Merrily had arranged to meet Gomer in the Black Lion for a sandwich around two-thirty. She was early, but the pub was already filling up with those civilized rambling-club types — anoraks and soft drinks — who seemed to constitute Ellis’s core congregation.
More of them today, substantially more. You looked at them individually and they seemed worryingly genuine: young people with a vision of a new day, elderly people with a new and healthy approach to the evening of the day. There was a buzz of energy in the dispirited, part-painted Black Lion bar, each hug, each ‘Praise God’ passing on a vibration.
Merrily found herself standing next to a white-bearded man of about sixty, one of the few with a glass of beer. She asked him where he was from. Wolverhampton, he said, West Midland Pentecostal.
‘How far’ve you come, sister?’
‘Oh, just from Ledwardine, just over the border. How many of you are there?’
‘About… what, fifty-five? Hired ourselves a coach. Luckily, there’s a lot of retired people in our church, but quite a few youngsters’ve taken a day off work.’ He grinned, relaxed. ‘It’s a question of whose work you put first, isn’t it? We’re going to walk down to this satanist place after lunch and hold some Bible readings outside the gate. I’ve not actually seen Father Ellis yet, but I’m told he’s a very inspiring man.’
‘So they say.’
‘Praise God,’ said the man from Wolverhampton.
Merrily saw Gomer coming in and pointed to the table near the door. She ordered drinks and cheese sandwiches at the bar. Greg Starkey avoided her eyes.
Gomer was wearing his bomber jacket over a grey sweatshirt with ‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire’ on it in red.
‘Three bloody coaches on the car park, vicar.’
‘Mmm. It’s what happens these days — everything goes to extremes. Fastest growing movement in the Church and, hey, they’re going to prove it.’
‘En’t the only ones. Bunch of ole vans backed into a forestry clearing up towards the ole rectory. Lighting camp fires, bloody fools.’
‘Travellers?’
‘Pagans, they reckons.’
Merrily sighed. ‘All we need.’
‘Two police vans set up in the ole schoolyard — Dr Coll’s surgery. Another one in Big Weal’s drive — the ole rectory. Makes you laugh, don’t it? Two biggest bloody villains in East Radnor, both well in with the cops.’
Merrily dumped her cigarettes and lighter on the table. ‘You find out some more?’
‘Been over to Nev’s.’
‘Your nephew, yes?’
‘Ar. Drop in now and then, make sure the boy’s lookin’ after the ole diggers. Anyway, Nev’s with a lawyer in Llandod, plays bloody golf with him. He gived him a ring for me, off the record, like. Word is Big Weal’s favourite clients is ole clients, specially them not too quick up top n’more.’
‘Going senile?’
‘Worries a lot about their wills when they gets like that, see. Who’s gonner get what, how it’s gonner get sorted when they snuffs it. What they needs is a good lawyer — and a good doctor. Puts their mind at rest, ennit? ’Specially folk as en’t had a family lawyer for generations, see.’
‘Incomers? Refugees from Off, in need of guidance?’
‘Exac’ly it, vicar. This boy in Llandod, he reckons Weal gets a steady stream of ole clients recommended by their nice, kindly doctor. That confirm what you yeard, vicar?’
‘Fits in. And if we were to go a step further down that road, we might find a nice kindly priest.’
‘Sure t’be,’ Gomer said. ‘Church gets to be more important, the nearer you gets to that big ole farm gate.’
Two bikers came in. One wore a leather jacket open to a white T-shirt with a black dragon motif. The dragon was on its back, with a spear down its throat. It was hard to be sure which side they represented.
At four o’clock, the ruined church of St Michael looked like an old, beached boat, waiting for the tide of night to set it afloat.
‘Going to be lit up like a birthday cake,’ Betty said with distaste. ‘You can’t spot them from here, but there are clusters of candles and garden torches all over it. In the windows, on ledges, between the battlements on the tower. It’ll be visible for miles from the hills.’
‘Making a statement?’
‘Yeah. After centuries of holding ceremonies discreetly in the woods and behind curtains in suburban back rooms, we’re coming out.’
They’d met in the decaying copse, Merrily walking from the old archaeological site, where Gomer had parked, Betty coming across the bridge from the farmhouse and joining the footpath.
The sky had dulled, low clouds pocketing the sunken sun, and you could feel the dusk, carrying spores of frost. Betty looked cold. Merrily tightened her scarf.
‘Bain still wants to do it naked?’
‘Possibly. They’ll light a small fire inside a circle of stones in the open nave. Dance back to back with arms linked behind. Not as silly as it sounds. After a while you don’t feel it. You’re aglow.’
Like singing in tongues, Merrily thought. A long, flat cloud lay over the church now, like a wide-brimmed hat. From the other side of the ruins, beyond the pines and the Sitka spruce, they could hear the sounds of a hymn: straggly singing, off-key. The Christians at the gate.
‘They’re going to keep that up all night long, aren’t they?’ Betty said.
‘You’ve heard nothing yet. There are scores more in the village now.’
‘Bad.’ Betty shivered. ‘Ned believes the spiritual tension will fuel the rite. He says we can appropriate their energy. That is way, way out of order.’ She shook herself. ‘I need to get them out of here, lock the gates and… try and save my marriage.’
‘Will you stay here… afterwards?’
Betty shook her head. ‘We won’t survive this. We’ll lose everything we’ve got with that house, but I don’t care if we’re destitute. Only problem is, I’m going to feel guilty about anyone else living here. I wish we could sell it to a waste disposal firm or something.’
‘But we’re going to deal with that,’ Merrily said firmly.
‘No. It was very stupid of me to ask you.’ Betty looked at her, green eyes sorrowful, without hope. ‘I wasn’t thinking. This is part of a prehistoric ritual complex. We don’t know who or what those original inhabitants were, but they chose their sites well. They knew all the doorways. Can’t you feel the earth and the air fusing together as it gets dark? This is a place that knows itself — but we don’t know it. Can’t you hear it?’
‘Just the singing,’ Merrily admitted.
‘I can hear a constant low humming now. I know it’s in my head, but it’s this place that’s put it there. We don’t know what went on here, nobody does. There are no stones left standing, only the holes where they were… and that church. And whatever — metaphorically, if you like — is underneath that church. And whatever it is, it’s much older than Christianity.’
‘And much, much older than Wicca?’ Merrily said.
‘Sure. We were invented in the fifties and sixties by well-meaning people who knew there was no continuous tradition. Most of Wicca’s either made up or culled from Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune. It has no tradition. There. I’ve said it. Is that what you wanted?’
The singing was already louder; more Christians had arrived.
‘There’s a tradition here,’ Merrily said, ‘of sorts. A strand of something that goes back at least to medieval times. Unfortunately, it seems to have been preserved by my lot.’
‘Yeah. You can certainly feel it in Cascob. Oh, and St Michael’s, Cefnllys. I meant to tell you — I looked this up — that when they eventually built a new church at Llandrindod the rector had the roof taken off Cefnllys Church to stop people worshipping there.’
‘He did?’
‘It was in a book. I suddenly remembered it from when I was a kid in Llandrindod. So I looked it up. I mean, was he thinking like Penney? Did they both feel the breath of the dragon? Probably didn’t understand any of it, but something scared them badly. Now people like Ned Bain are coming along and saying: it’s OK, it’s fine, its cool… because we’re the dragon. Do you still want to go in there with your holy water?’
‘What time?’
‘Any time after… I dunno, nine? If you don’t come, I’ll understand. Who’s that?’
It was a vehicle, creaking over the footpath, where it had been widened by the archaeologists. Merrily ran to the edge of the copse. She could see Gomer’s ancient Land Rover parked the other side, with Gomer leaning on the bonnet, smoking a roll-up, watching the new vehicle trundling towards him. It was Sophie’s Saab.