Fabric of Sin (20 page)

‘Be stupid of me to say it doesn’t. But not, I’d guess, in any way that would interest the police.’

‘So it won’t come out at the inquest or anything, about …’

‘Inquests tend to stick to the cold facts.’

‘Right.’ Eastgate paused. ‘Well, I don’t know what to say. Have to … get another builder.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know how to react to this. Was she crazy? I mean, that’s the issue, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. At first I thought it was something like that, but now I’ve been to the house, and … I don’t know. There’s a lot of history.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘Me?’

‘The Bishop referred it to you, Merrily.’

‘Yes.’

Remembering how she’d reacted, telling Lol,
I don’t
want
to go and stay in Garway for a week
.

‘You think it’s over, Merrily? You think it begins and ends with this disturbed woman?’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Not really.’

W
HEN SHE WENT
out by the back door, it had turned into the kind of October day that made global warming seem like a scare-story, cold air seizing her arms through the thin sweatshirt; she didn’t care.

She walked through into the churchyard, the way Lol had left at dawn, the sun now pulsing feebly in a loaded sky. Self-disgust oozing rancid fluid into her gut.

We have to think about what we mean by listening. Because, when you think about it, we hardly ever really do it
.

She
hadn’t. She hadn’t really listened to Fuchsia.

Smug, sanctimonious, hypocritical bitch.

‘He don’t look happy, do he?’ Gomer Parry said. ‘The ole sun.’

He was sitting, gnomelike, on the headstone of Minnie’s grave, his head on one side, as if he was listening for faint sounds from below the soil. When Minnie died, they’d both had new batteries in their watches and he’d buried them together in a small box under her coffin.

The watch after death.

‘You OK, Gomer?’

‘En’t too bad, vicar.’ He stood up. ‘Ole Min’ll be sayin’ I’m makin’ the place look untidy again.’ He peered at her. ‘’Ow’re you?’

‘Had better days.’

‘Felix Barlow, is it?’

‘How did you hear?’

‘Danny rung me. Hour or so ago.’

‘What are they saying?’

‘Usual. Never mess with a mad hippie, kind o’ thing.’

‘And Danny?’

‘Reckons there’s likely things we don’t know and en’t never gonner find out. ’Bout Barlow and that woman.’

‘He’d known her since she was born. Literally.’

‘Knowed her ma. When her moved in, some folks put it round he was the girl’s ole man.’ Gomer shook his head. ‘Feller starts doin’ well for hisself, always some bugger ready to pull him down the gutter. Don’t take it to heart, vicar, I reckon you done your best.’

Merrily stared at him. Didn’t recall telling Gomer anything about her dealings with Felix Barlow and Fuchsia.

‘The ole church, vicar.’ Gomer dipped a hand into his top pocket, pulled out his ciggy tin. ‘St Cosmo’s?’

‘Cosmas,’ Merrily said. ‘And St Damien.’

‘Ar, them’s the boys.’

‘Bloody hell, Gomer, it’s a disused church … remote.’

‘Exac’ly. You wasn’t exactly dressed for not gettin’ noticed, place like that. You like a nun, her like a bride. Word gets round.’

Like a bride
. Fuchsia in the white dress. The candle and the bigger light from the window over the altar. The light in Fuchsia’s wide-apart owl eyes. No light now, no eyes, no head.

‘Go back in the warm, eh, vicar?’ Gomer said. ‘You’re shivering.’

‘I’m OK. I just …’ She stared at the dull sun. There was something else. ‘Gomer, you did a drainage job in Garway – for a Mrs Morningwood?’

Gomer stiffened, shut the ciggy tin with a snap.

‘Muriel?’

‘Sorry, I don’t know her first name.’

‘It’s Muriel,’ Gomer said.

‘Just that we met her, Jane and me, the other day.’

‘Oh ar?’

‘And when she heard we were from Ledwardine, she mentioned you.’

Gomer said nothing. He looked wary. Merrily blinked.

‘This is, erm … where you usually tell me something interesting. Some little anecdote.’

‘What’s to tell?’ Gomer sniffed. ‘Got her own smallholdin’. Keeps bees, chickens. Does this toe-twiddling treatment thing. And herbs.’

‘Yes, I knew some of that.’

‘And her’s popular with the farmers.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well … knows her way around, ennit? Lot o’ the ole farmers don’t. Don’t like computers, paperwork, London, Europe. Hell, don’t like Hereford much neither.’

‘No.’

‘Plus, add to the list the council and the Min of Ag, whatever they calls it now.’

‘She helps farmers deal with red tape?’

‘Knows how to talk to shiny-arsed buggers with clipboards, that’s the basic of it. Farmer’s got hisself a problem with some official, don’t know how to harticulate it, he calls Muriel. Officials’ll back down, write it off as a bad job, see, soon as deal with Muriel.’

‘And this is official, is it? I mean, does she do this kind of thing as … you know … some kind of agricultural consultant?’

Gomer laughed, started coughing and fitted a ciggy in his mouth, still laughing, still coughing.

‘I see,’ Merrily said.

‘Go and get warm, vicar. That’s the best thing.’

Robbie was complaining that his coffee would be ready. Couldn’t this wait? But Jane persisted; these guys were sometimes inclined to forget they were getting paid fairly decent money to feed young minds.

‘I suppose you’ve been reading some trashy novel,’ he said.

‘No, Mr Williams,’ Jane said. ‘I’ve been to Garway Church.’

Robbie sat down again, behind the history room desk.

‘Have you now?’

‘Seriously interesting place.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Robbie said. ‘Spent many a day there, fully absorbed.’

Morrell, the head, had introduced this system where sixth-formers got to call teachers by their first names, like they were your mates. It just led to awkwardness, in Jane’s view, and this was a view clearly shared by
the head of history, who refused even to reveal his first name. It had always been
R. Williams
. So, obviously …

‘Right …’ Jane pulled up a chair. ‘So if anybody could answer my questions about Garway and the Templars …’

For you, Mr Williams, the mid-morning break is over
.

‘Damn and blast,’ Robbie said mildly. ‘Dropped myself in it there, didn’t I?’

He had to be coming up to retirement. Sparse white hair, tweed jacket, comfortably overweight and, unlike most of his smoothie colleagues, so determinedly uncool that he almost
was
cool.

‘You see, it’s not exactly very big, that church,’ Jane said. ‘But so full of mysteries.’

She wasn’t going to tell him she hadn’t been into the actual church yet, due to them running into Mrs Morningwood and everything. Anyway, no problem, she’d been on the common-room computer, and there were two or three websites with stacks of pictures of the church’s unique features – the Templar coffin lids in the floor, the enigmatic carvings, the remains of the circular nave …

Robbie took off his brown-framed glasses, looked at the ceiling.

‘Thing is, Jane … there’s an awful lot of twaddle talked about the Knights Templar. Always has been. Supposed to be magicians and guardians of famous secrets, but in reality they were uneducated and illiterate, most of them. Weren’t even monks, in the true sense, simply a religious brotherhood who observed various disciplines and went out into the world to fight people.’

‘But they obviously knew about magic and astrological configurations and things.’

‘Not “obviously” at all, girl. Magic, in medieval times, was a high science, chronicled in Latin and Greek. Hardly for the illiterate.’

‘Yeah, maybe
one
kind of magic, but, like, what about all the hedge witches and the local conjurers? You’re saying
they
were intellectuals? I mean, there was always like an
instinctive
element, surely. Like, something that was passed down?’

‘An oral tradition. Perhaps. I’m merely saying that the ornate web of mythology woven around the Templars was precisely that.’

‘But you don’t
know
that. You don’t know that they hadn’t—’

‘They’ve became a very convenient repository for ludicrous conspiracy theories, and you need to remember that I—’

‘But you don’t know that they didn’t develop some instinctive spiritual feel for—’

‘—teach history, Jane, not New-Age theology.’

‘OK, history.’ Jane focused. ‘The Templars were linked to the Cistercians, right?’

‘That’s one theory.’

‘And the Cistercians were known for being close to the earth, in like a pagan way? Always settled in remote places where they could be self-sufficient. And
they
studied the stars and they were well into landscape patterns and stuff.’

‘To an extent.’

‘And
that
wouldn’t’ve been written down in Latin, would it? And … OK, if the Templars weren’t into magic, what about all the charges that were proved against them? Secret rituals at night?’

‘The charges were
not
proved, Jane. The Pope, Clement V, actually declared that they were
un
proven, but decided to dissolve the Templar order anyway because these accusations had brought it very much into disrepute.’

‘But if you—’

‘Ah, Jane …’ Robbie Williams sat back, arms folded, smiling almost fondly and shaking his head. ‘You really are a most unusual girl. Hard to think of anyone else in your year who displays the smallest curiosity about anything not actually involved with achieving the necessary qualifications. And I’m not being very helpful, am I? Why don’t you tell me where you’re going with this? Or hoping to go.’

For the first time, Jane felt her engine stall. Couldn’t tell him
that
. Stick to questions. Teachers always liked questions.

‘There’s only one pub left in Garway, right?’

‘The Moon.’ Robbie patted his comfortable stomach. ‘I do know my hostelries.’

‘Did you know there used to be another three, called The Sun, The Stars and The Globe?’

‘I
didn’t
know that. How interesting. Do you know how far those names go back?’

‘Well, I … haven’t had a chance to check it all out yet. But it does suggest there’s some astrological tradition in the area, doesn’t it?’

‘Astronomical, anyway. Then again, it may be simply that some chap opened a pub called The Moon, and another chap set up in opposition and called his The Sun. And so on.’

‘Yeah. I suppose.’

‘Sorry, Jane. What else have you found? The dovecote with 666 compartments? Your guess is as good as mine on that one. Could be a coincidence, could be someone’s idea of a joke or it could be rather sinister. Who knows?’

‘How about the green man?’

‘Ah,’ Robbie said.

A bell at the end of the passage signalled the end of break-time.

‘The stone face carved into the chancel arch,’ Jane said quickly. ‘And nobody knows what it really means … even though they’re fairly common in churches.’

‘Yes. Is the green man of Celtic origin or early medieval? And does this one even qualify for the title?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘A green man is, by definition, a
foliate
face – leaves and vines coming out of his mouth and his nose and whatnot.’

‘Yes.’

Jane had a picture of it in her head, from one of the websites. The blank eyes, the stubby horns …

‘But what’s interesting,’ Robbie said, ‘is that the specimen inside the chancel arch at Garway appears to have no foliate embellishments whatsoever. No representation of greenery emerging from its mouth – instead, what, on closer scrutiny, is quite obviously a thick, studded cord with tassels at either end. I admit that’s puzzled me, too.’

‘What could it mean?’

‘Well now …’ Robbie leaned forward in his chair; he smelled quite strongly of mints. ‘If we return to the list of charges against the
Templars, they were, if you recall, accused of worshipping an idol. In the form of a bearded male head.’

‘Yeah! Of course … It was supposed to have powers?’

‘It was also said to have a cord wound around it,’ Robbie said.

‘Holy sh—’ Jane slid to the edge of her chair. ‘So that face could be—’

‘
Baphomet
.’ Robbie raised both arms and joined his hands behind his head. ‘It came to be known as Baphomet. A name for which there seem to be several explanations, the most common of which is that it’s a corruption of Muhammad. And the Templars, during the Crusades, would obviously have been much exposed to Islam.’

‘The Templars could’ve been secret Muslims? This could be a kind of Islamic idol?’

‘The Muslims don’t
have
idols, Jane. And if we pursue that theory, we also tend to stumble over the word “worship”. While the Muslims afford their prophet the very greatest respect, they only
worship
Allah.’

‘Maybe the Pope or somebody put a spin on that. Because, like, messing with Muhammad, that would be serious heresy, right?’

‘Obviously, it
would
. However, since those days – in the West anyway – Baphomet seems to have acquired a rather darker image. Satanic, even. Demonic, anyway. Which is where it rather departs from the medieval historian’s sphere of expertise, so you’d need to research that at the library.’

‘But, like, the fact that the head’s set into the chancel arch, the entrance to the holiest part of the church …’

‘If that
is
Baphomet …’ Robbie put on a slightly twisted, conspiratorial smile ‘… is he guarding the altar? Or is he drawing attention
away
from it? Think, for instance, which side it’s on.’

‘Well, erm …’ Obviously she hadn’t seen the actual thing, only the picture, which was close-up. ‘I suppose that would depend which side you’re approaching it from.’

‘It’s only visible from one side Jane. The side facing you as you walk in. Putting it very firmly on the
left
.’

‘Oh.’