by Phil Rickman
'Let's put this in context,' Ernie Dawber said. 'The Bridelow tradition is very much on the distaff side, and most of us accept this. It's a gentler, softer kind of, of...'
'Witchcraft?' Macbeth said.
Milly said, 'We don't like that word, Mungo. It implies you want to use it to do something. All we wanted was to keep a balance. It's more like, you know, conservation. That's why women have been best at it; not got that same kind of aggression, not so arrogant as men.'
'In general.' Ernie Dawber sniffed once. 'But what I wanted to say was that you don't get a tradition carried on this long unless there's a certain ...'
'Power,' Milly said. 'Immense power.'
'... concentrated here,' said Mr Dawber.
'Power?' Macbeth was still sitting at the gateleg table. There was a small amount of whisky left in his glass. 'What kind of power we talking about?'
Milly rearranged the cats. 'Let's just say that if you wanted to do something you'd do it a lot better in Bridelow than you might elsewhere.'
Willie said, 'For most of the lads here it's no big deal. We used to say it were women's stuff - back in the days when you were allowed to talk like that. So it were a while before anybody realized that Jack ... Stanage, I'll call him that, though that's just an invented name he writes under ... that Jack Stanage had been, like … studying.'
'He always had a girl,' Ernie said. 'Any girl. Any girl - or woman - he wanted. This'd be from the age of about thirteen. Bit more precocious in those days than it might seem now.'
'Yes,' Milly said, and they all looked at her. Milly looked down at the cats and said no more.
'I didn't notice that so much,' said Willie hurriedly, 'him being a few years older than me. What I noticed was the money. He always had lots of money. He was generous with it too, if you went along with what he wanted you to do. He could show you a good time, could Jack.'
Milly didn't look up. 'Not when you're ten years old,' she said.
'Uh ... yeah.' Macbeth reached over to his slicker, pulled out the paperback, Blue John's Way. Ernie Dawber picked it up with a thin smile.
'You read it?'
'Leafed through it. In light of what I just heard, I wondered if maybe...'
'Not so much an allegory, Mr Macbeth, as …'
'Mungo.'
'When I know you better, Mr Macbeth. Not so much allegory as a case of "only the names have been changed".'
'So let me get this right...' Macbeth was cautious. 'This is a guy who gravitates towards the, uh, arcane. A guy who might like to try and harness other people's powers, maybe.'
Willie looked up. 'What are you thinking about?'
Macbeth finished up his whisky. It made him feel no better. 'I'm thinking about Moira Cairns,' he said soberly. 'And I'm thinking about a comb.'
To Joel Beard, former teacher of physical education, the issue had always seemed such a simple one. If good was to triumph over evil then good required strength. Good needed to work out regularly and get into condition. Indeed, he found a direct correlation between the heavy pectoral cross and the powerful pectoral muscles needed to support it.
But he couldn't find the pectoral cross.
He'd found the wooden lectern, one of the owl's wooden legs missing, smashed up against the Horridge family tomb.
Now he was down on his hands and knees in the sodden grass, the rain pummelling his back.
Not that he felt powerless without the cross, not that he felt like a warrior without his sword; he could stand naked and know that his spiritual strength came from within, but ...
'Mr Beard ... are you here?'
Joel stopped scrabbling in the grass, felt his back stiffen. The fluid, tenor voice had curled with ease around the tumult of the night. It was, he realized suddenly, the voice of a man who might have been a priest.
It's all around you, Mr Beard ... you'll see the signs everywhere ... in the church ...
Joel stood and was drawn towards the voice and the question which had tormented him for so many months.
'Who are you?'
They stood opposite each other at the porch door, Joel thought he was the taller, but only just. He couldn't see the man's face under his black umbrella.
The man stepped inside the porch and lowered the umbrella. 'You don't know me?'
'I've never seen you before,' Joel said, water cascading down his face. Sweet, refreshing rain? Rain out of darkness was not so sweet.
The man waited, languid, in the doorway under the porch lantern. He wore a loose, double-breasted suit of black or charcoal grey.
'It's many years since I was here, Mr Beard. It's changed, thankfully. Otherwise I simply wouldn't have been able to come in.'
Joel said, 'I took it upon myself to remove certain offensive artefacts.'
'Well done, m'boy.' The man's face split into a sudden grin, revealing large teeth, unexpectedly yellow in his candle-white face.
'Who are you?' Joel said. 'Why are you doing this?'
'My name,' said the man, extending a long, slender, white hand, 'is John. And I was born here.'
Joel took the hand firmly. He had developed a manly handshake which some recipients apparently found crushing.
This hand, he found when his fingers closed on it, was not crushable; it was like high-tensile steel.
He recognized strength.
'May I come in?' he asked politely.
'M' dear boy ...' The man called John stepped to one side. 'Interesting weather, have to say that. Washes away the murk of the past, perhaps.'
'Did you find it was ... murky ... when you lived here?'
'Mr Beard, it was layer upon layer. Tell me - small point - what are your views on the ordination of women?'
'I deplore it,' said Joel from the heart. 'I shall always deplore it.'
'Well said. Probably hasn't escaped your notice that the so-called spirituality of this place has been steered for generations by women.'
'They call this spirituality?' Joel gestured towards the space where the pagan abomination had spread her legs.
John lifted his hands. 'My point entirely. Expressed, in various ways, many years ago. Before I was made to leave. Not much more than a boy at the time. Excluded. And then sent away. Do what they like, these close-knit communities.'
'Made to leave? Because you stood out against their witchery?'
John shrugged.
'It's barely credible,' said Joel.
'I'll be quite frank with you, Joel - may I call you Joel, I feel we've known each other so long now - I'll be quite honest, I promised myself that one day, I'd see them and their way of life destroyed. Can you understand that?'
'"Vengeance is mine sayeth the "Lord." However, in certain circumstances, we're all tools, are we not? I've always seen myself as a tool.'
'Quite.' John pulled open the inner door into the church itself and stepped through into the amber-lit interior. He moved like a partially blind man, feeling his way. He kept touching things, placing his hands on the walls, the pillars, the pew-ends, as if surprised that he was not receiving electric shocks.
'It's been cleansed,' Joel said. 'But it's still vulnerable. Was Hans Gruber here in your time?'
'Who? Oh, the collaborating minister. No, I left many years before he arrived. Fellow called Boston in my day. But much the same, y' know. Much the same.'
'A quisling?'
'They're all tamed within a remarkably short space of time. Which is why I thought you should be alerted.'
'How did you know I'd come here?'
'Dear boy, could you have resisted it? Besides which, there was Archdeacon Flemming.'
'Oh.'
'Friends of friends, y' know.'
Joel was vaguely disappointed. He'd seen his mission to Bridelow in terms of divine orchestration rather than human machination. And yet, could not the two be interlinked?
'Gone mostly unchallenged for centuries y' know,' John said. 'And so when local papers were passed to me, relating your adventures in Sheffield, it was cl
ear you were The Man
for The Job, as it were. All the namby-pamby clerics around. All the airy-fairy, New Age nancy-boys. No. Anybody could rattle them, Joel, it was going to be you.'
John walked slowly up the nave. Even the amber lights failed to colour the pallor of his skin or the snow-white hair receding in ridges from his grey-freckled forehead.
'Used to have crosses here, made of twigs and things, dangling down. Kiddies would be sent out to collect the entrails.'
'Gone. I dealt with it. And their nasty little shrine at the edge of the moor.'
'But your friends have chickened out. Why was that?'
'There was . . Joel shook water from his curls, '... a manifestation of evil. Some of them couldn't... cope. John, I have to know ... are you a priest?'
John's yellow teeth reappeared. 'Joel,' he said. 'I've told you as much as I can about me and more than I should.'
'I thought so,' said Joel. He paused. 'It isn't over, is it? If it were, you wouldn't be here.'
'Well deduced, Joel, m' boy. Have you ever been up to the lamp?'
Joel stared at him. He felt an almost chemical excitement in his stomach. 'The so-called Beacon?'
'I said we'd put it out, didn't I? I said between us we'd put out the Devil's Light. So. After you, m' boy.'
'Where?'
'To the stairs. Do you have a hammer?'
'I believe there's one in the shed, bottom of the churchyard.'
John looked at his watch. 'No time, old lad. Witching hour approaches. Have to make do with what we've got.'
He grinned, affable, relaxed and not quite like any priest Joel had ever encountered.
'Stanage fixed it,' Macbeth said, 'so Moira would be performing at the Celtic convention. He also requested that she play a certain song, called "The Comb Song", which was of, uh, personal significance to her.'
'I know.' Willie Wagstaff started to pour out more whisky, then changed his mind and capped the bottle. 'I was there, must be ten years ago, when that song was recorded. My contribution seems to have been chopped in the final mix, but she wanted friends around her during the session. She invited Matt and me, but Matt couldn't come, I think probably Lottie wouldn't let him.'
Macbeth was a mite dismayed. 'Said she hadn't told anyone the background to that song before.'
'She didn't, lad, far as I know. She just wanted us to be there. She never told us what it were about and I didn't ask.'
Macbeth felt a small pinprick of tears. Quickly, to cover up, he began to tell them about the deer-head incident.
'See, just before it happened, it grew real cold in that room and real tense, like a thunderstorm's on the way. Afterwards, this guy — who I now know to be Stanage - is close up to Moira, and he's bleeding from one eye. Probably got hit by a shaft of bone. Looking back, I get the feeling there was some kind of contest - that's too mild a word, some kind of struggle, battle of wills ... and that's what caused it. I started thinking of two stags locking horns. But there was so much ...'
'Energy.' Milly Gill was nodding. 'So much energy that it exploded in the atmosphere and brought down all these ... things '
'See, another thing, Moira felt pretty negative about the deer heads, the idea of guys like the Earl blasting off at defenceless animals for kicks and then hanging the heads on their walls. Not the old Celtic way, she said, to boast about, I dunno, the superiority of one species over another. Or maybe I heard that someplace.'
Ernie Dawber chuckled. 'The Celts were more likely to display human heads. But even then, as you say, not gratuitously.'
'It does sound, doesn't it,' Milly said, 'if what you say about him bleeding is correct, that if there was a contest, then Moira won it.'
'He wouldn't like that,' Willy said. Macbeth sensed that beneath the table the little guy's fingers were beating bruises into his knees. He found his own fists were clenching.
'But why'd he target Moira, that's the question? What'd he want with her?'
Willie said, 'Well, it's no coincidence, is it?'
Ernie Dawber looked up at the wall-clock, hand-painted with spring flowers. 'I don't want to hurry you, but I'm not sure where this is getting us.'
Willie stood up suddenly. His nose twitched in disgust. 'Getting us a damn sight further than talk of sacrifice, Mr Dawber.'
Macbeth said, 'Sac ... ?' and Ernie Dawber put a finger to his lips.
'Don't you think, for his own good, it would be better if Mr Macbeth were to leave us?'
'Bollocks to that.' Willie's eyes flashed and he thumped a hand down on the table.
Milly Gill said, 'Willie ...'
'And bollocks to your daft ideas, Mr Dawber. We might have taken some bullshit off you when you was headmaster, but not any more. If Jack's behind this, least we know what we're up against.'
'And you think that makes it any better, Willie?' Ernie Dawber shook his head. 'No, this is a man who was a danger to us all at the age of sixteen. Now he's rich and powerful, he's had half a lifetime of indulgence in esoteric studies of what you might call the most dubious kind. He's got a hatred for Bridelow inside him that's been fermenting for about half a century. And you're saying we don't need drastic action to protect us?'
'If John Peveril Stanage is in some way responsible for the death of Moira Cairns,' Macbeth said grimly, 'please, just point me in the right direction and I will go bust this bastard's ass.'
Willie and his woman looked at each other, stark hopelessness in their eyes.
'I hope you're not trying to tell me,' said Ernie Dawber, with dignity, 'that our American friend is in some respect less irrational than I am?'
'I wouldn't try to tell you anything, Mr Dawber, you're the schoolmaster and I know my place.'
'Willie!'
'I've had it, lass. I've had enough of this crap. If you want to go out on the Moss and kill Mr Dawber, just do it.'
He stopped because the door had opened. Macbeth saw there was another woman in the room, standing quite still, watching them.
She was young, maybe mid-twenties. Rain sparkled in her thin, blonde hair and there were big globules of it like tiny winking lights against the dark blue of her duffel coat.
'You left the Post Office door unlocked again, Milly. You'll have armed robbers in.'
'Cathy.' Ernie Dawber stood up, his hat in one hand, the cup and saucer balanced on the other. 'I thought you'd gone back to college.'
'You really think I could leave at a time like this, Mr Dawber? Sit down. Please.'
The girl walked into the room, glanced at Macbeth and thought for a moment, then apparently decided to go ahead anyhow.
'Am I right in concluding, Mr Dawber, you've been offering yourself as a replacement for the Man in the Moss?'
Macbeth closed his eyes, wondering briefly what the prospects were of him awakening in his hotel bedroom in Glasgow with a real lulu of a hangover and Moira Cairns still alive
someplace. When, with a sigh, he opened them again into the slightly tawdry light of Milly Gill's many-petalled parlour, Milly was saying, 'How long have you been on the other side of that door, Cathy?'
'Long enough.' The girl turned back to the old man. 'Mr Dawber, let's get one thing cleared up. The Man in the Moss was in what, in his day, would have been considered the prime of life. To us, he'd be a young lad.'
Ernie Dawber placed his cup and saucer on the table and took his hat in both hands.
'He was fresh meat, Mr Dawber,' said Cathy. 'Whereas you - and I trust you won't take offence - are dried-up, wizened and probably as tough as old boots. What I'm saying is, you wouldn't be much of a sacrifice, Mr Dawber.'
Ernie Dawber cleared his throat. 'In the last War, Catherine, when Hitler was planning an invasion of these shores from occupied France, the, er, pagans of southern England ...'
'... held a ritual on the beach at Hastings or somewhere in cold weather, and an old man went naked and allowed himself to die of exposure, thus setting up a barrier against the Nazi hordes. I don't believe that old story eithe
r, Mr Dawber.'
Macbeth could tell by the way Ernie Dawber was turning his hat around in his hands that the poor old guy was close to tears.
Cathy said, 'I know you love Bridelow more than any man alive ...'
'Anyone alive, young lady.'
'Sorry. But throwing your life away isn't going to help anyone, least of all the poor devil who's got to do the deed. You won't accept this, I know you won't, but you're like a number of people who got too close to the Man in the Moss, you're drawn almost into another world. You contemplate things that under normal circumstances ...'
'Cathy, lass, these are not normal circumstances.'
'Yes, but why are they not? Why's everything been allowed to go haywire? You've got to ask yourself when all this started and how. I've spent a long time talking to Pop, and ...' Cathy pulled damp, pale hair out of an eye. 'Look, you know they've been seeing Matt Castle in the village.'
Willie Wagstaff jerked and stiffened and went white. Macbeth couldn't take any more. He got up, walked over to the window and listened hard to the rain until it turned the girl's steady voice into white noise, crazy disconnected phrases seeping out, like when you drove into a new state and your car radio was catching some stray police waveband.
'… and when she looked into the fryer, the fat had all congealed and gone black. Black. Like peat.'
Macbeth pushed his forehead up against the window, rolling it repeatedly on the cold, wet glass.
He was too tired for this but couldn't imagine how he'd ever sleep again.
From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):
THE TRIPLE DEATH
Three was a sacred number for the ancient Celts.
I don't know why. Nobody does, obviously. But think of Christianity - the Holy Trinity. Now think of the Celtic triple goddess - maiden, matron, hag Think, if you like, of the Law of Three, as taught by the cosmologist Gurdjieff. '... One force or two forces can never produce a phenomenon,' writes his colleague, P. D. Ouspensky, going on to explain about (i) the positive force, (ii) the negative force and (iii) the neutralizing or motivating force.