‘A martyr?’ the 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 cliche, but it’s true. What’s happening here’s gonna be-’
‘Symbolic,’ a voice said from behind him. He turned and saw Vivvie on the step. Vivvie had come out to help him. Vivvie alone.
The worst thing that could’ve happened.
‘Symbolic of the whole struggle to free this country from two millennia of religious corruption and spiritual stagnation. He’s right, Betty. We have to play our part. We have to reconsecrate the church and it has to be tomorrow night. It’s why we’re here.’
Betty started to shake her head, and the light from the bulkhead caught one side of her face and Robin saw the dark smudges, saw she’d been crying hard.
‘Bets!’ He almost screamed. ‘Look, I know things haven’t been right. I know you never connected with this place. Honey, please… once this is over we’ll sell up, yeah? I mean, like, Jeez, from what I’ve been hearing there’s gotta be about a hundred pagans ready to take it off our hands. But this… Imbolc… this is something we have to go through — together, yeah? Please let it be together.’
‘Give me those keys.’
‘I will not let you leave!’
‘You will not stop me,’ Betty said. ‘And she certainly won’t.’
She turned away, walked across the yard toward the track.
Robin ran after her, managed four paces before the cold, suddenly intense, bit into his chest and his breathing seemed to seize up. But that was nothing to the pain right dead centre of his heart chakra.
His eyes flooded up.
‘Don’t follow me,’ Betty said. ‘I mean it, don’t take one more pace.’