A Crown of Lights

by Phil Rickman

10

  Nightlife of Old Hindwell

  ROBIN HAD THE map spread out under a wine-bottle lamp on the kitchen table, after they’d finished supper.

  ‘Come take a look, Bets.’ Holding his thick, black drawing pencil the way he held his athame in a rite. ‘Whole bunch of churches around the Forest.’

  The lamplight sheened his dense, Dark Ages hair. Betty leaned over him. He smelled sweet and warm, like a puppy. She felt an unexpected stirring; he was so lovably uncomplicated.

  And so simplistic, sometimes, in his thinking. Why, since they’d arrived here, had any physical desire always been so swiftly soured by irritation? She gazed around the still-gloomy farmhouse kitchen. Why, with the stove on for over a week, was there still an aura of damp – always worse after sunset? She felt clammy and uncomfortable, as though she had the curse. If Robin had said, ‘Let’s give this place up, and leave now, tonight,’ she wouldn’t have hesitated.

  But since that mention of the E-word, his attitude had unsubtly altered. A couple of seconds of trepidation then the male thing was kicking in. Robin wanted to find out precisely where Ellis was coming from, then get in his face. It hadn’t been helped, Betty guessed, by Ellis wearing army gear. Combat gear? She was appalled to think that she might even once have shared Robin’s zeal. If only this had been someone else’s house, the home of a fellow pagan in need of moral support.

  If only she wasn’t already growing to hate their church too much to want to defend it.

  She’d tried to remember her reaction on first seeing it, and couldn’t. Probably because she was being practical at the time and paying more attention to the farmhouse, leaving Robin to moon over the ruins, take dozens of photographs.

  He’d now finished ringing churches on the Landranger map. Although it didn’t identify individual ones except by symbols, nearby place names sometimes would give a clue to the dedication. Betty could help him out there a little, from childhood knowledge of Welsh. She put a thumbnail to the southernmost symbol.

  ‘That one: the village is Llanfihangel nant Melan. Llanfihangel’s Welsh for “The Church of St Michael”.’

  ‘Cool.’ Robin drew an extra ring around the church and then tracked around the others with the tip of his pencil until he came to the northern part of the forest perimeter. ‘What’s this? Same word, right?’

  ‘Llanfihangel Rhydithon. That’s another, yeah. And then ours, of course. Three St Michael churches around the Forest. He was right, I suppose.’

  ‘Gotta be more. Three doesn’t make a circle.’

  With swift, firm pencil strokes, he redrew the plan on his sketch-pad. Graphics were important to Robin. Making a picture made things real.

  ‘Of course,’ Betty said, ‘there’s nothing to suggest all these churches were built at the same time. I vaguely remember going to Llanfihangel Rhydithon as a kid, and I don’t think it’s even medieval.’

  ‘It’s the site that counts. Come on, Bets, what are you, agnostic now? Look through Ellis’s eyes. Guy thinks he’s fighting an active Devil.’

  ‘Or, more specifically, in the absence of people actually sacrificing cockerels and abusing children on his doorstep – against us,’ Betty said bitterly.

  ‘I’m still not sure he knows. Ellis was fishing. Like, who could’ve told him? Who else knows, or could’ve seen anything? We didn’t even use removal men.’

  Betty said, ‘It scares me. I don’t want this.’

  ‘Aw, come on,’ he said. ‘You’re a witch. Hey, you know, damn near all these churches have just gotta be on older sites, when you see how close they are to standing stones and burial mounds.’ He leaned back in satisfaction. ‘This valley’s a damned prehistoric ritual freaking wonderland. Which explains everything.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘You got all these sacred sites, right? It’s a good bet most of them were still being used by surviving pagan groups well into medieval times, and probably long after that. This was a remote area with a small and scattered population. Closed in, secretive. I think it’s fair to assume that even when they’d been brutally eradicated from most of the rest of the country, the Old Ways were still preserved here.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘The Archangel Michael’s the hard guy of the Church. It’s them saying to the pagans, you bastards better come around, or else. Ellis, as a fundamentalist, relates to all of that. Plus, he’s been influenced by insane Bible Belt evangelists who persecute snakes. Plus, his ego’s already been blown up sky high by the size of congregations he’s pulling when all the neighbouring churches are going down the tubes. I’ve decided the guy sucks. The only remaining question is how long we keep stalling before we tell him that he and his exorcism squad can go screw themselves.’

  ‘I was going to say that if we don’t make an issue of it, if we let it go quiet, then he’ll probably forget about us,’ Betty said lamely.

  ‘Not gonna happen. Believe me, this guy’s on some kind of crusade under the banner of St Michael. Hey! Would that explain the army surplus stuff? Shit.’

  Robin smiled at his own flawed logic. Betty saw, with a plummeting heart, that he wanted to be a target of Christian fanaticism.

  ‘When we look at those ruins,’ he said, ‘we see a resurgence of the true, indigenous spirituality. Whereas he sees a naked tower giving him and his religion the finger. He so wants to be the guy who killed the dragon and claimed it all back. It’s an ego thing.’

  ‘You and him both.’

  The smile crashed. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘You have a few beers together, you size each other up, and now you’re both flexing your muscles for the big fight. You can’t wait, can you? You love it that he’s got this huge mass of followers and there’s just the two of us here, newcomers, isolated...’

  ‘Now listen, lady.’ Robin was on his feet, furious. ‘My instinct was to kick his ass, right from the off, but no... I play it the way I figure you would want me to! Mr Nice Guy, Mr Don’t Frighten The Horses... Mr Take A Faceful Of Shit And Keep Smiling kind of guy!’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You thought you could play with him, lead him around the houses, take the piss out of him a little... when in fact he was playing with you.’

  ‘You weren’t even there!’

  ‘And you’ve never given a thought to where this could leave us. We have to live here... Whatever happens, we have to live here afterwards. And we will have to live here, because – in case you haven’t thought about this – who is going to buy a rundown house along with a ruined church which the local minister insists is infested with demonic evil?’ She spun away from him.

  ‘You shithead.’

  Robin snatched in a breath that was halfway to a sob then threw his pencil down on the table. ‘I need some air.’

  ‘You certainly do!’

  He turned his back on her, strode across the kitchen like Lord bloody Madoc and tore open the back door. Before he slammed it behind him, she heard the rushing of the rain-swollen Hindwell Brook in the night, like a hiss of glee.

  Betty let her head fall into her hands on the tabletop.

  What have we done? What have we walked into?

  Robin stomped across the yard, hit the track toward the gate and the road. It was cold and the going wasn’t so easy in the dark, but he was damned if he was going back for a coat and flashlight.

  Why, why was whatever he said, whatever he did, whatever he tried to do, always the wrong fucking thing?

  Four years he and Betty had been together and, sure, they were different people, raised in different cultures. But they’d previously come through on shared beliefs, a strong respect for natural forces and each other’s destiny.

  And he’d thought the road to Old Hindwell was lit for them both.

  All the portents had been there, just as soon as they decided they would look for a place in the countryside where they might explore the roots of the old spirituality. They’d let it be known on the pagan network that they were looking for something rural and it didn
’t have to be luxurious. The Shrewsbury coven had worked a spell on their behalf and, before that week was out, they’d received – anonymously, but with a wellwisher’s symbol and the message ‘Thought you might be interested in this... Blessed Be!’ – the estate agent’s particulars of St Michael’s Farm. And – in the very same post – a letter from Al Delaney at Talisman to say that Kirk Blackmore was impressed with Robin’s work and would like him to design the new cover... with the possibility of a contract for the soon-to-be-rejacketed backlist of SEVEN VOLUMES!

  Even Betty had to agree, it was like writing in the sky.

  Robin joined the lane that led first past the Prosser farm and then on to the village. The farm was spread across the council roadway, like it owned it, sheds and barns on either side, mud from tractor wheels softening the surface of the road. A Land Rover was parked under an awning. It had a big yellow sticker in the back window, and even at night you could read ‘Christ is the Light!’ in luminous yellow. Robin gave a moan, stifled it. He hadn’t known about this. If Ellis denounced them, they’d have no support from their neighbours.

  When he got clear of the farm he surveyed the night. Ahead of him, the moon lay on its back over a long hill bristling with ranks of conifers – a hedgehog’s back, a dragon’s back. Robin held out his arms as if to embrace the hill, then let them fall uselessly to his sides and walked on down the middle of the narrow lane, with ditches to either side and banks topped by hedges so savagely pleached they were almost like hurdles. Gareth Prosser was clearly a farmer who liked to keep nature under his thumb. His farm, his land. Robin wondered how Prosser had reacted to the team of archaeologists who’d moved in and sheared the surface from one of his fields to uncover postholes revealing that, four thousand years ago, the farm had been a key site of ritual pagan worship. Maybe Prosser had gotten Ellis in to sanctify the site.

  Whatever, there was virtually nothing to see there now. Robin had sent off to the Council for British Archaeology for the report on the Radnor Valley dig. A couple of weeks ago, when he and Betty had driven down with a vanload of books, he’d checked out the site but found just a few humps and patches where the soil had been put back and reseeded. The team had taken away their finds – the flint arrowheads and axes – and hundreds of photos, and given the temple back to the sheep.

  And to the pagans.

  Well, why not? The night before they moved in, they’d agreed there should be a sabbat here at Imbolc – which Betty preferred to call by its old Christian name, Candlemas, because it was prettier. They’d agreed there should be the traditional Crown of Lights, which Betty would wear if there was no more suitable candidate. At the old church above the water, it was all going to be totally beautiful; Robin had had this fantasy of the village people coming along to watch or even join in and bringing their kids – this atmosphere of joy and harmony at Imbolc, Candlemas, the first day of Celtic spring, the glimmering in the darkness.

  But that had not been mentioned since, and he was damned if he was gonna bring it up again.

  Robin walked on, uphill now. Presently, the hedge on the right gave way to a stone wall, and he entered the village of Old Hindwell. As if to mock the word ‘Old’, the first dwelling in the village was a modern brick bungalow. A few yards further on was the first streetlight, a bluish bulb under a tin hat on a bracket projecting from a telephone pole. Older cottages on either side now. At the top of the hill, the road widened into a fork.

  On the corner was the pub, the Black Lion, the utility bulkhead bulb over its porch clouded with the massed corpses of flies. It was an alehouse, not much more; the licensee, Greg Starkey, had come from London with big ideas but not pulled enough customers to realize them.

  Tonight, Robin could have used a drink. Jacketless, therefore walletless, he dug into his pockets for change, came up with a single fifty-pence piece. Could you get any kind of drink for fifty-pence? He figured not.

  ‘Robin. Hi.’

  ‘Jeez!’ He jumped. She’d come out of an entrance to the Black Lion’s back yard. ‘Uh... Marianne.’

  Greg’s wife. She moved out under the bulb, so he could see she was wearing a turquoise fleece jacket over a low-cut black top. Standard landladywear in her part of London, maybe, but not so often seen out here. But Marianne made no secret of how much she’d give to get back to the city.

  ‘Haven’t seen you for days and days, Robin.’

  ‘Oh... Well, lot of work. The house move, you know?’

  The last time he’d seen her was when he’d driven down on his own with a vanload of stuff, grabbing some lunch at the Lion. She’d seemed hugely pleased that he was moving in, with or without a wife. Anything you wanna know about the place, you come and ask me; Wednesdays are best, that’s when Greg goes over to Hereford market.

  Yeah, well.

  ‘Bored already, Robin? I did warn you.’

  She was late thirties, disillusion setting up permanent home in the lines either side of her mouth.

  Robin said, ‘I, uh... I guess I just like the night.’

  ‘Robin, love,’ she said, ‘this ain’t night. This is just bleedin’ darkness.’

  She did this cackly laugh. He smiled. ‘So, uh... you still don’t feel too good about here.’

  ‘Give the boy a prize off the top shelf.’

  Her voice was too loud for this village at night. It bounced off walls. She moved towards him. He could smell that she’d been drinking. She stopped less than a foot away. There was no one else in sight. Robin kind of wished he’d turned around at the bottom of the street.

  ‘This is the nearest I get to a night out, you know that? We got to work. We got to open the boozer every lunchtime and every bleedin’ night of the week, and we don’t get the same day off ’cause we can’t afford to pay nobody, and we wouldn’t trust ’em to keep their fingers out of the bleedin’ till, anyway.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Marianne...’

  ‘They all hate us. We’ll always be outsiders.’

  ‘Come on... Nobody hates you.’

  ‘So we take our pleasures separately. Greg whoops it up at Hereford market on a Wednesday. Me, I just stand in the street and wait for a beautiful man to come along who don’t stink of sheep dip.’

  ‘Marianne, I think—’

  ‘Oh, sorry! I forgot – except for this Saturday when I’m going to a funeral. Because it is potilic... what’d I say? Politic – that’s what Greg says: politic. I’m pissed, Robin...’ Putting out her hands as if to steady herself, gripping his chest. ‘And you’re very appealing to me. I been thinking about you a lot. You’re a different kind of person, aincha?’

  ‘I’m an American kind of person is all. Otherwise just a regular—’

  ‘Now don’t go modest on me for Gawd’s sake. I tell you what...’ She started to rub her hands over his chest and stomach. ‘You can kiss me, Mr American-kind-of-person. Think of it as charity to the Third World. ’Cause if this ain’t the Third bleedin’ World...’

  ‘Uh, call me old-fashioned’ – Robin gently detached her hands – ‘but I really don’t think that would be too wise.’

  ‘Well, if anybody’s watching...’ Marianne’s voice rose. ‘If anybody’s spying from behind their lace bleedin’ curtains, they can go fuck themselves!’

  Robin panicked; no way he wanted to be associated with this particular attitude. He backed off so fast that Marianne toppled towards him, clawed vaguely at the air and fell with her hands flat on the cindered surface of the pub’s parking lot.

  Where she stayed, on all fours, looking down at the road.

  Oh shit.

  Robin moved to help her. She looked up at him and bared her teeth like a cornered cat. ‘You pushed me.’

  ‘No, no, I really didn’t. You know I didn’t.’

  Marianne staggered to her feet, hands waving in the air for balance.

  ‘How about we get you inside,’ Robin said.

  ‘You pushed me!’ Backing towards the yard entrance, holding up her scratched hands like s
he was displaying crucifixion scars. If the people of Old Hindwell hadn’t been watching from behind their curtains before, they sure were now.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Marianne said. ‘Fuck you!’ she screamed and flew at him like a crazy chicken.

  Robin backed off and spun around and found himself running any which way, until he was out of breath.

  He stopped. Apart from his own panting, the place was silent again. He looked around, saw only night. The buildings had gone. He didn’t know where he was.

  And then he looked up and there, set into the partially afforested hillside, was the tip of a golden light, a shining ingot in the dense, damp, conifered darkness. It was, by far, the brightest light in Old Hindwell village and, as he stepped back, it lengthened and branched out. Became a cross, in golden neon.

  Nick Ellis’s clapboard church.

  The cross hung there as if unsupported, like a big, improbable star.

  The truth was, Robin found it kind of chilling. It was like he’d been driven into a trap. Away in the darkness, he heard footsteps. He froze. Was she coming after him?

  Too heavy, too slow. And the steps were receding. Robin walked quietly back the way he’d come and presently the light above the pub door reappeared. He moved cautiously into the roadway in case Marianne was still around, claws out.

  A few yards ahead of him, passing the entrance to the school-turned-surgery, was a man on his own. A man so big he was like an outsize shadow thrown on a wall. Must be a head taller than most of the farmers hereabouts. But he hadn’t come out of the pub. He was not drunk. He had a steady, stately walk and, as he passed the pub, Robin saw by the bulkhead light that the man was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt and tie. The kind of attire farmers wore only for funerals.

  The guy walked slowly back down the street, the same way Robin was headed. After a dozen or so paces, he stopped and looked over his shoulder for two, three seconds. Robin saw his face clearly: stiff, grey hair and kind of a hooked nose, like the beak of an eagle.

  The guy turned and continued on his way down the street. Robin, having to take the same route, hung around a while to put some distance between them; he didn’t feel too sociable right now, but he did feel cold. He stood across from the pub, shivering and hugging himself.