Midwinter of the Spirit

‘And this Deliverance trip, right?’ Jane knew she wasn’t supposed to discuss this, but Rowenna’s military background – high-security clearance, all that stuff – meant she could be trusted not to spread things around. ‘It’s obvious she thinks this is a kind of cutting-edge thing to do, and will maybe take her closer. You know what I mean?’

‘To the spiritual world?’

‘But it’s actually quite the opposite. From what I can see, the job is actually to stop people getting close. She has to actively discourage all contact with the occult or anything mystical – anything interesting. I think that’s kind of immoral, don’t you?’

‘It’s kind of fascist,’ Rowenna said.

‘Let’s face it, almost any kind of spiritual activity is more fun than going to church.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’

And then, as usual, it was suddenly gone.

Sometimes you were left floating on a cushion of peace; occasionally there was an aching void. This time only silence coloured by the placid images of the Cathedral and the Wye Bridge in the small stained-glass window just above her head.

Merrily stood up shakily in the intimacy of Bishop Stanbury’s exquisite chantry. She stood with her arms by her sides, breathing slowly. It was like sex: sublime at the time but what, if anything, had it altered? What progression was there?

Outside, in the main body of the Cathedral, the prayer was over and there was a communal rising and clattering. She stood quietly in the doorway of the chantry, her grey silk scarf dangling from her fingers.

‘Go away. Go away.’ A few yards away, a man’s voice rose impatiently. ‘I can’t possibly discuss this here.’

‘I don’t understand…’ A woman now, agitated. ‘What have I been doing wrong?’

‘Hush!’

A stuttering of footsteps. Merrily stepped out of the chantry, saw a woman, about sixty, who drew breath, stifled a cry, turned sharply and walked quickly away – across to the exit which led to the Cathedral giftshop. She wore a tweed coat and boots and a puffy velvet hat. She never looked back.

From the aisle to the left of the chantry, the man watched her go.

Merrily said, ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

He wore a long overcoat. He glanced at her. ‘I think your party is over in the Lady Chapel.’

Then he saw her collar and she saw his, and the skirt of the cassock below his overcoat. And although she’d never seen him before, as soon as she discerned cold recognition in the pale eyes in that stone face – the face of some ancient, eroded graveyard archangel – she knew who he was.

And before she was aware of them the words were out. Possibly, under the circumstances, the stupidest words she could have uttered.

‘Is there anything I can do, Canon Dobbs?’

He looked at her for a long time. She couldn’t move.

Eventually, without any change of expression, he walked past her and left the Cathedral.

8 Beautiful Theory

FOR MANY YEARS, Dick Lyden had been something stressful in the City of London. Now he and his wife were private psychotherapists in Hereford. Dick was about thirty pounds heavier, pink-cheeked, income decidedly reduced, a much happier man.

‘And Moon – in her spiritual home at last?’ He beamed, feet on his desk. ‘How is Moon?’

‘Moon is…’ Lol hesitated. ‘Moon is what I wanted to see you about.’

Dick and Ruth lived and practised in half of a steep Edwardian terrace on the western side, not far from the old water-tower. Dick’s attic office had a view across the city to Dinedor Hill, to which Lol’s gaze was now inevitably being pulled. When Dick expansively opened up his hands, allowing him the floor, Lol turned his chair away from the window and told Dick about the crow which Moon claimed had mystically fallen dead at her feet.

Dick swivelled his feet from the desk, rubbed his forehead, pushing back slabs of battleship-grey hair. ‘And do you think it really did?’

‘I didn’t see it happen.’

‘So she may just have found it in the hedge and made the rest up.’

‘It’s possible,’ Lol said.

‘And the blood… she actually… That’s extraordinary.’ Dick rubbed his hands together, looking up at a plaster cornice above Lol’s head. ‘And yet, you know, while it might seem horrible to the likes of us, she’s spent quite a few years scrabbling about in the earth, ferreting out old skulls with worms in their eyes.’

‘This was a bit different, though.’

Yes, it was, Dick conceded. In fact, yes, what they were looking at here was really quite an elaborate fantasy structure, on the lines of one of those impossibly complicated computer games his son James used to play before he discovered rock music. Except this wasn’t dragons and demons; this was built on layers of actual history.

‘Let’s examine it. Let’s pull it apart.’ Dick dragged a foolscap pad towards him, began to draw circles and link them with lines.

‘What’ve we got? An extremely intelligent girl with a degree in archaeology, some years’ experience in the field… and this absorbing, fanatical interest in the Iron Age civilization, which became an obsession – the Celtic jewellery, the strange woollens. She still wear that awful sheepskin waistcoat thing?’

‘Not recently.’

‘That’s one good thing. Anyway… suddenly she’s aware she can explain this obsession in the context of her own family history. She’s been told the family roots in that particular spot go back to the Dark Ages and before – which is probably complete nonsense, but that’s irrelevant. She forms the idea that this is what she was born to do, because of the place she was born – on the side of this Iron Age fort or whatever it is.’

Dick drew a crude hill with battlements.

‘Perhaps believing… that there’s some great secret here… that only she can recover. Some Holy Grail. But of course… what she really wants to find is a key… to her father’s suicide.’

Dick smiled happily at Lol. He loved finding cross-references.

‘Who knows, Laurence? Who knows what horrors lodged in the mind of a two-year-old child in circumstances like that? And Dinedor Hill never talked about, Denny going dark with anger if the subject of their father arises. So much mystery. Well, she doesn’t want to believe her old man topped himself because he messed up his finances. It’s got to be more profound than that.’

‘It’s profound enough,’ Lol said. ‘By losing the farm, he let down his family, and his ancestors. Scores of farmers have killed themselves in the past few years for similar reasons. And we’re talking about a very historic family.’

‘Absolutely. She’s bunched all that together into an epic personal quest, with all the pseudo-mystical and supernatural overtones of James’s trashy computer games.’

‘Is that a good thing, though, Dick? Moon living at the centre of a fantasy?’

‘I don’t see that it’s necessarily bad. And if it’s all going to be providing material for her book… Do we know what kind of book she has in mind?’

‘A history of Dinedor Hill seen through the eyes of the people who live there now—’

‘Splendid,’ Dick interrupted.

‘—and the people who lived there over two thousand years ago.’

‘Constructed from archaeological evidence and what she feels is her own instinctive knowledge of her ancestors? Well, that could be a very valid book, couldn’t it? One can certainly imagine a publisher going for that. I