Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

Merrily shook her head, blinked away the unbelievably horrific image of a torn-off arm on the central reservation.

‘You were very lucky, both of you. And the boy?’

‘Eirion. His car was a write-off.’

‘He’s not injured, that’s all that matters.’

‘Some whiplash. They kept him in for the night, too, but I think his father picked him up this morning. Or his father’s chauffeur. I talked to his stepmother on the phone. Eirion seems to be blaming himself for what happened. Nice kid.’

‘So, altogether...’

‘What I keep coming back to is, suppose I’d arrived one second earlier? Suppose I’d killed her? In one of those one-in-a-billion freak family tragedies? What would I have done with the rest of my life? What would any of it be worth?’

‘But you didn’t. Someone didn’t want to lose you – and didn’t want you forever damaged either.’

Merrily leaned back, shook out a cigarette. ‘You ever thought of getting ordained, Sophie?’

‘God forbid.’ Sophie stood up. ‘Put that thing away and get your coat.’

‘It’s Jane’s coat. What for?’

‘Jane’s coat, then. I’m going to drive you to this funeral. You can perhaps sleep on the way. If we leave now, we might even stop for a sandwich.’

‘Sophie, it’s Saturday. You can’t... You have things to do.’

‘Oh,’ Sophie said, ‘I think Hereford United can manage without me for one week.’

Merrily blinked. Sophie unhooked a long, sheepskin coat and a woollen scarf from the door. It did rather look like the sort of outfit you would wear to a football match in January. Bizarre?

‘This is above and beyond, Soph.’ Merrily got unsteadily to her feet.

‘I should be grateful if you didn’t smoke in my car,’ Sophie said.

THE MAIN ROAD from Old Hindwell to New Radnor passed through the hamlet of Llanfihangel nant Melan. The church of St Michael was right next to the road and, although it didn’t actually look very old, there were indications of a circle of ancient yew trees, which suggested it had been rebuilt.

Although there were a number of other cars nearby, Betty stopped the Subaru. She was in no mood to talk to Mrs Wilshire or anybody else right now. She would check out the atmosphere of the church. It might even calm her down.

She was still furious with Robin. If he’d been accosted the other night by the drunken wife of Greg Starkey, feeling him up in the street, why hadn’t he told Betty when he arrived home? Old Hindwell wasn’t exactly known for its red-light quarter. So why had he kept quiet?

Why? Because they’d just had a goddamn row over his handling of Nick Ellis. Because he’d slammed out of the house and didn’t think she’d be speaking to him anyway. Because he was cold and tired. Because .

So why hadn’t he mentioned it the next day, even?

Because... Jeez, was it important? Did she think he enjoyed it? Did she think he’d snatched this chance to feel Marianne’s tits?

Actually, she didn’t think that. What she thought was that Robin hated to tell her anything that might make her think less of Old Hindwell. Why don’t you get to know the people here? Like Judith Prosser – she’s OK, not what I imagined.

Dickhead.

Betty walked over to the church. The stonework suggested extensive Victorian renovation. Did anything remain of the church built as part of some alleged St Michael circle? How would this one feel inside?

Sooner or later, when Robin was not around, she would have to go back into the Old Hindwell ruins to face the question now looming large: the stained and sweating, fear-ridden man at prayer – was that him? Was that the Reverend Terry Penney? Was he dead now?

But this wasn’t an exercise in psychic skills. Before she went back there, she wanted to know all there was to be known about all the churches in the St Michael circle.

However, in Llanfihangel Church, she was immediately accosted by a man in a light suit who asked her if she was on the bride or the groom’s side. So much for standing there in the silence and feeling for the essence of the place. Betty apologized and escaped with a handful of leaflets, which she inspected back in the Subaru.

And just couldn’t believe it. One, apparently produced as a result of a community tourism initiative, was blatantly entitled, ‘Where sleeps the Dragon on the trail of St Michael’s churches’.

Betty slumped back in her seat, broke into a peal of wild, stupid laughter. A tourist leaflet. Was that how all this had started?

The text explained that there were four St Michael churches around Radnor Forest – at Llanfihangel nant Melan, Llanfihangel Rhydithon, Cefnllys and Cascob. It presumably didn’t mention Old Hindwell because it was a ruin, now on private land.

An inside page was headed: ‘St Michael and the Dragon of Radnor Forest’.

It referred to the introduction by Jewish Christians of ‘angelology’. Angels guarded nature and local communities. St Michael guarded Israel and was named in the Book of Revelations, etc., etc. Most Welsh churches dedicated to him had appeared in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The specific Radnor reference had been pulled from a book called A Welsh Country Parson by D. Parry-Jones, who recounted a legend that the last Welsh dragon slept in Radnor Forest and, to contain it, local people had built four St Michael churches in a circle around the Forest. It was said that if any of these churches was destroyed, the dragon would awaken and ravage the countryside once more.

This was it? This was the source of Nicholas Ellis’s paranoia?

Crazy!

Still, it did look as though Robin and Ellis were right. Assuming there was no fire-breathing elemental beast locked into the landscape, this appeared to be a simple metaphor for paganism, the Old Religion.

... if any one of these churches is destroyed...

Old Hindwell had been virtually destroyed... and initially by its rector, which didn’t make any obvious sense. Why would a clergyman make a gesture which was bound to be adversely interpreted by anyone superstitious enough to give any credence to the dragon legend?

Unless Penney had been a closet pagan. Was that likely?

Not really. Something was missing. For a moment, Betty smelled again the rich, sickening stench from the praying man in the skeletal nave.

She drove off too quickly, the Subaru shuddering.

Lizzie Wilshire greeted her with a spindly embrace.

‘I don’t know whether it’s your herbal mixture or just you , my dear, but I feel so much better.’ Holding out her right hand and making it into a claw, the fingertips slowly but effectively closing on the palm.

‘Gosh,’ Betty said.

‘I haven’t been able to do that for months!’ Those ET eyes shining like polished marbles. ‘You’re a wonder, my dear!’

‘I wouldn’t quite say that.’

Psychological? The potion couldn’t possibly have had such a spontaneous and dramatic effect unless her problem was essentially, or to an extent, psychosomatic.

And yet... Betty caught an unexpected sidelong glimpse of Lizzie’s aura. It was, without a doubt, less fragmented. And she was talking constantly, garrulous rather than querulous now.

‘Were you originally called Elizabeth? Like me?’

‘A long time ago,’ Betty admitted, as they sat down.

‘A long time ago, my dear, you weren’t even born.’ Lizzie Wilshire laughed hoarsely. ‘Now, were those papers useful? If not, just throw them away. I’m in a clearing-out mood. Clutter frightens me. I’m even thinking of selling the summer house. Every time I look out at it, I expect to see Bryan walking across the garden. Do people buy summer houses second-hand like that? Can they take them away?’