Remains of an Altar

timber-framed squares, once wattle and daub, then plastered and whitewashed and finally overpainted, by Jane herself, in defiant reds and blues and oranges.

It was more than two years since she’d coloured the squares – just a kid, then, disoriented by the move to this antiquated village with a mother who used to be normal and had suddenly turned into a bloody priest.

Just a kid, determined to make her mark: Jane’s here now. Jane takes no shit. This is Jane’s apartment. This is the way Jane does things, OK?

In a seventeenth-century vicarage, it wouldn’t have been at all OK with the Listed-Buildings Police, but it had seemed unlikely that they’d ever come beating on the door with a warrant to investigate the attic. Looking back, Mum had been seriously good about it, letting Jane establish a personal suite up here and splatter the walls with coloured paint they couldn’t really afford … and never once suggesting that it might look just a bit crap.

But that was over two years ago and now Jane was, Christ, seventeen. And this once-important gesture, these once-deeply-symbolic walls, were looking entirely, irredeemably naff. Not even much like a Mondrian – in the middle of an A-level art course, she could say that with some certainty.

More like a sodding nursery school.

Decision: the Mondrian walls would have to go. You were in no position to fight senseless public vandalism if you couldn’t identify your own small crimes.

That sorted, Jane sat up in bed and looked out of the window at the real issue. Full of the breathless excitement of new discovery and a low-burning rage which, she’d have to admit, was also a serious turn-on.

Below her, beyond the front hedge, lay Ledwardine, this black and white, oak-framed village, embellished with old gold by the early sun. Defended against neon and advertising hoardings by the same guys who would’ve freaked if they’d ever been exposed to the Mondrian walls … while totally missing the Big Picture.

The focus of which was just beyond the village: a green, wooded pyramid rising out of a flimsy loincloth of mist.

Cole Hill. She’d always assumed that it had simply been named after somebody called Cole who’d tried to farm it a few centuries ago. Now … Cole Hill … it sang with glamour.

Jane sank back into the pillows, last night’s images coalescing around her: the slipping sun and the line across the meadow. Drifting down from the hill, with the blackening steeple of Ledwardine Church marking the way like the gnomon on the sundial of the village. Amazing, inspirational.

But, like, for how long?

Tumbling out of bed, she dislodged from the table the paperback Old Straight Track she’d been reading until about two a.m. – photo on the back of benign-looking bearded old guy, glasses on his nose. Alfred Watkins of Hereford: county councillor, magistrate, businessman, antiquarian, photographer, inventor, all-round solid citizen. And visionary.

Jane Watkins picked up the book.

You and me, Uncle.

This book … well, it had been around the vicarage as long as Jane had, and she’d thought she must have read it ages ago. Only realizing a week or so back that all she’d done was leaf through it, looking at Watkins’s pioneering photos, assuming his ideas were long outdated, his findings revised by more enlightened thinking. Now, because of this A-level project, she’d finally read it cover to cover. Twice. Feeling the heat of a blazing inspiration. And it was all so close. Mum was probably right when she said there was no family link, and yet it was as if this long-dead guy with the same name was communicating with Jane along one of his own mysterious straight lines.

Saying, help me.

Jane turned her back on the clashing imperatives of the Mondrian walls, stumbled to the bathroom, and ran the shower.

She needed back-up on this one.

Two years ago, telling Mum would have been a total no-no, the issue too left-field and the gulf between them too wide. Two years ago, the sight of Mum kneeling to pray would have Jane shrivelling up inside with embarrassment and resentment. But now she was older and Mum was also more balanced, a lot less rigid.

Except for the rumble of the old Aga and the rhythmic sandpaper sound of Ethel washing her paws on the rug in front of it, the kitchen was silent.

Jane found a note on the table. It said:

J. YOU’VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THIS … BUT HAD TO LEAVE EARLY THIS MORNING TO MEET PARANOID RECTOR IN THE MALVERNS. THICK-SLICED LOAF IN BREAD BIN, EGGS IN BASKET. DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE DRIED FOOD OUT FOR ETHEL. SORRY ABOUT THIS, FLOWER. SEE YOU AFTER SCHOOL. LOVE, M.

Flower. Like she was seven.

But, yeah, she had forgotten. In fact, there’d been so much on her mind when she’d come in last night from Cole Hill that she’d hardly listened to anything Mum had said, before pleading fatigue and bounding up to the apartment to research, research, research well into the early hours, until she’d finally fallen asleep.

Jane left the note on the table, went to find the dried cat-food for Ethel and grab a handful of biscuits from the tin. No time for eggs and toast.

What about school?

What about not going?

She didn’t remember ever bunking off before. But some things were too important for delays, and anyway school was winding down now towards the long summer break.

Trying to open the biscuit tin, she found she was still gripping The Old Straight Track, having brought it down with her like a talisman. On the front was a misty photograph of a perfect Bronze Age burial mound swelling behind a fan of winter trees.

Yesterday evening, at sunset, she’d seen – and she must have been around there a dozen times in the past without spotting it – what must surely be the remains of a burial mound, or tumulus, or tump, on the edge of the orchard behind Church Street. The magical things you could so easily miss, bypass, ignore … or destroy.

Jane felt this swelling sense of responsibility towards a man who had already been dead for well over half a century when she was born.

You and me, Uncle Alfie.

3 For the Views

Must have been in one of Jane’s pagan books that Merrily had read how, in primitive communities, the local shaman was often a social outcast, both feared and derided. Being a female exorcist in the Church of England gave you some idea of what this must have been like.

‘Deliverance Consultant.’ The Reverend Spicer was shaking his head wearily. ‘What exactly does that … you know … ?’

She’d watched him moving around, pulling down tea caddy, mugs, milk and sugar from strong, beechwood units. He knew where everything was. After what Sophie had told her in the office, she’d been half-expecting some kind of desperate chaos in the rectory kitchen – unwashed dishes, layers of congealed fat on the stove – but it was clean and functional, if not exactly cosy.

He spilled a single blob of milk, frowned and ran a dishcloth over it.

‘I know what “exorcist” used to mean. Deliverance is a bit more … And consultant? ’

‘That just means I don’t get involved personally unless I’m invited to. On the basis that these … slightly iffy things are usually best handled by the guy on the ground. Which would be you, Mr Spicer.’

‘Call me Syd.’ He opened a cutlery drawer, extracted two spoons. ‘You ever done an exorcism?’