Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘I should think so. You could advertise it in the paper. I could do that for you, if you want.’

‘Oh, would you? That’s terribly kind. Yes. I told Dr Coll – I hope you don’t mind...’

‘About the summer house?’

‘About you, of course! About your wonderful herbal preparation. He called in this morning, even though it’s Saturday – such a caring, caring man – and said how much better I was looking, and naturally I told him about you.’

‘Oh.’ In Betty’s experience the very last thing a doctor liked to be told was that some cranky plant remedy had had an instantaneous effect on a condition against which powerful drugs had thus far failed to make a conspicuous impact.

‘He was delighted,’ Lizzie said.

‘He was?’

‘Far be it from him, he said, to dismiss the old remedies. Indeed, he’s often suggested I might benefit from attending one of the Reverend Ellis’s services – but that’s all too brash and noisy for me.’

‘He must be a very unusual doctor.’

‘Simply a very caring man. I didn’t realize how pastoral country doctors could be until Bryan died. Bryan had a thing about the medical profession, refused to call a doctor unless in dire emergency. He’d have liked you . Oh, yes. His army training involved finding treatments in the hedgerows. A great believer in natural medicine, was Bryan. Although, one does need to have a fully qualified medical man in the background, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ Betty said. ‘I suppose so. Shall I make some tea?’

She knew now where everything was kept. She knew on which plate to arrange which biscuits. On which tray to spread which cloth. All of which greatly pleased Mrs Wilshire. When it was done, Betty sat down with her and they smiled at one another.

‘You’ve brightened my life in such a short time, Betty.’

‘You’ve been very helpful to me, too.’

‘I won’t forget it, you know. I never forget a kindness.’

‘Oh, look...’

‘We never had children, I’ve no close relatives left. At my age, with my ailments, one doesn’t know how long one has left...’

‘Come on... that’s daft.’

‘I’m quite serious, my dear. I said to Dr Coll some time ago, is there anything I can do to help you after my death? Is there anything you need? New equipment? An extension to the surgery? Of course, he brushed that aside, but I think when you’ve been treated so well by people, by a community, it’s your duty to put something back.’

‘Well...’

‘In the end, the most he would do was give me the name of a local charity he supports, but... Oh dear, I’ve embarrassed you, I’m so sorry. We’ll change the subject. Tell me how you’re getting on with that terrible old place. Have you been able to do anything with the damp?’

‘These things take time,’ Betty said, careful not to mention the need for money.

Getting into the car, she felt deeply uncomfortable. It might be better if she didn’t return to Mrs Wilshire’s for a while. The old girl probably wasn’t aware of trying to buy attention, even if it was only with compliments about a very ordinary herbal preparation, but... Oh, why was everything so bloody complicated, suddenly?

She leaned back in the seat, rotating her head to dispel tension. She noticed the dragon leaflet on the passenger seat. Where, out of interest, was the next church on the list?

Cascob.

Nestles in the hills near the head of the Cas Valley... village appears in the Domesday Book as Casope – the mound overlooking the River Cas.

Promising, she supposed. And was about to throw the leaflet back on the seat, when another word caught her eye.

It was ‘exorcize’.

A couple of miles into Radnor Forest, Betty became aware of an ominous thickening of cloud... and, under it, a solitary signpost.

She must have passed this little sign twenty times previously and never registered it, perhaps because it pointed up that narrow lonely lane, a lane which didn’t seem to lead anywhere other than: Cascob.

Strange name. Perhaps some chopped-off, mangled Anglicization of a Welsh phrase which meant ‘obscure-church-at-the-end-of-the-narrow-road-that-goes-on-for-ever’. Or so it seemed, perhaps because this was the kind of road along which no stranger would dare travel at more than twenty mph. It was deserted, sullen and moody. Robin would be enchanted.

There wasn’t much to Cascob. A bend in a sunken, shaded lane, a lone farmhouse and, opposite it, a few steep yards above the road, the wooden gate to the church itself, tied up with orange binder twine. Betty left the Subaru in gear, parked on the incline, untied the twine around the gate.

Sheep grazed the sloping, circular churchyard among ancient, haphazard gravestones and tombs that were crumbly round the edges, like broken biscuits. There was a wide view of a particularly lonely part of the Forest, and the atmosphere was so dense and heavy that Betty couldn’t, for a while, go any further.

Some places, it was instantaneous.

The old man in the cellar at Grandma’s place in Sheffield... that had probably been the first. None of them had frightened her for quite a while, not until she’d learned from other kids that you were supposed to be afraid of ghosts. Until then, she’d been affected only by the particular emotions specific to each place where something similar happened: fear, hatred, greed and – the one emotion she hadn’t at first understood – lust.

She steadied her breathing. Cascob Church squatted under low, grey cloud. It looked both cosy and creepy. To what extent had the present sensations been preconditioned by what she’d read in the leaflet?

... to exorcize a young woman...

She walked on, towards the church.

The stone and timbered building, like many this old, seemed to have grown out of the site organically. There were oak beams in its porch and under the pyramid-cap of the tower. It snuggled against an earthmound which was clearly not natural, possibly a Bronze Age tumulus. From the base of the mound grew an apple tree, spidery winter branches tangled against the cold light. There was a gate across the porch – more twine to untie.

Betty stepped inside. There were recent posters on the wall and a framed card invited all who entered to say a prayer before they left. She would not be so crass as to offer a prayer to the goddess. When she put out a hand to the oak door, Cascob Church seemed to settle around her, not unfriendly, certainly ancient and comfortably mysterious.

And locked.

She wondered for a moment if this was a sign that she was not supposed to enter this place. But then, all churches were kept locked these days, even – perhaps especially – in locations this remote.

She walked back across the churchyard and the narrow road to the farmhouse to enquire where she might borrow a key. The bloke there was accommodating and presented her with a highly suitable one, about six inches long. It made her right hand tingle with impressions, and she twice passed it quickly to her left hand and back again before reaching the porch.

The lock turned easily. She went in and stood tensely, with the door open behind her.

The church inside was dark and basic. Betty stood poised to banish anything invasive. But there was nothing. It was quiet. So far removed from the foetid turmoil swirling in the Old Hindwell ruins that she banished that from her thoughts, lest she somehow infest Cascob.

The place was tiny and probably little changed since the fourteenth or fifteenth century. A farmers’ church, with a font for christenings but no room for gentry weddings.

There was a wooden table with literature on it, including the sleeping dragon leaflet and a similar one about Cascob Church itself. A collection box had Betty fumbling for a fiver, an offering to appease the god of the Christians. She stood for a moment behind one of the back pews, not touching its dark wood, her head hanging down so as not to face the simple altar. It was not her altar, it faced the wrong direction, and she’d turned away from all this eight years ago.