Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘Stand up and smell the foetid stench of Satan!’

There was this shattering hush.

‘Feel the heat of the dragon’s breath!’

A woman moaned.

‘And know that the beast is come!’

‘It was you?’ In the dingy parlour-turned-temple, Robin stared at Ned Bain; Bain didn’t look at Robin. ‘You had the estate agents send us the stuff?’

‘Not... directly.’ For the first time, the guy was showing some discomfort. ‘We put out feelers through the Pagan Federation to see if anyone might be interested.’

‘We?’ Betty said.

‘I did.’

‘But, like, how come you didn’t just buy this place yourself?’ Robin was still only half getting this.

‘And reveal himself to Ellis?’ Betty said. ‘Before he could get his plans in hand?’

‘Coulda bought it through a third party.’

‘He has,’ Betty said acidly.

‘I don’t think that’s quite fair,’ said Max. ‘There was hardly time for plans – except, perhaps, in spheres beyond our own. I’m inclined to believe this came about as a spontaneous response to what one might call serendipitous circumstance.’

‘Max.’ Betty was laying on that heavy patience Robin knew too well. ‘Do you think, for one minute, that we’d all be here today, trying to pull something together at the eleventh hour, if Vivvie hadn’t crassly shot her mouth off on a piece of late-night trash television and alerted Ellis to what he immediately perceived as the Devil on his doorstep? No, Ned would have waited for Beltane, Lammas, Samhain... and got it all nicely set up for maximum impact.’

Max started to speak, then his beard knitted back together.

George was up now – squat, stubbly George, partner of Vivvie.

‘Look, people, I think... that however this all came about, we’ve got to put it behind us for tonight. If we allow it to destroy this seminal sabbat, under the spotlight of the entire pagan world, we are going to regret it for the rest of our lives, man. I agree that maybe Ned’s not been as up-front as he might’ve been. I know we could start to accuse him of only setting this thing up to have this Ellis man go down in history totally humiliated, as the priest who lost his church to the Old Religion, but...’

‘It’s more than that,’ Betty said. ‘For a start, he set us up. And in a place which none of us—’

‘It doesn’t matter , Betty. We cannot let personal issues fuck up a seminal event. We have to hold the sabbat, we have to reconsecrate this church in the names of Mannon and Brigid and...’

George stopped. Betty had stood up. In this damp, chilly room she was a heat source: the only one here who didn’t look kind of tawdry. She looked like a goddess.

‘Ask him what he’s waiting for,’ she demanded.

‘Please...’ George wilted back. ‘Just leave it.’

Ned Bain didn’t move.

‘He’s waiting for his stepbrother,’ Betty said. ‘He’s waiting for the hymns to start up, only louder. He’s waiting for his stepbrother to lead the enemy to the gate.’

‘But, Betty, we need that tension,’ George said. ‘That’s what this is about – the changeover. In the dawn of the year, the dawn of a millennium, a pretender is banished.’

‘Christ, you mean?’

‘If you like. I prefer to think in terms of the warlike Michael. I’ve got nothing against Christ, but he was, at best, an irrelevance. Yeah, Christ, if you like.’

‘I don’t like,’ Betty said. ‘We’re an alternative. We’re not the opposition. I mean, he might be – he and Ellis both. Whatever else they are, whatever they claim to represent, it’s completely soured by what lies between them. I don’t want that. I don’t want to go into that old, fouled place on the back of twenty-five years of pent-up hatred. I suggest everybody gets changed and leaves now.’

Howls of protest and serious consternation at this, shared by Robin. In some ways, the recent revelations had made him feel better about the situation – the great Ned Bain brought down to human level.

‘Bets, look,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you can’t precisely say we were set up. We decided to go for this place. All the omens said it was right at the time. Plus, we had the promise of the Blackmore deal and all that it could bring. We were on a roll.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Betty said, ‘the Blackmore deal.’

Ned Bain shifted. Robin felt a pulse of alarm. I still think Kirk could be persuaded to listen to reason. This was all gonna crash now, the rainbows in the puddles turning black.

‘Robin, love...’ Betty’s eyes had misted, or was it his own? ‘Kirk Blackmore’s been working you like a puppet, hasn’t he? All your highs and all your lows.’

‘He was important, sure.’ Robin looked at Ned. Ned was staring at the stone flags in the floor, elbow on knee and arm outstretched, cigarette loose between his fingers.

And suddenly Robin knew.

‘I guess you’re Kirk Blackmore, huh?’

Bain didn’t reply. The room was silent.

Robin turned to Betty. ‘How did you find that out?’ Inside his rough woollen tunic he was starting to sweat like a hog.

‘Some... friends of mine got some information from the Internet. Blackmore’s this notorious recluse supposedly living on a Welsh mountain and communicating only by fax. People speculate endlessly on the Net about the true identities of authors. Publishers often write novels under pseudonyms: usually lurid, mass-market novels they might not want to be associated with. I’m really sorry, Robin.’

Ned’s brow was suddenly a little shiny.

‘But he could’ve bought this place out of his small change,’ Betty continued.

‘It was your destiny, not mine,’ Bain said calmly. ‘At the time.’

‘Bullshit,’ Robin said quietly.

‘Any time you wanted to get out, I’d have taken it off your hands.’

‘You mean like after we ran out of money? After we’d taken all the shit from the local people? After Ellis got safely kicked out on his ass by the Church? After our marriage got smashed up on the fucking rocks?’

‘There was always this growing atmosphere of turbulence,’ Betty said. ‘We were made to feel insecure from the first. He wanted us to feel beleaguered, maybe a little scared.’ She looked down at Bain. ‘You needed this, didn’t you? Were you working on it with your coven, Ned, or was it some magical construction of your own – long and intrictate, like one of your novels? Generating unrest – backed up by a campaign of mysterious letters and phone calls directed at Ellis. The dragon rising? Were you working towards some kind of cataclysm... only forestalled by stupid Vivvie giving it away – resulting in this farce.’

Vivvie snarled, ‘What are you these days, Betty? Because you’re not one of us any more.’

Bain said, ‘If you really want to discuss this, I’m perfectly willing—’

‘Did you buy the witch box from Major Wilshire? Did you have someone deliver it to us, place it on our doorstep?’ Betty paused. ‘And were you... were you really that surprised when Major Wilshire fell from his ladder?’

Ned Bain sprang up in a single movement. ‘Don’t you fucking dare ...

His stiffened finger inches from Betty’s soft cheek.

Which was enough.

Robin lurched across the room to the altar. George reached out to stop him, but Robin shook George savagely away. He felt the weight of his hair on his shoulders. He heard warbling sirens in the night. He saw through a deepening mist. He remembered the pit of desperation that swallowed him when Al Delaney, of Talisman, had called to say, He wants someone else to do it, Robin. He doesn’t want you.