A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  He stopped. Betty had walked out. She was robed again. She looked terrified, but she didn’t look up, not once.

  She was somehow still wearing the crown of lights.

  And Merrily, in a vibrantly dark moment, was already hearing the verse from Revelation when he started to broadcast the words.

  ‘Now a great sign appeared in heaven... a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet... and on her head... a garland of twelve stars...!’

  Robin Thorogood shouted, ‘No... that’s not...’ Throwing out his arms in protest.

  ‘Serpent!’

  Merrily saw what she knew that Ellis was seeing. She saw the picture in his war room, the one by William Blake, and it turned Robin’s arms into great webbed, leathery wings the colours of a freshly dug worm, and his wild hair into a ram’s curling horns. She saw the Woman Clothed with the Sun, stars around her head, a twinkling lure for the Great Red Dragon.

  Merrily at last gave way to the prods and thrusts at her back.

  Robin saw the small, dark-haired woman running into the nave.

  ‘No...’ she was yelling. ‘Please God, no.’

  And when he heard, from above, this sickening, crumbling, creaking, cracking sound, he realized he was screaming too as he hurled himself towards Betty, threw his arms around her and bore her to the ground, covering her with his body and closing his eyes as the first stone came out of the sky.

  He didn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything. But he could hear other people’s screams and, above them all, Ellis’s bellow.

  ‘And there was war in heaven!’

  Robin just lay across his goddess on the sleeping bag, unmoving as the black sky tumbled.

  He opened his eyes just once, to watch the crown of lights rolling away like a cheap Catherine wheel, the birthday candles going out one by one.

  There were many other lights, too, but he closed his eyes on them; many other sounds, but he didn’t listen to them. He heard only the heart of his goddess, and his own voice whispering the words which moved him beyond all others.

  In the fullness of time we shall be born again, at the same time and in the same place as each other, and we shall meet and know and remember... and love again...

  59

  Damage

  HE WAS A tall, stooping man with a mournful, half-moon kind of face, a heavy grey moustache. He was the recently appointed head of Dyfed-Powys CID, a mere caretaker role, he said, before retirement. His name was Gwyn Arthur Jones, detective superintendent. Gomer Parry knew him from way back, which saved them some time.

  But it was still close to three a.m. before they left the incident room – Dr Coll’s waiting room – for the comparative privacy of Dr Coll’s surgery. The door was closed, and a metal Anglepoise burned on a desk swept clean of all papers.

  Formal statements had been taken and signed. Jane was asleep on Dr Coll’s couch. Sophie had taken Eirion back to Hereford and his stepmother’s car.

  Detective Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones had brought out his pipe and discovered a bottle of single malt in Dr Coll’s filing cabinet.

  ‘Kept naggin’ at me, see,’ Gomer said, ‘that piece o’ ground. Amateur job, stood out a mile. Why would bloody Gareth dig it up again and put it back, ’less he was lookin’ for treasure, and Gareth wouldn’t know treasure ’less it come in a bloody brass-bound chest with “Treasure” wrote on it.’

  ‘And Mrs Prosser?’ The superintendent’s accent was West Wales, quite soft, a first-language Welsh-speaker’s voice. ‘Did no one ever nurture uncharitable suspicions about her?’

  ‘Judy?’ Gomer shook his head as though he would go on shaking it for ever. ‘Not me. Least nothin’ I could get a ring-spanner to. But her kept croppin’ up, ennit? I kept sayin’ to the vicar, didn’t I, vicar, you wanner talk to Judy... Judy’s smart... Judy knows. Bloody hell, Gwyn, I never guessed Judy knowed it all.’

  ‘And still holding out on us.’ Gwyn Arthur sipped Dr Coll’s whisky. Merrily had noticed that when he’d taken the bottle from the drawer he’d replaced it with a twenty-pound note. ‘I don’t somehow think she will ever do otherwise. “Mrs Councillor Prosser, wife of a former chairman of the police committee” – time and time again, like name, rank and number.’

  ‘Local credentials,’ Gomer said. ‘Means everythin’ here.’

  ‘And Dr Collard Banks-Morgan, former acting police surgeon – the allegations about him, he tells us, are quite risible. As we would have been further assured by Mr Weal, had the poor man not taken his own life. I suspect people cleverer than me will have to spend many days among Mr Weal’s files.’

  Gwyn Arthur poured further measures of whisky into those little plastic measuring vessels you got with your medicine.

  ‘All in all,’ he said, ‘never, in my experience, have so many eminently respectable, conspicuously guilty people lied so consistently through their teeth. I’m awfully afraid, Mrs Watkins, that you are destined for a considerable period in the witness box.’

  ‘What will you do with Ellis?’ Merrily asked.

  ‘We’ll hold him until the morning, then we shall have to think in terms of charges, and I’m very much afraid that my imagination, at present, will not stretch a great deal further than wilful damage – if that – regardless of the tragic consequences. He didn’t even have to break into the tower. Just bolted himself in from the inside. What happened later was, he insists, an unfortunate accident. He hasn’t even described it as the will of God. The tower parapet, as the late Major Wilshire discovered to his ultimate cost, was horribly unstable. He did not mean for all those stones to fall.’

  ‘What about the TV pictures?’

  ‘Almost gratuitously graphic when it comes to portraying the results. But the lights on the cameras were insufficiently powerful to reach the top of the tower – or to illuminate Ellis’s movements in the moments before the stones were dislodged. I would give anything for it to be otherwise, but there we are.’

  Merrily lit a cigarette with fingers which still would not stay steady. ‘I’m not giving up on that bastard. Expect me at the station later today, with a Mrs Starkey, if I’ve got to drag her. But I don’t think it’ll come to that. Not now.’

  ‘Yes, indecent assault is a better beginning.’ Gwyn Arthur Jones drained his medicine measure and went to stand at the window. The only vehicles left on view in the village were the police cars and vans, Merrily’s Volvo, Gomer’s Land Rover and Nev’s truck with the digger on the back. Gwyn Arthur came back and sat down and contemplated Merrily. ‘And what else? What else, in your wildest imaginings, Merrily, would you think Ellis might have done?’

  She took a tiny sip of Scotch. ‘Well... have you got anybody yet for the village hall?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘but no we haven’t. The travellers we brought in were most indignant.’

  ‘I mean, it was all getting a bit tame, wasn’t it? A few hymns, a little placard-waving. He’d had his chance to convince three hundred fundamentalist Christians that Satan was in residence in Old Hindwell, and he hadn’t really pulled it off, had he?’

  ‘You think he planned to inflame these people, as it were, with the thought that the pagans wanted to burn them alive? Maybe to drive them to excesses?’

  ‘Knowing full well he’d have been able to lead them to safety out of the rear entrance, even if Gomer hadn’t turned up and received the credit? I think that’s very much on the cards.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the superintendent. ‘Certainly, emotions among those decent, church-going Christians were running at a level possibly unparalleled since the days of the witch-hunts. There’s no question in my mind that it could have become extremely nasty... if, ironically enough, those stones had not fallen when – and where – they did.’

  ‘You could always check out his robe for petrol traces or something.’

  ‘No one as yet, has been able to find his robe,’ said Gwyn Arthur Jones regretfully. ‘He doesn’t remember where he left it. Unlike Mrs Prosse
r, he’s being entirely cooperative. He tells us he chose to go alone to the church, one man against a horde of heathens, precisely because he did not want his legitimate Christian protest against the desecration of the house of God to become a bloodbath. Several witnesses confirm that he tried to stop them.’

  Merrily closed her eyes. ‘He doesn’t like churches. Churches are disposable. Instead, he set up in this village hall because it was close to Old Hindwell Church... the battleground. He claimed he’d been getting anonymous letters, phone calls... signs on the Internet.’ She sighed. ‘Do you know the Book of Revelation at all? The paintings of William Blake?’

  Betty stared down into the near-black water. She said slowly, ‘O Lord, Jesus Christ, Saviour Salvator, I beseech the salvation of all who dwell within from witchcraft and from the power of all evil men or women or spirits or wizards or hardness of heart. Amen Amen Amen.’

  An ambulance warbled across the city. Maybe the one which had brought her here several hours ago.

  From the viewing platform above Victoria Bridge, the suspension footbridge over the Wye, bushes hid the sprawl of Hereford County Hospital.

  It was dawn, that coldest time, with only a few lights across the river, shining through the bare, grey trees.

  ‘Either the charm didn’t work,’ she said, ‘or it worked all too well.’

  ‘Get rid of it,’ Merrily said.

  Half an hour ago, she’d been waiting with Betty when the orthopaedic surgeon, who was called Frank, had explained that Robin’s pelvis was smashed, and there was some spinal damage. ‘Will he walk again?’ Betty had asked. Frank couldn’t answer that one, yet, but he said he was hopeful.

  Merrily said bitterly, ‘War in heaven, and all the casualties down here.’

  ‘Don’t you go losing your faith,’ Betty said. ‘It’s only religion. Faith is faith, but religions are no better than the people who practise them.’

  60

  Lamplit

  IT WAS STILL only mid-morning when the bedside phone awoke her. She hadn’t been in bed long enough for it to be a sleep of any depth – although the half-dreams were dark – and she was instantly focused and expecting the worst.

  She didn’t expect him.

  ‘It all comes down to demonization, you see, Merrily,’ he said, as if they’d been talking for hours. ‘I was demonized from an early age – twelve, to be exact. He was the little Christ, and I was the Antichrist. He and his mother were always very efficient at the demonization of anything in their way. And he still is, of course.’

  He sounded as if he’d been drinking. His voice was dark and smooth and intimate. Merrily sat up in bed, fumbling a cardigan around her shoulders.

  ‘He wanted dragons, so I sent him dragons. I sent him serpents.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It isn’t all done by magic. The postal service can be equally effective, and now the Internet and e-mail... almost as fast as one can transmit a thought. But then it’s all electricity, isn’t it? Everything’s a form of electricity. Science is catching us up. Soon everyone will be doing magic. What a dispiriting thought.’

  She heard the clink of a glass against his teeth.

  ‘I’ve been a bad man, in my way. No worse, I would submit, than Simon, but bad enough. Sometimes I yearn for redemption. Is that possible, do you think, Merrily?’

  ‘It’s possible for everybody.’

  The sunlight penetrated through the crack in the curtains and put a pale stripe down the bed. Celtic spring had come.

  ‘I hoped you’d say that,’ he said. ‘So... will you help me? Will you help a poor sinner onto the... lamplit path?’

  She froze. ‘Who told you about that?’

  He laughed. ‘I know everything about you. You’re in bed, aren’t you?’

  She felt his Sean-breath, the warm dusting, and she was afraid.

  ‘I can just see you in bed,’ he said, ‘all rumpled, a little creased around the eyes. Rumpled and smelling of softness and sleep.’

  She remembered the blood he could not have seen on her hands. She remembered the red and white lights on the motorway, false lights in a night of filth.

  ‘Can we meet?’ Ned Bain said. ‘And discuss my redemption?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said, and put down the phone and sat there in bed, shivering.

  Notes and credits

  MOST OF THE stranger aspects of this novel are based (as closely as the law and the rules of fiction allow) on fact. The ‘Abracadabra’ charm can be seen at the charming Cascob Church; the Four Stones nestle behind their hedge off the Kinnerton road; and, although you may have difficulty finding Old Hindwell itself, the Hindwell Brook still meanders and sometimes rushes through the Radnor Valley. The area’s huge importance in the Bronze Age was uncovered by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust and documented by Alex Gibson in The Walton Basin Project, published by the Council for British Archaeology. The locations are illustrated and described in Merrily’s Border (Logaston Press).

  My thanks to Glyn Morgan, who pointed me down the dark lane of border spirituality with a very timely photocopy of the witch charm, found in the wall of an old house in North Radnor.

  The imperfect Radnor Pentagram also exists. It’s true that only four churches are listed in the official tourism brochure, but the pentagram can be completed by adding St Michael’s, Discoed, an ancient church with an even more ancient yew tree in front. Thanks to Carol for first suggesting what proved to be more than an idea, and to the distinguished medieval historian, Alun Lenny, of Carmarthen, for completing the picture, with the help of Francis Payne’s classic work on Radnorshire.

  Pam Baker told me a hospital ghost story and explained about oestrogen, etc. Quentin Cooper discussed a few of the problems involved in owning a church, and extra details were filled in by Brian Chave, Steve Empson and Steve Jenkins at the Church of England. Geoffrey Wansell and John Welch helped with the setting up of the Livenight programme.

  Thanks also to Neil Bond, Sally Boyce, Jane Cook, Gina-Marie Douglas, Paul Gibbons, Gavin Hooson, Bob Jenkins, Dick Taylor and Ken Ratcliffe. And, for inspiration, to the white magic of XTC and ‘Apple Venus’.

  Of course, the thing would never have come together at all without my ingenious wife, Carol, who plot-doctored, character-trimmed and edited for weeks, with her usual inimitable flair, ruthlessness and lateral thinking. You can do it alone, but it’s never as good.

  Lol Robinson’s songs can be found on two full-length CDs, Songs from Lucy’s Cottage and A Message from the Morning (which includes Moon’s Tune) by Lol Robinson and Hazey Jane II, produced by Prof Levin ad Allan Watson. Full details on the website www.philrickman.co.uk.

  PHIL RICKMAN was born in Lancashire and lives on the Welsh border. He is the author of the Merrily Watkins series, and The Bones of Avalon. He has won awards for his TV and radio journalism and writes and presents the book programme Phil the Shelf for BBC Radio Wales.

  ALSO BY PHIL RICKMAN

  THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES

  The Wine of Angels

  Midwinter of the Spirit

  A Crown of Lights

  The Cure of Souls

  The Lamp of the Wicked

  The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

  The Smile of a Ghost

  The Remains of an Altar

  The Fabric of Sin

  To Dream of the Dead

  Coming soon...

  The Secrets of Pain

  OTHER BOOKS

  The Bones of Avalon

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