Quite what had happened was the only subject of conversation in Swinley for days. Ardwyn’s husband, who was there to make sure that no opportunity to undermine Everett was missed, made his opinion that it must be some fault in the butcher known often and loudly. Everett himself was almost sure that it had nothing to do with the fact that he was stoned a lot of the time, but quit cold turkey all the same. Everyone assumed that Moccus had gone out into the world and that he would not be seen again until the sacrament of the first flesh in 1994.
Then the body was found in Mother’s pigsty.
It was the corpse of a poacher, still in his long coat with pheasants in his pockets, and disembowelled so utterly that his torso was virtually an empty sack propped open by his ribcage, but with no signs of his viscera anywhere.
Everett went up into the woods to see if the Recklings had played any part in this, and found them huddled by the stream with Gar, chewing on what the poacher had left behind.
‘Did you do this?’ he asked Gar.
Gar shook his head. ‘Moccus,’ he replied, with his mouth full.
‘But why would he kill a man and then dump his body in the village? Is it meant to be some kind of a warning?’
‘Man is stronger,’ said Sus, who was squatting on her haunches nearby and licking her bloody fingers. She had learned to wear clothes since the last time they’d met, but the way her dress rode up over her thighs seemed to make her more feral than if she’d been naked.
Everett prodded something gristly with his toe. ‘Well, he obviously wasn’t strong enough.’ He was about to leave when he got a proper look at what Gar was actually eating. ‘Is that his liver?’
Gar shrugged. Anatomy was not important, it seemed, for the enjoyment of this meal.
The deserter hesitated. Liver had always been a delicacy in the Grey Brigade, usually reserved for the one who provided the meat. He found that his mouth was watering in a way that it hadn’t done in the more than fifty years since he had tasted human flesh.
He glanced around to make sure that Ardwyn hadn’t, for some reason, followed him. She was tolerant of a lot, but he didn’t think she’d find it easy to accept this. ‘Here, pass us a piece of that,’ he said.
Gar narrowed his eyes and clutched his prize tighter.
‘Now then, I’m only going to have a nibble. You can’t begrudge me that, surely, can you, chum? After all the whisky I’ve brought for you over the years?’
Reluctantly, like a child giving up a favourite toy, Gar handed over the half-chewed organ. The deserter took his penknife, pared off a thin slice and tossed it back. Gar continued munching while Everett placed the morsel on his tongue and savoured the rich heaviness. Just a taste for old time’s sake. When he opened his eyes again he found that Sus was gazing at him speculatively.
‘You are like us,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘A runt and a cast-off? How right you are.’
* * *
Everything went wrong in ’94.
The year before had been good for killers, cannibals, and fanatics – eastern Europe was tearing itself apart all over again, Waco burned, and the World Trade Centre was bombed – and as if in response to that, Moccus did not submit peacefully to the sacrament of the first flesh. When Mother summoned him with the bone carnyx he came unwillingly, snorting and roaring in the peculiar throaty squeal of a mature boar, and if he hadn’t already been weak with age and the unaccountable malaise that had afflicted him in ’68, it would have been impossible to subdue him at all. As the Farrow held him on his knees, the deserter looked into his blind eyes with concern.
‘What’s up, old chap?’ he murmured. ‘You’re not yourself these days.’
Moccus had merely snarled at him, so he’d done the only thing he could do which was to put the god out of his misery and hope that the replenishment sacrifices restored him better than they had last time.
But he didn’t even get around to the first one before the Farrow realised that something was wrong. A week after the feast of the first flesh Everett awoke with a familiar weight in his lungs, and when he got out of bed he was seized with a fit of coughing. It wasn’t as bad as it had been in ’16, but it terrified him, nonetheless. The rest of the Farrow were similarly afflicted. While the scars of old physical injuries remained healed, illnesses and disabilities were creeping back – arthritis, gout, deafness, blindness – not drastically so, but just the first twinges which warned them that whatever was wrong with Moccus hadn’t been remedied, and was in fact getting worse.
The first flesh was losing its potency.
Urgent debates were held.
‘We must hold to our faith,’ said Mother to the Farrow assembled in St Mark’s. ‘We must trust that he will grow strong again, and bless us once more.’
‘As a plan of action goes, I have to say it stinks,’ said the deserter. ‘The only thing that we will get by sitting around waiting on the off-chance that something spontaneously improves is very bored and then very dead.’
Gus Melhuish sneered. ‘I’m amazed that you have the audacity to even open your mouth, Butcher. If this is anybody’s fault, it’s yours.’
‘How do you figure that, chum?’
‘Nobody else is wielding the knife.’
‘That’s very true. You’d best remember that in case I decide to wield it in your direction.’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ said Ardwyn, likely meaning both the situation and their squabbling. ‘Whatever we’re doing, it’s obviously not enough. We need to modify the ritual in some way to make our lord stronger.’
‘There will be no modifications,’ asserted Mother. ‘We will worship as we always have. If there is a fault it lies in us – in our doubts and weaknesses. We must look to our own souls for the answer.’
Stronger. Everett remembered Sus’ words in the woods after eating the poacher’s viscera. The poacher that Moccus had killed and dumped in Mother’s sty, which everyone at the time had interpreted as some kind of cryptic warning – against what, they still had no idea – but which the deserter was now starting to think might not have been a warning at all, but a demand. Man is stronger, Sus had said.
‘I think I know what we need to do,’ he said, knowing too that it wasn’t going to go down at all well with the Farrow, and least of all Mother.
‘Really?’ scoffed Gus. ‘Give us the benefit of your deep theological insight, please.’
‘Human vessels,’ he replied simply. ‘The swine that we used last time obviously weren’t enough. You remember how weak he was, and how we had to dig him out of the ground. I think the poacher was a message to us. Moccus put his body in the sty where the vessels are kept for a reason. Man is stronger.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘I think our lord wants a change of menu.’
A babble of consternation and outrage broke from the congregation, over the top of which Mother’s voice came ringing: ‘Unthinkable! Absolutely unthinkable! What do you think we are, Everett – savages? We do not perform human sacrifice! Would you go into a Christian cathedral and suggest that they begin eating their infants? The very idea is an abomination!’
‘Maybe, but it didn’t used to be, did it?’ he replied. ‘Two thousand years ago, when the Farrow were Cornovii tribesmen? Do you think they shied away from giving the hunter of the first woods their blood? At some point since then the practice has switched to swine, which is more civilised, obviously, but what does Moccus care for civilised? He is a hunter and a killer – he wants what he wants, and it’s been denied to him for so long that it’s not surprising he’s finally starting to sicken from the pale substitutes that you’ve been offering.’
Mother fixed him with a look of steel. ‘We. Are. Not. Murderers.’
‘No, but he is,’ said Gus, pointing at the deserter.
‘What’s your point, chum?’
‘The beast takes on something of the butcher, isn’t that right, Mother?’ Gus asked.
She nodded. ‘With each rebirth he is created anew, shaped by the man with the knife.’
‘Well, forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the man with the knife in this case is a murderer and a cannibal, isn’t that so?’
‘You’re saying this is my fault?’ asked Everett. ‘You might want to be very careful there, Gus, because it seems like you’re questioning the wisdom of Mother in choosing me as the god’s butcher.’
‘Whatever the cause,’ Ardwyn interrupted, ‘we are still left with the problem.’
‘We will hold to the ways of our faith,’ said Mother. ‘Everett, if you feel that you are unable to perform your duties with the replenishment sacrifices, I will understand and find a replacement.’
‘No, that’s all fine,’ he replied. ‘With your leave, Mother, I’ll continue to bleed your swine. Six months is not such a long time after all. But if the equinox comes and Moccus is reborn even weaker than before, none of us will live to see the twenty-first century. Gus is right about me, so take it from a man who knows: if you want to survive, you’re going to have to make some unpalatable decisions.’
* * *
Ardwyn came to his bed the night she and her husband were due to depart, but she was too agitated and angry for sex. Instead, he watched her pace around the room like a caged animal, her face haggard and her arms crossed tightly across her belly. He guessed that some old illness which Moccus’ flesh had held at bay was making itself felt again, and not for the first time wondered how old she really was.
‘How can she be so bloody blind?’ she raged. ‘How can she not see what’s happening right in front of her?’
‘Oh, she sees, all right,’ he said. ‘She’s just scared like the rest of us.’
‘The worst of it is, I thought I knew her! I thought, she’s looked after us for so long and guided us all this time, surely she’ll recognise the danger and act on it. I knew that the old traditions were important to her but I never imagined that she could be so – I don’t know – so close-minded. Damn her! Damn her!’ Ardwyn was almost in tears. He moved to embrace her but she shoved him away. ‘No!’ She turned from him, smearing the tears away with the heels of her hands. ‘Don’t. That’s not what I need from you.’
‘Well, for God’s sake what do you need, then?’ he replied, stung.
‘Something real. Something more than just words.’
‘Fine then. What do you want me to do?’
‘What can you do?’
He laughed. ‘Oh I could do all manner of things. I don’t know about you, but I mean to survive. The question is how far are you prepared to go? What are you prepared to sacrifice? Your husband and your church?’
‘Church,’ she snorted. ‘A banker, his screeching wife, and a defrocked priest: hardly a huge congregation. I’m sure Cirencester can survive without us, and I’m damned sure I can survive without Gus.’
‘Swinley?’ he pressed. ‘Mother herself?’
He watched her wrestle with this and eventually square her shoulders as if ridding them of an uncomfortable weight. ‘If at the end of the day she refuses to see reason, then yes. Everything,’ she said. ‘All of it.’ Ardwyn moved into his arms and laid her hands on his chest. ‘All of it,’ she repeated. He felt his heart swelling with some large, churning sensation that was quite new and uncomfortable. Then a coughing fit gripped him, and he decided that it had simply been a bronchial spasm.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he repeated.
She told him, and as he listened his grin grew wide.
12
SCHISM
SIX MONTHS LATER, GAR’S RECKLING KIN MET Ardwyn’s car on the road to Swinley two days before the final replenishment sacrifice. The lane had been blacktopped many years previously but not widened, so that trees still grew closely down to the roadside, and it was easy for the Recklings to get close to the vehicle without being seen when Gus was forced to stop it at the sight of Everett and Gar standing in the middle of the lane.
‘What’s this about?’ He frowned, opening the door.
It was wrenched out of his hand by Sus. As he stared at her in astonishment, other Recklings appeared and hauled him out of the car.
‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do this! I won’t allow—’
But then a hand that was mostly fingers closed over his mouth and they never did find out what it was that he wasn’t going to allow. He was dragged into the trees, twisting and making muffled noises of protest.
‘You’ll look after him?’ Everett asked Gar.
Gar shrugged.
‘I mean, will he still be alive by tomorrow night?’
‘Alive, yes.’
Ardwyn got out of the car and joined them. She was moving slowly, with a hand pressed to her abdomen low down.
‘It’s getting worse?’ Everett asked her.
She nodded. ‘And your cough?’
‘Still bad. And it’s not just us. Swinley is looking like a geriatric ward. He’s had nothing but pig’s blood since March.’
‘Then let’s do something about that,’ she said.
* * *
The Farrow assembled in the clearing around Moccus’ pillar and the sixth swine was brought to him for sacrifice. He could feel the slow life of the god churning in the ground beneath his feet, and the responsibility he owed to it. At a nod from Ardwyn he took the blade from the beast’s throat and pushed it away.
‘No,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘We will not perpetuate this travesty any longer. Gar?’ she called, and out from the darkness beyond the clearing stepped Gar and Sus, pushing Gus ahead of him. The man was tied at the hands and gagged, and his eyes rolled like terrified white marbles in his face, just like every other man the deserter had seen die over the long years.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ demanded Mother, outraged. She stepped forward, but Everett pointed the sickle at her and she stopped, paralysed almost as much by fear as fury, he hoped. Others of the Farrow made moves as if to intervene, but from around the clearing the other Recklings appeared to stand between them and the deserter. They stopped, wailing and cursing. One or two even ran.
‘You can’t do this!’ Mother cried. ‘It’s sacrilege!’
‘No, Mother,’ said Ardwyn. ‘It is the beginning of a new covenant between the Farrow and He Who Eats the Moon. But I don’t blame you for resisting. Rebirth is always painful.’
‘Ardwyn!’ she wept. ‘Daughter. I beg you to reconsider!’
Ardwyn didn’t reply, but gently took the bone carnyx from her frozen hands.
Gar brought the new vessel before him and forced it to kneel. For the first time, Everett realised how much it resembled the young German soldier. ‘Nothing personal, chum,’ he said, as he took the new vessel by the hair and bent its head back. It was weeping and screaming behind its gag. ‘First flesh, first fruit,’ he whispered, and the knife made a whisper of its own, and the vessel emptied onto the black soil. Then Ardwyn blew the bone carnyx to summon their god back to life, and the ground began to heave.
This time, Moccus made it on his own, and stepped out of the pit to tower over them in something like his former vitality. His amber eyes locked onto Everett’s.
He nodded, once.
Then he was gone, loping into the trees, and the Recklings too disappeared in their father’s wake, to leave the Farrow alone in the clearing, shocked and weeping.
‘What have you done?’ whispered Mother, her voice hoarse and utterly distraught. ‘Oh, my children, what have you done?’
‘Survived,’ said Ardwyn. From the way she was rubbing her belly he could tell that she was feeling better already, and he could feel the heaviness in his lungs clearing too. ‘And so have the rest of you. You’re welcome, by the way.’
‘Get out,’ said Mother. ‘All three of you.’
‘Gladly,’ Everett retorted, and tossed the knife at her feet. ‘But one day you’ll come to see the necessity of all this, and you’ll want me back.’
‘Never!’
‘Try not to take that long. You’ve got another twenty-six years to change your m
ind or find someone else.’
* * *
By February of 2020, she hadn’t changed her mind. The old wooden farm gate that had once opened from the road onto the lane into Swinley had been replaced by a pair of tall wire mesh security gates attached to razor-wire-topped fencing that disappeared into the trees to left and right, a sign that read No TRESPASSING: THESE PREMISES PROTECTED BY PRIVATE SECURITY and, as if to prove that this wasn’t a bluff, a CCTV camera set on a pole a little further in.
Everett parked the RV that they’d picked up in Frankfurt and looked at it all. ‘Do you ever get the impression that you’re not welcome?’ he said to Ardwyn and Gar.
The lock on the gates was too strong even for Gar to break, so he tore a hole in the chain-link fence to one side and they walked instead.
‘Maybe we should try the Recklings first,’ he suggested. ‘Get the lie of the land, so to speak. See what other surprises might be in store.’
‘No,’ said Ardwyn. ‘This is our home. Mother can’t keep us out; we’re Farrow, the blessed of Moccus, just like her, and we have a right to worship him. I won’t sneak in like a thief and I won’t hide with the beasts.’
Gar grunted, but whether it was in agreement or displeasure at being called a beast was hard to tell.
‘Fair enough,’ Everett said, and checked that his officer’s Webley was fully loaded before they set off. They managed no more than a few hundred yards before they heard the sound of a vehicle approaching, and a Land Rover Defender appeared around the corner, slewing to a halt across the lane diagonally in front of them. Two men in dark, nondescript uniforms were inside; while the driver said something into his radio, his passenger got out and approached them. He was wearing a utility belt with all sorts of things clipped to it, including what looked like pepper spray, a baton and something in a pistol-shaped holster.
‘You need to leave now,’ he said. He was very large and there was an earpiece with a coiled wire running behind his collar. ‘This is private property. That’s your one warning.’
‘My name is Ardwyn Hughes,’ she replied. ‘This is—’
‘We know who you are. All three of you. You were ID’d when you pulled up outside the gate. The owners have made it clear that you’re not welcome. Leave. Now.’
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