The Fever of the World, page 19
For the first time. Was he at all worried about the implications of submitting to the image of a serial succubus?
According to religious traditions, repeated sexual activity with a succubus can cause poor physical or mental health, even death.
Religious traditions? Whose? Who would want a man to think he might be risking his life messing with a spectral seductress?
Somehow, she didn’t like this.
Having awoken early, feeling the same underlying excitement she’d felt over the eight-year-old girl at Goodrich. Only darker. If times were normal she and Irene would be planning a quick weekend trip there to find out what evidence remained of these people: who they were, where they lived, how you could find out about them while avoiding their attentions.
‘Our members come and go,’ Sorrel said now. ‘Scores of them, including regular holidaymakers. There’s always an element of pagan tourism that brings people back, feeling a mystical connection to the area. Sometimes they end up living here.’
Jane smiled. It was as if the Pod believed it qualified for an annual grant for boosting the local economy.
‘You looking for anybody in particular?’ Sorrel asked.
Jane hesitated, then thought why not? And shrugged.
‘I suppose I’m looking for someone who might know a woman called Diana,’ she said fairly casually. ‘Diana Portis.’
Couldn’t say that name now without feeling this dark thrill. She had the woman’s wedding picture back on the screen, the copper’s sexual fantasy – was it any more than that?
There was what seemed like a long break in the mobile signal before Sorrel came back to her.
‘Jane… just give me that name again, will you?’
‘Diana…’ Jane peered at the laptop screen showing the newlywed estate agent. ‘Diana Venus Portis.’
Sorrel echoed the name then paused again.
‘She added the Venus.’
‘She what?’
‘Another goddess. After Diana, the huntress, comes Venus. More complex. And more dangerous. Venus can cast shadows, did you know that?’
‘I… No.’
‘I mean Venus the planet. Hotter than Mercury, though further from the sun. Named after the dark Roman goddess of love.’
‘Yes, she…’ Named after two Roman goddesses? Hmm. ‘Sorrel, is Diana Portis in the Pod?’
‘No.’
‘But you do know her?’
‘We know her.’ Sorrel was sounding kind of reticent. ‘As much as anyone is allowed to. She was once invited to join us but declined. We… don’t actually invite many people to meetings, but we thought she’d fit our membership. Swell our collection of all the holders of ancient wisdom around here.’ Sorrel hesitated. ‘She comes from a family of established druids.’
‘She does?’
‘Going way back, I gather. To the days of Iolo Morganwg and Lady Llanover and all those people, if not before.’
‘Way back? That was no more than a couple of hundred years ago, surely?’
After a pause, Sorrel said, ‘Do you know much about Druidism, Jane?’
‘Well, erm… I mean, it’s like… it’s Britain’s… our oldest religion, isn’t it?’
‘Be honest,’ Sorrel said. ‘You don’t know anything about Druidism.’
‘Well, I—’
‘There are no books or established druidic dogma. No gurus, famous priests, no rituals handed down. Because nothing was ever written down,’ Sorrel said. ‘We’re told it was the religion of the Celts, before and during early Christianity. We think they carried out rituals in stone circles and we used to think they were involved in building them… and then the experts said the circles went back to the Bronze Age, which pre-dated the druids by a few thousand years. But yeah, the only druids we really know about were the eighteenth-century Welsh revivalists like Lady Llanover and Iolo Morganwg. Who did write stuff down, even if it wasn’t authentic.’
‘But surely they were just political – they were early Welsh nationalists.’
‘And many of them were also English,’ Sorrel said. ‘More Welsh than the Welsh, the English, when they discover Wales – that’s the kind of Wales they want to absorb, make a part of themselves. A heritage. Like the guy who built Goodrich Court. He used to hang out with neo-druids.’
Jane shut down the laptop. She was disappointed. She knew a bit about the eighteenth-century Welsh druids – who had made most of it up to give their country a mystical heritage that was probably phoney. They’d built all these new stone circles for their cultural ceremonies, the eisteddfodau, which were conducted entirely in the Welsh language and continued today only because they supported it. Druidism had begun to be about Welshness.
‘You seem to be losing interest,’ Sorrel observed.
‘Because it’s a different thing. That was just political.’
A silence.
‘Was it, Jane?’
‘Nothing wrong with Welsh nationalism, if you’re Welsh, but linking it with the original druids is basically bollocks.’
‘Oh?’
‘My boyfriend’s Welsh,’ Jane said. ‘He finds it all a bit unconvincing.’
She didn’t want to offend the well-meaning Sorrel and what was left of the Pod but, as far as she could see, people had always been borrowing these unknown druids and getting them all wrong – hundreds of books attempting to glorify, sanitize and – like some Welsh people still did – even Christianize a bunch of barbarians whose only accepted legacy was the Wicker Man.
He at least had turned into a decent horror film.
34
Cold
THE SCULLERY: JANE had been in here.
Merrily slumped into the old captain’s chair. No doubt about it. Jane was no tidier, no more discreet than she’d been at fifteen, when they’d first arrived at Ledwardine vicarage and she didn’t yet have her own apartment upstairs. She left tracks, traces and debris everywhere.
The kid had clearly been in here last night for some time, writing in the sermon pad which Merrily had abandoned when the parish churches had been closed down by the pandemic. Pages from the pad had now been torn out and taken away. No discarded paper in the waste bin.
Jane had been making notes during a phone call? To whom? Had she been in here last night? Had she picked up any of the weird chat with Darth Vaynor?
Merrily held up the pad to the light from the window to try and read the impressions left on it by the pen. Only one word was distinct, letters deeply scrawled between lines.
SUCCUBUS
Oh God. She’d tried to avoid that word, precisely because she thought it would be familiar to Vaynor, and it wouldn’t help him at all to know how it had been interpreted online. He was right to have suggested it could now be considered a psychological term for a woman’s image appearing in the dreams of heterosexual men to arouse them. Nothing paranormal there. But what about the suggestion that ‘according to religious traditions’ it could, if it occurred too many times, become harmful, causing poor physical or mental health?
Possible. Again, there was nothing particularly paranormal in that, but…
Even death?
She thought hard about this, gazing out of the scullery window where the climbing rose used to swing, then slowly picked up the phone. She had a funeral looming, didn’t have much time to try and get a few things clear.
‘After what happened,’ the unknown woman was saying into Jane’s ear, ‘everyone was being kind to her and indulgent. This probably went on for years afterwards, and they still don’t like to bother her.’
When the phone call had come, Jane had been about to leave the shop, see how Gomer was doing. She hadn’t sat down again, and kept the strap of her bag over her shoulder as she tried to balance the receiver.
‘Sorry. Who are you, again? I’m not really thinking straight this morning.’
She’d picked up the phone and heard the unknown voice of a woman, older than her, maybe around Mum’s age. But it wasn’t Mum. It was local, well localish.
‘I had a call from Sorrel Podmore,’ the woman said carefully. ‘She thought I should let you know some things.’
Jane groaned to herself. What had she started?
‘I admit I’m saying this for my benefit as much as yours,’ the woman said. ‘I need it to come out.’
Was this some member of the Pod who’d joined since Jane had stopped going to meetings? Also, when she asked them things, people – pagans, especially – were inclined to assume she was making enquiries on Mum’s behalf. To pagans, Mum was considered to be the open, liberal face of the diocese, not too churchy, always accessible to fringe opinions. Sometimes, in the past, she’d used Jane as a conduit into pagan activities. Which Jane was beginning to regret.
‘Sorrel says you’ve been asking questions.’
‘It’s what I do,’ Jane said. ‘I’m curious. And I like to help people. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Perhaps I didn’t give you one.’
‘Do I know you?’
‘Evidently not. So I won’t enlighten you. And I’ll ask you not to be too curious about me. But I know about you and also a certain amount about Diana Portis who I think you were asking about.’
‘Oh.’
Jane sat down, lowered her bag to the floor. This was someone Sorrel had persuaded to talk to her. Why?
‘Diana Portis…’ she had to choose her words carefully ‘…made a big impression on a… on a friend of mine.’
‘Who would that be?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘All right.’ A very small laugh. ‘Male or female?’
‘It’s a man.’
‘I see. It was that kind of impression, was it?’
‘I think you could say that.’
Sometimes you just had to go for it.
‘All right,’ the woman said. ‘I grew up near Crocker’s Ash, where her mother had a cottage and smallholding. Don’t live there any more. Diana was younger than me, but all her friends were my age or older. When we started hanging out together at nights, I was fourteen, she was eleven. You see where I’m going with this?’
‘I…’
She must be younger than Jane had first thought. Early thirties?
‘Diana Portis taught me things. She knew all sorts of things. And places. Places we thought we were familiar with. It was interesting at first.’
‘At first?’
‘Then it became frightening. Very frightening. Soon afterwards I got married. I was only eighteen. I got married and left the area. I think that was one of the reasons I got married so young. To leave… I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. Except that I’ve known for a while that sooner or later I’d have to tell somebody, or she’d get somebody really damaged…’
Jane noticed that her speech had begun to get higher and faster.
‘Damaged how?’
‘Mentally. At least. If you’re damaged mentally, you can hurt yourself, or somebody else…’
‘Has she done that?’
‘She likely has, but you didn’t hear that from me. In fact you didn’t hear anything from me.’
‘And as I don’t know who you are…’
‘Nobody questioned her beliefs,’ the woman said. ‘Villages around the Doward have a very long tradition of it if you look in the right corners.’
‘What?’
‘People from South Wales settled here years ago and put down roots. And married into local families.’
‘A long tradition of what?’ Jane said.
‘Sorrel said you would know.’
‘No, listen, I—’
The phone suddenly was lifeless.
*
Huw Owen said, ‘This is about the vicar in the Wye Valley? Tell me owt or nowt, lass. I’ll help if I can. I won’t be here for ever and I need to think deliverance’ll still be in good hands when I’ve gone.’
‘Come on, Huw. Don’t start talking like that.’
‘I mean when they force me to retire. As the bastards will, one day not too far off.’
Merrily pictured him, hunched in his leaking fireside chair in the Brecon Beacons vicarage. She told him, without naming names, about the two possible encounters between DC Vaynor and what he thought had been the woman, Diana Portis, or something connected to her.
‘I don’t know how much of this, if any, to believe, Huw. On one hand, the person who told me about it is intelligent, articulate and… somehow convinced it all happened as he described.’
‘He saw this woman in a dream?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘If a woman says she can be with a bloke after bedtime when they’re apart, or the bloke says he’s been having dreams about her and sometimes wakes up in need of fresh underpants— there are words for this. And you just used one.’
‘Succubus? Did I say that?’
‘A term out of myth, out of fairytales. A word we don’t believe in, the way we once might have, as kids. But words like that were once used by folk as did believe. These were specialized words. I’m looking this one up now on t’computer. Looks like Latin, but it goes back to ancient Jewish mysticism – the Qabala. Describes a female spirit as appears to men in dreams, sometimes messing wi’ blokes in intimate ways while they’re asleep.’
Merrily sighed.
‘You’re right, of course – it’s out of the fairytales. But do I now proceed as if it really exists? I’ve encountered things before that I only half believe in and—’
‘Listen. I were once consulted by a feller, who had this very enthusiastic young woman as wanted to be his girlfriend. He wasn’t sure about her himself. They worked together as teachers at the same school and he found he were dreaming about her a lot. Fancying her more in dreams than he did awake. At the time, he were engaged to a woman he genuinely liked – more than he liked this teacher who were throwing herself at him every night, in his own bed – or that’s what he told me.’
‘You believed him?’
‘It don’t matter.’
‘You think this woman was producing something that could be described as a succubus? Or was it just his sexual fantasy?’
‘Just let me finish, lass. One night it went further. He were with her – or dreaming he was – when he experienced what’s known as… a nocturnal emission? In the middle of which, he woke up and it were… cold.’
‘I’m sorry, you mean…?’
‘Inside. Inside her, it were bloody cold. Normal sex, except entirely cold at the moment of… release. Listen, I’m not saying this to—’
‘I know.’
In her head, she heard Vaynor: All I knew was that I kept shivering because… because she was surprisingly c—’
‘And I’m not talking about a mutual thing born out of a close relationship,’ Huw said. ‘I’m not smoothing any of this up.’
‘So it’s usually a bad thing.’
‘Course it’s a bad thing. Owt unexpectedly cold is not usually a good sign in any faith. Cool is one thing, cold is summat else.’
‘So what happened next?’ Merrily asked. ‘In real life.’
‘He took my advice, I’m glad to say. Left the school. And the area. Got another job.’
‘That worked?’
‘And got married quick. I haven’t seen him since, but I assume he’s over her and whatever she were trying to do. Anyroad… that’s my succubus story, for what it’s worth. Somehow she found a way into his head and stayed there for a while.’
‘In my succubus story, I don’t personally know any of the people concerned, but…’
‘But happen you’re about to.’ Huw made a small, faintly sinister laugh. ‘It’s one of them situations where things start to come together, and you’re pulled into summat and, if you’re doing this job proper, you’re forced to keep asking questions and there might be more than one answer to the same question.’
‘Huw…’ She paused. ‘Have I become one of those women who people go to when they want something done that may not…’
‘Aye, I know.’
‘And they know that if it’s all wrong, I’ll be there to take the crap?’
‘Merrily…’ He did the laugh again. ‘You’ve always been one of them women. And this woman, who some people think can be seen as a succubus… if she doesn’t exist, that’s the last you’ll hear. If she does, she’ll happen be wondering if you exist. Then it might get interesting.’
35
Only the moon for light
IT UNLOCKED SOME sad history, that name.
Calling Sorrel back, Jane learned that Diana Portis’s father, Sam, was the son of Pamela Farrowman, a divorcee who’d kept a smallholding near the Doward village of Crocker’s Ash. Sam had worked in computers in the early years of the Internet and made quite a lot of money very quickly. He’d bought and extended the smallholding, which his mother had continued to rent and maintain on her own after her husband had left. They’d prospered.
Sam’s new girlfriend, Mona, knew how to spend his spare money, and show him a good time with it. She knew about having good times, Sorrel said, and died in the middle of one.
This particular spring night, many years ago, it was very bright, and Mona, who Sam had brought over from South Wales, had taken all her clothes off and slipped into the river, as she’d done many times before. Naked, she was part of the night, revelling in the new season.
The truth was, Sorrel said, that they were both already well stoned, and he went in after her, even though he wasn’t much of a swimmer and, in a fast flow of foliage, kept failing to reach her.
At some point, Pam Farrowman was alerted by a neighbour and called the police. The bodies were found at first light, some way down river, entangled in blown-down branches, near the rapids.
‘Oh,’ Jane said, dismayed. ‘I didn’t know about that.’
‘It happens,’ Sorrel said. ‘Not often, but those of us born in this area all know of at least one fatal incident in the Wye. A famously beautiful river. But periodically it kills.’
‘And the baby? Diana? She’d lost both parents to the river? She must’ve been seriously damaged by that.’
