He thought he could hear distant voices, beyond the trees. Like from a barbecue. Or maybe he just thought barbecue on account of the red glow in the sky. Perhaps a glimmering of Imbolc.
‘There’s a fire somewhere,’ Betty said. ‘Can’t you smell it? Didn’t you hear the sirens?’
‘I was maybe smashing things at the time. Coming on like the Reverend Penney.’
‘Let me tell you the truth about Penney,’ Betty said. ‘He had a bad time in Old Hindwell Church. I think he was basically a very good man, probably determined to make a success of his ministry. But I think there were some aspects of what he found here that he couldn’t handle. Began taking all kinds of drugs.’
‘Didn’t the Pottinger woman say, in her letter to the Major, she didn’t think he was doing drugs?’
‘She was wrong. He seems to have had a vision, or a hallucination... of a dragon... Satan... in the church. And he seems to have thought that by discontinuing active worship there, it would... make it go away.’
Nothing very new there. ‘But?’ Robin said.
‘But I don’t think what he experienced was anything to do with the Old Religion or the rise of the new paganism. I think he became aware of the dualistic nature of religion as it already existed in this area; that there is a paganism here, but it’s all mixed in with Christianity. A kind of residual medieval Christianity – when magic was very much a part of the whole thing. When prayer was seen as a tool to get things done. It’s practical. It suits the area. Marginal land. Hand to mouth.’
Robin thought of the witch box, the charm. Christian, but not entirely Christian. Those astrological symbols, and some of the words – using witchcraft against witchcraft.
‘There are five St Michael churches,’ Betty said. ‘A pentagram of churches, apparently to confine the dragon. But it’s an inverted pentagram, right?’
‘That... doesn’t sound good.’
‘Perhaps,’ Betty said, ‘it was accepted that, at some time, they might need to invoke the dragon. It’s border mentality. I met a bloke called Gomer Parry. Radnorshire born and bred. He’ll tell you this place took a lot of hammering from both the English and the Welsh and survived, he reckons, by knowing when to sit on the fence and which side to come down on.’
Robin took some time to absorb this. He could smell those bonfire fumes on the air now. It was, in some ways, a sharp and exciting smell carrying the essence of paganism.
He said, ‘You mean they’re... I don’t know this stuff, the Book of Revelation and all...’
‘Sitting on the fence while the war in heaven rages,’ Betty said. ‘Five little old churches in a depopulated area with a rock-bottom economy. No-man’s-land.’
‘No-god’s-land?’ Robin said, awed. ‘But, like... way back... way, way back... this place was something... the archaeology shows that.’
‘Maybe that accounts for its inner strength. I don’t know. We don’t know what we’re standing in front of. We don’t know the full nature of what lies the other side of that barn.’
‘Does Ellis?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Or Bain?’
‘Partly. Maybe.’
‘But Bain’s big thing was personal. That’s dark magic. Low magic.’
‘There are people round here who would understand it. It’s notorious for feuds lasting from generation to generation.’
Robin said, ‘I wonder, how did Ned Bain get the box from the Major? He buy it? Or just push the old guy off of his ladder and steal it?’
‘I don’t think he’d push the Major off the ladder. But I don’t think he’d have been averse to posting his name on the Kali Three Web site.’
‘What is that, anyway?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Betty said.
‘Don’t wanna dump on my idyll, huh? There’s no idyll, babes. No more idyll. Where’s that leave us?’
‘Leaves us with eleven disappointed witches,’ Betty said. ‘And a contaminated church.’
Robin breathed in the distant smoke. ‘What do we do?’
‘I was expecting somebody. I thought she’d have come by now.’
‘The woman priest? The Christian priest?’
‘She’s also an exorcist.’
‘Excuse me,’ Robin said, ‘but didn’t we pass this way before?’
‘It would’ve been very wrong to let Ellis do it. You were right about that. From the start.’
‘Don’t try and get me on your side.’
‘OK.’
They looked out over the freezing puddles to the barn on the other side of which the Church of St Michael overhung the restless Hindwell Brook, probably the very same brook into which that guy’s son’s blood flowed from his hair, in the old Welsh poem Max had read out.
‘On account of you know you never need to,’ Robin said eventually. ‘You know that whatever shit comes down, I am on your side. Do what you think is best.’
He felt like crying. He wished for subsidence, an earthquake. He wished the freaking church would fall into the freaking brook.
Presently, Alexandra stood on the edge of one of the puddles, her long, grey hair loose, a thick woollen shawl wrapped around her.
The emissary. The negotiator. The one they were most likely to talk to.
‘It has to be your decision,’ Alexandra told them.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Betty said.
‘Babes,’ Robin said gently, ‘it’s getting late. And the priest isn’t here. If she was ever gonna come at all.’
‘We don’t know what that place is really about.’ Betty looked out into the night, in the direction of the church. ‘We don’t know what rituals they were performing, what kind of magic they were trying to arouse or for what purpose. All those millennia ago.’
‘Bets,’ Robin said, pained, ‘the ancient powers locked into the land? The magic of the Old Ones? This is Blackmore shit.’
She looked at him, puzzled. She was probably thinking of him standing watching the water rushing below the church and ranting about the cool energy, him and George with their dowsing rods working out how many old, old bodies were under there, where the energy lines converged. She didn’t understand – as Robin now did – that to do his paintings, to be what he was, a true creative artist, he just had to live the legend. That was all. That was as deep as it went.
Alexandra said hesitantly, ‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘Please,’ said Robin.
‘We abandon all reconsecration plans. That’s been tainted now, anyway, because of Ned. And Ned’s gone, and we talked about that and we were all relieved, even George, because Ned’s... Ned’s a little bit dark.’
‘Fucker,’ Robin said.
‘So we forget all that. We forget the politics.’
‘Even Vivvie?’
Alexandra glanced behind her. Robin saw the whole coven in the shadows.
Vivvie came forward, looking like some rescued urchin. She stood beside Alexandra. ‘Whatever,’ she said.
‘My suggestion,’ Alexandra said, ‘is that we simply enact the Imbolc rite.’
‘Who’d be the high priest?’ Robin said.
‘It should be you.’
Robin knew this was a major concession, with George and Max out there. Although he’d been through second-degree initiation, he’d never led a coven.
‘And when we come to the Great Rite,’ Alexandra said, ‘we’ll leave so that you can complete it.’
For Robin, the cold February night began to acquire luminosity.