With a nod to Our Sheila, Moira slipped quietly into St Bride's church just before 10 a.m.
To be alone. To confront the spirit of Bridelow. Maybe find something of Matt Castle here.
Special place. Matt had said, a long, long time ago on a snowy night in Manchester. It's got… part of what I've been trying to find in the music. That's where it is… where it was all along.
Cathy Gruber had persuaded her to stay the night in the guest room. She'd slept surprisingly well, no awful dreams of Matt in his coffin. And awoken with – all too rare these days – with a sense of direction: she would discover Matt, trace the source of the inspiration. Which was the essence of the village.
Bridelow, last refuge of the English Celts.
A more pure, undiluted strain than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe.
She stopped in the church porch.
Who said that? Who said that?
The American said it. Macbeth.
Macbeth? Yeah, quoting somebody… some writer addressing the Celtic conference. Stanhope, Stansfield, some name like that… from the North of England.
Connections.
She felt like a small token in a board-game, manoeuvred into place by the deft fingers of some huge, invisible, cunning player.
And she knew that if she was to tap into Matt's imagination, she was also going to have to confront his demons.
As she walked – cautious now – out of the porch, into the body of the church, something whooshed down the aisle and collided with her at chest-level.
'Hey!' Moira grinned in some relief, holding, at arm's length, a small boy.
'Gerroff!' Kid was in tears.
'You OK? You hurt yourself?'
The child tore himself away from her, wailing, and hurled himself through the door, an arm flung across his eyes, like he'd been blown back by an explosion.
Moira's grin faded.
Something had changed.
The place looked bare and draughty. Even through the stained-glass windows, the light seemed ashen and austere. On a table near the entrance, next to the piles of hymn books, al1 the lanterns and candlesticks had been carelessly stacked, as if for spring cleaning. One of the slender, coloured candles had rolled off the edge and lay snapped in two on the stone flags.
She picked up the two halves, held one in each hand a moment then placed them on the table and wandered up the central aisle of a church which seemed so much bigger than yesterday at Matt's funeral, so much less intimate, less friendly.
Something was crunched under her shoe. She looked down and saw curled-up leaves and broken twigs, shrivelled berries and bracken and acorns and all the rustic rubble of autumn scattered everywhere.
Like a savage wind had blown through the nave in the night. Looking up, she saw what was missing, what the mess around her ankles was.
Somebody smashed the Autumn Cross.
'No accident, this,' Moira said aloud. Shivered and wrapped her arms around her sweatered breasts. It was still cold, but after what she'd learned last night, she'd left the black cloak at the Rectory. This was obviously not a place in need of a spare witchy woman.
She stood by the rood screen and looked back down the naked church. She looked down at the mess all around her, on the stone floor and the scratched and homely pews. Saw, for a moment, a scattering of bleached white skulls. But she knew almost at once that it wasn't the same.
Or at least that she was not to blame this time.
This was a rape.
She experienced a moment of awe. I walked into someone else's conflict.
But it was not quite someone else's conflict. There was a connection, and the connection was Matt Castle.
Last night, she'd said to Cathy, just as abrupt as the girl had been, 'Why did they open Matt's coffin? What was in that bottle?'
'Ah.' Cathy's eyes cast down over the steaming mug of chocolate. 'You saw that.'
'Don't get me wrong, I'm not normally an intrusive person, but Matt meant a lot to me.'
'Dic obviously thinks so.'
'Oh. You heard that. I wondered if maybe you had one of those pianos that plays itself.'
'Those pianos don't play bum notes.' Cathy looked offended. 'No, I didn't have my ear to the door. Dic and I went for a drink the other night. I drove, he got a bit pissed. He said his father…'
'The boy's way off. There was nothing more complicated than friendship between me and Matt. He never…'
He never touched me.
Moira stumbled and fell into a dusty pew. Sat staring into the vaulted ceiling where the cross had been, but seeing nothing.
He never touched me.
That was true. Never a friendly kiss. Never a celebratory hug when a gig had gone down well or the first album had gone into profit. Never touched me sexually. He never came near.
But he looked.
Often she'd feel his moody gaze and turn and catch his eyes, and she'd smile and he wouldn't, and then he'd look away.
She bent painfully over the prayer-book shelf.
Clink. From outside, the sound of a chisel on stone.
I was thinking, if we'd slept together, just once, to kind of get it over, bring down that final barrier…
No. Wouldn't have got anything over. Would have started something bad. You knew that really, just as you really knew what was going on inside Matt Castle and chose to ignore it. Just a crush; he'll get over it. He didn't. He couldn't. He made you leave the band, before…
The clinking from outside was coming harder. Maybe they were demolishing the joint entirely.
Too choked to think about this any more, stomach tight and painful, Moira stood up, made her way slowly down the aisle to the doors. But when she grasped the ring-handles, the doors wouldn't open.
'Owd on! You'll have me off.' Sound of someone creaking his way down a wooden ladder up against the doors.
She leaned her back against the doors, took a few deep breaths, and called out after a few seconds, 'OK?'
'Aye.' The porch doors opened, and there was a smallish guy in his sixties, flat cap and a boiler-suit. Big, soft moustache, like a hearth brush. 'Sorry, lass, dint know there were anybody in theer.'
He held a mallet and a masonry chisel. There were chips of grey stone and crumbly old concrete around the foot of the step-ladder.
'Storm damage?' Moira said.
'You what?'
'You repairing storm damage?'
'Summat like that.'
But then, looking up at the wall above the porch, she saw where the chippings had come from.
From the stones supporting the Exhibitionist. The Sheelagh na gig. Our Sheila.
'You're taking her down?'
'Aye.' He didn't sound too happy.
'Why?'
He gave her a level look. 'Alfred Beckett, verger, organist, dogsbody. Who are you?'
She grinned. Fuck it, she was here now, in the open, uncloaked. 'Moira. Moira Cairns. Used to work with… Matt Castle.'
The name felt different. A different, darker Matt Castle.
'Matt Castle, eh?' said Alfred Beckett. 'Right. 'Course.' He seemed to relax a little. 'How do.' He stuck out a stubby hand and Moira took it, stone dust and all. He had a firm grip; it pulled her back into what people took for the real world.
'So, Mr Beckett…' She glanced up at the ancient woman squashed into a stone plaque, fingers up her fanny. A few strokes of the chisel away from a serious loss of status.
'Aye,' Mr Beckett said, like a ragged sigh, and Moira saw he wasn't far from tears. He said he was following instructions. Didn't want to do it. Hated doing it. But he wasn't in an arguing position, was he? Vergers being a good way down the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
'And if I don't do it,' he said, 'he'll do it hisself. And he won't be as careful as me.'
'Mr Beard,' Moira said.
'Aye. He'll smash her, like…'
'Like the Autumn Cross.'
'I'll see she's all right,' Alfred Beckett said. 'I'll keep her safe until such time as…'
He sighed, fished a packet of Arrowmint chewing gum out of the top pocket of his boiler-suit. Moira accepted a segment and they stood together chewing silently for a minute or so.
Then Mr Beckett said, 'Aye. It's a bugger.'
A scrap of cement fell from Our Sheila.
Moira said, 'But isn't she – excuse me, I'm no' an expert in these matters – isn't she protected in some way?'
'No, lass, she's…'
'I meant, isn't she a feature of a listed historic building?'
'Oh,' said Alfred Beckett. 'Aye. Happen. But Mr Beard reckons she's not safe and could fall on somebody's head. Same as she's not done for the past umpteen centuries.'
'Aye,' Moira said eventually. 'It's a bugger all right.' 'Now then. Why aren't you at school?'
Benjie threw his arms around Ma's waist and burrowed his head into her pinny. He started to sob.
She pulled him into the kitchen, shut the back door. 'Now, lad. What's matter? Tell owd Ma.'
Ma Wagstaff sat her grandson on the kitchen stool. Spine still giving her gyp, she reached up for a bottle of her special licorice toffees. Never been known not to work.
When it was out, Ma said, 'The bugger.'
Benjie with his swollen eyes and his wet cheeks bulging with toffee.
'The unfeeling, spiteful bugger,' Ma said.
Biggest thing that had ever happened to Benjie, Ernest Dawber putting him in charge of the Autumn Cross – a whole afternoon, inspecting the twigs and branches, acorns, bits of old birds' nests and stuff the other kids had brought, saying what was to go into the cross, what was right for it, what wasn't good enough. Standing proudly, top of the aisle, the day Alfred Beckett had come with his ladder, and the cross, all trimmed and finished, had been hoisted into place, and everybody cheering.
Biggest thing ever happened to the lad.
'Leave him to me,' Ma said. 'I'll sort that bugger out meself, just you see if I don't.'
Benjie stared at her, wildly shaking his head, couldn't speak for the toffee.
'Gone far enough,' Ma said. 'Got to be told a few things. For his own good, if nowt else.'
'No!' Benjie blurted. 'Don't go near it, Ma.'
Ma was taken aback. 'Eh?'
'…'s getting bigger, Ma. Every day, 's getting bigger.'
'What is, lad?'
'The dragon!' The little lad started crying again, scrambling down from the stool, clutching Ma round the waist again, wailing, 'You've not to… You've not to!'
Eh?
Mystified, but determined to get to the bottom of this, Ma detached his small hands from her pinny, squatted down, with much pain, to his height. 'Now then. Summat you've not told me. Eh? Come on.' She held his shoulders, straightening him up, feeding him some strength, not that she'd much to spare these days. 'Come on. Tell owd Ma all about it.'
He stared into her face, eyes all stretched with terror. 'Bigger, Ma… 's bigger.'
'He might look big to you, Benjie,' Ma said gently. 'But he's only a man.'
'No. 's a dragon!'
'Mr Beard?'
"s a dragon.' So the new curate was in combat with the Forces of Evil.
As represented by Our Sheila and the Autumn Cross.
And whatever Willie's Ma was doing inside Matt Castle's coffin.
Last night – early this morning – as the dregs of hot chocolate were rinsed from the mugs, she'd at last got it out of Cathy, what it was all about – or as much of it as Cathy knew.
'So, the coffin's on the ground and the light's been lowered, and the lid is open…'
'I didn't see it!'
'And your friend, old Mrs Wagstaff has her hands inside… and I'm wondering if maybe the old biddy has a passing interest in necrophilia…'
'That's a terrible thing to say!'
'I know… so tell me. What's going on, huh?'
'It was… I think it was… a witch bottle.'
'I thought you said she wasny a witch.'
'It's just a term. It's a very old precautionary thing. To trap an evil spirit…?'
'Matt's spirit…?'
'No… I don't know. Maybe if there was one around. In there with him.'
'In the coffin?'
'I don't know… it's no good asking me. You're going to have to talk to Ma. If she'll talk to you.' And Lottie. Today it was important to talk to Lottie, because Lottie was not part of this place, had not been returning, like Matt, to the bosom of a tradition which was older than Christianity.
… a more pure, undiluted strain… than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe…
Moira had come through the lych-gate, was standing at the top of the cobbled street, the cottages like boulders either side under a blank, unyielding sky – a sky as hard as a whitewashed wall.
… this writer… Stanton, Stanhope…
… he's on his feet, and is he mad… this guy's face is… this guy's face is… this guy's face is…
White.