Midwinter of the Spirit (51 page)

‘Ah,’ said Athena calmly, ‘I see.’

‘Where’ve you been? I mean where
have
you been?’ The kid just staring back at her, and Merrily taking a deep breath, gripping the Aga rail. ‘I’m sorry. Christ, what am I
saying
?’

‘I don’t know, Mum.’

‘I close my eyes in church, I see that lime-green Fiesta reversing into our drive. I come back from church, and you’re not here. I’m sorry. There is no reason at all you have to be here all the time.’

‘No, you’re right,’ Jane said. ‘It was thoughtless of me.’

‘Ignore me, flower. I’m badly, badly paranoid. Previously, I see a stranger in the congregation, and I think:
Yes. Wow. Another one!
Now, when I glimpse an unfamiliar face, I’m watching for a little sneer at some key moment; I’m watching their lips when we say the Lord’s Prayer. I go round afterwards and sniff where they sat. Jesus, I shouldn’t be saying this to you – you’re only sixteen.’

‘Yes, I am,’ Jane said mildly. ‘And I’ve just been to see Danny Gittoes. Rowenna gave him, like, oral sex in return for breaking into the church and contaminating your cassock with Denzil Joy’s suit. Just thought you should know that.’

Merrily broke away from the Aga.

‘Also – and I’m not qualified to, like, evaluate the significance of this – but Rowenna’s been seeing – euphemism, OK? –
seeing
a young guy by the name of James Lyden. He goes to the Cathedral School and apparently tonight he’s going to be enthroned in the Cathedral as something called – vomit, vomit – Boy Bishop. Does this mean anything to you?’

47

Medieval Thing

S
HE CALLED
H
UW
, but there was no answer. She didn’t know his Sunday routine. Perhaps he drove from church to church across the mountains – service after service, until he was all preached out. If he had a mobile or a car-phone, it wouldn’t work up there, anyway.

She next called Sophie at home. Sophie, thank God,
was
home. Merrily pictured a serene, pastel room with a high ceiling and a grandfather clock.

‘Sophie, are you going to the Boy Bishop ceremony tonight?’

‘I always do,’ Sophie said. ‘As the Bishop’s lay-secretary, I consider my role as extending to his understudy.’

‘That’s not quite the right word, is it? As I understand it, the boy is a symbolic replacement – the Bishop actually giving way to him.’

‘Well, perhaps. Should I explain it to you, Merrily?’

‘Please.’

She listened, and made notes on her sermon pad.

‘Shall I see you there?’ Sophie asked.

‘God willing.’

‘I should like to talk to you. I’ve delayed long enough.’

An hour later, Merrily called Huw again, and then she called Lol but there was no answer there either, and no one else to call. When she put the phone down, she said steadily to herself, ‘I shouldn’t need this. I shouldn’t need help.’

Jane, coming into the scullery with coffee, said, ‘You can only ever go by what you think is right, Mum.’

‘All right, listen, flower. Sit down. I’m going to hang something on you. And you, in your most cynical-little-bitch mode, are going to give me your instinctive reactions.’

Jane pulled up a chair and they sat facing one another, sideon to the desk.

‘Shoot,’ Jane said.

‘It’s a medieval thing.’

‘Most of Hereford seems to be a medieval thing,’ Jane said.

‘In the thirteenth century, apparently, it was a fairly widespread midwinter ceremony in many parts of Europe. Sometimes he was known as the Bishop of the Innocents. It was discontinued at the Reformation under Henry VIII. The Reformation wasn’t kind to the Cathedral anyway. Stainedglass windows were destroyed, statues smashed. Then there was the Civil War and puritanism. In most cathedrals, the Boy Bishop never came back, but Hereford reintroduced it about twenty-five years ago, and it’s now probably the most famous ceremony of its kind in the country. The basis of it is a line from the Magnificat which goes:
He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek
.’

‘That’s crap,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t know anybody my age who is remotely humble or meek.’

‘How about if
I
tell you when to come on with the cynicism. OK, back to the ceremony. After a candlelit procession, the Bishop of Hereford gives up his throne to the boy, who takes over the rest of the service, leads the prayers, gives a short sermon.’

‘Would I be right in thinking there aren’t a whole bunch of boys queuing up for this privilege?’

‘Probably. It’s a parent thing – also a choir thing. The Boy Bishop is almost invariably a leading chorister, or a recently retired chorister, and he has several attendants from the same stable.’

‘So, what you’re saying is, Hunter symbolically gives up his throne to this guy.’

‘No, it isn’t symbolic. He actually does it. And then the boy and his entourage proceed around the chancel and into the North Transept, where he’s introduced to St Thomas Cantilupe at the shrine.’

‘Or, in this case, the hole where the shrine used to be.’

‘Yes, I understand this will the first time since the institution of the ceremony in the Middle Ages that there’s been no tomb.’

‘Heavy, right?’

Merrily said, ‘So you’re following my thinking.’

‘Maybe.’ Jane pushed her hair behind her ears.

Merrily said, ‘If – and this is the crux of it – you wanted to isolate the period when Hereford Cathedral was most vulnerable to… shall we call it spiritual disturbance, you might choose the period of the dawning of a millennium… when the tomb of its guardian saint lies shattered… and when the Lord Bishop of Hereford…’

She broke off, searching for the switch of the Anglepoise lamp. The red light of the answering machine shone like a drop of blood.

‘Is a mere boy,’ Jane supplied.

‘That’s the final piece of Huw’s jigsaw. Is that a load of superstitious crap or what? You can now be cynical.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So?’ Merrily’s hand found the lamp switch and clicked. The light found Jane propping up her chin with a fist.

‘How long do we have before the ceremony starts?’

‘It takes place during Evensong – which was held in the late afternoon until Mick took over. Mick thinks Evensong should be just that – at seven-thirty. Just over three hours from now.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not very long at all.’

‘No.’ Jane stood up, hands in the hip pockets of her jeans. ‘Why don’t you try calling Huw Owen again?’

‘He isn’t going to be there, flower. If he is, it would take him well over an hour to get here.’

‘Try Lol again. Maybe he can put the arm on James Lyden’s dad.’

‘The psychotherapist?’

‘Maybe he can.’

‘All right.’ Merrily punched out Lol’s number; the phone was picked up on the second ring.

‘John Barleycorn.’ A strange voice.

‘Oh, is Lol there?’

‘No, he’s not. This is Dennis Moon in the shop. Sorry, it’s the same line. I’m not usually here on a Sunday, but Lol’s not around anyway. Can I give him a message if he shows before I leave?’

‘Could you ask him to call Merrily, please?’

‘Sure, I’ll leave him a note.’

‘Face it,’ Merrily said, hanging up. ‘This guy is not going to pull his boy out of the ceremony – thus forcing them to abort it.’

‘I suppose not. Actually, it does seem quite scary. What if something did happen and we could have prevented it? But, on the other hand, what
could
happen?’

‘Well, it won’t be anything like thunder and lightning and the tower cracking in half.’ She saw Jane stiffen. ‘Flower?’

‘Why did you say that?’

‘What?’

‘About the tower cracking in half.’

‘It was the first stupid thing I thought of.’

‘That’s the tarot card Angela turned up for me: the Tower struck by lightning. It’s just… Sorry, your imagination sometimes goes berserk, doesn’t it?’

‘Look.’ Merrily stood up and put an arm around her. ‘Thunder is not forecast, anyway. You don’t get thunder at this time of the year, in this kind of weather. That tower’s been here for many centuries. The tarot card is purely symbolic. And even if something like that
did
happen…’

‘It did in 1786.’

‘What did?’

‘We did this in school. They had a west tower then, and it didn’t have proper foundations and the place was neglected, and on Easter Monday 1786 the whole lot collapsed.’

Merrily moved away, looked down at the desk, gathering her thoughts. ‘Look, even if it
was
likely, it’s still not the worst disaster that could happen.’

‘You mean the collapse of spirituality,’ Jane said soberly.

‘Whatever you say about the Church, flower, there’s no moral force to replace it.’

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘So suppose all the people jumping off the Tower Struck By Lightning are the ones, like, abandoning Christianity as the whole edifice collapses. Suppose the final disintegration of the Church as we know it was to start
here
?’

Merrily said, ‘Would you care?’

48

Blood

T
HE CROW
.

As the crow flies
: a straight line.

Dinedor Hill… All Saints Church… Hereford Cathedral… and two further churches, ending in…

‘What’s this place, Robinson? Can’t make it out.’

‘Stretford.’ For a moment it stopped his breath. ‘This… is the church of St Cosmas and St Damien.’

‘Oh, Robinson,’ Athena White said. ‘Oh, yes.’

Once the old ladies had begun to gather in the lounge, she’d beckoned Lol away and up the stairs. In Athena’s eyrie, with the Afghan rugs and all the cupboards, the OS map of Hereford had been opened out on the bedspread, and the line from Dinedor drawn in.

Athena’s glasses were white light. ‘It was in the
Hereford Times
, wasn’t it? Was that last week, I can’t remember? The crow…
the crow
. Why does one never see what is under one’s nose?’

‘They happened the same night. The crow sacrifice, and Moon’s death… and a minister called Dobbs had a stroke in the Cathedral.’

‘Yes!’

It all came out then, in strands of theory and conjecture which eventually hung together as a kind of certainty.

Tim Purefoy had said:
That’s one of Alfred Watkins’s leylines. An invisible, mystical cable joining sacred sites. Prehistoric
path of power. They’re energy lines, you know. And spirit paths. So we’re told. Probably all nonsense, but at sunset you can feel you own the city
.

Now, Athena White said, ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s there or not, Robinson. It’s what the magician
perceives
is there. The magician uses visualization, driven by willpower, to create an alternative reality.’

Moon had said:
The line goes through four ancient places of worship, ending at a very old church out in the country. But it starts here, and this is the highest point. So all these churches, including the Cathedral, remain in its shadow. This hill is the mother of the city. The camp here was the earliest proper settlement, long before there was a town down there
.

‘When the first Christian churches were built, Rome ordered them to be placed on sites of earlier worship, places already venerated, so as to appropriate their influence. But you see, Robinson, the pre-Christian element never really went away, because of the continued dominance of Dinedor Hill. So, if your aim was to destabilize the Cathedral and all it symbolizes, you might well decide to cause a vibration in what lies
beneath
.’

And Lol had said to Merrily – ironically in the café in the All Saints Church, on the actual line from St Cosmas to Dinedor Hill:
In Celtic folk tales, crows and ravens figured as birds of illomen or… as a form taken by anti-Christian forces
.

‘At one end of the line,’ Athena said, ‘a crow is sacrificed. At the other – at the highest point – is your crow maiden.’

Lol said, ‘Sacrificed?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘They killed her?’

‘Or helped her to take her own life? Probably, yes. I’m sorry, Robinson, I don’t know if this is what you wanted to hear.’

‘It’s just… are you sure about this?’
She’s an old woman
, he thought.
She lives in a fantasy world
. ‘You have to be sure.’

‘And yet,’ she said, ‘these two deaths are so different. Calm down, Robinson, I won’t let you make a fool of yourself. You see, as Crowley once pointed out, a sacrifice was once seen as a merciful and glorious death, allowing the astral body to go directly to its God. This essentially means a quick death, a throat cut… the way the crow presumably died. But your friend’s blood was let out through the wrists. Not quick at all – a slow release…’

‘ “Crow maiden, you’re fadin’ away…” ’

‘What did you say?’

‘Just a line from a song.’

Athena White’s clasped hands were shaking with concentration. ‘Robinson, have we discussed the power of blood?’

On the way back from the Glades, Lol kept glancing at the passenger seat – because of a dark, disturbing sensation of Moon sitting beside him.

I’d like to sleep now
.

‘I know,’ he said once. ‘I know you can’t sleep. But I just don’t know what to do about it.’

At the lectern in Ledwardine Church, with the altar behind them, candles lit, Merrily took both Jane’s hands in hers, and looked steadily into the kid’s dark eyes.

‘You all right about this?’

‘Sure.’

Merrily had locked the church doors – the first time she’d ever locked herself in. A church was not a private place; it should always offer sanctuary.

Merrily gripped the kid’s hands more firmly.

‘Christ be with us,’ she said, ‘Christ within us.’

‘Christ behind us,’ Jane read from the card placed in the open Bible on the lectern. ‘Christ before us…’

‘Hello, Laurence,’ Denny said tiredly.

The shop was all in boxes around his knees. Despite the possible implications for his own domestic future, Lol had forgotten about Denny’s decision to shut John Barleycorn for ever. The walls were just empty shelves now, even the balalaika packed away. The ochre wall-lamps, which had lit Moon so exquisitely, did her brother Denny no favours. His face was grey as he wiped his brow with the sleeve of his bomber jacket.