Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

And then there were two…

Here was Mick Hunter on a low wooden seat under the rim of the corona. It was not the first time she’d seen Mick in his episcopal splendour. He wore it well, like some matinée idol playing Becket. We’re all of us actors, Merrily. The Church is a faded but still fabulous costume drama . She noticed the medieval touches, the fishtail chasuble, the primatial cross instead of the crozier; Mick was not going to be upstaged by a schoolboy. Sad, Jane would comment, wherever she was.

As the plainsong ended, the Boy Bishop turned his back on the congregation and knelt to face Mick Hunter on his throne.

Merrily’s fingers tightened on the stem of the cross.

Jane had hidden in the little chantry chapel, where the stone was ridged like a seashell. She crouched where she supposed monks had once knelt to pray – though not ordinary monks; it was far too ornate. The medieval chant washed and rippled around her, so calming.

She must not be calm.

Rowenna stood not ten feet away, leaning against a pillar. Rowenna wearing a soft leather jacket, short black skirt, and black tights.

How would she react if Rowenna was to walk in here now?

Go for her like a cat? Go for her eyes with all ten nails?

Uh-huh, better to keep quiet and watch and listen. Whatever was going to happen here, Rowenna would be central to it. She wasn’t just here to watch her boyfriend – who would not be her boyfriend at all if he hadn’t been the chosen as Boy Bishop.

And Jane suddenly remembered yesterday’s lunch in Slater’s, and Rowenna saying, Listen, I have to go. Go on, ask me where. You’re gonna like this… the Cathedral . Then Jane expressing surprise because she’d understood they were going shopping, and Rowenna going, I just forgot what day it was. I have to meet my cousin – breaking off at this point because Lol had appeared. But it was obvious now: Rowenna would have gone with James to his dress rehearsal, so she’d know exactly…

The evil, duplicitous, carnivorous slag! Jane didn’t think she’d ever hated anyone like she hated Rowenna right now.

But it was wrong to hate like this in a cathedral. It had to be wrong. She emptied her mind as the Bishop’s lovely deep, velvet voice was relayed to the congregation through the speaker system. What Mum had once called his late-night DJ voice – so, like, really sincere.

‘James, you have been chosen to serve in the office of Boy Bishop in this cathedral church. Will you be faithful and keep the promises made for you at your baptism?’

In the silence, Jane heard a small bleep quite close. It was such an un-cathedral noise that she flattened herself against the stones, and edged up to the opening and peeped out just once.

The Boy Bishop said, in a kind of dismissive drawl, ‘I will, the Lord be my helper.’

Jane saw Rowenna slipping a mobile phone into a pocket of her leather jacket.

Mick Hunter said, ‘The blessing of God Almighty – Father, Son and Holy Ghost – be upon you. Amen.’

Silence – as Jane held her breath.

The choir began to sing.

She relaxed. It was done. James Lyden was Boy Bishop of Hereford.

And nothing had happened.

Had it?

Amid the cold trees, below the cold moon, was a panel of light.

Lol stopped on the ice-glossed earthen steps. He thought at first it must be the farmhouse, and that he was seeing it from a different angle, seeing behind the wall of Leylandii.

But it was the barn.

The glazed-over bay was one big lantern.

Lol moved down the frozen steps and saw, behind the plateglass wall, tall candles burning aloft on eight or ten holders of spindly wrought-iron.

A beacon! You would see it from afar, like a fire in the sky laying a flickering path towards the Cathedral tower.

It shocked him into stillness, as if the same candles had been burning on Katherine Moon’s coffin. Behind their sombre shimmering, he was sure shadows were moving. All was quiet: not an owl, not a breath of wind. A bitter, still, rock-hard night.

He was scared.

Calm down, Robinson , Athena White said from somewhere. He ran from the steps to the rubble-stone barn wall and edged towards the lit-up bay. Rough reflections of the candlelight were sketched on to the ridged surface of a long frozen puddle, the remains of the pond-excavation where Moon had said she’d found the Celtic sword.

When he reached the front door, he realized it was lying open. He backed away, recalling the darkness pushing against him – the slit between worlds.

Tonight, however, the door was open, and – perhaps not only because he was so cold – the barn seemed to beckon him inside.

Merrily murmured to Sophie, ‘What happens now?’

A hush as the Boy Bishop and his two candle-bearing attendants faced the high altar. Choristers were ranked either side, poised for an instant on a single shared breath.

As Mick Hunter walked away, smiling, the choir sailed into song, and the Boy Bishop approached the altar.

‘Later,’ Sophie whispered, ‘the boy will lead us in prayer, and then he gives a short sermon. He’ll say how important the choir’s been to him, and that sort of thing. But first there’ll be a kind of circular tour, taking in the North Transept.’

‘The shrine?’

‘I don’t know quite how they’re going to cope with that this time – perhaps they won’t. What are you doing, Merrily?’

‘I’m going to watch.’ She edged out of the pew, holding the cross with one hand, gathering her cloak with the other.

‘Are you cold, Merrily?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. I wonder if there’s something wrong with the heating.’

The candle-led procession was leaving the chancel, drifting left to the North Transept. Merrily paused at the pew’s end. She felt slightly out of breath, as if the air had become thinner. She looked at Sophie. ‘Are you really cold, as well?’

Behind her, there was a muffled slap on the tiles.

Sophie rose. ‘Oh, my God.’

Merrily turned and saw a large woman in a grey suit, half into the aisle, her fingers over her face, with blood bubbling between them and puddling on the tiles around her skittering feet.

THE BARN WAS like an intimate church. Lol could sense it around him, a rich and velvety warmth. He could see the long beeswax candles, creamy stems aglow, and imagine tendrils of soft scented smoke curling to the rafters.

He stood for a moment, giving in to the deceptive luxury of heat – experiencing the enchantment of the barn as, he felt sure, Moon would have known it. Then catching his breath when the total silence gave way to an ashy sigh – the collapse of crumbling logs in the hearth with a spasm of golden splinters, the small implosion bringing a glint from a single nail protruding from the wall over the fireplace. A nail where once hung a picture of a smiling man with his Land Rover.

Which brought Lol out of it, tensing him – because another black-framed photo hung there now: of a long-haired woman in a long dress.

The candle-holders were like dead saplings, two of them framing a high-backed black chair, thronelike. And, standing beside the chair – Lol nearly screamed – was a priest in full holy vestments.

Merrily was gesturing wildly for a verger, a cleaner, anybody with a mop and bucket – people staring at her from both sides of the aisle, as though she was some shrill, house-proud harpy.

What she was seeing was the defiled altar at St Cosmas, blistered with half-dried sacrificial blood – while this blood was close to the centre of the Cathedral, and it was still warm and it was human blood, bright and pure, and there was so damned much of it.