‘Like so much that happens here,’ Jones said, ‘it doesn’t make immediate sense.’
The boy in the wetsuit came to his feet.
‘Leave it with you, then, should we?’
‘Yeah, we’ll do something with it.’ The bearded man looked at Jones. ‘What you reckon, Gwyn? Should I dispose of it? Don’t want to cause embarrassment for the King.’
‘And if it turns up on the television?’
‘It won’t, though, will it? You heard what she said. If they already have a big story in Hay, they’re not going to want a bit of whimsy.’
‘Not sure he wasn’t actually in England when they found him,’ Gwyn Arthur Jones said. ‘This is the exact border, I think.’ He pointed across the rough grass, where it formed a kind of peninsula between the river and quite a wide stream bursting into it. ‘That’s the brook, is it not?’
‘The Dulas Brook?’ Bliss went to the edge, peered down. ‘This is where it comes out in the river?’
‘The official border between Wales and the other place.’ Jones bent to the effigy, fitted his hands underneath its arms and raised its upper half from the stones. ‘Not too heavy. No, boy, I don’t think we should dispose of it at all.’ He looked at Bliss. ‘Something here I instinctively mistrust. If somebody wants it in the river, I’d quite like to see it stays out. I’ve a little room at the back of my shop… all right with you, Francis?’
‘How far’s your shop?’
‘Halfway to the clock. Yellow sign. It’s called The Cop Shop.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Give you a hand?’ The bearded guy lifted up the head and shoulders. ‘If I take this end and Jeeter takes the feet we can carry it between us and that way nobody gets soaked.’
Bliss shrugged. The effigy’s head lolled, as if it was a real head with the weight of bone, Bliss guessing papier mâché with a thin skein of plaster of Paris, which had suffered in the water. The features were inexact. In the greying, blurring light, it looked like a real face that might be about to try and speak.
44
The mountains and the word
BY THE TIME she was back at the car, it was raining. Merrily had a headache. Found a packet of Anadin in the glove box, just one left.
False alarm, someone had told her and Huw outside the Granary. They’d thought there was a body in the Wye, near where the Dulas Brook flowed into it, but it had turned out to be an effigy of the King. What a bloody mindless thing to do, a woman had said, when the town had its heart in its mouth about Tamsin Winterson, known to many of the folks here since before she could walk.
Merrily swallowed the Anadin. Huw had gone home. This was one of those times when she might have gone home, too, and directly into the church to let it all out, but the prospect of meeting an angsty Martin Longbeach in there, gearing himself up for Sunday’s service…
She stood for a few moments in the rain, then made a conscious decision, stripped off the wet fleece.
She pulled her newly waxed Barbour jacket from the back seat and walked out into the rain.
Little lights everywhere. A fairy grotto.
In the middle of the altar, attended by small figurines of the Virgin Mary, a tabernacle held the host under glowing candles and a starry blue dome.
St Mary’s, Hay.
Oh, this was the real thing, all right. And yet she felt embraced by the shadows rather than the lights, wondering if she, or any woman priest, was welcome here. It was a broad church, the C. of E. and the Church in Wales, but few of her colleagues had been tempted, not even Martin Longbeach. Not anyone in Herefordshire where Bernie Dunmore wouldn’t have touched it with a six-foot crozier.
Not that he could totally prevent it, if some minister wanted it. She knew for a fact that Richard Williams, the Anglo-Catholic vicar, had taken over an average congregation of about half a dozen, and now, apparently, it was averaging forty.
The lure of old ways.
She should be so lucky.
She stepped back, took off her coat and sat in one of the right-hand pews, next to a painted virgin and child.
St Mary’s Church, Hay. Another St Mary’s Church at Capel-y-ffin.
And Cusop… St Mary’s. Marian country. How far did that go back? Did the alleged visions of the Lady of Llanthony have origins pre-dating Father Ignatius? She sat with hands flat on her knees, closing her eyes, and now the scent of incense was powerfully on the air, and she set her thoughts adrift, opening herself to some kind of understanding.
Voices would intrude.
…that Peter Rector was, at that time, a darker man. A man who wanted to play with the elements, if he could, and people’s minds…