The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Flexitime,’ Mary Morson said, smug. Put on a bit of weight, Danny noticed. Pregnant? Unlikely. Accidents didn’t happen to Mary Morson.

‘Listen to this, Danny,’ Greta said. ‘Just listen to this — what did I say about that woman? Tell it him, Mary.’

‘I just thought somebody should enlighten a mutual friend of ours.’ Mary looked serious, light brown hair tucked behind her ears, small disapproving lines either side of her mouth. ‘It’s none of my business, really.’

‘In which case—’

‘Danny!’

‘Go on, then.’ Danny sighed and tried to get his bum within a yard or two of the wood-stove, but Mary and Greta both had chairs pulled up to the heat. Jerry Springer or some such earache was on the telly with the sound thankfully down, and he stood in front of that.

‘That bitch is cheatin’ on him already,’ Greta said, big smile, and Danny turned briefly, thinking her was on about some bint on Jerry Springer. But it wasn’t Jerry Springer on the box after all, it was some little blonde home- improvement tart.

‘Natalie Craven,’ Mary said grimly.

‘Eh?’

‘That blue camper van. The one Natalie Craven sold to the survey people at Stanner Rocks…’

‘I thought you and the naturalist feller was all washed up,’ Danny said.

‘I still have friends there,’ Mary said, voice cold as outside. ‘They were using the van as a site office, and they kept the folding bed as emergency overnight accommodation for volunteers. But one day, there was evidence that it had been… used.’

‘Mabbe one of the volunteers fancied a lie-down. It can get weary, watching little bloody plants grow.’

‘At night, this was,’ Mary said, ‘when there weren’t any volunteers on site. The van was always kept locked and the keys in a locked drawer at the Nature Trust office in town. Anyway’ — Mary’s little nose twitched in distaste — ‘they found suggestions of sexual activity.’

‘Like what?’ Danny raised his eyes to the big central beam. ‘Pair o’ pink knickers with no crot—’

‘Danny!’ Greta roared.

‘Well, this is bloody daft, Gret. Couple o’ randy naturalists nips in the ole van for a quick shag, and it’s gotter be—’

‘Listen, will you!’

Danny sniffed and scowled, and Mary said, ‘The door hadn’t been forced. It had obviously been unlocked. And if anybody might’ve had a spare key, nobody could think of anybody more likely than the person who sold them the van in the first place. So anyway, one of the team, he left some equipment on the site this night, see, and had to go back. And what should he find parked up there on the edge of the forestry but Jeremy’s four-by-four, and nobody in it. But there was a bit of light coming from the camper van, and when he looked in the window, there she was, with a man, and it certainly wasn’t Jeremy.’

It had all come out in a rush, and Mary Morson slumped back in her chair, lips tight. For the first time in his life, Danny wanted to physically shake the smile off Greta’s face.

‘Natalie?’

‘No more’n you’d expect from a woman like that,’ Greta said.

‘A woman like what?’

‘I need to spell it out?’

‘So who was the man?’

‘He didn’t recognize the man,’ Mary said. ‘He couldn’t see him very clearly, because he…’ Mary looked away. ‘I expect she was on top of him. But then he doesn’t know many local people, anyway.’

‘In which case—’

‘But he does know Jeremy! And he knows her.’

Danny shut his eyes. Shit.

‘Somebody ought to tell him,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Somebody who knows him well.’

‘When?’ Danny said harshly. ‘When was this?’

‘Night before last.’ Mary Morson stood up in front of him. ‘There’s no mistake about this, none at all, Danny. It was her. It was Natalie Craven and a bloke, and they were—’

‘All right!’

‘We’re just telling you,’ Greta said, ‘because you’re the nearest he’s got to a best friend. None of us wants to see him hurt.’

‘Hurt? It’ll kill him! You really expect me to go tell him? Like he don’t got enough on his plate?’

‘Who else is going to? You wanner wait till it’s all over Kington?’

‘You mean it en’t already? Oh, I forgot, you en’t been shopping yet, did you?’

‘That’s unfair!’

‘Well…’ Danny turned away. ‘It’s bloody upset me, it has.’

‘It’s upset all of us,’ Mary Morson said, shameless.

Merrily checked out the pine bookcase. Not many changes here: The Hedgewitch Almanac, Green Magic, Britain’s Pagan Places, plus another fifty or so pastel spines confirming that Jane was still a vague supporter of the Old Religion, which, as the kid now admitted, was actually not very old at all.

The shelves were all full. No room here for the Bible, which had failed to address the issue of the mystical British countryside, but there was still a corner, Merrily noted, for the 17th-century Herefordshire cleric Thomas Traherne, who’d chronicled its God-given glories at length.

This was all about the need for direct experience, a confirmation of Otherness. And, of course, there was an area of operation where Christianity and New Age paganism came close together.

It was spiritual healing.

It was several days now since she’d been to see Alice Meek, suggesting that if there was to be a service of healing it should initially be directed towards the soul of nine-year-old Roland Hook. Telling Alice it all came back to Roland, all the guilt and the grief… and the pain of a young child who had died, very afraid, in the middle of a crime. Maybe the knowledge that Roland’s soul was at peace would bring some kind of harmony to the family.

‘Right, then.’ Alice had stood up, stiff-backed, fiery-faced. ‘You leave it with me, vicar. Half of them won’t understand what it’s about, dull buggers, but I’ll talk to my niece in Solihull, her as did the Alpha course. We’ll make this happen, somehow.’

Not a word since. Sophie, meanwhile, had been compiling a list of ministers in the diocese who had a serious, practical interest in healing, with a view to organizing a preliminary meeting. But it needed someone else to organize it; Merrily wasn’t good at admin.

She sat on Jane’s bed. Turning over the apartment was beginning to look like a waste of time. Had she really expected to find a ouija board laid out next to the collected works of Doris Stokes? She’d looked briefly in the wardrobe, flicked open dressing-table drawers, glanced under the bed. Not even much dust under there — amazing what changes a few weekends of chambermaiding could bring about.

Through the window, she could see wooded Cole Hill, with scattered snow up there, like grated cheese. There hadn’t been a serious fall this year; maybe it wouldn’t come this side of Christmas. After Christmas, Lol would go on tour for the first time since… well, since he was hardly older than Jane. Lol finally getting a life: where would that leave them?

Don’t think about it.

The only book on the bedside table was a scuffed old favourite: The Folk-lore of Herefordshire, by Ella Mary Leather, dead for three-quarters of a century and still unsurpassed for down-home authenticity. There was an orange Post-it sticker in the book, and Merrily let it fall open.

Cwn Annwn, or the Dogs of Hell.

Parry (Hist. Kington 205) gives an account of the superstitious beliefs of many aged persons then (1845) living in the parish.

It was the opinion of many persons then living in the out-townships that spirits in the shape of