A Crown of Lights (45 page)

‘Cool,’ Jane said.

‘Actually, it’s not,’ Betty said soberly. ‘The defensive, white magic pentagram has the point at the top. What you’ve just found on the map is an
inverted
pentagram.’ She put down the pencil and looked at Merrily. ‘I don’t think I need to explain what that means.’

‘No.’ Merrily pulled out a cigarette. ‘Probably not.’

Jane looked mystified. ‘You mean it’s like an aggressive thing?’

Betty said, ‘It tended to be used in black magic. See the horns? Even pagans accept that horns are not
invariably
a good sign. Look... I went to Cascob the other day. That exorcism’s displayed on the wall, in a frame. It dates back to about seventeen hundred, and was used to purge a woman called Elizabeth Loyd of evil spirits and alleged assaults of the Devil. I... got a bad feeling from it.’

‘In what way?’

Betty looked embarrassed.

‘You mean the exorcism itself?’

‘I don’t know. My first thought was that Elizabeth Loyd was
just some poor epileptic or schizophrenic girl who somebody decided must be possessed. Then I... got the feeling that maybe she did have something... satanic... inside her. I don’t know. The wording was a mixture of Roman Catholic and pagan and cabbalistic references.’

‘Oh?’

‘A combination of religion and magic, therefore. I suppose what really scared me was that the words were so very similar to the ones used in a charm that was found in a box concealed in an old fireplace at our house. And that one was dated over a century later. Nothing had changed.’

Nothing had changed.

Nothing changes. Merrily tried to focus. There was something very important here.

‘
You
found this charm?’

‘No, it was delivered to us. The box was placed on our doorstep just after we moved in. It spooked us quite a bit, because it was a charm against witchcraft. It seemed to be saying, “We know what you are and we know how to deal with you.” There was a note with it, signed “The Local People”.’

‘Nasty,’ Jane murmured.

‘The wording of this exorcism,’ Merrily said, ‘do you remember how it went?’

‘It invoked God and the Trinity. It said it would deliver Elizabeth Loyd from all witchcraft and spirits and hardness of heart. It had Roman Catholic stuff, kind of Ave Maria, and it used these cabbalistic names of power – Tetragrammaton, the mighty name of God.’

‘Did it really?’

‘That means something?’

‘I don’t know. OK, something else... Cascob. Apparently, Penney approached the then vicar or rector of Cascob and suggested he get his church decommissioned. He talked about the St Michael churches around Radnor Forest. The vicar reminded him of a folk tale implying that if one of those churches were destroyed it would allow the
dragon
to escape.’

‘Right.’

‘Penney said it was... quite the
reverse
.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘like the reverse pentagram. I don’t get it.’

‘Nor me.’ Merrily stared at the irregular star of churches. ‘Whether the churches were intended to be a circle and just happened to fall into this rather vague star shape... or whether it’s all complete coincidence. And, when you think about it, if you turn the map upside down, it’s not inverted any more, is it?’

‘
Wrong!
’ Jane cried. ‘Because pagans always work to the north, right, Betty? Their altars are
north-facing
. The two prongs, the horns, are pointing north.’

Merrily nodded, with reluctance. ‘Yeah, OK. I think it’s at least fair to say that Penney became convinced this was bad news. If his LSD experience – and, in those days, the feeling was that this wasn’t just another drug – if his experience convinced him that the unfortunate layout of the churches invited the old serpent to slither in... then that would explain why he was so determined to destroy the pattern by taking out one of the churches.’

‘I wonder how much of this Ellis knows?’ Betty said.

Possibly quite a lot, Merrily thought. She was considering the distinctly medieval aspects of Ellis’s unnecessary exorcism of Marianne Starkey.

She dreamed, through most of that night it seemed, in colour.

Deep velvet purples and wild, slashing yellows. Abstract images, and then the church at Old Hindwell, vibrating blue against a pink evening sky. White-clad Ellis and his followers walking like pilgrims through the woods with their Bibles and bottles of holy water to exorcize the pagan place by night. Betty, in a robe of pale mauve.

Jesus Christ screaming on the cross.

Fire sizzling. Yellow fire in the kindling. The robe shrivelled and blackened. Betty’s golden hair alight.

At the foot of the cross, Marianne Starkey in a torn white nightdress, blood-flecked.

Out of a dream full of savage heat, Merrily awoke into the cold. The sizzling became the metallic rattle of night hail on the bedroom window. Merrily wrapped herself in the too-thin duvet and prayed for the blue and the gold, but they wouldn’t come.

I
T WAS DAWN.

Max led Robin out, through his own house, through the mingled aromas of incense and marijuana, out through the kitchen, past the Rayburn on which sat the remains of a pot of fragrant stew tended last night by Alexandra, past sleeping people in sleeping bags.

Robin, as if sleepwalking, his mind disconnected.

He followed Max across the cold yard, in between the oily pools, past the barn, five cars as well as the Winnebagos parked in front of it now, including the Subaru Justy. There was an intermittent sleet.

‘I thought it was meant to be cold and sharp and fine.’

‘Give it time,’ said Max.

In fact, the sky was not so dark: there was a curdled-milk moon under thin cloud and a pale, muddy glow in the east. It was February, and the blackest night of Celtic winter was supposed to be over.

The fuck it was over
. Robin stared, for the first time with resentment, at the church: big and bare. The tower was lamp black. The sky in the north and west was burnt umber.

Robin had spent the night in his studio, but had hardly slept. He hadn’t shaved for two days. He didn’t want to be here any more, not without Betty. Without Betty there could be no light.

A short while ago, he’d been aroused from a miserable doze by a tapping on the door, and there was big, beardy, flutey-voiced Max, and he said, ‘Oh, Robin, I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but we have to discuss tonight.’

‘Max, how many ways can I say this? If there was
no
tonight, I would not be awfully gutted.’

Max was nodding solemnly, the asshole. ‘I understand. I do understand, Robin. I would give anything to have Betty back, but if she has a problem with all this, it’s perhaps as well she stays away, and she probably knows that.’

‘Oh, that’s what you think, is it?’

Betty had to be someplace close. She couldn’t have gone far, unless she’d called for a cab. And then where? Back to Shrewsbury? Back to her parents in Yorkshire, who’d barely spoken to her since she gave up her career for the Craft? Maybe she was staying with the widow Wilshire.

He’d thought she would at least’ve phoned. He’d had the phone and the answering machine in his studio all night, but all he heard were good wishes from supporters he didn’t know, threats from enemies he didn’t know, offers from media people – even one call from some private TV production company suggesting the Thorogoods might like to discuss the possibility of a docusoap series about the day-to-day lives of witches. What did these guys think their average day was like, for Chrissakes – they had breakfast in their ceremonial robes, went down to the shops hand in hand, skyclad, then sang ‘The Witches’ Rune’ together in the tub before having tantric sex in front of an open fire?

Max was bleating on, ‘...
would
have been a problem with numbers but, as usually happens when something is meant, it’s been solved.’

‘Solved?’ Robin said vaguely.

‘I want you to come and meet someone.’

A Tilley lamp stood on one of the old tombstones in what had been the chancel, about where the Christian altar was originally
located. Presumably the Reverend Penney had hurled the altar in the creek with the rest of the stuff – or had he baulked at that?

When Max and Robin walked into the nave, George Webster was saying to someone, ‘Yeah, I see your point. The problem is, this whole building, being Christian, is oriented on the east. We can either go with that or we can just pretend the building isn’t here at all and work with the site geophysically. You know what I mean?’

‘So which do
you
think, George?’ A man’s voice, smooth. ‘You’re the geomancer.’

‘I think there’s got to be a compromise somewhere.’

‘No,’ the man said firmly. ‘Oh no, no compromise. We either use their altar and change the current, or we build our own to the north and work, as you say, with the site.’

‘Ah... Ned.’ Max sounded like a hesitant owl. ‘I’ve brought Robin Thorogood.’

Ned Bain, pagan publisher, king-witch in all but title, came out into the lamplight. Robin had never seen him before. His face looked white in the gaseous Tilley light, but it was strong and lean and kind of genial. His hair was tight and curly. He had on a dark suit with a dark shirt underneath, kind of priesty – like
church
priesty.

‘Hi.’ He gripped Robin’s arm.

‘Hello.’

‘I do like your name. It evokes Robin Goodfellow, the hobgoblin. Is it your given name?’

‘Sure.’

‘Someone’s prescience? And I very much like your work.’

‘Well, uh... thanks.’ Despite the temperature, Robin’s arm felt warm all the way to the shoulder, even after Bain let it go.

‘This place inspires you?’

‘I guess.’

‘It should do. It’s an important site. It’s an axis.’ Bain’s voice was one peg down from smooth and refined, maybe a tad camp, but not enough to deter the ladies, Robin guessed. He felt faintly uncomfortable about the heat in his arm.

‘Listen, Robin, I’m grateful for what you’re doing. I know this has
got
to be a strain. I mean physically, psychically, domestically.’

‘Uh... yeah, domestically, sure.’

‘But I can’t tell you how important it is, mate.’ Bain was standing on the tombstone next to the lamp, casual, on someone’s grave. His eyes found Robin’s. Couldn’t see those eyes but they’d found him and they held him. ‘This
is
our religion. We
are
the religion of the British Isles. All these church sites are
our
sites.’

‘Right. Uh, I’ve been kind of out of it... You just drive over here or were you here last night?’

‘No, I was in a hotel last night. I think you were already crowded enough, weren’t you? I drove over this morning. I wanted to watch the sun rise here. And to see the place in the dark. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked your permission.’

‘Uh, no, that’s...’

Max said, ‘The point is, we have to get this right. Old Hindwell’s a crucial test case, and if we’re seen to back down before this man Ellis, it’ll set the Craft back years... decades, even.’

Robin glanced at George. George was looking up over the walls of the nave towards the moon. Robin guessed George had told Ned Bain all about Betty walking out and Robin coming to pieces. He’d been set up for a pep talk. Trouble was, it was working. Bain had magnetism, even in the dark – maybe especially in the dark. Also he had a certain instant gravitas: when Max talked, you thought
bullshit
; but if Ned laid something on you, you were inclined to accept its importance.

‘You’ve done Imbolc before, of course, Robin?’

‘Sure.’

‘It
is
very appropriate.’ Ned picked up the Tilley lamp by its wire handle. He looked like a modern, clean-shaven Christ out of Holman Hunt’s
The Light of the World
. ‘It’s the first fire festival of the year. The kindling in the forest of winter.’

‘Like, the winter of Christianity?’

‘Well perceived,’ Bain said very softly. Robin felt stupidly flattered. ‘It
is
the winter of Christianity.’

‘And Ned’s devised a rite reflecting that,’ George said.

‘Didn’t take many modifications. Which shows how essentially right it is.’ Ned Bain raised the lamp so that there was a core of light in the centre of what had been the chancel. ‘For instance, when we chant, “Thus we banish winter, thus we welcome spring”, we’ll be banishing rather more than winter. Or, in this case, a spiritual winter which has lasted two thousand years. And we’ll be welcoming, into this temple, a new light stronger than any one spring.’

‘Right,’ Robin said.

The lamp sputtered. Around Ned, as he lowered it, shadows grouped and divided again.

‘What I’m saying, Robin, is that for the duration of our rite, Old Hindwell will be the centre of... everything.’

Robin was awed, no longer reluctantly.

George said, ‘She’ll be sorry she missed out on this.’

‘Betty?’

‘Yeah. Can’t you get her back, man? She’s the priestess for this. She’s got more’ – George opened his hands like he was letting out a cloud of smoke – ‘than any of us.’