Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

She was in bed by eleven, with a hot-water bottle. Less than ten minutes later, the phone bleeped.

‘Ledwardine Vic—’

‘Merrily, it’s Sophie at the Bishop’s office. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but we’re having a problem – at the Cathedral. I wonder, could you perhaps come over?’

Big grey snowflakes tumbled against the window. Merrily sat up in bed. It had never felt so cold in here before.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I… it involves Canon Dobbs. I don’t like to say too much on the phone.’

Merrily switched on the bedside lamp. ‘Give me half an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes if the roads are bad.’

‘Oh God, yes, I didn’t realize. Do be careful.’

‘I’ll see you soon.’

When she came out of the bedroom, buttoning her jeans, she found Jane on the landing. ‘I heard the phone.’ She was in her dressing-gown, and mustn’t have been asleep.

‘Some kind of problem at the Cathedral.’

‘Why should that concern you ?’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Shall I come? It looks a bit rough out there.’

‘God, no. You get back to bed.’

‘What if you get stuck? These roads can be really nasty and the council’s mega-slow off the mark – like about three days, apparently.’

‘It’s a big car. I’ll be fine.’

‘This is like Deliverance business again, isn’t it?’

‘To be honest, I just don’t know.’

‘Talk about secrecy,’ Jane said, strangely wide awake. ‘You Deliverance guys make the SAS seem like double-glazing salesmen.’

Why had she imagined the Cathedral would be all lit up? Maybe because that was how she’d been hoping to find it: a beacon of Old Christian warmth and strength.

But in the snow and the night, she was more than ever aware of how set-apart it had become. Once it had stood almost next to the medieval castle, two powerhouses together; now the city was growing away from the river, and the castle had vanished. The Cathedral crouched, black on white, like the Church at bay.

Merrily parked on Broad Street, near the central library. The dashboard clock, always five to ten minutes fast, indicated near-midnight. It had been a grindingly slow journey, with her window wound down to let the cigarette smoke out and the arctic air in, just to keep her awake. She’d taken the longer, wider route east of the Wye, where there was always some traffic, even the chance of snowploughing if anyone in the highways department had happened to notice a change in the weather. The road-surface was white and brown and treacherous, snow-lagged trees slumped over it like gross cauliflowers.

It all still seemed so unlikely – what would Hunter want with her at this time of night? Was he trying to turn Deliverance into the Fourth Emergency Service?

Merrily locked the Volvo, put on her gloves, pulled up her hood and set out across the snow-quilted silence of Broad Street.

No one about, not even a drunk in view. No traffic at all. The city centre as you rarely saw it: luminous and Christmas-card serene, snowflakes like big stars against the blue-black. Merrily’s booted steps were muted on the padded pavement. Behind her only the Green Dragon had lights on. She felt conspicuous. There was no sign of the Bishop or the Bishop’s men. Hadn’t a woman once been raped in the Cathedral’s shadow? Hadn’t the last time she’d been called out at night…?

Christ be with me, Christ within me .

The Cathedral was towered and turreted, the paths and the green lawns submerged together in snow, a white moat around God’s fortress. But no other night defences; its guardians – the canons and the vergers – were sleeping in the warren of cloisters behind. Nobody about except…

‘Merrily!’

Sophie came hurrying around the building, towards the North Porch, following the bouncing beam of a torch attached to a large shadow beside her.

Merrily breathed normally again.

‘Thank heavens you made it.’ The Bishop’s secretary lived not five minutes’ walk away, in a quiet Victorian villa near the Castle Green. She wore a long sheepskin coat, her white hair coming apart under a woollen scarf. ‘We were just wondering whether to call Michael, after all.’

‘But I thought the Bishop—’

‘He doesn’t know anything about this,’ Sophie said quickly.

‘Do you know George Curtiss?’

‘Good evening, Mrs Watkins. I, ah, think we have met.’

‘Oh, yes. Hello.’ He was one of the Cathedral canons: a big, overcoated man with a beard of Greek Orthodox proportions and a surprisingly hesitant reedy voice.

‘George called me to ask if we should tell Michael about this,’ Sophie said. ‘But I suggested we consult you. This is all very difficult.’

‘Look, I’m sorry… Am I supposed to know what’s happening?’

‘You tell her, George.’

‘Yes, it’s… Oh dear.’ George Curtiss glanced behind him to make sure they were alone, bringing down his voice. ‘It’s about old, ah, Tom Dobbs, I’m afraid.’

‘Merrily,’ Sophie was hugging herself, ‘he’s virtually barricaded himself in. We think he’s…’

‘Drunk, I rather fear,’ George said.

‘What?’

‘He’s behind that partition,’ Sophie said. ‘You know, where they’re repairing the Cantilupe tomb?’

‘He’s in there with—?’

‘Chained and padlocked himself in. He won’t talk to us. He’s just rambling. To someone else? To himself? I don’t know. Rambling on and on. Neither of us understands, but I just… well, I rather suspected you might. It’s all… it’s rather frightening, actually.’

‘So there is a’ – Merrily swallowed – ‘a Deliverance context?’

What a stupid question.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sophie said, ‘I think so. Don’t you?’

George Curtiss shuffled impatiently. ‘I trust we can, ah, rely on your discretion, Mrs Watkins. I know he’s an odd character, but I do have a long-standing admiration for the man. As does… as does the Dean.’

‘But I don’t know him. I’ve never even spoken to him.’

‘He’s, ah, had his problems,’ George said. ‘Feels rather beleaguered – threatened by… by certain recent developments. In view of these, we’d rather avoid involving the Dean – or the Bishop – at this stage.’

‘But I don’t know him. And he—’

‘But you know what he does , Merrily,’ Sophie whispered urgently.

‘Do I?’

‘Mrs Watkins.’ George Curtis coughed. ‘We all know what he does , if not the, ah, technicalities of it. It’s just we’re a little nervous about what’s… going on in there.’

‘You want me to try and talk to him?’

‘Just listen, I suppose.’ Sophie tightened her scarf. ‘Interpret for us.’

‘My Latin isn’t what it used to be,’ George said.

‘Latin?’

George dragged a long breath through the brambles of his beard, but his voice still came out weakly. ‘My impression is he’s talking to, ah… to, ah… to St Thomas.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said.

Sophie almost snapped at her, ‘You think we do?’

They followed George Curtiss and his torch around the building to St John’s door, which was used mainly by the clergy and the vergers. Snow was already spattered up the nearby walls.

‘We’ll go in very quietly,’ George said, as though addressing a party of schoolchildren – he was one of the regular tourguides, Merrily recalled. ‘I sometimes think the Dean has ultrasonic hearing.’

Merrily stepped warily inside – as if a mad-eyed Dobbs might come rampaging at them, swinging his crucifix.

Drunk? If Dobbs had a drink problem, it was the first she’d heard about it. But if the old exorcist had become a public embarrassment, the Dean could no longer be seen to support him. That way the Dean would himself lose face. And if the Bishop found out, he would make the most of it – in the most discreet way, of course – to strengthen his position as an engine of reform, get rid of Dobbs, and perhaps the Dean as well.