ‘Did she call?’

  ‘Betty? Er, no.’

  ‘That car’s old, Robin,’ Vivvie said. ‘Maybe it’s just broken down.’

  ‘I listened to the weather forecast,’ George said. ‘The rain’s likely to have passed by morning. It’ll get colder, but tomorrow looks like being dry, so we’ll have all day to prepare the site.’

  Robin shivered under the towel. ‘You guys don’t get it, do you? This is not gonna happen without Betty. If Betty doesn’t come back... no Imbolc.’

  ‘You’re tired, man,’ George said.

  ‘She will come back,’ Vivvie promised with intensity. ‘She won’t want to miss this.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘Imbolc... the glimmering of spring. This really is the start of an era. This is history. Like Max was saying while you were outside, it’s going to be the biggest thing since the Reformation. But whereas that was just Henry VIII plundering the riches of the Catholic Church, this is about the disintegration and decay of pride and vanity... and the regrowth of something pure and organic in the ruins. This is so beautifully symbolic, I want to cry.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Robin said. ‘I’m starting not to give a shit.’

  ‘You don’t mean that. You did a terrific job tonight.’

  ‘I most likely looked a complete asshole. I just wasn’t gonna cringe in front of th
at creep in his monk’s robes, was all. I was gonna look as white as he was.’

  And maybe less pretentious. He wasn’t gonna go out there swinging a gold pentacle. He’d wanted to handle the confrontation with simple human dignity. Because what he’d really hoped for was that Betty would be out there watching – that she’d gotten home OK, but had been unable to come through the gate on account of the march, so was out there watching her tactless, thoughtless, irresponsible husband handling a difficult situation with some kind of basic human dignity.

  And then fucking Hermes had blown it all away.

  If you were looking for omens, you sure had one there. What kind of headlines were they gonna get tomorrow? ‘Witches Hurl Shit at Man of God’. The perfect follow-through to Robin looking like a freaking cannibal that last time.

  ‘Robin...’ The motherly Alexandra smiled a tentatively radiant candlelight smile at him across the room.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Robin, there’s a small car just come into the yard.’

  ‘Huh...?’

  He shot to the window, the bath towel dropping to the flags. He shaded his eyes with his cupped hands, up against the glass, hardly daring to hope that he’d see...

  A little white Subaru Justy.

  Oh God. Oh God. Robin sagged over the big, wide window sill, staring down between his hands and working on his breathing until he no longer felt faint with relief.

  He straightened up. ‘Look, would you mind all staying here? I have to do some explaining.’

  The Black Lion was packed, the air in the bar full of damp and steam, coming off journalists, TV people, even a few of the Christian marchers – all wet through, starved, in need of a stiff whisky. Greg was run off his feet. No sign of Marianne yet.

  Gomer fetched Merrily a single malt and one for himself. There was nowhere to sit except in a tight corner by the window next to the main door. Whenever the door opened, they had to lean to one side, but at least they weren’t overheard as Merrily told Gomer the plain truth about Marianne’s exorcism.

  Gomer didn’t blink. He weighed it up, nodding slowly. He laid out a row of beer mats on the table – and, with them, Merrily’s dilemma.