The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

There was a white cloth on the altar, a small chalice for the wine, a saucer for the wafers. Beth Pollen had assisted here. Merrily glimpsed Beth sitting next to Jane, staring straight ahead with focus and determination.

There seemed to be twelve of them now, including Brigid and Bliss and Alma. Antony Largo, wherever he was, had made no attempt to come in and his cameras were gone. The one she knew least was Clancy: school skirt, white school blouse, dark golden hair overhanging her eyes, her mouth sullen — eerily like the young Brigid, whose same picture, from a school photo, had been appearing in the papers for years and years.

Twelve of them. Twelve and Hattie. More holy water sprinkled in Hattie’s room before leaving. Lord God, our heavenly Father, you neither slumber nor sleep. Bless this bedroom…

Merrily connected now with that. It was the beginning. She stepped out with her Bible and her service printout.

‘ “I am the resurrection and the life,” the Lord says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die…” ’

We have all got a sperrit something like a spark inside we, said the old man to Mrs Leather.

The brown mud in the stained-glass window began to clear in the early dawn, suggestions of colour rising like oil in a puddle.

‘So this is a service with Holy Communion to bring peace to Hattie Davies — Hattie Chancery, who died by her own hand before the Second World War. But I’d also like us to remember, in our prayers, Hattie’s daughter, Paula, who was also a suicide, and Paula’s daughter, Brigid who is… with us.’

With the aid of a car battery provided by Ben, she’d managed to print out the order of service from Common Worship on the C of E Web site. Close to the top of the service — and lest anyone forget what this was about — she’d brought in a serious Confession that she made them repeat after her, line by line.

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed.

There were candles on tables amongst the congregation, establishing that they were part of it, not an audience. Brigid Parsons sat next to one, with Jeremy and Clancy. Brigid’s hair was freshly brushed and some of its long-ago colour was shining through, in strands of fine gold, as if in acknowledgement that she’d soon be able to wash it all away because anonymity wouldn’t matter any more, where she was going. Her face was dark and strained, the wide mouth turned down, with lines either side that looked as if they’d just been pencilled in.

We do earnestly repent,

and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;

the burden of them is intolerable.

Merrily had tried to talk to Brigid in the lounge, but Brigid, who had slept for a couple of hours on the sofa, had been unresponsive to everything except the idea and purpose of the Requiem. Please, just… take the bitch away.

‘This is not about revenge.’ She focused on Brigid now, in the near-white candlelight. ‘It’s not about hitting back, it’s not about laying a ghost… it’s about forgiveness. We’re looking at Hattie and what she did, and, sure, there were a lot of evil elements there… but that does not make Hattie evil in herself. We have to search, in this service, for a depth of forgiveness that we perhaps wouldn’t be able to reach in everyday life. We’re always saying, I can forgive anybody anything but That… Today, we have to say — and mean it — I can forgive anything, including That.’

In her own mind, she saw the woman in the picture over the bed, a woman with fair hair twisted and coiled like a nest of pale snakes, and eyes like white marbles. She could hear wild laughter, the smack of stone on flesh and bone.

Whoop, whoop.

It wasn’t easy, was it?

‘Fortunately,’ she said, ‘we can count on some help.’

She opened the New Testament: John, Chapter Twelve. At a later stage, she’d have to say, ‘Let us commend Hattie to the mercy of God.’

It was clear that nobody was ready yet to consider mercy. Not even Jeremy Berrows, the natural farmer, the quiet farmer, innocent face under hair like dandelion clocks. Giving Brigid an occasional sideways glance, their shoulders touching. Jeremy Berrows, who firmly believed the evil that arose in Brigid had been bequeathed to her by Hattie.

And maybe it had. Maybe Bella Chancery, led here by a twisted path of deception, had opened the door to… something that Jeremy was now being asked to forgive. Now. Within probably an hour of losing for ever his main reason to go quietly on.

John 12, verse 27. ‘Now my soul is in turmoil, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this that I came to this hour…’

Canon Jeavons’s point entirely. It’s how we develop within ourselves — by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee.

If Merrily could take on Jeremy’s suffering she’d do it. She felt a low-level tingle in her spine.

Behind Jeremy was Alistair Hardy, rotund and bland and — a phrase you didn’t hear much these days, but it suited him — clean-shaven.

The psychic? She didn’t doubt it, but there was a lot to doubt. The Lucy Devenish thing, for a start. Also Dr Bell’s ‘revelation’ about the use of a newborn baby in that dubious ceremony. Because Beth Pollen had almost certainly known of the suggestion that the baby was Hattie, had almost certainly told Hardy.

Smoke and mirrors.

‘ “The crowd standing by said it was thunder, while others said, An angel has spoken to him. Jesus replied, This voice spoke for your sake, not mine. Now is the hour of judgement for this world; now shall the Prince of this world be driven out…” ’

Driving out evil, it was hard not to personalize it.

Brigid Parsons… Paula Parsons… Hattie Chancery… Black Vaughan and Ellen Gethin. To what extent could this possibly be said to go all the way back to Black Vaughan? Who seemed to have been only a fall guy, anyway. A story to blacken Vaughan and his tradition — the Welsh tradition in an area becoming rapidly Anglicized.

She looked at Ben Foley, his sleek head bowed. The original destructive haunting was said to have threatened the whole economy of Kington; Ben had been hoping it would revive his.

She wondered if she ought to have included Sebbie Dacre in this.

A Vaughan thing.

Had Dacre been told that he was a Vaughan? Did that explain his robber-baron mentality, his need to reclaim what was his, to dominate the valley? But the threat Dacre perceived was a threat from within his own family. The worst kind. Look at Dexter Harris.

Merrily looked around the cold room with its tiny spearpoint flames. Looked around, flickering face to flickering face.

Where are you, Hattie?

Of all the things she hadn’t intended to ask…

‘Dying, you destroyed our death. Rising, you restored our life.’

He’s here. Christ. He should be here.

Here now.

Everything is all right.

The tingling in the spine.

But she felt so utterly tired that the candles blurred and the faces fused. She shook herself very lightly.

Not everyone took communion. Beth Pollen was first, looking up at the rising cold blue in the stained-glass window. Then Jane, with a wry and slightly apprehensive smile.