A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  ‘All local stone,’ Judith said proudly. ‘From the quarry.’

  ‘Got that done quickly, didn’t he?’

  Judith closed the oak door, so their voices were sharpened by the walls of the mausoleum, which were solid concrete, inches thick. The chamber was about twenty feet square, nothing in it but the tomb, and the two of them, and dead Menna.

  Judith said, ‘Mal Walters, the monumental mason, is a long-established client of J.W. Mal worked through the night.’

  ‘Right.’

  Judith Prosser stood by the head of the tomb, disquietingly priest-like in her tubular black quilted coat – not quite cassock-length, but close. Her short, strong hair had been bleached, her pewter-coloured earrings were thin, metal pyramids. She was waiting, behind the shade of a sardonic smile.

  ‘I thought...’ Merrily put down the airline bag she’d brought from the car. The junior exorcist’s starter kit. ‘I thought I’d keep it simple.’

  But should she even be doing it here, rather than in that big room behind the bay window, where the ‘baptism’ had taken place?

  Yes, she should. She didn’t want the complication of having to try to restore peace to a room where the atmosphere had apparently been ravaged by another priest. Also, she had been asked by Menna’s next of kin to calm the spirit. No one had invited her to deal with that room, least of all Weal. She didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to enter his actual house in his absence. She really needed guidance. If she’d predicted this situation might develop, she’d have rung her spiritual adviser, Huw Owen, in advance. But there’d been no time for that.

  Judith moved to a double switch on the wall, and the lantern at the head of the tomb went out, leaving Menna’s concrete cell softly lit, like a drawing room.

  ‘Are you a Christian, Mrs Prosser?’

  ‘That’s a funny question.’

  ‘I know you go to church. I know you support Father Ellis. I don’t really know what you believe.’

  ‘Nor will you ever,’ Judith said tartly. ‘What’s your point? What are you getting at?’

  ‘Do you believe in the unquiet dead?’

  Judith Prosser regarded Merrily across the tomb, her eyes half closed. ‘The dead are always quiet, Mrs Watkins. The dead are dead, and only the weak-minded are afraid of them. They cannot touch us. Nor, I assume...’ She laid a forefinger gently on Menna’s small inscription, ‘... can we touch them.’

  ‘Meaning Mr Weal.’

  ‘Mr Weal’s a tragic figure, isn’t it? He wanted what he thought Menna was. He liked it that she was quiet. He liked it that she was polite to her father and did not go with boys. A real, three-dimensional woman was far too complicated for J.W. He wanted, I suppose, a shadow of a woman.’

  Oh my God.

  Merrily said, ‘You have to tell me this. If not you yourself, then has anyone else seen the... spirit of Menna Weal?’

  Judith made a scornful pfft noise. She half turned and began to unbutton her coat. ‘Anyway...’ Sweeping the coat back to place her hands on her hips, turning to face Merrily. ‘Time is getting on. What do you propose to do here, my girl?’

  ‘Well... I’m going to say some prayers. What I really should be doing – I mean to be halfway sure of this – is holding a Requiem Eucharist. And for that there really ought to be a few of us. Like I said this morning, it would be better if we’d had Mr Weal with us. I mean with us.’

  ‘And as I said, that would be imposs—’

  ‘Or even Barbara. If Barbara were here, it—’

  Merrily heard her own words rebound from the concrete walls. She lurched away from the tomb, as if it were mined.

  Such a vast tomb for one small body.

  Judith looked mildly curious. ‘Someone walk over your grave, Mrs Watkins?’

  Merrily knew she’d gone pale. ‘Judith...?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘We’re quite alone, almost.’

  Merrily swallowed. The scarf felt tight around her throat.

  ‘What do you think J.W. Weal would have done if he’d discovered that Barbara Buckingham had found out about Father Ellis’s exorcism of Menna, performed at his behest?’

  Judith’s eyes were not laughing. ‘What on earth am I supposed to say to that?’ She stepped back.

  Now they were both looking at the tomb.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Judith said.

  Merrily said nothing.

  ‘You mean, after he dumped the car in the Claerwen Reservoir, what, precisely, did he do with the body?’

  Merrily said nothing.

  ‘Does Barbara perhaps lie below her poor sister? Were her remains, in those fine English clothes, already set in concrete when Menna’s coffin was laid to... unrest?’

  Merrily bit her lip.

  ‘Come on, woman! Is that what you meant?’

  ‘It looks very deep,’ Merrily said. ‘And... as you said, the monumental mason worked all night.’

  ‘All right!’ Judith’s voice rang with challenge. ‘Then let’s find out, shall we?’

  Merrily found she’d backed against the door.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Watkins, did you think poor J.W. could bring himself to say such a final farewell to his beloved? What other reason would a man like him have for going to all this trouble?’ She pointed.

  From back here, Merrily didn’t even have to bend down to see that the tomb’s handsome oakwood lid was hinged.

  ‘It’s very heavy, all the same,’ Judith said. ‘You may have to help me.’

  Merrily remembered, when she was a little kid, being towed along by her mother to make the arrangements for her gran’s funeral, and how the undertaker’s inner door had been left open. Merrily’s mother thinking she was too young to understand. But not too young to absorb the smell of formaldehyde from the embalming room.

  She’d been four years old, the formaldehyde alternating with the equally piercing tang of furniture polish, making her afraid to go to sleep that night, and she didn’t know why. There was only this grim, opaque fear, the sense of a deep, unpleasant mystery.

  Which returned when Judith threw back the solid oak lid of the tomb. Judith hadn’t needed help with it after all. She looked down into the tomb and smiled.

  The dead are always quiet, Mrs Watkins. The dead are dead, and only the weak-minded are afraid of them.

  But Merrily who, since ordination, had seen any number of laid-out bodies was afraid. The same grim opaque fear, and she didn’t know why.

  What would be the point, anyway? Judith had only done this for effect, to put herself in control from the start. And if the body of Barbara Buckingham was in there too, it would be in the base, set in concrete, never to be discovered, certainly not in J.W. Weal’s lifetime.

  Menna, though – Menna was readily accessible. It was clear that Judith was not now looking down on merely a coffin lid.

  ‘Close it, please,’ Merrily said.

  ‘How do you know it isn’t Barbara? Come on, see for yourself.’

  ‘This is intrusion,’ Merrily said.

  ‘It was always intrusion, Mrs Watkins.’

  ‘Then close the lid and I’ll say some prayers and we’ll go.’

  ‘If I close the lid,’ Judith said, ‘she won’t be able to hear you, will she?’

  The whole mausoleum stank of embalming fluid. Merrily needed air, a fortifying cigarette. She went back to the door.

  ‘Don’t open it, you silly girl. The light!’ Judith let go of the lid and it hung for a moment and then fell against the stone side of the tomb with a shuddering crash, leaving the interior fully exposed. The single lantern, over the foot of the tomb, swung slightly, and Merrily saw a quiver of parchment-coloured lace from inside.

  ‘Come over yere, Mrs Watkins,’ Judith said.

  ‘This is wrong.’ Merrily’s hand went to the centre of her breast where, under her coat, under her jumper, the pectoral cross lay. Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me...

  ‘Come and see how peaceful she looks. It’ll
make you feel better. Then we’ll say goodnight to her. Come yere.’

  ... Christ before me. Merrily walked into the centre of the mausoleum. If necessary, she’d close the lid herself.

  ‘You silly girl.’ Judith reached out suddenly and grabbed her by the arm, pulled her close. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’ll look after you.’

  I don’t think so. As the formaldehyde seared the back of Merrily’s throat, the lantern swung again at the sudden movement and shot spears of light and shadow from Menna’s swaddled feet to Menna’s exposed face.

  See how peaceful she looks.

  No.

  That night in the hospital, with the freshly applied water on her brow, Menna had appeared simply and calmly dead. The body hadn’t, from a distance, seemed much different during her funeral. Now, embalmed, only days later, her face was pinched and rigid, her mouth downturned, lips slightly parted to reveal the teeth... and that particularly, Merrily thought in revulsion, was surely not the work of the embalmer.

  She recoiled slightly. Judith’s arm was around her, gently squeezing.

  ‘Thank you,’ Merrily said. ‘Now I know it isn’t Barbara.’

  ‘You’re trembling.’ Merrily felt Judith’s breath on her face.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said mildly.

  Things you oughta know, Marianne had said. And earlier: That Judy. She took you outside, din’t she? I was glad when she did that.

  ‘It’s been hard for you, Merrily, hasn’t it?’ Judith said, quite tenderly. ‘All the pressures. All the things you didn’t understand.’

  ‘I’m getting there.’ Marianne had been in shock. Marianne needed help. Marianne, who sometimes preyed on men, had herself become vulnerable, pitiable, accessible.

  ‘Yes, I believe you are,’ Judith said tonelessly.

  52

  Beast is Come

  JANE WATCHED, EATEN up with dread, as the multitude assembled where two lanes in the village converged. The uniformed chief inspector in charge tried to organize some kind of roll-call, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Only two people known to be missing, and one of them was Mum.

  Once the fire brigade was in – four machines, two Welsh, two English – the police had sealed off Old Hindwell. Firefighters with breathing apparatus tried to get into the village hall but were eventually ordered out for their own safety. Jane was there when the order was given, and that was when she began to sob.

  When – soon after the brigade got there – the porch’s wooden roof had collapsed, lighting up the night and several Sitka spruce, many people fell down on their knees and prayed to the violent, orange sky. Jane was frantic and clung to Eirion, by the side of the police Transit in the filthy, choking air. She didn’t remember when Eirion had appeared, or where he’d appeared from. Sophie was here too, now, and many local people had come out of their homes.

  And Gomer... Gomer was a deeply reluctant hero. The media kept wanting to talk to him. They wanted to hear him describe how he’d spotted the flames and gone round to the rear entrance and opened it up and guided 350 Christians to safety. Gomer kept saying, ‘Later, boys, all right?’ But later he was muttering, Bugger off, as the firefighters went on blasting thousands of gallons into the roaring hall.

  And still they hadn’t found Mum.

  Jane, by now hyperactive with fear, had dragged Eirion into the middle of the milling people, and she kept shouting through her tears, ‘Small, dark woman in a tatty duffel coat, anybody? Anybody!’

  But nobody had seen her. Nobody.

  Though a number elected to pray for her.

  Not nearly as many, however, as were praying for Father Ellis, last seen, apparently, stepping from the stage to sing with the crowd. Nobody, at that time, had been aware of the fire in the porch because of the fire doors, and nobody had heard it because of the glorious exultation of the Holy Spirit amplified through their hearts and lungs.

  Nobody had known a thing, in fact, until a skinny little man with wild white hair and thick glasses had appeared at the bottom of the hall and had begun bawling at them to bloody well shut up and follow him. By then the fire doors were surrounded by flame and the air was turning brown and the tongues were torn with coughing.

  Now Jane’s arms were gripped firmly. Sophie said incisively into her ear, ‘Jane, she is not in there, do you understand? She cannot possibly be in there.’ Jane opened her mouth to protest and took in a wad of smoke, and was bent double with the coughing, and heard a man shouting in rage.

  ‘They’ve found a petrol can!’

  Obvious what this meant. Jane straightened up, eyes streaming.

  A senior-looking policeman was saying, ‘We don’t know anything yet, so don’t anybody go jumping to conclusions.’ But he was wasting his breath, because everybody knew what the petrol can meant.

  And then, suddenly, the white monk was there.

  He was just suddenly there, about thirty yards away from the crowd, up against the schoolyard wall.

  Jane’s feeling was that he’d been sitting quietly in one of the cars or something, staying well out of it, and had come out casually when everyone’s attention was diverted by the sound of the porch crashing down or something. Two women in their thirties noticed him first, and it was like Mary Magdalene and the other woman finding an empty tomb and then turning around and there He was. They ran towards him, shouting, ‘Thank God, thank God, thank God.’

  And it just kind of escalated like that. Jane saw all these people falling down on their knees at his feet and all shouting, ‘Praise God,’ and, ‘Thank you, God,’ and some of them even looked like local people. Jane heard a tut of disdain from Sophie, and, for the first time, felt something approaching genuine affection for the cool cathedral woman in the wreckage of her camel coat.

  There wasn’t a mark on the white monk.

  ‘Please,’ he was saying, ‘don’t you worry about me. I’m fine.’ He bent to one of the women. ‘Stand up, please.’ He raised her up and hugged her and then he walked away from the wall. And his arms were raised, palms towards the crowd, fingers splayed. ‘Stand up, everyone –

  ‘Stand up and smell the foetid stench of Satan!’

  There was this shattering hush.

  ‘Feel the heat of the dragon’s breath!’

  A woman moaned.

  ‘And know that the beast is come!’

  ‘It was you?’ In the dingy parlour-turned-temple, Robin stared at Ned Bain; Bain didn’t look at Robin. ‘You had the estate agents send us the stuff?’

  ‘Not... directly.’ For the first time, the guy was showing some discomfort. ‘We put out feelers through the Pagan Federation to see if anyone might be interested.’

  ‘We?’ Betty said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But, like, how come you didn’t just buy this place yourself?’ Robin was still only half getting this.

  ‘And reveal himself to Ellis?’ Betty said. ‘Before he could get his plans in hand?’

  ‘Coulda bought it through a third party.’

  ‘He has,’ Betty said acidly.

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite fair,’ said Max. ‘There was hardly time for plans – except, perhaps, in spheres beyond our own. I’m inclined to believe this came about as a spontaneous response to what one might call serendipitous circumstance.’

  ‘Max.’ Betty was laying on that heavy patience Robin knew too well. ‘Do you think, for one minute, that we’d all be here today, trying to pull something together at the eleventh hour, if Vivvie hadn’t crassly shot her mouth off on a piece of late-night trash television and alerted Ellis to what he immediately perceived as the Devil on his doorstep? No, Ned would have waited for Beltane, Lammas, Samhain... and got it all nicely set up for maximum impact.’

  Max started to speak, then his beard knitted back together.

  George was up now – squat, stubbly George, partner of Vivvie.

  ‘Look, people, I think... that however this all came about, we’ve got to put it behind us for tonight. If we allow it to destroy th
is seminal sabbat, under the spotlight of the entire pagan world, we are going to regret it for the rest of our lives, man. I agree that maybe Ned’s not been as up-front as he might’ve been. I know we could start to accuse him of only setting this thing up to have this Ellis man go down in history totally humiliated, as the priest who lost his church to the Old Religion, but...’

  ‘It’s more than that,’ Betty said. ‘For a start, he set us up. And in a place which none of us—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Betty. We cannot let personal issues fuck up a seminal event. We have to hold the sabbat, we have to reconsecrate this church in the names of Mannon and Brigid and...’

  George stopped. Betty had stood up. In this damp, chilly room she was a heat source: the only one here who didn’t look kind of tawdry. She looked like a goddess.

  ‘Ask him what he’s waiting for,’ she demanded.

  ‘Please...’ George wilted back. ‘Just leave it.’

  Ned Bain didn’t move.

  ‘He’s waiting for his stepbrother,’ Betty said. ‘He’s waiting for the hymns to start up, only louder. He’s waiting for his stepbrother to lead the enemy to the gate.’

  ‘But, Betty, we need that tension,’ George said. ‘That’s what this is about – the changeover. In the dawn of the year, the dawn of a millennium, a pretender is banished.’

  ‘Christ, you mean?’

  ‘If you like. I prefer to think in terms of the warlike Michael. I’ve got nothing against Christ, but he was, at best, an irrelevance. Yeah, Christ, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like,’ Betty said. ‘We’re an alternative. We’re not the opposition. I mean, he might be – he and Ellis both. Whatever else they are, whatever they claim to represent, it’s completely soured by what lies between them. I don’t want that. I don’t want to go into that old, fouled place on the back of twenty-five years of pent-up hatred. I suggest everybody gets changed and leaves now.’