A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  ‘The hell you don’t!’ Merrily was half out of her seat, but well off-mic.

  ‘We are an alternative to Christianity,’ Bain stressed. ‘And also, I should perhaps point out at this stage, a precursor, of the tired, politicized cult of Jesus. And I say precursor, because there’s evidence that Christianity itself is no more than a fabrication, a modification of the cult of Dionysus, in which the story of the man-god who dies and is resurrected...’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Fallon stopped him. ‘Fascinating stuff, Ned, but I want to stay with satanism for a moment.’

  ‘As you would,’ Merrily muttered.

  ‘Now, Ned, you would say that satanism is as much anathema to pagans as it is to the Christian Church. And yet young Gemma graduated – or descended – to some kind of devil worship after being initiated as a witch. I want to come back...’ Fallon wheeled ‘... to Merrily Watkins...’

  Merrily’s hands tightened on the arms of her chair. Please God...

  ‘Now, what we didn’t say before about Merrily is that, as well as being one of the new breed of female parish priests, she’s also the official exorcist – I believe Deliverance Minister is the correct term these days – for the Diocese of Hereford. That’s right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ignore the camera, the lights. Don’t look at Bain’s eyes.

  ‘So what I want to ask you, do people like Maureen often come to you with this same kind of story?’

  ‘I...’ She swallowed. How could she say she hadn’t been in the job long enough to have accumulated any kind of client base. ‘I have to say... John... that what you might call real satanism is uncommon. What you have are kids who’re playing old Black Sabbath albums and get a perverse buzz out of dressing up and doing something horribly antisocial. Quite often, you’ll find that these kids will join a witch coven in the belief that it’s far more... extreme, if you like, than it actually is. That they’re entering a world of sex rites and blood sacrifice.’

  ‘Which is your fault!’ one of the pagans shouted. ‘Because that’s how the Church has portrayed us for centuries.’

  ‘She’s saying,’ Maureen shrilled, extending a finger at Merrily, ‘that my daughter only joined the witches because she thought they were evil?’

  ‘No, what I’m—’

  ‘She’s sitting on the fence!’ A heavy man bounded down one of the aisles. ‘That’s what she’s doing.’

  Two security heavies moved in from different directions. Fallon blocked the man’s path. ‘You are?’

  ‘The Reverend Peter Gemmell.’ He was grey-bearded and big enough to take on either of the two security men. ‘You won’t find me on your list. I’m an industrial chaplain, and I came with the factory group from Walsall. But that’s beside the point. What I want is to tell you all the truth that my colleague here is too diplomatic, too delicate, too wishy-washy to introduce. And that is to say that Satan himself is present in this studio tonight.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ Jane said glumly, ‘a fruitcake. Just when I thought she might be really cooking.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Gerry leaned back in his canvas chair with his hands behind his head.

  Voice-crackle from Maurice’s cans. He nodded, scanning the monitors to make sure Gemmell was alone. ‘OK, Steve, thanks, will do. John, let’s see where this one goes, OK?’

  Eirion looked shell-shocked. ‘Anything could happen down there, couldn’t it? Suppose that guy had a gun?’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t be that much use against Satan, anyway,’ Jane reasoned.

  ‘Why don’t you tell them?’ The Rev. Peter Gemmell hissed at Merrily. ‘Why don’t you tell them that Satan is in our midst? That he’s here now. Why don’t you stand up and denounce him?’

  Fallon saved her.

  ‘Well, you tell us, Peter, since you’re here. You point him out. Where exactly is Satan sitting?’

  ‘I shall tell you.’ Gemmell didn’t hesitate. ‘He’s sitting directly behind you.’

  Fallon stepped aside to reveal Ned Bain smiling and shaking his head, pityingly.

  ‘That man...’ Gemmell glared contemptuously at Bain. ‘That man speaks from the Devil’s script. From his lips spews the slick rhetoric of Satan the seducer.’

  Sea of Light? Merrily wondered.

  ‘ “The satyr shall cry to his fellow!” ’ Gemmell roared. ‘ “Yea, there shall the night hag alight, and find for herself a resting place!” Isaiah.’

  Merrily thought of the number of interpretations you could put on that. In fact, she was sure there was a rather more innocent translation in the Revised English Bible. She just couldn’t remember what it was. Couldn’t remember anything tonight.

  ‘The satyr,’ Gemmell explained, ‘is the so-called horned god of the witches – the god Pan. The night hag is the demon Lilith. And so the Bible tells us quite plainly that paganism invites the demonic to share its bed. And that is as true today as it was when it was written.’

  ‘The Old Testament,’ Bain said wearily. ‘This guy comes down here and quotes at me from a hotchpotch of myth and legend and old wives’ tales...’

  ‘The voice of Satan!’ Gemmell snarled, and Merrily was aware of Steve Ewing to her right, putting the bouncers on alert.

  ‘Thank you, Peter.’ John Fallon placed an arm on the big priest’s shoulder. ‘We’re grateful for that, but I don’t think we’re quite ready for the battle of Armageddon tonight.’

  ‘I have made my point,’ Gemmell said with dignity and, with a baleful glance at Merrily, walked back up the aisle and then stopped and turned and, before the security men could reach him, roared out, ‘We must – and will – put out the false lights in the night of filth!’

  ‘Good man,’ Fallon said. ‘Well... Ned Bain’s either the saviour of our planet or he’s the Antichrist. But before that interruption, Merrily, you were saying so-called satanists are just a bunch of delinquent kids...’

  ‘No, what I said was that real satanism is uncommon. I do know it exists. I have encountered the use of occult practices for evil purposes and I think Ned’s being a bit optimistic if he thinks all pagans are in it to heal the earth.’ Her mouth was dry again. She swallowed.

  ‘Go on,’ Fallon said.

  ‘Well, I know for a fact that pagan groups are infiltrated by people with less... altruistic aims – whether it’s money, or drugs or iffy sex.’

  ‘Black propaganda!’ a woman screeched. Fallon held up a hand for quiet.

  ‘I do know a young girl,’ Merrily said carefully, thinking of Jane watching at home. ‘She’s a girl who was very nearly ensnared by the people who were secretly running what appeared to be a fairly innocent mystical group for women. It’s a minefield. In the glamorous world of goddesses and prophecy and... and nude dancing at midnight, it’s very hard to distinguish between the people who truly and sincerely believe all this will heal the earth and free our souls... and the ones who are into personal power and gratification of their—’

  ‘What group?’ the woman shouted. ‘She’s making it up! John, you make her tell us where it was!’

  ‘Ssssh,’ Fallon said. ‘OK, where was this, Merrily?’

  ‘It was... around Hereford. Around the Welsh border. Obviously, I’m not going to name anybody who—’

  ‘All right.’ Fallon turned to the young woman who’d shouted out. ‘It’s Vivienne, right? And you’re the priestess of a coven in Manchester. How do you know what kind of people you’re initiating? How do you vet them?’

  ‘You just... know.’ Vivienne had cropped hair and earrings that seemed to be made from the bejewelled bodies of seahorses. ‘The initiation process itself weeds out the scum bags and the weirdos. It’s a psychic thing. You learn to pick up on it, and the goddess herself—’

  ‘That is rubbish,’ Merrily interrupted.

  Vivienne paused. John Fallon smiled.

  Merrily said, ‘People don’t get vetted before they’re allowed to mess with other people’s minds. You don’t have any real organization or any fixed creed. Your rituals don’t go
back to pre-Christian times, they were all made up in the last half century. You’re a complete ragbag of half-truths and good intentions and bad intentions and—’

  ‘And that’s any different from your Church?’ Vivienne reared out of her seat. ‘Half of you don’t believe in a Virgin Birth! Half of you don’t believe in the Resurrection! And you call us a ragbag. I’m telling you, lady, you’ll have come to bits long before we do. It’s happening right now. And you... you’re part of the decay. We look at you and the blokes see a pretty face and nice legs, and that’s just the Church’s latest scheme to deflect attention from the rot in its guts.’

  A build-up of cheers among the pagan ranks. John Fallon stepped back to let the camera catch it all.

  ‘Your Church is dying on its feet!’ Vivienne grinned triumphantly. ‘It’s not gonna see the new century out. You took our sacred sites from us, and we’re gonna take them back. Your fancy churches will fall, and honest grass will grow up through their ruins, and towers will stand alone, like megaliths—’

  ‘Whoah!’ Fallon stepped back into the action. ‘What are you banging on about?’

  ‘All right,’ Vivienne said. ‘She’s from the Welsh border, yeah? I can show you a church on her actual doorstep where that’s already happened. I can show you a church with a tower and graves and everything... which is now a pagan church. You don’t know what’s happening on your own doorstep. You don’t know nothing!’

  15

  Fairground

  ‘MOVE IT!’ JANE raced along the bright corridor, trailing her fleece coat over a shoulder. The building appeared to be still only half finished; there were lumps of plaster everywhere, and the panes of many windows still had strips of brown tape across them. ‘Irene, move!’

  ‘I was just trying to thank Maurice and Gerry.’

  ‘We’ll write them a letter! Come on. Believe me, she is not going to hang on here. She’s going to be out of that bear pit before any of them can pin her in a corner. She’ll be driving like a bat out of hell down the motorway, swearing that she’ll never, never, never again...’

  ‘I thought she did OK,’ Eirion said, blundering behind her, ‘in the end. She got that woman very annoyed.’

  ‘You thought she did OK. I think she just about managed to rescue the situation. She’ll think she was absolutely crap and like disgraced the Church and the bishop and... Jesus Christ!’ Jane hit a pair of swing doors, still running. ‘Can’t you move any faster? I thought you were in the rugby team.’

  ‘The chess team.’ Eirion caught the doors on the rebound. ‘You know it was the chess team.’

  In the old Nova, with Jane leaning back, panting, against a peeling headrest, Eirion said, ‘I wonder what Gerry meant, when that woman was going on about the pagan church.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘He said, “That’ll flog, if I’m quick,” and made a note on his script.’

  ‘That church, you mean?’

  ‘No, the story, I suppose.’ Eirion drove out of the parking area, past a red and white striped barrier which was already raised. ‘He means sell the story.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Who would you normally sell a story to? To the papers. He was a tabloid journalist, wasn’t he? And John Fallon didn’t even follow it up on the programme, so...’

  ‘He doesn’t follow up anything that’ll take longer than thirty seconds or won’t lead to a fight. Irene, was that crass, meaningless and totally inconclusive, or what?’

  ‘Bit like the Welsh Assembly without a vote.’

  ‘You still want to do TV one day?’

  ‘What? Oh... well, not quite that, obviously. Not exactly that. I want to be a TV news reporter.’

  ‘So did those guys at one time, I expect. I mean, nobody starts out wanting to shovel shit for a living, do they?’

  ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ Eirion slowed for a roundabout. ‘We’re looking for M5 South, aren’t we?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Yeah, this one.’ Eirion hit the slip road. ‘That girl your mother was talking about. The girl who nearly got ensnared by those people running that women’s mystical group in Hereford.’

  ‘You already know it was me. You saw how it ended.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Well, it was.’

  ‘And yet you’re still interested in paganism and all that. Because that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? I mean, I know you did think I might get something out of it, career-wise... but you are kind of drawn to all that, aren’t you? I mean, still.’

  Jane snorted a laugh. A big motorway sign loomed up, wreathed in tendrils of mist: ‘Worcester. The South West’. So many options. The motorway was romantic at night, despite those dark, blurred, nightmare memories that were more nightmare than memory, but fading.

  ‘Like, despite everything,’ Eirion persisted, ‘you’re still turned on by weird mystical stuff.’

  ‘Irene, it’s not “weird mystical stuff”, it’s about what we are and where we’re going. Do you never lie in bed and wonder what we’re part of and where it all ends?’

  ‘I could lie awake all night and agonize about it, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it? I don’t like the look of this fog, Jane.’

  ‘But suppose it would? Suppose you could? I mean, suppose you could go places, deep into yourself and into the heart of the universe at the same time?’

  ‘But I know I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have the – what is it? – the application. Neither would most of those people there tonight. They think they can discover enormous, eternal, mind-blowing truths by summoning gods and spirits and things, but they’re just fooling themselves. I mean they were just... kind of sad tossers.’

  ‘Ned Bain wasn’t sad.’

  ‘Course he was. He was just the tosser in the suit.’

  Eirion drifted onto the motorway. It wasn’t too foggy, but you couldn’t see the sky. Jane hoped Mum wasn’t feeling too choked about her performance to drive carefully.

  She said, ‘He was making the point that paganism is no longer a crank thing; that it has to be taken seriously as a major, continuing tradition in this country and a genuine, valid force for change. He was like... very controlled and eloquent. I’d guess he’s quite a way along the Path.’

  ‘You mean the garden path?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

  ‘He’s manipulative. You couldn’t trust him.’

  ‘Because he’s kind of good-looking?’

  ‘Well,’ Eirion said, ‘that’s obviously a small plus-factor with you.’

  ‘Sod off. If I was that superficial, would I be going out with you?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Superficial?’

  ‘Going out with me?’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t know. I might be too weird for you.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my principal worry, too,’ Eirion said, deadpan.

  ‘Bastard.’ Jane leaned her shoulder into his. ‘I wish there’d been time to wait and grab that Vivienne when she came out.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have told you where that church is. You notice how quick she clammed up, as though she knew she’d said too much? Because if some witchcraft sect are secretly practising at a Christian church... well, I don’t know. If they haven’t actually broken in, is that some kind of crime? Probably not.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘Your mother’s going to have to find out about it, though, isn’t she?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And what will she do when she does find out?’

  ‘Go in there with a big cross? How should I know?’

  ‘You could be more sympathetic to her.’

  ‘I am sympathetic.’

  ‘You’re also sympathetic to paganism.’

  ‘I’m interested. I’ve had... experiences, odd psychic things I can’t explain.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it really.’

  ‘Oh.’ Eirion drove in silence. Ye
llow fog-warning lights signalled a forty mph speed limit.

  ‘I’m not being funny,’ Jane said. ‘This just isn’t the time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Haven’t you? Had things happen to you you can’t explain? Feelings about places? Things you thought you saw? Times when your emotions and your, like, sensations are so intense that you feel you’re about to burst through into... something else. Some other level? I mean, the Welsh are supposed to be like...’

  ‘My gran’s a bit spooky.’

  ‘Tell me in what way.’

  ‘No, you tell me about your mum. Tell me about your dad.’

  ‘That bloody Gerry,’ Jane said.

  Eirion was hesitant. ‘Was what he said...?’ The rest of it was lost under the rattling of a lorry passing them in the centre lane, a low-loader without a load, fast and free in the night.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jane said. ‘He had it more or less right. My dad met my mum at university, where they were both studying law, and she... got pregnant with me and left the university, and he carried on and became a bent solicitor.’

  ‘There was a special course for bent solicitors?’

  ‘Ha ha. They were both going to do legal aid stuff and defend people who couldn’t afford solicitors and all kinds of liberal, crusading stuff like that, according to Mum. But Dad wanted money – because of me, maybe he’d have said. Because of the responsibility. Though Mum says she was already learning things about him she didn’t like. And, anyway, he got into iffy deals with some clients and Mum found out about it and there was this big morality scene, not helped by him screwing his clerk.’ Jane paused for breath. ‘Around this time, Mum had been helping the local vicar with community work and also she had this quite heavy experience of her own.’

  ‘What sort of experience?’

  ‘This was when things were really, really bad, and she was desperately trying to sort things out in her own head. She drove off into the sticks and came across this tiny little church in a wood or something and there was, like, a lamplit path...’