The Magus of Hay(33)

‘There’s something else?’

‘The lights I mentioned? I’m just telling you what this old lady said. Just so you know.’

‘Yeh, yeh, not gonna hold it against you, Tammy.’

‘Tamsin, sir. Boss. She said it was like a flashgun going off, back in the days when they went pop, only there was no sound, just everywhere lit up white. Only like in negative, where the dark things are light. That’s what she said. And she said it felt… unearthly, kind of thing. As if you were seeing through the land. Anyway, that’s—’

‘And she saw this when?’

‘The night before Mr Hambling was found. Through her bedroom window just as she was going to bed, so before midnight.’

‘Right,’ Bliss said.

‘She thought it was like an omen. Though that was obviously after she’d heard about Mr Hambling. She’s quite a well-spoken old lady. I can give you her name.’

‘We’ll have a think about that,’ Bliss said. ‘The temple’s through there, Merrily.’

‘You keep saying temple?’

‘What do I know?’ Bliss said.





16

The unknowable


SUDDEN SUN HAD pushed a bar of light through the crack between grey velvet curtains, bringing out the glow in two vast rugs. They looked kind of Zoroastrian. Men with curious waist-level wings, cauldrons of fire.

‘Mmm,’ Merrily said. ‘Looks like the kids weren’t far off.’

Bliss walked over to the mahogany desk by the tall window. All a bit churchy, but it didn’t seem to be an altar.

‘He was a wizard?’

‘How about we don’t use that word.’

Floor-to-ceiling darkwood bookcases lined the walls. Deep shelves, shadowed but you could see they were full. In the few spaces between the bookcases, there were small pictures. Black-framed drawings or engravings, all figurative, and all the figures were naked. And active.

Bliss pointed up at the ceiling. The two oak beams crossing it looked older than the house.

‘Could be replacing supporting walls. I reckon this might be three rooms knocked into one.’

Merrily turned to where a dozen plain, darkwood chairs had been arranged in short rows. Freestanding wrought-iron candle-holders stood behind them, layers of wax on the candle trays showing they were not merely decorative. A sweetish scent weighted the atmosphere. Incense rather than cannabis.

‘Don’t see it as a temple, though.’

‘Why not?’



‘Well, unless…’ She bent and pulled back a corner of one of the rugs. ‘No… just floorboards. A temple would be designed to some strict geometric format. And it would have a magic circle. A protective circle. And generally there are black and white squares on the floor.’

‘So what’s this?’

‘It’s what it looks like – a library. And a lecture room. Or it might have been used for group meditation. And yet…’

Shallow niches either side of the long window housed small statues. On the left, an Egyptian woman with a thin staff and an ankh. Isis? On the right, what was almost certainly the Virgin Mary, hands raised. Curious.

‘Yet what?’ Bliss said.

‘Have you looked elsewhere in the house? In the barns? For anything resembling a temple?’

‘The other rooms are what you’d expect. Plainish bedrooms, two bathrooms, the kitchen, which you’ve seen, and a little study. The outbuildings all have holes in the roofs, old bales of straw, a rusting tractor… What was he – a witch, warlock? What do they call it these days?’

‘I’ll need to have a better look at the books, but I think this is something more… academic. You’re probably looking at ritual magic.’

‘Which means?’

‘How many weeks have you got? It’s a formalized system – in fact, several formalized systems – with origins going back far further than contemporary witchcraft. As far back as ancient Egypt. Possibly.’ She nodded at the statuette in its niche. ‘I think that’s Isis – Egyptian goddess. Can we draw back the curtains then I can see some of these books?’

‘Little switch, near Tamsin’s elbow. Thank you, Tamsin.’

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘that’s nicely done, isn’t it?’

Velvety light in all the bookcases now displaying thousands of volumes, some clearly old, leather bound. You’d never get Jane out of here.



‘I could look at some of this stuff and think this guy was a collector, possibly a dealer.’ She put out a finger without touching the faded ochre spines of a set of four. ‘This looks like it could be Israel Regardie’s original publication of the rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. You know about them?’