Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

And too ludicrous?

‘So a squatter ,’ Merrily said, ‘is your term for a localized demon – an evil spirit in residence.’

‘If I were trying to be scientific I’d cobble summat together like potentially malevolent, semi-sentient forcefield . Or I might’ve called it a sleeper , but that doesn’t sound noxious enough. You know what a sleeper is, in espionage?’

‘It’s a kind of deep-penetration agent, isn’t it? Planted in another country years in advance, to be awoken whenever.’

Deep-penetration, Huw liked that. Made it sound, he said, like dampness. And it was very like that – in so deep, it was almost part of the fabric. It could be lying there for centuries and only the very sensitive would be aware of it.

‘Like an imprint ,’ Merrily suggested.

‘With added evil. Evil gathers around a holy place, like we said. The unholiest ground, they used to say, is sometimes just over the churchyard wall. But if it gets inside , you’ll have a hell of a job rooting it out. It’s got all those centuries of accumulated devotional energy to feed on, and it’ll cause havoc.’

‘But if you accept that this was an evil spirit, how could this canon beat it and put it in fetters? That argues for your first suggestion – that the canon caught some vagrant who’d stolen the vestments.’

‘Or the entire story’s metaphorical. It suggests he was able to bind this evil by ritual and the power of the Lord, and also…’

‘St Thomas Cantilupe.’

‘Aye,’ said Huw, ‘there we have the link – the key to it all.’

The whining in the bulb was making her nervous. It was like a thin wire resonating in her brain.

‘Thomas Cantilupe.’ Huw leaned back, and his chair creaked. ‘Tommy Canty – now there were a hard bastard.’

The Norman baronial background, the years in government, the initial ambition to be a soldier. ‘And you could still think of him as one,’ Huw said. So he already had the self-discipline and, on becoming a bishop of the Church, had taught himself humility – and chastity.

‘He went to Paris once and stayed wi’ a feller, and the feller’s wife – a foxy lady – contrives to get into bed wi’ Tommy. Tommy rolls out t’other side, pretends he’s still asleep. Next morning she asks him how he slept and he tells her he’d have had a better night if he hadn’t been tempted by the Devil.’

Merrily thought of Mick Hunter under the aumbry light. And then she thought of herself and Lol: how close she’d come, in her near despair, to slipping into Lol’s bed.

‘Tommy Canty,’ said Huw. ‘No sleaze. No risks. Warrior for the Lord. What would your lad Hunter have made of him?’

Both fast-track, Merrily thought. Cantilupe had come straight in as bishop. No weddings and funerals for him, presumably. But, yes, in spite of that they’d probably have hated each other’s guts.

‘But think what Cantilupe did for this town,’ Huw said. ‘Most of the religious establishments along the border were well into debt during that period. After St Thomas’s day, Hereford Cathedral never looked back. They were adding bits on to the building, all over the place. Pulling power of the shrine meant thousands of pilgrims, hundreds of accredited miracles, cripples brought in droves.

‘If you were too sick to get to Hereford, you were measured on a length of string and they brought that instead. I don’t know how it worked, but it did. You believe in miracles, Merrily, don’t you? I bet Hunter doesn’t.’

‘Who can say? Look, the demon story – how long had Cantilupe been dead by then?’

‘About eight years. And the shrine’s power was near its peak. How could that demon get in? Was it brought in by one of the pilgrims? Was it already there and something activated it?’

‘Like a sleeper ?’

‘Aye, exactly. But, thank God, the unnamed medieval canon, and the power of Christ channelled through the Cantilupe shrine… they contained it. Imprisoned is the word. Not killed or executed, but imprisoned .’

Merrily experienced one of those moments when you wonder if you’re really awake. Mrs Straker, the aunt, had said Rowenna Napier lived in what she would call a fantasy world. But what would she call this? Where was it leading?

‘Tommy Canty’ – Huw liked saying that, maybe a Northerner’s need for familiarity, as if he and the seven-centuries-dead St Thomas wouldn’t be able to work together unless they were old mates – ‘guardian and benefactor of Hereford. Must have been a mightily good man, or there’d be no miracles. Now his bones have all gone, but he’s there in spirit. His tomb’s still there’ – Huw suddenly leaned towards her, blocking out the lamplight – ‘except when it’s not …’

‘Oh.’ She felt a tiny piece of cold in her solar plexus.

‘Know what I mean?’

‘Except when it’s in pieces,’ she said.

And the image cut in of Dobbs lying amid the stones, arms flung wide, eyes open, breathing loud, snuffling stroke-breaths.

‘I want to show you something else.’ Huw bent over the bag, his yellowing dog-collar sunk into the crew-neck of his grey pullover. He brought out a sheaf of A4 photocopies and put them in front of Merrily. She glanced at the top sheet.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: SHRINE OF ST THOMAS

CANTILUPE

Conservation and Repair: the History

‘You know what happened when he died?’

‘They boiled his body, separated the bones from the flesh. And the heart—’

‘Good, you know all that. All right, when the bones first arrived in Hereford, they were put under a stone slab in the Lady Chapel. You know about this, too?’

‘Tell me again.’

‘That was temporary. A tomb was built in the North Transept and the bits were transferred there in the presence of King Edward I – in, I think, 1287. The miracles started almost immediately, and petitions were made for Tommy to be canonized, but that didn’t happen until 1320. That’s when he got a really fancy new shrine in the Lady Chapel – which, of course, was smashed up during the Reformation a couple of centuries later, when the rest of the bones were divided and taken away.’

‘So the present one is… which?’

‘It appears to be the original tomb, which seems to have been left alone. According to this document, one of the first pilgrims wrote that he’d had a vision of the saint, which came out of the “image of brass” on top of the tomb. We know there was brass on this one, because the indent’s still visible. Now, look at this.’

Huw extracted a copy of a booklet with much smaller print, and brought out his reading glasses.

‘This is the 1930 account of the history of the tomb, and it records what happened the last time it was taken apart for renovation, which was in the nineteenth century. Quotes a fellar called Havergal, an archaeologist or antiquarian who, in his Monumental Inscriptions , of 1881, writes… can you read this?’

Merrily lifted the document to the light. A paragraph was encircled in pencil.

This tomb was opened some 40 years ago. I have an account written by one who was present, which it would not be prudent to publish.

Huw’s features twisted into a kind of grim beam. ‘You like that?’

‘What does “not prudent” mean?’

‘You tell me. I’d say the person who wrote that account was scared shitless.’

‘By what they found?’

‘Aye.’

‘But the bones had all gone, right?’

‘People aren’t frightened by bones anyroad, are they? Least, they wouldn’t be in them days.’

‘You’re presuming some… psychic experience?’