by Phil Rickman
‘I know who you mean. I’m just impressed at the extent of your knowledge.’
‘It’s in the medieval history syllabus — just. Our history guy, Robbie Williams, it’s his period. So what happened, Bernard cleared up the problem the Templars had about being devout Christians and also having to kill people on a regular basis. Simple solution: he ruled that it was OK to kill non-Christians.’
‘Especially Muslims,’ Merrily said. ‘A medieval interpretation, which now seems to operate in reverse. What’s your point?’
‘Comes back to paganism again. Of all the medieval monastic orders, the Cistercians were the ones who most reflected pre-Christian religion. The old ways.’
‘Some sources might say that, but—’
‘Come on — natural successors to the Druids? Sheep farmers who liked relative isolation and were into ancient sites and earth-forces and sacred springs?’
‘Natural running water was very much prized in the days before taps,’ Merrily said. ‘And, sure, maybe they dowsed for it. That doesn’t mean—’
‘Garway Church has a holy spring, doesn’t it?’
‘It does. And if you can find somewhere to turn this car around we’ll go back and check it out. No, not there. Jane, keep your eyes on the—’
‘Did you see that sign?’ Jane’s head swivelling. ‘On the house?’
‘Mmm. I’m afraid I did.’
They’d passed a grey stone corner house which might once have been a pub and still had a big yellow sign on the side. THE SUN. A mystical golden sun, with a smug-looking, curled-lipped face and waving tendrils of radiance; below it were sunflowers and a naked figure on a horse. Merrily also noticed that the farmhouse almost opposite had a name plate: The Rising Sun.
‘It’s just an old pub sign, Jane, that’s all.’
‘Mum, it was like a giant tarot card. The Sun? And the Moon? This place had two pubs called The Sun and The Moon? That says nothing to you?’
‘I’m … reserving my opinion.’
‘I think I was probably guided to turn up this road.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘As above, so below,’ Jane said.
The holy well was at the bottom of the churchyard. Like most holy wells, it was disappointing. A trickle under the wall. Ribbons on a nearby bush, which could be down to either visiting pagans or local kids.
Jane crouched down, unzipping her white hoodie, holding cupped hands underneath the water. Merrily was reminded uncomfortably of the author Winnie Sparke, who had hung around the wells in Malvern, and what had happened to her.
‘Jane, you know how much I really hate doing the mother-hen bit, but that water …’
Jane looked into her cupped hands but didn’t drink the water. She smiled and dabbed some on her cheeks. Beyond the body of the church, the vertically-slit-eyed tower gazed down with what Merrily took to be a kind of benign cynicism.
‘If we go back to the church, we can see the outline of the original circular nave. Templar trade mark. Designed in honour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem?’
‘On the other hand …’ Jane stood up and walked off to the edge of the churchyard ‘… if we go along here, we should be able to see the dovecote designed to commemorate the Beast 666.’
‘It’s on private land. We’d need to ask for permission.’
‘Not just to see it.’
Jane — why else was she here? — was already walking across a marshy-looking field towards the fringe of a farm with barns, storage tanks, a galvanized shed and some kind of stone silo. Merrily, wrong shoes, as usual — bugger — stepping uncertainly across a boggy bit, following a shallow stream, while slowly realizing that the stone silo on the edge of the farmyard clutter was probably what they were looking for.
She stopped and confronted it: a squat round tower, like a sawn-off, roofless hop-kiln. The fading sun balanced on its rim, Jane shading her eyes.
‘Doesn’t look very evil from here,’ Merrily said.
‘Why should it be evil?’ Jane turning in annoyance. ‘That’s just Christian propaganda. Anyway, recent translations of the Book of Rev from the ancient Greek suggest it might actually be six one six.’
‘Not being much of a Greek scholar, I may have to continue to be wary of 666.’
‘Whatever,’ Jane said, ‘it does suggest a kind of partly submerged mystical awareness, doesn’t it?’
‘It does?’
‘Sacred architecture.’
‘It’s a dovecote.’
‘Everything is significant. Another pointer to this whole hill being a store of arcane knowledge. I can’t believe Coops and his guys haven’t checked this place out. I need to ask him.’
‘Jane, I think—’
Merrily shut up. Some mothers with daughters, it was pregnancy, abortion, drugs. If the worst you had to worry about was your kid creating a fantasy landscape …
And Coops, of course. Maybe she ought to find out more about Coops.
‘Fantastic energy here, Mum.’ Jane began whirling around with her arms spread wide, eight years old again. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
‘Not to speak of, no.’
The sun had tucked itself under the rim of the tubular dovecote, the ground dropping into shadow, and Merrily was aware of a damp pattering, as Jane said, ‘You just don’t want to admit—’
And then was staggering back, something long and grey and damp surging between them.
‘God—’
Merrily lurching towards Jane through the wet grass, a woman’s voice crying out behind her.
‘Roscoe!’
When Jane sat down in the grass, it was on top of her, pinning her down, all over her face.
Tail waving, thank God. A woman with shoulder-length white-blonde hair threw down a short leather dog-lead.
‘You bastard, Roscoe!’
The dog shifted from Jane, looked back at the woman, seeming bemused.
‘Obviously thought she was offering to play with him,’ the woman said. ‘Is it racist nowadays to say the Irish wolfhound’s the stupidest bloody creature on four legs? You all right, darling?’
‘I … sure.’
Jane had struggled upright, holding Roscoe’s hairy head against a hip to prove that she wasn’t afraid of him. If there hadn’t been energy in the air before, there was now.
‘Teach you to stand there in a place like this,’ the woman said, ‘calling out the Number of the bloody Beast.’
15
Fearsome Tradition
The woman picked up the dog-lead. She wore an ancient Barbour, flayed almost white in places, full of holes and flakily at odds with her rose-pink silk scarf. Her face was long and thin-lipped, and older than the Barbour, but by how much was anybody’s guess.
‘If we’re on your land,’ Merrily said, ‘I apologize.’
Frowning at Jane, who was brushing herself down, smudged brown paw marks down the front of the white hoodie.
‘It isn’t my land, don’t worry.’ The woman patted her knee and Roscoe ambled over, and she attached his lead as a mobile phone beeped inside the Barbour. ‘Not that ownership of most of the land around here isn’t open to some kind of dispute. Excuse me a moment.’
Reining in the wolfhound, she dug out the mobile, pushed back her straight white hair and held the phone to an ear without turning or moving away.
‘Mr Hinton, good afternoon … No, not yet, I’m afraid. As you may not have noticed, it’s Sunday … Yes, indeed, I’m expecting the delivery in the next week and as soon as it gets here I shall bring it round … Yes, I guarantee you’ll love it. Guarantee it … Money back, yes, absolutely. We’ll talk again, Mr Hinton.’
The woman clicked off the phone, dropped it into a coat pocket.
‘Farmers. They think everybody works on Sundays. The columbarium, yes, why does it have 666 chambers? Not often spoken of locally. As you see by its situation, we tend not to advertise our antiquities.’
‘Why not?’ Jane asked. ‘It’s suppose
d to be unique.’
‘No idea.’ The woman smiled, exposing a dark and raunchy slit between upper front teeth, setting light to deep-set but vivid blue-green eyes. ‘But then I was merely born here. We tend, nowadays, to rely on outsiders — usually Americans — to explain all our mysteries. Where’ve you come from?’
Merrily told her Ledwardine, in the north of the county. Aware of time moving on, the need to take a brief look at the Master House before they left.
‘You’re no use at all then.’ The woman patted her pockets. ‘Haven’t got a fag on you, by any chance? Slim chance nowadays, I know.’
‘Actually, I have.’ Merrily reached down to her shoulder bag. ‘Only Silk Cut, I’m afraid.’
‘That would be perfect, m’ dear. Left my buggers on the mantelpiece, and I’m absolutely gasping. Thank you.’
She mouthed a cigarette and Merrily lit it for her and she swallowed a lungful of smoke, head tilted back to exhale it into the sky in the direction of the devil’s dovecote.
‘Lit up in the pub the other night in joyful contravention of the law. Chap looking at me as if I’d pissed on his shoes. Bloody government. How dare they?’
Merrily looked at Jane. Jane was wide-eyed and trying not to laugh.
‘Ledwardine, eh?’ The woman lowering her eyes to Merrily’s Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt. ‘And you evidently know the little digger chap with specs that you or I might use to track the canals on Mars.’
‘I didn’t realize Gomer worked so far out.’
‘Needed new field drains in a hurry — ditches overflowing. Quagmire. My regular chap had packed it in but absolutely refused to recommend anyone local. He’d worked for the Grays, you see, and, oh my God, you can’t work for the Grays and the Gwilyms. You were here yesterday with Murray, weren’t you?’
‘So fascinated that I came back.’
‘Thought so.’ Squinting at Merrily through the smoke and a frond of hair, nicotine-blonded, fallen forward, a worn elegance about her.
‘Bad penny,’ said Merrily.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mrs Watkins.’
And you thought the intelligence services in Ledwardine were fast. Merrily took a step back. The woman held up her cigarette.
‘Not habitually nosy. But living here, one learns there are things it’s as well to know about as not. So, yes, I do know who you are.’ She snatched another puff, blowing the smoke out sideways. ‘And what you do.’
‘Not exactly a chance encounter, then,’ Merrily said.
‘No. Sorry.’ The woman switched the cigarette to her left hand, putting out the right. ‘Morningwood. Mrs.’
Free-range eggs and honey and herbs. The woman who’d told Felix the Master House was unhappy.
They shook hands.
‘This is Jane. My daughter.’
‘Of course. Girl involved in a fracas with the wretched Council. I applaud you, m’ dear. Would have been there m’self, with a placard, but always too busy.’
Merrily sighed. ‘Mrs Morningwood, this is all very impressive—’
‘Darling, it’s not impressive at all. Truth of it is, Roscoe and I happened to be padding quietly through the church precincts yesterday afternoon when Murray was kind enough to identify you by name.’
‘You must’ve been … behind the church tower?’
‘No wish to intrude.’
Merrily imagined Mrs Morningwood flattened against the stonework with a hand around the wolfhound’s muzzle. Not that this would have been necessary; you couldn’t help noticing how docile and obedient Roscoe had become since being … set on Jane?
‘And the rest was down to Google. Directing me immediately to your Diocesan website. Deliverance? That’s really what they’re calling it nowadays?’
‘Mixed blessing, Google.’
‘Brass tacks, Mrs Watkins?’
‘If you like.’
‘All right.’ Mrs Morningwood flicked away an inch of ash. ‘Save some time, I ask you why you’re here. You say, what’s it to you, you prying cow? I then try to convince you that I might be able to assist in some way, being the nearest neighbour of whoever’s attempting to live in that benighted hovel at any particular time.’
‘The Master House.’
‘So-called. And now, interestingly — or mystifyingly, perhaps — in the ownership of the heir to the throne. Should we feel honoured, do you suppose?’
Merrily said, ‘Attempting to live there?’
‘If you were able to point to anyone who’d succeeded, you’d have a sight longer memory than me, m’ dear. Am I to understand you’ve been invited to subject the place to some form of exorcism?’
‘That’s probably overstating it. We haven’t even found it yet.’
‘Want to find it now?’
‘That was the original plan, but now we don’t have much time.’
‘Not much time is probably an advantage. An excuse to get out of there.’ Mrs Morningwood patted her thigh, and the dog crept close. ‘Follow me.’
The sun had been reduced to a reddening corona on the rim of the dovecote. They followed her back to where the Volvo was parked, up against the hedge on the edge of the churchyard. Then along the lane and into a lay-by concealing the entrance to a mud track.
All too easy to miss. Cigarette poking from her lips, Mrs Morningwood began pulling nettles away from the bars of a galvanized gate with her bare hands, a rural skill that Merrily had never mastered. Impressive.
‘Entrance seems to seal itself up in a matter of days, even at this time of year. Make of that what you will.’
‘Not you, Jane,’ Merrily said, and Jane smiled and moved alongside Mrs Morningwood at the jammed gate.
‘Mrs Morningwood, can I ask you something before I forget? Why were there two pubs around here called The Sun and The Moon?’
‘Before my time, child.’
‘I was thinking that the Knights Templar were well into astrology,’ Jane said.
‘Were they?’
‘You don’t know much about the Templars?’
‘Problem at Garway …’ Mrs Morningwood freed the gate, with a ferrous clatter, prising it from the post ‘… is separating fact from legend. You probably know the saying about the Garway witches. No? There’ll be nine witches from the bottom of Orcop to the end of Garway Hill, as long as water runs.’
‘And are there?’
‘To my knowledge … only me.’ Mrs Morningwood let loose a short, throaty laugh. ‘Herbs, darling. I grow various medicinal herbs. Make potions and flog them at the farmers’ markets, two fingers up to the diabolical EC regulations.’
‘Have you lived here all your life?’
‘Except for the twenty years or so when I tried to separate myself, before the damn place reached out its suckers.’ Mrs Morningwood pinched out the remains of her cigarette. ‘Mother passed along, leaving me the cottage, which tied in roughly with the divorce. Came back to recover. That was thirteen … no, fourteen years ago. God almighty. Shouldn’t’ve reverted to the maiden name, that was the mistake. Slotted myself back into a fearsome tradition.’
Jane looked at her, waiting for it.
‘Always be a Morningwood on Garway Hill, as long as badgers shit on the White Rocks!’ Mrs Morningwood exploded into catarrhal laughter and flung open the metal gate. ‘In you go.’
16
Watch Night
A square, ridged field, given up to docks and thistles. New thorn trees sprouting around the greying bones of the old. Woodland enclosing it on three sides hid many of the hills, and the only sighting point was the conical cap of the church tower.
‘So many folds and hollows,’ Merrily said. ‘Hard to be sure exactly where you are.’
‘You know Kentchurch Court?’ Mrs Morningwood’s arm, another of Merrily’s cigarettes at the end of it, was signposting a heavy canopy of oak woodland. ‘Down behind there. Home of the Scudamores. Normans who followed the Conqueror over here in the eleventh century. One of the sons married Owain Glyndwr’s dau
ghter, and they’re supposed to have sheltered him when his rebellion went down.’
‘And the Master House is … where?’
‘Close. Over the ridge.’ Mrs Morningwood pushed the gate shut and plucked a twig from one of the holes in her Barbour, turning to Jane. ‘Suppose I might as well tell you — those pubs, Sun and Moon?’
‘Uh-huh?’
Jane stood on the mud track, a hand on Roscoe’s grizzled head. Getting better at containing her curiosity.
‘That’s only half the story,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Used to be a third inn. Called, as it happens, The Stars.’
‘Wow.’ Jane blinked. ‘Really?’
‘And … if you continue past The Sun, you’ll come to a white house which also used to be a pub. With the, I suppose, equally celestial name of The Globe.’
‘Holy sh …’ Jane lost it. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Go and look on your way home. There’s a small sign on the wall. The Globe.’
‘Four astronomical pubs in one small area? This is amazing, Mrs Morningwood.’
‘Yes, it is interesting, I would agree. When you’ve grown up with it, you don’t think. Part of the fabric.’
‘I’m sorry …’ Merrily kept on looking at the point of the church tower and the autumnal woodland glowing dully, like dying embers, under clouds the colour of old brick ‘… but did you say The Globe?’
At the first oblique sight of it, you thought of a fox dozing in the undergrowth.
Except they didn’t, did they? Not out in the open, by day. Foxes didn’t sleep like that.
They’d walked uphill for about fifty paces, cresting a rise with two oak trees on top, boughs locked like antlers, and then the house was in a hollow below them: sprawling side-on, low-slung and sagging in a frame of bleached oak, built of rubble-stone the muddy colours of Garway church. A tin-roofed lean-to had collapsed at one end, exposing arms of oak raised in a ragged V to the rafters.
There were the usual twentieth-century additions to the house itself, notably the dormers jutting from the old stone tiles, but you could see that they were already rotting — slates slipping, guttering hanging off, while the original oak endured.