Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

Or was there, as Gerard Stock had suggested, a powerful, residual sense of injustice because the nature of the crime had been misunderstood, the wrong people convicted?

Merrily prayed silently to understand, to get a feeling of what was needed, and then intoned aloud: ‘O God, forasmuch as without You we are not able to please You, mercifully grant that Your Holy Spirit may, in all things, direct and rule our hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

‘ Amen ’ – Stock and Lol. Nothing from Stephanie – she looked hazy, suspended in the column of the midday sun. Next to her Stock seemed dense, leaden. Was Stephie already building another life for herself, away from here? And where would Stock be if she left him? This was, after all, her house.

‘At this point, we’ll have… a period of quiet,’ Merrily said. ‘If that’s OK.’

‘Sure.’ Stephanie’s voice was crisp, and Stock glared at her, like a disapproving father, but said nothing. Merrily turned her face away from a collision of light beams emanating from the tiny trinity of windows, and looked down at the flags where Stewart Ash had been taken down, and then closed her eyes.

Greyness.

Stewart…?

Careful not to reach out for him or call him back. It was about being receptive. She kept her eyes shut, allowing any unfocused thoughts to drift away. There was a metallic shudder from the fridge, then comparative quiet.

In her head: Stewart… don’t be afraid to let go. I know it’s very confusing for you. You must have been utterly terrified – and outraged. You must have felt, along with the pain, a terrible sense of betrayal. Perhaps you’re still feeling that. But there’s no progression without forgiveness. Try to release your resentment, the sense of injustice. We’re with you. God’s with you. Let go. Please .

She lifted her face towards the central window, now framing the full sun, an orange glow through her eyelids. Appealing now to Jesus Christ to come into this place, because it was always better to welcome in the light than simply drive out the darkness.

‘Jesus, we ask that Stewart might be free of all earthly bonds. Free to go into the light and the warmth and the sublime reality of Your eternal love.’

She bent her head.

The commendation came next: a call to the spirit, in the name of its creator, to leave this world. An appeal to God to send His angels to meet Stewart, guide him home. Something told her to omit the prayers of penitence for the killers. Keep the killers out of this, whoever they might be.

Next: the cleansing.

‘Father, You have overcome the power of death, strengthen us now with Your spirit and make us worthy to perform correctly the blessing of this home. Let evil spirits be put to flight and may the angel of peace enter in. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

Lol thought, This has to be a scam. But who’s using who?

He watched the priest, his friend, through half-closed eyes – her hands together, the tips of her fingers parallel with the bridge of her nose, the pectoral cross catching the sun through the inverted V of her black-sheathed forearms.

Doing her best for these people: no scam, no sham.

Merrily. If there was only …

Stephanie Stock’s bare arm slid up against his own, again. He tried not to think about it.

Merrily opened her eyes to a light lancing through the central window, was momentarily blinded and felt an intense heat all around her, as though there was still a furnace in here and the doors had been flung open.

She felt sweat on her forehead and a harsh rawness at the back of her throat. She fought the urge to cough.

Oh God .

It had caught her off guard. Until then, there’d been nothing: a growing sense of anticlimax, no sense at all of Stewart Ash. Now the kiln seemed claustrophobic, suddenly stifling, and when the fridge grated like a passing container lorry she realized what she’d forgotten to do.

She saw Lol watching her, a flaring of alarm in his eyes. She put a hand to her throat, swallowed. Her throat was burning. She was gasping on a stench of gunpowder and rotten eggs and the smell of cheap fireworks from when she was a kid, fierce and searing as a jet from a blowlamp, hot breath of hell.

SULPHUR?

As she struggled for breath, she was asking herself Is this real? and turning to glance at the stove in case it was pumping black smoke.

It wasn’t.

Then Lol’s voice: ‘Merrily…?’

His normal voice – no wheezing, no coughing. He wasn’t getting it; none of the others were. She began to utter in her head the lines of St Patrick’s Breastplate: Christ be with me, Christ within me …

Hand to her mouth, she crossed the room and pulled open the door leading to the hop-store-turned-living-room. Rushed in and grabbed a wooden dining chair to wedge the door open.

Christ behind me, Christ before me …

Huw Owen coming through. What’ve you forgotten, Merrily? Huw putting them through their paces in a Victorian chapel in the Brecon Beacons. DOORS! All of them… cat-flaps… cupboards… open and wedge… firmly… come on… it’s not a joke! Do it! Open and wedge! OPEN AND WEDGE!

She dragged open the door of the huge old fridge… a cold, white bulb blinking on inside. Then the heavy door began to swing back on her and she pulled down two bottles of Chardonnay from a shelf inside to set on the flags and wedge it open. When she turned back into the room, Lol was moving towards her.

She croaked, ‘ No! ’

One of them must have jogged the hop-crib table, because the chalice instantly tipped over and the red wine began dribbling into the cracks in the wood. Why hadn’t she put away the sacrament when her plan for the Eucharist was shelved? Why hadn’t she done that?

She snatched the flask of holy water to safety as the spilled wine dripped down and pooled in the outline of Stewart’s bloodstain on the flags below.

When she could manage to speak, she said, ‘It’s all right. Not what I thought.’ It came out both hoarse and shrill, no kind of reassurance.

What she meant was: It’s not Stewart Ash . Something was loose, playing with her senses, but it wasn’t Stewart.

‘Grant, Lord—’ She broke off and took a deep breath, watching droplets of holy water from her flask twinkling in a channel of sunlit dust. ‘Grant, Lord, to all who shall work in this room that in serving others they may serve you.’

But in her voice, the recommended blessing for a kitchen sounded as potent as watered milk. She’d blown it. She’d been unprepared, had come in here, unforgivably, as a partial sceptic, her mind absorbed by something else, and whatever was here had known it and gone for her and only her.

What is it? What’s here ? Who are you?

She cleared her throat, hands trembling around the flask. She could still taste the sulphur. Stephanie Stock was watching her, amused, as if storing up the whole event for a party anecdote – Stephie’s famous impression of the loopy woman who thought she was an exorcist.

‘The living room?’ Merrily asked.

Gerard Stock nodded. He kept glancing at the small pool of wine on the floor, now a stain on the stain.

Coincidence? Coincidence!

But Stock was sweating, wet patches the size of dinner plates under each arm. I’ve lost it , Merrily thought in horror, I’ve let it through. It’s come through me! She was aware of Lol watching her intently, as if there were only the two of them here. Lol, who rarely judged, almost never condemned – because he was a loser and a wimp, he’d insist.