Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

Except Athena White showing her little teeth.

‘If you know all this, Watkins, what do you want from me?’

‘Well… that’s all I know about Mithras and Mithraism. Although I think I recall old pictures of him in one of those caps like a beanie.’

‘The Phrygian cap. I’ll accept that the little chap was less handsome than Christ, with that… perpetual petulance. But then, the Roman Mithras was all about finding spiritual fulfilment through killing. An ancient sun god adopted by Roman emperors, hailed as the protector of soldiers. A sun god worshipped in darkness… in underground chambers stinking of blood. Now, what exactly are you looking for?’

‘Don’t know how it works, basically. Only that it was eventually supplanted by Christianity.’

‘Supplanted. That’s what you think, is it?’

‘Well, it certainly came off second best. Even at the time.’

‘Did it?’

Miss White hunched herself up, coquettishly, like a venomous bushbaby in the fork of a tree.

‘I imagine you’re familiar with the missives of St Paul? Who instructed the Ephesians to put on the whole armour of God… the breastplate of righteousness… the helmet of salvation… the sword of the Spirit…’

‘What a thug that guy was,’ Merrily said uncertainly.

‘And where did he get it? Where did all that military imagery come from? His home town, of course. Tarsus. A veritable hotbed of Mithraism. Onward, Christian Soldiers. Mithraism wasn’t supplanted by Christianity at all – they existed side by side for centuries and one fed the other. Scholars ask why Mithraism suddenly disappeared. It didn’t, of course.’

Merrily sat shaking her head. Whatever you got from Athena White you had to pay for, big time.

‘Consider, Watkins. It’s not merely the military imagery that’s seeped into the churches, it’s the whole ethos. Think of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition… the ghastly Bush and that grinning shit Blair who took us to war and then had the audacity to turn Catholic.’ Miss White’s eyes lit up. ‘Now there was an interesting coincidence! The bloody thread of the true Roman religion. Does he even know, do you think?’

‘Not for me to say.’

‘Hold up your bloodied cross, and what do you see? The handle of the sword of Mithras. The sword which now forms what some might think of as the spine of Christianity.’

‘Well, that’s not quite-’

‘Tell me this, Watkins… how do you know that you yourself are not, to some degree, a child of Mithraism?’

Merrily smiled.

‘Because, Athena… I’m a woman.’

Miss White clapped her tiny hands.

‘ Excellent reply. Now we can begin.’

Danny looked up at the black iron gates which would’ve replaced a standard wooden five-bar, the wall of dressed stone where it used to be chicken wire.

‘What we gonner be looking for, then, Gomer? Blood? Feathers? Empty lager cans?’

He had his new phone with him. Supposed to be a decent camera in there with a shedload of pixels. Should do the job. Shading his eyes, he looked out over the shining roofs of all the cars to the high ground behind the Court.

‘It’s all changed.’

‘Can’t change the countryside, boy,’ Gomer said.

‘You reckon?’

‘The ole Unicorn was up by the top bridge, and the cockpit was in the field behind the yard, so I reckon it’s gotter be up by that stand o’ pine.’

‘Well fenced off,’ Danny said. ‘So we gotter do it the hard way?’

He’d been hoping they could get what they’d come for without having to go in with the media and the gentry and the dickheads in chains of office. Far as he could judge from the number of parked cars, there was likely two hundred people here: press, radio and telly and a bunch of bored freeloaders helping themselves to a rich bastard’s hospitality.

Halfway up The Court’s new gravel driveway they were stopped by a stocky woman, short bleached hair, a warning finger on her lips. Regional BBC were interviewing Savitch with his house in the background. The reporter, Mandy Patel, smiling up at him and nodding hard, the way TV reporters did but nobody ever did in real life.

‘Oh, dear me, no,’ Savitch was going. ‘Not the New Cotswolds, this is absolutely not about the so-called New Cotswolds. This is about the Old Marches! ’

Lifting a fist, like he’d just coined a new slogan. What a dick. A phoney cheer went up from behind him, from folks Danny had never seen before, whose idea of the Old Marches would be around 1998.

Gomer turned away, fishing out his ciggy tin. In his old tweed cap, yellow muffler, red and green trainers from Hay and Brecon Farmers, he looked like part of the stage dressing.

‘Now, it’s a fact,’ Savitch was saying, ‘that last year, by far the highest percentage of British incomers t’this area was from London itself. However-’

‘You included, of course,’ Mandy Patel said.

‘Indeed. Yes, of course, Mandy, but what’s seldom understood is that most of us don’t want t’bring London out here, we want t’sustain and fortify the essential character of the Old Marches. Everything we do here comes out of the area. Local skills, local tradition. I want to win the respect and trust of the real people.’

Jesus wept. This was how the Americans used to talk in Iraq, while all the corpses got shovelled off the streets. Hearts and minds.

Gomer sniffed, rolling his ciggy. Got a few hard looks but nobody was gonner challenge a man who looked more Old Marches than any bugger here. Danny looked beyond the TV people at the tarted-up farmhouse, its reblackened timbers bulging like black Botox lips around the white plaster. He saw men in old-fashioned leather jerkins, women dressed as serving wenches with trays of fizzy wine. He saw a load of phoney shite.

There wasn’t much more to Savitch than spreadsheets and flow-charts, but a few folks would clock the muted tweedy jacket and what looked like working men’s boots and go, Gotter hand it to him, at least he’s making an effort to fit in. Some country folks, when it came down to basics, were no wiser than town folks.

Mandy Patel lifted a finger, then the cameraman straightened up from his tripod and Savitch shook hands with both of them and moved on along the drive, people patting him on the back.

‘OK, thanks,’ the woman with the short bleached hair said to Danny. ‘You can go through now. Thank you for your patience.’

Looking down her nose at Gomer’s ciggy, then turning away, talking to a woman with a name-tag that said Country Pride magazine. Danny hung around, listening.

‘… going to ask you about Countryside Defiance, Rachel,’ the magazine woman said. ‘I see you’ve a stand over there.’

‘Well, sure,’ this Rachel said, and Danny recognized her now, from the TV. ‘Country-dwellers are still seen either as dinosaur gentry, old hippies or retired roses-round-the-door types. If we don’t start appealing to younger people with money we’re going to be dead in the water, darling.’

Danny turned away, feeling like he was drowning in liquid shit. Saw the TV woman and the cameraman, tripod over one shoulder, head across the lawns past the Green displays – solar panels, domestic wind-turbines, geo-thermal heating and other expensive kit that never quite worked.

‘Smiffy Gill doesn’t come cheap,’ Rachel said, ‘but he’s certainly good value if you’re trying to show how cutting-edge the country is.’

‘He’s not here, is he?’

The magazine woman looking hopefully around, Rachel frowning.

‘Might come later. Meantime, talk to Ward. Talk to Kenny, who’s an absolute treasure, frighteningly macho. Talk to the local councillor, Pierce, who’s youngish and local.’