Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘That was only the half of it, though,’ Merrily said, to defuse things a little. ‘The next part would be the baptism of the two of them, in the same little bowl of holy water, I guess. Something medieval going on there: the fusion of two souls?’

Merrily stared down at the soured face in the tomb. In the medieval church, baptism was exorcism. Exorcism charms had been included in marriage services, or blessing of the sick. Pregnant women were exorcized too. In those days, demons were getting expelled from people like tapeworms.

A scenario: late afternoon, the sky like sheet metal. The baywindowed room north-facing, so not much of the sunset visible. A cold room and a cold time of day. Menna standing there like some white slave, her skin waxy, her arms like straws. Perhaps a bruise forming blue where Ellis had gripped her roughly – in his mind gripping not her but it . Perhaps she was wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. Or was she entirely unmoved? Compliant? Accepting this ritual as just another of those things men liked to do to her.

‘Do you embrace God?’ Ellis’s customizing of the rite.

J.W. Weal standing there, big as God.

Menna hesitating, perhaps a little worried by the word ‘embrace’ and thoughts of what else God might do to her after this.

‘Do you embrace Him?’

‘I... Yes... Yes.’

Around the high, white room, dark oak chairs with long pointed spines, standing like judge and jury.

‘Do you renounce the evil which corrupts that which God has created? And the sick and sinful, perverted desires which draw you away from the love of God?’

Menna beginning to cry again.

‘Say it!’

Her head going back. A sniff.

‘Say, “I so renounce them”!’

‘I s... so... renounce them.’

‘I can’t begin to know where Ellis derived that rite from,’ Merrily said. ‘Or if he made it up. But there’s an awfully long tradition of bodged religion around the Forest, isn’t there?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Judith Prosser said sulkily.

‘Like, what’s the good of religion if it isn’t practical ? Whatever he did, it was nasty and unhealthy and yet... and yet somehow it worked, Judith. In some horrible, insidious way, it bloody well worked . And he has her now.’ Merrily felt she was drifting away on a formaldehyde fog, sailing so far from the land of normality that she was afraid of never getting back there. ‘Got her to himself. At least part of her. Part of something . Something half realized, fluttering after him like a crippled bird. It’s obscene.’

There was a slithering sound. Judith was shedding her long, black, quilted coat, like a snakeskin.

EVEN JANE COULD see the police didn’t quite know how to handle this any more. A routine peacekeeping assignment had turned into a confusion of arson and murder. They’d taken over the doctor’s surgery as an incident room, for two separate investigations which might be totally unconnected.

Jane and Gomer were keeping well back from it all. They stood with Sophie and Eirion in the shadow of the rear entry to the pub yard. Gomer had a ciggy going, and looked more his old self. Jane, too, felt more in control since Sophie had taken her to the chief fire officer, and he’d confirmed that they’d now managed to get inside the hall and had found no bodies there.

But the police had a body: a body with no face, dug out of the mud. And now that the immediate fire crisis was over, this had become their priority again, and they wanted very much to talk to Gomer. Wanted to know why he’d been so sure that something was buried in the old archaeological site that he’d gone up there with a digger, at night. Sophie, her white hair in almost hag-like disarray, was trying to explain to him that all they wanted was a statement, to allay their suspicions.

Gomer didn’t want to know, though. It was a plant hire thing that would take too long to explain; Jane understood this. ‘It’s stupid. Why would Gomer have sent you to tell the police if he had something to do with it?’

Eirion said to Gomer, ‘I think what Mrs Hill’s trying to say is it would be better if you approached them , rather than have them come find you.’

‘Eirion, what can I tell ’em that’s gonner be any help?’ Gomer growled. ‘I’ll talk to the buggers tomorrow, ennit?’

And Jane realized that he was worrying about Mum.

She looked out of the entry to the street, where a sombre assembly had formed around two priests – or, at least, two men in dog collars. One of them was raising his hands as if holding up a huge rock he was about to smash down on something. Jane just knew that some crazy scenario was being manufactured around the village hall fire, involving not a furtive little green-haired plonker with a can of petrol and a grudge, but some great satanic panoply clanking through the night. They’d asked Father Ellis what he wanted them to do, but Ellis had said, cleverly, ‘I’m not your leader. Listen to your hearts and let the Holy Spirit move within you.’ And he had walked away, leaving bitter, apocalyptic stuff on the air amidst the hellfire fumes. He knew what they’d do. He just wasn’t going to be seen to instigate it.

Watching this, Gomer had nodded knowingly. ‘Truly a local man at last,’ he’d said – which Jane didn’t really understand.

Sophie appeared at her shoulder. ‘There’s one place we haven’t tried,’ Jane said.

‘The church, I suppose,’ Sophie said. ‘She had a loose arrangement with that young pagan woman, didn’t she? To do some sort of Deliverance work? You’re probably right. If you and Gomer want to go down there, Eirion and I will stay here, in case she shows up.’

Gomer nodded. He never liked to stand still for very long. ‘Thank you, Sophie,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve been—’

‘Shut up, Jane,’ Sophie said wearily. ‘Just go. And perhaps you could warn them over at the church’ – she nodded towards the assembly on the streets – ‘about that .’

Robin and Betty were holding one another in some kind of sweet desperation. Everything seemed lost: Robin’s work, the house, their friends, their religion, their future here. Everything smashed in an act of sacrilege so gross it was worthy of a Christian. The candle chopped in half, the scourge handle snapped, the pentacle sent skimming like a frisbee into the wall. The chalice of red wine draining into the rug.

Finally the one-time studio table hauled from its trestles, flung onto its side. Max’s wife Bella screaming, Vivvie raging, calling down the vengeance of the gods, or some shit like that. This was before Ned Bain had come and stood, unflinching, in front of Robin, who still held the sword. Robin had felt like decapitating the bastard, but Ned Bain had remained impressively cool. That quiet power, even Robin felt it.

‘Before I leave,’ Bain said, ‘I want to make it clear that no one else here was involved, no one conspired. No one else deserves to suffer.’

And then he turned and gathered his robe and walked out without another word.

There’d been a long period of quiet then, broken only by some weeping. Betty leaned against a wall, drained. Vivvie had her head in her hands. Even Max had nothing to say. His kids hovered in the doorway, the fiendish Hermes looking satisfyingly scared. The pregnant witch, whose name Robin couldn’t recall, had left the room with her partner. Robin only hoped she was OK. He was starting to feel sick and cold. The twig-fire hissed. A thick piece of altar candle rolled into a corner.

Alexandra, who’d been sitting calmly, with the crown of lights on her knees to protect it, was the first to speak. ‘I think we should all leave Betty and Robin alone for a while.’