Midwinter of the Spirit mw-2

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Police said what did we wanna do with it – this valuable antique. So I took it. Ma was in no state at the time, never would be again, so I took it. Ma signs for it, never knew what she was signing for. I was sixteen by then – big man taking charge. I knew what to do with it. I wrapped it up in some newspaper, stuffed it in my bike bag – brought it up here, back to the old farm. Come up on the bike early one morning, and buried the fucker.’

  ‘You buried it?’

  ‘And then, many years later, my poor little mental sister comes along and digs it up – the same blade.’ Denny hissed, ‘It defies fucking belief.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ Lol leapt up aghast. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’

  ‘Don’t know it? It was on our wall for… I dunno, for centuries. That’s why I knew Kathy wasn’t talking total crap about us being in this direct line to the old Celtic village. My grandad, when I was little, he told me that artefact’d been in the family for two thousand years. Sounds balls, don’t it? What family’s been two thousand years in the same spot?’

  ‘Where did you bury it?’

  ‘In the shit.’ A short, bitter laugh. ‘There was this kind of slurry pit in front of here in those days. I dug down to the bottom of it. I put the sword in the shit.’

  It all fitted so well. Perhaps the Purefoys or their predecessors had found the old pit, thought it was the site of a pond, so dug down – and when no water came up, they abandoned it. It all fitted so horribly well.

  ‘You tell the police it was the same sword?’

  ‘They never asked. They knew she’d dug up all this stuff. Far as they’re concerned she was just obsessed with Dad’s suicide. They’re not connecting it beyond an obsession. If you were the police, would you wanner know all this shit about the ancestors? Would you want a hint of anything…’ Denny drew breath and bit his lower lip. ‘Anything paranormal?’

  ‘You think that?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Denny said, ‘it’s the least complicated option.’

  ‘She said it was telling her things,’ Lol said. ‘She wouldn’t even let me touch it. She said she didn’t want the flow blocked by anyone else’s vibrations.’

  ‘Madness,’ Denny said. ‘Let’s just call it madness.’

  Lol stood up and moved to the window, looked down into Capuchin Lane, snow now in rags against the house walls after a day of shoppers’ shoes. ‘She just wanted to think she was in… almost physical contact with her ancestors.’

  ‘She’s with the primitive fuckers now,’ Denny said sourly.

  27

  Protect Her This Night

  THE DAY AFTER tomorrow it would be December. Amidst frozen fields, the Church of St Cosmas and St Damien, a small candleshimmer behind its leaded windows, looked peaceful in a humble-stable-at-Bethlehem way. Or so she told herself.

  Another attempt to dispel the fear.

  Always make time to prepare, Huw would say. All the time she’d made, she’d blown.

  An hour fending off Ted Clowes, who saw himself as her lay-supervisor, who was always credited with getting Merrily the Ledwardine living – to ease the worries of her mother, his sister in Cheltenham who was convinced that it was only a matter of time before any female curate in Liverpool was found raped and battered in the churchyard.

  Ted would also dump her without a qualm if anything began reflecting badly on himself.

  ‘I think,’ he’d told her before they finally parted tonight, ‘that this parish is beginning to realize precisely where it stands with you, Merrily.’

  And she knew that this time he’d cause trouble. Perhaps a discreet call to the Archdeacon, a question at the parish council which would be recorded in the minutes.

  It had left her less than an hour to see to the blessing and bottling of the water and to explain to Jane where she was going and why Jane, who would be more than a bit interested, could not come. The truth was, if there was anything in there, she didn’t want Jane exposed to it. Kids her age were easy prey. It might even have been kids Jane’s age who were behind the desecration.

  But Jane seemed unconcerned, said that was OK, as she was going out anyway, to see a movie in Hereford with Rowenna.

  Hardly for the first time, as she parked the Volvo at the side of the track next to a Suzuki four-wheel drive and a muddied Mondeo, Merrily wondered why Jane did not have a boyfriend.

  She went round the boot to fetch her case, containing the Bibles, the prayer books, the rites of blessing and lesser exorcism that she’d hand-copied on to cards, and the holy water. She was freezing. She’d changed into her vestments before leaving, so now she put on her cowled clerical cloak of heavyweight loden, but it did nothing for the cold inside.

  Lights shone from the cottages. The church, however, was in darkness, no candlelight visible from this side.

  She saw figures waiting for her at the edge of the churchyard.

  ‘DS Bliss.’ He shone a torch upwards to his own ginger-topped face. ‘Franny Bliss.’ Merseyside accent. ‘I’m a Catholic. You all right with that, Vicar?’

  ‘That’s… fine. I’m Merrily.’

  ‘I know. Seen your piccy in the local rag. This big yobbo’s PC Dave Jones. Nonconformist, him. What was that bloody chapel of yours again, Dave?’

  ‘Pisgah, sarge. Pisgah Chapel.’ PC Jones was in plain clothes: dark anorak and a flat cap. ‘Not been back in years, mind.’

  ‘I just love to hear him say it,’ Bliss said. ‘Now, just so’s you know, Merrily, we’ve gor another lad hanging out by the farm. We don’t talk about him – many years lapsed. That’s why he gets to stay in the cold. Anyway, we’re the best the DCI could put together in the time. Where do you want us?’

  ‘I don’t know how you want to handle it.’ Merrily stood on the parapet surrounding the churchyard, looking out at the bare fields gleaming silver under a sizable moon. The wind plucked at her cloak. ‘This could be a wild-goose chase for you.’

  ‘Like most of our nights, that is,’ said bulky Dave.

  Merrily gathered the cloak around her. She was scared – and had been since changing into her priestly things. Under her cloak, the cassock had begun to feel clammy, the surplice stiff.

  ‘For a start, who else knows about this?’ Franny Bliss asked.

  ‘Well, I told Major Weston, and made a courtesy call to my colleague at Dilwyn. Left a message on his machine, anyway. I also rang the farm here and got the numbers of about half a dozen people living in the area, giving them the opportunity to come along if they felt strongly about it.’

  ‘Or if they fancied watching an exorcism?’

  Merrily sighed. ‘Unfortunately, yes. But I said the number allowed inside the church would be limited. And definitely no children.’

  ‘Would it be all right if we talked to a few of the locals? In areas like this, people hear things.’

  ‘Afterwards, though.’

  ‘We’ll ask them to hang on. And we’ll pay particular attention to anyone who doesn’t want to. I do feel quite strongly about it meself. It’s only wilful damage, but if they can do this, they’re capable of a lot of other stuff carrying stiffer sentences, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I had a chat with Inspector Howe.’

  ‘And your Bishop’s had a chat with our Divisional Super. It’s about community relations at the highest level.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry about that.’ The Bishop had been hard to pin down, and tonight’s ceremony had, in the end, been cleared with him on his mobile via Sophie.

  ‘Not that we wouldn’t be here anyway,’ Franny Bliss said, ‘but maybe not three of us. Still, get these lads, and even if we don’t get a line on the body in the Wye, we might get something else.’

  ‘Might get possessed, sarge,’ PC Jones said heavily.

  ‘Merrily’ll protect us, Dave. Won’t yer, Merrily?’

  There was nothing essentially wrong with Christianity, Patricia said. It promoted a useful, if simplistic, moral code. But it was an import. When it was introduced,
it was revolutionary and brash and sometimes brutal and crass. It trampled over ancient wisdom.

  Jane saw Rowenna’s glance. None of the rest of the group knew her mother was a vicar. They thought she was a teacher. And they thought Jane was eighteen and working as a secretary.

  Blinds were down over the window. A small brass oil lamp burned on a high table. Seven of them sat in a vague semicircle around Patricia, on mats and dark-coloured pillows. There was a faint scent, musty-sweet, perhaps from the oil in the lamp. It was mysterious but also cosy.

  ‘And Christianity has always been used as a prop for prejudices,’ Patricia continued, ‘creating the myth of the clovenhoofed devil and demonizing black cats, which were tortured and slaughtered in their hundreds.’

  Jane thought about Ethel and seethed.

  ‘So many of these things are forgotten now,’

  Patricia said. Patricia had the look of someone much older than she possibly could be, someone who’d been soaking up wisdom for like centuries. She was the elder of the circle and the others deferred to her. Jane wasn’t sure how many others there were in the group. They came from a wide area on both sides of the Welsh border. All women: a couple of old-hippy types – long skirts and braided hair – but mainly the kind you thought of as school-teacherish. Thank heavens none of their own teachers were here.

  She and Rowenna were the youngest. The women called themselves ‘the Pod’, after the café itself.

  Patricia was saying: ‘It’s the basis of many of our exercises that human beings are the central nervous system of the Earth. Thus we can receive impulses and also send them out. We can effect changes with our minds, and this is a responsibility not to be taken lightly.’

  That was the definition of magic, wasn’t it? Effecting change with the mind – Mum’s lot would say that only God could effect changes. Which, from where Jane was sitting, was bollocks basically – all this Serving the Will of God stuff. Like the wholesale slaughter of black cats? The Spanish Inquisition?

  But was the Pod a pagan thing? Because, OK, she was entitled to find her own spiritual path, but it would be better if it was like parallel to Mum’s. She wasn’t particularly looking for confrontation and heavy-duty domestic strife.

  She just wished someone would explain simple things like that.

  ‘It’s about consciousness.’ Patricia looked suddenly at Jane, as if she’d picked up her thoughts, her uncertainty.

  Jane shivered. She was a little scared of Patricia, with her smoky-grey dress and her tight, parchment-coloured hair. She wanted to ask exactly what Patricia meant by ‘consciousness’. But this was only their second meeting, and she didn’t want to seem stupid. The nature of consciousness was something on which she’d be expected to meditate – she was establishing a special corner for that in her sitting-room/study, next to a big yellow rectangle on one of the Mondrian walls. She’d bought a little incense-burner but hadn’t used it yet.

  It was all a little bit frightening – therefore, naturally, wonderful.

  Jane glanced up. Patricia was looking directly at her. In the gloom, Patricia’s eyes burned like tiny torchbulbs.

  Jane gulped, suddenly panicked. Christ, she’d been rumbled. They’d found out that her mother was an Anglican priest. They thought she was some sort of Church spy. She looked across at Rowenna, but Rowenna was staring away into the darkness. The others were gazing placidly down into their laps. She didn’t really know any of them; Angela, the tarot lady, had not been present at either of the meetings.

  Jane had expected all kinds of questions before she was admitted to the circle, but it hadn’t been like that. It was only when you got here and experienced the electric atmosphere – as if this little room was the entrance to an endless tunnel – that you instinctively wanted to keep quiet about yourself. At least, you did if your old lady was a vicar.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jane,’ Patricia said suddenly. ‘We’re here to help you.’ The woman smiled thinly.

  The wind whined in the rafters and the flame of the oil lamp shrank back, as though it was cowering.

  Cool!

  The church was now lit by two oil lamps supported on brackets, three candles and a hurricane lantern on the central pulpit. It looked deceptively cosy. Huw Owen was there with a curlyhaired, jutting-jawed, youngish minister, who backed away from Merrily in her cloak, as if she was a vampire, throwing up his hands in mock defence.

  ‘Mrs Watkins, I beg forgiveness.’

  ‘From me?’

  ‘I’m Jeffrey Kimball, from Dilwyn. Major Weston approached me this morning, to perform the necessary, and I’m afraid I threw a tantrum and gave him your home number, which I looked up in the telephone book. It was pure pique on my part after that memorandum from the Bishop on the subject of Deliverance, and I’m sorry to have taken it out on you.’

  ‘I can understand your—’

  ‘To be quite honest, Mrs Watkins, I tend to object to more or less anything this particular bishop does. I do so hate blatantly political appointments of any kind. Absolutely everyone thought Hereford should have gone to Tom Armstrong – a canon at the Cathedral for five years before he went to Reading as Dean… Immensely able man… and they used a very minor heart problem as an excuse to give it to Hunter. I make no secret of my feelings, and I realize you—’

  ‘Happen you can save that till after, lad,’ Huw Owen said.

  ‘Oh.’ The Rev. Kimball let his arms fall to his sides. ‘Yes, of course. I should have thought.’

  ‘Merrily needs a bit of quiet,’ Huw said.

  ‘Yes, I shall leave you alone and go out to contemplate the moonlight on the snow.’

  ‘Aye, give us quarter of an hour, there’s a good lad.’

  ‘I know his type,’ Huw said as the latch dropped into place behind Kimball. ‘Gets to the age when the bishops are looking younger. How are you, lass?’

  She hugged Huw. It was the first time they’d been together since the Deliverance course. He wore what looked like an airforce greatcoat and a yellow bobble-hat.

  ‘You all right for this, Merrily?’

  ‘Sure.’ She looked around, sniffed the air, could only smell disinfectant.

  ‘Who cleared it up?’ Huw asked.

  ‘I did. Couldn’t ask anybody else, could I? Buried the… remains… just over the wall. Little ceremony.’

  ‘Hands and knees wi’ a scrubbing brush, eh? What you got in mind for tonight?’

  ‘We’re looking at minor exorcism.’

  ‘Never go over the top.’

  ‘A cleansing. Holy water.’

  ‘Go right round it, I would. Take one of them coppers with you. Never had a copper at one of mine. Right, make a start? You want to pray together first?’

  ‘That would be good.’

  They sat side by side on the pew nearest the pulpit. ‘I’ll keep it simple,’ Huw said, ‘then we’ll have a bit of quiet. Lord, be with us in this tainted place tonight. Help this lass, Merrily, to repossess it, in Your name, from whatever dark shadows may still hang around it. Protect her this night, amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ Merrily added.

  And, during the ensuing period of quiet, she felt nothing – at first.

  When she closed her eyes, she saw neither the blue nor the gold, nor the lamplit path. She saw nothing but a swirling grey untinged by the lamps and the candles.

  She was not comfortable on the strange, sloping pew. Found she was squirming a bit, her cassock feeling clammy again. She was actually sweating; she felt damp down her spine. Come on, calm down. She undid the cloak, let it slip from her shoulders. Opened her eyes, but lowered the lids, letting them relax. Shifted position again, and was aware of Huw’s brief sideways glance.

  Lamplight flushed the sandstone faces of the knight and his lady, raised only inches above the floor to her left. They were believed, she now knew, to be John and Agnes de la Bere. The de la Beres were lords of the manor for much of the Middle Ages. John wore armour and carried a shield; his wife was gowned and wimpled
, slim and girlishly pretty. Another knight, probably John’s father, Robert, lay in the sub-chancel in front with his wife Margaret. Some effigies were terrifying, but these were courtly and benign and truthful. John de la Bere was stocky, had narrow eyes and a big nose.

  In other words, she felt OK about them. And about the church. So why was she so uneasy?

  She closed her eyes again, pressed her hands formally together, like the hands of John and Agnes de la Bere, and murmured St Patrick’s Breastplate in her mind. She smelled the pine disinfectant she’d borrowed from the farm, and ignored the slow-burning itch which occurred in the palm of her left hand and then the right, as though transmitted from one to the other.

  Huw was watching her openly now. She was absolutely desperate for a smoke. She shifted again. The itch in her hands was worse; she couldn’t ignore it, had to concentrate hard to stop herself pulling her hands apart and rubbing her palms on the edge of the pew.

  When she could bear it no longer and yearned for relief, she was at last given some help.

  Scritch-scratch.

  The tiny bird-claw, the curling nail on a yellow finger. The smell of disinfectant had grown sweet and rancid, and was pulled into her nostrils like thin string and down into her throat.

  Cat faeces and gangrene.

  A rough cough came up like vomit. Merrily began to cough and cough and couldn’t stop. She folded up on the pew, arms flailing, eyes streaming. She felt Huw’s arms around her, heard him praying frantically under his breath, clutching her to him, and still she couldn’t stop coughing and slid down his legs to the stone floor, and he pulled away from her and she heard him scrabbling about.

  ‘Drink,’ he said urgently. Then a hard ring of glass pushing at her lips, chinking on her teeth.

  She gripped it and sucked and Huw held it there.

  Merrily fell back against the pew, holy water dribbling down her chin, the lamps and candles blurring into a blaze. Huw brought her gently to her feet and put her cloak around her shoulders.