by Phil Rickman
Remains of an Altar
( Merrily Watkins - 8 )
Phil Rickman
In 1934, the dying composer Sir Edward Elgar feebly whistled to a friend the theme from his Cello Concerto and said, "If you're walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don't be frightened. It's only me." Seventy years later, Merrily Watkins—parish priest and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford—is called in to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension in a spate of road accidents in the Malvern village of Wychehill. There, Merrily discovers new tensions in Elgar's countryside. The proposed takeover of a local pub by a nightclub owner with a criminal reputation has become the battleground between the defenders of Olde Englande and the hard men of the drug world—with extreme and sinister elements on both sides. And as the choral society prepares to stage an open-air performance of Elgar's Caractacus at a prehistoric hill fort, the deaths begin.
The Remains of an Altar
(The eighth book in the Merrily Watkins series)
A novel by Phil Rickman
PART ONE
‘The Bible record is unmistakable in its references to the old straight track as having partly or wholly gone out of use: “the ancient high places are in possession of the enemy”; “my people have forgotten me, they stumble in their ways from the ancient paths.”’
Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track (1925)
1
On the Bald Hill
More than a day later, there was still wreckage around: a twisted door panel across the ditch and slivers of tyre like shed snakeskin in the grass.
It had rained last night, and the Rev. S. D. Spicer’s cassock was hemmed with wet mud. What might have been a piece of someone’s blood-stiffened sleeve was snagged in brambles coiling like rolls of barbed wire from the hedge. The countryside, violated, wasn’t letting go. It felt to Merrily as if the air was still vibrating.
‘Other vehicle was an ancient Land Rover Defender,’ Spicer said. ‘Must’ve been like driving into a cliff face.’
Ground mist was draped like muslin over the hedges and down the bank and the early sun lit the windows of a turreted house in the valley. Looking back along the road Merrily could see no obvious blind spots, no overhanging trees.
‘Boy died in the ambulance.’ Spicer nodded at the metallic red door panel, crumpled and creased like thrown-away chocolate paper. ‘Took the fire brigade best part of an hour getting him out the car. Fortunately, he was unconscious the whole time.’
Merrily shook her head slowly, the way you did when there was nothing to be said. No act of violence as sudden and savage, massive and unstoppable, as a head-on car crash. She was thinking, inevitably, of Jane and Eirion out at night in Eirion’s small car. One momentary lapse of attention, a snatched caress, and…
‘He was in his mid-twenties. Lincoln Cookman, from north Worcester. The girl … no hurry to get her out. She’d had her window wide open. No seat belt. Head almost taken off on impact. Sonia Maloney, from Droitwich.’
‘Oh God.’ Merrily took a step back. ‘How old?’
‘’Bout nineteen.’ Spicer’s London accent was as flat as a rubber mat. ‘All horribly brutal and unsightly, but mercifully quick. No suffering. Except, of course, for Preston Devereaux.’
‘Sorry, Preston—?’
‘Local farmer and chairman of the parish council. And, as it happened, the driver of the Land Rover. Returning late from a family wedding.’
‘Oh, hell, really?’
‘Could’ve been any of us, Mrs Watkins. Parish Council’s been asking for speed cameras since last autumn. Not that that would’ve made a difference, state these kids must’ve been in. They come over from Worcester, places like that, at the weekends. Windows open, music blasting. Sixty-five, seventy, wrong side of the road. Poor guy’s still reliving it. He’ll need a bit of support – my job, I think.’
‘And what, erm … what’s mine, exactly, Mr Spicer?’
It was a reasonable question, but he didn’t answer. Parish priests would often have difficulty explaining why they’d resorted to Deliverance. Spicer had been terse and cagey on the phone yesterday. Can you come early? Before eight a.m.? In civvies. Best not make a carnival out of it.
OK, just gone 7.50 on a Monday morning, and here she was in discreet civvies: jeans and a sweatshirt. And here’s the Rector, all kitted out: cassock, collar, pectoral cross. Merrily felt wrong-footed. Why would he want that? She’d never met him before, didn’t even know his first name. Never been to this village before, out on the eastern rim of the diocese where it rose into the ramparts of Worcestershire.
‘Well, the point is,’ Spicer said, ‘this is the worst but it’s not exactly the first.’
‘You mean it’s an accident black spot?’
Sometimes, when a stretch of road acquired a reputation for accidents, someone would suggest that a bad pattern had been established, and you’d be asked to bless it. One of those increasingly commonplace roadside rituals, support for all the road-kill wreaths laid out by bereaved relatives – how did all that start? Anyway, it was a job for the local guy, unless there were complications.
‘How many actual accidents have there been, Mr Spicer?’
He didn’t respond. He was standing quite still; shortish and thickset, with sparse greying hair shaved tight to his head and small, blank eyes that seemed to be on his face rather than embedded there. Like a teddy bear’s eyes, Merrily thought. Poor man, Sophie had said last night on the phone. She took the children, of course.
It was as though some part of Spicer had withdrawn, the way a computer relaxed into its screensaver. Not many people could do this in the presence of a stranger – especially clergy who, unless they were in a church, tended to treat silence like a vacuum into which doubt and unbelief might enter if it wasn’t filled with chatter, however inane.
OK, whatever. Merrily let the silence hang and looked up at the tiered ramparts of the sculpted fortress-hill called Herefordshire Beacon, also known as British Camp. This was the most prominent landmark in the Malverns. Where the Celts were said to have held out against the Romans. The misty sun was hovering over it like a white-cowled lamp.
The name Malvern came from the Welsh moel bryn, meaning bald hill, and bald it still was, up on the tops of this startling volcanic ridge, while the foothills and the Alpine-looking valleys were lush with orchards and the gardens of summer villas: well-preserved remains of Elgar’s England.
‘Three … four now,’ Spicer said. ‘Maybe even five, including this one. That’s inside a couple of months. One was a lorry, took a chunk out of the church wall.’
‘And on a stretch of road as open as this, I suppose that’s…’
‘Drivers reckoned they swerved to avoid a ghost,’ Spicer said.
His tone hadn’t altered and his eyes remained limpid. A wood pigeon’s hollow call was funnelled out of the valley.
‘That took a while to come out, didn’t it?’ Merrily said.
‘Come back to the house.’ He turned away. ‘We’ll talk about it there.’
2
Uncle Alfie
After very little sleep, Jane awoke all sweating and confused. On one level she was lit up with excitement, on another fired by the wrongness of things: injustice, greed, sacrilege.
Bastards.
The thinness of the light showed that it was still early, but the Mondrian walls were already aglow: ancient timber-framed squares, once wattle and daub, then plastered and whitewashed and finally overpainted, by Jane herself, in defiant reds and blues and oranges.
It was more than two years since she’d coloured the squares – just a kid, then, disoriented by the move to this antiquated village with a mother who used to be normal and had suddenly
turned into a bloody priest.
Just a kid, determined to make her mark: Jane’s here now. Jane takes no shit. This is Jane’s apartment. This is the way Jane does things, OK?
In a seventeenth-century vicarage, it wouldn’t have been at all OK with the Listed-Buildings Police, but it had seemed unlikely that they’d ever come beating on the door with a warrant to investigate the attic. Looking back, Mum had been seriously good about it, letting Jane establish a personal suite up here and splatter the walls with coloured paint they couldn’t really afford … and never once suggesting that it might look just a bit crap.
But that was over two years ago and now Jane was, Christ, seventeen. And this once-important gesture, these once-deeply-symbolic walls, were looking entirely, irredeemably naff. Not even much like a Mondrian – in the middle of an A-level art course, she could say that with some certainty.
More like a sodding nursery school.
Decision: the Mondrian walls would have to go. You were in no position to fight senseless public vandalism if you couldn’t identify your own small crimes.
That sorted, Jane sat up in bed and looked out of the window at the real issue. Full of the breathless excitement of new discovery and a low-burning rage which, she’d have to admit, was also a serious turn-on.
Below her, beyond the front hedge, lay Ledwardine, this black and white, oak-framed village, embellished with old gold by the early sun. Defended against neon and advertising hoardings by the same guys who would’ve freaked if they’d ever been exposed to the Mondrian walls … while totally missing the Big Picture.
The focus of which was just beyond the village: a green, wooded pyramid rising out of a flimsy loincloth of mist.
Cole Hill. She’d always assumed that it had simply been named after somebody called Cole who’d tried to farm it a few centuries ago. Now … Cole Hill … it sang with glamour.
Jane sank back into the pillows, last night’s images coalescing around her: the slipping sun and the line across the meadow. Drifting down from the hill, with the blackening steeple of Ledwardine Church marking the way like the gnomon on the sundial of the village. Amazing, inspirational.
But, like, for how long?
Tumbling out of bed, she dislodged from the table the paperback Old Straight Track she’d been reading until about two a.m. – photo on the back of benign-looking bearded old guy, glasses on his nose. Alfred Watkins of Hereford: county councillor, magistrate, businessman, antiquarian, photographer, inventor, all-round solid citizen. And visionary.
Jane Watkins picked up the book.
You and me, Uncle.
This book … well, it had been around the vicarage as long as Jane had, and she’d thought she must have read it ages ago. Only realizing a week or so back that all she’d done was leaf through it, looking at Watkins’s pioneering photos, assuming his ideas were long outdated, his findings revised by more enlightened thinking. Now, because of this A-level project, she’d finally read it cover to cover. Twice. Feeling the heat of a blazing inspiration. And it was all so close. Mum was probably right when she said there was no family link, and yet it was as if this long-dead guy with the same name was communicating with Jane along one of his own mysterious straight lines.
Saying, help me.
Jane turned her back on the clashing imperatives of the Mondrian walls, stumbled to the bathroom, and ran the shower.
She needed back-up on this one.
Two years ago, telling Mum would have been a total no-no, the issue too left-field and the gulf between them too wide. Two years ago, the sight of Mum kneeling to pray would have Jane shrivelling up inside with embarrassment and resentment. But now she was older and Mum was also more balanced, a lot less rigid.
Except for the rumble of the old Aga and the rhythmic sandpaper sound of Ethel washing her paws on the rug in front of it, the kitchen was silent.
Jane found a note on the table. It said:
J. YOU’VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THIS … BUT HAD TO LEAVE EARLY THIS MORNING TO MEET PARANOID RECTOR IN THE MALVERNS. THICK-SLICED LOAF IN BREAD BIN, EGGS IN BASKET. DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE DRIED FOOD OUT FOR ETHEL. SORRY ABOUT THIS, FLOWER. SEE YOU AFTER SCHOOL. LOVE, M.
Flower. Like she was seven.
But, yeah, she had forgotten. In fact, there’d been so much on her mind when she’d come in last night from Cole Hill that she’d hardly listened to anything Mum had said, before pleading fatigue and bounding up to the apartment to research, research, research well into the early hours, until she’d finally fallen asleep.
Jane left the note on the table, went to find the dried cat-food for Ethel and grab a handful of biscuits from the tin. No time for eggs and toast.
What about school?
What about not going?
She didn’t remember ever bunking off before. But some things were too important for delays, and anyway school was winding down now towards the long summer break.
Trying to open the biscuit tin, she found she was still gripping The Old Straight Track, having brought it down with her like a talisman. On the front was a misty photograph of a perfect Bronze Age burial mound swelling behind a fan of winter trees.
Yesterday evening, at sunset, she’d seen – and she must have been around there a dozen times in the past without spotting it – what must surely be the remains of a burial mound, or tumulus, or tump, on the edge of the orchard behind Church Street. The magical things you could so easily miss, bypass, ignore … or destroy.
Jane felt this swelling sense of responsibility towards a man who had already been dead for well over half a century when she was born.
You and me, Uncle Alfie.
3
For the Views
Must have been in one of Jane’s pagan books that Merrily had read how, in primitive communities, the local shaman was often a social outcast, both feared and derided. Being a female exorcist in the Church of England gave you some idea of what this must have been like.
‘Deliverance Consultant.’ The Reverend Spicer was shaking his head wearily. ‘What exactly does that … you know … ?’
She’d watched him moving around, pulling down tea caddy, mugs, milk and sugar from strong, beechwood units. He knew where everything was. After what Sophie had told her in the office, she’d been half-expecting some kind of desperate chaos in the rectory kitchen – unwashed dishes, layers of congealed fat on the stove – but it was clean and functional, if not exactly cosy.
He spilled a single blob of milk, frowned and ran a dishcloth over it.
‘I know what “exorcist” used to mean. Deliverance is a bit more … And consultant?’
‘That just means I don’t get involved personally unless I’m invited to. On the basis that these … slightly iffy things are usually best handled by the guy on the ground. Which would be you, Mr Spicer.’
‘Call me Syd.’ He opened a cutlery drawer, extracted two spoons. ‘You ever done an exorcism?’
‘Minor exorcism, mainly – Requiem Eucharist for the unquiet dead, variations on that. Never had to stop a small child abusing herself with a crucifix, never been sprayed with green bile. Although, naturally, I live in hope.’
You got this all the time. A recent survey had shown that more people in Britain believed in ghosts than in God. Whereas parish priests still tended to believe in some kind of God but often had a problem with ghosts. Even more of a problem with exorcism, last refuge of anachronistic misfits in the desperately modern C of E.
Spicer didn’t smile. Behind him, on the Rayburn, the kettle hissed.
‘So what qualifies for a minor exorcism?’
‘Usually, an unhappy atmosphere that doesn’t respond to concentrated prayer. Would you like me to lend you a book? That’d take care of the consultant bit.’
‘I think I need the personal service.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘I’m just … not sure, frankly, about where you…’
Merrily sighed. That other familiar barbed hurdle.
‘My spiritual director is a b
loke called Huw Owen. Runs deliverance training courses in the Brecon Beacons?’
‘Yeah, I know the area.’
His small, passive eyes said, too well. Curious.
‘At the end of the course he gave me the regulation warning. Told me ordained women were becoming the prime target for every psychotic grinder of the satanic mills who ever sacrificed a chicken. Therefore a woman exorcist might as well paint a big bull’s-eye between her … on her chest.’
‘Maybe you saw it as a bit of a challenge.’ Spicer, decently, didn’t look at Merrily’s chest. ‘A chance to carry women’s ministry into a dark and forbidden area.’
‘Well, no, the point I’m making … I’m not a militant feminist, I’m not a post-feminist, I’m not pioneer material and I’m not—’
‘Honestly.’ He held up his hands. ‘I don’t have a problem with women priests. Nor even women deliverance consultants. In principle.’
‘So the problem is?’
The kettle came whistling to the boil.
‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘taking it seriously, as you’re bound to do – being comparatively new to the job and with the side issue of the women’s ministry still having something to prove – it occurs to me you might not be up for what could be a PR exercise.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I mean if I, as Rector of Wychehill, were to ask you, as official diocesan exorcist, to perform a public ceremony of, shall we say, spiritual cleansing, whatever you wanna call it, simply to make the community feel happier – take some pressure off?’
‘Off whom?’ Merrily reached down to her shoulder bag: cigarettes.
‘Off me, for a start.’ Spicer poured boiling water into a deep brown teapot. ‘See, these people who say they had an accident because they swerved to avoid a spectral figure on the Queen’s Highway … I’m having difficulty with it. They’re decent people, but…’