Midwinter of the Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘He knew it happened. He told me exactly where to find this document. He told me where to look in Mrs Leather’s book. All right, it’s not much, and that’s the end of the documentation, but just because that eye-witness account was never published doesn’t mean it hasn’t been passed down by word of mouth.’

  ‘Which is notoriously unreliable. All right, what did happen when they opened the tomb this time?’

  Huw smiled. ‘When you’ve been with that owd feller a while, you learn he doesn’t like talking. And when he does, there are words he won’t use. Me, I’ll ramble on about squatters and visitors and the like, but Dobbs’ll just give you funny looks.’

  ‘Helpful.’

  ‘I don’t know, Merrily. I don’t know that he’s prepared to even think, at the present time, about what it was gave him the stroke. It’s part of shutting down.’

  ‘So who contained the’ – she couldn’t bring herself to use the word demon, either – ‘squatter, last century?’

  Huw shook his head. ‘Don’t know. But if you carry on with this theory, you’ve got two explanations. One is that the then exorcist, or somebody at least, was ready for it. Two is that all you had was a single terrifying manifestation; that there wasn’t sufficient energy around on that occasion for it to take up what you might call serious occupation.’

  ‘So why should it now? What’s changed?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Merrily, you can ask me that?’ He held up a hand against the window, and began counting them off on his fingers. ‘One, the recent Millennium: two thousand years since the birth of Our Lord, and a time of great global religious and cosmic significance. Two, the appointment of a flash, smartarse bishop who doesn’t believe in anything very much…’

  ‘You can’t say that!’

  ‘Have you questioned the slippery bastard in any depth, lass? Has anybody? Three—’

  Merrily could stand it no longer and clicked off the whining lamp, dipping them back into reddened darkness. Outside, she noticed, a third row of golden Santas had gone out – as if the whole of this end of town was suddenly beset by destructive electrical fluctuations because of what they’d been discussing.

  Madness! Stop it!

  ‘And three is…’

  Huw paused.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  44

  A Candle for Tommy

  ‘I KNEW SHE was going to be trouble,’ Sorrel said to Lol.

  Patricia would have been the best, but Jane had no idea where she lived, didn’t even know her last name. Sorrel was the one they got because there weren’t many Podmores in the phone book. Sorrel who lived at Kings Acre, in the suburbs, but wouldn’t let Lol come to see her there. She hadn’t wanted to see him at all, until he mentioned police.

  ‘How old is she?’ Sorrel had finally agreed to meet him at the café in Bridge Street. They sat at one of the rustic tables, with the window blinds down. They sat under the Mervyn Peake etchings of thin, leering men and the fat witch with the toad.

  ‘Thirteen,’ he said, just to scare her.

  Sorrel was plump and nervous. She closed her eyes on an intake of breath. ‘We didn’t know – no way we knew that. She said she was working. We thought she was seventeen at least.’

  ‘Does she really look seventeen?’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ Sorrel threw up her hands. ‘This should not have happened. We’re a responsible group. We have a strict rule about children.’ She looked hard at Lol. ‘You’re Viv’s friend, aren’t you – the songwriter? She said—’

  ‘And a friend of Jane’s mother’s,’ Lol said. ‘Her mother the vicar.’

  Sorrel paled. Lol was starting to feel sorry for her.

  ‘This could cause a lot of damage if it got out,’ Sorrel said. ‘I mean damage to the business. You know what people are like. They don’t understand about these things. They’ll think we’re using children for weird rituals. It could close us down – I mean the café.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Lol nodded.

  ‘I mean, I’ve got kids myself. And my husband, he doesn’t… It’s got out of hand, you see. They started calling it the Pod only because they were meeting here. It just grew out of healthy eating and Green issues. I’m not really that involved, but the name’s linked now, and it’s very hard for me to… to…’

  ‘Look,’ Lol said, ‘I realize this is not your fault. You had pressure put on you, right?’

  Sorrel didn’t answer.

  ‘So maybe it’s whoever put on the pressure I need to talk to.’

  ‘Please’ – she was actually looking scared now – ‘can’t you just leave it?’

  ‘I wish I could, but her mother’s in the clergy. Things are difficult enough for women priests.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘An anonymous letter.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Sorrel said.

  ‘You know what I think, Sorrel? I think you suspected Jane was quite young, but somebody else put the arm on you to take her into the group, and you weren’t in a position to refuse. Who would that have been?’

  Sorrel bit her lip.

  ‘Was it Angela?’

  ‘I don’t know any Angela.’

  ‘Anna Purefoy?’

  ‘Oh Christ.’ Sorrel stood up and walked to the counter, picked up a cloth and began scrubbing Today’s Specials from a blackboard, her back turned to Lol.

  He stood up. ‘I gather she’s not actually in the group.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to be.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  She turned to face him. ‘Because they own this building.’

  ‘The Purefoys?’

  ‘The building came up for sale when our lease had only about six months to run. The chemists next door were going to buy it to extend into, so it would’ve been… over for us. Then suddenly the Purefoys bought it. They knew one of our members…’ Sorrel began to squeeze the cloth between her hands. ‘Mr Robinson, I don’t want to talk about this. I really do need this café. My husband’s about to be made redundant, we’ve got a stupid mortgage… I’m sorry about Jane, but she’s not been with us long, there’s been no harm done. Nothing to interest the police, really.’

  ‘Quite a bit to interest the press.’

  ‘What do you want? I’ve said I’m—’

  ‘How well do you know Rowenna?’

  ‘I don’t. No more than I know Jane. All right, a bit more. She’s picked up messages here and things.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘We have a notice-board, as you can see. People leave messages.’

  ‘And some that aren’t on the board, maybe?’

  ‘There are no drugs here,’ Sorrel said firmly.

  ‘I never thought there were. I don’t even assume the Pod gets up to anything iffy. What I think is that maybe Jane will meet other people who aren’t regular members, and she’ll get invited to – I don’t know – interesting parties. And Rowenna makes sure she goes to them, and at these parties there are maybe some slightly off-the-wall things going on, and before you know it her mother receives some pictures of Jane, well stoned and naked on a slab. Just call me cynical, but I used to be in a band.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You know it’s not.’

  Sorrel threw the cloth down. ‘So what do you… want?’

  ‘I want to know about Anna Purefoy.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘OK.’ Lol stood up and moved towards the door. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

  ‘But I… I know somebody who might help you.’

  He turned and waited.

  ‘She used to be our teacher – before Patricia. When she heard the Purefoys had bought this building, she stopped coming. She may or may not need some persuading. But I can tell you where to find her.’

  ‘In Hereford?’

  ‘About twenty miles out,’ Sorrel said. ‘If she’s still alive, that is.’

  By the time they left the gatehouse, half the street’s Santas and
lanterns seemed to have gone out. You felt as though you were on the bridge of a ship leaving port at night, gliding slowly away from the lights.

  ‘I’m sorry, lass,’ Huw said, ‘but think about it. What does the smart-arse iconoclast new Bishop do first? He breaks a twothousand-year convention by appointing a female exorcist. In a city which history has shown to be periodically in need of a good guard dog, he…’

  ‘Swaps his Rottweiler for a miniature poodle?’

  ‘I’ve gone far enough down that road, luv. Don’t want me throat torn out. All I’m saying is that the combination of all these factors – and maybe others we don’t know about – could be felt to be having a dissipating effect. And a weakened body invites infection. Well, I’m telling you how Thomas Dobbs sees it.’

  They walked across the green towards the huge smudge of the Cathedral.

  ‘And you,’ Merrily asked him, ‘what do you believe?’

  ‘Wait till we’re inside.’

  She was struck, as always, by the hospitality of the place: the stones of many colours, almost all of them warm; the simplicity of the arcade of Norman arches; the friendly modern glitter of the great corona, which always seemed to be hanging lopsided, although it probably wasn’t. She knew nothing about medieval architecture, but it just felt right in here.

  Ancient centre of light and healing.

  They went directly to the North Transept, deserted except for one of the vergers, a tubby middle-aged man in glasses who looked across, suspicious, then relaxed when he saw Huw’s collar and recognized Merrily.

  He raised a hand to them. ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘I’ve got a key, pal.’ Huw indicated the partitioned enclosure. ‘We’ll be about ten minutes.’

  ‘I’ll have to stay in the general vicinity,’ the verger said, ‘if you don’t mind. The Dean’s been a bit on edge since that slab was reported stolen.’

  Huw stopped. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ Merrily said. ‘A chunk of one of the side-panels, with a knight carved on it – it’s missing.’

  ‘Oh no,’ the verger said, ‘it isn’t missing. Somebody must have made a mistake – miscounted. When the mason was in here this morning, he confirmed everything was there. Quite a relief, but it did make us think a bit more about security.’

  Huw said, ‘Do you know which piece it was? Which knight?’

  ‘No idea, sir. The masons will be back on Monday. They’ll now be able to put St Thomas together again. Too late, unfortunately, for the Boy Bishop ceremony. It’ll be the first time he won’t be able to pay his respects.’

  ‘Boy Bishop?’

  Merrily briefly explained about the annual ceremony and its meaning, while Huw unlocked the padlock with what apparently were Dobbs’s keys. She saw where rudimentary repairs had been carried out since George Curtiss had kicked his way in.

  Huw surveyed the dismantled tomb, looking more or less as it had the afternoon Merrily and Jane had stood in here with Neil, the young archaeologist. Segments of a stone coffin; knights in relief, with shields and mashed faces. ‘What happens at this Boy Bishop ceremony then, lass?’

  ‘Never been to one. Harmless bit of Church pageantry, I’d guess.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Harmless? Any reason why it shouldn’t be?’

  ‘Everything worries me tonight.’ Huw shoved his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat. ‘Especially this missing stone business. First a stone’s missing, then it’s not. Church masons don’t miscount.’

  ‘Which means it’s either still missing…’

  ‘Or it’s back. In which case, where’s it been meanwhile?’

  She wondered for a moment if he meant that the stone had been somehow dematerialized by the demon. Then she realized what he did mean.

  ‘Hard to comprehend, especially seeing it like this,’ he trudged around the rubble, ‘that this box was once the core of it all. If you try and imagine the amount of psychic and emotional energy – veneration, desperation – poured into this little space over the centuries…’

  ‘You can’t. I can’t.’

  ‘And then imagine if – while it was away – that same stone had hot blood and guts spilled on it.’

  ‘Huw!’

  ‘And then it was brought back?’ He shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’

  Merrily looked up at the huge, lightless, stained-glass window, and saw the dim figure of a knight pushing his spear down a dull dragon’s throat.

  ‘All right, what would happen if the balance tilted – if the dominant force in here was the force of evil?’

  ‘Even a bit of evil goes a long way. Take all the aggro they’ve had over at Lincoln Cathedral. Terrible disruption, hellish disputes, and bad feeling and bitterness among the senior clergy. And consider the number of people who put all that down to evil influences emanating from this little old carving in the nave known as the Lincoln Imp. A thousand sacred carvings in that place – and one imp, know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ Merrily was wondering what damage had been caused at Salisbury by Rowenna’s sexual forays into the canonries.

  ‘Had a few rows here too, mind,’ Huw recalled. ‘You remember – could be this was before your time – when the first contingent of Hereford women priests staged a circle-dance here in the Cathedral?’

  ‘I read about it. They were supposed to have been gliding around trancelike, caressing the effigies on bishops’ tombs, which some fundamentalists thought was a bit forward and rather too pagan.’

  ‘Bloke who organized it, he said it were simply to introduce women to the Cathedral as an active spiritual force for the first time in its history. So as to make their peace with the old dead bishops. The Bishop at the time, he went along with it, but Dobbs went berserk, apparently. It were said he went round from tomb to tomb that night, like an owd Hoover, removing all psychic traces of the she-devils.’

  ‘Devils?’

  ‘I exaggerate.’

  ‘You have a problem with circle-dancing?’

  ‘Not especially. But I don’t rule out there might be a problem. Cathedrals are just not places you bugger about with, without due consideration. You walk carefully around these old places.’

  Merrily found herself wondering what a demon would look like. She tried to imagine one in canon’s clothing, but all she could conjure was the crude cartoon image of a grinning skull, its exposed vertebrae vanishing into a dog-collar. What was the image with which Dobbs – if only in his own mind – had been confronted in the seconds before his stroke?

  She thought of the lightning impression of Denzil Joy ratcheting up in her own bed. What if she’d been old, with a heart condition?

  ‘What are we fighting here, Huw? Your malevolent, semisentient forcefield – and what else? Who else?’

  ‘I wish I knew. But if Dobbs knew the significance of the dismantled tomb – and it’s been in the newspaper enough times, so other folk did too. And we’re not just talking about the headbangers now.’

  He looked at Merrily.

  ‘Who, then?’ she asked.

  Huw scratched his head. ‘Happen the ones with knowledge, and seeking more. Higher knowledge – the knowledge you can’t get from other men. And you won’t get it from God or His angels either, on account of you’re not meant to have it. But demons are different: you can command a demon if you’re powerful enough. Or you can bargain with it.’

  ‘They found one headbanger floating in the Wye,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s not been released by the police yet, so don’t, you know… but a man whose body was found in the Wye, with head injuries, kept a satanic altar in his basement. With a big poster of the Goat of Mendes, and American stuff, dirty satanic videos, all that.’

  ‘When was this, lass?’

  ‘Couple of weeks ago. He was from Chepstow. The police are trying to identify his contacts in satanic circles – without conspicuous success.’

  ‘Where in the Wye?’

  ‘Just along the river from
here, near the Victoria Bridge. Any relevance, do you think?’

  He shook his head. He didn’t know any more than she did. She needed to stop regarding Huw as the fount of wisdom, and start thinking for herself. If the possibility of arousing the demon of Hereford Cathedral had already become an occult cause célèbre, perhaps Sayer had been in here that night.

  Merrily was cold and confused. This was all getting beyond her comprehension, and the sight of the empty, segmented tomb was starting to distress her.

  She was glad when Huw said, ‘Let’s light a candle for Tommy,’ and they moved out of the enclosure.

  There was a votive stand which had previously been sited next to the tomb when it was intact. All its candles were out, so she passed Huw her Zippo and he lit two for them. The little flames warmed her momentarily.

  He touched her elbow. ‘Let’s pray, eh?’

  She nodded. They knelt facing the partition and the ruins of the shrine. One of the candles went out. She handed Huw the Zippo again, and he stood up and relit the candle. Merrily put out a hand, feeling for a draught from somewhere. No obvious breeze.

  As Huw stepped back, the second candle went out.

  He waited a moment then applied the lighter to the second candle. As the flame touched the wick, the first candle went out.

  A thin taper of cold passed through Merrily, and came out of her mouth as a tiny, frayed whimper.

  Outside, in the fog-clogged and freezing night, Huw said, ‘Watch yourself.’

  Merrily was shivering badly.

  ‘What I’m saying is, don’t feel you’ve got summat to prove.’

  ‘Li… like… like what?’

  ‘You know exactly what. If anything happened, and you thought the sanctity of the Cathedral was at risk, you might just be daft enough to go in there on your own, to call on Tommy Canty and Our Lord to do the business.’

  ‘I don’t think I w… would have the guts.’

  She felt naked, as though the fog was dissolving all her clothing like acid. She wanted Jane to be with her, and yet didn’t want Jane anywhere near her.