Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

Like the sword. The sword she’d just happened to find in a pit where it looked as though the Purefoys had been digging a pond. The sword sticking up for her to find – like it was meant. They’d put it there, hadn’t they?

Perhaps they’d found it where Denny had buried it, or perhaps it wasn’t the same sword at all – Denny’s own memory refashioning it to fit the circumstances.

At the funeral, Anna Purefoy had said: We were so delighted by her absorption in the farm that we couldn’t resist offering her the barn. We thought she was perfect .

Moon was perfect for them because – according to the tenets of Anna Purefoy’s occultism – Moon’s obsession was a passage to the heart of the hill’s pagan past. By stimulating a resurgence of the once-dominant pagan energy, they were attempting to induce a spiritual reversion. Using the Celtic tradition of vengeful crow-goddess and blood ritual to link that holy hill with the pre-medieval Church at the terminus of the ley-line alignment. Thus feeding something old and corrupt inside the Christian Cathedral.

Belief was all, Athena White had said. It didn’t matter how real any of this was, so long as they believed it. They hadn’t even had to bend Moon to their will. She was already halfway there. But had they actually killed her? Had they used the Celtic sword as a sacrificial blade to cut her wrists? Because, if they hadn’t done anything physical, it was an unprovable crime, bizarrely akin to euthanasia. Perhaps not even a crime at all.

He called Merrily again.

‘ Hello, this is Led —’

He put the phone down, then lifted it again and redialled, waiting for the message to end. ‘Merrily,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got to tell somebody. It’s about Moon and… and your desecration thing at the little church…’

He talked steadily about crows and sacrifice. After three minutes, the bleeps told him his time was up. He waited for a minute, then called back, waited again for the message to finish. This time he talked about projections. He knew why he was doing this: he had to hear himself saying it, to decide if he could believe it.

Moon’s father: not a ghost but a projection , a transferred image. Transmitting a projection – Athena looking rather coy at this point – was not terribly difficult. Especially if the Purefoys had a photograph to work with. Photographs and memories, half-truth and circumstance – and the power of the ancestors, usurped.

‘By some combination of projection, hypnosis, psychic-suggestion – maybe you have better words for this – they may have steered her to suicide.’

When the bleeps started again, he didn’t call back. He took up his habitual stance at the window, looking down into Christmas-lit Church Street/Capuchin Lane. Moon’s agitated shade was misting the periphery of his vision – Moon with her medieval dress and her rescue-me hair.

What did you do with information like this? What could you do but take it to the police, or try to get it raised at the inquest?

But the man to do this was Denny, the brother. At some stage, Denny – who wanted none of it – would have to be told. Lol went downstairs.

In the shop below, Denny was sitting, his back to Lol, on the last filled box. John Barleycorn was no more.

‘Destroying something can be a very cleansing thing.’ Denny had his hands loosely linked and he was rocking slowly on the box, his earring swaying like a pendulum: tick… tick… tick.

‘You, er… you want to go for a drink?’

‘Nah, not tonight, Laurence.’

‘Only, you were right,’ Lol said, ‘about needing to talk.’

‘Couldn’t face it now, mate.’ Denny stared out of the window. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t wanner be with me tonight.’ He heaved himself down from the box and grinned. ‘I’ll be off. You look a bit shagged-out, Laurence. Get some sleep. It’ll all seem much clearer in the morning.’

‘It will?’

‘Maybe.’ Denny looked around the skeleton shop. ‘Good night, mate.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘Thanks.’

There was a full moon. They hadn’t seen it coming because of the fog, but tonight was a flawless, icy night and the moon hung over Broad Street – and the Christmas Santas couldn’t compete, Jane thought.

Hail to Thee, Lady Moon ,

Whose light reflects our most secret hopes .

Her only secret hope tonight was for Mum to come through this with everything intact: her reputation, her mind…

Hail to Thee from the Abodes of Darkness .

There won’t be any darkness, Jane thought, willing it and willing it. There won’t .

They stood together on the green, watching people file into the Cathedral. The usual Evensong congregation, plus whatever audience the Boy Bishop ceremony pulled in with its pre-Christmas pageantry and extra choral element.

Mum had come in her long, black cloak – the winter-funeral cloak – wearing it partly because you couldn’t turn up for a ceremony at the Cathedral in a ratty old waxed jacket. And partly because it was so much better for concealing—

Oh, please, no …

—the foot-long, gilt-painted, wooden cross she’d taken from Ledwardine Church, prising it out of the rood-screen with a screwdriver, then immersing its prongs in holy water.

The whole bit! The complete, crazy Van Helsing ensemble. And Merrily had no plan. If the worst happened, if there was some indication of what she called infiltration , she was just going to, like, walk out, holding the cross high and shouting the magic words from the Deliverance handbook.

Madness? At the very least, professional suicide. Church of England ministers did not behave like this. She would be making her entire career into this minor footnote in ecclesiastical history, right under the bit about the female priests who circle-danced around the Cathedral touching up dead bishops.

And that was what you wanted, wasn’t it? You always thought it was a wasted life .

No! Uncomfortable, Jane turned away from her mother. She didn’t know. She didn’t know any more. She began to feel helpless and desperate. They needed help and there was none.

She looked up at the Cathedral, warm light making its windows look like the doors in an advent calendar. She was aware of the timeless apartness of the place, even though it was surrounded by city. She thought about its possible future as a tourist attraction, or a carpet warehouse, or something. A rush of confused emotions were creating a panic-bomb, just as a woman came towards them. She wore an expensive suede coat and a silk headscarf – Sophie Hill, the Bishop’s secretary and Mum’s secretary too. Sophie who, Mum explained, didn’t need a secretary’s job, but did need to be part of the Cathedral. Sophie was looking apprehensive.

‘Oh, hello, Jane,’ she began awkwardly.

Which was like Goodbye, Jane . Mum said, ‘Why don’t you go in, flower, and find us a discreet pew with a good view – but not too near the front.’

‘Sure,’ Jane said meekly. She was wearing her new blue fleece coat and a skirt. Respectable. As she slipped away, the panicbomb began to tick.

Walking quickly down towards the Cathedral porch, when she was sure they couldn’t see her, she diverted along the wall and back across the green, running from tree to tree, to the access path, and down into Church Street. Seeing this big, bald guy come out of John Barleycorn and – Thank you, thank you, God! – Lol Robinson behind him in the doorway.

She started waving frantically at Lol as the bald guy vanished down the alley towards High Town.

‘Jane?’

He looked seriously hyped up, nervous, but grateful to see her – all of those. With the overhead Christmas greens and reds strobing in his glasses, his hands making fists, and his mouth forming unspoken words – like he was full of stories that just had to be told.