A Crown of Lights (40 page)

‘Yeah.’ A whisper.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to hear it like this, because I could be making it up, couldn’t I? To support the stuff you were rubbishing this morning.’

‘Irene... what am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know. What happened... happened to other people. It’s not even a good coincidence. I mean, who believes in any of this crap?’

‘
You
do.’

‘I don’t know whether I do or not. And anyway, I’m just a fundamentalist Welsh Chapel bigot.’

‘Were there any other people mentioned on this Web site, apart from Mum?’

‘Probably. I didn’t look, to be honest. What if there’d turned out to be a whole bunch of names and biographies of people
and they were all recently dead or...? Shit, that’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it? Preying on your mind?’

‘Like, suppose there was this big hex thing and people... all over the country... the world... were being invited to, like, tune in and focus on Mum, the enemy, to put her off. Because, we both know how rubbish she was on that programme. I mean, she was fine on TV tonight, wasn’t she? Kind of cool, almost. Suppose it wasn’t just nerves that night. Suppose there were hundreds – thousands – of people sending her hate vibes or something. And then they all started focusing on that piece of road, where Dad... It’s
horrible
!’

‘It’s also complete crap, Jane. We’re just stretching things to fit the facts. We’re playing right into their hands.’

‘
Whose
hands?’

‘Anybody who frequents the Web site – including, presumably, Ned Bain, if he was the one putting it round about your mum. That doesn’t mean he’s behind any of it. It just tells us where he got his information.’

‘It’s still creepy.’

‘It’s meant to be creepy.’

‘Can you tell when it was originally pasted on the site?’

‘Somebody else might be able to, but not me. For all I know, somebody could have pushed it out
after
the show, to make it look... I don’t know. It’s all crap, and it makes me mad.’

‘Irene, I’m going to have to tell her.’

‘I think you should. I’ll try and find out some more.’

‘You’re wonderful,’ Jane said.
Whoops
. ‘Er... how’s the whiplash?’

‘Well, it just kind of hurts when I look over my shoulder.’

Jane instinctively looked over hers and shivered, and it wasn’t an exciting frisson kind of shiver. Not now.

‘A
MARTYR?
’ T
HE
rain had eased. Merrily pushed back the dripping hood of her saturated, once-waxed jacket. ‘With his chest all splattered. Perhaps that was what he wanted.’

When the police had gone in, she’d walked away from it all. Her first instinct had been to stay on Robin Thorogood’s side of the fence, maybe go and talk to him, but now the cops were doing that. Journalists and cameramen were together in another group by the gate at St Michael’s Farm, waiting for someone to emerge.

Ellis had been driven away in a white Transit van, the cross and the torches packed away in the back. His followers watched the white van’s tail lights disappear along the end of the track, talking quietly in groups. There was an air of damp anticlimax.

‘For just one moment,’ Merrily said to Gomer, ‘I thought—’

‘Coppers thought that, too. Out o’ their car in a flash.’

‘It looked like blood.’

‘Shit does, in a bad light.’

‘It really was?’

‘Sheepshit, or dogshit more like, stuck on a bloody great lump o’ soil. He din’t smell too fragrant then. Likely the real reason he’s buggered off so quick.’

‘Whoever threw it... that wasn’t a great idea. Thorogood was winning their argument.’

‘Young kiddie, it was. ’E had it on the end of a spade. Seen him come up behind the boy in the T-shirt.’

‘Still look good in the press, though,’ Merrily said glumly. ‘On their pictures he
will
look like a martyr. I...’ She glanced over the gate to where two police were still talking to Thorogood.

‘Look out, vicar,’ Gomer murmured.

Judith Prosser was heading over, without her Gareth. She wore a shiny new Barbour, a matching wide-brimmed hat.

‘They’ve found Barbara’s car, then, Mrs Watkins.’ She spotted Gomer. ‘Ah... I see you have your
informant
with you.’

‘’Ow’re you, Judy?’

‘Gomer. I heard your wife died. I’m sorry.’

‘Things ’appens,’ Gomer said gruffly. He shook his head, droplets spinning from his cap.

Judith nodded. ‘So what about Barbara, Mrs Watkins? She down there, in Claerwen Reservoir, is it?’

‘Well, I don’t
know
those reservoirs, Mrs Prosser. But I think if Barbara’s body was in there, they’d have found it by now. I reckon the answer to that mystery’s much more likely to be found here.’

‘Do you indeed?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘You like a mystery, do you?’

‘How’s Marianne?’ Merrily said.

‘Mrs Starkey is quite well’ – wary now – ‘I assume.’

‘Those lustful demons can be difficult to extract.’

The caution was suddenly discarded as Judith laughed. ‘Don’t you believe all you hear.’

‘Like what?’

‘All kinds of nonsense gets talked about, Mrs Watkins. Be silly for you to start passing on rumours, isn’t it? I certainly haven’t heard anything to upset me.’

She smiled; she had good teeth.

‘In that case, you must have a strong constitution, Mrs Prosser,’ Merrily said.

Left to himself, Robin would have kicked the kid’s ass.

Hermes, nine years old, brother of Artemis, twelve, and of Ceres, six and a half.

Max and Bella did not kick Hermes’s ass. They were not the ass-kicking kind. They would, presumably, explain to him later, in some detail, what effect having tossed shit at the Christian priest might have on him karmically.

No hassle from the cops for Hermes, either. Soon as they found out this was a kid, and that they didn’t get to lean on a grown pagan, they didn’t hang around. Soon as the cops had gone, the media went off too, back to the Black Lion. None of them came to the house.

Robin peeled off his sodden T-shirt, towelled himself dry, stood in front of the cheery fire with a bath towel around his shoulders.

‘They’ll be back tomorrow night,’ George said with a good lashing of relish, ‘when we’re in the church. And this time there’ll be hundreds of them. It’s going to get really, really interesting, man.’

Robin said, ‘Did she call?’

‘Betty? Er, no.’

‘That car’s old, Robin,’ Vivvie said. ‘Maybe it’s just broken down.’

‘I listened to the weather forecast,’ George said. ‘The rain’s likely to have passed by morning. It’ll get colder, but tomorrow looks like being dry, so we’ll have all day to prepare the site.’

Robin shivered under the towel. ‘You guys don’t get it, do you? This is not gonna happen without Betty. If Betty doesn’t come back... no Imbolc.’

‘You’re tired, man,’ George said.

‘She
will
come back,’ Vivvie promised with intensity. ‘She won’t want to miss this.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘Imbolc... the glimmering of spring. This really is the start of an era. This is history. Like Max was saying while you were outside, it’s going to be the biggest thing since the Reformation. But whereas that was just Henry VIII plundering the riches of the Catholic Church, this is about the disintegration and decay of pride and vanity... and the regrowth of something pure and organic in the ruins. This is so beautifully symbolic, I want to cry.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Robin said. ‘I’m starting not to give a shit.’

‘You don’t mean that. You did a terrific job tonight.’

‘I most likely looked a complete asshole. I just wasn’t gonna cringe in front of that creep in his monk’s robes, was all. I was gonna look as white as he was.’

And maybe less pretentious. He wasn’t gonna go out there swinging a gold pentacle. He’d wanted to handle the confrontation with simple human dignity. Because what he’d really hoped for was that Betty would be out there watching – that she’d gotten home OK, but had been unable to come through the gate on account of the march, so was out there watching her
tactless, thoughtless, irresponsible
husband handling a difficult situation with some kind of basic human dignity.

And then fucking Hermes had blown it all away.

If you were looking for omens, you sure had one there. What kind of headlines were they gonna get tomorrow? ‘Witches Hurl Shit at Man of God’. The perfect follow-through to Robin looking like a freaking cannibal that last time.

‘Robin...’ The motherly Alexandra smiled a tentatively radiant candlelight smile at him across the room.

‘Sorry?’

‘Robin, there’s a small car just come into the yard.’

‘Huh...?’

He shot to the window, the bath towel dropping to the flags. He shaded his eyes with his cupped hands, up against the glass, hardly daring to hope that he’d see...

A little white Subaru Justy.

Oh God. Oh God
. Robin sagged over the big, wide window sill, staring down between his hands and working on his breathing until he no longer felt faint with relief.

He straightened up. ‘Look, would you mind all staying here? I have to do some explaining.’

The Black Lion was packed, the air in the bar full of damp and steam, coming off journalists, TV people, even a few of the Christian marchers – all wet through, starved, in need of a stiff
whisky. Greg was run off his feet. No sign of Marianne yet.

Gomer fetched Merrily a single malt and one for himself. There was nowhere to sit except in a tight corner by the window next to the main door. Whenever the door opened, they had to lean to one side, but at least they weren’t overheard as Merrily told Gomer the plain truth about Marianne’s exorcism.

Gomer didn’t blink. He weighed it up, nodding slowly. He laid out a row of beer mats on the table – and, with them, Merrily’s dilemma.

‘Gotter be a problem for you, this, girl. Question of which side you’re on now, ennit?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. She’d taken off her wet coat, but still had the scarf wound round her neck. She was still seeing Robin Thorogood there on his own, vastly outnumbered, not wearing anything witchy, not countering Ellis’s talk of Satan and sacrilege with any pagan propaganda. It could have been an act, to appear ordinary in the face of all the cross-waving – and yet it was
too
ordinary to be feigned.

‘What you gonner do, then, vicar?’

‘Gomer, how could Judith Prosser and those other women sit there and watch it? Can they really believe in him to that extent?’

Gomer took out a roll-up. ‘Like I said, it’s about stickin’ together, solid. Ellis’s helped the right people, ennit? Judy and Gareth with their boy. And who knows what else he done.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Vicar?’

Merrily drank the rest of her whisky in a gulp.

‘Menna,’ she murmured. ‘
Menna...
’

Robin turned on the bulkhead lamp. It was no longer raining, but the wind had gotten up. A metal door creaked rhythmically over in the barn; it sounded like a sailing boat on the sea making him wish he and Betty were alone together, far out on some distant ocean.

Still naked to the waist, he stood on the doorstep and watched her park next to one of the Winnebagos. She stepped out of the
car and into a puddle. The whole of the yard was puddles tonight.

She didn’t seem to care how wet her feet got. Her hair was frizzed out by the rain, uncombed.

Oh God, how he loved this woman. He tried to send this out to her.
I take thee to my hand, my heart and my spirit at the setting of the sun and the rising of the stars
...

He saw her standing for a moment, entirely still, taking in the extra cars in the yard, the two Winnebagos.

Then she saw him.

He came out of the doorway, walked towards her. She still didn’t move. If it was cold out here, he wasn’t feeling it yet.

‘Bets, I...’

He stopped a couple of yards from his wife. The back of his neck felt on fire.

‘Bets, I couldn’t stop them. It was either them or... or all kinds of people we didn’t know. It had all gotten out. You just couldn’t imagine... It was all over the Internet. We were getting hate faxes and also faxes from people who were right behind us – like, religious polarization, you know, over the whole nation? Or so... so it seemed.’

Betty spoke at last, in this real flat voice.

‘Who are they?’

‘Well, there... there’s George and Vivvie, and... and Alexandra. And Stuart and Mona Osman, who we met at some... at some sabbat, someplace. And Max and Bella... Uh, Max is kind of an all-knowing asshole, but they’re OK where it matters. I guess. And some other people. Bets, I’m sorry. If you’d only called...’

There was no expression at all on her face; this was what scared him. Why didn’t she just lose her temper, call him a stupid dickhead, get this over?

‘See, we always said there was gonna be a sabbat at Imbolc. Didn’t we say that? That we were gonna bring the church alive with lights? A big bonfire to welcome the spring? So like... maybe this was destined to come about. Maybe there was
nothing we could do to get in the way of it. Like it’s meant to be – only with more significance than we could ever have imagined.’

Why did this all sound so hollow? Why was she taking a step back, away from him?

There was a splish in a puddle. Her car keys? She’d dropped the car keys. Robin rushed forward, plunged his hand and half his arm into the puddle, scrabbling about in the black, freezing water, babbling on still.

‘Look... Ellis was here, with his born-again buddies. Chances are they’re gonna be back tomorrow – only more of them. There was like this real heavy sense of menace. You and me, we couldn’t’ve handled that on our own, believe me.’

He hated himself for this blatant lie, but what could he say? He pulled out the dripping keys, hung on to them.

Betty said, ‘Give me the keys, Robin.’

‘Why?
No!
’

‘I can’t stay here tonight.’

‘Please... you don’t know... Bets, it’s gotten bigger than us two. OK, that’s a cliché, but it’s true. What’s happening here’s gonna be—’