Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘And did you ever take this misdiagnosis up with Dr Coll?’ Betty was imagining Juliet waking up in the night listening for his breathing, monitoring his diet, being nervous whenever he was driving. It must have been awfully worrying.

‘I took the coward’s way out, and persuaded Stanley to move somewhere else, a bit more convenient. I said I was finding the village too claustrophobic, which was true. By then I’d discovered that Dr Coll had... well, appeared to have created a... dependency among several of his patients, and all of them, as it happened, incomers to the area. People who might be feeling a little isolated there, and would be overjoyed to find such a friendly and concerned local GP.’

‘Making up illnesses for them, too?’

‘I don’t know. People don’t like to talk about certain things. People are only too happy to praise their local doctor, to boast about what a good and caring GP they have. Perhaps ours was an isolated case. Certainly, some of them did die quite soon. One rather lonely elderly couple, childless and reclusive, died’ – her voice faded – ‘within only months of each other.’

‘And did they by any chance leave money,’ Betty asked her, ‘to this...?’

‘The Hindwell Trust. Yes, I rather believe there was a substantial bequest.’

‘Did you never say anything?’

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Mrs Pottinger snapped. ‘Was I supposed to go to the police? I’d have been a laughing stock. I believe Dr Coll even helped out as a police surgeon for some years. Yes, I did, when we were about to leave the village, suggest to the Connellys, who’d bought a rather rundown smallholding... but... No, it was a waste of time. Dr Coll is a very popular man: he has five children, he hosts garden parties at his lovely home on the Evenjobb road. Even now, I don’t necessarily believe—’

‘What about the solicitor?’

‘Oh, Mr Weal and Dr Coll go right back. Fellow pupils at the Old Hindwell Primary School. In fact, Mr Weal administers the Hindwell Trust – and its trustees include Councillor Gareth Prosser. You see?’

I see. Oh yes, I do see.

Such a caring, caring man .

Driving out of the hamlet of Kinnerton, Betty felt a rising panic, an inability to cope with this news on her own. The Radnor Valley was all around her, a green enigma. Abruptly, she turned into a lane which she already knew of because it led to the Four Stones.

She stopped the car on the edge of a field beyond Hindwell Farm – Hindwell, not Old Hindwell. Different somehow – placid and open and almost lush in summer. She could see the stones through the hedge. She loved this place, this little circle. She and Robin must have been here ten or fifteen times already. It was still raining, but she got out of the car and climbed eagerly over the gate. It felt like coming home.

The Four Stones were close to the hedge, not high but plump and rounded. Betty went down on her knees and put her arms around one and looked across the open countryside to the jagged middle-distant hillside where stood the sentinel church of Old Radnor. She hugged the stone, surrendering to the energies of the prehistoric landscape.

This was the religion – and the Radnorshire – that she understood.

The rain intensified, beating down on her out of a blackening sky. Betty didn’t care; she wished the rain would wash her into the stone. When she stood up, she was pretty well soaked, but she felt better, stronger.

And angry. Bitterly angry at the corruption of this old and sacred place. Angry at the bloody local people , the level to which they appeared to have degenerated.

She drove to the end of the lane and, instead of turning left towards Walton and Old Hindwell, headed right, towards New Radnor, against the rain.

Even if the woman’s bungalow was strewn with copies of the Daily Mail , she would charm Lizzie Wilshire around to her side. She would ask her directly if the Hindwell Trust was mentioned in her will.

‘Above all,’ Max said, pouring himself a glass of red wine, ‘we can challenge them intellectually.’

Max had this big, wildman beard. You could’ve lost him at a ZZ Top convention. But any suggestion of menace vanished as soon as he spoke, for Max had a voice like a one-note flute. He was a lecturer someplace; he liked to lecture.

‘St Michael equates with the Irish god Mannon, of the Tuatha de Danaan. Mannon was the sea god, and also the mediator between the gods and humankind and the conductor of souls into the Otherworld. In Coptic and cabbalistic texts, you will find these roles also attributed to Michael. Therefore, every “Saint” Michael church is, regardless of its origins, in essence a pagan Celtic temple. Which is why this reconsecration is absolutely valid.’

Normally, even coming from Max, Robin would have found this amazing, total cosmic vindication. Right now he really couldn’t give a shit.

Because it was close to dark now, and still Betty had not returned, had not even called.

He walked tensely around the beamed living room, which they had taken over, stationing candles in the four corners, feeding gathered twigs to a feeble fire they’d gotten going in the inglenook where the witch-charm box had been stored. When George and Vivvie had come down, the first weekend, Betty had stopped them establishing a temple in this room. But now, in her absence, they’d gone right ahead.

Altar to the north – some asshole had cleared one of the trestle tables in Robin’s studio and hauled it through. Now it held the candle, pentacle, chalice, wand, scourge, bell, sword.

There had to be a power base, George said. There would be negative stuff coming at them now from all over the country. It was about protection, George explained, and Betty would understand that.

If she was here. She’d never been away this long before, without at least calling him. Robin imagined the cops arriving, solemn and sympathetic and heavy with awful news of a fatal car crash in torrential rain.

Never, for Robin, had a consecration meant less. Never had a temple seemed so bereft of holiness or atmosphere of any kind.

‘She’ll be back, Robin.’ A plump middle-aged lady called Alexandra had picked up on his anxiety. She’d been Betty’s college tutor, way back, had been present at their handfasting. Her big face was mellow and kind by candlelight. ‘If anything had happened to her, one of us would surely know.’

‘Sure,’ Robin said.

‘I just hope she’ll be happy we’ve come.’

‘Yeah,’ Robin said hoarsely. See, if she’d only called, he’d have been able to prepare her for this. He knew he should have held them off until he’d consulted with her. But when George had come through on the mobile, Robin had been already majorly stressed out, beleaguered, and it hadn’t immediately occurred to him that they would have to accommodate a number of these people in the farmhouse, with sleeping bags being unrolled in the kitchen, and more upstairs.

And kids, too. Max and Bella’s kids: two daughters and a nine-year-old son called Hermes – Robin had already caught the little creep messing with his airbrushes. At least they weren’t gonna sleep in the house; the whole family were now camped in the big Winnebago out back. It had a pentagram in the rear window, the same place Christians these days liked to display a fish symbol.

Robin went over to the window again, looking out vainly for small headlights.

Sometimes suspicion pierced his anxiety. He wondered if this whole thing had been in some way planned. While George was into practicalities like dowsing and scrying, Vivvie was essentially political. For her, Robin sometimes thought, paganism might just as easily have been Marxism. And it was Vivvie who had accidentally, in the heat of the moment, let it out on TV. He never had entirely trusted Vivvie.