The Echo of Crows E-Book

Phil Rickman

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Merrily Watkins Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

THE FINAL NOVEL IN THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES _____________________ 'Brilliantly eerie' PETER JAMES 'A most original sleuth' THE TIMES _____________________ Welcome to the Wye Valley, exactly on the border of England and Wales, home to a dark legacy of murder... Nestled deep in the Black Mountains, the village of Longtown is haunted by killings both ancient and modern. When young farmer and lottery winner Eddy Davies is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Herefordshire Police find themselves handling a complicated investigation. Things aren't looking good for Davies's friend, the mysterious Autumn Wise, who is found nearby holding a shotgun. When Merrily Watkins - parish priest, single mum and renowned demon exorcist - comes to Autumn's aid, she soon discovers that Eddy's death is only the latest in a long string of tragedies to blight Longtown and the surrounding area. But help is at hand from Merrily's spiritual advisor, the Rev. Huw Owen, who has an unorthodox solution in mind to end the area's centuries-long trail of misfortune... ____________________________ More praise for Phil Rickman 'Cleverly illuminates the darkest corners of our imagination' John Connolly 'The layers, the characters, the humour, the spookiness - perfect' Elly Griffiths 'First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night' Daily Mail 'No one writes better of the shadow-frontier between the supernatural and the real world' Bernard Cornwell 'Engrossing and beautifully dark . . . a cracking good read' JO BRAND

Leseprobe

Also by Phil Rickman

THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES

The Wine of Angels

Midwinter of the Spirit

A Crown of Lights

The Cure of Souls

The Lamp of the Wicked

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

The Smile of a Ghost

The Remains of an Altar

The Fabric of Sin

To Dream of the Dead

The Secrets of Pain

The Magus of Hay

The House of Susan Lulham

Friends of the Dusk

All of a Winter’s Night

Merrily’s Border

The Fever of the World

THE JOHN DEE PAPERS

The Bones of Avalon

The Heresy of Dr Dee

OTHER TITLES

Candlenight

Curfew

The Man in the Moss

December

The Chalice

Night After Night

The Cold Calling

Mean Spirit

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2025 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Copyright © Phil Rickman, 2025

The moral right of Phil Rickman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 462 7

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 463 4

Printed in Great Britain.

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PART ONE

The old people used to tell how travellers coming over the Black Mountain were led astray by the Devil, in the shape of a large black crow, which put out their lights and caused them to lose their way.

Ella Mary Leather: The Folk-lore of Herefordshire

1

Flash flood

HUW OWEN’S DAY began in the late autumnal under-light.

He’d gone to bed in a rare fury, expressing his rage at the increasing scepticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his followers by mentally changing the first vowel in Canterbury.

At eight a.m., when he’d set out in his Land Rover from the hills south of Brecon, Huw had decided that this was the day he was going to do it, give them what they wanted: quit the established Church. Today, as deliverance consultant for mid-south Wales and the border, he’d drive over the Black Mountains into Herefordshire and confide some of his secret plans to the diocesan exorcist there, Merrily Watkins.

He thought she’d see where he was coming from. The C of E’s heavyweight bishops were now apparently suspicious of anything supernatural, opposing archaic stuff like the attempted disposal of evil spirits, and dismissive of most exorcists as ‘magic Christians’.

Huw angrily shoved one of his old compilation tapes into the Land Rover’s stereo. His feelings were reflected in the first track: the Doors’ ‘Been Down So Long’. It did look like up to him, goddamn it, or maybe down… but not out.

By nine a.m., the quality of the music had cooled his mind, and he had a clear sense of purpose. The cassette had wound on to Lol Robinson and Hazey Jane II with another look back at the bad times, ‘Heavy Medication Day’. Huw found himself thinking about Lol, the songwriter, and how his relationship with Merrily had positively changed him.

Huw had taken a different route from usual to Ledwardine to explore the strangeness he’d recently been alerted to on the very edge of England and of Wales. But he didn’t get far before being thrust into a white wall of solid rain.

*

Water.

A sudden, widening road of water gushing across the country lane, a river racing out of nowhere and bringing leaves and branches with it. They were quickly being pushed into damming piles, helped by the winnowing wind which was acting with all the urgent efficiency of a beaver.

Huw felt the steering wheel quiver before he heard the first whump and was aware of his Defender suddenly lower and closer to the thickening shelf of swirling liquid. It was as though he was on the edge of a cliff overlooking a bay full of small islands, some green, some mud-coloured and…

‘Oh, bugger!’

He’d flattened the brake pedal, shouldering open the driver’s door before realizing he’d need to pull it shut again – and fast – or the merciless dark fluid would suck him in. There were already cold splashes on his cheeks and in his beard, and he was shocked when he became aware of his own fearful fingers feeling for his dog collar and wondered if maybe this was God’s way of blocking his path. The way ahead had seemed so clear earlier.

‘Is this it? You want me to keep quiet and retire?’ He half-smiled, realizing he’d spoken the thought out loud amid the rushing water.

No reply, although Huw figured this wasn’t a situation God would engineer, just the onslaught of another eager late autumn on the English border with Wales; flooding coming hard and early, the fields beyond the roadside rising into liquid splits. No impact, no damage, no other vehicles. Huw was on his own and could do nothing but his best not to drown. Which suddenly looked like a serious possibility.

Flash-flooding wasn’t supposed to affect a genuine, if ageing, Land Rover, not in its English home, anyway. But he was as near as you could get to the edge of England, where it washed into Wales, coming to a wet end not far from here; floods formed their own borders.

*

An end. Folks said that Huw – born in Wales, brought up in Yorkshire – was as near as you could get to the end of being English. Or to the start of being Welsh, into which language he’d hurled himself until he’d found a level of fluency… without losing his Yorkshire voice or his sawn-off northern attitude.

He felt the first of the flood water presumptuously seeping into his shoes, and wondered mildly which side of the border he’d die on… and if his entire cab would become flooded. Thinking maybe he shouldn’t really give a bugger, as he was already washed up in this job. He felt around his jacket pockets until he found his phone. It took a while to blink into life, which meant either a signal problem or its battery was close to used up. He didn’t like mobile phones at the best of times, which this dripping morning could never be called.

He started trying to ring Merrily Watkins, to tell her she’d be unlikely to see him today as they’d planned. Happen she’d not see him ever again on account of him being damn-near over as her spiritual director.

He shook himself in the driving seat – did he really think it was time for ‘Good morning, St Peter, get your foot out of the crack, lad, I’m coming through’? Merrily Watkins didn’t answer and St Peter said nowt either. The water seemed to rise but, God be praised, not finding its malign way into the engine. Land Rovers, unlike exorcists, didn’t easily get written off, but—

‘Huw?’

‘Merrily?’

‘Huw… something wrong? Your voice… not very clear… where are you?’

‘Don’t bloody know, lass…’ He hadn’t said owt in a while; his voice sounded too weak – that would have to change if he were to stay in business. ‘Except to say I’m in a knackered old Land Rover with a vicious flood rising all around, and I’m likely to drown soon… so I’d best say ta-ra…’

‘Huw!’

‘Signal breaking up and a lot of background noise here.’

‘Where are you? What’s your nearest place?’

‘Clod… Clodock.’

‘You mean the village near Longtown?’

‘P’rhaps I do. Never been this way from t’Black Mountains before. Never expected this. Deeper than…’ Crackles on the phone echoed the noise outside. He almost shouted, ‘I were coming to tell you it were over for me. Din’t realize it actually might be—’

‘It’s that bad? Barely raining at all here and I’m less than thirty miles away.’

‘Black Mountains have weird weather,’ Huw said. ‘Came this way to have a look round the church before meeting you.’ The signal faltered again.

‘More heavy rain could be coming your way soon, according to the radio,’ Merrily said, ‘so you need to—’

‘Came on bloody hard, and sudden high-up, no warning,’ Huw said, ‘and it’s still pissing down, and some roads can’t take it. Up here, you can’t see where one field starts and t’next ’un ends, and there’s no proper fencing, and th’old Land Rover went into this field and found a hole and I can’t bloody get it out, backwards or forwards. What if a bloody front tyre’s gone, and water’s—’

‘Huw… Give me… I’ll get you some help, somehow, so if you can tell me exactly—’

‘Merrily—’

No response. Signal gone. He could only talk into a mute phone with a near-spent battery and the cold, liquid darkness rising all around.

What if this was a mortally serious situation and a slow, wet death was closing in? Buggered if he was having that. He reached for the battery-powered radio he always kept in the car and switched on to a local station, hoping to get a weather forecast and roads report. He’d have to wait. Coming out of the speaker was the wintry ‘A Very Cellular Song’ by the Incredible String Band, favourites of the last great Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who’d been allowed to retire too soon by a fast-changing Church; a Church whose leaders were struggling for survival, even if that meant sagging into the secular.

*

Some time later, after he’d turned the radio off to save its battery, there was a tapping on the glass next to his right ear.

‘All right in there, ’re you?’

Huw tried to turn his head, but his neck was too stiff.

A more urgent tapping and then a shadow was falling across the glass.

‘You OK, Reverend?’

A slow splashing as Huw wound his window down – four inches, no more, just enough to let the voice in along with a handful of rain and the roaring sound of rushing water.

‘Are you—? Can you year me? You’ve drived—’

Through the mud and rain-spattered glass, it looked like a man in waders with a coil of thick rope over one shoulder. He put his mouth to where the gap began, snatched away an unlit cigarette stub and, in his local accent, not English, not Welsh, bawled out, ‘—drived into a flash flood, see, so it d’ look like you’ll ’ave to be towed out, ennit?’

‘You can do that?’

‘Juss… juss do as I says and you’ll be all right. You yearin’ me?’

Huw nodded. He somehow knew this feller and the accent was Radnorshire. Meanwhile, Huw’s neck hurt and, in the rear-view mirror, he saw a reflection of a blue vehicle. Was it the Land Rover that he was in? How was that possible? He must be bloody hallucinating.

No, it wasn’t possible, it had to be another one…

‘You got a Land Rover back there?’ Huw demanded.

‘When I yeard about you,’ the man said, ‘I was thinkin’ I might need a tractor for this, see, but we’ll get by, ennit, with two Land Rovers? Juss you sit tight an’ I’ll fix the rope on.’

Bloody hell, Huw recognized him now, this was—

Splashes bounced off Huw’s forehead as an arm in seasoned tweed, poking out of a drenched mac, rammed itself between the window and the roof, and then the familiar voice identified itself.

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire, Reverend. Merrily said you were like a bit out of your depth.’

2

From Off

THERE COULD, OF course, be worse places to die.

Eirion strolled into the dappled shade from the venerable trees lining the lane. Between the trees were a few ragged black and white houses, with cars and vans wedged into paths probably last widened for horse-drawn apple carts.

It couldn’t have changed all that much. Not if you ignored the pink-brick semis now crowding in and already outnumbering the timber-framed houses. New houses with no trees – identical dwellings from multiple-use plans originally drafted in a city office many miles away. This was the new Ledwardine. Nobody else would be brought here specifically to die, though, as an old wooden sign was recalling.

The sign was standing knee-high at the side of the lane, just where the trees ended, many of them now reduced to stumps encircled by small heaps of sawdust.

A tasteful new nameplate identified the adjacent foreign-brick housing estate as Appletree Close. But where it joined what was left of the existing roadway, the old wooden sign was still scratchily announcing

GALLOWS LANE

Jane Watkins stopped. It was gradually becoming clear to Eirion, who was watching her, that she’d brought him out here for a reason of her own.

‘See what I mean?’ Jane amplified. ‘More bastard builders on the make and the county council can’t be allowed to just sweep aside all the local history…’

‘Particularly the dark, scary bits?’ Eirion was beginning to see what she was getting at. ‘What do the people who live here say about this?’ He stood in front of the old wooden sign. ‘Have they even been asked?’

‘Oh, Irene…’ Jane had fixed him with a familiar disparaging look. ‘Most of them wouldn’t even understand the links between gallows and hanging. The people in these new houses, they’re all from Off.’ Employing, Eirion knew, the term her mother’s veteran gravedigger used for incomers. Anything that Gomer came out with was significant to Jane. He was a real person, who belonged here inside the traditional black and white houses, and certainly not the pink brick ones, though he’d been forced to live in something similar nearby so he could keep his elderly digger garaged alongside and ready for action.

Eirion sighed.

‘Gomer’s from Radnorshire, which is, like, almost England, and “Off”… that’s everywhere else, isn’t it?’

‘In this case it means London and wealthy towns like Tunbridge Wells where you can sell a little terraced house for a hundred times what it cost to build and then move out here and buy a mansion… or something pink here in Appletree Close.’

‘You’re saying…’ he smiled patiently, ‘…that new people make it clear they don’t want to live in somewhere called Gallows Lane. Which is why the council’s trying to change the name… and, in fact, succeeding.’

‘Appletree Close,’ Jane said, ‘is a pretty name invented for an appealing new estate by a council sub-committee. Whereas Gallows Lane… that’s kind of grim but, for me, it’s part of our history. Part of the story of old Ledwardine. Part of its past and identity.’

She stared at the new homes and their identical doors and windows. ‘Ironic, isn’t it, when the residents put witches’ hats and skeletons in their windows to so-called frighten people and kids on Hallowe’en but they’re supposedly scared off by an authentic nameplate.’

‘Yeah, I get it. So where…’ Eirion stepped up onto the pavement and looked around. ‘Where exactly are these gallows now then? Did council employees come along with axes and chainsaws? Like with the trees?’

‘Don’t even get me started on the trees.’ Jane’s wry expression told him that the gallows had probably been gone for whole centuries, but that wasn’t the point.

‘You’re saying they just want to get rid of the sign, so potential buyers won’t immediately find out they’re living in an unhappy place where law-breakers used to be taken and legally strung up? Right?’

Jane said, ‘Or it’s just that Hereford councillors don’t want to discourage anyone from Off paying an arm and a leg to get something clean and new and overpriced – while at the same time depriving local people of a home in the village… the generally unchanging village they grew up in.’

‘People like you?’

‘Well… maybe not me – I didn’t really grow up here, I was about fifteen when we moved in. But I’ve grown increasingly part of Ledwardine and I don’t want to see it overrun by wealthy migrants while all the real locals have to leave for somewhere cheaper and crowded, with less grass and no trees. You shouldn’t have to be loaded to live somewhere you can relate to and have roots in but, increasingly, you do. Get it?’

Of course he did. And he knew that some of these new houses – maybe even more of the older ones – would become holiday homes, empty most of the year, packed with incomers in summer and over Christmas. Just like the appearance of the village, the nature of the whole population was swiftly changing. And that was wounding Jane.

‘But what can you do about it?’ Eirion said. ‘People from traffic-choked cities always want to move to quiet villages like this. And you’re always going to find some long-time villagers happy to exploit them and make themselves suddenly rich by flogging the old family home. Can you blame some who want to move to the bright lights, well away from where their remote ancestors were, like, possibly hanged by the neck until they were dead?’

Jane would know there was probably nobody left in Ledwardine with an ancestor who’d died here, but she wasn’t letting go.

‘I can’t do much, Irene… but you can. Ledwardine is one of the last traditional villages in the UK to hold onto its Gallows Lane, right? I’ll see to social media, but if you can get it in the papers about the council getting rid of the old names…’

‘But—’ Now he got it; he could see her turning and beginning to walk away. ‘Jane, I’m just a very junior reporter working on one of the local papers that don’t do as well as they used to pre-Internet.’

‘You’re a professional journalist’ – her eyes gleamed – ‘in a position to publicize this scandal and be believed in a way the Net fact-shredders rarely are, I hope.’

‘In a Welsh evening paper that really isn’t interested in what’s happening in a village over the English border? And this kind of thing is hardly what you’d call a scandal any more. It’s the norm.’

The Welsh evening paper was his first job, and he’d been lucky to get it… but for how long, when local papers everywhere in Britain were rapidly closing down? But this one was surviving, just, and it was also convenient, because although Eirion was actually working in Wales, his office was not much more than an hour’s drive from the village of Ledwardine.

He stepped under a vast, very English, horse chestnut tree loaded with conkers in their spiky green shells. He needed the job but he probably needed to hold onto Jane Watkins more. He looked sideways at her in the late autumn sunshine. She was in patched, dark-blue jeans and an innocent white T-shirt. Did he want her to know how deep it went, how he’d never get tired of gazing at her? How he wanted to look at her at the start of every new day, until the day he died still staring at her, even if she was only inside his head?

Hell, he couldn’t tell her that, like they were in some Victorian romantic novel he’d never want to read.

He watched her moving away between the trees lining what was destined to pass into oblivion as Gallows Lane… and then found himself going after her to concede defeat, back down, let her win.

Because Jane Watkins always won.

3

The voice of God

‘YERE WE GOES, then, boy,’ Gomer Parry shouted and Huw Owen realized, as he was letting the Defender slip out of gear, that, compared with Gomer, he was a boy; must be at least ten years younger than the old feller on the other end of the tightening tow rope.

He wound his window the whole way down, and prepared to get good and wet, as a series of clunks told him he and his vehicle were being dragged out of the deep depression in the field and back onto the lane, where they rocked and then settled.

‘Go on, then, give him a try,’ Gomer called from behind.

‘No chance,’ Huw muttered grimly, as the Land Rover did a couple of coughs… then fired. ‘Bloody hell! Can’t believe it. An hour back I had a dead car, a dead phone and I thought me own end might be nigh. Then you come along and it’s like it never happened. Even the water levels are going down fast.’

Huw switched off the engine and clambered out to check around the wheels.

Even the tyres seemed to have survived. As God didn’t owe Huw any favours, he figured he must have Gomer to thank, so he pulled out his wallet hastily and grabbed several notes. Immediately, Gomer declined the offer, waving it away emphatically.

‘No, no, can’t ’ave that. Didn’t ’ave to come far. I was sussing out a job not far from here when the vicar rang and the rest was just a bit of old rope. I will have a cider at the local pub, though, if you push me.’

Huw grinned, wondered if they did lunches and if he had time to check out the church. An hour later, after refreshments and a call to Merrily to let her know they were safe, that’s where they headed.

*

Huw hadn’t expected that what could be the River Monnow would be thrashing down the nave when they entered.

All right, it didn’t. The nave was dry. So why did it sound like this? The river was some way from the church and not very big normally but, after hours of rain, it had swollen and strengthened and its unlikely roar was there, blasting under the pulpit – an unusual three-tier pulpit – like it was the voice of God.

Or some god, because, as Huw had learned recently from a tourist guide to the area, this may once have been the site of pre-Christian worship. A pagan place, its location linked to legends, its position in the landscape to strange phenomena and its very name to an ancient murder. He’d read the guide and a magazine he’d received from an old friend just days ago. How very weird his attention had suddenly been drawn to this unlikely ancient church and its curious ‘royal’ history by something unexpected in his mail. And then by unexpected weather.

Coincidence or divine intent? A crow flying past a window and cawing loudly cast a fleeting shadow on the wall in the nave. It felt so strange. He thought of Noah visited by a dove to show he was saved. A crow was linked through folk history as the sometimes carrier of a darker message.

Too much darkness. Already Clodock had its claws into Huw, whose hands were suddenly tightly gripping one another under a prayerbook shelf. How could somewhere this small have produced a saintly king?

Gomer seemed to read his thoughts. ‘King Clydawg – got hisself murdered here,’ he said. He seemed to know a lot of local history, gleaned from a lifetime’s work on the border landscape. And, according to Gomer, it was the only medieval church in the area not to have been updated by the Victorians.

Why had it been left in the Middle Ages then? Huw wondered. Then he found out, surprisingly, that Gomer Parry himself knew… an old digger driver with, additionally, an extensive knowledge of Iron Age history. It was turning out to be one of those days when things threw themselves into your mind – the same things from different places.

‘Clydawg getting hisself done in was the biggest thing ever happened yere,’ Gomer said. ‘They made him a saint and put up this church near where it happened and this is where they had him buried. He’s still under yere somewhere, all these centuries later.’

Huw stared at the wall and pictured, on the other side of it, the swollen river he’d seen coming in, which still made a roaring noise in his head. Could this be the Monnow, likely a far thinner stream in the sixth century, when there wasn’t an England or Wales as Huw knew them now? Clodock had been in both at various times, finishing up in the English county of Herefordshire. In the sixth century, when King Clydawg had been here, it would have been wholly Welsh. And the site of perhaps the oldest recorded murder in the Black Mountains. Certainly the oldest murder of a monarch, whatever qualified as one in them days.

Huw was increasingly asking himself how he’d been suddenly drawn to this place. He’d barely heard of it before yet it was the scene of a centuries-old evil and, somehow, that evil was still here. He could feel it. He could somehow sense its reverberation. Perhaps this needed some attention. Maybe his or maybe Merrily’s, considering this was her patch – just. She’d never talked about it. Perhaps it had never figured on her radar either. A place on the fringes, left to moulder in the Black Mountains umbra.

‘So what exactly happened to the king?’ he asked Gomer, who then told him about a woman who’d refused to marry anyone but Clydawg. Gomer didn’t know her name but she, apparently, was also of noble birth, nice-looking and nice-tempered enough for people to go along with her marriage plans.

‘Only it din’t work out,’ Gomer said. ‘Another fella fancied her for hisself. Saxon chap, if I recalls correc’ly. Anyway, him and a few mates ambushed the king and brung him down yere, by the little river, and this was where they kilt him. Some say he was shot with an arrow but, whatever, he never got to wed his intended.’

‘And now there’s nowt much else left here,’ Huw said, ‘apart from your feller’s church, one pub and a few cottages. It’s like the whole village took the king’s death… murder… to heart.’

‘Sure t’be,’ Gomer said. ‘Longtown, right next to it, is a lot bigger, while Clodock’s kinder lonely, no bigger now than what it was then. But it was remembered, mind, with him being made a saint and pilgrims coming. They come in droves for quite a while after.’

It was what had struck Huw, too. Before the murder and the church being built, probably nothing had been here but grass, trees and a forded stream. Now he was here, on All Hallows’ Eve, of all days, along with his copy of Apparitionism, journal of the mainly ecclesiastical parapsychologists of England and Wales.

Periodically edited by an old friend from theological college, Apparitionism occasionally contained something he felt he should be aware of and this edition, looking at curious churches of the southern Welsh border, had grabbed his attention and held it strongly.

He was starting to feel a bit reflective now. He hadn’t died in the flood, he was just looking at retirement, which was like death, only worse in a way.

‘You never feel under pressure to retire, Gomer?’ he said to lighten the mood. ‘Or would that just be a waste of all them years of experience?’

Gomer looked like this had never, ever occurred to him.

‘Get to my age, boy, you needs to keep goin’, else you en’t gonner get much further.’ With both arms, he dragged himself half into his Land Rover. ‘Still got our uses, I reckon. Folk always need jobs done. Matter of fact, like I said, I dint have far t’come when the vicar rang me on the mobile. In this field at Bacton, sizing up for a double gateway, I was, but this sounded more urgent. Vicar, her said you thought you was lookin’ down at a watery grave.’

‘Aye,’ Huw said thoughtfully, ‘happen I was.’ He gazed up at the dark, stone-towered church, far too big for this cluster of cottages. ‘This is the first place to mess wi’ me mind since I decided to turn away from t’Church bosses. Likely there’s nowt in it but I’ll have to have a look. Happen not today, but I’ll come back, and if there’s an open grave of any kind, it’s my job to look down it…’

‘I fills ’em in fast as I can afterwards, Reverend,’ Gomer said.

Huw gave him a look of incomprehension before remembering that Gomer was the long-time parish gravedigger.

He suddenly felt his calling. His vocation was being tested, not ending. He saw his reflection ridiculously lengthened in a puddle. If he wasn’t in the established Church of England any more, who was there to get in his way? What got in Gomer’s way that he couldn’t remove with a bulldozer? He felt an excitement, an urgent need to talk to Merrily Watkins about this place and his future.

4

Fake history

EIRION HEARD HIMSELF saying, ‘I suppose I could try and drum up some interest.’

Jane stopped walking up the lane but didn’t turn.

‘Obviously I couldn’t tell them what to put,’ he said. ‘And if they come across people who think that losing an old name from a sign isn’t such a bad idea…’

At last, she turned.

‘You could do that?’

‘Well…’ he took a breath, ‘… there’s a girl – woman – I was on the pre-entry journalism course with. She went to BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester and…’

‘And covers this area?’

‘I guess I could give her a call. But before I do… are you sure there actually was a real gallows here where people were once executed? I don’t want to start spreading fake history.’

Jane stepped up from the narrow roadway to the new pavement, where Eirion spotted, with delight, that a corner of her mouth had twitched meaningfully as he caught her arm. He liked what that elfin near-smile said about her, the way it conveyed a mixture of amusement and triumph. He realized he’d seen it in her mother’s face, too. When it reached their eyes it kind of took them over.

Meanwhile…

‘Jane, were people really executed here?’

She nodded. ‘Twice, I think.’

‘That’s two separate hangings?’

‘Well, maybe in different centuries, since the Middle Ages.’

‘Murderers?’

‘One, possibly, but they didn’t have to be murderers in those days,’ Jane said. ‘Probably people convicted of stealing, I don’t know… sheep? Or apples? Even in medieval times, Ledwardine was well known for its apples.’

‘People were hanged for nicking apples?’

Jane nodded. ‘Way back, I imagine. I shouldn’t think stealing apples was actually a capital offence. But people were hanged here. Until all hangings were transferred to Hereford, several smaller places had their own gallows where people could come and watch the local miscreants dangle.’

Eirion eyed her. ‘Would you have watched?’

She didn’t reply. Wouldn’t have thought about all the jeers and cackling as a rough noose slid through tight coils and wrenched on a neck until it broke. Eirion thought that if it was still happening, she might make herself go and watch, even if she didn’t approve, if only so people couldn’t accuse her of being too squeamish to see a life being taken as easily and openly as council tax, and by similar people.

‘Ledwardine was actually a small town in the old days,’ Jane was saying. ‘With its own castle, even though only earthworks are left now.’

‘And persistent impressions,’ Eirion said.

He didn’t used to think there were still villages like this which, when the traffic noise died, would sometimes seem to be playing back faint echoes of their sometimes-harrowing histories.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my radio friend – well, not a friend actually, but we’ve had a couple of chats. I’ll ask her if she can get the story out. I suppose it’s the sort of thing they’d do, as a bit of a conversation topic.’

It actually could become quite a talking point, but he wasn’t going to tell Jane that. Her face dimpled again, and he followed that familiar facial twitch from her mobile mouth to those flashing, dark eyes.

She’d got what she wanted. This was the first complete day they’d spent together since the big separation, brought about initially by the covid pandemic and then by the start of Eirion’s first job – both situations that had radically changed his life very quickly, at a time when everything seemed to be in flux, and broadcast and printed news was too often being replaced by online drivel.

It was early afternoon, and the sun seemed to be getting stronger after the fluke torrent of rain earlier on. The sky to the east seemed heavy enough to be threatening more. Climate change affected everything. He didn’t want to believe that, but he was a journalist now; you had to acknowledge evidence.

He wondered how Jane felt about that these days. Was she saving up for an electric car or did she think everybody was wildly overreacting to extinction-rebellion protests by squeaky, upper-middle-class young people? For now, she seemed more concerned about the trend for wilfully abandoning history than a supposed impending climate crisis.

‘Keep me informed, then,’ Jane said.

‘About what?’

‘About the Gallows Lane sign. If it’s going to be on the radio I want to try and listen to it. See where we can go next… where else can we take it? We can’t let these bureaucratic petty crimes keep getting swept under the carpet.’

So what are we supposed to do about it? Superglue our fingers to the endangered sign?

‘Jane…’ Eirion fixed his hands on his hips, ‘are you yourself prepared to talk about Gallows Lane? Be quoted in the papers?’

‘Well, I…’ Jane looked uncertain. ‘I’d rather not be identified again as the “vicar’s daughter”, which these media people always like to do. And the bastard Bishop would be sure to support the council.’ She squeezed her hands together. ‘Oh God, Irene, nothing’s ever bloody simple, is it?’

Not for Jane it wasn’t. Or for her mother, for whom being a vicar was only the start.

Eirion shrugged non-committally. Where was all this going to end? Was something even starting? Everybody was suddenly talking about the nearness of the end of the world, whether it would be through climate change or nuclear warfare. Was he really prepared for Jane’s to be the last voice he would ever hear? Waking up one morning for the last time next to her and her latest obsession?

Complications all the way. He took hold of her left hand. It was warm and slightly moist. Suddenly, he wanted her in the soft grass beyond the fence.

And then he didn’t.

Not where the bodies of the executed had lain after being cut down, flattening the grass, squashing dandelions and daisies – ancestors of today’s wild flowers, their tiny petals gently floating away.

That was an end-of-the-world thing.

‘Who was hanged here, Jane?’

‘Not sure. It was a long time ago. Hangings were centralized. The more recent ones were better chronicled. Like this guy who poisoned his wife up at Longtown. He and his girlfriend were strung up side by side in the centre of Hereford – and that was as recently as the turn of the nineteenth century.’

So recent that he couldn’t get it out of his head.

Eirion shook himself. It had been mainly a nice day, maybe the last nice day of a golden autumn for them both. He didn’t want it to go out this way. He noticed he was walking faster down Gallows Lane, half-dragging Jane Watkins away from a pastoral place that even now sometimes carried this dark, medieval magnetism. Jane walked faster as they reached the main village street, passing Gomer Parry’s bungalow, and the terrace enfolding the little cottage Lol Robinson occupied, once the home of Lucy Devenish.

‘How about we just go into the Black Swan?’ Eirion said, with a hoarse hint of desperation. ‘Get a drink and forget all this capital punishment. It doesn’t exist any more in this country.’

But somehow the past did exist here. He stepped from the pavement to the pub’s cobbled forecourt as a dog-collared guy got out of a Land Rover and Jane stopped suddenly.

*

‘Bugger,’ Jane said. ‘He’ll come in for a very slow drink and start giving me the third degree.’

‘Your mum’s colleague?’

Eirion held open the pub door for her.

‘Senior colleague,’ she muttered. ‘I do kind of like him, but he has to know everything about Mum, and if he thinks I’m hiding anything he’ll tell her.’

‘You’ve nothing to hide, have you?’

Jane said nothing. Sometimes she had. Sometimes she’d removed books from the shelves in the office so she could hear Mum talking on the phone about paranormal stuff she was supposed to be investigating confidentially. Not realizing how vital it could be for her daughter to be in the picture.

‘I think it’s important for her to have some back-up,’ she told Eirion out of the side of her mouth. ‘I’m more confidential than she thinks. I don’t talk about her extra job, which I think is important if she doesn’t get carried aw— Hello, Mr Owen, have you been to see Mum?’

‘Not yet.’ Huw Owen ran a forefinger under his dog collar. ‘Don’t know whether you’ve found this, Jane, but you can never trust weather any more. I forgot it were borderline November this morning. Sudden flood nearly wrote off me and the Land Rover. It’s thanks to Gomer we’re both here now. Anyroad… I thought I’d grab a quick half and a snack before I see your ma.’

No escape now. Jane sidestepped under Eirion’s outstretched arm to the oak door, as Huw followed her and asked a familiar question.

‘Still on her own then? No wedding plans yet?’

Jane tried not to frown.