‘And much, much older than Wicca?’ Merrily said.
‘Sure. We were invented in the fifties and sixties by well-meaning people who knew there was no continuous tradition. Most of Wicca’s either made up or culled from Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune. It has no tradition. There. I’ve said it. Is that what you wanted?’
The singing was already louder; more Christians had arrived.
‘There’s a tradition here,’ Merrily said, ‘of sorts. A strand of something that goes back at least to medieval times. Unfortunately, it seems to have been preserved by my lot.’
‘Yeah. You can certainly feel it in Cascob. Oh, and St Michael’s, Cefnllys. I meant to tell you – I looked this up – that when they eventually built a new church at Llandrindod the rector had the roof taken off Cefnllys Church to stop people worshipping there.’
‘He did?’
‘It was in a book. I suddenly remembered it from when I was a kid in Llandrindod. So I looked it up. I mean, was he thinking like Penney? Did they both feel the breath of the dragon? Probably didn’t understand any of it, but something scared them badly. Now people like Ned Bain are coming along and saying: it’s OK, it’s fine, its cool... because we’re the dragon. Do you still want to go in there with your holy water?’
‘What time?’
‘Any time after... I dunno, nine? If you don’t come, I’ll understand. Who’s that?’
It was a vehicle, creaking over the footpath, where it had been widened by the archaeologists. Merrily ran to the edge of the copse. She could see Gomer’s ancient Land Rover parked the other side, with Gomer leaning on the bonnet, smoking a roll-up, watching the new vehicle trundling towards him. It was Sophie’s Saab.
48
Black Christianity
NO CANDLES? THE candles had gone from the windows. Not just gone out, but gone: the trays, the Bibles, everything.
At first, it seemed an encouraging sign, and then Merrily thought, It isn’t. It isn’t at all. In the face of the invasion, the local people had withdrawn, disconnected; whatever happened tonight would not be their fault.
It was about five-fifty p.m. The post office and shop had closed, there were few lights in the cottages. Only the pub was conspicuously active; otherwise Old Hindwell, under dark forestry and the hump of Burfa Hill, had retracted into itself, leaving the streets to them from Off.
The multitude!
In the centre of the village, maybe three or four-hundred people had gathered in front of the former school. They had Christian placards and torches and lamps. They were not singing hymns. They seemed leaderless.
Gomer put the Land Rover at the side of the road, in front of the entrance to the pub’s yard, where it said ‘No Parking’. The car park was so full that none of the coaches would get out until several cars were removed. Two dark blue police vans lurked inside the school gates. Four TV crews hovered.
The minority of pagans here seemed to be the kind with green hair and eyebrow rings. Maybe twenty of them, in bunches – harmless probably. One group, squatting outside the pub, were chanting ‘Harken to the Witches’ Rune’, to the hollow thump of a hand drum.
‘Sad,’ Jane commented. She and Eirion were in the back of the Land Rover; Merrily sat next to Gomer in the front. ‘They’re just playing at it, just being annoying.’
‘You’ll be joining the Young Conservatives next, flower.’
‘But those so-called Christians really make me sick. They’re tossers, holier-than-thou gits.’
‘Phew,’ Merrily said. Through the wing mirror, she saw Sophie’s Saab pulling in behind them. Sophie didn’t get out.
Eirion said, ‘What do you want us to do, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Just stay with Gomer and Sophie. Perhaps you could get something to eat in the pub?’
Jane was dismayed. ‘That’s all the thanks we get? A mouldy cheese sandwich and a can of Coke?’
‘Don’t think I’m not immensely grateful for what you two and Sophie’ve uncovered. Just that I need to put it to Ellis by myself. If there are any witnesses, he won’t even talk to me.’
They’d talked intently for over an hour in the Land Rover, listened to a cassette recording of a phone call involving Sophie and some journalist in Tennessee, and then Merrily had watched as Betty, now armed with many things she hadn’t known about Ned Bain, had walked away into the last of the dusk, not looking back.
Merrily leaned against the Land Rover’s passenger door, and it opened with a savage rending sound.
‘How long will you be?’ Jane asked.
‘As long as it takes. He hasn’t even shown yet. An hour and a half maybe?’
‘And then we come looking for you?’
‘And then do whatever Gomer tells you.’
The crazy violence seemed to start as soon as Merrily’s feet touched the tarmac: lights flaring, a woman’s scream, a beer can thrown. A black cross reared out of a mesh of torch beams amid a tangle of angry voices.
‘... finished, you fuckers. Had your time. Christ was a wanker!’
‘... your level, isn’t it? The gutter! Get out of my—’
Sickening crunch of bone on flesh. Blood geysering up.
‘Oh dear God—’
‘So why don’t you just fuck off back to your churches, ’fore we have ’em all off you?’
‘Stand back!’
‘Reverend?’ A hand pulling Merrily back, as the police came through.
‘Marianne?’
She was pushed. ‘Stand back, please. Everybody, back!’
Headlights arriving. Then Collard Banks-Morgan with his medical bag. Next to him, a man in a dark suit. Not a white monk’s habit, but a dark suit.
A woman shrieked, ‘You’ll be damned for ever!’ and started to cry.
‘Listen, Reverend,’ Marianne said calmly. ‘I’m better now.’
‘Good.’
‘Things you oughta know.’ She pulled Merrily into the yard.
She followed when they took the man with the broken nose into the surgery. A woman too, spattered with his blood, wailing, Ellis’s arm around her. ‘He’s in good hands, sister. The best.’
In the waiting room, the lighting was harsh, the seats old and hard, the ceiling still school-hall high, with cream-painted metal girders. A woman receptionist smiled smugly through a hatch in the wall. ‘Come through,’ Dr Coll sang, voice like muzak. ‘Bring him through, that’s right.’
Doors slammed routinely. There were health posters all over the walls: posters to make you feel ill, paranoid, dependent. No surprise that Dr Coll had taken over the school, a local bastion of authority and wisdom.
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ Merrily said to Ellis.
‘I’m sure you would, Mrs Watkins,’ he said briskly, ‘but I don’t have the time or the interest to talk to you. You’re a vain and stupid woman.’ Under his suit he wore a black shirt, no tie, no clerical collar.
‘What happened to your messiah kit?’
‘Libby, tell Dr Coll I’ll talk to him later,’ Ellis said to the receptionist.
Merrily said, ‘There’s going to be trouble out there.’ She waited as Ellis dabbed with a tissue at a small blood speck on his sleeve. ‘Are you going to stop them marching to the church?’
‘Who am I,’ he said, ‘to stop anyone?’
‘You started it. You lit the blue touchpaper.’
‘The media started it. As you say, it’s already out of hand. It’d be highly irresponsible of me to inflame it further. Now, if you don’t mind...’
‘You could stop them. You could stop it now. It isn’t worth it for a crumbling old building with a bad reputation.’