‘You mean … Fuchsia?’
‘Fuchsia. Indeed, yes.’
‘She came here to the church? To ask for sanctuary?’
Merrily remembered now. The bloke at Garway, he was no help at all.
‘Sanctuary is perhaps too emotive a word. The builder chap was waiting in the entrance in his truck. The girl was rather vague, disoriented. I thought she was … Anyway, I brought her in and said a short prayer. You know the routine.’
‘What did you think she was?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘You said when you first saw her you thought she was …’
‘Ah.’ Murray straightened up, hands behind his back, looking up at the tower. ‘I thought – I’m afraid – that she was probably on drugs. A small percentage of the visitors here do tend to be what we used to call potheads. Found a chap the other week completely out of it, lying with his head under the holy spring. Harmless enough, I suppose, but not what one expects to see in a country churchyard.’
‘Where’s the holy spring?’
‘My, we are getting down to business, aren’t we? I’ll show you, if you like. I can show you everything.’ Teddy Murray extended an arm to steer Merrily towards the church entrance. ‘It appears to be my principal role in this community: guide and interpreter. Much more my sort of thing – I have to say, with no little shame – than dispensing spiritual succour. Historian by inclination, I’m afraid. And the walks.’
‘The walks?’
‘For the guests. My wife’s guest house tends to cater for people who like to tramp the hills in all weathers. I compile the handy route-maps. And I’m available to go along and point things out, when required. This …’ The Rev. Murray turned and flung out an arm towards the guardian hills ‘… is God’s own weekend retreat. I always say that. In fact it’s in Beverley’s brochure. God’s Own Weekend Retreat.’
‘Very, erm …’
‘Presumptuous, I suppose. But there had to be some reason for the Templars to favour it, remote spot like this. Was it divine guidance? Sorry!’ He put up his hands. ‘One gets carried away. Do you want to know all this? I only ask because, as someone’s bound to tell you, the Master House does seem to be contemporaneous with the Templars’ occupation of Garway – although, despite the title, it does not appear to have been the home of the preceptor, or master.’
‘So you didn’t go back to the Master House? With Fuchsia?’
‘Well … no.’ Murray looked bewildered. ‘She didn’t ask me to. Hardly my property to intrude upon. Anyway, my impression was that you couldn’t have dragged her back and, in the absence of a full-time minister here, I wasn’t sure who it would be best to inform. And then events overtook me, and so— Paul. How are you?’
A man in jeans and a heavy work-shirt had come out of the church, leaning on a stick. There was a motorized wheelchair on the path outside; he stood looking at it with no great love. Teddy Murray took a step forward, and the man raised his stick.
‘Bugger off, eh, Teddy?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not ready for him yet, boy. Gonner have another bit of a walk round. Come back for the thing.’
Teddy nodded. They watched the man making his way up the path. He couldn’t be more than mid-thirties, thick brown hair.
‘MS,’ Teddy murmured. ‘What kind of luck is that for a farmer?’ He opened the church door, stood aside for Merrily. ‘You been in here before?’
‘Never.’
No sooner were they inside than he’d closed the door, blew out a breath.
‘Didn’t want to introduce you, Merrily. Difficult. That’s Paul Gray – he and his wife …’ Teddy lowered his voice ‘… sold the Master House to the Duchy.’
‘Oh.’
‘Long story. Bad feeling. Not for me to … Still a bit of a newcomer. As, of course, is Paul, which is one of the problems.’ He laughed. ‘You can be here for three generations and they’ll still call you a newcomer. Couple of families go back to the Norman Conquest. So …’ Extending an arm. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s … unusual.’
‘More than you know.’
Merrily nodded, taking it in. It was quite small but lofty and airy and filled with rosy light. The chancel was framed by a classic zigzagged and serrated Norman arch, wide and theatrical. Red velvet curtains were drawn across it, as if what lay beyond them was not for the unprepared. Something rare and sacred, Grail-like.
Or perhaps a body in a coffin?
Merrily shook herself. Too much M. R. James.
Teddy Murray nodded towards a banner with a crusader kind of cross, red and gold on white, hanging from the pulpit.
‘Still a major presence, then?’ Merrily said.
‘The Templars? Yes, I suppose they are. Do you know much about them, Merrily?’
‘Erm …’ She looked up at the dark brown wooden ceiling, curved like the bottom of a boat and decorated with a small and regular galaxy of white stars. In a pocket of her jeans, the mobile phone began to vibrate against her left thigh. ‘Maybe not as much as I ought to.’
Merrily placed a hand over the phone, and Teddy Murray leaned back against a pew end, looking down at her with what you could only describe as a beneficent smile, evidently all too ready to do what he was better at than dispensing spiritual succour.
‘It’s sometimes difficult to separate the truth from the lurid speculation,’ she told him. ‘Never a problem for my daughter.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that few of us like to countenance the idea that the Templars guarded the secret of the bloodline of Christ through his supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene.’
‘Oh, she’s happy enough with that idea. I suppose what bothers me most is the idea of the Templars – or someone – guarding the secret resting place of his bones.’
‘Let’s not talk of heresy.’
‘Let’s not.’
‘None of it, however, makes the Knights Templar less interesting,’ Teddy Murray said. ‘Follow me, Mrs Watkins.’
9
Funnies
WHEN MERRILY CLIMBED back into the car, the weather had changed; the sky had the deep grey lustre of tinfoil and a single slow raindrop rolled down the windscreen like a cartoon tear, and she just wanted to be home and lighting a fire.
She pulled out her phone. Lol would be on the way to his gig in Newtown, Powys, so it was more likely to be Jane.
It was neither, just a short text.
CALL ME.
MOB PLEASE
FB
A text from Frannie Bliss? If it was him, this was a first. Mobile would mean he didn’t want to take the call in the CID room. She found his number in the index, but the signal was on the blink, so she reversed out of the church entrance and drove away from the village, uphill, pulling into a passing place, winding up the window against a rising wind.
‘Nicely timed, Reverend,’ Bliss said. ‘You’ve caught up with me in the gents.’
‘I totally refuse to picture the scene.’
‘Not good enough, anyway. Too much of an echo. I’ll call you back. Just give me a couple of minutes to … finish up in here.’
Echo?
Merrily sat watching the sloping landscape losing its colours in the gathering rain, compiling a mental inventory of all the curios that Teddy Murray had revealed in Garway Church.
Beginning with the green man, the familiar stone face with entwined foliage, inexplicably found in churches. This one was in the chancel arch and, with those stubby horns, he wasn’t typical. There was also a cord or vine with tassels resembling fingers, so it looked like he was making a funny face at you, waggling his fingers at either side of his head.