The echo of crows, p.1
The Echo of Crows, page 1
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.
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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
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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?’
