watching her through what appeared, for just a moment, to be Sean’s eyes.

‘Everything,’ Jane confirmed.

And earlier that man smiling Sean’s pained, ‘Isn’t it all so tedious?’ smile. All of it following a Sean-haunted drive up the M5, and then, when returning home, on that same stretch of motorway, on the way back.

‘What we figured it means,’ Jane said, ‘is that people all over the world were probably sending you ill will at that point.’

‘Down their computers?’

‘Don’t try and laugh it off. You were crap on telly.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Maybe that wasn’t all your fault, you know? There’s a lot of really heavy people out there. They knew your weaknesses: your guilt trip about Dad and the Church.’

‘That’s... silly.’

‘And now Ned Bain’s in Old Hindwell.’

‘OK, not good.’

Two religious fanatics facing each other across the ruins of a church that was spiritually suspect. Both sides raising the stakes.

Betty Thorogood came down, wearing a sloppy old baseball sweater of Jane’s. She declined an egg, but accepted toast and honey.

She’d heard the radio report from upstairs.

She said she was going back to St Michael’s.

‘I don’t want that church reconsecrating – not in anybody’s name. I’m not forecasting some apocalypse scenario, I just don’t want it to happen. I’m stopping it.’

‘You’ve got thirteen people to persuade. All determined to celebrate Candlemas.’

‘They can bloody well do it somewhere else,’ Betty said flatly.

Merrily brought coffee. ‘Tell me exactly what happens at Candlemas.’

‘It’s the festival of Brigid, the triple goddess.’

‘Three stages of womanhood,’ Jane translated, ‘maiden, mother, hag.’

‘Imbolc means belly. It’s about Mother Earth giving birth to spring, so in Wicca we put the emphasis on the mother. Three women are involved in the rite, but the mother wears the crown of lights... that’s a headdress of candles. This is a festival of light and new awakening. Of all the sabbats, it’s probably the one closest to Christianity, I’d guess.’

Merrily nodded.

‘Normally, it would be an especially good time to consecrate a church or temple, simply because it’s coming out of a long period of darkness, reawakening to spring.’

‘Everything perfect, then,’ Merrily said neutrally, ‘for giving back Old Hindwell to the old gods.’

‘No, everything’s utterly wrong – take it from me. If there were good omens before, it all reversed when we moved in. I’ve become snappy and irritable and... alienated from Robin. We’ve hardly even, you know, touched each other since we arrived. And even regarding money. Robin had the possibility – almost the certainty – of a very lucrative contract, to do seven book covers for Kirk Blackmore, the fantasy writer.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘I used to read his stuff, when I was a kid.’

‘And then the rug seems to have been pulled. Blackmore’s decided he doesn’t like Robin’s concept, and it’s Blackmore calls the shots. That’s just the latest thing to go wrong.’

Jane said, ‘Maybe you need the new light.’

Betty shook her head. ‘There won’t be any. We won’t bring that place out of the darkness; it’ll suck us in.’ She looked vaguely around, from face to face. ‘Whatever you may think about this, I’ve called out to the goddess in the night, and the goddess won’t come to me. I’m not being emotional or hysterical about this. I just don’t see a good future.’

‘OK, so you go back,’ Merrily said, ‘and you try to stop it. How do you do that?’

Betty shrugged. ‘If necessary I can just tell them all to get out. It’ll cause another row with Robin, but the house is half mine. That’s only a last resort. If I play along for a while, something subtler might occur. I don’t want to create negative vibrations, if possible. What about you?’

‘I’m going to have to try and cool Ellis. One or two ideas occur. Well, one anyway.’ Merrily’s throat was dry from too much smoking, not enough sleep. ‘Maybe we can meet somewhere, late afternoon, and see where we stand.’

‘There’s a footbridge,’ Betty said, ‘that leads from the church to the other side of the brook.’

‘I know it. Four o’clock?’ Part of her was saying this was whimsy, that the only really important things were to, first, find Barbara Buckingham, and second, persuade the police to investigate the Hindwell Trust. ‘Betty, what do you think, seriously, is likely to happen if we can’t stop this tonight?’

Betty shook her head quickly, non-committally.

‘The dragon gets out,’ Jane said, ‘whatever that means.’

‘I’ve been thinking.’ Betty looked at Merrily. ‘The problem with this place is nothing really to do with us. But it is to do with you, I suspect – with what you do. Ellis thought it needed exorcizing. I’m not sure he was wrong.’

‘But not by him.’

‘No,’ Betty said, ‘not by him.’

‘You mean... by me?’ Merrily felt obscurely honoured and immediately guilty about that.

‘I wondered about tonight,’ Betty said. ‘Candlemas is Candlemas. I suppose it’s a good time, wherever you stand. I mean, I’d go in with you, if you thought that would help. Or, if you thought that would be spiritually wrong, I’d stay out of the way.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you think about it, Merrily? It’s become kind of central to everything, hasn’t it?’

‘But... exorcizing a church...’

‘Like you keep saying,’ Jane said, ‘it isn’t a church any more.’

‘All right, I’ll talk to the bishop.’

‘Please don’t do that,’ Betty said. ‘He might suggest you have other priests along. That would bother me. I don’t want it to look like a formal sellout.’

Merrily nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said.

43

Mitigating Circumstances

JANE HAD CALLED Eirion at the rotting mansion and there was no answer. Well, there was an answer... on a machine, and in Welsh.

Like she wasn’t already feeling excluded enough. Gomer had collected Betty and taken her back to Old Hindwell, Mum had gone off on her own. Little Jane had been given the really important job of relaying any messages to Mum on her mobile.

Bastards!

‘I can’t speak bloody Welsh!’ she howled over the message. ‘Just tell Irene... Eirion... to call me. It’s very urgent. It’s Jane Wat—’

She shut up. The message was being translated.

‘Dafydd and Gwennan Lewis are unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Diolch yn fawr.’

‘OK. Please, please, tell Eirion to ring me. It’s Jane Watkins. It’s very urgent. Please?’ Realizing she’d ended on a kind of strangled sob. Maybe that would underline the urgency, or maybe just the existing suspicions of the

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