Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘We abandon all reconsecration plans. That’s been tainted now, anyway, because of Ned. And Ned’s gone, and we talked about that and we were all relieved, even George, because Ned’s... Ned’s a little bit dark.’

‘Fucker,’ Robin said.

‘So we forget all that. We forget the politics.’

‘Even Vivvie?’

Alexandra glanced behind her. Robin saw the whole coven in the shadows.

Vivvie came forward, looking like some rescued urchin. She stood beside Alexandra. ‘Whatever,’ she said.

‘My suggestion,’ Alexandra said, ‘is that we simply enact the Imbolc rite.’

‘Who’d be the high priest?’ Robin said.

‘It should be you.’

Robin knew this was a major concession, with George and Max out there. Although he’d been through second-degree initiation, he’d never led a coven.

‘And when we come to the Great Rite,’ Alexandra said, ‘we’ll leave so that you can complete it.’

For Robin, the cold February night began to acquire luminosity.

Alexandra smiled. ‘You’ve both had a bad time. We want this night to be yours.’

Robin tingled. He did not dare look at Betty.

ONLY A DEAD body.

Whatever else remained was not here; it was probably earth-bound in that back room, where a medieval exorcism replayed itself again and again, until the spirit was flailing and crackling and beating at the glass. The grey and lightless thing that J.W. Weal brought home from Hereford County Hospital.

‘Look at her...’ said Merrily, in whom guilt constantly dwelt, like an old schoolmistress. ‘That’s what you all did. That’s what you left behind. Take a proper look at her face. Go on .’

But Judith Prosser looked only at Merrily. And there was no guilt. Practical Judith in her tight blue jeans, the sleeves of her shirt pushed up to the elbows, her black coat in a heap on the floor. Practical Judith Prosser, ready to act, thinking what to do next, how to make her move. A smart woman, a hard woman, a survivor.

But Merrily, perhaps taking on the guilt that Judith would never feel, pushed harder.

‘Maybe that’s why J.W. invited you to the interment – you and Gareth and the good Dr Coll. Did Dr Coll, by the way, prescribe Valium to keep Menna afloat, keep her quiet when she threatened to be an embarrassment? Was there medication for Marianne, too? I thought Marianne seemed awfully compliant during her cleansing.’

‘You have it all worked out, Mrs Watkins,’ Judith said.

‘Yeah,’ Merrily said. ‘I finally think I do. It stinks worse than this embalming stuff.’

‘And what will you do with it all? Will you go to the police and make accusations against Dr Collard Banks-Morgan and Mr Weal, the solicitor, and Mrs Councillor Prosser?’

‘It would help,’ Merrily conceded, ‘if Barbara Buckingham’s body was in here.’

‘So why don’t you come back here with a pickaxe? Or with your good friend Gomer Parry and one of his road-breakers?’

It wasn’t going to be there, was it? There was no one under Menna. Yet Merrily was sure now that Barbara Buckingham was dead.

‘ Did Barbara find out about the exorcism?’

Judith slowly shook her head, smiling her pasted-on smile, back on top of the situation, giving nothing away.

‘Still,’ Merrily said, ‘ Menna ’s here. For any time you want to look at her and remember the old days before she turned into a woman and became less malleable. And J.W.’s left you with a key. So you can come in any time and watch what you once had... see what you did. Watch it slowly decaying before your—’

Merrily sank to her knees.

She’d been expecting, if anything, a shriek of outrage and clawing hands. She hadn’t seen this coming. Judith Prosser didn’t seem to be close enough. Now Merrily was on her knees, with the flash memory of a fist out of nowhere, hard as a kitchen pestle. On a cheekbone.

She had never been hit like this before. It was shattering, like a car crash. She cried out in shock and agony.

Judith Prosser bent with a hand out as if to help her, and then hit her again with the heel of it, full in the eye. Merrily even saw it, as if in slow motion, but still couldn’t move. It drove her back into the wall, her head connecting with the concrete, her left eye closing.

‘You can tell the police about that, too, Mrs Watkins.’ Judith was panting with satisfaction. ‘And see who they believe – a hysterical little pretend-priest from Off, or Mrs Councillor Prosser. Ah...’

One hand over her weeping eye, Merrily saw through the other one that the door had swung open. And the doorway was filled. Really filled.

‘Good evening, Jeffery,’ Judith said.

‘You have me, Judith, as a witness that she hit you first.’ Weal’s voice was colourless and flat as card. ‘But only if you make no further mess of her than that, or it would not be a reasonable defence.’

He was carrying what looked like a kind of garden implement. He came in and gently closed the door of the mausoleum behind him. He was wearing a charcoal grey three-piece suit and a white shirt, and a black tie to show he was still in mourning. His face was pouchy, red veins prominent in his grey cheeks.

He propped the garden implement against the door. Merrily saw that it was a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun.

‘Thought it was the hippies, see.’ He nodded at the twelve-bore. ‘Some satanist hippies are parked up in the clearing by the Fedw Dingle. Father Ellis phoned to warn me. They break in anywhere.’

‘Isn’t loaded, is it, Jeffery?’ Judith said.

‘It’s always loaded. There are foxes about. And feral cats. I hate cats, as you know.’

‘Not going to the Masonic?’

‘I was going, Judith, till I saw all those troublemakers in the village. Can’t leave your house unguarded, all this going on, can you?’

Talking politely, like neighbours over the wall, people who knew each other but not that well.

They must have known one another for most of their lives.

Merrily didn’t try to move. Judith looked down at her.

‘Recognize this one, do you, Jeffery? Came to see me this morning. Asking all kinds of questions about Father Ellis. And about you, and Menna. When she left, I saw that the keys... You know where I keep your keys, on the hook beside the door? Stupid of me, I know, but I trust people, see, and we’ve never had anything stolen before. But when she left I seen the keys were gone.’

Weal stood over Merrily. ‘Called the police?’

‘Well, next thing, there she is coming down the lane tonight. I thought, I’ll follow her, I will, and sure enough, up the drive she goes, lets herself in and when I came in here, she’d already done that .’ They both looked at the open tomb. ‘Disgusting little bitch. I shouldn’t have touched her but, as you say, she went for me. Like a cat.’

I hate cats, as you know. How instinctive she was.

Merrily was able to open her swelling eye, just a little. She looked up at Weal. It was like standing under some weathered civic monument. She didn’t think there was any point at all in telling him that Judith had lured her here, picking up, with psychopathic acumen, Merrily’s guilt, her sense of responsibility for Barbara Buckingham.

‘Why did you do this? Why do you keep coming here? Why do you keep wanting to see my wife?’

J.W. Weal gazing down at her sorrowfully, giving Merrily the first real indication that there was something wrong with him. His speech was slow, his voice was dry.

‘The truth of it is,’ Judith said, ‘that she seems to have a vendetta against Father Ellis.’

‘Father Ellis is... a good man,’ Weal said calmly.