After half a mile or so, the landscape broadened out and they were into a random scatter of modern housing and an open stretch of common with a children’s play area. Across the lane from the common was a pub of whitewashed stone with a swinging sign: a full moon in a deepening twilight sky.
THE GARWAY MOON.
‘Cool sign,’ Jane said. ‘Artistic. Kind of pagan.’
‘Why does the moon always have to be pagan?’
‘You tell me. Does the Bible have much to say about it?’ Jane relaxed into the driver’s seat. ‘This is very much my kind of place, Mum. It’s like frontier country. On the edge.’
‘It is frontier country. Those hills are Wales.’
‘I actually meant frontier in the deeper sense. The Knights Templar move in, monks with horses and swords, and they stamp their presence on the whole area. Infuse it with mystery. I mean like, why out here? Unless … maybe it was considered a really good, obscure place to conceal secrets, practise arcane … practices.’
‘Or they were just given the land. Maybe no better reason than that.’
‘There’s always a better reason,’ Jane said.
‘For you, flower, there always has to be.’
‘Don’t call me “flower”. And don’t tell me you’re not curious, too.’
‘I can be curious without having to subscribe to the whole fashionable Gnosticism thing.’
Jane slowed, as the road sloped past a modern-ish primary school on one side and a run-down village hall on the other.
‘I don’t see what’s so wrong with Gnosticism. It’s just saying that faith is not enough. The Gnostics wanted to know. They wanted direct experience of the reality of … something out there. God. Whatever. I don’t see why you have a problem with that.’
‘Anyway …’ Not now, huh? Too weighty. ‘… I’d’ve thought you’d lived in the sticks long enough to know it’s absolutely the worst place to keep a secret.’
‘Yeah, now. But in medieval times, when almost nobody could read.’
‘Including the Templars. Most of the Knights Templar seem to have been illiterate.’
‘Mum, they were international bankers! People could stash money at one preceptory and withdraw from another.’
‘Since when did banking demand literacy?’
‘OK, then, maybe this was just where they came to carry on their own form of Gnostic worship, which the straight Church would see as heresy.’ Jane pulled the Volvo over to the grass verge to let a tractor get past. ‘Was that all right?’
‘Except you should’ve signalled first, to let him know what you were doing. And why are we going up here?’
Inexplicably, Jane had taken an uphill right.
‘Sorry. I thought …’
‘I think the church was straight on down the hill. Never mind, carry on.’
It didn’t matter. Merrily suddenly wanted to hug Jane. If the worst you had to deal with was theological debate …
‘You OK, Mum?’
‘Mmm.’
She felt the pressure of tears, deciding that when Jane wasn’t around she was going to ring Eirion on the quiet, find out what had gone wrong between them. Just wanting the kid to be happy.
‘This sort of location is actually more suited to the Cistercians,’ Jane said. ‘They liked to be way out on their own. But, see, that fits, too, because the Knights Templar were connected with the Cistercians. Through Bernard of Clairvaux? The top Cistercian fixer, smartest operator in the medieval Catholic Church?’
‘I know who you mean. I’m just impressed at the extent of your knowledge.’
‘It’s in the medieval history syllabus – just. Our history guy, Robbie Williams, it’s his period. So what happened, Bernard cleared up the problem the Templars had about being devout Christians and also having to kill people on a regular basis. Simple solution: he ruled that it was OK to kill non-Christians.’
‘Especially Muslims,’ Merrily said. ‘A medieval interpretation, which now seems to operate in reverse. What’s your point?’
‘Comes back to paganism again. Of all the medieval monastic orders, the Cistercians were the ones who most reflected pre-Christian religion. The old ways.’
‘Some sources might say that, but—’
‘Come on – natural successors to the Druids? Sheep farmers who liked relative isolation and were into ancient sites and earth-forces and sacred springs?’
‘Natural running water was very much prized in the days before taps,’ Merrily said. ‘And, sure, maybe they dowsed for it. That doesn’t mean—’
‘Garway Church has a holy spring, doesn’t it?’
‘It does. And if you can find somewhere to turn this car around we’ll go back and check it out. No, not there. Jane, keep your eyes on the—’
‘Did you see that sign?’ Jane’s head swivelling. ‘On the house?’
‘Mmm. I’m afraid I did.’
They’d passed a grey stone corner house which might once have been a pub and still had a big yellow sign on the side. THE SUN. A mystical golden sun, with a smug-looking, curled-lipped face and waving tendrils of radiance; below it were sunflowers and a naked figure on a horse. Merrily also noticed that the farmhouse almost opposite had a name plate: The Rising Sun.
‘It’s just an old pub sign, Jane, that’s all.’
‘Mum, it was like a giant tarot card. The Sun? And the Moon? This place had two pubs called The Sun and The Moon? That says nothing to you?’
‘I’m … reserving my opinion.’
‘I think I was probably guided to turn up this road.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘As above, so below,’ Jane said.
The holy well was at the bottom of the churchyard. Like most holy wells, it was disappointing. A trickle under the wall. Ribbons on a nearby bush, which could be down to either visiting pagans or local kids.
Jane crouched down, unzipping her white hoodie, holding cupped hands underneath the water. Merrily was reminded uncomfortably of the author Winnie Sparke, who had hung around the wells in Malvern, and what had happened to her.
‘Jane, you know how much I really hate doing the mother-hen bit, but that water …’
Jane looked into her cupped hands but didn’t drink the water. She smiled and dabbed some on her cheeks. Beyond the body of the church, the vertically-slit-eyed tower gazed down with what Merrily took to be a kind of benign cynicism.
‘If we go back to the church, we can see the outline of the original circular nave. Templar trade mark. Designed in honour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem?’
‘On the other hand …’ Jane stood up and walked off to the edge of the churchyard ‘… if we go along here, we should be able to see the dovecote designed to commemorate the Beast 666.’
‘It’s on private land. We’d need to ask for permission.’
‘Not just to see it.’
Jane – why else was she here? – was already walking across a marshy-looking field towards the fringe of a farm with barns, storage tanks, a galvanized shed and some kind of stone silo. Merrily, wrong shoes, as usual – bugger – stepping uncertainly across a boggy bit, following a shallow stream, while slowly realizing that the stone silo on the edge of the farmyard clutter was probably what they were looking for.
She stopped and confronted it: a squat round tower, like a sawn-off, roofless hop-kiln. The fading sun balanced on its rim, Jane shading her eyes.
‘Doesn’t look very evil from here,’ Merrily said.