Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

And now they were looking at a serious showdown with some seriously fanatical fundamentalist Christians. Two of the Wiccans, Jonathan and Rosa, had been down to the village to take a look, and had seen a gathering of people around a man in white. Ellis? This confrontation, Max said, must not be allowed to get in the way of the great festival of light. But George had grinned. George loved trouble.

‘What is terrific about this,’ Max piped, waving his wineglass, ‘is that only two deities were directly filched from the Old Faith by Christianity. One was Michael, the other was the triple-goddess, Brigid, who became associated with Saint Brigid, the Abbess of Kildare – who was, in all probability, herself a pagan worshipping in an oak grove. So, as we know, Imbolc is the feast of Brigid, Christianized as Candlemas – the feast of Saint Brigid...’

Max beamed through his beard in the candlelight. There was no particular need for him to go on; they all knew this stuff, but Max was Max and already a little smashed.

‘Therefore... it is absolutely fitting that this church should be reconsecrated on that sacred eve, in the names of both Mannon and Brigid, with a fire festival, which will burn away...’

Jesus . Robin stared out of the window into the uninterrupted night. He wondered if Betty, once away from here, had decided never to come back.

There was a green Range Rover parked in front of Lizzie Wilshire’s bungalow, so Betty had to leave the car further down the lane, under the outer ramparts of the New Radnor castle mound, and run through the rain. It didn’t matter now; this was the same rain that was still falling on the Four Stones.

When she reached the Range Rover, the clear, rectangular sign propped in its windscreen made her stop. Made her turn and walk quickly back to her car.

The sign said, DOCTOR ON CALL.

She had to think. Was this a sign that she was supposed to go in there, tackle Dr Coll face to face?

Betty sat in the driving seat, thankful for the streaming rain obscuring the windscreen and her face from any passers-by.

She went over it all again in her head. Dr Coll, who was here. Mr Weal, the solicitor whose home was not so far from St Michael’s Farm and whose wife had recently died.

So how did Mr Weal become your solicitor?

He’s simply there. He becomes everyone’s solicitor sooner or later. He’s reliable, it’s an old family firm, and his charges are modest. He draw up wills virtually free of charge.

I bet he does.

I don’t suppose any of this will affect you at all. You’re too young: you’ll see both of them out. It probably wouldn’t have affected Major Wilshire, either. He was ex-regiment, a fit man with all his wits about him.

Lizzie Wilshire: Bryan had a thing about the medical profession, refused to call a doctor unless in dire emergency. A great believer in natural medicine, was Bryan.

All his wits about him.

... it was, unfortunately, entirely in character for Bryan to attempt such a job alone. He thought he was invulnerable.

A light tapping on the rain-streaming side window made Betty jump in her seat. She was nervous again, and the nerves had brought back the uncertainty. She could be getting completely carried away about this. She hurriedly wound down the window.

‘Mrs Thorogood?’

Betty was unable to suppress a gasp.

Raindrops glistened in the neat, pointed beard under his rugged, dependable face.

‘I’m sure Mrs Wilshire wouldn’t want you hanging around out here in the rain. Why don’t you come into the house?’

‘I didn’t want to intrude,’ Betty said. ‘I was going to wait till you’d gone.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Dr Collard Banks-Morgan. ‘As much as anything, I’d very much like to talk to you about the herbal medicine you so generously prepared for Mrs Wilshire.’

He held open the car door for her. He was wearing the same light-coloured tweed suit, a mustard-coloured tie. On his head was a tweed hat with fishing flies in it. He had an umbrella which he put up and held over her, guiding her briskly past his green Range Rover and up the path to the bungalow.

For a moment, it was almost like an out-of-body experience – she’d experienced that twice, knew the sensations – and she was watching herself and Dr Coll entering the porch together. As though this was the natural conclusion to a sequence of events she’d set in motion when she’d decided she had to leave Robin at the mercy of the media and seek out Juliet Pottinger.

She was now being led into a confrontation with Collard Banks-Morgan, in the presence of Mrs Wilshire. Bright panic flared, she was not ready! She didn’t know enough!

But something evidently had taken over: fate, or something. Perhaps she was about to be given the proof she needed.

Betty could hardly breathe.

‘Won’t be a jiff.’ Dr Coll stood in the doorway, shaking out his umbrella. ‘Go through if you like. Mrs Wilshire’s in the sitting room, as usual.’

Betty nodded and went through. Though it was not yet three o’clock, the weather had made the room dark and gloomy, so that the usually feeble-looking flames in the bronze-enamelled oil stove were brazier-bright, making shadows rise around Mrs Wilshire, in her usual chair facing the fireplace. She didn’t turn when Betty came in.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Wilshire,’ Betty said. ‘I wasn’t going to come over until the doctor had left.’

Mrs Wilshire still didn’t turn round.

The shadows leapt.

The force of her own indrawn breath flung Betty back into the doorway.

‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’

Not, Oh, Mother! which she only said, still self-consciously, at times of minor crisis.

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh no...’

There was a small click and wall lights came on, cold and milky blue.

‘Go and look at her, if you like,’ said Dr Coll. ‘I think you ought to.’

He walked over to the fireplace, stood with an elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

‘You aren’t afraid of death, are you, Mrs Thorogood? Just a preliminary to rebirth, isn’t that what you people believe?’

Betty found she was trembling. ‘What happened to her?’

Dr Coll raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Among other things, it seems you happened to her.’

Betty edged around the sofa, keeping some distance between her and the doctor. When she reached the window, a movement outside made her look out. Another car had parked next to the Range Rover. A policeman and a policewoman were coming up the path.

Betty spun and saw Lizzie Wilshire, rigid and slightly twisted in her chair with a little froth around her bluing lips and her bulbous eyes popped fully open, as if they were lidless.

Dr Coll stepped away from the fireplace. He was holding up a round, brown bottle with a half-inch of liquid in the bottom.

‘Is this your herbal potion, Mrs Thorogood?’

FROM OFF, THEY were, nearly all of them, Gomer reckoned. He’d told Merrily he could never imagine too many local people sticking their heads above the hedge, and he was right. There were maybe fifty of them – not an enormous turnout under the circumstances – and the ones Merrily could hear all had English accents.

Two TV crews had stayed for this; they were pushing microphones at the marchers as they came to the end of the pavement, a line of lamps, moving on into the lane past Annie Smith’s place, bound for the Prosser farm and St Michael’s. Telly questions coming at them, to get them all fired up.

‘But what are you really hoping to achieve here?’

‘Do you actually believe two self-styled white witches can in some way curse the whole community?’