Crybbe aka Curfew

'He hanged people.'

'Goddamn it, J.M., all high sheriffs hanged people.'

'In the attic?'

'Arguably more humane than public execution. But, yeah, OK, that was the other thing about him they couldn't handle. He was a scientist. And a philosopher. He wanted to know where he came from and where he was going to. He wanted to find – what's that phrase? – the active force…'

'The force above human reason which is the active principle in nature.'

'Yeah.'

'Definition of natural magic. John Dee.'

'Yeah. I got this Oxford professor who's so eminent I don't get to name him till he comes through with it, but this guy's doing a definitive paper on the collaboration between John Dee and Wort. Has access to a whole pile of hitherto unknown correspondence.'

'From the Wort side?' Powys thought of Andy's Filofax, wondered whether the professor had been given all the correspondence.

'Maybe. Yeah. Maybe, also, some of Dee's papers that came into Wort's possession, all authenticated material. This is heavy stuff, J.M. Point is, you can imagine how the people hereabouts reacted to it back in the sixteenth century?'

'Pretty much the way some of them are reacting to your ideas now, I should have thought.' Powys wondering how Dee's private notes – if that was what they were – had fallen into Wort's hands. Unless Wort had taken steps to acquire them in order to remove any proof of the collaboration.

'They drove Wort to suicide, the people around here. A witch hunt by ignorant damn peasants, threatening to burn down the Court.' Goff stood up straight, his back to his domain. 'Tell you one thing, J.M. No fucker's gonna threaten to burn me out.'

You do have this one small advantage. You haven't hanged anybody. Yet.'

Goff laughed. 'You really wanna know about this hanging stuff, doncha? Listen, how many people get the opportunity to study precisely what happens when life is extinguished? When the spirit leaves the body?'

'Doctors do. Priests do.'

Goff shook his head. 'They got other things on their minds. The doctor's trying to save the dying person, the priest's trying to comfort him or whatever else priests do, last rites kinda stuff.'

Powys saw Goff's eyes go curiously opaque.

'Only the watcher at the execution can be entirely dispassionate,' Goff said. Powys could tell he was echoing someone else. 'Only he can truly observe.'

CHAPTER VII

In a helter-skelter hill road, a mile and a half out of Crybbe, there was a spot where you could park near a wicket gate with a public-footpath sign. The path, quite short, linked up with the Offa's Dyke long-distance footpath and was itself a famous viewpoint. From just the other side of the gate, you could look across about half the town. You could see the church tower and the edge of the square, with one corner of the Cock. You could see the slow, silvery river.

From up here, under a sporadic sprinkling of sunlight from a deeply textured sky, Crybbe looked venerable, self-contained and almost dignified.

It was nearly 5 p.m.

They'd come out here because there were secrets to exchange which neither felt could be exchanged in Crybbe; there was always a feeling that the town itself would eavesdrop.

When Powys had returned to Bell Street, Fay had been in her car outside, with Arnold. 'Dad's not back yet. Tried to steel myself to go in. Couldn't do it alone. Feeble woman chickens out.'

'Well, if you've left anything in there that you want me to fetch,' he said, 'forget it.'

'I suspect you're being indirectly patronising there, Powys, but I'll let it go.'

Her eye actually looked worse, the rainbow effect quite spectacular. Part of the healing process, no doubt. He was surprised how glad he was to see her again.

Although there must be no involvement. Not this time.

Up here the air was fresher, and a gust of wind carrying a few drops of rain, hit them like a sneeze. It was unexpected and blew Arnold over; he got up again, looking disgruntled.

'I'm beginning to feel I'm part of Andy's game,' Joe Powys said. 'Suppose he left all that stuff in the bread-oven for me to find, to give me a chance to figure it all out – while knowing there was nothing I could do about it.'

'And have you figured it out?'

'Black Andy,' Powys said, I mean… Black Andy? How can anyone called Andy possibly be evil? Andy Hitler, Andy Capone. Andy the Hun, Andy the Ripper.'

'So you're convinced now. It's Andy Wort?'

'Families often change their name if something's brought it into disrepute. Why shouldn't they simply reverse it?'

'I made some enquiries. That's why I was late. There are no Worts left in Crybbe. What remained of the family seemed to have sold up everything – well, nearly everything, and moved down to the West Country. As for the Bottle Stone…'

'Please,' Powys said. 'Let's not… I think that whole episode was Andy trying out his emergent skills, weaving a fantasy around a stone, creating a black magic ritual, seeing what happened.'

'Yes, but…'

'Look down there,' Pouts said. 'Goff's prehistoric theme park. The old stones back in place.'

They could see a sizeable megalith at a point where the river curved like a sickle.

'On that bit of tape you played me, Henry was puzzled by a standing stone he'd located because it didn't seem to be an old stone. He recorded the same problem in his journal. Experienced dowsers can date a stone with the pendulum, asking it questions – too complicated to explain, but it seems to work. Anyway, Henry noted that he couldn't date this particular stone back beyond 1593… when it was destroyed.'

'After Wort's death. The townsfolk destroyed the stones after his death.'

'Perhaps they were advised to… to stop him coming back along the spirit paths. But the point is… perhaps Henry couldn't date the thing earlier than 1593 because that was also when it was erected'

There was another gust of wind and the blue cagoule Fay carried under her arm billowed behind her like a wind-sock.

'Wort erected the old stones of Crybbe. They weren't prehistoric at all. He was marking out his own spirit paths, along which he believed he could travel outside of his body.'

'Are we saying here that Wort – perhaps in collaboration with John Dee – had created his own ley-lines…?'

'Look,' Powys said. 'There's this growing perception of leys as ghost roads… paths reserved for the spirits… therefore, places where you could contact spirits. Sacred arteries linking two worlds – or two states of consciousness. New Agers say they're energy lines – in their eternal quest for something uplifting, they're discarding the obvious: leys tend to link up a number of burial sites – tumps, barrows, cemeteries, this kind

of thing.'

'No healing rays?'

Powys shrugged. 'Whether this rules out the energy-line theory I don't know – we might just be talking about a different kind of energy. There's certainly a lot of evidence of psychic phenomena along leys or at points where they cross. And ghosts need energy to manifest, so we're told.'

'And Crybbe, for some reason, has all these curious pockets of energy, fluctuations causing power cuts, all this…'

I'd be interested to know how many people in Crybbe have seen a ghost or experienced something unnatural. Hundreds I'd guess. Especially along the main line, which comes down from the Tump, through the Court, the church, the square… and along the passage leading to your studio. I'm surprised nothing strange has happened to you in there, with this kind of hermetically sealed broadcasting area.'

'Maybe it has.'

'Oh?'

'I don't think I want to talk about it,' Fay said, tasting the Electrovoice microphone. 'Look…' She spread out the cagoule on the damp grass at the edge of a small escarpment overlooking the town. She patted it. They both sat down.