A Crown of Lights

needle. ‘Ah!’ She crossed the room and plucked a green-covered book from the row supported by tall kitchen weights on a window ledge. ‘You are enlivening my morning no end, Mrs Thorogood. So few people nowadays want to discuss such matters, especially with a garrulous old woman.’

She laid the book in front of Betty. It was called A Welsh Country Parson, by D. Parry-Jones. It fell open at a much-thumbed page.

‘Parry-Jones records here, if you can see, that a dragon had dwelt “deep in the fastnesses” of the Forest. And he records – this would be back in the twenties or thirties – a conversation with an old man who insisted he had heard the dragon breathing. All rather sketchy, I’m afraid, and somewhat fanciful. Anyway, it soon became clear to the people he was involved with on a day-to-day basis that Terry was becoming quite obsessed.’

Betty looked up from the book, shaken.

‘As a symbol of evil,’ Mrs Pottinger said, ‘a satanic symbol, the dragon from the Book of Revelation represents the old enemy. My impression was that Terry thought he was in some way being tested by God – by being sent to Old Hindwell, where the dragon was at the door. That God had a mission for him here. Well, English people who come to Wales sometimes do pick up rather strange ideas.’

Mrs Pottinger put on a rather superior smile, as though Scots were immune to such overreaction. Ignoring this, Betty said, ‘Did he believe there were so-called satanic influences at work in the Forest? I mean, is there a history of this... of witchcraft, say?’

‘If there was, not much is recorded. No famous witchcraft trials on either side of the border in this area. But, of course’ – a thin, sly smile – ‘that doesn’t mean it didn’t go on. Quite the reverse, one would imagine. It may have been so much a part of everyday life, something buried so deep in the rural psyche, that rooting it out might have been deemed... impractical.’

‘What about Cascob?’

‘Cascob? Oh, the charm.’ Mrs Pottinger beamed. ‘That is rather a wonderful mixture, isn’t it? Do you know some of those phrases are thought to have been taken from the writings of John Dee, the Elizabethan magus, who was born not far away, near Pilleth?’

‘Do you know anything about the woman, Elizabeth Loyd?’

‘Some poor child.’

‘Could she have been a witch? I mean, the wording of the exorcism suggests she was thought to be possessed by satanic evil. Suspected witches around that time were often thought to have... relations with the Devil.’

... some women are known to have boasted of it, Betty had read yesterday. The Devil’s member was described as being long and narrow and cold as ice...

‘Nothing is known of her,’ Mrs Pottinger said, ‘or where her exorcism took place, or who conducted it. The historian Francis Payne suggests that the charm was probably buried to gain extra potency for the invocation.’

‘Buried?’

‘It was apparently dug up in the churchyard.’

Betty sat very still and nodded and tried to smile, and felt again the weight of a certain section of Cascob’s circular churchyard, and the chill inside the building.

‘Mrs Pottinger,’ she said quickly, ‘what finally happened to Terry Penney?’

‘Well, he’d virtually destroyed his own church – an unpardonable sin. He had effectively resigned. He’d already left the village before the crime was even discovered, taking with him his roomful of possessions in that old van he drove.’

‘You suggested in your letter to Major Wilshire that there’d been previous acts of vandalism.’

‘Did I? Yes, minor things. A small fire in a shed outside, spotted and dealt with by a churchwarden. Other petty incidents, too, as though he was building up to the main event.’

‘Where did he go after he left?’

‘No one knows, or much cared at the time. Except, perhaps, for me, for a while. But the Church was very quickly compensated for the damage done, so perhaps Terry had more money than it appeared. Perhaps his frugal lifestyle was a form of asceticism, a monkish thing. Anyway, he just went away – after setting in train the process which ultimately led to the decommissioning of Old Hindwell Church. And the village then erased him from its collective – and wonderfully selective – memory.’

‘You really didn’t like the place much, did you?’ Betty said bluntly.

‘You may take it that I did not feel particularly grateful to some of the inhabitants. We left in eighty-three. My husband had been unwell, so we thought we ought to live nearer to various amenities. That was what we told people, at least. And that’s...’ Mrs Pottinger’s voice became faint. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling people ever since.’

She sat back in her typing chair, blinked at Betty, then stared widely, as if she was waking up to something.

Betty returned the stare.

‘You’re really rather an extraordinary young woman, aren’t you?’ Mrs Pottinger said in surprise, as though she’d ceased many years ago to find young people in any way interesting. ‘I wonder why it is that I feel compelled to tell you the truth.’

‘The truth?’

‘Tell me,’ Mrs Pottinger said, ‘who’s your doctor?’

28 A Humble Vessel

THERE WAS NO doorbell, so she knocked twice, three times. She was about to give up when he answered the door.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Reverend Watkins.’ Registering her only briefly before bending over the threshold, apparently to inspect the candles in the neighbouring windows. ‘Good.’

Meaning the candles, she guessed.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Ellis...’

‘They told me you’d be dropping in.’ He shrugged. ‘I accept that.’

‘I feel a bit awkward...’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you must do. Do you want to come in?’

She followed him through a shoebox hall which smelled of curry, into a small, square living room which had been turned into an office. There was a steel-framed desk, two matching chairs. A computer displayed red and green standby lights on a separate desk, and there was a portable TV set on a stand with a video recorder underneath.

‘The war room,’ Nicholas Ellis said with no smile.

His accent sounded far more transatlantic than it had during Menna’s funeral service. He wore a light grey clerical shirt, with pectoral cross, and creased grey chinos. His long hair was loosely tied back with a black ribbon. His face was windreddened but without lines, like a mannequin in an old-fashioned tailor’s shop.

He waved her vaguely to one of the metal chairs.

‘Not much time, I’m afraid. I’ll help you all I can, but I really don’t have much time today, as you can imagine. Events kind of caught up on me.’

When he sat down behind his desk, Merrily became aware of the aluminium-framed picture on the wall behind him, over the boarded-up fireplace. It was William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Sexually charged, awesomely repulsive. Ellis noticed her looking at it.

‘Revoltingly explicit, isn’t it – shining with evil? I live with it so that when they look in my window they will know I’m not afraid.’

They? The war room?