The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  Ben looked up as Natalie’s head came round the door.

  ‘Ben, Alistair Hardy’s just arrived, with that guy Matthew. I’ve shown them up to the Chancery room. I have to take Clancy to a neighbour’s for the night, OK? The drive’s totally blocked at The Nant – I’ll be back later.’

  ‘Nat – do be careful. We need you enormously this weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I’ll try not to get stuck,’ Natalie said, and Ben raised a hand.

  For a moment, as the door closed on Natalie, the instability of the Border seemed to vibrate through the room, making everything glow, but with a cheap and garish light. Jane took a breath and came right out with it.

  ‘The truth is that the very last thing you wanted was for those guys to come out of the pines with a dead puma. That would’ve blown it, right?’

  ‘Blown it?’

  ‘The mystique.’ Jane gripped the sides of her chair. ‘A whole century’s worth. Like, you don’t believe the story of the spectral hound, but you don’t want it disproved either. You didn’t want those guys coming up with anything real that they’d shot. Certainly not anywhere near Stanner. Like... Oh, we’ve shot the Hound. And it gets in all the papers. You really didn’t want that.’

  ‘Would’ve been a touch prosaic,’ Ben agreed.

  ‘And that was really... that was why?’

  She heard him shouting at the shooters on the last night of the murder weekend. I warned you, not on my land! This time you’re fucking dog meat!

  You thought you knew about people. She’d had this nice, safe image of Ben: clever, charming, theatrical, faintly camp.

  Ben shrugged. Jane almost cringed from him.

  The snow was piled like mashed potato out by the entrance of Danny’s place, and Danny had his tractor out, with the snow-plough attachment and the spotlights. If he got it cleared now and he was up again by five tomorrow, likely he could keep on top of it.

  He climbed down and stood by the gate, looking out. The Queens of the Stone Age were giving it some welly from the stereo back in the cab, singing, as it happened, about the sky falling. If this went on, there’d be some contract work for him and Gomer, from the county highways, sure to be. Plant hire, like Gomer kept saying, never slept.

  Normally he’d be excited: snow was a challenge, folk needed help. But tonight he felt weary. Biggest problem was the lane outside – passable now, with four-wheel drive, but tomorrow was another day. Danny was knackered now, and the snow was oppressive.

  Back at the house, he saw a tongue of yellow light – the back door opening – and Greta shouted, ‘Is it clear?’

  ‘Clear as I can get it without two tons of grit.’ Danny left the music on and trudged back up the path.

  ‘Only Jeremy rang, see. Wanted to know if we could take the child tonight on account his track’s blocked solid.’

  Danny kept on walking till he reached the back door. ‘Gimme that again, Gret.’

  ‘The child. Clancy? That woman— Her mother... is gonner bring her down from the hotel. Drop her off yere.’

  ‘Wants us to have her?’

  ‘I said I’d make up the spare bed.’

  Danny stood just short of the step, trying to figure it. This Natalie and the kiddie, here they were at a great big hotel full of empty bedrooms... and they wanted the spare bed in the box-room where he kept all his albums. But even that wasn’t the most unlikely aspect of it.

  ‘Nothing strike you as funny, Gret?’ Danny breathed in stinging air through his teeth. ‘Jeremy’s track? When is Jeremy’s track ever blocked?’

  ‘You gonner come in or not, ’fore we loses every bit of heat in the house?’ Greta backed away from the cold, arms folded.

  Danny stepped inside. ‘If anybody knowed the big snow was on the way... When I was up The Nant earlier on, he’d got a trailerload of grit all ready. Had his ewes down last night, all tucked up. And now you tell me—’

  Danny’s brain froze.

  ‘Well, what you want me to say?’ Greta demanded. ‘I accuse him of lying, say we en’t having the girl—? What’s wrong?’

  ‘He don’t want the kiddie there. Why don’t he want the kiddie there?’

  Her stared at him, not getting it.

  ‘Greta, how’d he sound? What d’he sound like, in hisself?’

  ‘Sounded like he always does, to me. Half-baked. What’s the—?’

  ‘When was this? When’d he ring?’

  ‘Half an hour ago, mabbe. You was busy out there, I didn’t wanner bother you with—’

  ‘Holy shit, Greta...’ The jolt to Danny’s senses kicked him back outside. He shut his eyes and he threw his head back, feeling the fat snowflakes coming down on his upturned face and his beard and his gritted teeth. He snapped back upright. ‘Call him.’ Wiping his eyes hard with the heel of his hand. ‘If he don’t answer, call again. And again.’

  ‘What do I say to him?’

  ‘Talk about the weather, talk about any damn thing.’ Danny stumbled away through the snow to his tractor. ‘But keep him talking.’

  Jane ran upstairs and tossed the camcorder on her bed in fury. Picked up her phone and saw there was a message on the voice-mail: Antony’s number.

  Sod that. She dropped the phone on the bed and sat quietly for a while with the light out, watching the snow drifting past the window, wishing she’d caught the usual bus, gone home to Mum. Someone you could count on to behave like... decently.

  What was worst about this was that Ben didn’t even seem to see anything vaguely wrong in meeting violence with violence. And all to sustain his hugely powerful image.

  She felt sick. She wanted out of here.

  With no enthusiasm, she picked up the phone, keyed in the message.

  ‘Jane. Listen, hen, I have a problem. We’re talking white hell here. Those guys at the Highways Agency, they’re never prepared for cruel and unusual weather, and it looks like they’re about to close the Severn Bridge. I’m doing ma best here, but it may be tomorrow night or later before I can get over there. Looks like it’s down to you, the big one. Don’t worry about it, you screw up it’s no’ the end of the world, we can reconstruct. Just weld the wee thing to your hands and get what you can: lots of Ben, lots of the weirdos, keep in tight, don’t zoom. And don’t be put off; they get used to the lens, the punters and the victims both. Good luck.’

  ‘Sod off,’ Jane said sourly. If they thought she wanted to be part of the artifice, they could both sod off.

  It seemed likely now that they were all in this – the White Company too. Was Alistair Hardy really going to tell the viewers that he couldn’t actually get Conan Doyle on the line? Was he going to tell Ben that Conan Doyle had confirmed to him that the Hound was purely a Devon myth? Not if he had any psychic sense of what Ben was about – Ben, who suddenly was no longer endearingly eccentric, but more than a little unstable.

  Maybe it was simply mid-life crisis, hormonal: Ben well into his fifties now, racing the clock. Ready to hurl the clock to the ground, it seemed, and hack at it with his heel in rage. Ready to damage anybody threatening the now drama.

  Reluctantly, Jane called Antony back. At least he was younger and therefore probably less desperate. When he answered, she could hear a car engine.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were driving.’

  ‘Jane, is that you? Trying to get myself home, here, through the white hell, which has arrived in the soft South, and the novelty’s already wearing thin. Wait a sec, let me pull into the verge.’

  ‘OK. Sorry.’ The cynical languor in his voice had a calming effect on Jane. She waited for the handbrake’s ratchet. ‘Antony, can I talk to you confidentially?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll switch off the recording machine.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Joke. Go on.’

  ‘I’m worried. About things. Well, about Ben.’

  ‘Well, I never.’

  ‘This is serious. You’re his mate, or I wouldn’t tell you – in fact, I didn’t tell you, OK?’
>
  ‘Jane, this conversation will dissipate in the ether.’

  And so, in the face of his levity, and because there was no one else she could tell, she told Antony the shocking truth about Nathan and what Ben had done to him. Told him in considerable detail.

  And then she told him why Ben had done it.

  ‘Oh boy,’ Antony said.

  She told him how Ben, on another occasion, after screaming at the shooters, had said that where he came from there were real hard bastards.

  ‘Knightsbridge?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Antony!’

  ‘OK. Joke. Ben’s from Reading and not what you’d call the most salubrious side. As I understand it, his old man was a builder’s labourer, something like that. Well, fine. Not then, though – Ben came into television at a time when a good and educated background, a nice accent, was still very much an advantage, and he gave them what they felt most comfortable with, and now he’s stuck with it. So, yeah, I guess he knows how to handle himself. However, next time he tears someone’s face off, it would be awfully nice to have it on camera. Is the wee Sony in your other hand, as we speak?’

  ‘Antony, I don’t—’

  ‘Jane, don’t worry about it. He’s no’ gonnae do anything to spoil the programme, believe it. I know this guy, I promise you.’

  What did she expect, common sense? God, were they all the same?

  She said, slightly desperately, ‘It’s just... that it’s getting weirder. It’s getting out of hand. Like Hattie Chancery?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The daughter of the man who built Stanner. She killed her—’

  ‘Oh yeah, he told me.’

  ‘But what’s she have to do with Doyle and the Hound of Hergest? She probably wasn’t even born when Doyle was here. It’s just like, Oh, she’s spooky, let’s throw her into the pot. I just think it’s getting out of hand.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, that...’ What was she supposed to say to this guy? Antony, I want to believe. I want to believe in the mystical Borderland, and if the Hound’s part of that, I wanted to believe in the Hound. I need this. I don’t want it turned into... artifice.

  ‘Jane, listen. Don’t worry, it’s gonnae be fine. We can sort all this out later. You’re my number one girl out there, and only one rule. If it’s sexy, shoot it.’

  ‘Cool,’ Jane said sadly.

  After Walton, the forestry came up on both sides of the tractor, this hostile army of giants in new white armour. Danny’s face felt hot with anger and anxiety. He’d even switched off his music – mabbe feel more like playing it on the way back, instead of replaying over and over in his head what Greta had said.

  Sounded like he always does. Half-baked. Like he en’t yere.

  Danny leaned on the wheel and the tractor battered on into England. Like he’d figured, no Hereford gritters or ploughs had made it this far, and by the time he reached the turning to The Nant, the road looked like it would soon be impassable for ordinary vehicles.

  However...

  On Jeremy’s ground, the snow was packed tight on either side, and there was a well-cleared channel down the middle, and the tractor rolled sweetly down this long, grey alleyway to the edge of the farmyard.

  Dear God.

  Danny climbed down from the cab, hissing as the night wrapped its frozen arms around him. He looked around: no lights in the farmhouse, no security lights outside. Power off already? Snow brought the lines down?

  Danny hoped it was only the power that was off.

  He stood there and looked at The Nant for long seconds, snow accumulating on the vinyl shoulders of his donkey jacket and already inches thick, dense as Christmas-cake icing, on the farmhouse roof.

  And then, before he’d realized it, he was bawling out into the white night, like Greta doing the full Janis, ‘Jeremy! Jeremy, where are you, boy? JEREMY!’

  When he filled his lungs again, the bitter air stung his throat and he started to cough, doubled up by the gate. He leaned on the gate, tears in his eyes, panting, letting the silence re-form around him as the snow fell, all pretty and pitiless. Come out, Jeremy, please.

  But when he pictured Jeremy, the boy wasn’t coming towards him but walking softly away through the cushiony fields, off into the hollows of the deep forestry where there was peace.

  Danny raised his head and thought he saw a glow behind one of the windows in the farmhouse. And it was then that it started up.

  At first it was like it was coming up from the ground, from some sunken prison cell, down where there was no light and no hope. It was coming up through the snow like tongues of cold fire. It was as old as the hills, as old as the Ridge, and bone-cold, the coldest sound in the world.

  28

  The Jane Police

  SO MUCH BIGGER than asthma now.

  This was what Alice said when Merrily rang her, as Lol had known she would, before the night was out.

  Alice was a force of nature. If Dexter thought that by finally coming out with the untold story he was going to make her drop it, he’d got her badly wrong. She’d discovered this powerfully mystical aspect of Christianity she’d never imagined existed. And also – as the oldest sister in a dysfunctional family – she saw it as her responsibility to sort everything out.

  Even from across the scullery, Lol had heard everything coming out of the phone, Alice’s voice crackling like an old radio. She and Dexter had had a row and Dexter had stomped off in a rage, although he was supposed to come back to do the last two hours in the chip shop – Alice saying he wasn’t having his own way this time, asthma or no asthma, nothing was going to stop the Eucharist. Telling Dexter she’d find Darrin herself, make sure he was there. At the Eucharist.

  ‘She’s fallen in love with the word,’ Merrily said. ‘Sounds powerful and kind of technical. Prayer’s comforting, but Eucharist suggests big guns.’

  The computer was booting up, this row of icons extending along the bottom of the screen, Lol realizing that he didn’t know what any of them meant: another religion he didn’t understand.

  ‘So where’s Darrin now?’

  ‘Well, he was in prison. One way or another, Alice will find him. Which is not what Dexter wants. But Dexter’s clearly still scared of Darrin. Whereas Alice is scared of nobody.’

  A face with a heavy moustache was on the screen, the expression solemn and dignified but the eyes bright with just the possibility of madness.

  Illuminating Merrily’s other problem.

  ‘If the White Company are simply harmless, misguided, terribly British eccentrics’ – she was standing next to the computer, holding her pectoral cross between her fingers – ‘then why didn’t Jane tell me about them?’

  ‘Because she knows you’d have to disapprove,’ Lol said. ‘And she’d be embarrassed if she had to say, “I’m sorry I can’t work this weekend because my mum doesn’t want me exposed to evil forces.” ’

  ‘You think I’m overreacting.’

  ‘She’s grown up quite a lot in the past year. I mean... have you actually had experience of a medium letting evil into the world, or is this received wisdom?’

  ‘In as much as it’s received from the same source we get all our—’ Merrily sank into the chair, hair mussed. ‘It’s all received wisdom, isn’t it? It’s why they call us The Church. And if she’s grown up that much, why did you feel you had to tell me about Lucy?’

  He looked up at her from the rug. ‘Because, in the Jane Police, I’m just a junior officer.’

  She laughed. There was something that might have been a tear stain like a birthmark alongside her nose. He wanted to go over and lick it off.

  ‘I’m trying not to get screwed up or sanctimonious about this,’ Merrily said. ‘There are even one or two Deliverance ministers who actually work with mediums and don’t seem to have come to any—’

  ‘Look, you won’t rest till you find out what they’re doing. Why don’t you ask them?’

  ‘What do I do – send them a spirit message?’r />
  ‘Or even go back to the homepage and click on Contacts.’

  ‘Oh.’ She flipped back a page. ‘Contact Us.’

  To apply for membership or to obtain any of our leaflets, contact Matthew Hawksley on otherside@asc.com

  Merrily clicked on it. An e-mail option came up. ‘Should I?’

  ‘What’s your own e-mail address? No reference to Deliverance in it?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Jane uses it. It just says Watkins.’

  ‘Why don’t you say you’re a Conan Doyle enthusiast and you’ve heard there’s a conference at Stanner Hall this weekend. And is it still on, despite the weather? Mention the cwn annwn – that’ll sound knowledgeable.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily began typing.

  Good evening, Mr Hawksley,

  Word has reached me of your gathering at the Stanner Hall Hotel, near Kington, in Herefordshire, this weekend. As a Conan Doyle enthusiast living not far away, I should be most interested to learn more details. In fact, given the weather conditions, will the conference still be taking place? As my own researches into the links between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Hound of Hergest, the cwn annwn, etc. have shown, this is a fascinating area of inquiry. If you could supply me with more details ASAP, I would be most grateful.

  Yours sincerely,

  M. Watkins.

  ‘Perfect,’ Lol said.

  ‘What if they are at Stanner, and one of them shows this to Jane?’

  ‘They’re unlikely to make the connection,’ Lol said. ‘But if they do, you’ll get a call from Jane. And she’ll have to tell you all about it, in a lot of detail, and there won’t be a mystery any more, and we can get out of this cell and go and light a fire and watch the snow build a big white wall between us and the world.’

  Merrily put on a wry smile that didn’t quite work.

  Jane was pacing the shabby lobby with the camera hanging from her shoulder like a school bag – the camera and all it represented a burden now; it had come to this. Time to talk seriously to Nat – soon as she got back.