A Crown of Lights

‘They took me up the hall. Father Ellis was there.’

‘Did they tell you why you were going to the hall?’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Father Ellis...?’

‘He was dressed all in white, as usual. He was like a saint, and I felt so comforted. I felt I was in the right hands, the hands of a living saint. And we sits down and Father Ellis explains about the demon what Robin had put inside of me.’

‘Those were his words?’

‘Once he’d given me the demon, he didn’t wanna know me no more, he just pushed me away.’

‘Robin?’

‘Pushed me away, and I fell down in the street. The demon did that. That was the demon. After the pub closed, Greg and me, we had this terrible ding-dong. I’m insulting him, I’m like belittling him, you know what I mean? I’m screaming, “Go on, do it to me, you got any bottle.” Poor Greg. Turns him off like a light, you talk dirty. But that wasn’t me. I know now that wasn’t me. That was the demon.’

‘Is that what Father Ellis said?’

‘He said he could take it away, but it wouldn’t be easy, and it was not to be gone into lightly and I would have to understand that I would be giving myself to the Holy Spirit. He said it was a foul entity, the demon, and it was gonna have to come out... like a rotten tooth.’

Merrily said. ‘You mean... out of your mouth?’

Marianne’s eyes narrowed, lines appeared either side of her mouth. She looked accusingly at Merrily. ‘Judy said you come to spy on Father Ellis.’

‘I was sent to support him,’ Merrily said. ‘From the bishop, remember? The bishop thought he needed some help.’

Marianne looked confused. ‘That Judy, she took you outside, din’t she? I was glad when she did that.’

‘We hadn’t met before. I think she was a bit suspicious of me.’

‘She took you outside,’ Marianne said. ‘I was very glad.’

‘We had a good chat,’ Merrily assured her. ‘We worked things out. Marianne, do you remember what Father Ellis did... to exorcize the demon of lust?’

Marianne blinked, affronted. ‘He said the Church has strict rules about the exorcizing of demons. They don’t just do it. You could wind up exorcizing someone who was mentally ill, couldn’t you?’

‘Er... yes. Yes, you could.’

Ellis told her this? Merrily’s heart sank a little. This was established Deliverance procedure. You didn’t even contemplate exorcism until all the other possibilities, usually psychiatric, had been eliminated.

‘Don’t get me wrong, love, he could’ve done what he liked without a word, the way I was feeling, long as he took it away. But he explained it was a disease. I needed checking over by a doctor, and what he was doing should be medically supervised.’

‘He said that?’

‘Dr Banks-Morgan was there for the whole thing,’ Marianne said. ‘That’s the kind of man Father Ellis is.’

The male figure in the doorway.

She sat in her car for a while.

Then she rang Hereford Police, asked for Mumford. He was out, so she rang Eileen Cullen at home, hoping she wasn’t asleep. A man answered; Merrily realized she knew nothing about Cullen’s domestic situation. When she came on the line, she sounded softer, a bathrobe voice.

‘Before you say a word, Merrily, there is one incident I will never talk about again, not to you, not to anyone.’

‘Angina,’ Merrily said.

‘Ask away,’ Cullen said.

‘The pills you take for angina. Tri-something?’

‘Trinitrin. You feel it coming on, you stick one under your tongue.’

‘Becomes automatic?’

‘Long-term sufferers, they practically do it in their sleep.’

‘Take a hypothetical case. Person on Trinitrin for angina becomes converted to herbal remedies. Says I’m going to stop filling myself up with these nasty drugs. Then she feels an attack coming on, so what does she do?’

‘Reaches for the Trinitrin. Says I’ll stop fillin’ meself up with these awful drugs tomorrow.’

‘All right.’ No time for the subtle approach. ‘Hypothetically, if, in circumstances like this, a doctor saw an opportunity to do away with a patient in a way which might throw blame on someone else, say for instance the herbalist... how would he go about it?’

‘Jesus, Merrily, what is this?’

‘It’s, er... a question. Just a question.’

‘Well here’s your answer – a hundred ways. Could casually swap her Trinitrins for blanks, for starters. Who’s gonna know? It’s easy for a doctor. Always has been.’

Robin had been gazing from his studio window when he saw her walking, like some grounded angel, across the yard, and he’d gone running wildly through the farmhouse, like some big, stupid kid, knocking a bowl of cornflakes out of the hands of a mousy, pregnant witch from Gloucester, called Alice.

Now he held Betty’s hand, and he was breathing evenly for the first time in many hours. They shared this big cushion they used to have in their previous apartment. Only now it was on the floor of the parlour, the room with the inglenook which was now the house temple.

They’d been left alone in here, just Robin and Betty and the altar and the crown of lights.

The kindly, mature witch, Alexandra, Betty’s one-time tutor, had made it. Alexandra was a twig-weaver, or whatever you call it, and this was a tight wreath of hedgerow strands, like a crown of thorns without the thorns. Across the top of the wreath was shaped a kind of skullcap made out of one of those foil trays you got around your supermarket quiche. The candles which ringed its perimeter were the kind you had on birthday cakes, though not coloured.

‘A Blue Peter job,’ Betty had said with a wistful smile, referring to some TV show she used to watch as a kid, where you were taught how to make useful artefacts from household debris. Foil trays apparently featured big.

‘I love you,’ Robin said. ‘I want you to wear it tonight.’

Outside on a calm night, with all the candles lit around the head of a beautiful woman, the crown of lights looked awesome.

‘It’s the mother wears the lights,’ Betty said.

‘This is special.’

‘What would Ned say?’

‘He’ll be cool.’

Everything was cool, coming together, happening just like he’d known it would. He hadn’t asked where she’d spent last night. That didn’t matter. She sometimes needed time to think things out. He recalled how one moonlit night she’d gone out walking from Shrewsbury into the countryside, hadn’t returned until dawn, had covered maybe twenty miles and hadn’t noticed the time go by. He’d been frantic, but she was her own person. She was his priestess. He would trust her for ever, through life after life after life.

‘Ned’s even gonna fix things with Kirk Blackmore, I tell you about that?’

‘Yes,’ Betty said, ‘I’m sure he will.’

‘Bets, things are really turning around. It’s Imbolc. I can feel the light coming through.’

‘Yes,’ Betty said.