To Dream of the Dead

Sophie said Helen had been concerned enough by the tone of the message on the answering machine to hang on to the tape. Had thus been able to present the evidence to Howe when Howe brought up the issue.

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily had said. ‘I don’t understand. Howe brought this up?’

‘Well, yes, I think so. She seems to have specifically asked Helen if Clement’s attitude to the Dinedor Serpent had led to threats.’

‘As if she already had reason to suspect the murder was Serpent-related?’

‘I thought I’d made that clear,’ Sophie said.

Merrily looked down at the seated Jane from behind, really not liking where things were going.

‘So when the Council decided to go ahead with the road… people were very angry?’

‘You think they didn’t have good reason to be?’ Jane turned her chair round. ‘Soon as the council learned about the Serpent, they hushed it up. They didn’t want it to come out until they knew they could bulldoze the road through regardless. One guy chained himself to a machine.’

‘You sure about that — that they were hushing it up?’

‘It’s obvious. They didn’t even want to hear any arguments. Wouldn’t allow any public debate. It was discussed by the so-called Cabinet behind closed doors. All we heard was this reactionary old bastard Clement Ayling going on to Midlands Today and the Hereford Times about how crap the Serpent was anyway and how it wasn’t even worth preserving.’

‘Mmm.’

‘They didn’t even take any steps to protect bits of the Serpent they’d uncovered — like against the elements? So it was all filling up with water during heavy rain, causing untold damage.’

‘But as I understand it, that’s why it needed to be covered up again, even if it was by a road — to protect it against bad weather.’

‘And people nicking stones as souvenirs, sure. But you could cover it up and still make a feature out of it. Look at Ohio. No, it was the way this was done — hushed up. And like when a few civilised protesters turned up at the council offices and refused to leave they were actually arrested? By the cops? You must remember that.’

‘Well, I do, but it came to nothing, surely? Nobody was charged.’

‘Mum… they were thrown into police cells! These were just ordinary people disgusted at the way the council was behaving. And two of the ones arrested, they were, like, over eighty?’ Jane’s eyes wide now, with outrage. ‘And some of them got taken all the way to Worcester because like there weren’t enough spare cells at Hereford? OK, the charges were withdrawn, but banging elderly people up in cells just for standing up for some kind of democracy… Like they were terrorists or something?’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Why do you keep saying that? Of course I’m sure. And the reason I’m sure is because some of the protesters are also members of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society. Same problem, same council. I’d’ve been with them myself if it hadn’t been a school day — wow, does that sound pathetic or what?’

‘Actually, it sounds sensible. If you can cope with sensible.’

‘I should’ve been there. Wimped out.’

Jane turned back to the computer and brought up another SAVE THE SERPENT page, which said:

Please support by adding comments and taking online actions including a petition to the Prime Minister.

Merrily stood looking at it, but not seeing it. Seeing the greater pattern. Dinedor Serpent/Coleman’s Meadow. The trouble with this county, it was just too damn small. Everything interconnected. Everything eventually trickling down into your own community, your own home, your—

‘Mum! You’re digging your fingers into my shoulders!’

‘I… sorry.’

‘OK.’ Jane stood up. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You mentioned Clement Ayling.’

‘Fascist of the first order. We truly live in a police state, you know? Nobody’s allowed to object to anything any more. I mean, you only have to look at pictures of Ayling with his phoney smile, the smug, fat, arrogant—’

‘Jane.’

‘What?’

‘Sit down, huh?’

17 River of Light

They dressed the tree. A pagan ceremony, Jane always used to say, and she was probably right.

Merrily climbed on a chair to attach their slightly frayed Christmas fairy, or maybe angel, to the topmost branch. She thought of the offerings at Whiteleafed Oak in the Malverns. She thought of the little lights that were supposed to be visible in the orchard here in Ledwardine, where cider apples known as the Pharisees Red had been grown. Pharisees from farises — local slang for fairies.

As if we’d block the city’s economic development for their juvenile fairy stories.

Jane was applying herself, with serious, numbed concentration, to the decoration of the tree. When she’d spoken it was only to point out that they needed more glass balls or strands of tinsel.

You could almost hear her mind turning over and over like an engine trying to start. And then she said, as if the words had just drifted out, ‘Do what thou wilt, though it harm none.’

She had the Christmas tree lights stretching up the stairs to untangle the wire.

‘That would be the motto of the Pagan Federation?’ Merrily said.

‘Actually, it’s a Wiccan saying. But, yeah, if they had a motto it would be something like that.’

‘Right.’

If you were a vicar, a parish priest in the Christian faith, and you were fully aware that your daughter was wearing, next to her skin, a fine silver necklace with a pentacle hanging from it, what were you supposed to do about that? Come over all Shirley West? Ban her from keeping pagan books in your vicarage? Watch her every move, find out who she was meeting, phoning, keep a check on her emails and pray for her deliverance from the arms of Satan?

Or did you, seeing through to the person underneath, remember when you were a teenage Siouxie and the Banshees fan in black lipstick and let it, for God’s sake, lie?

‘Mum, these lights are just not coming on.’

‘They never come on first time. You have to go round screwing every one in tight, and then… pray.’ Merrily came down from the chair. ‘So what you’re trying to say is… no supporter of the Dinedor Serpent or the Coleman’s Meadow stones — and certainly no modern British pagan — would even contemplate something so brutal and barbaric.’

‘You think they would?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Jane. Some of the modern pagans I’ve encountered, it would be difficult to imagine them sacrificing lunch. But if you look at their forebears in the Dark Ages…’

‘Which weren’t dark, but go on.’

‘If you look at ancient Celtic paganism, as practised, presumably, by the Iron Age people who lived in their round huts on the top of Dinedor Hill… and Cole Hill, come to that—’

‘So that would be like two thousand years ago? Three thousand?’

‘Whatever, they were very into removing heads, the old pagans, weren’t they?’

‘No!’

‘All I’m—’