Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

The bungalow looked empty, no smoke from the chimney. Merrily drove on. ‘You know who lives there?’

‘Retired folk from Off, I reckon.’

‘Mmm.’ Retired incomers were always useful for topping up your congregation. If the affable local minister turned up to welcome them, just when they were wondering if they were going to be happy here among strangers, they would feel obliged to return the favour, even if it was only for the next few Sundays. But if the friendly minister was the Reverend Nicholas Ellis, drifting away after a month or so could be more complicated.

This was what Bernie Dunmore had been afraid of. She’d received a briefing on the phone from Sophie before they left.

Apparently there was something of a record turn-out at the village hall yesterday. The bishop understands that a number of people were out delivering printed circulars last night, and bulletins were posted on Christian websites, warning of pagan infestation. Today there’s to be what’s been described as ‘a Demonstration of Faith’, which the bishop finds more than a little ominous.

‘I wonder what he said to them in his sermon. You know any regular churchgoers in the village, Gomer?’

‘We’ll find somebody for you, vicar, no problem.’

The bishop’s in conference all day...

Unsurprisingly.

... but what he wants you to do initially, Merrily, is to offer advice and support to the Reverend Mr Ellis. By which I understand him to mean restraint.

What was she supposed to do exactly? Put him under clerical arrest?

But if Merrily felt a seeping trepidation about this exercise, it clearly wasn’t shared by Gomer, who was hunched eagerly forward in the passenger seat, chewing on an unlit ciggy, his white hair on end like a mat of antennae. Describing him to someone once, Jane had said: ‘You need to start by imagining Bart Simpson as an old man.’

The lane dipped, darkening, into a channel between lines of forestry. The old rectory appeared on the left, in its clearing. Merrily kept her eyes on the narrowing road. How would she have reacted if she’d turned then and seen a pale movement in a window? She gripped the wheel, forestalling a shudder.

‘Not a soul, vicar,’ Gomer observed ambivalently.

‘Right.’ Her voice was huskier than she would have liked. The towering conifers were oppressive. ‘This must be the only part of Britain where you plunge into the trees when you leave the Forest.’

‘Ar, we all growed up never thinkin’ a forest had much to do with trees.’

Merrily slowed at the mud-flecked Old Hindwell sign. A grey poster with white lettering had been attached to its stem.

‘Christ is the Light!’

That hadn’t been there on Saturday either. She accelerated for the hill up to the village. Halfway up, to the right, the tower of the old church suddenly filled a gap in the horizon of pines. It was like a grey figure standing there.

The manifestation of a truly insidious evil in our midst .

A seriously inflammatory thing to say – Ellis playing it for all it was worth.

She’d read the Daily Mail story twice. Robin Thorogood sounded typical of the type of pagan recruited for Livenight . Primarily political, and an anarchist – what they used to call in Liverpool a tear-arse – but not necessarily insidiously evil. She wondered what his wife was like; no picture of her in the paper.

Sophie had said, The bishop would like you to point out to whoever it might concern that, while this might have previously been a church, it is also now this couple’s private property, and they do not appear to be breaking any laws – which the Reverend Ellis and his followers might well be doing if any of them sets foot inside it.

Merrily slowed to a crawl at the side road to the church and farm. This was where you might have expected to find a lychgate. There was a small parking area, and then an ordinary, barred farm gate. She saw that, while St Michael’s Church had never been exactly in a central position, trees and bushes had been allowed to grow around what was presumably the churchyard, hedging it off from the village. Somewhere in there, also, was the brook providing another natural barrier.

They moved on up the hill. ‘I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that place without drawing attention. Would that be possible, Gomer?’

‘Sure t’be. There’s a bit of an ole footpath following the brook from the other side. They opened him up a bit for the harchaeologists last summer, so we oughter be able to park a good way in.’

‘You know everything, don’t you?’

‘Ah, well, reason I knows this, vicar, is my nephew, Nev, he got brought in to shovel a few tons o’ soil and clay back when the harchaeologists was finished. I give Nev a bell last night. Good money, he reckoned, but a lot o’ waitin’ around. Bugger me, vicar, look at that ...’

Merrily braked. There was a cottage on the right, almost on the road. It had small windows, lace-curtained, but in one of the downstairs ones the curtains had been pushed back and a candle was alight. Although the forestry was thinning, it was dark enough here for the flame to be visible from quite a distance. Power cut?

Not exactly. The candle was fixed on a pewter tray, which itself sat on a thick, black book, almost certainly a Bible. Christ is the Light .

‘Annie Smith lives there,’ Gomer said. ‘She’s a widow. Percy Smith, he had a little timber business, died ten year ago. Their boy, Mansel, he took it over but he en’t doin’ too well. Deals mostly in firewood now, for wood-burners and such.’

Merrily stopped the car just past the cottage. ‘She overtly religious, this Annie Smith?’

‘Never made a thing of it, if she is. But local people sticks together on things, see. Gareth Prosser goes along with the rector, say, then the rest of ’em en’t gonner go the other way. It’s a border thing: when the Welsh was fightin’ the English, the border folk’d be on the fence till they figured out which side was gonner be first to knock the ole fence down, see. And that was the side they’d jump down on. But they’d all jump together, see.’

‘Border logic.’

‘Don’t matter they hates each other’s guts the rest o’ the time, they jumps together. All about survival, vicar.’

‘And does Gareth Prosser go along with the rector?’

‘They d’say he’s got one o’ them Christ stickers in the back of his Land Rover.’

‘What does that mean, then?’

‘Means he’s got a sticker,’ Gomer said.

Before they reached the village centre, they’d passed five homes with candles burning in their windows, and two of them with Bibles stood on end, gilt crosses facing outwards. A fat church candle gleamed greasily in the window of the post office. Merrily, usually at home with Bibles and candles, found this uncanny. We don’t do this kind of thing any more.

‘It’s medieval, Gomer. One couple. One pagan couple – OK, young, confrontational, but still just one couple. Then it’s like there’s a contagious disease about, and you put a candle in the window if it’s safe to go inside. Is this village... I mean, is it normally... normal?’

‘Just a village like any other yereabouts.’ He pondered a moment. ‘No, that en’t right. Ole Hindwell was always a bit set apart. Not part o’ the Valley, not quite in the Forest. Seen better times – used to ’ave a little school an’ a blacksmith. Same as there used t’be a church, ennit? But villages around yere, they grows and wanes. I never seen it as not normal.’

A big, white-haired man was walking up the hill, carrying something on his shoulder.

‘They d’say he does a bit o’ healin’,’ Gomer said.