Midwinter of the Spirit (46 page)

‘You sealed him into a kind of magic circle.’

‘
Protective
circle: the invisible church. Magic is where you use your willpower to bring about changes in the natural pattern, to rearrange molecules.
We
ask God to do it, if He thinks it’s the right thing – which is subtly different, as you know.’

‘Protecting him from what? The Devil? What, Huw?’

‘I wanted to bring you in on it, Merrily, honest to God I did. I
hated
going behind your back. But the Dean’s lads are saying no way, no way. It’s the last thing Dobbs’d want. They don’t like the Bishop and you’re the Bishop’s pussycat.’

‘Terrific.’

‘You know that’s not what I think, so stuff the Dean. Let’s talk about this; I really don’t know how much time we’ve got. I’ve not come across it before in any credible situation.’

‘
What?
’

A shadow had dropped over the room, like a cloth over a birdcage. Merrily saw that a line of golden Santas had gone out over Broad Street.

‘We think there’s a
squatter
in the Cathedral,’ Huw said.

* * *

So, like, how could she go back to that school on Monday and be in the same room with the lying slag? The same building?
How?

Lol said, without much conviction, that maybe it was best not to leap to too many conclusions.

‘Yeah?’ Jane collapsed on to the rug. ‘Like which particular conclusions is it best to avoid, Lol? Should I maybe like hang fire on the possibility that Rowenna wants to be my best friend for reasons not entirely unconnected with my mother?’

‘No, that’s valid.’

‘Is she real, Lol? Is she psychotic? Is there a word for women who need to shag priests?’

‘Janey, if we were merely talking about a psychological condition, it would make it all so much simpler. She hasn’t been anywhere near Merrily, has she?’

‘Just the once.’

‘All right,’ Lol said, ‘let’s go back to when you first knew her. This must be before your mum became an exorcist. When did she make the first approach?’

‘She didn’t. It was me. This was when she first started at the school, right? Before her, the last new girl there was me, and I know what it’s like when you come in from out of the area and they’re all kind of suspicious of you. I went over to talk to her, and we just got on. That’s it.’

‘Did she know about Merrily?’

‘Pretty soon she did. See, one of her most… attractive qualities is she likes talking about
you
. She listens, she asks questions, she laughs at the things you say. She’s sympathetic when you’ve got problems at home.
You
are the most interesting person in the world when you’re with Rowenna.’

‘You tell her everything.’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said gloomily. ‘You tell her
everything
.’

‘How soon before the psychic things, the New Age stuff?’

‘I don’t know. It just happened. You’re talking all through the lunch hour, then you discover she’s got her own car, so she gives you a lift home. But, yeah, when I found out she was interested in like otherwordly pursuits, that was the clincher. Soul-mates! It’s just like so brilliant when you find somebody you can talk to about that stuff, and they’re not going:
Yeah, yeah, but where do you go on Saturday nights?
It just never occurs to you to be suspicious, you’re so delighted. And when she says,
Hey, there’s this psychic fair at Leominster
, you don’t go,
Oh, I’d better ask my mum
, do you?’

‘What happened at the psychic fair?’

‘We met Angela.’

‘Mrs Purefoy?’

‘If you say so. Although, when I look back, was she really
doing
the psychic fair? How do we know she read anybody
else’s
cards? See, it was Rowenna who first mentioned the fair. It was Rowenna who, when we’d been there a while and it was getting cold and boring, suggested we consult a clairvoyant in the nice warm pub. It was Rowenna who said she’d had a call from Angela wanting to see us again. I will struggle for a long time against things I don’t want to believe, Lol, but when the cracks start to appear…’

‘What was Angela like?’

‘Really, really impressive – not what you were expecting. Very smooth, very poised, very articulate and kind of upperclass. Like, you felt she had your best interests at heart at all times. And, of course, you believed every damn word she said.’

Lol smiled.

‘She said I had extraordinary abilities.’

‘Which, instinctively, you knew.’

Jane scowled.

‘I suppose she recommended you should develop them.’

‘She put me in touch with a group called the Pod.’

‘Meeting over the healthfood caff in Bridge Street.’

‘It
was
you then. I thought you hadn’t spotted me.’

‘If you’d been your usual friendly little self,’ Lol said, ‘I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. So what happens at the Pod?’

‘It’s good actually. It’s just about building up your awareness of like other realms.’

‘Nothing heavily ritualistic?’

‘Not at all. In fact – here we go – Rowenna’s already suggesting it’s kind of low-grade stuff. God, it’s so transparent when you start seeing it from another angle.’

‘It’s not really. It seems quite sophisticated to me. They introduce you into a group full of nice, amiable women who mother you along, don’t scare you off…’

‘So the Pod are part of this?’

‘I don’t know. They seem fairly harmless. Somebody apparently suggested you’d be an asset. That’s what I was told.’

‘Because of Mum? What
is
all this?’

‘It’s just about women clerics, I think,’ Lol said. ‘They’re still new and sexy, and it’s the biggest and most disruptive thing to happen in the Church for centuries. Angela’s involved with the Pod, right?’

‘I don’t actually think so. She’s never’s been to a meeting in the short time I’ve been going.’

‘She mention your mum?’

‘She said Rowenna’d told her. She said she was annoyed about that because she thought it was ethically wrong – some bullshit like that – to know things about people you were doing readings for. And, yeah, she’s like, “Oh, I can’t tell you anything tonight after all, I’ve probably got it all wrong” – until I’m begging her. And then all this stuff that I have to tease out of her and Ro, about needing to lead Mum into the light. And they’re dropping what now seem like really broad hints that if I don’t, some disastrous situation will develop. They just want to like… corrupt her, don’t they?’

‘I suppose so,’ Lol said. ‘And Merrily’s right: they’re getting at her through you. Whatever you might think, you’re the most important thing in her life. That must be obvious to them – you being the only child of a single parent.’

‘Who’s them?’

‘I don’t know. The idea of all these evil Devil-worshippers targeting priests, it just sounds so… and yet…’

‘We have to do something, Lol. I’m just like so boiling up inside. It’s like I’ve been raped, you know? We…’ Jane sprang up. ‘Hey! Let’s go and see
Angela
! Now we know who she is, let’s just turn up on her doorstep and, like, demand answers.’

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘
Why
not?’

‘I’ve got to think about this.’

Jane frowned. ‘This is about Moon again, isn’t it?’

43

Deep Penetration

H
UW LIFTED HIS
black bag up on to the desk, switched on the lamp, and took out a fat paperback.

Merrily recognized it at once.
The Folklore of Herefordshire
(1912) by Ella Mary Leather had been, for several months, Jane’s bible, introduced to her by the late Lucy Devenish, village shopkeeper, writer of fairytales for children and a major source of the kid’s problematic interest in all things New Age. It was a formidable collection of customs and legends, gathered from arcane volumes and the county’s longest memories.

Huw opened it.

SECTION IV
SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA

(1) WRAITHS

Visitors
, it would have said now, in Huw-speak.

Mrs Leather revealed that all over Herefordshire it was accepted – at least in 1912 – that the wraith of a person might be seen by relatives or close friends shortly before or just after death. The departing spirit was bidding farewell to the persons or places most dear to it; this was stated as a matter of fact. It seemed amazing that it had taken less than a century for believers in ghosts to be exiled into crank country.

Huw turned the page and pushed the book directly under the desk lamp for Merrily to read. He said nothing.

(3) DEMONS AND FAMILIAR SPIRITS
A Demon in the Cathedral

A very strange story of the appearance of a demon in the Cathedral is told by Bartholomew de Cotton. The event is supposed to have happened in AD 1290.

An unheard of and almost impossible marvel occurred in the Cathedral Church of the Hereford Canons. There a demon in the robes of a canon sat in a stall after matins had been sung. A canon came up to him and asked his reason for sitting there, thinking the demon was a brother canon. The latter refused to answer and said nothing. The canon was terrified, but believing the demon to be an evil spirit, put his trust in the Lord, and bade him in the name of Christ and St Thomas de Cantilupe not to stir from that place. For a short time he bravely awaited speech. Receiving no answer, he at last went for help and beat the demon and put him in fetters; he now lies in the prison of the aforesaid St Thomas de Cantilupe
.

She looked up. ‘Who was Bartholomew de Cotton?’

‘No idea.’

‘Where’s the prison of St Thomas?’

‘Don’t know. Bishops
did
have their own prisons, I believe.’

‘So what does it all mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Huw. ‘It could be an allegorical tale to put the knife in for one of the clerics. Could simply be some penniless vagrant got into the Cathedral and nicked a few vestments to keep himself warm, and it got blown up out of all proportion.’

‘Or?’

‘Or it could be the first recorded appearance of the
squatter
.’

Merrily became aware of a thin, high-pitched whine nearby. Possibly the bulb in the desk lamp, a filament dying.

She realized fully now why Huw used all these bloody silly words:
visitor
,
hitchhiker
,
insomniac
. It was because the alternatives were too biblical, too portentous.

And too ludicrous?

‘So a
squatter
,’ Merrily said, ‘is your term for a localized demon – an evil spirit in residence.’

‘If I were trying to be scientific I’d cobble summat together like
potentially malevolent, semi-sentient forcefield
. Or I might’ve called it a
sleeper
, but that doesn’t sound noxious enough. You know what a sleeper is, in espionage?’

‘It’s a kind of deep-penetration agent, isn’t it? Planted in another country years in advance, to be awoken whenever.’

Deep-penetration, Huw liked that. Made it sound, he said, like dampness. And it was
very
like that – in so deep, it was almost part of the fabric. It could be lying there for centuries and only the very sensitive would be aware of it.

‘Like an
imprint
,’ Merrily suggested.

‘With added evil. Evil gathers
around
a holy place, like we said. The unholiest ground, they used to say, is sometimes just over the churchyard wall. But if it gets
inside
, you’ll have a hell of a job rooting it out. It’s got all those centuries of accumulated devotional energy to feed on, and it’ll cause havoc.’

‘But if you accept that this was an evil spirit, how could this canon beat it and put it in fetters? That argues for your first suggestion – that the canon caught some vagrant who’d stolen the vestments.’

‘Or the entire story’s metaphorical. It suggests he was able to bind this evil by ritual and the power of the Lord, and also…’

‘St Thomas Cantilupe.’

‘Aye,’ said Huw, ‘there we have the link – the key to it all.’

The whining in the bulb was making her nervous. It was like a thin wire resonating in her brain.

‘Thomas Cantilupe.’ Huw leaned back, and his chair creaked. ‘Tommy Canty – now
there
were a hard bastard.’

The Norman baronial background, the years in government, the initial ambition to be a soldier. ‘And you could still think of him as one,’ Huw said. So he already had the self-discipline and, on becoming a bishop of the Church, had taught himself humility – and chastity.

‘He went to Paris once and stayed wi’ a feller, and the feller’s wife – a foxy lady – contrives to get into bed wi’ Tommy. Tommy rolls out t’other side, pretends he’s still asleep. Next morning she asks him how he slept and he tells her he’d have had a better night if he hadn’t been tempted by the Devil.’

Merrily thought of Mick Hunter under the aumbry light. And then she thought of herself and Lol: how close she’d come, in her near despair, to slipping into Lol’s bed.

‘Tommy Canty,’ said Huw. ‘No sleaze. No risks. Warrior for the Lord. What would your lad Hunter have made of him?’

Both fast-track, Merrily thought. Cantilupe had come straight in as bishop. No weddings and funerals for him, presumably. But, yes, in spite of that they’d probably have hated each other’s guts.

‘But think what Cantilupe did for this town,’ Huw said. ‘Most of the religious establishments along the border were well into debt during that period. After St Thomas’s day, Hereford Cathedral never looked back. They were adding bits on to the building, all over the place. Pulling power of the shrine meant thousands of pilgrims, hundreds of accredited miracles, cripples brought in droves.

‘If you were too sick to get to Hereford, you were measured on a length of string and they brought that instead. I don’t know how it worked, but it did. You believe in miracles, Merrily, don’t you? I bet Hunter doesn’t.’