Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘Madog.’

‘Aye, that’s a good one.’

‘And …’ Merrily glanced at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Cynllaith?’

‘ Cynllaith ,’ Huw said. ‘Lovely. People round there really don’t know where all these names come from, Mrs M?’

‘We’re inclined to suspect Wales,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled.

‘I’ll do a last check. Use your computer, lass?’

He stumped off into the scullery, shutting the door, and Merrily turned to Mrs Morningwood.

‘People certainly seem to know about Jacques de Molay. Or they did.’

‘Naomi Newton.’ Mrs Morningwood took off her sunglasses and applied a tissue to an eye. ‘I suppose Roxanne related that episode in all its gory detail.’

‘Well, you certainly didn’t.’

‘Better you heard it from them. Not my family’s finest hour. Haunted my poor grandmother to her own dying day.’

‘Anything else you’re keeping to yourself that might be relevant?’

‘Darling, I have over half a century’s worth of knowledge. Who knows what’s relevant?’

Huw was back within a few minutes, nodding, satisfied.

‘If you were worrying about the Duchy of Cornwall, no need. You’re looking at the first generation of male Royals not tied up with Masonry. Duke of Edinburgh, he were one – lasped now, mind. Queen’s not eligible, of course, but her old man, George VI, he was well in. And so it goes.’

‘If Charles broke the chain,’ Merrily said, ‘how does the Masonic hierarchy feel about that?’

‘Aye, well, you might’ve put your finger on summat there, lass.’

‘Erm …’ Merrily shook out a Silk Cut. ‘In your message on the machine last night, you talked about …’

‘The feller who advised the Duchy of Cornwall that you wouldn’t blab.’

‘I think I’ve managed to contain my curiosity quite well.’

Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood, who gathered up her cigarettes and matches.

‘I need to go and bathe my eyes.’ She stood up, Roscoe stretching at her feet. ‘Perhaps apply something foul-smelling to other abused areas.’

‘Nice dog,’ Huw said.

‘Interesting woman,’ he said when she’d gone. ‘Always been attracted to strong ladies. When you get past a certain age, mind, almost all womankind develops a strange and sorrowful allure.’

Merrily sat back, arms folded, gazing at the ceiling.

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘Sorry for the anticlimax. You were right first time. Well, I couldn’t say owt on the phone, could I?’

‘You bloody denied it!’

‘No big deal, anyroad. I’m not an official consultant or owt like that, just acknowledged as not linked to any of the factions in the Church. Safe pair of ears, in other words.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘No. Never. No need. Best not to, really. Basically, this is summat I inherited from Dobbs. No offence to you, but he could never trust a woman. And you weren’t around then, anyroad. Essentially, there’s a handful of us – Jeavons is another.’

‘Ah.’

Canon Llewellyn Jeavons, once tipped as the first black Archbishop of Canterbury – until his wife died and he went strange, becoming an expert on healing and deliverance with an email address book containing Somali witch doctors and Aboriginal songline-hoppers. It figured.

‘It was decided that certain people close to the throne needed a bit of looking out for. With regard to spiritual aspects of their lives and work. This lad, his heart’s in the right place, but he will keep putting his foot in it.’

‘BMA chauvinism and architectural carbuncles?’

‘Tip of the iceberg, lass. He gets frustrated and fires off letters to Government ministers. Well, fair enough, I say. An independent mind. If a man thinks he can see the civilized world going down the pan and he wants to use whatever influence he’s got to try and stop it, I’m all for it. But they don’t like it. Far as the Government’s concerned, the Family ought to know its place. Which is on the sideboard.’

‘Strictly ornamental.’

‘Exactly. You heard from that chippy little copper?’

‘Bliss? Yesterday.’

‘Got a feller on his back, you said.’

‘Jonathan Long.’

‘Aye. Slime like him, see, times’ve changed. Used to be the spooks automatically supported royalty as an institution. Now they’re Government animals. Servants of spin. And if the Government of the day should contain a number of people of, shall we say, republican instincts, in key positions … You know what I’m getting at?’

‘Go on.’

‘For instance, Governments, national and European, don’t like alternative medicine, they like straight doctors, drugs and drug companies. They like GM foods and meat imports and they don’t really give a shit for animal welfare. Or farmers, for that matter.’

Huw stopped and looked at Merrily. Merrily shrugged.

‘Plus, unless you’re Islamic and they can’t decide whether to bang you up or kiss your arse, this is now a secular country. Merlin the Wizard, he could be heading for the sideboard, too, and he knows it. And yet, despite what anybody says, there’s a great spiritual yearning out there.’

‘Just that the way some of it’s expressed doesn’t please some of our more traditional colleagues,’ Merrily said.

‘And if some of these oddball spiritual pathways appear to have been trodden by the heir to the throne – well, not good news for the Church, but not necessarily bad news for the republicans. Use it to shaft him again – eccentric’s one thing, bonkers summat else. There’s quite a body of opinion thinks this could turn out to be a good time to lose ’em.’

‘Dump the monarchy?’

‘Or stand well back and allow it to dump itself. A lot of cynicism about the Family right now. What’s your view?’

‘Expensive, undemocratic. And some, on the fringes, have been free-loading airheads. But, at the end of the day, I suppose I feel happier that they’re there. They represent something I feel kind of reassured to have around. Plus, can you think of a contemporary politician you could stand to see as President?’

‘Happen you’d’ve got on with Dobbs better than either of you thought possible.’

‘I’m guessing Dobbs was closer to all this than you. He knew Laurens van der Post, for a start.’

‘Aye, he did. Knew him way back, and renewed the contact not long before his death. See, there’s a lot of superstition around the monarchy, and Charleses haven’t been too lucky. Charles I, executed – very public human sacrifice. Charles II had to hide in an oak tree, thus becoming the Green Man. You heard that one?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘The head of Charles II peering through the foliage … the green man to the life.’

‘I suppose it is. What’s the significance?’

‘A title which, for different reasons of his own choosing, could easily be applied to the future King Charles III. But because Charles is seen as an unhappy name for a king, the word is he’ll adopt one of his other names and become King George VII. Which doesn’t change things much , as your green man in churches has also been associated with Saint George. But that’s by the by.’

‘Huw, aren’t we getting just a bit …’

‘I’m giving you the folklore. The mythology. The superstition. Dobbs was a mystic. He believed the monarchy – good or bad, strong or weak – was preserving something fundamentally essential to the spiritual welfare of Britain … part of the soul of the nation, if you like. That if Church and State were still in bed together, nowt much would go wrong in the great scheme of things.’

‘So Charles suddenly announcing he wants to be defender of faiths plural …?’