The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (13 page)

‘It means death,’ Ben said.

‘We know
that
,’ Jane said. ‘But, like, how closely does that match the story of this Black Vaughan?’

Ben didn’t reply. He put his shoulder against the driver’s door, crunched it open and stepped out onto the edge of the road.

‘Obviously, not that closely at all,’ Antony murmured.

Ben leaned against the car. ‘There are actually local people who won’t come down here at night. Don’t smile, Antony, this isn’t the city, this isn’t even the soft country. Vaughan was associated with a black hound, which some sources suggested was in some way satanic. Now, although the spectral black dog is a familiar motif in British folklore, the death connection is less common. But I can tell you that there are still some local people who just won’t come this way for fear of meeting it on the road. I have that on good authority.’

‘Say that on camera, will they, pal?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Jane glanced across at Hergest Court. Nothing was moving. ‘
Have
people seen something?’

‘It’s odd,’ Ben said. ‘You talk to people in town and they’ll say, “Oh, old so-and-so’s seen the Hound, he’ll tell you about it. And then, when you find old so-and-so, he looks blank, never even heard of it. Which is extremely unconvincing and, in my view, the denials prove the fact of it. As I understand it, what’s been seen is a big black dog that disappears into walls, solid things. And there are other related phenomena that I’ll explain about later.’

‘But in the book it was a fiery hound,’ Jane said. ‘Which turns out to have been phosphorous paint. Like, when the Hound starts appearing again in modern times – like, Victorian times – it turns out to have been an actual dog that was starved, therefore given a good reason to howl in the night. And painted with luminous paint.’

Ben nodded. ‘In the novel, the fiery hound is a scam.’

‘And in the end Sherlock Holmes just shoots it,’ Jane said. And it was
all
coming back now. ‘Why did he have to do that? The poor dog’s already been deliberately starved for weeks. I hated him for that.’ She was aware of both men looking at her with curiosity. ‘OK, I was young. I didn’t realize he needed a dramatic finale. I was just sorry for the dog, and that’s all I remembered. And that’s... that’s why I’ve always hated the book. Sorry.’

A Land Rover Discovery came around the bend quite fast, tyres skidding in a patch of icy mud, and Ben slid quickly back into the MG. ‘Jane actually makes an important point there. Why
did
Doyle give his novel such a prosaic ending? A real dog and a pot of phosphorous paint?’

‘It was a Sherlock Holmes story,’ Antony reminded him. ‘Sherlock Holmes disnae believe in ghosties.’

‘Yes,’ Ben hissed, ‘but Doyle did! This is the whole point: a medical man, a scientist...
but
, for the last twenty years of his life, also a spiritualist!
The
most famous proponent of spiritism on the planet! The guy was beyond fanatical – tours of Britain and the States, promoting what he considered to be the absolutely proven scientific fact of life after death. In fact, towards the end, Antony’ – Ben put his face to within six inches of Largo’s – ‘Doyle
lived
for bloody ghosties.’

Then something caught his eye and he straightened up, looking away, down the lane to where the Discovery had stopped to let two men out.

‘Ah,’ Ben said.

The two men both wore army-type camouflage jackets and baseball caps. One of them pulled open the back door of the vehicle, reached inside and then handed the other something that Jane thought at first was a spade.

‘Them,’ Ben said.

The rear door was slammed shut, and the Discovery moved on, leaving the two men standing in the road. They started walking up the lane towards the MG, heads down like they hadn’t noticed it was there.

Jane thought,
Oh Christ
.

Two men, one shotgun.

‘How very opportune,’ Ben said through his teeth. He stepped out into the road.

Antony Largo raised an amused eyebrow, half-turning and leaning back against the passenger door for a better view. Did he know the history to this? Probably not.

‘You know, one thing I’ve always admired about Ben,’ Antony said, ‘is his ability to move into a new situation and form instant and lasting friendships.’

He folded his arms, waiting to be entertained. Jane looked at Ben, already all worked-up and dismayed because he was fighting for his and Amber’s life, and everything he’d thrown at Antony had been deflected – Antony in his professional body armour and Ben bare-knuckled.

‘I’m just
so
much in the right mood for these scum,’ Ben said. He moved into the middle of the lane and stood there with his legs planted apart, rocking slightly.

7

I
T WAS ONE
of those cottages with very small windows and so few of them that it needed lamps on all day in winter. Merrily counted seven of them, on tables and in nooks, all low-wattage, white-shaded and strung out like a chain of beacons so that you navigated through the house from lamp to lamp. There was a dreamlike feel to this.

‘One day, when I’m
really
old...’ Canon Jeavons was leading her down a cramped passage, like a tugboat on a canal; he was balancing coffee cups and milk and sugar on a tin tray, ‘there gonna be a nice, plain bungalow, with windows so wide you think you living on the lawn.’

His voice was crisp and biscuity, like on high-quality FM radio. A cathedral voice, too big for a farmworker’s cottage that probably had not been much updated since the wattle first met the daub.

He ducked through a doorway. ‘You must be the first person in a long, long time I’ve never had to warn to keep their head low till they sitting down.’

They’d arrived in a room that needed no lamp. It had whitewashed brick walls, a square of white carpet and an uncurtained window, revealing a small, fenced garden, wide fields and a hoary, wooded hill. The room had a sloping ceiling, suggesting that it had begun as a lean-to. A black cast-iron flue pushed through the ceiling at a crooked angle, serving a glass-fronted, pot-bellied stove in which coals glowed agreeably. There was an earthenware coffeepot on the stove. Homely.

‘This place used to be for the family cow,’ Jeavons said, ‘or maybe the pig. Sometimes I see just one big pig snuffling around in here – raised like a member of the family, many tears shed at the parting of the ways. Sometimes I feel the presence of a single cow, but mainly the pig. What do you feel, Merrilee?’

Unrolling her name like ribbon. His accent was a carnival – lazy Caribbean towed by old-fashioned, fruity English clerical. She couldn’t decide how much of it was laid on.

‘Cows are good,’ she said carefully. ‘And, er... pigs are even better.’

‘Indeed!’ Jeavons beamed. ‘Take a seat.’

He scooped a huge grey and white cat from a fat lemon-yellow armchair and sank into it, transferring the cat to his knees. When Merrily took a matching chair on the other side of the stove, she found it was so overstuffed that her feet didn’t reach the floor.

‘Well now...’ Jeavons sat back, his chins on his chest. ‘Ms Deliverance. This is interesting indeed.’

‘It is?’ Merrily looked into the big, squash-nosed, grey-sheened face, wishing she knew more about his personal history. The established facts were that he’d been a canon attached to Worcester Cathedral; the legends told of a seeded tennis player cured of multiple sclerosis and a fire victim whose disfiguring facial scars had vanished within a week.

Canon Jeavons and the big cat both looked placidly back at her. ‘Because you’re still not quite sure how to handle it,’ Jeavons said, ‘are you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘All of this – the calling, the job. And, most of all, I would imagine, the complexities of Deliverance. It’s a problem of... I was gonna say confidence, but it isn’t that. You have a fear.’

‘Lots.’

Suspicious now. When she’d finally reached him on the phone she’d learned that Sophie Hill had already called on behalf of the Bishop, to make sure that he was still available for consultation. Sophie would have told him a little about her but nothing personal. Sophie didn’t do personal.

‘I’d say you have a horror of being considered’ – he looked at her sleepily through half-closed eyes – ‘
pious
?’

She thought she must have shaken, physically. ‘What makes you say that, Mr Jeavons?’

‘You must call me Lew,’ he said. ‘Now that I’m retired.’

She didn’t call him anything, she just stared. He wore a linen jacket with wide blue and light-grey stripes, like for punting. Under it was something you always guessed must be available somewhere, but not in any ecclesiastical outfitters: a high-necked black T-shirt with a white dog collar that was part of the design. Maybe he’d got it from a joke shop.

‘See, Merrilee, most of the female clergy of my acquaintance, they all very proud of what they achieved for their sex after all these centuries. They wear the dog collar and the clerical shirt on all possible occasions. Maybe they sleep in a clerical nightdress, I wouldn’t know about that. But always, when they come to see a male priest, that’s when it’s
extremely
important to them that they be seen as equals. You, by contrast – no collar, no shirt. Only a cross, so discreet it could even be an item of jewellery. And you’re not wearing too much make-up or a short skirt, either, so... You’re married?’

‘Widowed, for some years. There is... a man.’

‘Oh.’ His eyes went into a squint. The cat purred, the coffeepot burbled on the stove.

‘He’s a musician. He helps out at a recording studio in the Frome Valley. We see each other... not as often as we’d like, and I’m not sure what to do about that.’

‘Your people know about him? In the parish?’ His gut pushed out comfortably, like a flour sack, and the cat nestled into it.

‘Some must’ve guessed by now. He used to live in the village. We thought there might be an opportunity for him to move back, but it wasn’t to be.’

Wasn’t to be
– had she conveyed some sense of foreboding in that phrase? Defensive now; this man could pluck away your secrets like specks of fluff.

‘What do your prayers tell you about this relationship?’ Jeavons asked.

‘I feel it’s the right thing. At this moment.’

Jeavons nodded. There was a movement outside the window – a cock pheasant on the lawn. Merrily blinked. There was something about the light in here, the white clarity of everything, after the dimness of the rest of the cottage. It was like snow-light;
everything
was lit. She had the curious feeling of emerging from an initiation.

She said slowly, feeling the words drawn out of her, ‘Martin Israel, in his book on exorcism, says that some degree of psychic ability is probably necessary to do this job – Deliverance.’

‘And you think you don’t have what’s necessary?’ Jeavons said.

‘How did you know about me and the word “pious”?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Sophie didn’t let it slip that “pious” was my most unfavourite word in the dictionary and that I have a fear of—?’

‘Sophie?’

‘Sophie Hill. The Bishop of Hereford’s lay secretary.’

‘Ah. A lady of evident discretion and diplomacy. No, she didn’t tell me that. But then she wouldn’t, would she? You, on the other hand...’ Canon Jeavons gripped the cat, and the cat purred fiercely. ‘Merrilee, you’re an open person. Aspects of you stand out as if you carrying a placard – it’s in your manner, the way you dress, that big old Volvo you drive. No doubt you’re capable of considerable discretion when it comes to the affairs of others, but about yourself... you drop sizeable clues, you know?’

‘The word “pious”...’

Jeavons rocked back, laughing. ‘You ain’t gonna let this go, are you? Listen, it dropped into my mind. Things do that sometimes. If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues come together and a feeling or a word sometimes drops into our minds, just like... like a packet out of a cigarette machine.’

She frowned. ‘You can also see the nicotine on my teeth?’

‘Your teeth are like pearls.’

‘And it’s always right, is it, this thing that drops into your mind?’

‘
Hell
, no. Sometimes it’s so far out I feel like a horse’s ass. But when you get to my age, time’s too precious to keep it to yourself and sit and wonder. This, as it happens, is at the heart of spiritual healing: taking the time to know people, making small deductions. How many doctors have the time or the patience to do that now – talking and considering and leaving time for small leaps of inspiration. No, it’s, “Take two of these three times a day”, or, “I’ll make you an appointment to see a consultant... send the next one in on your way out.” One time, minor ailments were resolved without the need for pills, because pills were expensive and time was cheap. And doctors – country doctors, particularly – would often be spiritual people, capable of insight. From insight to inspiration is only a small leap, which may be divinely assisted. Are you following my reasoning?’