Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

Treason .

‘Sophie?’

Sophie brought a finger to her brow, as if to halt a fastescaping thought. ‘We have to talk, Merrily.’

The phone rang on her desk in the other office.

‘Sure,’ Merrily said. ‘Whenever.’

She went in search of Lol. In John Barleycorn, the large, triballooking woman regarded her with some interest.

‘You must be Jane’s mum.’

‘You know Jane?’

‘Not personally,’ the big woman said with an enigmatic smile. ‘But I’ve got daughters, so I know the problem.’

‘ Is there a problem?’ What the hell had Lol been saying? Merrily rocked inside with a blinding urge to wipe away all the rumours and gossip and deceit that had gathered in the days of the fog.

And, oh, there was so much to say to Jane and so much to bring out, after a week in which Merrily had felt so scared of her own daughter that the only way she’d been able to approach this issue was behind the kid’s back.

The shop woman smiled to herself, heavy with superior knowledge.

‘Where’s Lol?’ Merrily snapped.

‘Oh.’ The woman recoiled. ‘I think he’s over in the central library. That’s where he said he was going.’

‘Thank you.’

The day had taken a sharp dive into December dusk. She became aware, for the first time, of Christmas lights. Little golden Santas racing across Broad Street on their sleighs, and the warm red lanterns winking a welcome to wallets everywhere.

Christmas in three weeks: goodwill to all men… school Nativity play in the church… afternoon carol service… midnight eucharist. The churchwardens beadily monitoring those big festive collections. Courtesy visits: Glass of sherry for the vicar, Celia. Not too much – don’t want you falling out of the pulpit, ha-ha .

And the core of cold and loneliness at the heart of it all. The huddling together, with drunken bonhomie and false laughter to ward off the dark.

She stopped outside the library, the lights still blinking universal panic over parties unorganized, presents unbought. For Merrily they emphasized a core of darkness in the little city of Hereford, deep and intense. She stood amid the rush-hour shoppers and she felt it in her solar plexus, where the ghost of Denzil Joy – the ghost that wasn’t – had formed an interior fog. And now it was clear.

Lol was coming down the library steps, with a big brown book under his arm.

‘Merrily!’ Santa-light dancing across his gold-framed glasses.

Lol , she wanted to shout, I’m all right. I’m clear .

And rush into his arms.

And I still can’t go to bed with you. We priests don’t do that kind of thing .

‘We have to talk, Merrily.’

Suddenly everybody wanted to talk.

‘Me too,’ she told him, still on that strange, sensitive high. ‘Let’s go to church.’

The vicar of All Saints had a bigger, more regular congregation than the Cathedral’s.

This was because they’d cleared a big space at the rear of the medieval city-centre church and turned it into a restaurant. A good one too. It might not work in a village like Ledwardine, but it had worked here. This church was what it used to be in the Middle Ages, what it was built to be: the centre of everything. It was good to hear laughter in a church, see piles of shopping bags and children, who maybe had never been in a church before, gazing in halffearful fascination down the nave towards the secret, holy places.

They carried their cups of tea to a table. Lol still had the big brown book under his arm. ‘That’s the Holy Bible, isn’t it?’ Merrily said. ‘Go on, I can take it. Excite me.’

‘Not’ – Lol put down the book – ‘exactly.’

On the spine it said, black on gold:

ROSS: PAGAN CELTIC BRITAIN

‘Damn,’ Merrily said. ‘So close.’

‘The crow,’ Lol said.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t tell me about the bloody crow they spread all over the altar at that little church.’

‘Should I have?’

Lol opened the book. ‘Didn’t anyone give a thought to why they would sacrifice a crow?’

‘Lol, we just want to keep the bastards out. We’re not into understanding them. Maybe you should talk to the social services.’

‘Crows and ravens,’ Lol said. ‘Feared and venerated by the Iron Age Celts. Mostly feared, for their prophetic qualities. But not like the you’re-going-to-win-the-lottery kind of prophecy.’

‘ “Quoth the raven, Nevermore .” ’

‘Right. That kind of prophecy – harbingers of darkness.’

‘Being black. The persecution we still inflict on anything or anybody black, how bloody primitive we still are.’

‘In Celtic folk tales, it says here, crows and ravens figured as birds of ill-omen or… as a form taken by anti-Christian forces.’

Merrily sat up.

‘There’s a story in here,’ Lol said, ‘of how, as late as the seventeenth century, a congregation in a house in the north of Scotland that was used for Christian worship… how the congregation was virtually paralysed by the appearance of a big black bird sitting on a pillar, emanating evil. Nobody could leave that house for over two days. They became so screwed up that it was even suggested the householder’s son should be sacrificed to the bird. This isn’t a legend.’

‘Then why, if it inspires so much primitive awe, would anyone dare to sacrifice a crow?’

‘Possibly to take on its powers of prophecy, whatever. That’s been known to happen.’

‘This makes me suspicious,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re doing my job for me. Why are you doing my job?’

‘Because of something that happened with Moon.’

And he told her about the disturbed woman standing on the Iron Age ramparts at Dinedor, with her hand inside a dead crow.

Merrily, thinking, drank a whole cup of tea, then poured more. She stared down the nave into the old mystery.

Lol said, ‘The way she died – I don’t believe she would have killed herself like that. I can’t believe in the reasons . Like the psychological answer, that she was locked into this fatal obsession, so when she found out how her father died it all came to a head. Or the possible psychic theory that maybe Denny’s been turning over in his mind: some lingering dark force which periodically curses his family with madness, and the only way you can make sure of avoiding it is to stay the hell away from Dinedor Hill.’

‘That can happen, Lol. We believe that can happen. Psychology and parapsychology are so very close. But I don’t necessarily buy a connection between what happened to Moon and the crow sacrifice at St Cosmas.’

‘No,’ Lol said, ‘maybe you’re right. Maybe I just saw the headline in the Hereford Times at the wrong time. Crows were on my mind then.’ He closed the book. ‘You look better, Merrily. Tired, but better.’

‘Tired? I suppose I must be. I didn’t realize. I’ve been dashing about. Oh, I took back my letter of resignation.’

‘Figured you might.’

‘Something… gave.’

‘Like, you found out about this guy Huw and old Dobbs.’

‘No, I… still don’t know about that. But I will, very soon.’

‘And Jane?’

‘Inquiries are in hand.’

Lol said, ‘I’ve had Viv in the shop looking into the Pod.’

‘Ah… that explains her .’

‘Apparently – you might find this interesting, not to say insulting – the women were told to look after Jane. That she was a special person with, er, a problem background.’

Merrily stiffened. ‘A special person? She said that? A special person with a problem background? Where did that come from? Who told these women all this?’