Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘What broke the idyll?’

‘What makes you think it broke?’

‘They always do,’ Lol said.

‘This one didn’t break , it just got diverted. Got a lot more intense very quickly. After some weeks we discover this guy called Mathew is living with us.’

‘You discover he’s living with you?’

‘He was just there. You know? People came and went. Any problems we had, plumbing and whatever, Mickey would fix it for some guy to attend to it. Mickey was an excellent man, he’d go out and find the right people, the ones on the fringe who, in return for a small package, wouldn’t spread it round that we were, you know, dangerously subversive. Then this guy Mathew – Mat, with one T, he was very particular about that – your name, the number of letters it had – very important, the numerological correspondences, all this shit.’

‘Bit mystical?’

‘ I thought, at first, he was just some fucking gardener Pierre’d hired. This messianic-looking guy – not much older than any of us but he had the look. Mat Phobe, he called himself, obviously not his real name. But who used their real names in those days? You called yourself what you thought you ought to be called, what would reflect your spirit. So it was a while before we became aware that Mat Phobe was actually in charge of us all.’

‘How do you mean, “in charge”?’

‘Yeah, exactly. I don’t believe we knew. You did one weird thing, weirdness became the norm. Especially if you were getting a buzz. But the Templars – it was Mat knew about the Templars. We’d all been down this weird little church and wandered around, but it hadn’t meant that much to us. There wasn’t all this shit about the Templars all over the media in those days. Medieval history wasn’t cool. Stone Age was cool, the golden age of ley lines when the land was irrigated by mysterious energies that could blow you away. We knew all about that, but we knew diddly-squat about the Templars. Except for Mat.’

And so it came out, Lol wishing there was some way he could record it all for Merrily.

Mat came and went. He’d go off for weeks at a time and come back with some new idea. Mat had said they were sitting on energies the like of which they couldn’t imagine. Mat had said the Master House was at the centre of forbidden secrets, all this stuff that gave a deep and wonderful significance to their lives when they heard about it, stoned.

He’d told them about the Templars being suppressed because of their advanced esoteric knowledge. He knew about Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order, coming to Garway in 1294. Mat was convinced de Molay had stayed in the Master House. He was also convinced that the Grand Master had brought something with him.

Lol sat up.

‘Like what?’

‘He reckoned Garway was … I dunno, the chosen place? He said this guy Jacques could already see the writing on the wall, knew that all these kings and popes were suspicious of the Order and jealous of their wealth and their influence and the secret knowledge they had – all this Da Vinci Code shit.’

‘ Is it shit?’

‘Probably. But we had no point of reference back then, anyway – the book that raised the whole bloodline of Christ issue, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , wouldn’t come out for several years.’

‘So are you saying Mat knew something of this before it was in the public domain?’

‘Oh man …’ Jimmy Hayter raised his eyes to the cherubs ‘… you listened to that guy, you thought there was nothing he didn’t know. He had all these charts and symbols and glyphs and astral correspondences and all this impenetrable balls. He was the high priest, the adept. Looking back, I can see that he was probably full of shit, but we didn’t question it at the time because the women found it, shall we say, very alluring. At first.’

‘So what did he think he was going to find?’

‘Treasure. Money … gold. Whatever. The Templars had massive wealth. They were a multinational enterprise. They ran a banking system across Europe and the Middle East. Mat’d got it into his head that de Molay had chosen Garway as a hiding place if the deal went down in France. Garway made sense, he’d say, because it was not only remote, it was on the Welsh border and the Templars were well in with the Welsh. And the Scots – they rode with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.’

‘Mat thought there was Templar treasure stashed at Garway?’

‘He thought we were sitting on it.’

‘At the Master House?’

‘The Grand Master House. Which was built soon after the church, just far enough away that nobody would suspect.’

‘And he thought the treasure was still there?’

‘Oh, Jeez …’ Jimmy Hayter laughed. ‘We were all over the place after that, tapping walls, looking for signs and symbols. Pierre and his woman, whatever her name was, they’d gone by then, and some other guy was there and I remember him being chased out of the church by the vicar after taking a crowbar to one of the long stones that were originally the lids of Templar coffins. I remember Mat gave him a talking-to, and then he gathered us all around and he said we were going about it all wrong. He said the only way to find out the secret was to get onto the Templar wavelength.’

Suddenly, Stourport was back, and his face seemed less relaxed now, his eyes harder.

‘That was when it got intense. That was when we started on the magic.’

MERRILY WENT BACK to check on Mrs Morningwood, listening outside the door of the guest room. All she could hear was Roscoe, padding around on the other side. Once, he growled.

Twice she went back out to the square, and Siân’s car was still there. Just after midday, she rang Huw Owen from the scullery and asked him straight out if he’d been approached by the Duchy.

‘I never thought you had so few friends, lass. No, it’s not me.’

‘Then who?’

‘Doesn’t have to be somebody you actually know. Could just be somebody as knows you . Somebody as knows exactly what you’ve been doing the past couple of years. Could even be Merlin the Wizard.’

Huw’s name for the Welshman who was Archbishop of Canterbury. Huw seemed oddly – for Huw – fond of him, which might have been down to their shared affection for The Incredible String Band, old Celtic hippies sticking together.

‘Help me out here,’ Merrily said. ‘What are they likely to want?’

Huw said. ‘You might remember what I told you about royalty and the Church. Reference to seismic shifts and little folks getting dropped down crevices?’

‘I remember.’

‘Follow your conscience but watch your back.’

‘And did it work?’ Lol asked. ‘The magic?’

He could feel the atmosphere hardening. He felt like he was stirring cement and running out of water to soften the mix. Soon Jimmy Hayter’s memories would become clogged, Lord Stourport less accommodating, and when his curiosity about Merrily ran out it would be time to go.

‘It was magick with a “k”,’ Hayter said.

‘Aleister Crowley put the “k” on the end, didn’t he?’

‘A tosser.’

‘But an influential tosser,’ Lol said. ‘I’m told.’

‘My dear friend …’ Stourport heaved himself up on an elbow. ‘If you thought I was going to tell you what we were doing … ’

‘Well, I did, actually,’ Lol said. ‘Hoped, anyway. It was a long time ago, after all.’

Crowley. Lol remembered a discussion he’d once had in a flat in Ross-on-Wye with a woman called Cola French who had hung out with some weird people and had told him about …

‘The OTO? That was something to do with Templars, wasn’t it? Ordo Templi Orientis ?’