Midwinter of the Spirit

and solidarity, another part of her felt it would be an empty gesture – hypocrisy.

And, anyway, she was, like, burning up with anger, and if the Eternal Spiritual Sun – wherever the bastard was these days – could add fuel to that, this was OK by Mystic Jane.

While Mum was conducting her morning service, Jane pulled on the humble duffel and walked into still-frozen Ledwardine, across the market square where, at close to midday, the cobbles were still white and lethal. She moved quickly, did not slip, fury making her surefooted. Rage at what they were trying to do to Mum – and what they’d already done.

They? Who? Who, apart from Rowenna?

With whom there was unfinished business.

Jane walked down to the unfashionable end of the village, where long-untreated timbers sagged and the black and white buildings looked grey with neglect.

She and Mum had sat up until nearly two a.m., hunched over this big, comfort fire of coal sweetened with apple logs. Like old times together, except it wasn’t – because Mum was dead worried, and you could understand it. She’d talked – frankly, maybe for the first time – about the dilemmas constantly thrown up by Deliverance. The need to believe and also disbelieve; and the knowledge that you were completely on your own – especially with a self-serving, hypocritical bastard of a bishop like Mick Hunter.

But she wasn’t alone now, oh no.

Jane stopped outside the Ox. The pulsing oranges and greens of gaming machines through the windows were brighter than the pub sign outside. This was as near as Ledwardine came to Las Vegas.

Jane went in. She was pretty sure they would be here. They’d been coming here since they were about thirteen, and they’d be coming till they were old and bald and never had a life.

There was just one bar: not big, but already half full. Most of the men in there were under thirty, most of the women under twenty, dregs of the Saturday-night crowd. Though the pub was old and timbered, the lighting was garish. A jukebox was playing Pearl Jam. It was loud enough, but the voice from halfway down the room was louder.

‘WATKINS!’

Right.

Wall and Gittoes were at a table by the jukebox, hugging pints of cider. Jane strolled over to the fat, swollen-mouthed slimeball and the bony, spotty loser who had once, she recalled, expressed a wish to have unholy communion with her mother.

‘I want to talk to you, Danny – outside.’

Danny Gittoes looked up slowly and blinked. ‘I’m drinking. And it’s cold out there.’

Jane took a chance. She’d gone to sleep thinking about this and she’d woken up thinking about it. If she was wrong, well… she just didn’t bloody deserve to be wrong.

‘Must have been cold in the church, too,’ she said.

‘What are you on about, Watkins?’ Gittoes had this narrow face, dopey eyes.

Dean Wall rose and tucked his belly into his belt. ‘If the lady wants to go outside, let’s do it.’

‘Siddown, Wall,’ Jane snarled, indicated Gittoes. ‘Just… that.’

‘Got no secrets from Dean,’ Gittoes said.

‘I believe you.’ Jane put on her grimmest smile. ‘Rowenna and I, we don’t have secrets either. For Christmas, I’m buying her a whole case of extra-strength mouthwash.’

‘Fetch me a map,’ demanded Athena White. ‘There’s a stack of them in the hall. Fetch me an OS map of Hereford. I want to locate this Dinedor Hill.’

Miss White seemed much happier now she knew precisely what this was about. And what he was about. The process of knowing him – and where he’d been and what made him afraid – had taken all of ten minutes. It would take Dick Lyden maybe four full sessions to get this far.

Lol was impressed – also disturbed. He sensed she could be, well, malevolent, when she wanted to. There was something dangerously alien about Athena White: unmoving, sunk into her many cushions, but her mind was darting; picking up the urgency of this.

Telling her about Katherine Moon had been the right thing to do.

He brought her the map. ‘Spread it out on the floor,’ she commanded. ‘Move that perfectly awful table, there. Oh, dear, it’s what one misses most stuck out here. The seclusion, the study time, yes, but there are things going on that one misses. OK, Dinedor Hill. Why Dinedor Hill? Put your finger on it, Robinson. Can’t make out the damned map, but I can at least see your finger. Now give me your other hand.’

He found himself kneeling on the map, with the forefinger of one hand on Dinedor Hill, while she held his other hand, both of her small hands over his. They were frail and bony and very warm.

‘Look at it, Robinson, look at the hill… no, not on the map, you fool. Picture it in your mind. Feel yourself there. Feel the wind blow, feel the damp, the cold. Think about Moon being there. She’s coming towards you, isn’t she? Now, tell me what you’re seeing.’

‘I’m seeing the crow,’ he said at once. ‘Her hand inside the crow. We’re standing right at the end of the ramparts, with the city below us and the church spire aligned with the Cathedral tower.’

‘Good.’

In the moments of quiet, he could hear crockery clinking several rooms away. Footsteps clumped outside the door, the handle creaked and Athena White let out a piercing squeak. ‘Get away from that door! Go away!’

And the footsteps went away.

Miss White said, ‘She killed that crow, you know.’

‘I wondered about that.’

‘I think she would have brought the crow down and killed it.’

Brought it down how?

Crow Maiden, he thought. And the crows would come, Denny had said. Crows’d come right up to her.

Lol opened his eyes. Through the window, the Radnor hills were firming up as the mist receded; you could see the underside of the sun in the southern sky.

‘You see, it doesn’t really work unless the blood is still warm,’ Athena White explained.

Jane and Danny Gittoes stood in the alley alongside of the Ox. There were men’s toilets here, the foul- smelling kind, and she was starting to get pictures of Danny Gittoes and Rowenna.

‘Jane, I’m sorry, all right. I’m sorry about your mother’s church, but I didn’t take nothing, did I? And it was her idea, all of it.’

‘Yeah, tell that to the police. “I did it for a blowjob, officer.” Real mitigating-circumstances situation, that is. The magistrates will really like you for that, Gittoes.’

‘I’ll pay for it, all right? I’ll pay for the window.’

‘Tell me about the suit.’

‘What about it?’

‘What did she say about the suit?’

‘She said it was a joke – on you and your ma. I didn’t twig it. She had the suit in the back of her car, in one of them plastic suit-bags like you get from the cleaners, and I had to keep it inside the bag till I’d got it in the wardrobe – then take it out of the bag.’

‘Did she go in with you?’

‘She waited outside with the torch. She shone the torch in and she told me where to put the suit, and to make sure it was out of sight. Look, Watkins, this is between you and her, right? This en’t nothing—’

‘You’re going down for it, Gittoes.’

‘Nobody goes down for breaking a window.’

‘It gets in the paper, though, and then everybody knows how pitiful you are. Everybody sees this redhaired stunner, and then they look at you. It does kind of test the imagination, doesn’t it, Danny? It’ll like follow you around for years – Beauty and the Sad Git.’

‘What about her?’

‘You really think she cares what anybody thinks? Hey – wow, I forgot.’ Jane stepped away from him and began to smile. ‘Isn’t your stepfather up for a vacancy on the parish council?’

‘Fuck you, Watkins.’