Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Accidents happen,' the Duchess said. 'Leave it on the floor.'

Macbeth's fingers were trembling as he laid the pieces down. He needed a cigarette more urgently than at any time since he quit smoking six years ago.

'I never liked that one anyway,' the Duchess said.

Doubtless psyching out that Macbeth could use more hot tea, and fast, she filled up his cup and added two sugars.

He drank it all. She was offering him an easy way out. She was saying, what just happened – the plate – also, the skulls on the wall… this is kids' stuff… this is chickenshit compared to what a person could be letting himself in for if he pursues Moira Cairns.

Mungo Macbeth, maker of mini-series for the masses, thought maybe this was how King Arthur laid it on the line for any mad-assed knight of the Round Table figuring to go after the Holy Grail.

He'd often wondered about those less ambitious knights who listened to the horror stories and thought, Well, fuck this, what do 1 need with a Holy Grail? Maybe I should just stick around and lay me some more damsels, do a little Sunday jousting. How could those knights go on living with themselves, having passed up on the chance of the One Big Thing?

He said, 'Earlier, you said… about when a guy gets to wondering how much his life has really been worth and if there isn't more stuff in Heaven and Earth than he's reading about in the New York Times…'

The silent girl who'd brought the tea came back and took away the tray.

After she'd gone, he said, 'Duchess, why? I only met your daughter once, never even… Why? Can you tell me?'

Instead, the Duchess told him the story of a man who fell in love with the Queen of the Fairies and all the shit that put him into. Macbeth said he knew the songs. Tarn Lin, Thomas The Rymer, all that stuff? But that wasn't the same thing, surely, Moira Cairns was a human being.

'That's quite true,' the Duchess said gravely. 'But remember this. Wherever she goes, that young woman… she's bound to be touched with madness. Now, who is the white man?'

'White man?'

'I thought perhaps you might be his emissary… White-skinned man? I don't think I mean race. Just a man exuding a whiteness?'

'Somebody I know?'

'You don't?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'I believe you don't. All right. Never mind.'

Macbeth asked, 'Do you know where Moira is?'

'Oh… the little Jewish person, Kaufmann, tells me she's in the North of England.'

'Bastard wouldn't tell me.'

'You he doesn't trust. Strange, that – I find you quite transparent.'

'Thanks.'

'There was a man called… Matt?'

'Jesus, you intuited that?'

The Duchess sighed in exasperation. 'She told me.'

'Right,' Macbeth said, relieved. 'Matt, uh…'

'Castle. She thinks he was her mentor. I rather suspect she was his.'

'Right,' Macbeth said uncertainly.

'He's dead. She'll have gone to try and lay his spirit to rest.'

Macbeth squirmed a little. Was this precisely what was meant by things you couldn't find in the New York Times? Was this what Mom meant about uncovering his roots? He thought not.

The Duchess smiled kindly. 'You can leave now, if you wish, Mr Macbeth. I'll have Donald see you to the gate.'

'No, wait…' Two trains of thought were about to crash, buckling his usual A to B mental tracks. 'This, uh, white person…'

'A thin man with white hair and a very white complexion.'

The Castle. The bones. White-faced man with a cut eye.

'Shit, I don't believe this… you got that outa my head. You pulled it clean outa my head.'

'Mr Macbeth, calm down. Two or three weeks ago, a man of this description came to consult me. As people do… occasionally. He didn't get in. Donald is my first line of defence, the dogs are the second, and Donald told me the dogs disliked this man quite intensely. On sight. Now… dogs can't invariably be trusted, they may react badly to – oh – psychic disturbance in a person, or mental instability. But when a man arrives in an expensive car and seems very confident and the dogs hate him on sight…'

Stanhope, Macbeth thought. Stansgate?

'And when Donald conveyed my message that I was unwell, he was apparently quite annoyed. He sent a message back that he had information about my daughter which he thought I would wish to know. I suggested Donald should let the dogs have him.'

'What happened?'

'He left.'

Stanley? Stanmore? 'Duchess, you think this guy meant her harm?'

'Two people arrive within a short period to talk to me about my daughter. One the dogs dislike. How did the dogs take to you, Mr Macbeth?'

'I wasn't invited to play rubber-bone, but I seem to be intact.'

The Duchess nodded, 'I don't know how you found me – no, don't explain, it's not important. I didn't mention the man to Moira, she has enough problems, I think. But if you wanted to help her, you might keep an eye open for him. If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need never know, need she?'

Macbeth started thinking about the knights and the Holy Grail.

And this guy… Stanton? Stansfield?

From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

THE HISTORY OF BEER

Beer, of course, was brewed in Bridelow long before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ale was the original sacred drink, made from the water of the holy spring and the blessed barley and preserved with the richly-aromatic bog myrtle from the Moss.

Nigel Pennick writes, in his book Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition:

'Cakes or bread and ale are the sacrament of country tradition. The runic word for ale – ALU – is composed of the three runes As, Lagu and Ur. The first rune has the meaning of the gods or divine power; the second water and flow, and the third primal strength. The eating of bread and drinking of ale is the mystery of the transmutation of the energy in the grain into a form where it is reborn in our physical bodies.'

It follows, therefore, that, to some local people, the sale of the Bridelow brewery and the detachment of the beer-making process from its ancient origins, would seem to be a serious sapping of the village's inherent strength, perhaps even a symbolic draining away of its lifeblood.

'She's got to be in. I can hear the kettle boiling.'

And boiling and boiling. Whistling through the house. The kettle having hysterics.

'I've got a key,' Willie said, bringing out the whole bunch of them.

A dark, damp dread was settling around Moira. She took a step back on the short path leading to Ma Wagstaff's front door. Held on to a gatepost, biting a lip.

'What the f-' The door opening a few inches, then jamming and Willie putting his shoulder to it. 'Summat caught behind here…'

'Hey, stop, Willie… Jesus.'

Through the crack in the door, she'd seen a foot, black-shod and pointing upwards. She drew Willie gently back and showed him.

'Oh, Christ,' Willie said drably.

He didn't approach the door again. He said quietly, 'Moira, do us a favour. Nip across to t'Post Office. Fetch Milly.'

'What about a doctor?'

'She wouldn't thank you for a doctor. Just get Milly. Milly Gill.' Moira didn't need to say a word. Milly Gill looked at her and lost her smile, shooed out two customers and shut up the post office. Ran ahead of Moira across the street, big floral bosom heaving.

When they got to the house, Willie had the front door wide open and tears of horror in his eyes. Milly Gill moved past him to where the old woman lay in a small, neat bundle at the bottom of the stairs, eyes like glass buttons, open mouth a breathless void, one leg crooked under her brown woollen skirt.

The body looked as weightless as a sparrow. Moira doubted she'd ever seen anything from which life was so conspicuously absent. A life which, obviously, had been so much more than the usual random mesh of electrical impulses. Even when it was moving, the little body had been the least of Ma Wagstaff.