A Crown of Lights

‘Mum says to tell the police not to let her go. She’s killed twice.’

They followed the path to the old archaeological site. Some thirty yards away, they could see two police cars lined up, a radio crackling from one of them. They could see the low, white tent, the orange tape. The second car was parked on the edge of a small wood full of dead trees, white branches shining like bone. Jane had told her what was probably still lying under the tent.

‘Are you sure?’ the kid kept saying. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I promised.’

‘But with everything that’s... And look at you... Look at you. You need a doctor.’

‘Dr Coll?’ Merrily started to laugh, and the laughter wouldn’t stop.

‘Stop it!’ Jane screamed. ‘What’s that on your hands?’

Merrily looked down, still laughing.

‘Oh.’

Thock, she heard. Thock.

Seeing the ridiculous dismay on Judith’s face... watching her step back, angrily breaking open the gun, and coming out with that brilliantly dry observation.

‘Wouldn’t you know it, Mrs Watkins? A Radnor man to the core. Never load two cartridges when you may not even need the one.’

The funniest line Merrily had heard in a long time. Possibly, at that moment, the funniest line being spoken in the whole, insane world. When she started to laugh, she was half expecting Judith to come at her with both fists or take a swing at her with the shotgun. But smart Judith, canny Judith... this was not how Judith reacted at all. She simply laid down the empty gun, a few inches away from the half-curled hand out of which she’d snatched it before the fingers could spasm around its barrel.

‘The stupid man.’ Voice flat, eyes flat like aluminium. ‘What did he want to do that for? You saw it, Mrs Watkins, you saw how I tried to stop him.’

As if the previous minutes had never happened – as if editing her life like a videotape. Instinctively compiling the alternative version, with an efficient jump-cut from the second the gun went off. So practical, this Judith.

And Merrily had reacted quickly for once, getting it exactly right.

‘You’d better tell the police what happened then, Mrs Prosser.’

‘It’s my duty, Mrs Watkins. Give me a hand here, will you?’

Both of them then pulling the body away from the door, as though it was a huge dead sheep, so they could squeeze outside.

This was how Merrily had got the blood on her hands.

To the left, she could hear the sound of the Hindwell Brook.

Jane said, ‘She killed Barbara Buckingham, that woman?’

‘Yes.’ Strangled her with her own silk scarf. Beat her up first, probably. ‘Perhaps when Barbara went to see her and challenged her over... certain things. I think Gomer said her husband owned a digger. I suppose one of them would’ve driven her car over to the Elan Valley, with the other following.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She’s Mrs Councillor Prosser, flower – fortified by the local community: the doctor, the lawyer, the councillor... even the priest. Solid as a rock, she was, until someone from Off blew it all open. Someone who hadn’t always been from Off, and realized what she was seeing here.’

And Merrily couldn’t help wondering to herself, then, if anything had ever gone on, way back, between Judith and Barbara – something Barbara had suppressed, erased from her memory as simply as Judith Prosser had erased from her mental tape the murder of Weal and the attempted murder of Merrily.

Over her shoulder was slung her airline bag, bought because it was blue and gold. She’d brought it out of the tomb with her, but there was no blood on it, a small miracle. It contained the Bibles, prayers, altar wine and holy water. So medieval?

They stopped at the bridge, and there was the church across the water, and also reflected in the water. Betty’s birthday cake.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Jane breathed. ‘It’s... son et lumiere. Without the son.’

Merrily smiled wildly. Less than an hour ago, she was staring into eternity down the barrels of a twelve-bore. Now she was back in airy-fairyland.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Jane said. Merrily squeezed her arm.

‘Jane... look... I don’t want to have to worry about you, OK? So I’d like you to stay out of the way. I know you’re sixteen and everything...’

‘You’re in shock, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve just seen something totally horrific. You’ve been through a really horrifying—’

‘Yeah, I probably am in shock.’

‘You could do this tomorrow.’

‘I said I’d do it tonight.’

‘We could explain to Betty...’

They were halfway across the footbridge now. The ruins shimmered in a hollow of silence.

Then a woman’s voice rose up.

‘Dread lord of Death and Resurrection

Of life and the Giver of life

Lord within ourselves, whose name is Mystery of Mysteries encourage our hearts

Let thy light crystallize itself in our blood...’

Merrily slumped over the rail of the bridge.

Too late.

58 The Woman Clothed with the Sun

HIS COVEN AROUND him, Robin lifted the wand high, in his right hand, until it divided the moon.

The wand was a slender, foot-long piece of hazel wood, cut from the tree with a single stroke on a Wednesday, as laid down in the Book of Shadows. In his left hand Robin held the scourge, a mild token thing like a riding crop with silken cords.

Behind him were the crone – Alexandra – and a woman called Ilana, who was twenty-four but looked a lot younger and represented the maiden tonight.

The flames rose straight up out of the tight nest of stones in the centre of the nave as he brought down the wand in a long diagonal, right to left, then left to right in a forty-five-degree angle and straight back horizontally and down... and up.

To a point. One point.

The positive, invoking pentagram of Earth... drawn before his high priestess, whose hair shone brighter than the fire, whose eyes were deeper than crystals.

‘Blessed be,’ Robin whispered.

And never had meant it more.

Merrily followed Jane around the church tower. The kid had a small torch, borrowed from Gomer, but they