A Crown of Lights (2 page)

‘Off what?’

‘That’s what they say. It’s their word. If you’re an immigrant you’re “from Off”. I’d forgotten that. I was not quite eleven when we left there. And then we were in Yorkshire, and Yorkshire flattens all the traces.’

Curtains of cold red light hung from the heavens into the roofless nave. When Robin emerged from the tower entrance, she took his cold hand in her even colder ones.

‘Sorry to be a frigid bitch. It’s been a heavy, heavy day.’

The church was mournful around her. It was like a huge, blackened sheep skeleton, with its ribs opened out.
Incongruously, it actually came with the house. Robin had been ecstatic. For him, it had been
the
deciding factor.

Betty let go of Robin’s hand. She was now facing where the altar must have been – the English side. And it was here, on this frigid January evening, that she had the flash.

A shivering sense of someone at prayer – a man in a long black garment, stained. His face unshaven, glowing with sweat and an unambiguous vivid fear. He’d discovered or identified or been told something he couldn’t live with. In an instant, Betty felt she was suffocating in a miasma of body odour and anguish.

No!
She hauled in a cold breath, pulling off her woollen hat, shaking out her sheaf of blonde hair.
Go away. Don’t want you
.

Cold. Damp. Nothing else. Shook herself like a wet dog.
Gone
.

This was how it happened. Always without warning, rarely even a change in the temperature.

‘And it’s not officially a church any more,’ Robin was reminding her – he hadn’t, of course, sensed a thing. ‘So this is not about causing offence. Long as we don’t knock it down, we can do what we like here. This is
so cool
. We get to reclaim an old, pagan sacred place!’

And Betty thought in cold dismay, What kind of sacred is this? But what she actually said, surprised at her own calmness, was, ‘I just think we have to take it slowly. I know the place is decommissioned, but there’re bound to be local people whose families worshipped here for centuries. And whose grandparents got married here and... and buried, of course.’

There were still about a dozen gravestones and tombs visible around the church and, although all the remains were supposed to have been taken away and reinterred after the diocese dumped the building itself, Betty knew that when they started to garden here they’d inevitably unearth bones.

‘And maybe,’ Robin said slyly, ‘just maybe... there are people whose distant ancestors worshipped here
before
there was a Christian church.’

‘You’re pushing it there.’

‘I like pushing it.’

‘Yeah,’ Betty agreed bitterly.

They moved out of the ruined church and across the winterhard field and then over the yard to the back of the house. She’d left a light on in the hall. It was the only light they could see anywhere – although if they walked around to the front garden, they would find the meagre twinklings of the village of Old Hindwell dotted throughout the high, bare hedge.

She could hear the rushing of the Hindwell Brook, which almost islanded this place when, like now, it was swollen. There’d been weeks of hard rain, while they’d been making regular trips back and forth from their Shrewsbury flat in Robin’s cousin’s van, bringing all the books and stuff and wondering if they were doing the right thing.

Or at least Betty had. Robin had been obsessed from the moment he saw the ruined church and the old yew trees around it in a vague circle and the mighty Burfa Camp in the background and the enigmatic Four Stones less than a couple of miles away. And when he’d heard of the recent archaeological discoveries – the indications of a ritual palisade believed to be the second largest of its kind in Europe – it had blown him clean away. From then on, he
needed
to live here.

‘There you go.’ He bent down to the back doorstep. ‘What’d I tell ya?’ He lifted up something whitish.

‘What’s that?’

‘It is a carrier bag – Tesco, looks like. The individual by the river had one with him. I’m guessing this is it.’

‘He left it on our step?’

‘House-warming present, maybe? It’s kinda heavy.’

‘Put it down,’ Betty said quietly.

‘Huh?’

‘I’m serious. Put it back on the step, and go inside, put on the lights.’

‘Jeeeeeeez!’ Robin tossed back his head and howled at the newborn moon. ‘I do not understand you! One minute I’m over reacting – which, OK, I do, I overreact sometimes, I confess
– and this is some harmless old guy making his weary way home to his humble fireside... and the next, he’s like dumping ten pounds of Semtex or some shit—’

‘Just put it down, Robin.’

Exasperated, Robin let the bag fall. It clumped solidly on the stone. Robin unlocked the back door.

Betty waited for him to enter first. She wouldn’t touch the bag.

It was knotted at the top. She watched Robin wrench it open. A sheet of folded notepaper fell out. He spread it out on the table and she read the type over his shoulder.

Dear Mr and Mrs Thorogood,

In the course of renovation work by the previous occupants of your house, this receptacle was found in a cavity in the wall beside the fireplace. The previous occupants preferred not to keep it and gave it away. It has been suggested you may wish to restore it to its proper place.

With all good wishes,

The Local People

‘ “The Local People”?’

Robin let the typewritten note flutter to the tabletop. ‘
All
of them? The entire population of Old Hindwell got together to present the newcomers with a wooden box with...’ He lifted the hinged lid, ‘... some paper in it.’

The box was of oak. It didn’t look all that old. Maybe a century, Betty thought. It was the size of a pencil box she’d had as a kid – narrow, coffin-shaped. You could probably fit it in the space left by a single extracted brick.

She was glad there was only paper in there, not... well, bones or something. She’d never seriously thought of Semtex, only bones. Why would she think that? She found she was shivering slightly, so kept her red ski jacket on.

Robin was excited, naturally: a mysterious wooden box left by a shadowy stranger, a cryptic note... major,
major
turn-on for him. She knew that within the next hour or so he’d have found the original hiding place of that box, if he had to pull the entire fireplace to pieces. He’d taken off his fleece and his mirrored fez. The warrior on the battlements had been replaced by the big schoolboy innocent.

He flicked on all the kitchen lights – just dangling bulbs, as yet, which made the room look even starker than in daylight. They hadn’t done anything with this room so far. There was a Belfast sink and a cranky old Rayburn and, under the window, their pine dining table and chairs from the flat. The table was much too small for this kitchen; up against the wall, under a window full of the day’s end, it looked like... well, an altar. For which this was not the correct place – and anyway, Betty was not yet sure she wanted an altar in the house. Part of the reason for finding a rural hideaway was to consider her own future, which – soon she’d have to confess to Robin – might not involve the Craft.

‘The paper looks old,’ Robin said. ‘Well... the ink went brown.’

‘Gosh, Rob, that must date it back to... oh, arguably pre-1980.’

He gave her one of those looks which said: Why have you no basic romance in you any more?

Which wasn’t true. She simply felt you should distinguish between true insight and passing impressions, between fleeting sensations and real feelings.

The basic feeling she had – especially since her sense of the praying man in the church – was one of severe unease. She would rather the box had not been delivered. She wished she didn’t have to know what was inside it.

Robin put the paper, still folded, on the table and just looked at it, not touching. Experiencing the moment, the
here
ness, the
now
ness.

And the disapproval of his lady.

All right, he’d happily concede that he loved all of this: the textures of twilight, those cuspy, numinous nearnesses. He’d agree that he didn’t like things to be over-bright and clear cut; that he wanted a foot in two countries – to feel obliquely linked to the
old
worlds.

And what was so wrong with that? He looked at the wild and golden lady who should be Rhiannon or Artemis or Titania but insisted on being called the ultimately prosaic
Betty
(this perverse need to appear ordinary).
She
knew what he needed – that he didn’t want too many mysteries explained, didn’t care to
know
precisely what ghosts were. Nor did he want the parallel world of faerie all mapped out like the London Underground. It was the gossamer trappings and wrappings that had given him a profession and a good living. He was Robin Thorogood: illustrator, seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways.

The box, then... Well, sure, the box
had
been more interesting unopened. Unless the paper inside was a treasure map.

He pushed it towards Betty. ‘
You
wanna check this out?’

She shook her head. She wouldn’t go near it. Robin rolled his eyes and picked up the paper. It fell open like a fan.

‘Well, it’s handwritten.’ He spread it flat on the tabletop.

‘Don’t count on it,’ Betty said. ‘You can fake all kinds of stuff with computers and scanners and paintboxes.
You
do it all the time.’

‘OK, so it’s a scam. Kirk Blackmore rigged it.’

‘If it was Kirk Blackmore,’ Betty said, ‘the box would have ludicrous runes carved all over it and when you opened it, there’d be clouds of dry ice.’

‘I guess. Oh
no
.’

‘What’s up?’

‘It’s some goddamn religious crap. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or one of those chain letters?’

‘OK, let me see.’ Betty came round and peered reluctantly at the browned ink. ‘ “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen, amen, amen...” Amen three times.’

‘Dogmatic.’

‘Hmmm.’ Betty read on in silence, not touching the paper. She was standing directly under one of the dangling light-bulbs, so her hair was like a winter harvest. Robin loved that her hair seemed to have life of its own.

When she stepped away, she swallowed.

He said hoarsely, ‘What?’

‘Read.’

‘Poison pen?’

She shook her head and walked away toward the rumbling old Rayburn stove.

Robin bent over the document. Some of it was in Latin, which he couldn’t understand. But there was a row of symbols, which excited him at once.

Underneath, the words in English began. Some of them he couldn’t figure out. The meaning, however, was plain.

In the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Amen Amen Amen...

O Lord, Jesus Christ Saviour Salvator I beseech the salvation of all who dwell within from witchcraft and from the power of all evil men or women or spirits or wizards or hardness of heart Amen Amen Amen... Dei nunce... Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen.

By Jehovah, Jehovah and by the Ineffable Names 17317... Lord Jehovah... and so by the virtue of these Names Holy Names may all grief and dolor and all diseases depart from the dwellers herein and their cows and their horses and their sheep and their pigs and poultry without any molestation. By the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen Amen... Elohim... Emmanuel...

Finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might that we may overcome all witches spells
and Inchantment or the power of Satan. Lord Jesus deliver them this day – April, 1852.

Robin sat down. He tried to smile, for Betty’s sake and because, in one way, it was just so ironic.

But he couldn’t manage a smile; he’d have to work on that. Because this
was
a joke, wasn’t it? It
could
actually be from Kirk Blackmore or one of the other authors, or Al Delaney, the art director at Talisman. They all knew he was moving house, and the new address: St Michael’s Farm, Old Hindwell, Radnorshire.

But this hadn’t arrived in the mail. And also, as Betty had pointed out, if it had been from any of those guys it would have been a whole lot more extreme – creepier, more Gothic, less homespun. And dated much further back than 1852.

No, it was more likely to be from those it said it was from.

The Local People – whatever that meant.

Truth was they hadn’t yet encountered any
local
local people, outside of the wood guy and Greg Starkey, the London-born landlord at the pub where they used to lunch when they were bringing stuff to the farm, and whose wife had come on to Robin one time.

Betty had her back to the Rayburn for warmth and comfort. Robin moved over to join her. He also, for that moment, felt isolated and exposed.

‘I don’t get this,’ he said. ‘How could anyone here
possibly
know about us?’

T
HERE WERE FOUR
of them in the hospital cubicle: Gomer and Minnie, and Merrily Watkins... and death.