Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘You know, if I’d followed my first instinct when I spotted that guy from the tower, I’d’ve run down directly and caught him dumping the carrier bag.’

Betty shook her head. ‘If whoever it was had come face to face with you on the doorstep, he’d just have made some excuse – like seeing lights in the house, coming over to check everything was OK. He’d have pretended the bag was his shopping and just taken it away with him.’

He didn’t argue; she was usually right. He put his hands on the box, closed his eyes, imagined other hands on the box – tried for a face.

‘I did that already,’ Betty said, offhand. ‘Nothing obvious.’

Robin opened his eyes. If she’d tried it and gotten nothing then there was nothing to be had. He had no illusions about which of them was the most perceptive in that way. He didn’t mind; he still had his creative vision.

‘Put it back, now huh, Rob?’

‘In the fireplace?’

‘In the barn , dickhead! Let’s not take any chances. Not till we know where it’s been.’

‘Ha!’ He sprang back. ‘You just have to know, dontcha?’

‘I’d quite like to know,’ Betty said casually.

‘Bets...’ He walked over, took her tenderly by the shoulders. ‘Look at me... listen... What the fuck’s it matter if someone does know we’re pagans? What kind of big deal is that these days?’

‘No problem at all,’ Betty said, ‘if you live in Islington or somewhere. In a place like this—’

‘ Still no problem is my guess. Bets, this is not you . It’s me does the overreacting. Me who won’t leave the house if there’s only one magpie out in the garden. I’m telling you, this is a good place. We’re meant to be here. We came at the right time. Meant, right? Ordained. Making the church site into a sacred place again. All of that.’

Betty gently disengaged his hands. ‘I thought I might go and see Mrs Wilshire. The note says, “The previous occupant preferred not to keep it and gave it away.” So presumably they’re talking about Mrs Wilshire. Or more likely her husband.’

‘He was an old soldier. He’d have thought this was pure bullshit.’

‘Before he died,’ Betty said.

‘Whooo!’ Robin flung up his hands, backed away, as if from an apparition. ‘Don’t you start with that!’

‘They didn’t even get to live here, did they? They get the place half-renovated and then the poor old Major is gone, crash, bang.’

Robin spread his arms. ‘Bets, it’s like... it’s an ill wind. It’s a big pile of ifs. If the Wilshires had gotten all the renovation work done, everything smoothed out and shiny, and then put the place on the market, it’d’ve been way out of our price league. If people hereabouts hadn’t been put off by the tragic reasons for the sale, there might’ve been some competition... If it hadn’t gone on sale in November, all the holiday-home-seekers from London woulda been down here. If... if... if... What can I say? All the ifs were in our favour. But, if it makes you feel better, OK, let’s go see her. When?’

‘What?’

‘The widow Wilshire.’

‘Oh. No, actually, I thought I’d go alone. She struck me as a timid kind of person.’

‘And I would spook her?’

‘We don’t want to look like a delegation. Anyway, you’ve work to do.’

‘I do. I have work.’

The Kirk Blackmore artwork was complete, and would now be couriered, by special arrangement, not to the publishers but to Kirk himself. But the idea of producing a painting of the church, fog-swathed, had gotten hold of Robin, and if he mentioned it to Betty she’d be like: If you’ve got time for that, you’ve got time to emulsion a wall . But while she was gone, he could knock off a watercolour sketch of the church. He was already envisioning a seasonal series... a whatever you called a triptych when there were four of them.

‘Besides...’ Betty walked to the door then turned back with a swirl of her wild-corn hair. ‘I’m sure there are lots of new things you want to play with, without me on your back.’

Robin managed a grin. With Betty around it was sometimes like your innermost thoughts were written in neon over your head. Sometimes, even for a high priestess, this broad was awesomely spooky.

And so beautiful.

Face it: if he really thought there was an element of risk here, any danger of it turning into an unhappy place, they would be out of here, no matter how much money they lost on the deal.

But that wasn’t going to happen. That wasn’t a part of the package. How they’d come to find this place was, in itself, too magical to ignore: the prophecy... the arrival of the house particulars within the same week, the offer of the Blackmore contract along with the possibility of a mega-deal for the backlist.

It was like the road to down here had been lit up for them, and if they let those lights go out, well that would really attract some bad karma.

The Local People?

Assholes. Forget them.

‘PAGANISM.’ THE BISHOP spooned mustard on to his hot dog. ‘What do we have to say about paganism?’

‘As little as possible?’ Merrily suggested.

The bishop put down his spoon on Sophie’s desk. ‘Exactly.’ He nodded, and went on nodding like, she thought, one of those brushed-fabric boxer dogs motorists used to keep on their parcel shelves. ‘Absolutely right.’

The e-mail on the computer screen concluded:

The programme will take the form of a live studio discussion and protagonists will probably include practising witches, possibly Druids, and ‘fundamentalist’ clergy. Would you please confirm asap with the programme researcher, Tania Beauman, in Birmingham?

‘So, it’s a “no”, then. Fine.’ Merrily stood up, relieved. ‘I’ll call them tonight. I’ll say it’s not a debate to which we feel we can make a meaningful contribution. And anyway, it’s not something we encounter a particular problem with in this diocese. How does that sound?’

‘Sounds eminently sensible, Merrily.’ But the bishop’s large, hairless face still looked worried.

‘Good. Nobody comes out of an edition of Livenight with any dignity left. The pits of tabloid TV – Jerry Springer off the leash.’

‘Who is Jerry Springer?’ asked the bishop.

‘You really don’t want to know.’

‘One finds oneself watching less and less television.’ He brushed crumbs from his generously cut purple shirt. ‘Which is wrong, I suppose. It is, after all, one’s pastoral duty to monitor society’s drab cavalcade... the excesses of the young... the latest jargon. The ubiquity of the word “shag” in a non-tobacco context.’

‘I’ll get my daughter Jane to compile a glossary for you.’

The bishop smiled, but still appeared strangely apprehensive. ‘So this...’ he peered at the screen ‘... Livenight is not current affairs television?’

‘Not as you know it. How would you describe Livenight , Sophie?’

‘Like a rehearsal for Armageddon.’ A shudder from the bishop’s lay secretary, now permanently based in Merrily’s gatehouse office. Sophie tucked a frond of white hair behind one ear and used a tissue to dab away a blob of English mustard which the bishop had let fall, appropriately, on the head of the burger-gobbling Homer Simpson on the computer’s mouse mat. ‘They begin with a specific topic, which is loosely based on a Sunday paper sort of news item.’

‘Say you have a suburban husband who pimps for his wife,’ Merrily said, ‘is she being exploited, or is it a valid way of meeting the mortgage premiums?’