"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 04 - The Druid Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

The Reverend Philip Owen swallowed, experienced a sudden rush of guilt. The old man, whoever he was, spoke the truth. To deny it would be to lie in the eyes of his own God as well as their gods.

The Bishop . . . the vicar,' the curate found himself blustering like a guilty schoolboy discovered in an empty common room with a cigarette smouldering in an ashtray. Protests only confirmed his guilt in the eyes of his captors.

'You plead for mercy but your pleas are in vain,' Alda snarled and in one movement tossed the blazing branch amongst the brushwood around the Wicker Man's feet. 'The guilt of your fellows is also your guilt. Now you die and so will they if they do not heed this warning!'

Philip Owen closed his eyes, heard the crackling and spitting of dry kindling, smelled the woody smoke drifting up from beneath him. He coughed, retched, tasted bile; looked out again through those eyeholes and saw the gathering half hidden by the swirling smoke. A noise reached his ears, a monotonous chanting sound like some kind of tuneless psalm.

One last determined effort at self-survival, but his muscles refused to respond. It was as though his whole body had been drugged, leaving only his mind free to suffer the tortures of fire. A brief moment of sheer panic and after that he did not fight against the inevitable again. It was becoming unbearably hot in here and no longer could he see outside. His eyes streamed and smarted but he was unable to close them.

'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ... * He wondered if he spoke

aloud but it was impossible to tell because that chanting outside had risen to a deafening crescendo. A shout, a word or a name that was recognisable: 'Edda . . . Edda . . . Edda

Now he was clinging to a frail thread of life, fighting to stay conscious even though he yearned for the peace of death. Screaming because his feet were beginning to smoulder, smelling his own roasting flesh and being unable to vomit.

Then leaping flames and indescribable agony, the smoky orange blackness enveloping him as his cassock caught fire and inferno roared its wrath like an enraged dragon.

And somewhere, far away, the Oke Priests were still chanting.

'Edda . . . Edda . . . Edda , . , '










CHAPTER TWO



BISHOP BOYCE wanted to vomit at the first opportunity. Vicar Mannering had done so openly in St Monica's churchyard and the gathering of police officers had not even seemed to notice. Yet, Boyce told himself, it might be all right for a mere vicar to spew in public, his complexion a greenish hue, but it was not becoming for a bishop, the head of the diocese. He gulped, tasted the sharp acrid tang of bile in his throat, and determined not to look again at that charred, virtually unrecognisable thing that lay in an area of scorched grass between two tombstones. The one on the right, that once-impressive monument to Sir Henry Grayne, looked as though somebody had attempted to remove the lush growth of moss from the marble with a blowtorch. They had only succeeded in rendering it to a blackened stump like a giant decayed tooth.

'You're sure this is . . . ' the Detective Inspector almost said, '"was" ... the Reverend Owen?'

'It's the curate, all right/ Boyce turned away, took a deep breath and hoped that he wouldn't throw up. 'I recognise the skull formation . . . also that ring he's wearing.' The former was a lie; no, more of a guess. The latter was true. At least, Owen always wore a signet ring.

'Well, we'll have to leave the CID chaps to scour this churchyard.' The police officer stroked a neat pencil moustache and was only too willing to retire to the local station and commence his written report. Anything to get away from that!

'I suppose . . . * Boyce drew a deep breath and was well aware how his heart was pounding inside his fleshy chest, 'I suppose you've no idea . . . I mean, how could a body just become incinerated like that?'

'I've no idea,' Detective Inspector Groome spoke abruptly. 'There does not appear to have been any fire except that which consumed the body. Although the undergrowth and that adjoining tomb are scorched, they aren't burned.^

'Perhaps he was struck by lightning,' Boyce offered, habitually extending his tongue and licking a small wart which grew on his thick lower lip.

'There was no storm last night.'