Unholy Rites (6 page)

“It's been a shock for you, as for all of us. I'm happy to do whatever I can to help. You must be exhausted.”

Liz moved her parcel to the floor and unbuttoned her coat, as though settling in for a long stay. “I thought you might like to hear more about the night your mother died, the night of the Imbolc ritual.”

“Mind if I pour myself a drink first?” Arthur asked. His mother was dead, wasn't that enough? If Liz insisted on talking about that night, how could he avoid revealing that he thought Celtic ritual was all claptrap?

A sudden memory brought Arthur to a standstill, wine bottle angled over his glass. Two, no almost three years ago, a Celtic harpist called Deirdre had talked to him about the world of spirits, and for a moment he'd felt close to that world. Then he'd destroyed the moment with a witty, unkind comment he'd immediately regretted. He didn't want to repeat that mistake.

He took a deep breath, poured his wine, and sat in the chair opposite Liz. “So tell me.”

Liz gazed at the fire as though gathering her thoughts. “To begin with, Imbolc marks the halfway point between winter and spring. In the secular calendar, it's known as Groundhog Day; in the liturgical calendar, it's Candlemas. You may remember going to Candlemas services when you were a child. Like most Christian festivals, Candlemas has pagan roots. Irish Celts identified this day with Brigit, or Brid, a pagan deity who became a Christian saint, until she was decanonized in the 1960s.”

“Ah yes, I remember Mum complaining about that, years afterwards,” Arthur said.

Liz gave him a sharp look. “Quite rightly, too. It was a time when many women felt shut out of the Christian tradition. That's why some of us turned to Wicca, with its strong goddesses. For Wiccans, Brigit is the triple goddess, the goddess of poetry, midwifery, and fire.”

Arthur found himself getting irritated. “What does this have to do with Mum's death?”

“I'm coming to that. I'm trying to explain how your mother, good Christian that she was, came to be celebrating what began as a pagan festival. Brigit became linked with the Imbolc festival through her association with midwifery. Imbolc is the Feast of Milk as well as fire, because it occurs about the time ewes begin lactating before lambing.”

Arthur shuffled restlessly. “When I first arrived, there was talk about a sheep being ritually mutilated. Was that part of your Imbolc ritual?”

“That had nothing to do with us.” Liz's tea cup rattled as she put it back into the saucer, and her face was flushed. “As Wiccans, we accept that things die. That is the cycle of nature, and we are part of it. We celebrate birth, and know that everything will pass away in nature's own time. We do
not
hasten death. But when I heard about the sacrifice of the sheep, so soon after your mother's death . . .”

Arthur wondered if Liz was slightly unbalanced. When she talked about Wicca, she seemed to have entered another world. “What are you suggesting?”

Liz shook her head, as though shaking off a dream, or a nightmare, and turned to face him. The flush had faded from her cheeks, accentuating the circles under her dark eyes. “Nothing, Arthur. If Geoff said she died of a heart attack, I'm sure she did.”

“It sure as hell wasn't witchcraft.” He peered at her troubled face, remembering the little bottles he'd seen on his mum's bedside table and in the medicine cabinet. “Wait a minute. Mum was taking some of your potions after her stroke. What were you giving her?”

“Nothing that would harm her. From time to time Ethel complained about feeling fatigued, nauseous, and dizzy. She had bouts of acute indigestion. These can all be symptoms of heart disease in women, but the tests Geoff sent her for didn't reveal anything. As you know, she insisted on drinking from that old well across the road. I suspected she was suffering from lead poisoning. There's a lot of lead in the water round here.”

“Yes, I remember. My dad took me for a walk up by Bradwell once and pointed out where the open pit lead seams were. Couldn't you or Geoff do anything?”

“Geoff didn't take my idea seriously. You know how stubborn your mum was. She wouldn't get her mineral levels tested. I gave her a tincture of ginger root to help the nausea and milk thistle to detoxify the liver. It wasn't enough.” Liz clasped the silver pendant she always wore, the Celtic knot twisting and doubling back on itself.

For a moment the Celtic knot looked to Arthur's eyes like a basket of writhing serpents. “Nothing that would harm her?”

Liz held his gaze. “Not if taken as directed, by the person it's prescribed for. Like any medicines, some herbal remedies have harmful side effects if not taken properly. That's why I removed them when I made the cottage ready for you.” She lifted her parcel onto her lap. From its shape, Arthur assumed Liz was returning books she'd borrowed. To his surprise, she pulled out three of his mum's scrapbooks and laid them on the coffee table.

Arthur picked up the one on top. The label on the spine said 1990–1992. “What are you doing with these?”

“Ethel brought them with her the night of the Imbolc ceremony. I presume there was something she wanted to show me, but the others were arriving by then, and so I put the scrapbooks upstairs in my study till later. She seemed agitated by Pat's news of James Marple's appointment, and who can blame her. Pat has been open to other religious traditions, but not so Marple, I fear. When we started the ceremony we all calmed down, until Ethel felt too ill to continue.”

Liz rose from her chair and walked to the uncurtained windows, where she stood gazing out into the dark. Arthur picked up his pipe and sucked on the stem. Patricia Wellcome had also mentioned his mum's opposition to Marple. Perhaps the reason lay in the scrapbooks, and Liz knew what it was.

“Then what happened?” he asked, sipping wine without tasting while she told her story. His mother had refused to let anyone call Dr. Geoff, insisting she could perfectly well walk the short distance home accompanied by the Ellison boy, who was upstairs doing his homework. Stephen returned while they were blessing the candles. He went straight upstairs, so they assumed everything was all right. When he came down for the Feast of Milk, he said Ethel was resting when he left her.

“After the others had gone, I went round to check on her,” Liz said. “It was too late.”

Arthur couldn't believe what he had heard. “She'd had a stroke, she was feeling ill, and finishing your blasted ritual was more important than seeing that she was properly cared for?”

“Stephen is a very responsible boy. He would have told us if she'd still felt unwell. As to the ceremony, your mum insisted that we go ahead with it. It's dangerous to leave a ritual unfinished; no one can have any idea where the energy created by it might go.”

Again Liz seemed to be slipping across the line between sanity and obsession.

“It's dangerous, all right. You and your pagan rituals killed my mother. She wasn't interested in all this before she came back here. Now the bookshelves are full of it.”

“I understand why you are upset, Arthur, but you're wrong to blame me for Ethel's interest in paganism. It was the well dressing that got her started. She began looking into its history, and that's where it led her. I wouldn't know about the scrapbooks, because I haven't looked at them. They didn't belong to me.”

Moving to the door, Liz wrapped her shawl around her head and shoulders, then hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. Her face had lost its earlier animation, and she looked old and tired. “Ethel held the first of the well dressing workshops in her garage, and it's been used for petalling the main panel ever since. Given the way you feel, you may prefer that we move elsewhere.”

Too bloody right, Arthur thought. Then something stopped him from accepting her offer. He would never get anywhere in unraveling his mother's secret if he cut off contact with the community. “Of course you must use the garage,” he said. “It's what my mother would have wanted.”

“Thank you, Arthur,” Liz said. “Trust me, you won't regret it.”

Could he
trust her though, Arthur wondered as he watched her walk into the darkness. He had only her word for what had happened the night his mother died. She wanted him to think his mum had taken the scrapbooks to her for safekeeping. What if his mum's real purpose was to confront Liz with something she'd discovered?

Stephen played with Happy
while he waited, his stomach in knots. He hadn't seen his brother in several weeks. Would he recognize Eric? Or would prison have changed him into a different person, someone in striped pajamas with handcuffs and leg irons, like in the comics?

At the knock on the door Stephen dumped Happy back in his cage and raced to the top of the stairs. His mum came clacking out of the kitchen and poked her head into the lounge, saying, “Now please, Bob, don't make a scene.” Stephen doubted his dad could hear her over the Man United game, or would pay any attention if he did. She stood in the doorway with one of her best black shoes on the worn carpet, the other lifted, ready to run away. Stephen knew she was wondering whether to say anything else, or leave well enough alone.

The knocking came again. The telly went on blasting away, his dad didn't appear. His mum turned to open the door. Eric swaggered in.

“I told him it's my house, he didn't have to knock,” Eric said, Mr. Clough following him in. Stephen felt relief wash over him. His brother hadn't changed, it seemed, and it wasn't just the jeans and jacket hanging open over his favorite Anathema T-shirt. Eric walked through the world like he owned it, he didn't scurry around like a mouse, hoping not to be noticed. His mum tried to give Eric a hug and he pulled back. She gave a little cry, like he'd kicked her. Stephen felt his shoulders slump. He could never be like Eric. She put on her smiley voice and said thank you to Mr. Clough, and yes, she'd make sure Eric didn't go out without her or Bob.

They made it through Sunday dinner with only one explosion from his dad.

“Bloody hell, would you look at this, burned to a crisp,” his dad said when his mum set the joint down for him to carve. “Simplest thing in the world, stick a joint in a pan, stick it in the oven, take it out again, and you can't even do that right.”

“Sorry, Bob,” his mum said with teary eyes. “Eric came just when it was time to take it out, and I got distracted.”

Eric held out his plate. “Looks fine to me. I'll have your share if you don't want it.”

“There's a man for you, teeth like steel.” His dad heaped Eric's plate, then shook his head at Stephen. “You wouldn't want this burned stuff, it's not good enough for you.”

“But Dad—”

“Don't worry, Stephen,” his mum said as she headed back into the kitchen. “There's plenty of mashed potatoes to fill up on.”

His dad was staring at him, just waiting for an excuse to send him to his room or worse. Stephen dropped his eyes. His mum would save him some for later. He kept quiet through the rest of the meal while his mum asked Eric questions. Eric didn't say much about the Cloughs except “They're all right.” He told a long story about going to a big house in Cressbrook to measure up for a cabinet to hold the missus's Toby jugs. “Put a locking door on it,” the man had said. “Those things are valuable.” Imagine that, locking up bits of pottery you could get in the jumble sales.

“Come upstairs,” Stephen said when they'd finished the baked jam roll, Eric's favorite. “I want to show you something.”

As soon as they walked into the bedroom they'd always shared, Stephen knew he'd made a mistake.

“Hey man, what's that thing on my desk? That's mine, get that thing out of here.”

Eric crossed their small room, picked up the wire cage, and gave it a shake.

Stephen heard Happy scrabbling around. He grabbed Eric's arm. “Stop! You're frightening Happy! Mrs. Rosson let me keep him over mid-term, she'll kill me if anything happens to him!”

Eric got that look on his face that meant Stephen was buggered. He lifted the cage over his head, too high for Stephen to see inside, and swung it back and forth. “So what's it worth to you?”

Stephen glanced towards the bank on his desk, a metal postbox that Nana had given him when he was five. He'd stopped putting money in when he realized that Eric was taking it. After Eric was nicked, he'd gathered the coins he'd stashed in various hiding places and dropped them one by one through the slot marked
LETTERS
. “I've got almost a pound.”

Eric's lips curled into a sneer. “Is that all the little rat's worth? Let's have a look.” Warning Stephen to stay back, he set the cage on the floor, kneeled in front, and stuck one hand inside. “Where are you, then, little rat face?”

“You can have my penknife,” Stephen said as Eric's fingers dug through the wood shavings where Happy liked to hide.

“Why thank you!” Eric's hand closed around the trembling gerbil and he drew it from the cage. “Nothing like a penknife to jingle in your pocket along with a bit of change. It's not enough, though, is it, little rat face?” He looked up at Stephen.

“What else do you want?” Stephen cried. “You took my Walkman when yours broke, and that was all I had.”

“What you have that I don't,” said Eric, “is freedom. I can't move without Clough's bloody sheepdog following me, and I can't even talk to my friends. Now does that seem fair? You wouldn't like it if you couldn't talk to your mates, would you?”

“That would be awful,” Stephen said, though truth to tell the only bloke he was mates with lived up in Tideswell. Their mums were friends, that's how they got to know each other. He didn't see much of his schoolmates; his mum didn't have time for that. “What do you want me to do?”

Eric took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “See this? We're going to go out and leave it near the river for the Grand Master, the man I told you about. I've got a bit of food for him too, and a few of Dad's cigs.”