‘Jane, what the
She didn’t reply, but took care to stay well back so he couldn’t snatch the Sony 150 from her again. She didn’t even know if the battery was still active; it was the gesture that counted. Independent working woman with a video.
Beth Pollen came briskly through, dragging on her sheepskin coat, shaking out her headscarf. ‘Anyone called the fire brigade? Now I think about it, I’m sure I heard an explosion about twenty minutes ago. It’s hard to tell in snow.’
Ben looked up. ‘Amber’s seeing to it. Though I can’t imagine how they could get up there in these conditions. I don’t even understand how a fire’s even possible on snow-covered bare rocks.’
‘I was involved with a Nature Trust survey some years ago,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘Awfully weird place. The rocks retain heat, apparently.’
‘In thick snow?’
‘Strange times, Ben. Doesn’t look like a threat to the hotel, but you never know. I’ll come with you, if you like. If you don’t know the paths fairly well, it can be jolly dangerous.’
Ben snapped, ‘For God’s sake, Jane, switch that thing
‘Just obeying instructions.’ Jane didn’t lower the camera. There was a clear image of Ben’s face, twisted with annoyance. ‘Antony says it’s supposed to be welded to my hands.’
‘Well,
Jane ignored him, pushing open the swing doors with her bum and backing out into the car park, still recording. She had on her boots and her nylon parka, which was a pain because it was fairly new and still crackled when she walked, doubtless getting onto the soundtrack. But at least she was equipped for the conditions, unlike Alistair Hardy and Matthew, who were hanging around the porch door now, looking up at the smoking rocks like they were being deprived of some profound spiritual experience.
Outside, ankle-deep in snow, Jane put the camera on pause while she took up a position about ten yards away, shooting Ben and Beth Pollen as they came out and then risking a pan up towards the sky, ambered now and spark-flecked, though the flames were low, as if the gas jet had been turned down. She had no idea what this was about, but neither did Ben, and he was unnerved for once, and that made her feel empowered.
‘Jane!’ Ben was standing in the middle of the car park, at the end of a channel of light from the porch. He had on a black Gore-Tex jacket and a black baseball cap with a reflective yellow stripe. ‘You’re staying here, you understand? You are
‘If I fall, I promise I won’t sue Stanner Hall.’
‘If you want to keep your job’ — and he wasn’t smiling — ‘you’ll go back.’
Jane didn’t move, carried on shooting him. It felt warmer, as though the fire on the rocks had conditioned the ambient temperature. Speaking down the side of the camera, right under the mike, she said casually, ‘You sacking me, Ben?’
‘Not if you go back at once.’
Although it had stopped snowing now, Jane felt the night still swirling around her: dark energy, shifting destiny.
‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Let’s not complicate things. I quit.’
Lol was leaning over Ella Mary Leather under the Anglepoise. The cover of the big paperback had this warm-coloured Merrie England watercolour street-scene, with a drummer and a dancing woman in a white dress. Post-it markers projected from the top edge of the book, like little coloured flags, part of the scene.
Herefordshire, 1912, the most rural county in England, with the unknowable horrors of the Great War still two years away. An area still loosely held in a harness of medieval customs, an eerie carnival always flickering on the periphery.
Vaughan… was a very wicked man, so after his death he could not rest and came back ‘stronger and stronger all the while…’ He sometimes took the form of a fly in order to ‘torment the horses’. Finally, he came into the church itself in the form of a bull. It was decided that something must be done.
Ethel strolled over the open book, sat down on the lamp-base and began to wash her paws — Ethel who used to be Lol’s cat, back when he was living in Ledwardine. Who was now the official vicarage cat, while Lol was still just an occasional visitor, trying to help out.
‘Something must be done,’ Lol said to the cat.
‘So they got twelve parsons, with twelve candles, to wait in the church to try and read him down into a silver snuff-box. For,’ the old man who told me the story explained, ‘we have all got a sperrit something like a spark inside we, and a sperrit can go large or small, or down, down, quite small, even into a snuff-box.’ There were present, to help lay the spirit, a woman with a new-born baby, whose innocence and purity were perhaps held powerful in exorcism.
‘Well, they read, but it was no use…’
Read what? Something from the Bible? The full text of the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism?
… They were all afraid… and all their candles went out but one. The parson as held that candle had a stout heart, and he feared no man nor sperrit. He called out ‘Vaughan, why art thou so fierce?’ ‘I was fierce when I was a man, but fiercer now, for I am a devil!’ was the answer. But nothing could dismay the stout-hearted parson, though, to tell the truth, he was nearly blind, and not a pertickler sober man.’
The detail suggesting an actual local character. But no names, no dates.
‘He read and read and read, and when Vaughan felt himself going down, and down, and down, till the snuff-box was nearly shut, he asked, “Vaughan, where wilt thou be laid?” The spirit answered, “Anywhere, anywhere but not in the Red Sea!” So they shut the box and took him and buried him for a thousand years in the bottom of Hergest pool, in the wood, with a big stone on top of him. But the time is nearly up!’
The time is nearly up.
Lol leaned back. ‘How nearly is nearly, Ethel?’ A thousand years would take the story back pre-Norman Conquest. And yet Black Vaughan was said to have been mortally wounded at the Battle of Banbury, during the Wars of the Roses, in 1469. And furthermore, according to Mrs Leather:
He and his ancestors were brave and honourable men, and history in no way corroborates the popular traditions concerning them. Still they… were probably regarded with more awe and fear than love by the folk among whom they lived.
But a devil? And when did the Hound fade into the picture? No suggestions of a big black dog accompanying Black Vaughan’s ghost, pre-exorcism.
Lol flipped to the second index sticker.
Hergest Court was, or perhaps still is, haunted by a demon dog, said to have belonged to Black Vaughan.
Said by whom? Lol went through to the kitchen, overlaid with Aga-throb, and into the passage to the narrow back stairs, ducking his head for the low oak beam at the bottom, although he was short enough, just, to walk underneath it. He felt uncomfortable here without Merrily. He didn’t belong, and the vicarage knew it. He switched on the upstairs lights and went up to the first landing: crooked walls patched with old doors.
One of them to Merrily’s bedroom.
