Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘No, everything’s utterly wrong – take it from me. If there were good omens before, it all reversed when we moved in. I’ve become snappy and irritable and... alienated from Robin. We’ve hardly even, you know, touched each other since we arrived. And even regarding money. Robin had the possibility – almost the certainty – of a very lucrative contract, to do seven book covers for Kirk Blackmore, the fantasy writer.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘I used to read his stuff, when I was a kid.’

‘And then the rug seems to have been pulled. Blackmore’s decided he doesn’t like Robin’s concept, and it’s Blackmore calls the shots. That’s just the latest thing to go wrong.’

Jane said, ‘Maybe you need the new light.’

Betty shook her head. ‘There won’t be any. We won’t bring that place out of the darkness; it’ll suck us in.’ She looked vaguely around, from face to face. ‘Whatever you may think about this, I’ve called out to the goddess in the night, and the goddess won’t come to me. I’m not being emotional or hysterical about this. I just don’t see a good future.’

‘OK, so you go back,’ Merrily said, ‘and you try to stop it. How do you do that?’

Betty shrugged. ‘If necessary I can just tell them all to get out. It’ll cause another row with Robin, but the house is half mine. That’s only a last resort. If I play along for a while, something subtler might occur. I don’t want to create negative vibrations, if possible. What about you?’

‘I’m going to have to try and cool Ellis. One or two ideas occur. Well, one anyway.’ Merrily’s throat was dry from too much smoking, not enough sleep. ‘Maybe we can meet somewhere, late afternoon, and see where we stand.’

‘There’s a footbridge,’ Betty said, ‘that leads from the church to the other side of the brook.’

‘I know it. Four o’clock?’ Part of her was saying this was whimsy, that the only really important things were to, first, find Barbara Buckingham, and second, persuade the police to investigate the Hindwell Trust. ‘Betty, what do you think, seriously, is likely to happen if we can’t stop this tonight?’

Betty shook her head quickly, non-committally.

‘The dragon gets out,’ Jane said, ‘whatever that means.’

‘I’ve been thinking.’ Betty looked at Merrily. ‘The problem with this place is nothing really to do with us. But it is to do with you, I suspect – with what you do. Ellis thought it needed exorcizing. I’m not sure he was wrong.’

‘But not by him.’

‘No,’ Betty said, ‘not by him.’

‘You mean... by me?’ Merrily felt obscurely honoured and immediately guilty about that.

‘I wondered about tonight,’ Betty said. ‘Candlemas is Candlemas. I suppose it’s a good time, wherever you stand. I mean, I’d go in with you, if you thought that would help. Or, if you thought that would be spiritually wrong, I’d stay out of the way.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you think about it, Merrily? It’s become kind of central to everything, hasn’t it?’

‘But... exorcizing a church...’

‘Like you keep saying,’ Jane said, ‘it isn’t a church any more.’

‘All right, I’ll talk to the bishop.’

‘Please don’t do that,’ Betty said. ‘He might suggest you have other priests along. That would bother me. I don’t want it to look like a formal sellout.’

Merrily nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said.

JANE HAD CALLED Eirion at the rotting mansion and there was no answer. Well, there was an answer... on a machine, and in Welsh.

Like she wasn’t already feeling excluded enough. Gomer had collected Betty and taken her back to Old Hindwell, Mum had gone off on her own. Little Jane had been given the really important job of relaying any messages to Mum on her mobile.

Bastards!

‘I can’t speak bloody Welsh!’ she howled over the message. ‘Just tell Irene... Eirion... to call me. It’s very urgent. It’s Jane Wat—’

She shut up. The message was being translated.

‘Dafydd and Gwennan Lewis are unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Diolch yn fawr.’

‘OK. Please, please, tell Eirion to ring me. It’s Jane Watkins. It’s very urgent. Please?’ Realizing she’d ended on a kind of strangled sob. Maybe that would underline the urgency, or maybe just the existing suspicions of the wealthy and powerful Dafydd Lewis about the hysterical English. It was not bloody fair , because she now had, like, masses of new data to lay on Eirion. He could hit the Net, and they could crack this thing wide open.

Jane paced the kitchen. Actually, she was quite proud of Mum this time, agreeing to undertake an exorcism on behalf of a witch. Like, it was a really heavy decision to have to make. But had she accepted the significance of Kali Three? It really was a pity they hadn’t got a decent computer.

Ah!

Jane went rapidly round the house, doing what had to be done – laying a fire in the drawing room, putting out dried cat food for Ethel, and all the time thinking hard. She didn’t need Irene; she just needed an online computer.

Sophie!

Sophie had one in the Deliverance office. It was only right that the diocese should pay for this research.

There should be a bus to Hereford passing through Ledwardine within the hour. Jane ran a brush through her hair, tugged on her fleece coat and was out of there. There’d be some resistance from Sophie, sure, but nothing Jane couldn’t handle with the usual combination of pathos and rat-like cunning.

She bought a Mars bar from the Eight-till-Late and stood on the square munching it, relishing the freedom to do things. Back at bloody school next week, with dismal GCSEs looming. Although the public school system was this, like, totally disgusting anachronism, she wished she was at the cathedral school with Eirion; at least it was in the middle of town.

It was bright but unexpectedly cold on the square. Jane chewed and stamped her feet on the cobbles. A silver BMW went past, then slowed suddenly and backed up and stopped on the edge of the square. The window glided down on the passenger side. Some sex beast wondering if she was in need of a lift.

‘Excuse me, little girl.’ Creepy voice sibilating from the bourgeois, tinted interior. Eyes narrowing, Jane pocketed the Mars bar and sashayed over. ‘Looking for somewhere, I am, see?’ he oozed. ‘Wonder if you can point me in the right direction. Little place called... if I can just see it on the map... Ah, got it...’ The passenger door was thrown wide open. ‘ England! ’

Jane glared in delight. ‘You bastard!’

‘Good morning, Eirion,’ Eirion said. ‘How’s the whiplash? Well, it’s quite a bit more comfortable, thank you, Jane.’

Jane got in. The leather seat creaked luxuriously. ‘Where’d you steal the flash Kraut wheels?’

‘Gwen’s, it is. She owes me. Don’t ask. Are you doing the decent thing and going to school?’

‘Well, I was , naturally. But, on second thoughts, I think we’ll go to Hereford Cathedral. I can show you the Deliverance office, in the gatehouse.’

‘Jane...’ Eirion snatched off his baseball cap and his dark glasses. ‘Half the school goes past there.’

‘You won’t be spotted, you’ll have your head bent over a keyboard. By lunchtime your eyes will be so terminally weakened you’ll be regretting you ever left the land of Druids and sad male voice choirs.’

Eirion sighed and let out the clutch. He handed her a brown A4 envelope. ‘Read this.’

‘What is it?’