Midwinter of the Spirit

She relaxed. It was done. James Lyden was Boy Bishop of Hereford.

And nothing had happened.

Had it?

Amid the cold trees, below the cold moon, was a panel of light.

Lol stopped on the ice-glossed earthen steps. He thought at first it must be the farmhouse, and that he was seeing it from a different angle, seeing behind the wall of Leylandii.

But it was the barn.

The glazed-over bay was one big lantern.

Lol moved down the frozen steps and saw, behind the plateglass wall, tall candles burning aloft on eight or ten holders of spindly wrought-iron.

A beacon! You would see it from afar, like a fire in the sky laying a flickering path towards the Cathedral tower.

It shocked him into stillness, as if the same candles had been burning on Katherine Moon’s coffin. Behind their sombre shimmering, he was sure shadows were moving. All was quiet: not an owl, not a breath of wind. A bitter, still, rock-hard night.

He was scared.

Calm down, Robinson, Athena White said from somewhere. He ran from the steps to the rubble-stone barn wall and edged towards the lit-up bay. Rough reflections of the candlelight were sketched on to the ridged surface of a long frozen puddle, the remains of the pond-excavation where Moon had said she’d found the Celtic sword.

When he reached the front door, he realized it was lying open. He backed away, recalling the darkness pushing against him – the slit between worlds.

Tonight, however, the door was open, and – perhaps not only because he was so cold – the barn seemed to beckon him inside.

Merrily murmured to Sophie, ‘What happens now?’

A hush as the Boy Bishop and his two candle-bearing attendants faced the high altar. Choristers were ranked either side, poised for an instant on a single shared breath.

As Mick Hunter walked away, smiling, the choir sailed into song, and the Boy Bishop approached the altar.

‘Later,’ Sophie whispered, ‘the boy will lead us in prayer, and then he gives a short sermon. He’ll say how important the choir’s been to him, and that sort of thing. But first there’ll be a kind of circular tour, taking in the North Transept.’

‘The shrine?’

‘I don’t know quite how they’re going to cope with that this time – perhaps they won’t. What are you doing, Merrily?’

‘I’m going to watch.’ She edged out of the pew, holding the cross with one hand, gathering her cloak with the other.

‘Are you cold, Merrily?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. I wonder if there’s something wrong with the heating.’

The candle-led procession was leaving the chancel, drifting left to the North Transept. Merrily paused at the pew’s end. She felt slightly out of breath, as if the air had become thinner. She looked at Sophie. ‘Are you really cold, as well?’

Behind her, there was a muffled slap on the tiles.

Sophie rose. ‘Oh, my God.’

Merrily turned and saw a large woman in a grey suit, half into the aisle, her fingers over her face, with blood bubbling between them and puddling on the tiles around her skittering feet.

50 Abode of Darkness

THE BARN WAS like an intimate church. Lol could sense it around him, a rich and velvety warmth. He could see the long beeswax candles, creamy stems aglow, and imagine tendrils of soft scented smoke curling to the rafters.

He stood for a moment, giving in to the deceptive luxury of heat – experiencing the enchantment of the barn as, he felt sure, Moon would have known it. Then catching his breath when the total silence gave way to an ashy sigh – the collapse of crumbling logs in the hearth with a spasm of golden splinters, the small implosion bringing a glint from a single nail protruding from the wall over the fireplace. A nail where once hung a picture of a smiling man with his Land Rover.

Which brought Lol out of it, tensing him – because another black-framed photo hung there now: of a long- haired woman in a long dress.

The candle-holders were like dead saplings, two of them framing a high-backed black chair, thronelike. And, standing beside the chair – Lol nearly screamed – was a priest in full holy vestments.

Merrily was gesturing wildly for a verger, a cleaner, anybody with a mop and bucket – people staring at her from both sides of the aisle, as though she was some shrill, house-proud harpy.

What she was seeing was the defiled altar at St Cosmas, blistered with half-dried sacrificial blood – while this blood was close to the centre of the Cathedral, and it was still warm and it was human blood, bright and pure, and there was so damned much of it.

The choir sang on. The Boy Bishop and his entourage were now out of sight, out of earshot, paying homage to Cantilupe in all his fragments.

She should be there, too. She should be with them in the ruins of the tomb, where the barrier was down, where Thomas Dobbs had fallen. Yet – yes, all right, irrationally maybe – she also had to dispose of the blood… the most magical medium for the manifestation of… what? What? Anyway, she couldn’t be in both places, and there was no one else… absolutely nobody else.

Sophie was tending to the woman, the contents of her large handbag emptied out on the pew, the woman’s head tilted back – Sophie dabbing her nose and lips with a wet pad, the woman struggling to say how sorry she was, what a time for a nosebleed to happen.

‘She has them now and then,’ a bulky grey-haired man was explaining in a low, embarrassed voice to nobody in particular. ‘Not on this scale, I have to say. It’s nerves, I suppose. It’ll stop in a minute.’

Merrily said sharply, ‘Nerves?’

‘Oh,’ he mumbled, ‘mother of the Boy Bishop, all that. Stressful time all round.’

‘You’re Dick Lyden?’

‘Yes, I am. Look, can’t you leave the cleaning-up until after the service. Nobody’s going to step in it.’

‘That’s not what I’m worried about, Mr Lyden. This is his mother’s blood?’ She was talking to herself, searching for the significance of this.

‘I don’t want the boy to see the fuss.’ Dick Lyden pulled out a white handkerchief and began to mop his wife’s splashes from his shoes. ‘He’s temperamental, you see.’

* * *

Someone had given James Lyden one of the votive candles from near where the shrine had stood, and he waited there while they pushed back the partition screen.

‘Not how we’d like it to be,’ Jane heard this big minister with the bushy beard say. ‘Still, I’m sure St Thomas would understand.’

‘Absolutely,’ James Lyden said, like he couldn’t give a toss one way or the other.

There was no sign of Rowenna.

Pressed into the side of one of the pointed arches screening off the transept, no more than six yards away from them, Jane saw it all as the bearded minister held open the partition door to the sundered tomb.

Only the minister and the Boy Bishop went up to the stones – as though it was not just stone slabs in there,