Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘You’ll fly again,’ he said lamely to the leafy mound. ‘You will.’

He felt dazed and inadequate. Poor crow.

Poor bloody Moon.

She stood up, her long grey dress hemmed with mud. As he followed her out of the hollow, Lol thought of Merrily Watkins, whom he hadn’t seen since leaving Ledwardine. Would a priest conduct a funeral service for a carrion crow? He thought Merrily would.

Moon gathered her dark woollen shawl around her. Numbed, he followed her along the slippery path. Ahead of them was a nowfamiliar oak tree with the single dead branch pointing out of the top like a finger from a fist. This was where another steep, secret path dropped towards Moon’s new home in its dripping dell.

When the path curved to the left, and the barn’s metal flue poked out of the trees, Moon’s mood changed. Her face was a tremulous dawn.

‘I still can’t believe it.’ She stopped where the path became a series of long, shallow earthen steps held up by stones and rotting boards. ‘I’m back. I’m really back. And they want me back. They’ve given me their sign. Isn’t that just…?’ Moon shook her head, blown away.

Leaving Lol in a quandary – his hands sticky with crow bits and blood. Should he tell Denny about this? Or just Dick? Or not mention it at all?

‘I’d like to sleep now, Lol,’ Moon said.

‘Good idea,’ he said gratefully.

‘I can’t tell you how wonderful I feel.’

‘Good,’ Lol said. ‘That’s, er… good.’

Driving the old Astra back through the semi-industrial sprawl of Rotherwas and into the city, he couldn’t even think about it. He thought instead about stupid things, like maybe buying a bike, too, and getting fit like Moon who insisted she’d be pedalling to the shop in Capuchin Lane six days a week all through the coming winter.

He parked in a private yard behind the shop, in a spot which would have been Moon’s if she possessed a car, and he walked through an alley and into Capuchin Lane. It was also known these days as Church Street, but he and Moon both preferred its old name.

This was a wonderful street to live in: narrow, ancient, cobbled and closed to traffic, full of little shops and pubs, and ending at the Cathedral – presenting, in fact, the most medieval view of it, especially at dawn and in the evening when all the shops were closed and the hanging signs became black, romantic silhouettes.

The flat over the shop called John Barleycorn – one of Moon’s brother’s shops – had been semi-derelict when Moon had first lived here. This was when she was helping with the archaeological excavation in the Cathedral Close, before the digging site was released for a new building to house the Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library. More than a thousand skeletons had been unearthed, and Moon had spent her days among the dead and her nights on a camp bed in this same flat. Walking out each morning to the Cathedral – the dream developing.

She kept a photograph of herself holding two medieval skulls from the massive charnel pit they’d found – all three of them wearing damaged grins. When the excavation ended and the bones were removed, Moon wanted to stay on there and Denny wanted her to leave, so there was tension, and soon afterwards Moon stole the skirts from Next, and the police found her stoned on the Castle Green. And that was when Dick had finally agreed to renovate the flat over the shop as a proper home for her.

Moon had seemed fairly content here in Capuchin Lane. Only Dinedor Hill, in fact, could have lured her away – and it did.

Lol, in need of somewhere to live, had then himself taken over the flat. Denny was glad about that, as it meant Lol could keep an eye on Moon during her working hours, and watch out for any hovering dope-dealers.

He had his key to the side door, but went in through the shop to report to Denny.

Moon’s much older, and very much bulkier, brother sat on a stool behind the counter, trying to tune a balalaika. Although there was only one customer in the store, a girl flicking through the CDs, it seemed quite full; for in a street of small shops this was the very smallest. And it was full of the busy sound of Gomez from big speakers – and Denny was here, a one-man crowd in himself.

‘It go all right then, my old mate?’

‘Fine.’

‘Shit.’

As well as this shop, Denny ran a specialist hi-fi business, and his own recording studio in the cellar of his house up towards Breinton. Lol had produced a couple of albums for him there: local bands, limited editions. Denny was keen to get him back on to the studio floor, but Lol wasn’t ready yet; the songs weren’t quite there – something still missing.

Denny said, ‘No fights, breakages, tears?’

‘Would you count tears of joy?’

‘Shit.’

Lol decided to keep quiet about the crow.

Denny twanged the balalaika and winced. ‘Don’t get yourself too comfy in that flat, mate. She changes like the wind, my little sister.’ He shook his bald head, and his gold-plated novelty earring swung like a tiny censer.

‘You hope.’ Lol couldn’t remember feeling exactly comfy anywhere.

‘Yeah,’ Denny said. ‘Don’t go back, that’s my philosophy. Never in life do you fucking well go back.’

Lol shrugged, helpless. ‘Whatever that place does to you, it has the opposite effect on her. You can’t get around it: she’s happy. She walks into the woods, up to the camp—’

‘Yeah… and all the time passing the place where her fucking father topped himself! What does that say to you?’

Denny sniffed hard and plucked twice at the balalaika’s strings, then laid it on the counter in disgust. ‘What use is a three-string shoebox on a stick? Kathy bought it from this poor, homeless busker, probably got the BMW parked round the corner.’

‘Soft-hearted,’ Lol said.

‘Soft in the head! I’ll tell you one thing: first sign of unusual behaviour, any hint of dope up there – she’s out . Kicking and screaming or…’ The CD ended and Denny lowered his voice. ‘Or however. Right?’

Lol nodded.

‘Long as we agree on that, mate,’ Denny said, as the girl customer turned around from the CD racks clutching a copy of Beth Orton’s Trailer Park , a slow delighted smile pushing her tongue into a corner of her mouth.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Lol Robinson, wow.’

‘Oh,’ Lol said. It seemed like ages since he’d seen her. He smiled, realizing how much he’d missed her even though sometimes, like Moon, she could be trouble. Well, not quite like Moon.

‘Hey, cool,’ the girl said. ‘And that same old Roswell sweatshirt. Is that the same one, or did you buy a set?’

‘Hello, Jane,’ Lol said. He wondered how much she’d overheard.

‘So, like who’s Kathy?’ Jane Watkins said. Dark mocking eyes under dark hair. A lot like her mother.

THE BISHOP SMILED hard, talked fast, and wore purple as bishops do.

‘The Church, OK?’ His voice was public-school with the edges sanded off. ‘The Church is… hierarchical, conservative, full of rivalry, feuding, back-stabbing. And inherently incapable of ever getting anything bloody well done .’

The Bishop wore purple all over: a tracksuit and jogging gear. The Bishop jogged all over the city and its outskirts, usually in the early mornings and the evenings, covering, according to the Hereford Times , a minimum of thirty miles a week.

‘Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, that organizing an office in the Cathedral cloisters would be the easiest thing? Scores of cells and crannies and cubicles, but… all of them the Dean’s. And if the Dean says there isn’t an office to spare, I’m not even permitted to argue. Within the precincts of the Cathedral, even God bows to the Dean. So we shall have to look elsewhere. I’m so sorry, Merrily.’