Phil Rickman - Crybbe

'We'll have to be a bit quick, Joe,' Fay said, rewinding.

Murray Beech watched his sermon rolling out of the printer with barely an hour to go before the service. Normally he worked at least three weeks in advance, storing the sermons on computer disk. This one had been completed only last night, at great personal risk – Murray had twice lost entire scripts due to power cuts.

But the electricity rarely failed in the morning, and the printer whizzed it out without interruption.

Certain claims have already been made for the effects of this so-called New Awakening…

Why am I doing this? he asked himself.

Because it's what they want to hear, he answered shamefully. Never imagined it would come to this. What harm were they causing, these innocent cranks with their ley-lines and their healing rays?

Ironically, Murray had come to Crybbe aware of the need for tolerance with country folk, their local customs, their herbal remedies. But it had proved to be a myth. Country people, real country people weren't like this, not in Crybbe anyway, where he'd never been offered a herbal remedy or even a pot of home-made jam. And where the only custom was the curfew, an unsmiling ritual, performed without comment.

On a metal bookshelf sat the three-volume set of Kilvert's Diary given to him by Kirsty when he told her he was leaving Brighton to become a vicar in the border country.

'Just like Kilvert!' She'd been thrilled. He'd never heard of Kilvert, so she'd bought him the collected diaries, the record (expressively written, if you liked that sort of thing) of a young Victorian clergyman's life, mainly in the village of Gyro, about twenty miles from Crybbe. Kilvert had found rich colours in nature and in the people around him. He'd also found warmth and friends, even if he did have a rather disturbing predilection for young girls.

Murray's stomach tightened; he was thinking of dark-eyed Tessa, a sweat dab over her lips.

Loneliness.

Loneliness had brought him to this.

I've no friends here.

Kirsty had spent a week in Crybbe, long enough to convince her this was not the border country beloved of Francis Kilvert.

'You once said you'd follow me anywhere my calling took me. Africa… South America…'

'But not Crybbe, Murray. I'd die. I'd wither.'

She'd given him Kilvert's diary for his birthday two years ago.

Exactly two years ago. Today was his birthday.

'Is there no chance of your finding a living down here, Murray?' his mother had asked this morning, on the phone.

They'd been proud, of course, as he had, when he'd been given Crybbe – such a large parish, such a young man.

Nobody else wanted it.

No home-made jam. No Women's Institute. No welcome at the primary school. No harvest-supper. No bell-ringers. No friends. No wife.

He could, of course, have betrayed the inert, moribund villagers by siding openly with the New Age community, who at least sought some kind of spirituality, albeit misguided. He could, perhaps, have made friends, of a sort, amongst them.

But he knew his role as priest was to support his parishioners, even if they did not support him, apart from token mute appearance at his services. Even if they did not deserve him.

Murray was disgusted with himself for thinking that.

Loneliness. Loneliness had brought him to this.

The only way either of them knew into the wood was through the Court grounds. When they arrived there in Fay's Fiesta, Rachel was outside the stables with one of the interior designers, a small, completely bald man she introduced as Simon.

'What this place is about,' Simon was saying, 'is drama. Drama and spectacle.'

Powys didn't even have to go inside to see what he meant. The original stable doors had been replaced with huge portals of plate-glass, through which you could look down into a kind of theatre, the kitchen and dining-room walled off from a single cavernous room, the length of the building, ending in a wide wooden desk, its back to the huge picture-window.

And the Tump.

When Max was sitting at his desk, he would be directly under the mound. From the top of the room it would look as if the great tumulus with its wavy trees was growing out of his head.

Especially now that…

'What happened to the wall?'

Rachel grimaced. 'Person or persons unknown came in the night to do Max a big favour, using Gomer Parry's bulldozer. I'm sure Humble knows who it was, he tends to be out there in the small hours, killing things. But Humble isn't saying.'

The attack on the wall, the opening up of the stable-block, with glass at either end… the formation of a conduit between the Tump and Crybbe.

Powys looked at it through Goff's eyes: a stream of healing energy – deep blue – surging through the stables, through the Court itself, through the wood to the church and then into the town.

Equally, though, you could see the Tump as a huge malignant tumour, assisted at last to spread its black cells and bring secondary cancers to Crybbe, a town already old and mouldering.

'Natural drama,' Simon, the designer, said. 'Great.'

In the centre of the wood was a huge hole, newly dug, around five feet deep.

'Must be destined for a big one,' Powys said. 'And they're making sure it's going to be visible.'

Fay looked around in horror. 'There was a bit of a clearing when I was here with Henry, but nothing… nothing like this.'

The immediate area was strewn with chainsaw carnage, stumps of slaughtered trees, heaps of wet ash where branches had been burned.

Looking back the way they'd come, Powys could see the roof of the Court. 'I reckon most of this wood's going to disappear. They want to open up the view from the prospect chamber, reconnect the town with the Court – and the Tump.'

'But you can't just chop down a whole wood!' Fay glared at Rachel, who backed off, holding up both hands.

'Listen, I know nothing about this. This is Boulton-Trow's province.'

'Aren't trees like this protected?'

'I should imagine so,' said Rachel. 'But it's hardly an imprisonable offence. You can take out injunctions to prevent people chopping down individual trees, but once they're gone, they're gone, and if you do it quietly, well…'

'Like starting from the middle and working outwards,' Powys said. 'I don't know how old this wood is, but the indication from the prospect chamber is that at the end of the sixteenth century it wasn't here at all. I reckon it was planted not to give the Court more privacy but so the townsfolk couldn't see the Court. So they could pretend it wasn't there. Just as the stable-block was put in to block the Court off from the Tump. They were scared of something.'

He was balancing on the edge of the hole, looking down. So, Fay, this is where Henry discovered there'd been a stone.'

'I think so. Must be.'

'And yet he had the feeling the stone that stood here wasn't an old stone.'

'That's what he seemed to be saying.' Fay was more concerned about the wholesale destruction of the wood. 'And they are supposed to be bloody New Age people!' She peered through what remained of the trees. 'Can I get to the church this way?'

'Sure,' Rachel said. 'Five minutes' walk. There's a footpath newly widened. Goes past a redbrick heap called Keeper Cottage, which is where Boulton-Trow's living.'

'He lives here?' Powys said, surprised. 'In the wood?'

'Yes, and rather him than me. Go past it, anyway. Fay, and you're in the churchyard in no time.'

'Thanks.' Fay pulled a bunch of keys from her bag. 'Do me a favour, Joe, I've got to catch Murray's blasted sermon. Could you bring my car round to the church when you've finished here. It's got the Uher in the back. I'll need to interview him afterwards.'

She vanished into the bushes. Like an elf, he thought.