‘That a fact.’
‘After death, this is. And, from your point of view, it possibly gets better. A contemporary Roman account tells how they’d preserve the head of a distinguished enemy in cedar oil and keep it in a chest for display. Or they might offer it up to the gods. Skulls have also been found, in quite large numbers, at shrines and other sacred places.’
‘Like the old Blackfriars Monastery?’
‘No, no, Mr Bliss — medieval, that is.’
‘Couldn’t be a Celtic site or something underneath?’
‘If there is, we haven’t found it yet. Sorry.’
‘So, let’s look at this a minute, Harri. We’ve gorra mixture of historical periods. But wouldn’t this serpent… wouldn’t that still have been around in Celtic times?’
‘We think not. A Roman ditch cuts across it, so it was certainly silted over by then. However, the hill itself would still have been venerated and perhaps a memory of the Serpent remained. Perhaps it still… For instance, while I’ve been working here, people have told me how families used to follow a path to the top of Dinedor on special days, like a pilgrimage?’
‘To this day?’
‘Near enough,’ Harri Tomlin said. ‘That’s a ritual, too, in its way, isn’t it? Beliefs and customs often last longer than physical remains. There’s also — I don’t suppose this helps you, particularly, but there’s a link between heads and water — specifically wells and rivers. Skulls have been found in rivers.’
Bliss was gazing up at Dinedor Hill, trying to stitch all this together. The important thing was that Harri Tomlin was strongly supporting the ritual element in the killing.
‘You get many… I dunno, modern pagan-types coming to see the site, Harri?’
‘Oh, some days…’ Harri was smiling ‘… you’d look up from your trench and they’d be coming out of the woods like the Celts of old. Home-made, multicoloured sweaters and dowsing rods. Harmless enough. Quite respectful, in general. You tell them not to walk across the site, they won’t. Very respectful. Give me pagans any day, rather than bored kids.’
‘You get to know any of them?’
‘Not by name. One weird beardie is much like another, I find. We don’t get them now, mind — had to be a lot more strict about sightseers since the accident.’
Bliss blinked at him.
‘Two of the boys cutting down trees. If it’s a big one, one of them goes some distance away to get the wider view and then gives a whistle when he can see it’s clear. Boy with the chainsaw, he swore he’d heard the whistle, see…’
Harri put a hand behind an ear by way of illustration. Bliss waited.
‘Well, the other fellow never whistled because he wasn’t out of the way himself. Tree comes down, wheeeeeee.’ Harri lowered his arm, slowly. ‘Fractured skull, smashed shoulder. Two operations on that shoulder.’
‘You were here at the time?’
‘Worn my hard hat religiously ever since, Mr Bliss.’
Bliss handed his back. Five past one. Time to leave, if he was going to make Gilbies by half past.
‘All the way to the ambulance, he was swearing he hadn’t whistled,’ Harri said, like Bliss might want to make something of it. ‘Funny how your senses can play tricks in a big open space like this.’
24
Poisoning the Apple
Merrily went into the church, up into the chancel, to meditate… pray.
Taking off Jane’s red wellies and sitting, thick-socked, in the old choirmaster’s chair. Hands palms-down on her knees, eyes almost closed, breathing regulated. This was how she went about it now, when she was on her own. Less liturgical, more meditative. Feeling for answers… truth.
Feeling for anything, actually, today, as the rain tumbled on the roof, rushed into the guttering, roared inside her head — a punishing noise. Her reward, probably, for opening The Hole in the Sky at random.
… understand this: Christianity has already entered its final phase. By the end of this century, ‘Jesus Christ’ will be nothing more than a mild oath, the origins of which will be a mystery to most people under the age of seventy.
She’d put the book down. Not thrown it down, just laid it next to the sermon pad.
It was not the issue. It was meaningless, like the arrival in Ledwardine of Mathew Stooke. No significant coincidence here — all the picturesque backwaters, forget it, the guy had to live somewhere.
This was not the reason she needed to go into the church.
Merrily had spent about twenty minutes mentally laying out the real issue, walking all around the house and ending up in Jane’s attic apartment where there were stacks of old magazines: back copies of Pagan Dawn, Pentacle, White Dragon, other homespun journals representing Wicca, Druidry and all pagan points in between. Bought and absorbed by thousands of people far too shy to dance naked around a woodland fire.
And people who weren’t. And people who did.
A long-established subculture was renewing itself, Jane would insist, while Christianity withered, in these days of industrial abuse, greed, neglect and consequent climate change. As the Earth bled, paganism was the only practical belief system and if the Church wanted to survive it needed to alter its remit accordingly.
Jane’s view of it was rose-tinted, of course — paganism just this all-embracing term for Earth-related green spirituality, a striving for oneness with the elements, sometimes personified as gods and goddesses, the male and female energies in nature. Pagans were more aware of their immediate environment, more connected to the land — this land, these hills, these fields. And when the land was raped and its ancient shrines desecrated by secular governments, pagans felt the pain, almost physically. Felt the violence. A spear into our spiritual heart, as the Irishman, Padraig Neal, had put it.
But this wasn’t some enlightened, half-faerie super-race. Pagans and green activists were just more flawed human beings, prone to anger, frustration, irrational hatreds, mental imbalance… and firing off inflammatory emails.
Emails were not like letters. Emails were shot from the hip and, by the time you’d realised you’d gone too far, it was too late, you’d sent it. Sure, there was a lot of anger about, but there was a big difference between sending a knee-jerk email and going out there with a knife or a machete.
And yet…
you will — be assured — have local by-elections within the year.
What was she supposed to do about this?
Perhaps sit down tonight with Jane and have a long discussion in the hope of convincing her that they should go through the entire correspondence of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, compiling a list of possibly dangerous extremists. Which would take most of the night.
And then what?
What?
What if there was another killing?
At lunchtime, when she got the call on her mobile, Jane was still smouldering.
Last day of term, and in morning assembly they’d all had to stand up and do a minute’s silence for Councillor Clement Ayling, who had apparently been Chairman of Education. Morrell paying a sincere tribute to Ayling’s vision and all that crap. Meaningless to the little kids at the front of the hall. Jane, at the back, glowering down at her shoes, thinking, What a total hypocritical scumball.