Omega (28 page)

They did, one by one; and Eileen told them about the Dust, the madness it caused, and the simple gauze-and-vinegar masks that would give protection.

When she had finished there was another brief silence. Then the doctor astonished her by asking: 'We've given our word, so don't be afraid. But was it Corwen Emergency Unit you were at?'

'No - I knew about Corwen but I was at another of the same kind. In fact, I only heard about Corwen by accident, when a doctor was transferred from there; I don't know

how many others there
are Why, doctor - have you been
to the Corwen unit?'

Dr Owen shook his head. 'No one's allowed inside the place. But a colleague of mine at Bala - they whipped away a couple of his bronchitis patients, local people, and he's never seen them since and can't find out about them. It was a couple of days after the tremors. . . . Bears out your story, I must say; not that I disbelieved you, but . . . Oh, my God, what a terrible thing.'

'Nurse Brown..." the minister began.

'Roberts,' Eileen corrected him. 'Eileen Roberts.'

He nodded. 'I'm glad you trust us. I would say, on behalf of this community, that we are deeply grateful to you. We shall see that everyone in the village follows your advice and you may rest secure that your confidence will not be betrayed.'

They all thanked her and there was no doubting their sincerity. Dai Police added that as for her friends in the Forest (about whom he apparently knew more than he had said) he personally would do all he could to see they were left in peace.

'And as for
me,'
Bronwen Jones said, 'I'll see the shop has all the vinegar and gauze anyone will need.' She paused, and then committed herself to the ultimate sacrifice. 'Sell it at cost price, I will.'

An immediate effect of Peter and Eileen's mission to New Dyfnant was that the Forest group became a little less wary of the outside world or at least of their immediate neighbours. A cautious visit by Greg, Rosemary, Eileen and Peter to the Forest Inn one lunchtime showed that they had nothing to fear from the villagers, who somehow managed to imply friendliness while studiously behaving as though they (with the exception of Peter, of course) were strangers passing through for the day. On the afternoon of the following day, Dan and Moira went shopping at Bronwen Jones's little store. Peter was not with them, and although Bronwen passed no comment she gave them all her attention, and after they had paid for their purchases, gave them a bar of chocolate 'for the little girl' - who was not with them either and had not been mentioned. They thanked her and she just smiled and said, 'My Trevor, he'll be about the same age. A beloved exasperation a child, innit?' - and left them to serve the next customer.

Warmed by the encounter, Dan and Moira allowed themselves the relaxation of a drive round the shore road of
Lake
Vyrnwy which Greg and Rosemary had told them was beautiful. An artificially-created reservoir almost eight kilometres long, the lake ran from north-west to south-east between steep mountains, the dam at its lower end lying about three kilometres north of New Dyfnant. Another village, Llanwddyn, was in the river valley just downstream of the dam, and they knew from Peter that the people there had been in a very nervous state since the earth tremor. If another worse shock were to breach the dam, Llanwddyn would inevitably be badly hit, possibly destroyed. New Dyfnant was spared that fear at least, being well into the edge of the Forest and a good fifty metres higher than the lake surface. Dan and Moira took the minor road on the New Dyfnant side of the river, avoiding Llanwddyn.

They drove past the dam and followed the south-western shore which lay in the shadow of the mountains while the opposite bank, seven or eight hundred metres across the water, was bathed in sunlight, its reflection cats-pawed by little breezes and punctuated here and there by rings expanding and fading where a fish had jumped. 'Brown trout and rainbow trout,' said Dan, who as usual had done his homework.

'Greg's right,' Moira said. 'This is a beautiful part of the country. If we have to be g
ypsies, I'm glad we chose here.’

'Yes.'

They drove in silence for a few minutes and then stopped to admire a waterfall feathering and bouncing down the mountain. They were not the only visitors; an elderly cyclist squatted by the roadside gazing up at it, his cycle and rucksack on the ground beside him. They called a cheerful 'Good afternoon' to him, and would have passed on to walk up to the fall but something about the man's laboured gesture of acknowledgement made Moira turn back. The man smiled up at her almost apologetically. Moira noticed his collar.

'Are you all right, father?' she asked.

'Just a bit tired, my dear, that's all. I've cycled rather longer than I should have done today, I think. When the sun shines like this, it's all too easy to forget one is not a young man any more. . . . I'll be fine again when I've rested.'

'I don't think you will,' Moira told him, and turned to call 'Dan I Isn't there a thermometer in the first-aid kit?'

The old priest protested feebly but accepted the thermometer which Dan put under his tongue and stayed obediently silent till it was taken out again.

'Thirty-eight point six,' Dan read. 'Father, we're putting that bike of yours in the car and driving you to the doctor in New Dyfnant.'

'But I'm sure I'll...'

'No argument, now. You're ill.'

The priest sighed and said half to himself: 'Back to the habitations of men. God help me, that's what I was running from.'

Moira sat down beside him. 'What do you mean, father?'

'Take no notice of me, my dear, I'm a foolish old man. And a cowardly one, I think.... At the moment - and may God forgive me for saying it - I am weary of towns and villages and the stupidity and cruelty of men.' He craned his neck back and looked wistfully up at the mountain. ' "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help" . . . Perhaps you're right and I am ill. I must certainly sound a bit delirious. I'm very grateful for your help and if it's not taking you out of your way, it would be very good of you to drop me off at a doctor's.'

They put his machine on the roof-rack and him and his pack in the car and turned around to go back to New
Dyfnant. But Moira, who had taken the driving seat, paused with her hand on the ignition key, her intuition nagging at her. She took her hand away again and asked: 'What did you mean, exactly, father? Were you planning to be a hermit?'

'For a while, my dear, yes - I was planning to do just that. To escape to these forests, as I used to do thirty or forty years ago for my holidays when I was a young curate, away from the clamour of men. I've always found it easier to hear God's voice when man isn't trying to interrupt.... But it looks as though God has other plans for me.'

'Perhaps not, after all
...
Look, father - we're camping up in Dyfnant Forest, eight of us altogether. One of us is a trained nurse. We coul
d take you back with us and she
could look at you. If
she
says you must see a doctor, well, that'll be it, I'm afraid; we'll have to take you to the village. But if she says you'll be all right, why don't you be our guest for a while? We have a little spare tent and you could sleep warm and dry.' She smiled back at him. 'Be a hermit in the forest but with square meals and a fire to sit by in the evenings.'

The old priest gazed at her, speechless, and she went on: 'There's just one thing you ought to know, though. We've run away from the cruelty of man, too. Six of the eight of us - including us two - are witches. I hope you don't mind.'

To her surprise, he almost laughed. 'Witches. How very appropriate! In two ways, actually.'

‘
Oh?'

'The first way: do you know the parable of the Good Samaritan?' 'Of course.'

'But do you realize the
point
of it? Very few people do, I find. . . . Our Lord always spoke directly to his hearers in language they would understand; he spoke as a fisherman to fishermen, as a peasant to peasants, as a priest to priests. . . . And to his audience the striking thing about that particular parable would be that the Samaritan was a heretic - a religious untouchable. It would be almost shocking to them - that the one who rescued the afflicted wayfarer and showed his compassion and love was a
heretic....
You see what I mean by "appropriate"?'

Dan smiled. 'A bit greener than the road from Jerusalem to Jericho - but I take your point. . . . Come on, darling, let's get him home. The poor man's shivering.'

Moira started up and asked as she drove: 'What was your other reason for saying it was appropriate, father?'

The priest sighed. 'That is a longer and sadder story, I'm afraid. May I save it for that fireside you spoke of?'

Eileen's ruling was that Father Byrne need not see a doctor unless he failed to improve in the next day or two; but she vetoed the tent because the site was subject to morning ground-mist. She and Angie would have moved out of their caravan and bedded down with the others, to give the patient a more suitable bunk; but Peter, arriving as the matter was being discussed, vetoed that in turn. Father Byrne would sleep in his trailer and he would borrow the little tent for himself. The old priest tried to argue with all of them that he was being a nuisance but was firmly overruled.

'There's nothing in the parable about the man
arguing
with the Samaritan,' Moira told him, 'so stick to the text.' Father Byrne was overcome with laughter till he had to be patted on the back and the matter was settled.

An hour or two later, full of hot dinner and cocooned in blankets on a camp-chair by the fire, he told them his story. He had been for many years a parish priest in Liverpool
, and although he spoke modestl
y of it, they could imagine that he had been a devout and hard-working one. He had had no more than the usual problems and crises of urban priesthood until the last few weeks because until then his ' views had not clashed with those of his parishioners. But with the explosion of the witch-hunt, everything had changed.

'Don't misunderstand md,' he said. 'I believe that witchcraft is a mistaken creed. Many good people follow it -and I have no doubt at all that that includes you, my new friends. I believe that in spite of your goodness, you have strayed from the truth. But that is for
you
to decide - and I believe, equally profoundly, that it is against God's law to try to impose a decision on you by legislation, persecution, mob violence or the burning of homes. Such methods have been tried again and again over the centuries and they have achieved nothing but the corruption of the persecutors. When this new persecution began, I stood up in my pulpit and condemned it.' He gave a diffident half-smile. 'I can be very vehement when I believe that I am right - perhaps too vehement for wisdom.

'At any rate, I am afraid that a majority of my flock disagreed with me. The Crusade stormtroopers - and I used that word in my sermon - are very active in our parish, and I made it clear that Christian or not, they were far worse than the witches because they were motivated by intolerance and hatred; and in my experience the witches are not so motivated.' He half-smiled again. 'Maybe that was overstating it; there are wicked witches just as there are wicked Christians. But in
our
parish, certainly at the time, it was the Crusaders who were guilty of intolerance and hatred -and quite a number of them were members of my congregation. As their priest, I had no choice but to say so.'

The smile had disappeared now. He said, wearily: 'I was mobbed outside my own church.'

There was silence around the camp-fire for a while. Then Rosemary asked: "Did they hurt you?'

'Physically? Oh, nothing much; it was not
that
. . . My curate - and it is not for me to judge him, he is young and fiery, as I was myself once - he disagreed with me, root and branch. To him, the witches were Antichrist, to be stamped out . . . He went to the bishop. And I am afraid the bishop supported him. He told me, in so many words, to watch my tongue.' Father Byrne sighed. 'And so I did, though with difficulty; I believe in obedience though not to the exclusion of all else.
...
I even kept quiet after this latest Order in Council when witchcraft was made illegal. As if you can make conscience illegal! . . . But I could not evade my own conscience indefinitely. A man came to me for confession
...
I could not tell you, of course, in the ordinary way - but he made it public himself. I knew he was a Crusader and had been out at night smashing
windows, and worse, and I knew
he had every intention of doing so again. I had to refuse him absolution because he was frankly, even blatantly, unrepentant. . . . My curate took him to the bishop who gave him absolution himself and suspended me from my parochial duties. He put my curate in temporary charge of the parish.'