Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

Betty said, ‘It scares me. I don’t want this.’

‘Aw, come on,’ he said. ‘You’re a witch. Hey, you know, damn near all these churches have just gotta be on older sites, when you see how close they are to standing stones and burial mounds.’ He leaned back in satisfaction. ‘This valley’s a damned prehistoric ritual freaking wonderland. Which explains everything.’

‘It does?’

‘You got all these sacred sites, right? It’s a good bet most of them were still being used by surviving pagan groups well into medieval times, and probably long after that. This was a remote area with a small and scattered population. Closed in, secretive. I think it’s fair to assume that even when they’d been brutally eradicated from most of the rest of the country, the Old Ways were still preserved here.’

‘Possibly.’

‘The Archangel Michael’s the hard guy of the Church. It’s them saying to the pagans, you bastards better come around, or else . Ellis, as a fundamentalist, relates to all of that. Plus, he’s been influenced by insane Bible Belt evangelists who persecute snakes. Plus, his ego’s already been blown up sky high by the size of congregations he’s pulling when all the neighbouring churches are going down the tubes. I’ve decided the guy sucks. The only remaining question is how long we keep stalling before we tell him that he and his exorcism squad can go screw themselves.’

‘I was going to say that if we don’t make an issue of it, if we let it go quiet, then he’ll probably forget about us,’ Betty said lamely.

‘Not gonna happen. Believe me, this guy’s on some kind of crusade under the banner of St Michael. Hey! Would that explain the army surplus stuff? Shit .’

Robin smiled at his own flawed logic. Betty saw, with a plummeting heart, that he wanted to be a target of Christian fanaticism.

‘When we look at those ruins,’ he said, ‘we see a resurgence of the true, indigenous spirituality. Whereas he sees a naked tower giving him and his religion the finger. He so wants to be the guy who killed the dragon and claimed it all back. It’s an ego thing.’

‘You and him both.’

The smile crashed. ‘Meaning what ?’

‘You have a few beers together, you size each other up, and now you’re both flexing your muscles for the big fight. You can’t wait, can you? You love it that he’s got this huge mass of followers and there’s just the two of us here, newcomers, isolated...’

‘Now listen, lady.’ Robin was on his feet, furious. ‘My instinct was to kick his ass, right from the off, but no... I play it the way I figure you would want me to! Mr Nice Guy, Mr Don’t Frighten The Horses... Mr Take A Faceful Of Shit And Keep Smiling kind of guy!’

‘No, you didn’t. You thought you could play with him, lead him around the houses, take the piss out of him a little... when in fact he was playing with you .’

‘You weren’t even there!’

‘And you’ve never given a thought to where this could leave us. We have to live here... Whatever happens, we have to live here afterwards. And we will have to live here, because – in case you haven’t thought about this – who is going to buy a rundown house along with a ruined church which the local minister insists is infested with demonic evil?’ She spun away from him.

‘You shithead.’

Robin snatched in a breath that was halfway to a sob then threw his pencil down on the table. ‘I need some air.’

‘You certainly do!’

He turned his back on her, strode across the kitchen like Lord bloody Madoc and tore open the back door. Before he slammed it behind him, she heard the rushing of the rain-swollen Hindwell Brook in the night, like a hiss of glee.

Betty let her head fall into her hands on the tabletop.

What have we done? What have we walked into ?

Robin stomped across the yard, hit the track toward the gate and the road. It was cold and the going wasn’t so easy in the dark, but he was damned if he was going back for a coat and flashlight.

Why, why was whatever he said, whatever he did, whatever he tried to do, always the wrong fucking thing?

Four years he and Betty had been together and, sure, they were different people, raised in different cultures. But they’d previously come through on shared beliefs, a strong respect for natural forces and each other’s destiny.

And he’d thought the road to Old Hindwell was lit for them both.

All the portents had been there, just as soon as they decided they would look for a place in the countryside where they might explore the roots of the old spirituality. They’d let it be known on the pagan network that they were looking for something rural and it didn’t have to be luxurious. The Shrewsbury coven had worked a spell on their behalf and, before that week was out, they’d received – anonymously, but with a wellwisher’s symbol and the message ‘Thought you might be interested in this... Blessed Be!’ – the estate agent’s particulars of St Michael’s Farm. And – in the very same post – a letter from Al Delaney at Talisman to say that Kirk Blackmore was impressed with Robin’s work and would like him to design the new cover... with the possibility of a contract for the soon-to-be-rejacketed backlist of SEVEN VOLUMES!

Even Betty had to agree, it was like writing in the sky.

Robin joined the lane that led first past the Prosser farm and then on to the village. The farm was spread across the council roadway, like it owned it, sheds and barns on either side, mud from tractor wheels softening the surface of the road. A Land Rover was parked under an awning. It had a big yellow sticker in the back window, and even at night you could read ‘Christ is the Light!’ in luminous yellow. Robin gave a moan, stifled it. He hadn’t known about this. If Ellis denounced them, they’d have no support from their neighbours.

When he got clear of the farm he surveyed the night. Ahead of him, the moon lay on its back over a long hill bristling with ranks of conifers – a hedgehog’s back, a dragon’s back. Robin held out his arms as if to embrace the hill, then let them fall uselessly to his sides and walked on down the middle of the narrow lane, with ditches to either side and banks topped by hedges so savagely pleached they were almost like hurdles. Gareth Prosser was clearly a farmer who liked to keep nature under his thumb. His farm, his land . Robin wondered how Prosser had reacted to the team of archaeologists who’d moved in and sheared the surface from one of his fields to uncover postholes revealing that, four thousand years ago, the farm had been a key site of ritual pagan worship. Maybe Prosser had gotten Ellis in to sanctify the site.

Whatever, there was virtually nothing to see there now. Robin had sent off to the Council for British Archaeology for the report on the Radnor Valley dig. A couple of weeks ago, when he and Betty had driven down with a vanload of books, he’d checked out the site but found just a few humps and patches where the soil had been put back and reseeded. The team had taken away their finds – the flint arrowheads and axes – and hundreds of photos, and given the temple back to the sheep.

And to the pagans.

Well, why not? The night before they moved in, they’d agreed there should be a sabbat here at Imbolc – which Betty preferred to call by its old Christian name, Candlemas, because it was prettier. They’d agreed there should be the traditional Crown of Lights, which Betty would wear if there was no more suitable candidate. At the old church above the water, it was all going to be totally beautiful; Robin had had this fantasy of the village people coming along to watch or even join in and bringing their kids – this atmosphere of joy and harmony at Imbolc, Candlemas, the first day of Celtic spring, the glimmering in the darkness.