A Crown of Lights

‘Shit does, in a bad light.’

‘It really was?’

‘Sheepshit, or dogshit more like, stuck on a bloody great lump o’ soil. He din’t smell too fragrant then. Likely the real reason he’s buggered off so quick.’

‘Whoever threw it... that wasn’t a great idea. Thorogood was winning their argument.’

‘Young kiddie, it was. ’E had it on the end of a spade. Seen him come up behind the boy in the T-shirt.’

‘Still look good in the press, though,’ Merrily said glumly. ‘On their pictures he will look like a martyr. I...’ She glanced over the gate to where two police were still talking to Thorogood.

‘Look out, vicar,’ Gomer murmured.

Judith Prosser was heading over, without her Gareth. She wore a shiny new Barbour, a matching wide- brimmed hat.

‘They’ve found Barbara’s car, then, Mrs Watkins.’ She spotted Gomer. ‘Ah... I see you have your informant with you.’

‘’Ow’re you, Judy?’

‘Gomer. I heard your wife died. I’m sorry.’

‘Things ’appens,’ Gomer said gruffly. He shook his head, droplets spinning from his cap.

Judith nodded. ‘So what about Barbara, Mrs Watkins? She down there, in Claerwen Reservoir, is it?’

‘Well, I don’t know those reservoirs, Mrs Prosser. But I think if Barbara’s body was in there, they’d have found it by now. I reckon the answer to that mystery’s much more likely to be found here.’

‘Do you indeed?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘You like a mystery, do you?’

‘How’s Marianne?’ Merrily said.

‘Mrs Starkey is quite well’ – wary now – ‘I assume.’

‘Those lustful demons can be difficult to extract.’

The caution was suddenly discarded as Judith laughed. ‘Don’t you believe all you hear.’

‘Like what?’

‘All kinds of nonsense gets talked about, Mrs Watkins. Be silly for you to start passing on rumours, isn’t it? I certainly haven’t heard anything to upset me.’

She smiled; she had good teeth.

‘In that case, you must have a strong constitution, Mrs Prosser,’ Merrily said.

Left to himself, Robin would have kicked the kid’s ass.

Hermes, nine years old, brother of Artemis, twelve, and of Ceres, six and a half.

Max and Bella did not kick Hermes’s ass. They were not the ass-kicking kind. They would, presumably, explain to him later, in some detail, what effect having tossed shit at the Christian priest might have on him karmically.

No hassle from the cops for Hermes, either. Soon as they found out this was a kid, and that they didn’t get to lean on a grown pagan, they didn’t hang around. Soon as the cops had gone, the media went off too, back to the Black Lion. None of them came to the house.

Robin peeled off his sodden T-shirt, towelled himself dry, stood in front of the cheery fire with a bath towel around his shoulders.

‘They’ll be back tomorrow night,’ George said with a good lashing of relish, ‘when we’re in the church. And this time there’ll be hundreds of them. It’s going to get really, really interesting, man.’

Robin said, ‘Did she call?’

‘Betty? Er, no.’

‘That car’s old, Robin,’ Vivvie said. ‘Maybe it’s just broken down.’

‘I listened to the weather forecast,’ George said. ‘The rain’s likely to have passed by morning. It’ll get colder, but tomorrow looks like being dry, so we’ll have all day to prepare the site.’

Robin shivered under the towel. ‘You guys don’t get it, do you? This is not gonna happen without Betty. If Betty doesn’t come back... no Imbolc.’

‘You’re tired, man,’ George said.

‘She will come back,’ Vivvie promised with intensity. ‘She won’t want to miss this.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘Imbolc... the glimmering of spring. This really is the start of an era. This is history. Like Max was saying while you were outside, it’s going to be the biggest thing since the Reformation. But whereas that was just Henry VIII plundering the riches of the Catholic Church, this is about the disintegration and decay of pride and vanity... and the regrowth of something pure and organic in the ruins. This is so beautifully symbolic, I want to cry.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Robin said. ‘I’m starting not to give a shit.’

‘You don’t mean that. You did a terrific job tonight.’

‘I most likely looked a complete asshole. I just wasn’t gonna cringe in front of that creep in his monk’s robes, was all. I was gonna look as white as he was.’

And maybe less pretentious. He wasn’t gonna go out there swinging a gold pentacle. He’d wanted to handle the confrontation with simple human dignity. Because what he’d really hoped for was that Betty would be out there watching – that she’d gotten home OK, but had been unable to come through the gate on account of the march, so was out there watching her tactless, thoughtless, irresponsible husband handling a difficult situation with some kind of basic human dignity.

And then fucking Hermes had blown it all away.

If you were looking for omens, you sure had one there. What kind of headlines were they gonna get tomorrow? ‘Witches Hurl Shit at Man of God’. The perfect follow-through to Robin looking like a freaking cannibal that last time.

‘Robin...’ The motherly Alexandra smiled a tentatively radiant candlelight smile at him across the room.

‘Sorry?’

‘Robin, there’s a small car just come into the yard.’

‘Huh...?’

He shot to the window, the bath towel dropping to the flags. He shaded his eyes with his cupped hands, up against the glass, hardly daring to hope that he’d see...

A little white Subaru Justy.

Oh God. Oh God. Robin sagged over the big, wide window sill, staring down between his hands and working on his breathing until he no longer felt faint with relief.

He straightened up. ‘Look, would you mind all staying here? I have to do some explaining.’

The Black Lion was packed, the air in the bar full of damp and steam, coming off journalists, TV people, even a few of the Christian marchers – all wet through, starved, in need of a stiff whisky. Greg was run off his feet. No sign of Marianne yet.

Gomer fetched Merrily a single malt and one for himself. There was nowhere to sit except in a tight corner by the window next to the main door. Whenever the door opened, they had to lean to one side, but at least they weren’t overheard as Merrily told Gomer the plain truth about Marianne’s exorcism.

Gomer didn’t blink. He weighed it up, nodding slowly. He laid out a row of beer mats on the table – and, with them, Merrily’s dilemma.

‘Gotter be a problem for you, this, girl. Question of which side you’re on now, ennit?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. She’d taken off her wet coat, but still had the scarf wound round her neck. She was still seeing Robin Thorogood there on his own, vastly outnumbered, not wearing anything witchy, not countering Ellis’s talk of Satan and sacrilege with any pagan propaganda. It could have been an act, to appear ordinary in the face of all the cross-waving – and yet it was too ordinary to be feigned.

‘What you gonner do, then, vicar?’

‘Gomer, how could Judith Prosser and those other women sit there and watch it? Can they really believe in