Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘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.’

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 daughter, 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.’