Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

Visualization , Athena White had said. Willpower .

‘Thank you.’ Lol accepted the stoppered wine bottle from Anna. He held it up for a moment before grasping it by the neck and smashing it into the stone fireplace. He felt the sting of glass-shards as the fire hissed in rage. Rivers of wine and blood ran down his wrist. And down over the hanging photograph of Moon.

‘Now, tell me what you did to her,’ Lol whispered.

The choir faded into trails of unconducted melody.

‘Please remain in your seats.’ The Bishop’s voice, crisply from the speakers. ‘We appear to have a power failure, but we’re doing all we—’ And then the PA system cut out.

Merrily spotted Mick in his mitre, by candlelight amid jumping shadows, before the candles began to go out, one by one, the air laden with the odour of cooling wax, until there was only the oval of light on the corona, like a Catherine wheel over the central altar – the last holy outpost.

She pulled the cross from under her cloak, standing close to the pool of blood on the tiles, though she couldn’t see it now. A baby began to cry.

She looked across the aisle and the pews, towards the main door, to where the big black stove should have been jetting red, and saw nothing. The stove was out, too. The Cathedral gone dark – gone cold.

‘ Jesus ,’ – Merrily feeling the fear like a ball of lead in her solar plexus – ‘ may all that is You flow into me .’

‘James?’ the bearded minister called out. ‘Are you there?’

Jane stepped out from the archway and heard the swish of heavy robes as the Boy Bishop brushed past her in the dark. The candles held by the two attendants, the sentries, were also out. Only one small flame glowed – the two-inch votive candle given to James Lyden, now lying on the mason’s bench. Jane ran and snatched it up, hid the flame behind her hand, and moved out into the transept, listening for the swish of the robes.

Lyden was going somewhere, being taken somewhere, escorted.

She heard him again – his voice this time. ‘ Yeah, OK .’ She followed quietly, though maybe not quietly enough, wishing she had her trainers on instead of her stupid best shoes.

She could see him now – a black, mitred silhouette against the wan light from the huge diamond-paned gothic windows in the nave.

Moonlight. Shadows of people, unmoving. Jane heard anxious whispers and a baby’s cry mingling into a vast soup of echoes. Where was Mum? Where was Mum with the cross? Why wasn’t she rushing for the pulpit, because, Christ, if there was a time for an exorcism, a time for the soul police to make like an armed response unit, this was it.

She could no longer see the mitred silhouette. Where had he gone, the sneering bastard who’d spat on the saint’s tomb, and brought darkness? Although, of course, she knew it hadn’t really happened like that. Somebody had hit a big fusebox somewhere. It was all coincidence, theatrics.

Jane stumbled, stepped into space, groping for stone, nearly dropping her stub of a candle. Hearing quick footsteps receding ahead of her.

Steps. Stone steps going down.

The crypt? The Boy Bishop was going into the crypt.

Jane had never been down there, although it was open to visitors. Mum had seen it. Mum said it was no big deal. No, there weren’t stacks of old coffins, nothing like that. Tombs at one end, effigies, but not as many as you might expect. It was just a bare stone cellar really, and not as big as you’d imagine.

Jane stayed where she was at the top of the steps.

Afraid, actually.

Admit it: afraid of being down there with Rowenna’s creepy boyfriend in his medieval robes, afraid of what slimeball stuff she might see him doing. The guy was a shit. Just like Danny Gittoes had broken into Ledwardine Church for Rowenna, James Lyden had spat on the tomb of the saint for her. Another sex-slave to Rowenna, who in turn was a friend of Angela. How long had Rowenna known Angela?

Aware of this long slime-trail of evil unravelling before her, Jane edged down two steps, listening hard.

Nothing.

She raised the stub of votive candle in its little metal holder. Perhaps she held the light of St Thomas, the guardian.

Could she believe that?

What did it matter? Jane shrugged helplessly to herself and went down into the crypt.

‘BLOOD,’ LOL SAID. ‘I’ve been learning all about blood.’

Feeling – God help him – the energy of it.

It had been the right thing to do. Another couple of minutes and the Purefoys would have had him apologizing for disturbing their religious observance.

Tim scowled. ‘Mr Robinson, there are several ways we could react to your outburst of juvenile violence. The simplest would be to call the police.’

‘Do it,’ Lol said.

‘If you think we would have any explaining to do,’ Anna said, ‘you’re quite wrong. We have an interest in ritual magic. It’s entirely legal.’

‘I am an ordained priest of God,’ Tim said. ‘My God is the God of Abraham and Moses and Solomon, the God who rewards knowledge and learning; the God who shows us strength, who accepts that plague and pestilence have their roles…’

‘Stop dressing it up.’

‘… the God to whom Satan was a – an albeit occasionally troublesome – serving angel. Calling me a Satanist, as I suspect you were about to do, is therefore, something of an insult. For which’ – Tim Purefoy waved a hand – ‘I excuse you, because it was said in ignorance.’

‘We were both brought up in the Christian tradition,’ Anna interrupted. ‘It took us a while to realize that Christianity was introduced primarily as a constraint on human potential, which has to be removed if we are to survive and progress.’

‘Let’s say it’s simply run its course,’ Tim added, with the fervour of the converted. ‘The Church has no energy left; it’s riddled with greed and corruption. In this country alone, it’s sitting on billions of pounds which could be put to more sensible use.’

‘Even if we didn’t lift a finger, it would destroy itself within the next fifty years. But the signs are there in the sky – too many to be ignored. We cannot ignore signs .’

‘The signs are what brought us here to Hereford,’ Tim said. ‘But I don’t think you want to know about that. I think you want to know about the death of Katherine Moon. I think you’re here for reassurance that there was nothing you could have done to save her, am I right?’

‘And we’re happy to give you that.’ Anna smiled and reached across the firelight for his bloodied hand. Her fingers were slim and cool.

George Curtiss had taken charge, talking to vergers, organizing people by sporadic candlelight, shouting from the pulpit, explaining.

As though he could.

Merrily noticed that candles had to be repeatedly relit; it was like last night, when she and Huw were at the saint’s tomb. She stumbled past the central altar – only three candles left alight on the corona – looking around for Jane and the Bishop.

She found Mick Hunter eventually in the deep seclusion of his throne beyond the choir-stalls. The throne was of dark oak, many pinnacled, itself a miniature cathedral. He came out to join her, having removed the mitre. His sigh was like an audible scowl.

‘Merrily, of all the people I could do without in this situation…’

‘You really… really have to let me do it, Mick.’ Keeping her voice low and steady. ‘You can look away, you can grit your teeth – but you have to let me do it.’

‘Do it?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. You’ve got darkness and cold and spilt blood in your Cathedral. What you must do now is wind up the service, get the congregation out of here, lock the doors, and just… just let me do it.’