Copyright © Lorraine Pickles 2016
The right of Lorraine Pickles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station,
Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-1-78545-138-6
ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-139-3
Cover design by Kevin Rylands
Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon CR0 4YY
Acknowledgements and thanks
I wish to thank, firstly my family - my husband Clive, and sons Laurence and James for their steady support and humour, and for being in my life.
I am indebted to Kathy Jones, Creator of the Glastonbury Goddess Temple, the Goddess Conference and Priestess Training, for her continued inspiration, for introducing me to Keridwen, and for encouraging me to start writing ‘The Old Crone Mysteries’ in the first place.
Thank you too, to those in the Goddess community who have waited patiently for this book to arrive. And a special thank you to Brytt-Baganz-Dickinson and all of the ‘Cerridwen Crew.’
Rev. Lorraine Pickles
Bristol
Autumn 2016
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgements and Thanks
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
A Note on the Characters
Preface
The autumn fog was dense, all enveloping. Leaving the ward had been easier than she had thought, they were watching, but not closely enough. She wished that she had put on some warm clothes, had not left in her nightdress and dressing gown, but she thought dragging her day clothes from her locker would have been noticed.
You couldn’t trust anyone, nurses or patients. She glanced back at the Gothic building that was the psychiatric hospital. The clock tower was shrouded in mist but she could just read the time on the clock, four thirty, and already it was nearly dark.
At first, she planned to go home, to be with her daughter again. She would count each day on a calendar she kept in a drawer in her locker. But days went into weeks; soon she lost all track of time, and stopped marking off the days. She would ask every day if she could see daughter, pleaded with her husband for him to bring her, but he said it was not a suitable place for her. It isn’t a suitable place for me either, she thought.
Thinking of her daughter now, her heart ached. She was sure this was for the best, this thing she had planned. Her daughter could then live her life, be free. The hospital loomed above her like a castle. She felt like Lady Shalott weaving in her room, her life full of shadows and the longing to be free.
She crossed to the rose beds, there were still some late roses in bloom. She could see their shapes in the half light. She could smell the earth, the dank earth of autumn and it beckoned her. She wanted to lie down in the earth, feel it enveloping her.
She wondered how long it would take for them to notice she had gone. The ward were having a handover meeting now, ready for the night shift. She would have to hurry. Her slippers, soaked now with the dew and an earlier rain shower, were uncomfortable on the gravel path.
She would have to go through the wood and it scared her, but not the lake, she thought only of oblivion in its depths. Slowly the path wove its way through the wood.
She was hurrying now; the trees were bearing down on her, not long, not long before she caught sight of the lake with its mists swirling around. Her nightdress was soaked now too, and she started to shiver. It would not be long now, she could wade into the lake, doubtless the reeds would grasp her, pulling her back, but she would push on, until slowly the water was up to her knees, then her waist. She closed her eyes and thought of her daughter.…
Somewhere an owl hooted. A procession of people with torches was making its way to the lake but for her it was too late…
Chapter 1
There is a place, beyond the shadows of the night, in the depths of a deep dark cave, where the Goddess Keridwen dwells, she of Death, Rebirth and Transformation.
It is from there that she moves through the darkness, to comfort and to hold those who travel beyond the veil, or those who wait for their own journey or the journey of others to begin.
To undertake such work, to live in the shadows, is indeed a wearisome thing. Keridwen was tired. She needed a holiday. Not only did she need a holiday, she felt she needed to experience what it was like to be human. Mostly she couldn’t understand why people would visit a place of pain again and again. She had to know.
Thus it was that Keridwen, Goddess of Death, Rebirth and Transformation, had decided to take a gap year. She felt drawn to Avalon, also known as the Isle of the Dead, also known as Glastonbury. She had visited there recently in a dream, she had seen the Tor rise up and the surrounding moors and marshes, she had taken flight on the back of a swan, she had felt the promise of rest and recuperation.
‘Ah,’ you say, but what was going to happen about all that work of the shadows, the comforting the sick, the dying, the bereaved? And you would be right to be concerned. Yet as the human condition remains the same, so does the Dark Mother, but sometimes it is possible for something or someone to reside in one place and yet be in another.
Thus it was on a wild wet and windy October day Keridwen made her way up Glastonbury High Street. Her strange appearance, her haunted melancholic air and her long black cloak caused little attention – it was, after all Glastonbury.
The local estate agents were less than impressed with her demands for a cottage on the foot of the Tor for a year and a day.
‘I ask you,’ the estate agent manager exclaimed in the pub afterwards to one of his colleagues. ‘Don’t you just wish you lived in a normal town? Anyway the old girl opened a large tapestry bag and produced bundles of notes. I got Young Tom to count them, and do you know it was exactly the right amount for a year’s rent – and the month’s deposit!’
Young Tom made a joke about her robbing a bank, apparently she said she had a knack of predicting the markets.’
‘Spooky!’ his colleague sipped his beer. ‘Which cottage has she rented then?’
‘You know the one we couldn’t let? It is a bit run down, supposed to have a bit of an atmosphere, that one?’
His colleague nodded. ‘That was a good bit of work then, letting that place.’
‘Yes, well, Young Tom felt a bit sorry for her, agreed to drive her up in his car, and also said he would do one or two odd jobs for her, put up some shelves, that sort of thing.’
‘She settling in then?’
‘Seems to be. Young Tom seems to have developed a bit of a soft spot for her. Says she knew all about his grandmother being ill, and who it appears, seems to have now taken a turn for the better. Young Tom said she didn’t seem to have much stuff, a few boxes seem to have arrived from somewhere, and a large cauldron which he says he struggled up the path with, it was so heavy. He said that there was so much to be sorted, he’s agreed to take his remaining leave to help her sort things out. She wants to keep chickens apparently, so he’s putting up some fences for her. He’s a good sort. In fact, I haven’t seen him looking this happy for a long time – usually it’s when he’s got some new woman on the go.’
‘Think he’s developed a bit of a thing the old girl then?’ They both laughed at the absurdity of the idea. ‘Another pint?’
Keridwen looked out dreamily at Young Tom who was chopping wood for her stove. Such a pleasure to watch him, she thought, his muscles rippling, his shirt off. He saw her, waved, and smiled. She smiled back at him, remembering the previous night. How wonderful it was, she had forgotten, to wake up next to someone, to be held in their arms. Of course, she could have shape shifted into a young girl. She thought that that was what he would have wanted, but he had seemed happy to make love to her as she was – and of course, she was rather good at sex. It was just that for a long time she hadn’t had much practice. She was normally sitting with people in the middle of the night when it had all gone terribly wrong. Not that it was sex itself that was the problem, she mused, more what people expected of it. She would try not to hurt him, she thought, she just wanted to experience it all again.
Young Tom was putting the finishing touches to some shelves he had been putting up in the living room, then he began to help Keridwen sort out her books.
‘They are all a bit weighty,’ he observed, taking them slowly out of the box. ‘Quantum Physics, Herblore, Alchemy, Existentialist Philosophy… mmm… when was the last time you read a novel?’
Keridwen shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. I read poetry. Now, lots of people write poetry when they are experiencing my energy.’ He smiled. She had such an interesting turn of phrase.
‘Crime novels’, he said, ‘that’s what you need.’
‘Why would I want to read about Death? I am on holiday.’
‘Ah well, you see, I think you would like their sense of moral absoluteness.’
‘You mean good triumphing over evil?’
‘Yes, and the fact that everything is resolved in the end.’
‘Not like life then.’
‘Sometimes like life, surely. When I come over tomorrow I’ll bring some over.’
He was as good as his word. With the autumn sun streaming in through the tiny window of the cottage, he placed a pile of paperbacks on the battered oak table. ‘Here’s a good one.’ he said. He picked one out and handed her a yellowing copy, its pages coming adrift from the spine.
‘The detective’s this old girl, no one takes her seriously ‘cos she’s old, she’s a spinster who lives a sheltered life in a small village. Yet she manages to solve all the murders. Keridwen, meet Miss Marple.’
‘Sounds ideal.’ Keridwen hitched up her skirts and took out a pair of gold rimmed glasses she had tucked into her knickers. Young Tom started to laugh.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘Best place to keep your glasses.’ She slowly turned the book over, read its back cover and glanced at the first page. ‘Looks good,’ she ventured. ‘I’ll read it tonight after…’ her dark eyes sparkled.
‘You are quite insatiable’ Young Tom smiled happily.
Keridwen left Young Tom sleeping and crept downstairs, book in hand. Keridwen slept badly. It was often in the night she was called on the most, and she had to be ready. Outside the wind moaned and in the light of the moon she could see the contours of the Tor, the soft gentle curves of the Goddess of the land. Keridwen had come far to be here. The spirits of the place whispered to her a welcome.
She opened the first page and was immediately transported down English country lanes, manor houses, vicarage tea parties, garden fetes… murder.
It was nearly dawn when she finished the novel. Making herself a cup of herbal tea she stood in the doorway of the cottage, savouring the dark woody smell of autumn.
She smiled to herself. That was what she was going to do with her gap year. She was going to solve murders. She thought she would be rather good at it.