Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘The squatter ,’ Huw said. ‘Suppose it was an apparition of the squatter in all his unholy glory.’

‘Oh, please…’ Merrily shuddered. ‘And anyway, nothing happened when they opened it this time, did it?’

‘No. And why didn’t it?’

‘How can I possibly…? Oh, Huw… Dobbs!’

And backwards and forwards from the Cathedral he’d go, at all hours, in all weathers , said Edna Rees. I’d hear his footsteps in the street at two, three in the morning. Going to the Cathedral, coming from there, sometimes rushing, he was like a man possessed .

‘Dobbs exorcized this thing?’

Huw shrugged. ‘Contained it, he reckons – like that canon in the thirteenth century – with the help of St Thomas Cantilupe in whose footsteps our Thomas had so assiduously followed. Until he was struck down.’

Memories of that night snowballed her. Sophie Hill: He’s just rambling. To someone. Himself? I don’t know. Rambling on and on. Neither of us understands. It’s all rather frightening… George Curtiss: My Latin isn’t what it used to be. My impression is he’s talking to, ah… to Thomas Cantilupe .

And the atmosphere in the Cathedral of overhead wires or power cables slashed through, live and sizzling.

‘Dobbs modelling himself on his hero, Tommy Canty,’ Huw said. ‘Keeping his own counsel, thrusting away all temptation… keeping all women out of his life? Making sense now, is it, lass?’

The whining from the lamp was unbearable now, like the sound of tension itself. She was afraid of an awful pop, an explosion. Although she knew that rarely happened, she felt it would tonight.

‘He fired his housekeeper of many years, did you know that? She didn’t know what she’d done wrong.’

‘Strong measures, Merrily, measuring up to Tommy Canty. Very strict about ladies – not only sexually. He kept all women at more than arm’s length, with the exception of the Holy Mother. See, what you have, I reckon, is Dobbs inviting the mighty spirit of Cantilupe to come into him. Happen he thought they could deal with it together.’

‘That’s what he told you?’

‘In not so many words. Not so many words is all he can manage.’

‘You’re saying that when it emerged that the Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust had finally managed to put enough money together to renovate the tomb, Dobbs was immediately put on his guard, suspecting something had happened when the tomb was last opened.’

‘He knew it happened. He told me exactly where to find this document. He told me where to look in Mrs Leather’s book. All right, it’s not much, and that’s the end of the documentation, but just because that eye-witness account was never published doesn’t mean it hasn’t been passed down by word of mouth.’

‘Which is notoriously unreliable. All right, what did happen when they opened the tomb this time?’

Huw smiled. ‘When you’ve been with that owd feller a while, you learn he doesn’t like talking. And when he does, there are words he won’t use. Me, I’ll ramble on about squatters and visitors and the like, but Dobbs’ll just give you funny looks.’

‘Helpful.’

‘I don’t know, Merrily. I don’t know that he’s prepared to even think, at the present time, about what it was gave him the stroke. It’s part of shutting down.’

‘So who contained the’ – she couldn’t bring herself to use the word demon , either – ‘ squatter , last century?’

Huw shook his head. ‘Don’t know. But if you carry on with this theory, you’ve got two explanations. One is that the then exorcist, or somebody at least, was ready for it. Two is that all you had was a single terrifying manifestation; that there wasn’t sufficient energy around on that occasion for it to take up what you might call serious occupation.’

‘So why should it now? What’s changed?’

‘Jesus Christ, Merrily, you can ask me that?’ He held up a hand against the window, and began counting them off on his fingers. ‘ One , the recent Millennium: two thousand years since the birth of Our Lord, and a time of great global religious and cosmic significance. Two , the appointment of a flash, smartarse bishop who doesn’t believe in anything very much…’

‘You can’t say that!’

‘Have you questioned the slippery bastard in any depth, lass? Has anybody? Three —’

Merrily could stand it no longer and clicked off the whining lamp, dipping them back into reddened darkness. Outside, she noticed, a third row of golden Santas had gone out – as if the whole of this end of town was suddenly beset by destructive electrical fluctuations because of what they’d been discussing.

Madness! Stop it!

‘And three is…’

Huw paused.

‘You,’ he said.

‘I KNEW SHE was going to be trouble,’ Sorrel said to Lol.

Patricia would have been the best, but Jane had no idea where she lived, didn’t even know her last name. Sorrel was the one they got because there weren’t many Podmores in the phone book. Sorrel who lived at Kings Acre, in the suburbs, but wouldn’t let Lol come to see her there. She hadn’t wanted to see him at all, until he mentioned police.

‘How old is she?’ Sorrel had finally agreed to meet him at the café in Bridge Street. They sat at one of the rustic tables, with the window blinds down. They sat under the Mervyn Peake etchings of thin, leering men and the fat witch with the toad.

‘Thirteen,’ he said, just to scare her.

Sorrel was plump and nervous. She closed her eyes on an intake of breath. ‘We didn’t know – no way we knew that. She said she was working. We thought she was seventeen at least.’

‘Does she really look seventeen?’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ Sorrel threw up her hands. ‘This should not have happened. We’re a responsible group. We have a strict rule about children.’ She looked hard at Lol. ‘You’re Viv’s friend, aren’t you – the songwriter? She said—’

‘And a friend of Jane’s mother’s,’ Lol said. ‘Her mother the vicar.’

Sorrel paled. Lol was starting to feel sorry for her.

‘This could cause a lot of damage if it got out,’ Sorrel said. ‘I mean damage to the business. You know what people are like. They don’t understand about these things. They’ll think we’re using children for weird rituals. It could close us down – I mean the café.’

‘Mmm.’ Lol nodded.

‘I mean, I’ve got kids myself. And my husband, he doesn’t… It’s got out of hand, you see. They started calling it the Pod only because they were meeting here. It just grew out of healthy eating and Green issues. I’m not really that involved, but the name’s linked now, and it’s very hard for me to… to…’

‘Look,’ Lol said, ‘I realize this is not your fault. You had pressure put on you, right?’

Sorrel didn’t answer.

‘So maybe it’s whoever put on the pressure I need to talk to.’

‘Please’ – she was actually looking scared now – ‘can’t you just leave it?’

‘I wish I could, but her mother’s in the clergy. Things are difficult enough for women priests.’

‘How did she find out?’

‘An anonymous letter.’

‘Bastards,’ Sorrel said.

‘You know what I think, Sorrel? I think you suspected Jane was quite young, but somebody else put the arm on you to take her into the group, and you weren’t in a position to refuse. Who would that have been?’

Sorrel bit her lip.

‘Was it Angela?’

‘I don’t know any Angela.’