Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

He’s here!

Rolling out of bed, breath coming in sobs, rolling over and scrambling on to her knees, she began to mutter the Breastplate , groping on the carpet for her pectoral cross.

‘… by invocation of the same

‘The Three in One and One in Three .

‘Of whom all nature hath creation .

‘Eternal Father, Spirit, Word…’

And she fell back against the bottom of the bed, gulping air.

Gone? Perhaps .

After a while she sat up, before reaching instinctively for the cigarettes and lighter, pulling herself to her feet, into the old woollen dressing-gown and out of the cold, uncosy bedroom.

She ached. The light from the landing window was the colour of damp concrete. The garden below looked like her head felt: choked with fog. She stood swaying at the top of the stairs, dizzy, thought she would fall, and hugged the newel post on the landing, the cigarette dangling from her mouth. Repeatedly scraping her thumb against the Zippo, but the light wouldn’t come. Sweating and shaking with panic and betrayal.

‘Mum?’

What?

‘Mum!’

The kid stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking frightened.

Merrily heard a single letter dropping through the box. The postman.

Normality .

She began to cough. No such thing .

Because there was no light, as such, penetrating Capuchin Lane, Lol overslept and awoke to the leaden grind of a harmonium from the shop below, a deep and doomy female voice.

Nico. Mournful, sinister old Nico songs from the seventies. Unshaven, Lol made it down to the shop, past Moon’s lonely mountain-bike, and found Viv, the new manager: a sloppyhippy granny, old friend of Denny’s.

‘Do you like Nico, Lol?’

‘Sometimes,’ Lol said.

‘I love her,’ Viv said. ‘I know she’s not to everybody’s taste. But it’s Moon’s funeral on Friday: a mourning time.’

‘That’s three days away.’ He didn’t know whether Moon had ever even liked Nico; it was not unlikely.

‘I thought I’d play it for an hour every morning, to show that we’re in mourning,’ Viv promised. ‘There’s a letter for you, from London.’

Lol opened it over his toast in the corner café. Ironically it promised money – money, as usual, for nothing. The revered Norma Waterson wanted to use one of his songs on her next solo album. It was ‘The Baker’s Lament’, the one about the death of traditional village life.

He was depressed. By James Lyden’s rules, he should have been dead now for at least ten years. On the other hand, unless folk singers were exempt, Norma Waterson should have been dead for over twenty-five. He stared through the café window into the fog. There was nothing in the day ahead for him. It had come to this.

Whereas Moon, so excited by her research, so driven… had just simply ended it.

He could not believe that what she’d discovered had led her to the conclusion that the only way of repairing the broken link with her ancestors was by joining them.

He’d heard nothing more from Merrily.

Lol finished his toast, walked back to the shop. A customer was coming out, and Lol heard that endless dirge again through the open door. It sounded – because Nico was also dead – like an accusation from beyond the grave, a bony finger pointing.

Sophie was saying into the phone, ‘Have they double-checked? Yes, of course, I’m sorry. But it seems so…’

Merrily pulled off her coat, tossed it over the back of her chair, slumped down into it. She was going to miss Sophie, and even the office with D on the door – almost a second home now, with none of the complications of the first.

Sophie put down the phone, tucking a strand of white hair behind one ear. ‘It’s bizarre, Merrily, quite bizarre. That was George Curtiss. The Dean’s absolutely furious. You know the Cantilupe tomb was due to be reassembled this week, in time for the Boy Bishop ceremony on Sunday? But, would you believe, there’s a piece missing.’

‘A piece?’

‘One of the side panels. You know the side-panels with the figures of knights? Knights Templar, someone suggested.’

‘I know.’ She remembered the knights, blurred by age, their faces disfigured.

‘Well, one had broken away from the panel. Maybe through age or stone-fatigue. It was due to be repaired, but now it’s vanished!’

‘Someone pinched a slab of stone?’

‘So it seems. When the masons were sorting out all the segments it just wasn’t there. It’s not huge – about a foot wide, eighteen inches deep – though heavy obviously.’

‘Not easily shoved in your shopping bag,’ Merrily said. ‘But safely locked up behind that partition, surely?’

‘That’s the point.’ Sophie looked worried. ‘About the only time its removal could have happened was when we were all fussing over Canon Dobbs, after his stroke.’

‘They suspect one of us?’ Maybe , she thought insanely, I could resign under suspicion of stealing a chunk of Cantilupe . It would be easier, less complicated.

‘This Dean will suspect anyone connected with the Bishop,’ Sophie said with rare malice. ‘He’s already calling for a full inquiry. No, I don’t for a minute think they suspect one of us. They just think we might have been more… I don’t know… observant.’

‘Who’d want to nick a single medieval knight not in terrific condition? And what for – a bird-table?’

‘Don’t joke about it in front of the Dean, whatever you do.’

‘I never seem to meet the Dean,’ Merrily said.

‘Personally I never joke in front of the Dean.’ The Bishop had appeared in the doorway. The Bishop at his hunkiest, with the possibly-Armani jacket over a denim shirt and jeans. The only purple now was a handkerchief carelessly tucked into his breast pocket. ‘Good morning, Sophie. Merrily, how did it go last night? Nothing over the top, one trusts. Restraint is our new watchword.’

She said, ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘What should I have heard?’

‘Mick, look…’ She came slowly to her feet. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Oh yes,’ Sophie said quickly, ‘the blessing at Stretford. I gather you weren’t very well, Merrily.’

‘Who told—?’

‘She really shouldn’t have turned out, Michael,’ Sophie said. ‘You can see how terribly pale she is.’

‘Merrily?’ The Bishop moved into the office, turned his famous blue eyes on her. ‘Lord, yes, you don’t look well at all.’

‘Fortunately,’ Sophie said, ‘Huw Owen was present and able to take over and conduct the service, so that was all right.’

Merrily stared at her. What are you doing?

‘Owen?’ The Bishop’s face stiffened with outrage. ‘Who the hell invited Owen?’

‘I did,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you, shouldn’t I?’

‘Yes, you should. The man’s from outside the diocese. He’s Church in Wales .’

‘It’s my fault,’ Sophie said quickly. ‘Merrily told me she’d asked the Reverend Owen to come in as…’

‘Hand-holder,’ Merrily said. ‘It was my first serious exorcism. As it was to be in a church, I didn’t want to make a mistake.’

‘Well, I should have been told,’ the Bishop said almost peevishly. ‘I realize he was your course tutor, Merrily, but I’ve appointed you , not him. In fact, if I’d known more about Owen at the time, we might not have sent you on that particular course.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Let’s just say’ – the Bishop’s eyes were hard – ‘that his roots are planted in the same general area as Dobbs’s.’

‘Oh, Michael…’ Any further discussion of the dangers of medievalism was forestalled by Sophie informing the Bishop about the missing Cantilupe knight, apparently smuggled out of the Cathedral.