Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘The Old Testament,’ Bain said wearily. ‘This guy comes down here and quotes at me from a hotchpotch of myth and legend and old wives’ tales...’

‘The voice of Satan!’ Gemmell snarled, and Merrily was aware of Steve Ewing to her right, putting the bouncers on alert.

‘Thank you, Peter.’ John Fallon placed an arm on the big priest’s shoulder. ‘We’re grateful for that, but I don’t think we’re quite ready for the battle of Armageddon tonight.’

‘I have made my point,’ Gemmell said with dignity and, with a baleful glance at Merrily, walked back up the aisle and then stopped and turned and, before the security men could reach him, roared out, ‘We must – and will – put out the false lights in the night of filth!’

‘Good man,’ Fallon said. ‘Well... Ned Bain’s either the saviour of our planet or he’s the Antichrist. But before that interruption, Merrily, you were saying so-called satanists are just a bunch of delinquent kids...’

‘No, what I said was that real satanism is uncommon. I do know it exists. I have encountered the use of occult practices for evil purposes and I think Ned’s being a bit optimistic if he thinks all pagans are in it to heal the earth.’ Her mouth was dry again. She swallowed.

‘Go on,’ Fallon said.

‘Well, I know for a fact that pagan groups are infiltrated by people with less... altruistic aims – whether it’s money, or drugs or iffy sex.’

‘Black propaganda!’ a woman screeched. Fallon held up a hand for quiet.

‘I do know a young girl,’ Merrily said carefully, thinking of Jane watching at home. ‘She’s a girl who was very nearly ensnared by the people who were secretly running what appeared to be a fairly innocent mystical group for women. It’s a minefield. In the glamorous world of goddesses and prophecy and... and nude dancing at midnight, it’s very hard to distinguish between the people who truly and sincerely believe all this will heal the earth and free our souls... and the ones who are into personal power and gratification of their—’

‘What group?’ the woman shouted. ‘She’s making it up! John, you make her tell us where it was!’

‘Ssssh,’ Fallon said. ‘OK, where was this, Merrily?’

‘It was... around Hereford. Around the Welsh border. Obviously, I’m not going to name anybody who—’

‘All right.’ Fallon turned to the young woman who’d shouted out. ‘It’s Vivienne, right? And you’re the priestess of a coven in Manchester. How do you know what kind of people you’re initiating? How do you vet them?’

‘You just... know.’ Vivienne had cropped hair and earrings that seemed to be made from the bejewelled bodies of seahorses. ‘The initiation process itself weeds out the scum bags and the weirdos. It’s a psychic thing. You learn to pick up on it, and the goddess herself—’

‘That is rubbish,’ Merrily interrupted.

Vivienne paused. John Fallon smiled.

Merrily said, ‘People don’t get vetted before they’re allowed to mess with other people’s minds. You don’t have any real organization or any fixed creed. Your rituals don’t go back to pre-Christian times, they were all made up in the last half century. You’re a complete ragbag of half-truths and good intentions and bad intentions and—’

‘And that’s any different from your Church?’ Vivienne reared out of her seat. ‘Half of you don’t believe in a Virgin Birth! Half of you don’t believe in the Resurrection! And you call us a ragbag. I’m telling you, lady, you’ll have come to bits long before we do. It’s happening right now. And you... you’re part of the decay. We look at you and the blokes see a pretty face and nice legs, and that’s just the Church’s latest scheme to deflect attention from the rot in its guts.’

A build-up of cheers among the pagan ranks. John Fallon stepped back to let the camera catch it all.

‘Your Church is dying on its feet!’ Vivienne grinned triumphantly. ‘It’s not gonna see the new century out. You took our sacred sites from us, and we’re gonna take them back. Your fancy churches will fall, and honest grass will grow up through their ruins, and towers will stand alone, like megaliths—’

‘Whoah!’ Fallon stepped back into the action. ‘What are you banging on about?’

‘All right,’ Vivienne said. ‘She’s from the Welsh border, yeah? I can show you a church on her actual doorstep where that’s already happened. I can show you a church with a tower and graves and everything... which is now a pagan church. You don’t know what’s happening on your own doorstep. You don’t know nothing !’

‘MOVE IT!’ JANE raced along the bright corridor, trailing her fleece coat over a shoulder. The building appeared to be still only half finished; there were lumps of plaster everywhere, and the panes of many windows still had strips of brown tape across them. ‘Irene, move!’

‘I was just trying to thank Maurice and Gerry.’

‘We’ll write them a letter! Come on. Believe me, she is not going to hang on here. She’s going to be out of that bear pit before any of them can pin her in a corner. She’ll be driving like a bat out of hell down the motorway, swearing that she’ll never, never, never again...’

‘I thought she did OK,’ Eirion said, blundering behind her, ‘in the end. She got that woman very annoyed.’

‘ You thought she did OK. I think she just about managed to rescue the situation. She’ll think she was absolutely crap and like disgraced the Church and the bishop and... Jesus Christ!’ Jane hit a pair of swing doors, still running. ‘Can’t you move any faster? I thought you were in the rugby team.’

‘The chess team.’ Eirion caught the doors on the rebound. ‘You know it was the chess team.’

In the old Nova, with Jane leaning back, panting, against a peeling headrest, Eirion said, ‘I wonder what Gerry meant, when that woman was going on about the pagan church.’

‘Huh?’

‘He said, “ That’ll flog, if I’m quick,” and made a note on his script.’

‘That church, you mean?’

‘No, the story, I suppose.’ Eirion drove out of the parking area, past a red and white striped barrier which was already raised. ‘He means sell the story.’

‘Who to?’

‘Who would you normally sell a story to? To the papers. He was a tabloid journalist, wasn’t he? And John Fallon didn’t even follow it up on the programme, so...’

‘He doesn’t follow up anything that’ll take longer than thirty seconds or won’t lead to a fight. Irene, was that crass, meaningless and totally inconclusive, or what?’

‘Bit like the Welsh Assembly without a vote.’

‘You still want to do TV one day?’

‘What? Oh... well, not quite that, obviously. Not exactly that . I want to be a TV news reporter.’

‘So did those guys at one time, I expect. I mean, nobody starts out wanting to shovel shit for a living, do they?’

‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ Eirion slowed for a roundabout. ‘We’re looking for M5 South, aren’t we?’

‘Huh?’

‘Yeah, this one.’ Eirion hit the slip road. ‘That girl your mother was talking about. The girl who nearly got ensnared by those people running that women’s mystical group in Hereford.’

‘You already know it was me. You saw how it ended.’

‘I wasn’t sure.’

‘Well, it was.’

‘And yet you’re still interested in paganism and all that. Because that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? I mean, I know you did think I might get something out of it, career-wise... but you are kind of drawn to all that, aren’t you? I mean, still .’