Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘A lot. I mean... Well, I still think Kirk could be persuaded to listen to reason.’

For Robin, the volatile light seemed to leap up the walls. ‘Even at this stage?’

‘The central motif’s there, isn’t it?’

‘Well, sure, I... I could have all seven covers...’ Robin’s heart raced. ‘I mean I could have them completed inside a month.’

‘Well, you know, I can’t make any promises. Except to talk to him. But we go back quite a long way.’

‘There you are, man,’ George said. ‘Ned talks to this Blackmore, you talk to Betty.’

Robin breathed out ruefully. ‘My part is not gonna be easy.’

‘Do your best.’ Ned Bain clapped Robin on the back. That heat again. Bonding. ‘We’re going to need all the psychic energy we can produce.’

Robin was elated. The electricity of fate. After the blackest night, the last night of winter, his personal lowest point for years, this guy just shows up without warning and things start coming together. Holism? Interconnection? The central premise in Wicca.

There was some kind of psychic energy here today all right. The kindling in the dark forest. Robin’s inner vision projected it onto the church walls like the airbrush mist around Lord Madoc. He could see it all coming together, like a beautiful painting. Betty would inevitably be drawn back. It was how these things worked.

Imbolc: it would be their rebirth, too. Robin tried to conceal some of his delight. He mustn’t look naive.

‘Well...’ He grinned. ‘I guess the whole thing would be easier if Ellis and his... flock... Like, if he just gave up and left us alone.’

George glanced at Ned Bain.

Ned Bain smiled broadly, shaking his head.

George felt it was safe to laugh.

Max said, ‘I don’t think you quite get this, do you, Robin? This is the energy. The surrounding hostility, the negativity from the village, all helps to create a rather special kind of tension. What you have is the whole struggle in microcosm. With those fanatical, fundamentalist Christians the other side of the gate singing their simplistic hymns, throwing everything at us, everything they’ve got left.’

‘Friction, man.’ George Webster rubbed his hands together and then did that smoke thing. ‘The combustion. It’s a fire festival. The dragon rises.’

‘CHRIST BE WITH me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me...’

In the not-quite-silence of Ledwardine Parish Church, amid dusty skitterings at mouse and bat and early-bird level, Merrily was kneeling near the top of the chancel steps, asking for clarity of mind, clearance of all nightmares. Murmuring the ancient Celtic prayer, St Patrick’s Breastplate.

‘I bind unto myself the Name,

The Strong Name of the Trinity...’

Today was Candlemas – known to pagans as Imbolc. It concerned the quickening of life in Mother Nature’s belly. The Catholic Church blessed its candles on this day. The Church of Nicholas Ellis kept them in its windows to ward off witchcraft.

When the Breastplate was around her, Merrily went and sat in the front pew. She was wearing jeans and a sweater and Jane’s duffel coat. She was still recalling details of Ellis’s exorcism of Marianne Starkey.

Cursed dragon, we give thee warning in the names of Jesus Christ and Michael, in the names of Jehovah, Adonai, Tetragrammaton...

In the half-light, she was granted clarity. What became clear was that Ellis was following a tradition of exorcism accepted there on the border for many centuries. Betty had written out for her what she could remember of the charm found in the fireplace at St Michael’s farmhouse and also the one in Cascob Church: a mongrel exorcism, a cunning cocktail of Catholicism, Anglicanism, paganism and ritual magic. Precisely what you would expect to find in an area where cultures and languages and religions overlapped and survival often depended on juggling in the dark. This litany of names of power and magical repetition was a blunt instrument, a club. Merrily imagined Elizabeth Loyd three hundred years ago, kneeling cowed and emptied on the stone flags of St Michael’s Cascob.

When you found an adversary or an obstacle, you demonized it and then, powered by the sacred names, you beat it into the stones. Hard, practical... tested over centuries. Father Ellis doesn’t do a soft ministry.

It’s hardly Jeffery Weal, is it? Barbara Buckingham had said of Ellis’s happy-clappy evangelism. Hardly. But happy-clappy was only the surface of it. Happy-clappy could unite the population, ensnaring the hearts and minds of local and incomer alike.

But under the surface, as Judith had said, Ellis suited the village. A quiet evangelist, neither ebullient, nor charismatic in the popular sense, but practical – dressed like an army chaplain. And he could, when required to, put the fear of God into people: the councillor’s boy who took a car, threatening to bring dishonour to his respected family... the kid with a pocketful of Ecstasy... the repressed solicitor who only wanted his love for his wife to be reciprocated... the bored and lascivious licensee’s wife who, sooner or later, might tempt a local man.

Ellis had earned his support by dealing with ripples on the normally dark and stagnant waters of Old Hindwell, while focusing, beyond them, on some bigger, darker, more nebulous objective. In the village hall, he had been rooting out some imagined, petty demon of desire. But also, through Marianne, attacking Robin Thorogood and what he represented.

But what did he represent? The Thorogoods had made no threats, taken no particular stance – Betty even appeared unsure that witchcraft was the right and only way for her. Yet Ellis had lost no time in demonizing them.

Gotter be a problem for you, this, girl. Question of which side you’re on now, ennit?

Merrily stood and approached the altar. The stained-glass windows were coming alive with the dawn. She spoke the last verse of the Breastplate, the address to Jesus.

‘Let me not run from the love that you offer

But hold me safe from the forces of evil.

On each of my dyings shed your light and your love.

Keep calling me until that day comes

When with your saints I may praise you for ever.

Amen.’

Merrily walked, blinking, out of the church. It was going to be a cold, bright, hard day.

When she got home, Jane had breakfast ready. The radio was turned to 5 Live, the news station.

‘Mum, they’ve just trailed a report from Old Hindwell. It’s coming up within the next ten minutes. That was about five minutes ago.’

‘Better turn it up then.’

‘And...’ Jane cleared her throat, ‘there’s some stuff I need to tell you.’

‘Any chance it could wait? It’s just I seem to have got more to think about than at any time since my A levels.’

‘No,’ Jane said, ‘it can’t wait. It’s about a Web site, called Kali Three. Kali as in the goddess of death and destruction?’

‘Not one of ours.’ Merrily helped herself to a slice of toast. She was thinking about how best to approach Marianne Starkey. Marianne was crucial now, if Merrily was going to restrain Ellis. ‘Not even one of Betty’s.’

‘Are you listening?’

‘Sure. Sorry.’

‘There’s this obscure Web site. A really heavy occult thing. A kind of like a hit list of people who are considered a threat to the, er... to, like, the expansion of human consciousness through magic, that kind of thing. Anyway, you’re included on it.’

‘You’re kidding! Still... shows I must’ve got something right.’