to. And then when Ma started getting gloomy, we all thought it were just her age. Even me, daft cow. And now everything's happened at once, and it's shaken us. But we'll be all right, honest, luv.'
She got up to put the kettle on. 'I've sent Willie to t'Man for a pint. Life's got to go on, Alf. Just means we'll have to have a bit of a get-together. Soon as possible. Sort this lad Joel Beard out for a start. Then we'll see what else we've got to tackle. Mrs Horridge, that's another thing…'
'Milly!' Alf Beckett's hearth brush moustache looked bent and spiky. 'Police've come.'
'Eh? Because of Ma? Have they found summat?'
'No, no listen to me, woman, for Christ's sake.' Alf sat up on the couch, hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles were whiter than his cheeks, it's t'grave. They're coming to dig Matt's grave up.'
In the narrow doorway to the back kitchen, Milly froze, filling it.
Alf said, 'Some bugger's told t'coppers as t'bogman's in theer.'
Milly felt sick. All churned up inside. Ma gone, the Rector in hospital. And her at the wrong time of life to cope with it all. She covered up her face with her hands and looked at him through her fingers.
'Lord,' she whispered. 'What've we done, Alf? What've we done in Brid'lo to deserve this?' Cathy said to Moira, 'If Pop hears about this, he's going to do something stupid.'
She'd told Cathy only about Ma's death. Not about seeing the old woman out on the Moss fighting a dead tree.
She said, 'Like what?'
'Like discharge himself,' Cathy said glumly. 'Moira, I don't know what to do. They ran this place between them, Pop and Ma Wagstaff. They hardly ever met, but they had an understanding, you know?'
They were in the sitting room. Cathy had lit the fire. She was sitting on the sofa where Dic Castle had sprawled. She'd taken off her shoes and her thick woollen socks were planted on an old rag hearthrug dark with scorchmarks from stray coals.
'He doesn't talk much about it, but it was obviously really tough for Pop when he first came here. He was pretty young – younger than Joel. And a Southerner. With a funny German name. Hell of a culture shock. Series of shocks, I suppose.'
'Like, when he finds out they're all heathens?'
'Is that what we are?'
Moira smiled, 'It's no' that simple, is it? I was up on the moor with Willie Wagstaff earlier. We saw the holy well. Who's that dedicated to? The goddess Brigid? St Bride? The Mother Goddess? Or the Holy Mother of God?'
'Gets confusing, doesn't it?' Cathy said.
'And the cross that was in the church, made out of twigs and stuff.'
'The Autumn Cross.'
'And there's a Winter Cross – yeh? – made of holly and mistletoe and stuff, and then a Spring Cross, made of…'
'You've got it.'
Moira said, putting it all together finally, 'They can't make up their minds what they are, can they?'
Cathy folded her legs on to the sofa. 'Like I said, you need to talk to Mr Dawber, he can put it into an historical context. But the first Church in Britain was the Celtic Church, and by the time they came along I like to think Celtic paganism was pretty refined, with this give-and-take attitude to nature and animals and things.'
'In parts of Scotland,' said Moira, 'particularly some of the Western Isles, it's not been so much a takeover as a merger. Like, nobody could say the teachings of Christ were anything less than a hell of a good framework for, say, human behaviour, the way we treat each other. But…'
'… in isolated areas, there were aspects of life it didn't quite cover,' said Cathy. 'Maybe still doesn't. And this area was always very isolated. Cut off. Self-sufficient. Immune from outside influences. We got electricity later than everybody else. Piped water was a long time coming. Television signals are still so lousy that most people haven't got one yet.'
'Yeh, but look…'
'… now it's a brick through your window and 'Sheffield United are shit' on the walls, and somebody has one on a public seat – that's outside influences for you. Be a rape next.'
'Cathy, this bogman…'
'Oh, he's all right.'
'No, he's not. Matt Castle was besotted with him. The Man in the Moss. Matt was seeing him in Biblical terms – sacrificial saviour of the English Celts.'
'He died to save us all,' Cathy said. 'Gosh. Isn't that a terrible piece of blasphemy? Can you imagine the sleepless nights Pop had over this? The bogman: was he some sort of Pennine Jesus?'
'Or the anti-Christ, huh?'
Moira thought of the black, snaking branches of the tree on the Moss. Her head throbbed, as if the thing were lashing at her brain.
'OK,' she said hurriedly. 'Let's leave that be for a while. When they built the first Christian church here, they put it on the old sacred site and it's dedicated to Brigid, or Brigantia, now known as St Bride. And the ministers here have always had a kind of agreement with the priestess and her attendants who, in time, become known as the Mothers' Union, right?'
'All the Anglican Churches have Mothers' Unions. Young Wives' groups too.'
'Yeah, but most of them, presumably, don't recognize the symbolism: the mothers and the hags. The hags being the ones over the menopause.'
'When you're over the Change,' Cathy said, 'you go on to a new level of responsibility. Well… so I'm told. How do you know all this?'
'I read a lot of books. Now, OK, the bogman turns up again. The willing sacrifice. The pagan Jesus-figure who supposedly went to his death to save his people. That's one powerful symbol, Cathy. Regardless of what else it might be, it's a heavy symbol. It churns things up.'
'I've told you, he's all right.'
'What d'you mean he's all right? Somebody's stolen him. I'm telling you there are people around who will do things with a relic as powerful as that.'
'Look, it's OK, that's sorted out.'
'Sorted out?' She had to stand up, walk away from the fire, although she was shivering and it hurt when she swallowed.
'Moira, come on, sit down. I promise you, it's OK.'
'Why?' Moira demanded. 'Why is it OK, Cathy?'
'Because,' said Cathy simply, 'the bogman's had a full Christian burial.'
CHAPTER II
By now the sky was the colour of police trousers, Ashton thought prosaically, and damn near as thick. 'Tent would've been better,' he said as the rain started up again, steel needles in the arc lamp. 'Does it matter if he gets wet?'
'Depends what state he's in.' Roger Hall was struggling with his umbrella.
'Glad to see you're still sure he's down there.'
'Count on it,' Hall said.
Ashton's lads had erected a grey canvas screen, about seven feet high, around the grave; still just a mound of soil, no headstone yet, that saved a bit of hassle.
'Anyway, you've brought your own coffin, have you?'
'I wouldn't call it that,' Hall said. 'My assistant has it, over there.' Pointing at Chrissie White, shivering in fake fur, a plywood box at her feet.
'What's that white stuff inside then, Dr Hall?'
'Polystyrene chips. Shut that lid properly, Chrissie, we don't want them wet. We've also brought a few rolls of
