Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘He just... he just said he didn’t like the painting,’ Robin said. His whole body seemed very light. ‘He said he... he said there were elements of the painting he didn’t like, was all.’

Al said, ‘He wants someone else to do it, Robin.’

‘Who?’ Robin couldn’t feel his hands.

‘It doesn’t matter who. Nobody in particular – but not you. Mate, I’m sorry. I was so convinced you were the man for this, I would’ve... I had to tell you today. I didn’t want you spending all weekend working out something that wasn’t even going to get—’

‘And the backlist?’

‘The backlist?’

‘What I’m saying, this isn’t just the one cover he doesn’t like...?’

‘It is the one cover he doesn’t like, obviously, and you’ll get paid in full for that, no problem at all. But it’s also... How many ways can I put this? He wants... he wants another artist. He doesn’t want you.’

Robin held up the core design which Blackmore should have loved, took a last look into the eyes of Lord Madoc who, in times of need, would stand in his megalithic circle and summon the Celtic Ray.

Robin’s Madoc – who would not now be Blackmore’s Madoc. A lean, noble, beardless face, its hairstyle – or glorious neglect of style – shamelessly modelled on Betty’s own delicious profusion. Sympathetic magic: Madoc’s hair was full of electricity and pulsed in the mist around him; Madoc, the hack fantasy hero, had been permitted to reflect the bright essence of Betty’s holy power. How could frigging Blackmore have failed to respond to that?

And what were they gonna live on now?

Maybe not love. He recalled Betty’s face before she had gone out, the light gone from her eyes, the shine from her skin. And her hair all brushed. She’d brushed her hair flat!

She also wore a skirt he didn’t even remember her owning, a dark, mid-length skirt – a very ordinary skirt. This was the true horror of it. When she left the house she was looking like an ordinary person .

And it was his fault. Ever since they got here, everything he did was wrong. And everything he didn’t do – or say.

Jeez, he’d never even thought much about what had happened with Marianne outside the pub. That whole sequence was like a dream – the glowing cross in the sky, the big, weird guy looking over his shoulder at no one right behind him. Robin had gone home and he’d slept, and tomorrow had been another lousy day.

He felt cold to his gut. Lately, Betty had lain with her back to him in bed, feigning sleep, a psychic wall between them.

Very tired, she would say, with the move and all.

‘Fuck!’ Robin tore the Madoc drawings end to end and let the strips fall to the floorboards. ‘Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck .’

Trying to picture Blackmore as he was ripping them, but he’d never seen the guy. The face that came to him was the smug, unlined, holy face of the Reverend Nicholas Ellis. Ellis had done this. Ellis who had made Robin his devil, focused his smug, holy Christian hatred on the ruins of St Michael’s, the lair of the dragon. Ellis had brought down bad luck on them.

And they were innocent.

He broke down and wept in frustration and despair, his head among the scattered paint tubes. Robin Thorogood, illustrator, seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways? What a fucking joke.

By seed, by root, by bud and stem, by leaf and flower and fruit, by life and love, in the name of the goddess, I Robin, take thee, Betty, to my hand, my heart and my spirit at the setting of the sun and rising of the stars.

A handfasting. None of this till-death-do-us-part shit.

In the fullness of time we shall be born again, at the same time and in the same place as each other, and we shall meet and know and remember and love again.

It made you cry. Every time you thought of that it made you cry. How much of the prosaic Christian marriage ceremony could do that to you?

Robin cried some more. He saw her in her wedding dress. He saw her slipping out of the dress, when they were left alone, for the consummation, the Great Rite.

How could it be that their souls were sailing away from each other? How could this happen in the sacred place which, it had been prophesied – it had been fucking prophesied – was their destiny?

Robin rose from the table. He figured what he would do now was take a walk down to the barn.

And from the barn he would retrieve the box containing the charm which promised to protect this house and all the chickens and pigs and local people therein from the menace of the Old Religion.

And he, Robin Thorogood, guardian of the softly lit doorways, would take this box and carry it to the edge of the promontory on which the Christians had built their church and, with due ceremony and acknowledgement to the Reverend Penney, hurl the motherfucker into the hungry torrent of the Hindwell Brook.

Robin wiped his eyes with a paint cloth. He thought he heard a knocking at the front door.

Local people. It was probably only Local People . Like the deeply local person who wrote the anonymous letter to his wife, shafting him good.

Well, these local people could just remove themselves from off of his – and the building society’s – property. Robin’s fists bunched. They could very kindly evacuate their asses from said property right now.

The guy said, ‘Mr Thorogood?’

Not a local person. Even Robin was getting so he could separate out British accents, and this was kind of London middle class.

Two of them, and one carried a biggish metal-edged case.

When Robin saw the case, he thought sourly, Whaddaya know, it’s another local person bringing us another box with another charm to guard us against ourselves and thus turn our idyllic lives into liquid shit.

‘Mr Thorogood, my name’s Richard Prentice. This is Stuart Joyce.’

Robin flicked on the porch light. Overweight guy with a beard, and a thinner, younger guy in a leather jacket. Double-glazing, Robin figured; or travelling reps from some company that would maximize your prospects by investing the contents of your bank account in a chain of international vivisection laboratories.

‘We both work for the Daily Mail newspaper,’ Prentice said. ‘If it’s convenient, I’d like a chat with you – about your religion.’

‘About my...?’ Robin glanced at the case. Of course, a camera case.

‘I understand you and your wife are practising witches.’

Robin went still. ‘How would you have come to understand that?’

Relax. No camera around the thin guy’s neck.

Prentice smiled. ‘You didn’t happen to watch a TV programme called Livenight , by any chance?’

‘We don’t have a TV.’

‘Oh.’ The man smiled. ‘That would certainly explain it. Well, Mr Thorogood, you and your wife were referred to on that programme.’

‘What?’

‘Not by name – but your situation was mentioned. Now, it sounds as though we’re the first media people to approach you. And that’s a good thing for both of us, because—’

‘Hold on a moment,’ Robin said.

‘If, as you say, we are witches – which, in these enlightened times, I’m hardly gonna deny... Why are you interested? There are thousands of us. It’s, like, the fastest growing religion in the country right now. What I’m saying is, what kind of big deal is that for a paper like yours?’

‘Well, I’ll be straight with you, Robin, it’s primarily the church. How many witches have actually taken over a Christian church for their rituals?’

‘Well, Richard,’ Robin said, ‘if I can reverse that question, how many Christian churches have taken over pagan sites for their rituals?’