Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘You’re in shock, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve just seen something totally horrific. You’ve been through a really horrifying—’

‘Yeah, I probably am in shock.’

‘You could do this tomorrow.’

‘I said I’d do it tonight.’

‘We could explain to Betty...’

They were halfway across the footbridge now. The ruins shimmered in a hollow of silence.

Then a woman’s voice rose up.

‘Dread lord of Death and Resurrection

Of life and the Giver of life

Lord within ourselves, whose name is Mystery of Mysteries encourage our hearts

Let thy light crystallize itself in our blood...’

Merrily slumped over the rail of the bridge.

Too late.

HIS COVEN AROUND him, Robin lifted the wand high, in his right hand, until it divided the moon.

The wand was a slender, foot-long piece of hazel wood, cut from the tree with a single stroke on a Wednesday, as laid down in the Book of Shadows. In his left hand Robin held the scourge, a mild token thing like a riding crop with silken cords.

Behind him were the crone – Alexandra – and a woman called Ilana, who was twenty-four but looked a lot younger and represented the maiden tonight.

The flames rose straight up out of the tight nest of stones in the centre of the nave as he brought down the wand in a long diagonal, right to left, then left to right in a forty-five-degree angle and straight back horizontally and down... and up.

To a point. One point.

The positive, invoking pentagram of Earth... drawn before his high priestess, whose hair shone brighter than the fire, whose eyes were deeper than crystals.

‘ Blessed be ,’ Robin whispered.

And never had meant it more.

Merrily followed Jane around the church tower. The kid had a small torch, borrowed from Gomer, but they didn’t need it; the church cast its own light. When she looked up to the top of the tower, she could no longer see the candle-lanterns, only the highlighted stones. She and Jane slipped – unseen, she assumed – from the tower, across a grassy, graveless churchyard, glittering with frost, to the side of what looked like a stone barn.

What to do? Watch and pray?

Christ be with us, Christ within us, Christ behind us.

They stood with their backs to the barn. From here, through an empty Gothic window in the nave, about twenty feet away, they could see the long candles on the altar, and they could see, by the fire and candlelight, Betty in her green robe. On one side of her was a girl of about eighteen, on the other a plump and placid woman, who looked like she ought to be running a day nursery. The girl was combing Betty’s blond hair.

There was now music on the freezing air: vaguely Celtic, string and reed music from some boombox stereo concealed in the ruins. It all seemed gentle and poetic and harmless and not a lot, in Merrily’s view, to do with religion.

The distance, the walls and the music allowed them to talk in low voices. Jane said, ‘Doesn’t look as if she’s been, like, coerced, does it?’

Betty stood with her back to the altar, the other women on either side. The male witch, who looked like he should be playing bass with Primal Scream, appeared in the Gothic window.

‘We saw him in the Daily Mail , right?’ Merrily said.

‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s Robin.’

‘And is he the high priest? You know this stuff better than me.’

‘Has to be.’

‘Not Ned Bain, then.’

‘Which is a mercy?’ Jane said.

‘Which has to be a mercy.’

A shadow moved beside her, as if off the barn. Any night but this, she might have cried out.

‘A mercy, you think, then?’ the shadow said.

‘Hello, Ned,’ said Merrily.

They’d customized the rite slightly, to allow for the place and the changed circumstances, but Robin thought it could still be OK. He tried to concentrate on the meaning of the ritual – the birth of spring. And the purpose – the bringing of fresh light to an old, dark place. He wondered if Terry Penney could see them in some way and feel what was happening. For in the absence of the woman priest, Betty said, this rite must also be a form of exorcism, to convey Terry’s spirit into a place of peace.

But Robin couldn’t dispel the awareness that they were doing this in a church . He would close his eyes for a moment and try to bring down the walls until there was only a circle of stones around them, but he was finding he couldn’t hold that image, and this wasn’t Robin Thorogood, visionary, seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways. He found himself wishing they were someplace else, in a frosted glade or on some open moorland... and that wasn’t Robin Thorogood, custodian of an ancient site which tonight was entering its third incarnation, quietly and harmoniously, without tension, without friction.

He laid the wand and scourge upon the altar and helped the maiden to arrange the shawl around the shoulders of the crone.

From a jam jar on the altar, he took a small bunch of snowdrops – the flowers of Imbolc – which Alexandra had found growing behind the barn and had bound together with some early catkins.

He presented this humble bouquet to Ilana, the maiden.

He lifted the crown of lights from the altar and waited while the three women arranged themselves.

He raised the crown of lights and placed it on Betty’s head, and the maiden and the crone tucked and curled her golden hair becomingly around it.

‘Merely spectators,’ Ned Bain whispered. ‘Isn’t it sad? Came for a baptism and they wouldn’t even let us be godparents.’

Merrily said nothing, keeping her eyes on the Gothic window, full of moving lights.

‘I’ve been barred,’ he said. ‘Might that be down to you?’

She flicked a glance at him. She hadn’t seen him clearly, but he was not robed, like the others. He seemed to be wearing a jacket and jeans. She made sure she kept Jane on the other side of her.

‘If you’ve been barred, why are you still here?’

‘Because Simon will come,’ Bain said. ‘If he isn’t here already.’

‘Simon?’

‘ You know who I mean.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You really aren’t on his side, are you, Merrily?’

‘I’m not on anybody’s side.’ She was picking up a musky, sandy smell on him. It reminded her, for just a moment, of Sean. She made the sign of the cross and cloaked herself and Jane in the glow from the breastplate of St Patrick. The smell went away.

Bain said, ‘Am I right in thinking Simon’s offended you?’

‘Am I supposed to think this is ESP, Ned? Your awesome powers at work?’

‘Isn’t Father Ellis performing exorcisms?’

‘Is he?’

‘Do they work?’

‘Depends on what he intends them to do. That’s where the problems arise.’

‘Tell me.’

Jane touched her shoulder. ‘Mum... I think they’re coming.’

‘If I tell you what he did,’ Merrily said, ‘will you bugger off?’

‘OK.’

‘He performed some kind of baptismal ritual which effectively bound together two people who never should have been brought together in the first place. And when the woman died, her... spirit would not leave the man. And instead of bringing him comfort, it oppressed him and sapped his energy, and turned him into... even less than he was before.’

‘Mum...’

‘Thank you,’ Ned Bain said. ‘What will you do about that?’

‘I don’t know that I can do anything.’

She moved behind Jane to the corner of the barn, looked out across a yard, past the farmhouse to where a track was marked out by a line of swinging torches and lamps.