A supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries.
For Bethan, a schoolteacher, the old superstitions woven into the social fabric of her West Wales village are primitive and distasteful, which is why she's pleased to welcome the sophisticated newcomers: London journalist Giles Freeman and his wife Claire. Surely they'll let in some fresh air?
But the Freemans are keen to absorb this different culture, a whole new way of life, rejecting the advice of an old colleague who warns them of a hard and bitter land where they've always danced on the edge of the abyss. They soon learn that this community hides an ancient, bloody, and pagan secret - one that will haunt them forever.
A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVEL
A supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries.
For Bethan, a schoolteacher, the old superstitions woven into the social fabric of her West Wales village are primitive and distasteful, which is why she's pleased to welcome the sophisticated newcomers: London journalist Giles Freeman and his wife Claire. Surely they'll let in some fresh air?
But the Freemans are keen to absorb this different culture, a whole new way of life, rejecting the advice of an old colleague who warns them of a hard and bitter land where they've always danced on the edge of the abyss. They soon learn that this community hides an ancient, bloody, and pagan secret - one that will haunt them forever.
A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVEL
eBookDigital Only (Digital Only)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
A supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries.
For Bethan, a schoolteacher, the old superstitions woven into the social fabric of her West Wales village are primitive and distasteful, which is why she's pleased to welcome the sophisticated newcomers: London journalist Giles Freeman and his wife Claire. Surely they'll let in some fresh air?
But the Freemans are keen to absorb this different culture, a whole new way of life, rejecting the advice of an old colleague who warns them of a hard and bitter land where they've always danced on the edge of the abyss. They soon learn that this community hides an ancient, bloody, and pagan secret - one that will haunt them forever.
A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVEL
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780857896889 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atlantic Books |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2013 |
| Series: | PHIL RICKMAN BACKLIST , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 500 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Phil Rickman was born in Lancashire and lives on the Welsh border where he writes and presents the book programme Phil the Shelf on BBC Radio Wales. He is the acclaimed author of Dr Dee, The Bones of Avalon, Midwinter Spirit (now a major ITV series), the Merrily Watkins Mysteries and the John Dee papers.
Visit his website at: www.philrickman.co.uk
The Bones of Avalon, The Heresy of Dr Dee and the Merrily Watkins Mysteries.
Read an Excerpt
Candlenight
By Phil Rickman
Atlantic Books Ltd
Copyright © 1991 Phil RickmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85789-688-9
CHAPTER 1
Laughter trickled after him out of the inn.
Ingley's mouth tightened and he would have turned back, but this was no time to lose his temper. In a hurry now. Knew what it was he was looking for. Could almost hear it summoning him, as if the bells were clanging in the tower.
Besides, he doubted the laughter was intended to be offensive. They were not hostile in the village – yes, all right, they insisted on speaking Welsh in public all the time, as if none of them understood anything else. But he could handle that. As long as they didn't get in his way.
"Torch," he'd demanded. "Flashlight. Do you have one I could borrow?"
"Well ..." Aled Gruffydd, the landlord, had pondered the question as he pulled a pint of beer, slow and precise as a doctor drawing a blood sample.
The big man, Morgan somebody, or somebody Morgan, had said, very deadpan, "No flashlights here, Professor. Blindfold we could find our way around this place."
"... and pissed," a man called out by the dartboard. "Blindfold and pissed."
Aled Gruffydd laid the pint reverently on a slop-mat and then produced from behind the bar a big black flashlight. "But we keep this," he said, "for the tourists. Rubber. Bounces, see."
Morgan laughed into his beer, a hollow sound.
"Thanks," Ingley said, ignoring him. "I ... my notes. And a couple of books. Left them in the church. Probably there in the morning, but I need to know." He smiled faintly. "If they aren't, I'm in trouble."
The landlord passed the rubber torch across the bar to him. "One thing, Doctor Ingley. Batteries might be running down a bit, so don't go using it until you need to. There's a good bit of moon for you, see."
"Quite. You'll have it back. Half an hour or so, yes?"
"Mind the steps now," Morgan said.
There was a short alleyway formed by the side of the inn where he'd taken a room and the ivy-covered concrete wall of an electricity substation. From where it ended at some stone steps Thomas Ingley could hear the river hissing gently, could smell a heady blend of beer and honeysuckle.
This pathway had not been built with Ingley in mind. The alley had been almost too narrow for his portly body, now the steps seemed too steep for his short legs. On all his previous visits to the church he'd gone by car to the main entrance. Hadn't known about the steps until somebody had pointed them out to him that morning. The steps clambered crookedly from the village to the church on its hillock, an ancient man-made mound rising suddenly behind the inn.
As the landlord had said, there was a moon – three parts full, but it was trapped behind the rearing church tower (medieval perpendicular, twice repaired in the nineteenth century) and there were no lights in the back of the inn to guide him up the steps. So he switched on the torch and found the beam quite steady.
Ingley had lied about leaving notes in the church. Kept everything – because you couldn't trust anybody these days – under the loose floorboard beneath his bed. He wondered what the hell he would have done if one of the regulars had offered to help him. Can't go up there on your own in the dark, Professor – break your neck, isn't it? He'd have been forced to stroll around the place, pretending to search for his documents, the tomb tantalisingly visible all the while, then have to wait for the morning to examine it. Too long to wait.
He never put anything off any more. If one had a line to pursue, strand to unravel, one should go on regardless of ritual mealtimes, social restraints, the clock by which man artificially regulated – and therefore reduced – his life.
And depressingly, with Ingley's condition, one never knew quite how much time one had left anyway.
He set off up the jagged steps.
A bat flittered across the torchbeam like an insect. Bats, like rats, were always so much smaller than one imagined.
Ingley paused halfway up the steps. Had to get his breath. Ought to rest periodically – doctor's warning. He scowled. Stood a moment in the scented silence. Did the sense of smell compensate for restricted vision in the dark? Or were the perfumes themselves simply more potent after sunset?
A sudden burst of clinking and distant clatter, than a strong voice in the night. A voice nurtured, no doubt, by the male choir and the directing of sheepdogs on windy hills.
"Professor! Dr. Ingley! Where are you, man?"
Morgan. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Snapping off the torch, he held himself very still on the steps. Or as still as one could manage when one was underexercised, over-weight and panting.
"Prof, are you all right?"
Of course I am. Go away. Go away. Go away. Thomas Ingley stayed silent and clenched his little teeth.
Another voice, speaking rapidly in Welsh, and then Morgan said "O'r gorau" OK, then – must mean that, surely. And the heavy front door of the inn closed with a thunk that sounded final.
Ingley waited a while, just to be sure, and then made his way slowly to the top of the steps. Emerging onto the plateau of the churchyard, he stopped to steady his breathing. The sky was a curious moonwashed indigo behind the rearing black tower and the squat pyramid of its spire. A dramatic and unusual site in this part of Wales, where most people worshipped in plain, stark, Victorian chapels – rigid monuments to nineteenth century Puritanism. Even the atmosphere here was of an older, less forbidding Wales. All around him was warmth and softness and musty fragrance; wild flowers grew in profusion among the graves, stones leaning this way and that, centuries deep.
Not afraid of graves. Graves he liked.
"Dyma fedd Ebenezer Watkins," the torch lit up, letters etched into eternity. "1858–1909."
Fairly recent interee. Ingley put out the light again, saving it for someone laid to rest here well over four centuries before Ebenezer Watkins. Excited by the thought, he made straight for the door at the base of the tower, straying from the narrow path by mistake and stumbling over a crooked, sunken headstone on the edge of the grass. Could fall here, smash one's skull on the edge of some outlying grave and all for nothing, all one's research. "Don't be stupid," he said aloud, but quietly. He often gave himself instructions. "Put the bloody light back on."
Followed the torchbeam to the door, which he knew would be unlocked. "A hospice, sanctuary I suppose you would say, in medieval times," Elias ap Siencyn had told him. "And today, is there not an even greater need for sanctuary?" Impressive man, ap Siencyn, strong character and strong face, contoured like the bark of an old tree. Too often these days one went to consult a minister about the history of his church to be met by a person in a soft dog collar and jeans who knew nothing of the place, claiming Today's Church was about people, not architecture.
At the merest touch the ancient door swung inwards (arched moulded doorway, eighteenth century) and the churchy atmosphere came out to him in a great hollow yawn. He was at once in the nave, eight or nine centuries or more enfolding him, cloak of ages, wonderful.
All the same, was it not taking tradition too far to have no electricity in the church, no lights, no heating?
Inside, all he could see were steep Gothic windows, translucent panes, no stained glass, only shades of mauve stained by the night sky. He knew the way now and, putting out the torch, moved briskly down the central aisle, foot-steps on stone, tock, tock, tock.
Stopped at the altar as if about to offer a prayer or to cross himself.
Hardly. Ingley didn't sneer this time, but it was close.
Table laid for God. A millennium or more of devotion, hopes and dreads heaped up here and left to go cold. Confirmed atheist, Thomas Ingley. Found the altar just about the least interesting part of the church.
He'd stopped because this was where one turned sharply left, three paces, to get to the secret core of the place, the heart of it all. Simply hadn't realised it until tonight. Been up here five times over the weekend. Missing, each time, the obvious.
Decidedly cool in the church, but Ingley was sweating in anticipation and the torch was sticky in his hand. A sweeping sound, a skittering far above him in the rafters: bats again. Then a silence in which even the flashlight switch sounded like the breach of a rifle.
Clack!
And the beam was thrown full in the face of the knight.
Like a gauntlet, Thomas Ingley thought, in challenge. Slap on one cheek, slap on the other. This is it. Lain there for centuries and nobody's given a sod who you were or what you were doing here. But you've slept long enough. Taking you on now, sir, taking you on.
The stone eyelids of the knight stayed shut. His petrified lips wore a furtive smile. His stone hands, three knuckles badly chipped, were on his breast, together in prayer. The beam of light tracked downwards, over the codpiece to the pointed feet.
"All right, friend," Thomas Ingley said, speaking aloud again, laying the torch on the effigy, taking out a notebook, felt-tip pen, his reading glasses. Nuts and bolts time. "Let's get on with it."
He made detailed notes, with small drawings and diagrams, balancing the notebook on the edge of the tomb beneath the light. He drew outlines of the patterns in the stone. He copied the inscriptions in Latin and in Welsh, at least some of which he suspected had been added later, maybe centuries after the installation of the tomb. Tomorrow, perhaps, buy a camera with a flash, do the thing properly. Tonight, just had to know.
Finally he took from his jacket pocket a retractable metal rule and very carefully measured the tomb. It was about two feet longer than the effigy. The inscription in stone identified its occupant as Sir Robert Meredydd. An obscure figure. If indeed, thought Ingley, he had ever existed.
The main inscription, he was now convinced, had been done later, the slab cemented to the side of the tomb; he could see an ancient crack where something had gone amiss, been repaired. He put away rule, notebook, pen, spectacles. Picked up his torch from the knight's armoured belly.
Got you now, friend. Yes.
For a moment, in the heat of certainty, all his principles deserted him and he wanted to tear the tomb open, take up a sledgehammer or something and smash his way in.
Involuntarily, he shouted out, "Got you!" And now he really did slap the effigy, full in its smug, smiling face.
A certain coldness spread up his arm as the slap resounded from the rafters.
Ingley stepped back, panting, shocked at himself. He felt silence swelling in the church.
The knight's cold face flickered. The torch went out.
Batteries.
Couldn't say he hadn't been warned. Too absorbed in his work to notice it growing dim. He shook the torch; a mean amber glimmer, then it died.
Mission accomplished, anyway. Retreating into the aisle, he glanced over his shoulder at the stone husk on the tomb, its dead lips luminously purpled by the colour of the night through the long windows. He would go now. He hurried down the aisle, tock, tock, tock.
As if to guide him on his way, five yards distant, at the entrance to the nave, close to the font (heptagonal, nineteenth-century replacement) a meagre flame appeared, like a taper. When he moved forward to try and see it more clearly, the small light moved with him, as if whoever held it was backing away.
"I'm sorry," Ingley said, raising his head and his voice, authoritative, irascible, producing an echo. "Who is there?"
there ... there ... ere ...
He registered, disturbed, that the little flame cast no ambience. It was like the light through a keyhole, something on the other side of the dark.
Then it went out.
Was somebody with him now in the church? Somebody who'd seen him by the tomb, who would tell them what he'd been doing? Who'd now doused his light to. ...
Blindfold we could find our way around this place ...
More likely he was simply overexcited and overtired. He stood very still, disgusted at his heart for suddenly pulsing in his chest like some squirming animal. Pills, where were his pills?
"Finished now. Leaving," he said to nobody.
ving ... ing ...
Back in the inn, that was where they were, the pills. On the dresser in his room.
"... Leaving, all right ...?"
... ight.
There was nobody. Nobody at all. He walked down the aisle to the great door, which was open a crack – had he left it like that? Thought perhaps he had, certainly didn't remember closing it. He glanced back into the church, towards the altar and the tomb, neither visible now. Saw only the tall Gothic windows tinctured in amethyst. He grasped the iron ring handle and hauled the door closed behind him, hearing the muffled echo of the latch from within.
Out then, gratefully, into the remembered warmth of a summer night, into the churchyard's terraced circle, from where one could look down on the yellow glowing of the village. Relieved, he took a great gulp of the soft night air.
The air was hard and slammed into his throat and locked there.
Ingley spun round, blinking.
No lights.
No village.
No moon.
He clutched at the stone porch and the breath came out of him like razorblades.
The circular cemetery was an Island in a dark, polluted sea. The sky was black, and something was swirling about him, plucking playfully at his jacket.
He hauled in another breath; it didn't want to come. He slapped at his jacket where the dark wind was fingering it like a pickpocket.
The breath came up like an anchor through mud. His chest seemed to creak. Cold too out here now, and damp. No sweet smells any more.
Then the true essence of the place came to him, faint at first, and shocking because ...
"Oh, Christ!" The little fat man, clamping a cupped hand over his mouth and nose, was thrown back by the stench.
Stench?
Yes, yes, vile, decaying, putrid ... as if the season had betrayed them and the scented flowers had choked and bloated on their stems. He knew that stink, had always known it. He knew it from hospital wards and his stricken mother's bedroom, from dustbins in summer and the yard behind his father's butcher's shop. And he knew, sad and angry now, that it was not as it seemed. It was within him – had to be – the blackness, the smell, the withering.
His own lights going out.
Poor old Ingley, historian, antiquary, awkward customer, abrupt sometimes, knew it – but so little time to do things, always so little time. Hang on to things. Hang on to reality – single-chamber church with tower to the West, perpendicular, wooden bell-stage, pyramidal two-tiered roof ...
Then, at first vaporous and indistinct, above a middle-distant grave, possibly the grave of Ebenezer Watkins, rose the little flame. Rose up and hovered, steamy and flickering as if in the hand of a still, dark figure, waiting. And blue this time, a cold and gaseous blue.
Ingley began to sob, and it was bitterly painful in his chest.
CHAPTER 2The corpse wore a shroud and a silly smile, and its hair was sticking out like wires. The five people standing around its coffin were gloomily dressed in black or dark brown – but they too were smiling.
Bethan was not smiling. It ought to have been comical, but it seemed all the more sinister and graphically real without the benefit of perspective. With the figures ludicrously out of proportion, big heads like grinning toffee apples on black sticks, it resembled some crude medieval engraving.
She turned over the exercise book to look at the name on the cover, and she was right. Sali Dafis, it said unevenly in capitals. She turned back to the drawing. Underneath it the childish script said in Welsh,
Old Mrs. Jones, Ty Canol, died on Friday. We all went in to see her. She was in her coffin. It was on the table. Nain said she knew Mrs. Jones would die soon because she saw the cannwyll gorff in the churchyard and it went all the way to Mrs. Jones's door.
On the facing page, another drawing showed a white gravestone against a sky crosshatched with dark-blue crayon. In the sky were a half-moon and several stars and something that looked like a bigger star hanging over the grave. Underneath this one was written,
Here is the cannwyll gorff over the grave of Mr.
Tegwyn Jones. He is sending it to fetch his wife.
"God," Bethan said and slapped the exercise book face-down on the sofa.
She'd told the children to pretend they were working for the papur bro, the community newspaper in Pontmeurig, and to write about something that had happened in their own village which they thought people ought to know about. Of the results she'd seen so far, most had been predictably innocuous. Carys Huws had written about the haymaking and how the farmers were hoping to have it finished in time to go to the Royal Welsh agricultural show. Bobi Fon had described the chairman's chair his father, the carpenter, had made for Glanmeurig District Council.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Candlenight by Phil Rickman. Copyright © 1991 Phil Rickman. Excerpted by permission of Atlantic Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
part one: PORTENTS,part two: NOT MEANT TO BE THERE,
part three: SICE,
part four: CROESO,
part five: TOILI,
part six: BLACK TEA,
part seven: THE NIGHTBIRD,
part eight: THE RED BOOK OF INGLEY,
part nine: CELTIC NIGHT,
part ten: NOS DA,
What People are Saying About This
Remarkable...something new...a nice fusion of British and American horror. Even my wife enjoyed it...and she doesn't usually like horror!
A magic, ambitious novel tight with atmosphere...I loved it.