The Magus of Hay (29 page)

‘He buried Hitler in the castle wall?’

‘I don’t think this is Hitler, do you?’

‘Then what is it?’

‘I suspect something more contemporary.’

‘And it won’t wait till tomorrow?’ Kapoor said.

‘I would not wait half an hour if it could be avoided.’

‘Yeah, me neither,’ Robin said. ‘We need an old-fashioned VCR.’

Kapoor took a look.

‘
Extremely
old-fashioned.’

Gotta be a few still around.’

Kapoor shook his head.

‘Wouldn’t bet on it, mate.’ He turned the tape box around with a forefinger. ‘This is Betamax. Big in the nineteen eighties, then VHS swallowed the market. By the mid-nineties they’d vanished completely. I can still sell VHS test-match tapes, or transfer them to DVD, but I won’t touch these. We’ll be bloody lucky to find anybody who’s still got a Betamax player tonight.’

Silence.

‘Shit,’ Robin said.

Merrily slipped upstairs with the airline bag. When she did the prayer, standing beside the heap of rubble in the lowering, flesh-coloured light, it felt like talking into a pillow pressed over your face.

Or maybe she was just impressionable.

Whatever, she brought out the flask of water.

PART FIVE

Chaos magicians… only get together to work on specific projects.

Prof. Ronald Hutton, in
The Book of English Magic
,
by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard
Heygate (2009)

52

The last redemptive project

T
HE WIND WAS
rising. A smoky cloud-mass shaped like a rabbit made a forward bound in slow motion and then came apart over Hay Castle, a mile away on the horizon.

Rector’s gate was open and Merrily drove through. She was early, but there was already another car here. A small car, and her heart jumped like the rabbit in the sky.

But, no. Tamsin’s car was green, a Clio. What was she thinking?

Nerves.

She got down from the Freelander, and saw a woman standing at the top of a paddock next to the house. The other car was a Mini Cooper, black and grey, no sign of a red Audi.

The woman turned, black against a deep red sun frizzling the day’s embers. Merrily unzipped the black hoodie to expose her second-smallest pectoral cross. She scowled, slipped it over her head and into a pocket of her jeans. Opened the wooden five-barred gate and they met somewhere in the middle of the paddock.

‘Mrs Watkins.’ A hand came out. Blue-varnished nails. ‘Claudia.’

‘You came early then.’

‘Worried I might have bothered Bliss for nothing, I suppose.’

‘Oh?’

‘Actually just worried.’

Claudia was nearly a head taller, a big-boned woman in a sheepskin gilet, pink jeans pushed into soft leather boots. The
kind of woman you saw picking up her kids in a Toyota Land Cruiser on the nanny’s day off. Merrily followed her back to the gate, and they stood with their backs to it watching the sun set over Hay.

‘I read what I could find about you on the Net,’ Claudia said. ‘And then I rang Athena White.’

‘And you still came?’

‘She particularly asked me not to tell you what she’d said about you. But, let’s say I think you might be quite surprised if I did.’

A rabbit – no, a hare – lolloped out of the farthest hedge, actually towards them, and stopped, becoming a silhouette that might have been a small standing stone, in the centre of the field. Claudia watched it, smiling faintly.

‘I’m not going to say anything as obvious as that’s Peter, come to see what we’re doing.’

The hare didn’t move.

Merrily said, ‘You think something’s happened here?’

‘I think there might have been a burglary.’

‘In the house?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve had a bit of a dilemma, bit of conscience-searching. I’ve obviously not been very careful. ’

‘Letting yourself be seen.’

I’m hoping Bliss will be discreet.’

‘He can be. When he has to.’

‘In return for which I told him I’m prepared to be
less
than discreet and talk about what was happening here. He wants me to talk about it to you, as someone who might be able to process it. And maybe so he can legitimately deny all knowledge of it if things get difficult for him.’

‘Blimey. Have you really only known him a couple of days?’

‘I’ve known other detectives. Ask me what you think he needs to know.’

‘You were close,’ Merrily said, ‘to Peter Rector?’

‘Thought I was. When he turned ninety, I offered him an apartment in my far-too-big house, with the use of a large
reception room and an outbuilding for his temple. Seemed such a perfect solution to his increasing fear of infirmity that I was quite offended, at first, when he refused. I didn’t realize, then, why he couldn’t leave here. There were things I didn’t know about him for a long time. Things I probably still don’t know. More like a revered great-uncle, shall we say, than a grandfather.’

Merrily watched the sun fall behind Hay, which, viewed across empty fields, at this time, in this light, looked like some impossibly romantic medieval settlement.

‘And is this about his… last redemptive project?’

‘If you know about that,’ Claudia said, ‘you didn’t get it from Athena.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Merrily – can I call you that?’ Claudia bit her lower lip. ‘I think we’re walking around one another, probably unnecessarily. But feel free to take out that cross again and wave it in my face.’

‘All right, I don’t know what the project is.’

‘Thank you. Athena’s in a difficult situation. She’s charged with making sure it doesn’t collapse. That’s what Peter wants. How discreet are you, Merrily? Are you bound to report to your Bishop?’

‘I’m on holiday.’ Merrily looked over her shoulder towards the castle mound and the church of St Mary, Cusop. ‘And I’m guessing we have a few minutes before Bliss gets here.’

‘Or a little more if he wants to give us time to connect, which I suspect he does. From my point of view, while I don’t go out of my way to conceal my private interest, I’d rather nothing appeared in the papers. If only because I don’t want any tedious jokes from young solicitors about magicking an acquittal.’

‘I can see you wouldn’t.’

‘I’m an initiate,’ Claudia said, ‘in an order of ceremonial magicians. A neophyte with aspirations.’

‘What kind of initiate?’

‘You mean white or black?’

‘I doubt it’s ever that simple. Why do you do it?’

‘I’m guessing you don’t want the offensive answer about Christianity, as practised in this country, no longer satisfying people’s spiritual needs.’

‘Doesn’t offend me, Claudia. If we provided much of a buzz any more, congregations wouldn’t be going down the toilet. What’s the non-offensive answer?’

‘It’s also an intelligent, challenging, demanding… escape. Into myself. Been meditating since my teens, and this is what comes next if you don’t want to get into some incomprehensible eastern discipline. It’s been wonderful for turning the mind into a blank screen, increasing one’s powers of focus and concentration and… other useful skills. Now, I know for a fact, for example, when someone’s lying to me in court.’

Claudia slotted her heels into the bottom bar of the gate and hauled herself up to sit on the top.

‘But they’re just side-benefits, really. Using peripheral skills to try and become superhuman in a world of ordinary humans, or to score points or make money is… bad karma, if you want to put it like that. Am I gaining your confidence at all, Merrily?’

‘My daughter’s drawn to paganism. It hasn’t turned her into a werewolf.’

Claudia nodded.

‘All right.’ She looked across the fields. ‘The project, then.’

‘Can I guess?’

‘Do.’

‘Is it Hay itself? If he was the Magus of Hay, was the project the Kingdom?’

It had come to her whole, standing so close to the border between England and Wales. Here before her was the Kingdom, right on the frontier. No obvious housing estates or factories visible from here, only the original medieval town. You could almost see the walls.

‘If I’ve got this right,’ Merrily said, ‘declaring independence was a spontaneous act. Richard Booth didn’t think about it, plan anything… he just said it and it happened. Metaphorically speaking.’

‘Far more than metaphorically.’

‘And when everybody thought it was a joke… to Peter Rector it wasn’t. It was something that was almost visionary.’

‘Almost?’

‘Maybe Booth thought it was a joke too, with his tin crown and his plastic orb.’

‘Which, unintentionally, are magical artefacts,’ Claudia said. ‘Far more powerful than if someone very rich had fabricated the real thing – real gold, real jewels. Here they are, made entirely from recycled stuff. Glass jewels nicked from a dog collar. Everything cobbled together. Worthless.’

‘Second-hand. Very Hay?’

‘
Yesss!’
Claudia jumping down to the grass, surprisingly nimble for someone her size. ‘Breaking all the rules. Saying to the government and the council and tourist and development boards…’

‘You don’t exist,’ Merrily said.

‘Exactly. Booth and his supporters were saying, “On
our
level of consciousness,
you don’t exist
. If we don’t see you, then you aren’t there.
We’ve made you disappear.”
Magic.’

‘Is it?’

‘Natural magic. A number of factors coming together at the right time. Serendipity. Serendipity is very close to magic. Except it doesn’t last. Mostly it explodes. The bubble pops. Unless…’

Claudia walked out into the darkening paddock, the grass sloping towards woodland below the town on the horizon, sparkling now with lights.

Merrily didn’t move.

‘The last redemptive project was to make sure it continued?’

‘The continued powering and protection of a brilliant chaotic mind,’ Claudia said.

‘So Rector had appointed himself court magician.’

‘I never actually thought of it like that.’ Claudia looked momentarily disapproving. ‘But I suppose you’re right.’

She went to stand where the hare had sat.

‘An exercise like this stands more of a chance of success if it’s set in train at the beginning of something. If it’s not a rescue package. Blank canvas. You spot your opportunity and then you move quickly. When you look at Hay now, it’s hard to imagine how it was before the first second-hand bookshop opened, most of its shops closed down, its railway ripped up.’

Claudia extended her arms.

‘Imagine
this
is Hay. This field. Imagine the gate is the castle. Behind it – as in physical reality – the Black Mountains. Below it, the River Wye. Most of the medieval town walls have gone – but still there, the stones taken to build houses and shops, so therefore still in the town. It’s
all still here
. On our mental model, we might choose to put the walls back in their original place, enclosing the heart. The street pattern at the core of the town, if you hadn’t noticed, actually forms the shape of a heart.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Look at a street plan sometime: High Street, Castle Street, Lion Street, Bear Street and the rest… all blood vessels shaping and wound around a heart. Peter’s self-appointed task was to make it beat. To a strong, persistent rhythm that couldn’t easily be stopped. To give it momentum.’

‘How does that work? What do you mean by the
mental model
?’

‘Something that exists on a higher plan. Constructed in the imagination. Imagine it as virtual reality on a screen into which you can drag images, make things happen. All magic works through will power and the harnessing of energy. Spirits, if you like. Which can be seen either as external forces or processes from deep in the human psyche. In this case, we also have natural energies directed into the town – the power of water rushing down the Dulas Brook, with all its waterfalls, flowing
into the River Wye, the best, most revered river in England and Wales. But more powerfully, emerging on the other side of town, you might have something else.’

‘We talking about the church?’

‘You know it? And the surroundings?’

‘I was there this afternoon.’

‘It’ll be very clear in your mind, then. Go there now. Go on… you’re safe. It’s one of yours.’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Humour me.’

She found she didn’t have to try too hard. As she stood by the hedge at the side of the paddock, she was, at the same time, below St Mary’s Church, following the stream past the waterfall, across the bridge. Then she was in the alley between the almshouses, emerging opposite the entrance to Forest Road, the end of the Gospel Pass, highway of saints, up to another St Mary church, high in the Black Mountains, where the statue of the Virgin raised her crumbling hands to bring down the…

‘… sheer power of medieval Christianity, Merrily. In a time when the Church was illuminated by miracles and magic. The blessing and guardianship of the Holy Mother.’

Claudia’s voice coming across the twilit field, with a slight echo. Seeming to pick up your unspoken thoughts. The tricks these people played. Merrily said nothing. Found she was holding the pectoral cross in her pocket, sliding her fingers through its chain. Well aware of how the modern Church had let all that dissipate.

‘So here’s Peter, at the confluence,’ Claudia said. ‘Where streams feeding the Dulas brook rush past another significant Mary church.’

‘Cusop Church.
That
one.’

Out of the corner of her right eye, she could see it: solid, short tower, enclosed, like the others, by yew trees, one said to be nearly two thousand years old.

‘Where was he?’ Merrily asked softly. ‘Where exactly was Peter Rector?’

‘In the engine room,’ Claudia said. ‘And the engine was comprised of people. Living and dead.’

53

Right-hand path

I
T WAS LIKE
something was preventing them getting close to the truth, erecting barriers.

Kapoor had an old VHS recorder for transferring vintage cricket tapes to DVD, but his only hope of finding a Betamax recorder was getting hold of the guy who repaired his kit.

An anorak, who never threw anything away, who worked out of a shop in Brecon, long closed for the night. And whose name was Jones. And who was unknown to Gwyn Arthur.

Kapoor had started ringing people in the phone book called Jones. It could take a while.

Meanwhile, the videotape sat on the console table that used to be an altar. Upstairs, the hole in the wall made Thorogood Pagan Books part of the Castle.

Robin had a little black book full of pagan contacts. Just didn’t carry it around with him, so he’d had to borrow Gwyn Arthur Jones’s laptop to track down George Webster, last heard of in Manchester and linked to a Wiccan group operating in the Pennines.

George was, presumably, still editor of Witches’ Rune, formerly a quarterly magazine, now only a website which, like most goddamn websites, didn’t go out of its way to reveal home numbers. However, the single number given was one for advertisements and subscriptions which, unless Witches’ Rune had acquired actual staff, was worth a shot.

Answering machine.

Shit
.

‘This is Robin Thorogood,’ Robin said, ‘George, if that’s you, for the Goddess’s sake, call me the hell back, willya? This is urgent.’

He hit
end call
, turned to Jones.

‘George thinks urgent is against the flow and therefore not a pagan concept, so we can only hope he comes back tonight.’

Jones pulled up one of the cane chairs he and Betty had brought from upstairs.

‘If you do get a number for someone linked to the Order, I’d be grateful if you’d speak to them yourself. I can brief you on what to ask but I doubt I’d be able to master the jargon or manage not to sound like an old policeman.’

‘And you think I talk Nazi?’ Robin’s phone rang; he lit up the screen. ‘Jeez, there
is
a goddess. Hold on…’ He listened, grinned. ‘Yeah… will do, George.’ Lowered the phone. ‘I’m calling him back directly. Times are hard at Witches’ Rune. Like everyplace, but at least George can lay a curse on the bank.’

He called back.

‘George, I guess you’re about to start a significant ritual so I won’t mess around.’

George’s voice was cold.

‘What makes you think that?’

Because your whole freaking life’s a ritual, George.

‘Forget it. George, listen up, I need help to trace a guy who ran a… well, a Left-Hand Path group operating on the Welsh border. This bookshop we’re running, someone wants me to try and get hold of some of their original literature. Normally, I’d politely decline, but we only just started up and I don’t want to get a reputation for being unhelpful.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Order of— Hold on, I got the note here. The Sun in Shadow?’

The phone went silent.

‘George…?’

‘The
Nazis
?’

‘That a fact? This guy just said Left-Hand Path. If he’d said like, Extreme
Right—’

‘The Order of the Sun in Shadow once contacted me to place a display ad seeking members. All a bit ambivalent, but it didn’t look too harmful at the time, so we ran it and they didn’t pay, despite repeated invoices. I’d imagine having a customer who collects fascist occult literature wouldn’t be terribly good for your image.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve promised now. You kept a contact address, phone number for this guy?’

Across the room, Robin heard a yelp of triumph, saw Kapoor throwing his mobile in the air and catching it.

‘—always keep contact details of people who owe me money,’ George said. ‘I’m just looking through the file. How’s Betty?’

‘She’s good,’ Robin said. ‘She’s always good.’

‘Yep, here he is. Moved from his original address in Radnorshire, to Solihull. Quite a reputable address – well, suburban-sounding anyway. You want that or just the number?’

‘Both, if that’s OK.’

Robin wrote it all down in Jones’s notebook.

‘Just keep my name out of it, Robin. These are unlikely to be terribly nice people.’

‘Yeah, the word Nazi was kind of a hint in that direction.’

‘I’m serious, Robin.’

‘I’m truly grateful to you, George,’ Robin said. ‘Heil Hitler.’