Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Well, that’s… a common illusion. Has Barry done much in the way of Deliverance so far?’

‘Only bits and bobs, you know. He’s still quite nervous about it, to be honest. And you?’

‘Still feeling my way,’ Merrily said.

Waiting for Barry Ambrose to call back, she went to the bookcase in the hall where they kept the local stuff. She plucked out one she’d bought in the Cathedral shop: St Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford: Essays in His Honour . She hadn’t yet had time to open it.

I have been reading , Edna Rees had said, about St Thomas of Hereford .

In the book, several historians explored aspects of the saint’s life and the effect he’d had on Hereford – enormous apparently. Merrily began to read about Cantilupe’s final months, in 1282, after his dispute with the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham.

This seemed to be a bureaucratic argument about one going over the other’s head, further fired up by a clash of temperament. It had ended with Cantilupe being excommunicated and travelling to Italy to appeal personally to the Pope. On the way back, exhausted, he’d collapsed and died – at dusk on 25 August – while still in Italy. As was the custom ( Really? Christ! ) the body was boiled to remove the flesh from the bones. The flesh was buried at the monastery church of San Severo, the heart and bones were brought back to England by Cantilupe’s steward, John de Clare. The heart was then kept at Ashridge, in Buckinghamshire, at a college of canons, while the bones came back to Hereford.

Where they began to attract pilgrims – thousands of them. When news of the miracles spread – cures of the crippled and the blind – it became the most important shrine in the West of England. And it made this comparatively remote cathedral very wealthy.

Although several of the bones seemed to have been removed as relics before this, it was not until the shrine was destroyed in the Reformation, on the orders of Henry VIII, that they were dispersed. The book recorded, without further comment, a story that during the journey from Italy the ‘persecuted bones’ had bled.

Barry Ambrose called back. She liked Barry: he was inoffensive, hamsterish, an old-fashioned vicar.

‘Hey, Merrily… you heard about Clive Wells?’

The lofty old-money priest who’d sneered at Huw. ‘Should I have?’

‘He’s packed it in,’ said Barry.

‘What, Deliverance?’

‘The lot. He’s apparently planning to emigrate to Canada with his family. Had some experience he wouldn’t talk about to anybody – now he can’t even go into the church. Can’t even pass a church without going to pieces, so they say.’

‘God.’

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it, Merrily. What can I do for you?’

It was, she admitted, a long shot. ‘There’s a girl moved into this area from Wiltshire… Salisbury.’

‘Oh, they’re very doubtful about me in Salisbury. You know what it’s like.’

‘Yeah. No, it’s just… if you happened to hear anything. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. This girl’s called Rowenna Napier. They left the area earlier this year. It was suggested to me that there was something funny in her past which might not seem very funny to a church minister. I’m sorry, that’s it, I’m afraid.’

Barry was unfazed. ‘Well, I’ve got a name – that’s a start, I suppose. I can only roll it along the Cathedral Close and see if anybody picks it up.’

‘Could you?’

‘Give me a day or two. So, how’s it going, Merrily – really?’ She heard the boxy sound of him covering the mouthpiece. ‘I tell you, it scares seven shades out of me sometimes.’

‘Thank God you said that, Barry. Stella gave me the impression you hadn’t been doing too much.’

‘All she knows,’ Barry said with an audible shudder.

Viv arrived at the shop with a Hereford Times .

‘Not too much about Moon, thank Gawd. They haven’t picked up on her father’s suicide, so that’s a mercy. Maybe nobody’s worked there long enough to remember.’

Or else Denny had refused to talk to them, Lol thought, and they were sitting on it till it all came out at the full inquest.

Viv said, ‘Oh, yeah, I talked to my friend who still goes to the Pod. It’s bizarre, but these two girls turn up out of nowhere: your friend’s kid and an older one, right? Patricia, who is like mother superior in the group, says to make this Jane feel at home, she’s a special person, they have to take care of her, she’s got problems at home – this kind of stuff.’

‘Problems at home ?’

‘I only mention this… like maybe you don’t know as much as you think. You got something happening with the mother, is that it? Was that her the other day, when you ran outside?’

Lol didn’t answer. Viv had tossed the Hereford Times on the counter, and he’d just noticed the lead headline.

CROW SACRIFICED IN COUNTY CHURCH HORROR

He snatched up the newspaper…

‘DO YOU KNOW how many messagesI have left on your machine in the past two days?’ Sophie demanded angrily. ‘Surely, even if you were ill…’

Ill? Yes, she’d been ill. She saw that now. Merrily sat at the desk in the office with the D on the door. Nothing had altered and yet everything had. The white winter sun lit the room. There were things to do.

‘I’m very sorry, Sophie. I’ve behaved very badly.’

It could have been entirely psychological. If her vestments were tainted, however slightly, with Denzil’s insidious musk, it would have a subliminal effect: expanding at moments of high emotional stress or extreme sensitivity – like the buildup to an exorcism in a country church – into a near manifestation. And it would then take root, and arise again at times – like emerging from sleep – when the subconscious was in free-flow.

Whatever, someone out there had tried to break her. But now, deep in her solar plexus, she was feeling the warm, pulsing thrill of redemption.

Sophie wore a royal-blue two-piece woollen suit. Her white hair was tightly bunned. She looked angry and perhaps overtired, but her eyes also displayed a small sparkle of hope. She’d become like a mother, Merrily realized.

‘Merrily, about your resignation e-mail…’

‘Oh, yes. Has the Bishop received that yet?’ She heard the unconcern in her own voice. It didn’t really matter any more whether or not she was the official Deliverance consultant. That was a spurious, manufactured title which conferred no special powers. It was just a beacon for the rat-eyes in the dark.

‘The Bishop doesn’t read his e-mail,’ Sophie said. ‘ I read his e-mail, and print out the relevant items and put them on his desk. This is yours, I think. What would you like me to do with it?’

She placed in front of Merrily a sheet of A4.

Dear Bishop,

After long consideration…

Merrily saw what Sophie wanted – how she could make Sophie much happier. ‘Could you wipe it?’ she said easily. ‘I wasn’t really myself, was I?’

Sophie gripped the desk tightly, and then let go.

‘Sophie?’ Merrily stood up, took her arm.

‘I didn’t want you to go, and leave me alone here.’ Sophie swallowed. ‘Sometimes I feel I’m going mad.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

‘I know. Capable, reliable old Sophie – total commitment to the Cathedral. That’s the problem , isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Something in the Cathedral’s going wrong, and I’m afraid Michael…’

Merrily sighed. ‘Might as well say it, Sophie. He can’t see it, can he? He wouldn’t feel it because he has no basic faith or spirituality? Isn’t that what you’re saying: that the Cathedral’s not safe in Mick’s hands?’