Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

And then, leaving it out there, shuffled back to his cell. Locking the thick and ancient door of his sanctuary against the pagan night. Falling uncomfortably into the rickety bed.

Tread carefully, Joel.

What did the Archdeacon mean by that? Joel would tread with the courage and determination of the first Christians to walk these hills. Those who had driven the heathens from their place of worship and built upon it this church.

And whose holy task, because of the isolation of the place and the inbred superstition of the natives, had yet to be completed..

With God's help, Joel Beard would drive out the infidel. For ever. Cathy was pouring boiling water out of a big white teapot, down the sink. 'Forgot to put the bloody tea in. I'm a bit impractical.'

'Well, don't bother for me,' Moira said. 'I have to go.'

'You're the singer, aren't you?' Cathy filled the kettle, plugged it into an old-fashioned fifteen-amp wall-socket. It was that kind of kitchen, thirty years out of date but would never be antique. Moira said wearily, yes, she was the singer.

Cathy said, 'Still, I bet you don't play the piano as good as me:

Moira grinned. 'How long you known Dic?'

'Years. On and off. He'd come up to Bridelow with his father at weekends. I used to fancy him rotten at one time.'

'Used to?'

Cathy shrugged. 'That was when we were the same age,' she said elliptically.

Moira looked at her. A little overweight; pale, wispy hair pulled back off a face that was too young, yet, to reflect Cathy's cute sense of irony.

'When we came in, you said you thought your father was knackered. You said it'd do him good to get out of this place for a while.'

'I said that, did I?'

Try again. 'You were born here?'

'So they tell me. I don't live here at present. I'm in Oxford.'

'Doing what?'

'Studying,' Cathy said. 'The principal occupation in Oxford, next to watching daytime telly and getting pissed.'

'What are you studying? Oh, hey, forget it. I'm tired of walking all around things. What I really want to know is what happened at Matt's funeral that fucked your dad up so bad. And who's the other minister, the big guy, and how come you don't like him. Also, who's the crone who fumbles in coffins, and why was your daddy letting it go on. That's for starters.'

Cathy straightened up at the sink. 'You can't do that.'

'Huh?'

'You can't just come into Bridelow and ask questions like that straight out.'

'Oh. Really. Well, I'll be leaving then.'

'OK,' Cathy said lightly.

The avalanche of liquid peat hit him like effluent in a flooded drain and then it was swirling around him and he was like a seabird trapped in an oil-slick, his wings glued to his body. If he struggled it would tear his wings from his shoulders and enter his body and choke him. He could taste it already in his throat and his nose.

But, even as it filled his dream, he knew that the tide of peat was only a metaphor for the long centuries of accumulated Godless filth in this village.

He knew also that he did have wings that could carry him far above it.

For he was an angel.

And if he remained still and held his light within him the noxious tide could never overwhelm him.

Joel dreamed on.

Although the stone room around him was cold, the black peat in the dream was warm. He remained still and the peat settled around him like cushions.

Inside his dreaming self, the light kept on burning. Its heat was intense and its flame, like the one inside the paraffin heater, became a tight, blue jet arising from a circle. It heated up the peat too.

In his dream he was naked and the peat was as warm and sensuous as woman-skin against him. Moira waited for her by the Rectory gate.

It was bitterly cold. She imagined the walls of the village cottages tightening under the frost.

Cathy came round the side of the house, a coat around her shoulders. 'How'd you know I'd come after you?'

Moira shrugged.

'You're like old Ma Wagstaff, you are. You know that?'

'That's…'

'The crone, yes.'

'I hope not,' Moira said. Well, dammit… Willie's old mother? And he never said. All those years and he never said a word.

'I'm trying to understand it all,' Cathy said. 'Somebody has to work it all out before we lose it. Most people here don't bother any more. It's just history. I suppose that's been part of the problem.'

Moira realised she was just going to have to do some listening, see what came together. The church clock shone out blue-white and cold, as if it was the source of the frost.

'The old ways,' Moira said. 'Sometimes they don't seem exactly relevant. And people get scared for their kids. Yeh, you're right, they don't want to understand, most of them. But can you blame them?'

'It's not even as if it's particularly simple. Not like Buddhism or Jehovah's Witness-ism,' Cathy said. 'Not like you can hand out a pamphlet and say, "Here it is, it's all there." I mean, you can spend years and years prising up little stones all over the place trying to detect bits of patterns '

Cathy fell silent, and Moira found she was listening to the night The night was humming faintly – a tune she knew. People like me, she thought, we travel different roads, responding to the soundless songs and the invisible lights.

It's all too powerful… the heritage… maybe you should go away and when you get back your problems will be in perspective…go somewhere bland… St Moritz, Tunbridge Wells…

Bridelow?

Ah, Duchess, you old witch.

She said, 'So what is the history of this place? I mean, the relevant bits.'

'You need to talk to Mr Dawber. He's our local historian.'

'And what would he tell me?'

'Probably about the Celts driven out of the lowlands by the Romans first and then the Saxons.'

'The English Celts? From Cheshire and Lancashire?'

'And Shropshire and North Wales. It was all one in those days. They fled up here, and into the Peak District, and because the land was so crap nobody tried too hard to turn them out. And besides, they'd set up other defences.'

'Other defences?'

'Well… not like Hadrian's Wall or Offa's Dyke.'

'The kind of defences you can't see,' Moira said.

'The kind of defences most people can't see,' corrected Cathy. She looked up into the cold sky. Moira saw that all the clouds had flown, leaving a real planetarium of a night.

Cathy said, 'She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you all this.'

'Who?'

'Ma Wagstaff, of course.'

'And what makes you so sure she doesn't know?'

'Oh, God,' Cathy said. 'You are like her. I knew it as soon as I saw you at the door.'

'It's the green teeth and the pointy hat,' said Moira.

'I don't know what it is, but when you've lived around here for a good piece of your life you get so you can recognize it.'

'But your old man's the minister.'

'And a bloody good one,' Cathy snapped. 'The best.'

' Right, Moira said. 'I'd like to meet him when he's feeling better.'

'We'll see.' Cathy walked past her, out of the Rectory gates, stood in the middle of the street looking up at the church. 'It's a sensitive business, being Rector of Bridelow. How to play it. And if it's working, if it's trundling along… I mean, things have always sorted themselves out in Bridelow. It's been a really liberal-minded, balanced sort of community. A lot of natural wisdom around, however you want to define wisdom.'

The moonlight glimmered in her fair hair, giving her a silvery distinction. Then Moira realised it wasn't the moonlight at all, the moon was negligible tonight, a wafer. It was the light from the illuminated church clock.

'They call it the Beacon of the Moss,' Cathy said.

'Huh?'

'The church clock. That's interesting, don't you think? It's not been there a century yet and already it's part of the legend. That's Bridelow for you.'