A Crown of Lights

One man on his feet in the crowded hall. It was the biker with the black dragon.

Ellis brought his hands together. ‘You came here because you were moved by the Holy Spirit. We must all obey those impulses which we recognize as a response to the will of God.’

‘But,’ the man persisted, ‘what does God want us to do?’

Ellis let the question hang a while, then he said softly, ‘You all saw what happened earlier to our brother. I can tell you that two men have been charged with assault causing actual bodily harm. That will be the least of their punishment. But, in allowing that to happen, God was telling us that a public demonstration is no longer the answer. The answer is prayer.’

‘Praise God,’ someone cried, but it was half-hearted. They wanted...

Blood? Merrily sat at the back, demoralized even in victory.

‘There will be no more... violence.’ Ellis emphasized it with open hands. There was desultory applause. ‘But our task is still far from over.’

He told them they must pray for the intervention of St Michael to keep his church out of the hands of Satan, out of the red claws of the dragon. And if they prayed, if their faith in God was strong enough, the Devil would fail tonight. The Lord would yet intervene.

A frisson went through the hall; there were tentative moans.

‘God’ – Ellis’s arms were suddenly extended, ramrod stiff – ‘arises!’

A man arose from the floor, his own arms raised, a mirror image of the priest. Others followed, with a squeaking and scraping of chairs.

Hundreds of arms reaching for the ceiling.

A woman began to gabble, ‘God, God, God, God, God!’ orgasmically.

Soon, Merrily found she was the only one seated and was obliged to scramble to her feet. She looked up and saw that Ellis – who must surely know that this was as good as over, that there would be no more generating paranoia, no more wholesale exorcism, no more internal ministry – was aglow again, his eyes like foglamps, and they were focused, through the wintry forest of stiffened arms... focused on her.

‘God arises!’ Ellis snarled.

Merrily left the hall. He was showing her that even in defeat his power was undiminished. That the Holy Spirit was with him.

‘A remarkable man, Mrs Watkins,’ said Judith Prosser.

She was standing in the porch, in her long black quilted coat.

‘Yes,’ Merrily admitted.

Judith gently closed the doors on the assembly. She contemplated Merrily with a wryly tilted smile. ‘I take it,’ she said lightly, ‘that you’ve made your decision.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your “exorcism in reverse”,’ Judith said. ‘The laying to rest of the poor moth in the jar.’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘Jeffery will have left now, for his lodge. But perhaps this was not such a good idea.’

Inside the hall, a hymn was beginning. It would end in tongues. Ellis and his followers were, for the time being, contained. Jane, too, by Gomer and Sophie. Merrily had a couple of hours yet before she was due at St Michael’s. She walked out into the cold and looked down on the meagre glimmer of the village. She shivered inside Jane’s duffel coat.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and do it.’

49 Cashmere and Tweed

JANE HAD NEVER seen Gomer quite like this before, although she’d heard the tales. The legend.

Ciggy glowing malevolently in the centre of his teeth, like a ruby in the face of some Indian idol, he rode the mini-JCB into the middle of the field to where the earth was banked. The digger was the size of a heavy-duty ride- on mower. A big yellow Tonka toy. Nev’s truck was parked a few yards back, engine running, headlights full beam. Next to it, at a slight angle, was Gomer’s Land Rover, with Sophie inside.

In any other situation, Jane would have found this deeply, shockingly thrilling, but tonight she only wanted to get it over with, and find Mum.

This was Prosser’s ground, turned over to the archaeologists who’d dug trenches all over the place, and then paid fat Nev to replace the tons of removed soil. Up here with Mum yesterday, Gomer had noticed a part that was not professionally finished. Not how he’d taught Nev to do it. Not seeded, but clumsily planted with turf. Not made good to Gomer Parry Plant Hire standards.

Gomer had taken it up with Nev. Nev had been offended. Nev said he’d left a bloody perfect job, banked up and seeded tidy.

Now, it could be that Gareth Prosser had buried some sheep here, but no sheep grazed this area, and it was a long way to come for a dull, lazy bugger like Gareth.

‘Eirion!’ Gomer yelled. ‘Do me a favour, boy, back the ole Land Rover up a few feet, then we can see the top o’ the mound.’

‘OK.’ Eirion ran through the mud.

‘Jane!’ Sophie called from the truck. ‘Either you come in here, or I’m coming out for you.’ Knowing Jane was quite keen to sneak away and snatch a look at the ruins of the church across the brook, to see if they were all lit up.

‘Oh, Sophie, Gomer might need some help.’

‘Very well.’ The truck’s passenger door creaked open. There was a squelch. ‘Blast!’

Jane grinned. Sophie was not the kind to carry wellies in the boot.

The bucket of the little digger went into the soft bank like a spoon into chocolate fudge. Gomer had thought this mini-JCB might be more appropriate than a big one, in the circumstances, and also less conspicuous. It couldn’t be an awful lot less conspicuous, with all the noise Gomer was making.

‘This is quite ridiculous.’ Sophie was now limping across the field, serious mud-splashes on her camel coat. ‘I don’t know how I ever agreed—’

‘You didn’t agree. We dragged you along. I’m sorry, Sophie. You’ve been, like, really brilliant today.’

‘Shut up, Jane.’

‘We could have told the police, I suppose, but they probably couldn’t have done anything without going to a magistrate for a warrant or something, and that would have meant tomorrow.’

‘Mind yourselves!’ Gomer bawled. The arm of the digger swung, the bucket dipped with a slurping, sucking sound. Jane wondered if Minnie’s exasperated spirit was watching him now.

The bucket clanged and shivered. ‘—ucking Nora!’ Gomer snarled. The digger’s hydraulic feet gripped at the slippery earth, the whole machine bucked and Gomer rose from the seat like a cowboy. He turned and spat out his cigarette end. ‘Eirion! Can you get the ole torch to that, see what we got there?’

But it was a just a big rock, too big for the digger to shift. Gomer and Eirion had to manhandle it out of the way. It took ages; they both got filthy.

After about half an hour, there was a new bank of earth, three feet high, at right angles to the one they were excavating. It was like some First World War landscape. Jane wandered over to the digger.

‘Gomer, look, suppose Sophie and I go back and see what’s happened to Mum? Is that OK?’

‘Sure t’be.’ Gomer sat back in the headlight beams, his glasses brown-filmed. ‘We en’t gettin’ nowhere fast yere. Bloody daft idea, most likely. Gotter put all this shit back, too, ’fore we leaves.’

‘It was worth a try, Gomer. You aren’t usually wrong. OK, look, we’ll get back just as soon as we—’

‘Mr Parry!’ Eirion’s face turned round from the gouged-out bank.

‘Ar?’