Phil Rickman - The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed.

There were candles on tables amongst the congregation, establishing that they were part of it, not an audience. Brigid Parsons sat next to one, with Jeremy and Clancy. Brigid’s hair was freshly brushed and some of its long-ago colour was shining through, in strands of fine gold, as if in acknowledgement that she’d soon be able to wash it all away because anonymity wouldn’t matter any more, where she was going. Her face was dark and strained, the wide mouth turned down, with lines either side that looked as if they’d just been pencilled in.

We do earnestly repent,

and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;

the burden of them is intolerable.

Merrily had tried to talk to Brigid in the lounge, but Brigid, who had slept for a couple of hours on the sofa, had been unresponsive to everything except the idea and purpose of the Requiem. Please, just... take the bitch away.

‘This is not about revenge.’ She focused on Brigid now, in the near-white candlelight. ‘It’s not about hitting back, it’s not about laying a ghost ... it’s about forgiveness. We’re looking at Hattie and what she did, and, sure, there were a lot of evil elements there... but that does not make Hattie evil in herself . We have to search, in this service, for a depth of forgiveness that we perhaps wouldn’t be able to reach in everyday life. We’re always saying, I can forgive anybody anything but That ... Today, we have to say – and mean it – I can forgive anything, including That.’

In her own mind, she saw the woman in the picture over the bed, a woman with fair hair twisted and coiled like a nest of pale snakes, and eyes like white marbles. She could hear wild laughter, the smack of stone on flesh and bone.

Whoop, whoop .

It wasn’t easy, was it?

‘Fortunately,’ she said, ‘we can count on some help.’

She opened the New Testament: John, Chapter Twelve. At a later stage, she’d have to say, ‘Let us commend Hattie to the mercy of God.’

It was clear that nobody was ready yet to consider mercy. Not even Jeremy Berrows, the natural farmer, the quiet farmer, innocent face under hair like dandelion clocks. Giving Brigid an occasional sideways glance, their shoulders touching. Jeremy Berrows, who firmly believed the evil that arose in Brigid had been bequeathed to her by Hattie.

And maybe it had. Maybe Bella Chancery, led here by a twisted path of deception, had opened the door to... something that Jeremy was now being asked to forgive. Now. Within probably an hour of losing for ever his main reason to go quietly on.

John 12, verse 27. ‘Now my soul is in turmoil, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this that I came to this hour...’

Canon Jeavons’s point entirely. It’s how we develop within ourselves – by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee.

If Merrily could take on Jeremy’s suffering she’d do it. She felt a low-level tingle in her spine.

Behind Jeremy was Alistair Hardy, rotund and bland and – a phrase you didn’t hear much these days, but it suited him – clean-shaven.

The psychic? She didn’t doubt it, but there was a lot to doubt. The Lucy Devenish thing, for a start. Also Dr Bell’s ‘revelation’ about the use of a newborn baby in that dubious ceremony. Because Beth Pollen had almost certainly known of the suggestion that the baby was Hattie, had almost certainly told Hardy.

Smoke and mirrors.

‘ “The crowd standing by said it was thunder, while others said, An angel has spoken to him. Jesus replied, This voice spoke for your sake, not mine. Now is the hour of judgement for this world; now shall the Prince of this world be driven out...” ’

Driving out evil, it was hard not to personalize it.

Brigid Parsons... Paula Parsons... Hattie Chancery... Black Vaughan and Ellen Gethin. To what extent could this possibly be said to go all the way back to Black Vaughan? Who seemed to have been only a fall guy, anyway. A story to blacken Vaughan and his tradition – the Welsh tradition in an area becoming rapidly Anglicized.

She looked at Ben Foley, his sleek head bowed. The original destructive haunting was said to have threatened the whole economy of Kington; Ben had been hoping it would revive his.

She wondered if she ought to have included Sebbie Dacre in this.

A Vaughan thing.

Had Dacre been told that he was a Vaughan? Did that explain his robber-baron mentality, his need to reclaim what was his, to dominate the valley? But the threat Dacre perceived was a threat from within his own family. The worst kind. Look at Dexter Harris.

Merrily looked around the cold room with its tiny spearpoint flames. Looked around, flickering face to flickering face.

Where are you, Hattie?

Of all the things she hadn’t intended to ask...

‘Dying, you destroyed our death. Rising, you restored our life.’

He’s here. Christ . He should be here.

Here now.

Everything is all right.

The tingling in the spine.

But she felt so utterly tired that the candles blurred and the faces fused. She shook herself very lightly.

Not everyone took communion. Beth Pollen was first, looking up at the rising cold blue in the stained-glass window. Then Jane, with a wry and slightly apprehensive smile.

Every time we eat this bread

and drink this cup,

we proclaim the Lord’s death

until He comes.

Brigid, when her turn came, had her eyes closed.

‘The bread of heaven in Jesus Christ.’

If she’d done this before, it had not been for a long time. Her hands came up, reaching for the chalice, the cuffs of her black shirt unbuttoned, falling back over her wrists so that Merrily could see deep, fresh scratches, the blood barely dry.

God...

She was so knocked back by the significance of this that she barely noticed Brigid moving away afterwards and Clancy taking her place.

Had Ben noticed it? Had Jane? Had she imagined it? Was it an hallucination? In the context of the Eucharist, These Things Happened. Immediately, she began to pray for guidance, for back-up, over Clancy’s dull gold hair.

Becoming aware at that moment of Jeremy Berrows, sitting back in the front row – Jeremy’s eyes wide, lit from two sides by candles. Jeremy’s eyes widening. Gazing beyond Merrily, upwards, back at Merrily.

‘The cup of life in Jesus Christ.’

‘Mum,’ Jane said faintly.

Merrily turned and saw, maybe, what Jeremy saw.

Its outline might have been conjured from the snowbanks joining the rising hills, and the jagged pine-tops, shadows against the first light. But yes, oh God, she saw it crouching there inside the leaded glass with its black haunches in the blue and its shadowy snout uplifted into the red where the first light was bleeding through. She saw it, and it was poised to bound.

No!

A coarse sucking sound sent her spinning back to the altar and the thick, dark blonde hair and the cup of life in Jesus Christ – Clancy’s hands around the chalice, Clancy’s lips...

She just stood and watched, her mind whirling, as Clancy trembled hard, as if in orgasm, and threw back her head and drank all the wine and smiled horribly up at Merrily with her black-cherry, glistening lips and eyes like small mirrors, a little candle-flame, a spark, a sperrit , in each of them.

In the very cold silence, Clancy burped and the wine spouted out of her.

Whoop .