Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Oh, Mother.' Ma dropped her stick. She'd made it home.

She fell down upon the stone, the edge of her woollen skirt in the rock pool; began to cry, words bubbling out of her like the water from the rock. 'I've brought thee nowt… Forgive me, Mother. Not properly dressed. Dint know I were coming, see.'

She sat up, crossed herself, closed her eyes, all hot and teary. Cupped her hands into the pool and brought the spring water to her eyes. And when they were touched by the water, she saw at last, through her eyelids, a warm, bright light.

Ma lifted up her hands into the light, and felt them touch the hem of the radiant blue robe of the Mother, the material that felt like a fine and silken rain.

She began to mumble, the old words dropping into place, words in English, words in Latin, words in an olden-day language that was neither Welsh nor Gaelic, words from the Bible, power-words and humble-words. Words to soak up the light and bring it into her blood. Come into me, Mother, give me light and give me strength, give me the holy power to face your enemies and to withstand…

The shadow fell across her.

The bright blue gauze dissolved. Ma's eyes opened into pain.

The curate stood astride the sacred spring. Big and stupid as a Victorian stone angel.

'So,' he said. 'This is it, is it?'

He kicked a pebble into the pool. 'It's even more tawdry than I expected, Mrs Wagstaff.'

'Go away,' Ma said quietly, looking down into the pool. 'What's it to do wi' you? Go on. Clear off. Come back when you're older.'

'What's it to do with me?' He stood there thick and hard as granite. 'You can ask that? Where did you get this?' With a hand like a spade, he plucked the Mother from her stone hollow. 'One of these Catholic shops, I suppose. Or was it taken from a church? Hmm?'

He held the statue at arm's length. 'Hardly a work of art, Mrs Wagstaff. But hardly deserving of this kind of grubby sacrilege.'

Ma was on her feet, blinding pain ripping through every sinew. 'You put that back! That's sacred, that is! Put it back now! Call yourself a minister of God? You're nobbut a thick bloody vandal wi' no more brains than pig shit!'

'And you,' he said, tucking the statue under an arm, 'are a poor, misguided old woman who ought to be in a Home, where you can be watched over until you die.'

Ma Wagstaff tried to stand with dignity and couldn't.

Joel Beard bent his face to hers. 'You're a throwback, Mrs Wagstaff. A remnant. My inclination as a human being is to feel very sorry for you, but my faith won't allow me to do that.'

Behind his eyes she saw a cold furnace.

'Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!'

The statue hefted above his head like a club. Ma cowered.

'Oh, no…'He lowered the statue to chest-height. 'Don't cringe, Mrs Wagstaff. I wouldn't hurt you physically. I'm a servant of God. I merely remind you of the strong line the Bible takes on your particular… sub-species.'

Joel Beard put out a contemptuous hand to help her up. She looked at the hand and its fingers became a bundle of twisted twigs bound roughly together, and the connection was made with the thing on the Moss, two opposing terminals, the black and the white, each as dangerous and Ma stranded in the middle.

'Gerraway from me!' She shrank back, feeling that if she touched his hand she'd be burned alive.

'What are you afraid of, Mrs Wagstaff?'

'I'm afraid of denseness,' Ma said. 'Kind of denseness as rips down a child's offering, smashes it on t'stones…'

'But… but it was evil,' he said reasonably. 'Can't you people see that? Primitive. Heathen. It insulted the true Cross.'

Ma Wagstaff shook her head. 'Tha knows nowt. Tha's big and arrogant, and tha knows nowt. Tha's not fit to wipe Hans Gruber's arse.'

Joel Beard raised the statue of the Mother far above his head. His face severe. His golden curls tight as stone.

'All right, then,' he said. 'Be your own salvation, Mrs Wagstaff.'

Ma grabbed at the air, eyes widening in horror. She began to whimper. Joel smashed the Mother down on the rocks and her head broke easily, pounded to plaster-dust

Ma Wagstaff cried out. The cry of the defeated, the gutted, the desolate.

Gone. Nowt left. Gone to dust.

Beating the plaster from his hands and his green hiking jacket, Joel Beard strode away across the dirty-yellow moorgrass. Fragments floated in the centre of the pool until the springwater scattered them, making widening circles over the Mother's headless body.

For the first time since all this had begun, Lottie's hands began to shake, and she pressed them against the hot-plate covers on the stove so that if the policeman had seen it he'd think she was simply cold.

It was a bad dream, switching from one dreadful scene to another until the horror was spinning about her like a merry-go-round of black shadow-horses, and whichever way she turned…

She turned back to the policeman, who, to give him his due, looked no happier about this than she felt. Steadying her voice, she said, 'You want to dig up my husband.'

'This is…' Inspector Ashton exhaled down his nose. 'Look, Mrs Castle, if there was any other way… It's not your husband we want to… see. It's the grave itself. Normally when there's an exhumation it's at the request of the coroner or the pathologist, to enable further examination of a body. In this case we don't want to touch the body, we don't even want to open the coffin. We… have reason to believe the grave may have been disturbed before your husband was placed in it.'

Lottie felt her face muscles harden. Somebody had blown the gaff on Ma Wagstaff and her primitive rituals. What the hell else had the old hag been up to?

'We have reason to believe,' Ashton said, 'that certain… stolen goods may be buried under your husband's coffin.'

'What goods?'

'I'd rather not say at the present time, if you don't mind, Mrs Castle.'

He'd turned up in the bar not long after Moira had left. On his own. Asked if he might have a word. All very casual and quiet.

Lottie thought about the implications. 'And what if I don't agree?'

Ashton sighed, 'it'll just take longer for us to get permission.'

'But you'll get it anyway.'

Ashton nodded. 'Between ourselves, what does bother me is that the person who's made the allegations about this… these stolen goods… has intimated that if we don't act on them quickly, he'll make his suspicions known to the media. I don't need to tell you what that would mean in terms of invasion of privacy, unwarranted intrusion into private grief, reporters all over your doorstep…'

'You mean,' said Lottie, 'that this man's blackmailing you?'

Ashton laughed. 'If only it was that simple. No, I was inclined to disbelieve him at first, but now I agree there's a strong basis for thinking something's down there as shouldn't be. And if we can handle our excavations discreetly, after dark, inconspicuous, no fuss…'

'Have you spoken to anyone else in the village?'

'No, I certainly haven't, and I'd be very much obliged if you'd keep this to yourself as well. Last thing we want is an audience. 'Course, we'll have to consult with the minister, but that won't be a problem, I shouldn't think.'

Lottie thought about Ma Wagstaff and her Old Ways and Matt's apparent acceptance of all this rubbish as part of the unique West Pennine tradition. Acknowledging, with much bitterness, Matt's part in all this.

'Right.' She pulled her hands from the stove. 'Go ahead. I'll sign whatever you want me to sign.'

'Thank you,' said Ashton ',That's very brave of you, Mrs Castle.'

'Just one thing.'

He'd begun to button his trenchcoat; he stopped.

'Keep me out of it, Inspector. I don't want to know when you do it or what you find. I don't want to be involved.'