A Crown of Lights

its red-light quarter. So why had he kept quiet?

Why? Because they’d just had a goddamn row over his handling of Nick Ellis. Because he’d slammed out of the house and didn’t think she’d be speaking to him anyway. Because he was cold and tired. Because.

So why hadn’t he mentioned it the next day, even?

Because... Jeez, was it important? Did she think he enjoyed it? Did she think he’d snatched this chance to feel Marianne’s tits?

Actually, she didn’t think that. What she thought was that Robin hated to tell her anything that might make her think less of Old Hindwell. Why don’t you get to know the people here? Like Judith Prosser – she’s OK, not what I imagined.

Dickhead.

Betty walked over to the church. The stonework suggested extensive Victorian renovation. Did anything remain of the church built as part of some alleged St Michael circle? How would this one feel inside?

Sooner or later, when Robin was not around, she would have to go back into the Old Hindwell ruins to face the question now looming large: the stained and sweating, fear-ridden man at prayer – was that him? Was that the Reverend Terry Penney? Was he dead now?

But this wasn’t an exercise in psychic skills. Before she went back there, she wanted to know all there was to be known about all the churches in the St Michael circle.

However, in Llanfihangel Church, she was immediately accosted by a man in a light suit who asked her if she was on the bride or the groom’s side. So much for standing there in the silence and feeling for the essence of the place. Betty apologized and escaped with a handful of leaflets, which she inspected back in the Subaru.

And just couldn’t believe it. One, apparently produced as a result of a community tourism initiative, was blatantly entitled, ‘Where sleeps the Dragon on the trail of St Michael’s churches’.

Betty slumped back in her seat, broke into a peal of wild, stupid laughter. A tourist leaflet. Was that how all this had started?

The text explained that there were four St Michael churches around Radnor Forest – at Llanfihangel nant Melan, Llanfihangel Rhydithon, Cefnllys and Cascob. It presumably didn’t mention Old Hindwell because it was a ruin, now on private land.

An inside page was headed: ‘St Michael and the Dragon of Radnor Forest’.

It referred to the introduction by Jewish Christians of ‘angelology’. Angels guarded nature and local communities. St Michael guarded Israel and was named in the Book of Revelations, etc., etc. Most Welsh churches dedicated to him had appeared in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The specific Radnor reference had been pulled from a book called A Welsh Country Parson by D. Parry-Jones, who recounted a legend that the last Welsh dragon slept in Radnor Forest and, to contain it, local people had built four St Michael churches in a circle around the Forest. It was said that if any of these churches was destroyed, the dragon would awaken and ravage the countryside once more.

This was it? This was the source of Nicholas Ellis’s paranoia?

Crazy!

Still, it did look as though Robin and Ellis were right. Assuming there was no fire-breathing elemental beast locked into the landscape, this appeared to be a simple metaphor for paganism, the Old Religion.

... if any one of these churches is destroyed...

Old Hindwell had been virtually destroyed... and initially by its rector, which didn’t make any obvious sense. Why would a clergyman make a gesture which was bound to be adversely interpreted by anyone superstitious enough to give any credence to the dragon legend?

Unless Penney had been a closet pagan. Was that likely?

Not really. Something was missing. For a moment, Betty smelled again the rich, sickening stench from the praying man in the skeletal nave.

She drove off too quickly, the Subaru shuddering.

Lizzie Wilshire greeted her with a spindly embrace.

‘I don’t know whether it’s your herbal mixture or just you, my dear, but I feel so much better.’ Holding out her right hand and making it into a claw, the fingertips slowly but effectively closing on the palm.

‘Gosh,’ Betty said.

‘I haven’t been able to do that for months!’ Those ET eyes shining like polished marbles. ‘You’re a wonder, my dear!’

‘I wouldn’t quite say that.’

Psychological? The potion couldn’t possibly have had such a spontaneous and dramatic effect unless her problem was essentially, or to an extent, psychosomatic.

And yet... Betty caught an unexpected sidelong glimpse of Lizzie’s aura. It was, without a doubt, less fragmented. And she was talking constantly, garrulous rather than querulous now.

‘Were you originally called Elizabeth? Like me?’

‘A long time ago,’ Betty admitted, as they sat down.

‘A long time ago, my dear, you weren’t even born.’ Lizzie Wilshire laughed hoarsely. ‘Now, were those papers useful? If not, just throw them away. I’m in a clearing-out mood. Clutter frightens me. I’m even thinking of selling the summer house. Every time I look out at it, I expect to see Bryan walking across the garden. Do people buy summer houses second-hand like that? Can they take them away?’

‘I should think so. You could advertise it in the paper. I could do that for you, if you want.’

‘Oh, would you? That’s terribly kind. Yes. I told Dr Coll – I hope you don’t mind...’

‘About the summer house?’

‘About you, of course! About your wonderful herbal preparation. He called in this morning, even though it’s Saturday – such a caring, caring man – and said how much better I was looking, and naturally I told him about you.’

‘Oh.’ In Betty’s experience the very last thing a doctor liked to be told was that some cranky plant remedy had had an instantaneous effect on a condition against which powerful drugs had thus far failed to make a conspicuous impact.

‘He was delighted,’ Lizzie said.

‘He was?’

‘Far be it from him, he said, to dismiss the old remedies. Indeed, he’s often suggested I might benefit from attending one of the Reverend Ellis’s services – but that’s all too brash and noisy for me.’

‘He must be a very unusual doctor.’

‘Simply a very caring man. I didn’t realize how pastoral country doctors could be until Bryan died. Bryan had a thing about the medical profession, refused to call a doctor unless in dire emergency. He’d have liked you. Oh, yes. His army training involved finding treatments in the hedgerows. A great believer in natural medicine, was Bryan. Although, one does need to have a fully qualified medical man in the background, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ Betty said. ‘I suppose so. Shall I make some tea?’

She knew now where everything was kept. She knew on which plate to arrange which biscuits. On which tray to spread which cloth. All of which greatly pleased Mrs Wilshire. When it was done, Betty sat down with her and they smiled at one another.

‘You’ve brightened my life in such a short time, Betty.’

‘You’ve been very helpful to me, too.’

‘I won’t forget it, you know. I never forget a kindness.’

‘Oh, look...’

‘We never had children, I’ve no close relatives left. At my age, with my ailments, one doesn’t know how long one has left...’

‘Come on... that’s daft.’

‘I’m quite serious, my dear. I said to Dr Coll some time ago, is there anything I can do to help you after my death? Is there anything you need? New equipment? An extension to the surgery? Of course, he brushed that aside,