Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Anna Purefoy?’

‘Oh Christ.’ Sorrel stood up and walked to the counter, picked up a cloth and began scrubbing Today’s Specials from a blackboard, her back turned to Lol.

He stood up. ‘I gather she’s not actually in the group.’

‘She doesn’t need to be.’

‘Why’s that?’

She turned to face him. ‘Because they own this building.’

‘The Purefoys?’

‘The building came up for sale when our lease had only about six months to run. The chemists next door were going to buy it to extend into, so it would’ve been… over for us. Then suddenly the Purefoys bought it. They knew one of our members…’ Sorrel began to squeeze the cloth between her hands. ‘Mr Robinson, I don’t want to talk about this. I really do need this café. My husband’s about to be made redundant, we’ve got a stupid mortgage… I’m sorry about Jane, but she’s not been with us long, there’s been no harm done. Nothing to interest the police, really.’

‘Quite a bit to interest the press.’

‘What do you want ? I’ve said I’m—’

‘How well do you know Rowenna?’

‘I don’t. No more than I know Jane. All right, a bit more. She’s picked up messages here and things.’

‘From whom?’

‘We have a notice-board, as you can see. People leave messages.’

‘And some that aren’t on the board, maybe?’

‘There are no drugs here,’ Sorrel said firmly.

‘I never thought there were. I don’t even assume the Pod gets up to anything iffy. What I think is that maybe Jane will meet other people who aren’t regular members, and she’ll get invited to – I don’t know – interesting parties. And Rowenna makes sure she goes to them, and at these parties there are maybe some slightly off-the-wall things going on, and before you know it her mother receives some pictures of Jane, well stoned and naked on a slab. Just call me cynical, but I used to be in a band.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘You know it’s not.’

Sorrel threw the cloth down. ‘So what do you… want ?’

‘I want to know about Anna Purefoy.’

‘I don’t know anything about her.’

‘OK.’ Lol stood up and moved towards the door. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

‘But I… I know somebody who might help you.’

He turned and waited.

‘She used to be our teacher – before Patricia. When she heard the Purefoys had bought this building, she stopped coming. She may or may not need some persuading. But I can tell you where to find her.’

‘In Hereford?’

‘About twenty miles out,’ Sorrel said. ‘If she’s still alive, that is.’

By the time they left the gatehouse, half the street’s Santas and lanterns seemed to have gone out. You felt as though you were on the bridge of a ship leaving port at night, gliding slowly away from the lights.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ Huw said, ‘but think about it. What does the smart-arse iconoclast new Bishop do first? He breaks a twothousand-year convention by appointing a female exorcist. In a city which history has shown to be periodically in need of a good guard dog, he…’

‘Swaps his Rottweiler for a miniature poodle?’

‘I’ve gone far enough down that road, luv. Don’t want me throat torn out. All I’m saying is that the combination of all these factors – and maybe others we don’t know about – could be felt to be having a dissipating effect. And a weakened body invites infection. Well, I’m telling you how Thomas Dobbs sees it.’

They walked across the green towards the huge smudge of the Cathedral.

‘And you,’ Merrily asked him, ‘what do you believe?’

‘Wait till we’re inside.’

She was struck, as always, by the hospitality of the place: the stones of many colours, almost all of them warm; the simplicity of the arcade of Norman arches; the friendly modern glitter of the great corona, which always seemed to be hanging lopsided, although it probably wasn’t. She knew nothing about medieval architecture, but it just felt right in here.

Ancient centre of light and healing .

They went directly to the North Transept, deserted except for one of the vergers, a tubby middle-aged man in glasses who looked across, suspicious, then relaxed when he saw Huw’s collar and recognized Merrily.

He raised a hand to them. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘I’ve got a key, pal.’ Huw indicated the partitioned enclosure. ‘We’ll be about ten minutes.’

‘I’ll have to stay in the general vicinity,’ the verger said, ‘if you don’t mind. The Dean’s been a bit on edge since that slab was reported stolen.’

Huw stopped. ‘What was that?’

‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ Merrily said. ‘A chunk of one of the side-panels, with a knight carved on it – it’s missing.’

‘Oh no,’ the verger said, ‘it isn’t missing. Somebody must have made a mistake – miscounted. When the mason was in here this morning, he confirmed everything was there. Quite a relief, but it did make us think a bit more about security.’

Huw said, ‘Do you know which piece it was? Which knight?’

‘No idea, sir. The masons will be back on Monday. They’ll now be able to put St Thomas together again. Too late, unfortunately, for the Boy Bishop ceremony. It’ll be the first time he won’t be able to pay his respects.’

‘Boy Bishop?’

Merrily briefly explained about the annual ceremony and its meaning, while Huw unlocked the padlock with what apparently were Dobbs’s keys. She saw where rudimentary repairs had been carried out since George Curtiss had kicked his way in.

Huw surveyed the dismantled tomb, looking more or less as it had the afternoon Merrily and Jane had stood in here with Neil, the young archaeologist. Segments of a stone coffin; knights in relief, with shields and mashed faces. ‘What happens at this Boy Bishop ceremony then, lass?’

‘Never been to one. Harmless bit of Church pageantry, I’d guess.’

‘Is it?’

‘Harmless? Any reason why it shouldn’t be?’

‘Everything worries me tonight.’ Huw shoved his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat. ‘Especially this missing stone business. First a stone’s missing, then it’s not. Church masons don’t miscount.’

‘Which means it’s either still missing…’

‘Or it’s back. In which case, where’s it been meanwhile?’

She wondered for a moment if he meant that the stone had been somehow dematerialized by the demon. Then she realized what he did mean.

‘Hard to comprehend, especially seeing it like this,’ he trudged around the rubble, ‘that this box was once the core of it all. If you try and imagine the amount of psychic and emotional energy – veneration, desperation – poured into this little space over the centuries…’

‘You can’t. I can’t.’

‘And then imagine if – while it was away – that same stone had hot blood and guts spilled on it.’

‘Huw!’

‘And then it was brought back?’ He shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’

Merrily looked up at the huge, lightless, stained-glass window, and saw the dim figure of a knight pushing his spear down a dull dragon’s throat.

‘All right, what would happen if the balance tilted – if the dominant force in here was the force of evil?’

‘Even a bit of evil goes a long way. Take all the aggro they’ve had over at Lincoln Cathedral. Terrible disruption, hellish disputes, and bad feeling and bitterness among the senior clergy. And consider the number of people who put all that down to evil influences emanating from this little old carving in the nave known as the Lincoln Imp. A thousand sacred carvings in that place – and one imp, know what I mean?’