A Crown of Lights (57 page)

‘Do you embrace Him?’

‘I... Yes... Yes.’

Around the high, white room, dark oak chairs with long pointed spines, standing like judge and jury.

‘Do you renounce the evil which corrupts that which God has created? And the sick and sinful, perverted desires which draw you away from the love of God?’

Menna beginning to cry again.

‘Say it!’

Her head going back. A sniff.

‘Say, “I so renounce them”!’

‘I s... so... renounce them.’

‘I can’t begin to know where Ellis derived that rite from,’ Merrily said. ‘Or if he made it up. But there’s an awfully long tradition of bodged religion around the Forest, isn’t there?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Judith Prosser said sulkily.

‘Like, what’s the good of religion if it isn’t
practical
? Whatever he did, it was nasty and unhealthy and yet... and yet somehow it worked, Judith. In some horrible, insidious way, it bloody well
worked
. And he has her now.’ Merrily felt she was drifting away on a formaldehyde fog, sailing so far from the land of normality that she was afraid of never getting back there. ‘Got her to himself. At least part of her. Part of
something
. Something half realized, fluttering after him like a crippled bird. It’s obscene.’

There was a slithering sound. Judith was shedding her long, black, quilted coat, like a snakeskin.

E
VEN
J
ANE COULD
see the police didn’t quite know how to handle this any more. A routine peacekeeping assignment had turned into a confusion of arson and murder. They’d taken over the doctor’s surgery as an incident room, for two separate investigations which might be totally unconnected.

Jane and Gomer were keeping well back from it all. They stood with Sophie and Eirion in the shadow of the rear entry to the pub yard. Gomer had a ciggy going, and looked more his old self. Jane, too, felt more in control since Sophie had taken her to the chief fire officer, and he’d confirmed that they’d now managed to get inside the hall and had found no bodies there.

But the police had a body: a body with no face, dug out of the mud. And now that the immediate fire crisis was over, this had become their priority again, and they wanted very much to talk to Gomer. Wanted to know why he’d been so sure that something was buried in the old archaeological site that he’d gone up there with a digger, at night. Sophie, her white hair in almost hag-like disarray, was trying to explain to him that all they wanted was a statement, to allay their suspicions.

Gomer didn’t want to know, though. It was a plant hire thing that would take too long to explain; Jane understood this. ‘It’s stupid. Why would Gomer have sent you to tell the police if
he
had something to do with it?’

Eirion said to Gomer, ‘I think what Mrs Hill’s trying to say is it would be better if
you
approached
them
, rather than have them come find you.’

‘Eirion, what can I tell ’em that’s gonner be any help?’ Gomer growled. ‘I’ll talk to the buggers tomorrow, ennit?’

And Jane realized that he was worrying about Mum.

She looked out of the entry to the street, where a sombre assembly had formed around two priests – or, at least, two men in dog collars. One of them was raising his hands as if holding up a huge rock he was about to smash down on something. Jane just knew that some crazy scenario was being manufactured around the village hall fire, involving not a furtive little green-haired plonker with a can of petrol and a grudge, but some great satanic panoply clanking through the night. They’d asked Father Ellis what he wanted them to do, but Ellis had said, cleverly, ‘I’m not your leader. Listen to your hearts and let the Holy Spirit move within you.’ And he had walked away, leaving bitter, apocalyptic stuff on the air amidst the hellfire fumes. He knew what they’d do. He just wasn’t going to be seen to instigate it.

Watching this, Gomer had nodded knowingly. ‘Truly a local man at last,’ he’d said – which Jane didn’t really understand.

Sophie appeared at her shoulder. ‘There’s one place we haven’t tried,’ Jane said.

‘The church, I suppose,’ Sophie said. ‘She had a loose arrangement with that young pagan woman, didn’t she? To do some sort of Deliverance work? You’re probably right. If you and Gomer want to go down there, Eirion and I will stay here, in case she shows up.’

Gomer nodded. He never liked to stand still for very long. ‘Thank you, Sophie,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve been—’

‘Shut up, Jane,’ Sophie said wearily. ‘Just go. And perhaps you could warn them over at the church’ – she nodded towards the assembly on the streets – ‘about
that
.’

Robin and Betty were holding one another in some kind of sweet desperation. Everything seemed lost: Robin’s work, the
house, their friends, their religion, their future here. Everything smashed in an act of sacrilege so gross it was worthy of a Christian. The candle chopped in half, the scourge handle snapped, the pentacle sent skimming like a frisbee into the wall. The chalice of red wine draining into the rug.

Finally the one-time studio table hauled from its trestles, flung onto its side. Max’s wife Bella screaming, Vivvie raging, calling down the vengeance of the gods, or some shit like that. This was before Ned Bain had come and stood, unflinching, in front of Robin, who still held the sword. Robin had felt like decapitating the bastard, but Ned Bain had remained impressively cool. That quiet power, even Robin felt it.

‘Before I leave,’ Bain said, ‘I want to make it clear that no one else here was involved, no one conspired. No one else deserves to suffer.’

And then he turned and gathered his robe and walked out without another word.

There’d been a long period of quiet then, broken only by some weeping. Betty leaned against a wall, drained. Vivvie had her head in her hands. Even Max had nothing to say. His kids hovered in the doorway, the fiendish Hermes looking satisfyingly scared. The pregnant witch, whose name Robin couldn’t recall, had left the room with her partner. Robin only hoped she was OK. He was starting to feel sick and cold. The twig-fire hissed. A thick piece of altar candle rolled into a corner.

Alexandra, who’d been sitting calmly, with the crown of lights on her knees to protect it, was the first to speak. ‘I think we should all leave Betty and Robin alone for a while.’

And so Robin and Betty, covenless, had rediscovered one another.
I take thee to my hand, my heart and my spirit at the setting of the sun and rising of the stars
. Robin started to weep again and buried his face in her hair. Clinging together in their stupid robes, in the wreckage of the altar.

They went hand in hand to the door, and looked out at Winnebagos, the barn and puddles. Robin watched the moon
in the puddles, icing over. You could almost get sentimental about those puddles. But not quite.

‘We should get outa here tomorrow. Go check into a hotel someplace. Think things over. I love you.’

Betty had her red ski jacket around her shoulders. ‘And I love you,’ she said. ‘But Robin, honey...’

Betty fell silent. He hated when Betty became silent.

‘OK, what?’ he said.

She held his hand to the centre of her breast, her emotional centre.

‘We can’t just leave it.’

‘Watch me,’ Robin said.

But his spirit took a dive. She’d already explained how she’d spent the night at a Christian priest’s house. A woman priest, who was also the county exorcist or some such, and knew a lot of stuff. He had the idea it had all come about through Betty’s meeting with Juliet Pottinger. A part of him still didn’t want to know about any of this.

He thought he could hear distant voices, beyond the trees. Like from a barbecue. Or maybe he just thought barbecue on account of the red glow in the sky. Perhaps a glimmering of Imbolc.

‘There’s a fire somewhere,’ Betty said. ‘Can’t you smell it? Didn’t you hear the sirens?’

‘I was maybe smashing things at the time. Coming on like the Reverend Penney.’

‘Let me tell you the truth about Penney,’ Betty said. ‘He had a bad time in Old Hindwell Church. I think he was basically a very good man, probably determined to make a success of his ministry. But I think there were some aspects of what he found here that he couldn’t handle. Began taking all kinds of drugs.’

‘Didn’t the Pottinger woman say, in her letter to the Major, she
didn’t
think he was doing drugs?’

‘She was wrong. He seems to have had a vision, or a hallucination... of a dragon... Satan... in the church. And he seems to have thought that by discontinuing active worship there, it would... make it go away.’

Nothing very new there. ‘But?’ Robin said.

‘But I
don’t
think what he experienced was anything to do with the Old Religion or the rise of the new paganism. I think he became aware of the dualistic nature of religion as it already existed in this area; that there
is
a paganism here, but it’s all mixed in with Christianity. A kind of residual medieval Christianity – when magic was very much a part of the whole thing. When prayer was seen as a tool to get things done. It’s practical. It suits the area. Marginal land. Hand to mouth.’

Robin thought of the witch box, the charm. Christian, but not entirely Christian. Those astrological symbols, and some of the words – using witchcraft against witchcraft.

‘There are five St Michael churches,’ Betty said. ‘A pentagram of churches, apparently to confine the dragon. But it’s an
inverted
pentagram, right?’

‘That... doesn’t sound good.’

‘Perhaps,’ Betty said, ‘it was accepted that, at some time, they might need to
invoke
the dragon. It’s border mentality. I met a bloke called Gomer Parry. Radnorshire born and bred. He’ll tell you this place took a lot of hammering from both the English and the Welsh and survived, he reckons, by knowing when to sit on the fence and which side to come down on.’

Robin took some time to absorb this. He could smell those bonfire fumes on the air now. It was, in some ways, a sharp and exciting smell carrying the essence of paganism.

He said, ‘You mean they’re... I don’t know this stuff, the Book of Revelation and all...’

‘Sitting on the fence while the war in heaven rages,’ Betty said. ‘Five little old churches in a depopulated area with a rock-bottom economy. No-man’s-land.’

‘No-god’s-land?’ Robin said, awed. ‘But, like... way back... way,
way
back... this place
was
something... the archaeology shows that.’

‘Maybe that accounts for its inner strength. I don’t know. We don’t know what we’re standing in front of. We don’t know the full nature of what lies the other side of that barn.’

‘Does Ellis?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Or Bain?’

‘Partly. Maybe.’

‘But Bain’s big thing was personal. That’s dark magic.
Low
magic.’

‘There are people round here who would understand it. It’s notorious for feuds lasting from generation to generation.’

Robin said, ‘I wonder, how did Ned Bain get the box from the Major? He buy it? Or just push the old guy off of his ladder and steal it?’

‘I don’t think he’d push the Major off the ladder. But I don’t think he’d have been averse to posting his name on the Kali Three Web site.’

‘What is that, anyway?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ Betty said.

‘Don’t wanna dump on my idyll, huh? There’s no idyll, babes. No more idyll. Where’s that leave us?’

‘Leaves us with eleven disappointed witches,’ Betty said. ‘And a contaminated church.’

Robin breathed in the distant smoke. ‘What do we do?’

‘I was expecting somebody. I thought she’d have come by now.’

‘The woman priest? The Christian priest?’

‘She’s also an exorcist.’

‘Excuse me,’ Robin said, ‘but didn’t we pass this way before?’

‘It would’ve been very wrong to let Ellis do it. You were right about that. From the start.’

‘Don’t try and get me on your side.’

‘OK.’

They looked out over the freezing puddles to the barn on the other side of which the Church of St Michael overhung the restless Hindwell Brook, probably the very same brook into which that guy’s son’s blood flowed from his hair, in the old Welsh poem Max had read out.

‘On account of you know you never need to,’ Robin said
eventually. ‘You know that whatever shit comes down, I am on your side. Do what you think is best.’

He felt like crying. He wished for subsidence, an earthquake. He wished the freaking church would fall into the freaking brook.

Presently, Alexandra stood on the edge of one of the puddles, her long, grey hair loose, a thick woollen shawl wrapped around her.

The emissary. The negotiator. The one they were most likely to talk to.

‘It has to be your decision,’ Alexandra told them.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Betty said.

‘Babes,’ Robin said gently, ‘it’s getting late. And the priest isn’t here. If she was ever gonna come at all.’

‘We don’t know what that place is really about.’ Betty looked out into the night, in the direction of the church. ‘We don’t know what rituals they were performing, what kind of magic they were trying to arouse or for what purpose. All those millennia ago.’

‘Bets,’ Robin said, pained, ‘the ancient powers locked into the land? The magic of the Old Ones? This is Blackmore shit.’

She looked at him, puzzled. She was probably thinking of him standing watching the water rushing below the church and ranting about the cool energy, him and George with their dowsing rods working out how many old, old bodies were under there, where the energy lines converged. She didn’t understand – as Robin now did – that to do his paintings, to be what he was, a true creative artist, he just had to
live
the legend. That was all. That was as deep as it went.

Alexandra said hesitantly, ‘May I make a suggestion?’

‘Please,’ said Robin.

‘We abandon all reconsecration plans. That’s been tainted now, anyway, because of Ned. And Ned’s gone, and we talked about that and we were all relieved, even George, because Ned’s... Ned’s a little bit dark.’