Phil Rickman: The Cure of Souls

‘Strange.’

‘It is, isn’t it? There was also an impression on the side of his neck strongly suggestive of a hook being attached to the wire. One of my lads, who was a farmer’s boy, had an idea what this might be.’

Lol said, ‘You’re talking about hop-wire, aren’t you?’

FOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE with hops, kilns, furnaces, gypsies, exorcism etc., thanks to:

Krys and Geoff ‘Chovihano’ Boswell (no relation), Paul Gibbons, Tony Heavens and Lynn, Mike Kreciala, Jeannine McMullen, Colin Osborne, Tony Priddle, John Pudge, Lisle Ryder, Tony Wargent and Trudy Williams.

Jani Sue Muhlestein gave me a timely reminder about Simon St John, whose rather gruelling earlier history is chronicled in December .

Once again, my wife, Carol, edited the manuscript with stunning perception, and pulled back the novel from the brink of the abyss with two perfectly tailored ideas. Thanks, too, to my editor, Peter Lavery, scourge of the staccato sentence, for the ultra-sensitive fine-tune, and to my agent, Andrew Hewson, who solved that delicate final problem. ( Look, she’s a 37-year-old woman…! )

If I bent the facts about the hop industry in the Frome Valley, no blame should be attached to A Pocketful of Hops , produced and published by The Bromyard Local History Society or Richard Filmer’s Hops and Hop Picking (Shire). On Romanies, Patrick ‘Jasper’ Lee’s We Borrow the Earth (Thorsons) was an inspiration, as were Jean-Paul Clebert’s seminal Gypsies and the haunting and evocative A Time from the World by Rowena Farre and Raymond Buckland’s Gypsy Witchcraft and Magic . I’m still not sure know how much of a threat a mulo is to a gaujo , but my advice is: don’t chance it.

Martin Israel’s profound and unflinchingly direct book, Exorcism , is published by the SPCK.

All the characters are entirely imaginary, and no councillors or officials, bent or clean, in the story have any connection with the members or staff of the existing Herefordshire Council. The Barnchurch Trading Estate is not, we must all hope, on anyone’s planning schedule. And while West Mercia Police may have had their problems over the years, none, to my knowledge, have been in relation to the Frome Valley, where Knight’s Frome may be difficult to find and nobody remembers the Emperor.

The songs Cure of Souls , Camera Lies and The River Frome Song can be heard, along with others from the series, on the CD Songs from Lucy’s Cottage by Lol Robinson with Hazey Jane II. Lady of the Bines is on the second Lol album, A Message from the Morning , both obtainable via the website www.philrickman.co.uk

The Cure of Souls background and locations can be found in Merrily’s Border , published by Logaston Press.

PHIL RICKMANwas 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.

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

The Secrets of Pain

OTHER BOOKS

The Bones of Avalon