Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

Round the corner, past Falconer’s farmhouse went the venerable car, and onto a track of stone and dirt, emerging into an open field, sheep nibbling around the fringes. It was bisected by a rough path, which began as a sheep-track, a narrow, muddied depression, and then turned to concrete before widening into a big, flat apron.

From the sky, this would look like a giant frying pan. Like a landing area for UFOs. A big new shed had gone up, too, and the whole damn thing across not only the path, but the Path — the principal ley line itself, leading through two dinky little round barrows and a standing stone to Dore Abbey itself. How utterly crass of the man.

But the concrete apron was out of sight of the house, so Cindy parked on the edge of it and set off on foot, with his little case. It was important, in a situation like this, to weave in and out of the path of power, the spirit-way. If you followed it directly, you were advertising yourself to the denizens of other planes, and might therefore attract all manner of unnecessary hangers-on.

How fortunate little Annie Davies had been on that morning. Just the right side of adolescence, the innocent side, and — due also, no doubt, to a rare and fortuitous pattern of circumstance — exposed to only the right, the very rightest elements.

And so her young life was blessed.

Marcus Bacton had written that each time he walked to the Knoll, it was a kind of pilgrimage. He believed it was a naturally blessed place. But of course there was no such thing. Some points on the earth, because of their geophysical properties and their positioning in relation to the sun and the stars, might be termed places of power. But power was not holiness … and holiness was not an inherent quality. It could be visited upon a place but it required maintenance.

And there was certainly no sense of holiness here this evening.

Senses racing ahead of him, Cindy followed the path up the side of High Knoll — or Black Knoll as it was called on the map. Why was that? Why black ? A reference to the Black Mountains, or something more sinister?

Under a wind-blasted hawthorn tree was a small, staked sign.

Black Knoll.

Once a long barrow, this chambered tomb dates from at least 3000 BC and appears to have been oriented to the midsummer sunrise. A monumental feat of Neolithic engineering, its capstone, now damaged, has been estimated to weigh nearly thirty tons. Evidence of several burials was found during an excavation in 1895.

No mention, naturally, of the vision of Annie Davies.

The stones were on a small, exposed plateau, like an island now in the misty rain. Cindy stopped. He could see the huge capstone, unbalanced and yawning like the open mouth of an alligator.

Where Mrs Willis had lain to die.

The stones glistening with damp and ancient magic.

There was a stout new fence and barbed wire. A gate in the fence was padlocked, but someone had cut the wire, and two of the horizontals had been taken out. Was this before or after the tragic death of Mrs Willis?

Cindy crouched in the damp, yellowed grass and went into the Quiet for a moment, wondering how best to approach.

No birds sang. The grey sky hung low and heavy, like a giant mattress.

A stroke was such a convenient way to go. It was rarely possibly to diagnose how, precisely, the stroke had been brought on. Had Mrs Willis overexerted herself getting here? Or had she been badly frightened by something or someone?

Cindy hitched up his tweed skirt and climbed over the damaged fence and walked, with undeniable trepidation, towards the burial chamber.

Was this, like, primitive, or was this primitive ?

OK, there was no sawdust on the floor (Grayle had heard some English pubs still had sawdust on the floor), but the Waldorf it was not. The bedroom had a bed with an iron frame and a washbasin you could see the pipes coming out of and then snaking down this hole in the floor. It did not, of course, have a bathroom en suite.

And no phone, on which to call room service and have them bring up a selection of the sweating pork pies and potato chips on sale in the saloon bar (it actually said saloon bar on the frosted glass door) or call a doctor to treat your food poisoning and your insomnia.

Grayle had been to Britain twice before in her life. That is, she’d stayed in London and Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon, and all these places were overcrowded but elegantly civilized, as you might expect.

But civilization seemed to end at Hereford. Even the roads. She’d hired this small Rover car in Oxford, spent some time getting over the problems of driving on the left. But most of the roads hereabouts, those problems didn’t arise; they were so narrow you just drove right down the middle and closed your eyes and headed for the hedgerow when someone came the other way.

Scared she was going to trash the hire car, Grayle had parked outside the first building resembling a hotel she came to after crossing the St Mary sign and checked in for two nights. The Ram’s Head. Maybe a mistake.

Grayle rested her ass on the edge of the bed — which was like a goddamn girder — and hoped it would take no longer than a day to establish if anyone in the village or the course centre, Cefn-y-bedd (however the hell you pronounced that), knew of Ersula’s present location.

First thing she’d done, on arrival, was to use the phone. Gave the landlady a ten-pound note and called up her dad at the ivory tower.

And no. No, his favourite daughter had not arrived home. Or written. Or phoned. He sounded busy.

Grayle looked out of the window at the stone houses, the church tower. Ancient, beautiful, serene. But the cottages had TV aerials, a couple had satellite dishes, the village shop would rent out videos of Tarantino movies … and St Mary’s was doubtless full of people with cute country accents thinking, God, I could really’ve made something of myself if I lived in … the States .

Feeling suddenly terribly lonely, Grayle keeled over on the bed, clutching her favourite quartz crystal. What if spirituality was just a human fabrication and life’s real peaks were getting drunk and getting laid? What if it was like that?

Cindy straightened his tweed skirt and opened his case.

Meeting the gaze of Kelvyn Kite, the bird’s glass eyes glittering malevolently. Silly old tart .

He scowled at Kelvyn and felt beneath the feathers for his drum, his beautiful bodhran , made with deerhide, stretched and patterned, dubbed and tightened, until the skin was a membrane … the membrane between worlds.

He decided not to bother with the feathered cloak. Too ostentatious. What he was wearing would surely suffice.

Cindy had come in his female aspect. Arising this morning, on the seaward side of the bed, to bathe in St Bride’s Bay. Softening the body with powder and lavender water. Shaving his legs before dressing in sensible countrywoman’s clothing. Leaving Wales as a woman, entering England as a woman; if High Knoll were to be coaxed into giving up her secrets, there was no other way.

For this was where Annie Davies had been granted a vision of the highest female divinity. A feminine place, a goddess site. The Lady of Light — it didn’t matter who she was, Holy Virgin, sun-goddess or alien being — was a symbol of rightness of the moment: the time, the person, the location.

Cindy sat upon the earth, in the passageway of open stones leading to the chamber. And began, with his fingers and the heel of his hand, to drum himself into separation .

This was the meeting place, the place of the confluence of many paths.

He began to chant, to the hollow, rhythmic resonance of the old drum.

Meeting place .