Secret Fire

The Prayers of the Pope was the final piece on this blog. Coming soon, a new Substack site - Secret Fire - all about the return of the King and the resacralisation of the West. There'll be a YouTube channel to go with it as well.

Full details in my first post, which I hope to have up by thus time next week.

https://secretfire.substack.com

Thank you for reading and engaging with the essays, stories and retellings on this blog.

May the road rise with you always and God bless you and yours.

One love,

John

The Prayers of the Pope

Adapted from the Charles Williams poem of the same title.

*

I saw the Pope in a dream last night. He was kneeling on the ground in a bombed-out city, his arms stretched out in prayer and an expression of sorrow etched onto every line and furrow of his face. He was talking to God - pleading with Him in the sunset - and though I could not hear what he said, it was as if I had somehow got inside his head and could see the thoughts and images as they came and went like moving pictures in his mind.

Soldiers and security men stood around him in a ring. A scene of ruin and desolation surrounded them. The ground was littered with broken crosses and the shattered statues of saints and prophets. The pagan temples had been smashed up too, as well as the modern, post-Enlightenment shrines to commerce and leisure. It was as if the whole of the Western Empire, in all its aspects, had been put most hideously to the sword, hence the body bags, the ambulances shuttling to and fro, the helicopters overhead, and the dull, heavy thud of not too distant artillery. 

I could tell what Francis was thinking; feel what he was feeling - a crystal-clear awareness of the shallowness of any notion of an 'era of peace' or a 'second spring' to follow this time of tribulation. That was the loosest of loose talk, another of the many disconnects from reality that had marked the previous era. No, he thought. Our God is not that type of God. He is a suffering God. He suffers Himself and he shares and inhabits the suffering of others. He stands with the dying child and the weeping mother. He knows that everything that is lost is utterly irreplaceable. Something - someone - that was once here is now gone forever and nothing in eternity can compensate for that. Every loss is a devastation, leaving a bottomless depths of roaring emptiness in its wake. Our God is there in that abyss though. He feels its weight. He seeks it out. It is where He sets Himself to work.

Francis looked up and seemed now to be gazing directly at me, or not at me precisely, but rather at my country, Britain. I was shocked by the pain and disappointment I saw in his eyes. It hit me then just how much hope he had invested in Arthur's Kingdom - 'Logres' we had called it - and the extent to which he had believed Merlin's prophecies: the establishment of a holy realm, a light to the nations, a sacred precinct setting the tone for the whole of the Empire - both East and West - a platform, as it were, first for the Grail and then for Our Lord Himself in His Parousia. The Pope wept bitterly at the thought. That the Second Coming itself should have to be postponed was such an overwhelming thing that it was barely comprehensible. But Logres had failed. Arthur, for his achievements, had not responded to the high vocation placed upon him. His mania for conquest, his egoism, the faithlessness of his Queen, the treachery of Lancelot - all these had come together in a perfect storm of madness and war as Arthur chased Lancelot into Brittany, while Gawain, driven mad by Lancelot's accidental killing of his brother Gareth, fought his own private, bitter campaign against the King's erstwhile right-hand man. 

Into the void stepped Mordred, Arthur's bastard son, assuming the purple while his father fought in France. Bread and circuses he doled out in plenty, fuelling the baser instincts and making the British weary of the discipline and standards Logres demanded and the beauty and nobility it incarnated. The high vision was lost, Mordred's corruption grew wings, and all across the West the princes rejected the unity of Empire and focused solely on material, short-term gain. But there was no gain, no increase, only dissolution and destruction. Islam from the South and the wild men of the East bore down in a pincer movement, while the captains fought among themselves, famine grew apace, and wolves howled at night outside the rapidly emptying cities and towns.

The Roman lines along the Rhine and Danube faltered and gave way. The tribesmen from the steppes burnt and pillaged as they conquered, bodies piling high behind them. Yet the Pope prayed for them still. I saw him do exactly this. He prayed for us as well - that in our fear and desperation we do not demonise the enemy, do not begin to see him as subhuman and boast in our pride that we would never be capable of the evil acts he commits. Then I saw his body shake as a vicious spasm of pain shot through him. He bent slowly down, all the way over, until his forehead rested on the ground. Some fresh horror, on a different level to what had come before, came to him in a vision. But what was it? A chemical weapon? A nuclear assault? No. Something, in a sense, still more dreadful. The wizards that commanded the Eastern tribes had gathered together ahead of their troops The armoured columns stood waiting behind them as they knelt on the ground, drew pentagrams, lit fires, and uttered secret words that had never been spoken since before the creation. The earth cracked and split and the bones of the dead spilled out and took on the semblance of flesh and the simulacra of life. With arms stretched blindly out and mouths lolling open, the legion of the dead marched forward at the head of the barbarian forces. The Imperial armies quailed. Citizens threw up their hands and fled, their reason wholly overturned. The Pope flung himself forward and lay fully prostrate, all sense of goodness and of the God he had known totally and definitively gone. Destitution and annihilation was all he knew as his soul shattered and splintered into a million irrelevant, meaningless shards. Just as the component parts of the Empire were shearing off away from Rome and Constantinople, so in Francis's inner life all sense of coherence and pattern had vanished. As his spirit dissolved, so everything around him fell silent, as if tuning in to his spiritual death - the guns, the helicopters, the vehicles, the artillery pieces. Even the soldiers and the security men lowered their heads, grieving for the demise of the familiar and much-loved civilisation they had been born into.

Then, out of the void, unbidden and unexpected, a new and radically different scene appeared in the Pope's mind. He beheld Taliessin - Arthur's one-time Storyteller and Chief of Staff - sat at a desk in a high-ceilinged room on the Île de la Cité preparing for the defence of Paris. His eyes were tired and sunken but his expression was steely and determined. Francis had met him once, two decades before, when Taliessin had been honoured by the previous Pope for the tactical genius he had displayed in the Battle of Mons Badonicus. His hair had been blonde in those days. Now it was grey and a lot less of it too. But the lights were still on, and Francis saw and appreciated that here was one at least whose eyes were still raised to Heaven and whose spirit remained undaunted by the grand collapse unfolding around him.

Taliessin was no longer in Arthur's service. He had refused to follow him in his pursuit of Lancelot and now worked solely for the Emperor in Constantinople. There was no treachery or oath-breaking connected to this in Taliessin's mind. Both Arthur and himself, in his view, were servants of the Emperor and through the Emperor servants of God. Arthur, after Mons Badonicus, had himself been acclaimed Emperor of the West. So it was Arthur who had turned his back on the Most High and left the Empire's service and not him. That was how Taliessin saw it. He prayed constantly though that even at this desperately late hour the mists of illusion and wrath might pass from the King's mind and he might be reconciled again to his high and holy purpose. 

Taliessin served the Empire alone now, but behind his head the Pope saw a large flag of Logres pinned to the wall - a red, rearing dragon on a background of burnished gold. Small icons were dotted around too - a couple on the window sill, one on top of a pile of books, one on the inside of the door - the Transfiguration, St. Michael and the Serpent,  Our Lady of Logres, St. John of Patmos, and more. The sun was setting in Paris too. Its rays slanted down into the room and where its light directly caught the icons they seemed to shine and glow and be almost on the point of taking on a life of their own, stepping out of the picture-world and into the rough and ready milieu of affairs, which Taliessin was doing his best, with very limited resources, to mould and shape according to the will of God.

The door swung open and a group of people entered the room, six men and six women. Like Taliessin, they were all in uniform and they stood around the desk in a horseshoe shape, the women to his left and the men to his right. Taliessin rose and greeted them with an expressive, somewhat expansive gesture, as if he was embracing them, maybe for the last time. Then he spoke:

'Friends. You will remember how our Company began. After Mons Badonicus, when the Western Empire was reborn in Logres, we believed we were on the threshold of a golden age and that Arthur was another Constantine, a mighty Christian monarch and a bearer of the sacred flame. So he was, to a great extent. Gaul, Hispania and Italia rallied to him in the days of his glory but, as we know, he has turned his power against those values now and has lost his imaginative hold over those lands and over Logres itself. At the moment when he started to lust after Rome, to dream of military conquest, yea, on that very night, three of us met under the eaves of Canterbury Cathedral and we talked until dawn and in the clarity of that sunrise this Company was born. Placing faith in princes, we perceived - even the noblest - is a fool's game. We saw that the West was fractured at a much more foundational level. The stories we told ourselves as a people had lost their force. There was lip service to tradition but nothing more - no central narrative, no commanding myth to bind us together and propel us forward. Evil surged into the gap, in the souls of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere first, then down into Logres and the whole Western Empire. We refused the temptation of short-term, knee-jerk reactions and built from the bottom - finding new ways of telling the one transformative story - the truth, power and grace of the Logos - and of embedding that truth in ourselves and radiating it out to the world.

'Our poems, our stories, our songs, our art, our architecture - everything we created this past seven years has had this aim of renewal in view. We have preserved, I believe, the inner essence of the West and given future generations much to build on. But that renewal will occur after the outer collapse now at hand. Physical war is nigh. Our mission has been accomplished and the time is right to dissolve our bonds and disband our Company.'

There was silence for a while. Then one of the women, whose name was Anastasia, said, 'My Lord. 'Everything you say is true and all things naturally run their course. But be not over-hasty, I pray. Whatever happens in this war, we know to our cost that the Second Coming has already been postponed. So the world will keep turning, no matter what, and our work should carry on likewise, for those who survive will have need of it and need of us as well. I humbly submit that our task is not yet accomplished and that more is still required of us.'

Taliessin bowed his head and reflected. 'Yes, Anastasia,' he replied. 'Your words ring true. Our story is not yet completed. Let our mission and vocation continue.' Then he took down the flag of Logres from the wall, laid it out on the desk and cut it with bis pocket-knife into thirteen pieces. He handed them out one by one to each of the Companions and kept the thirteenth for himself. 

'The pressures and responsibilities of war have weighed heavily on me, I have let pessimism and even fatalism take an uncharacteristic hold. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Grant that we all win through, and let us solemnly swear hat we will meet again once this war is won and knit back together the fragments of this flag.'

They knelt and gave each other their hands and swore a solemn vow and the Pope was hugely heartened. He hauled himself back up until he was once more kneeling on the pock-marked gravel. He thanked God for the witness of the faithful few and asked Him that their dedication to the high values might continue through this time of purification and extend forward far into the future.

Then he beheld a greater wonder still. A bright light dawned in his mind. The men around him sensed it, lifting their heads and looking at him, alert and focused again, sensing that something important was about to happen. The light, the Pope realised, was coming from a long way away - from the island of Sarras, the land of the Trinity far to the West - so far West that it was to all intents snd purposes East.

He saw the three leaders who had remained unaccounted for after the Grail Quest had failed - Galahad, Percivale, and Bors. They were lying asleep on the deck of a ship. The sky was grey but with hints of rose and pink. Dawn was not far off. The ship was in a harbour in the middle of a semi-circular bay. Francis saw rocks and crags at either end and battlements and watch towers on top with small white shapes flying around them. Then, all together and all at once, the shapes cried out - the dawn chorus of a colony of gulls - wheeling and circling not just around the weatherbeaten, archaic crags but what the Pope could now see in the growing light as the spires, domes, towers and turrets of a great city built into the mountains.

Bells rang out - slowly and deliberately. The sun peeped over the rim of the horizon and gently lit the deck where the sleepers lay. Francis saw the Grail right there in the midst of them, ringed around by their sleeping forms. Its colour changed continually in the first rays of the sun - from gold to silver to white to blue to purple to green and back to gold. It had been a long night in Sarras, one year and one day to be exact - a night of silence, penance and deep reparation - and now it was ended. The three lords awoke and the sun spilled forth fully onto the harbour. The bells rang out gladly now, resounding and rebounding in the air, as Galahad picked up the Grail and carried it tenderly as they stepped off the ship and onto the quay. saints and angels - the Pope could see them all - watching on as the trio made their way through the city's winding streets, up the Hill of Churches to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity at the top. Prester John - Priest, Prophet and King - was waiting for them at the High Altar. Galahad handed him the Grail and together they sung the High Mass while Percivale and Bors served as deacons. 

As they sang the Kyrie the Pope saw and felt Christ Himself, dressed in white with a great light around Him, descend into the depths of his heart and and pull him out of the black night of sorrow and back into the sunlit lands of faith, hope and possibility. And as the Lord did this, He did it to the world as well. Francis rose purposefully to his feet and in that moment the legion of the dead stopped in their tracks and disappeared, their bones returning instantly to their graves. The sorcerers trembled with foreboding while Taliessin and the Imperial captains rejoiced. The forces of Islam to the South felt the change too. The Muslim guns fell silent and their troops absorbed themselves in prayer in their makeshift battlefield mosques.

I saw the Pope walking towards a squat, still intact building with a cross etched in the stone above the doorway. His security men were lighting candles on an altar while a young boy in ragged clothes brought out a chalice and ciborium. Francis began a Low Mass and between the Kyrie and the Gloria he paused and blessed the Lord, thanking him for the mercy He had shown and the great gift he had given - the staying of evil's hand and more time for the world to turn back to the light of Sarras. For all the darkening of the Empire, and the loss of Logres and the hiding of the High Prince, Francis felt the Empire revive in a live hope of the Sacred City.

The Dreams of Magnus Maximus

Adapted from The Dream of Macsen Wledig in The Mabinogion

*

Magnus Maximus reigned as master of the Western Roman Empire in the mid-380s. One summer's day he went out hunting with his lieutenants in the hills to the north of Rome. It was a successful but tiring business and in the afternoon the Emperor grew weary. He lay down to rest beside a sparkling stream. He had a dream and in that dream he was walking on his own, following the stream until it joined a mighty river, which curved and twisted through a country of rocks and boulders and fallen temples to the old gods. He came to the sea and saw on the shore a glittering city of towers and spires with a wide harbour and a thousand ships lined up along it, all looking splendid in the sunlight - banners streaming, heraldic beasts emblazoned on the sails, and shields of all colours and designs blazing out from the bulwarks.

One ship in the middle of the harbour stood out above the rest. It shone like silver, and Magnus saw a golden orb and sceptre imprinted on the it's white sail. 'That's the one for me,' he thought, so he walked through the city, down to the harbour and onto the ship. As soon as he was onboard it moved off of its own volition and nine days and nine nights later pulled in to land. Magnus stepped out onto a land of mist and rain, shot through with bursts of brilliant sunshine. He walked and walked until he came to a mountain higher than any he had seen before. He climbed to the top and spied a noble castle in a nearby valley. He came down from the peak, walked through the valley, passed through the castle's courtyard and found himself in a magnificent hall with jewelled pillars and a ceiling of solid gold with a dais at the far end. On the left of this dais sat two young men with auburn hair, clad in black satin and absorbed in a game of chess. Magnus observed how finely wrought the pieces were. 'The work not just of a craftsman,' he said to himself, 'but an artist.' Then, on the other side of the dais, he saw a muscular, weatherbeaten man sat at a little table, holding a chisel and lathe and engaged in the work of carving out a truly royal-looking King.

The Emperor's eyes did not stay on him long, however. He wondered how he had not noticed her as soon as he came in - the radiant, wonderful woman sat facing the carver. She gathered up the shavings in her hands as he worked, but when she saw Magnus she gave a shout of joy and ran down the steps and across the marble floor to greet him. He felt a shock of recognition. It was like coming home - like he had always known her. They wrapped their arms around each other and were about to kiss when he was jolted out of his dream by his lieutenants, who were prodding him with sticks and trying to wake him up. 'You must hurry, Sire,' they said. 'You have slept long and deeply and have been well nigh impossible to awaken. It is late-afternoon and matters of state await you. You must return at once or you will miss your appointments.' But Magnus cared no more about matters of state or appointments. He returned to the city out of duty but from that day forth all his direction and focus was directed towards the woman in the jewelled hall. He had to find her; had to be with her. But how? What to do? Where and how to start?

He tried the conventional way first, sending messengers to the four corners of the Empire in search of the castle and the lady. But they all had nothing to report. After a year and a day and with the ship of state listing and nobles and generals grumbling, Maxentius called his friend, Constantius, who was a Christian priest, to his side. 'I should have confided in you straightaway' he said, 'but I felt bound by the official channels and the time-honoured ways. The world is changing though. The old ways have lost their force. They don't make things happen any more. Call down your Holy Spirit then, I beg you, and ask him to show us the way to the woman of my dream.'

Constantius went away and prayed and when he came back he said, 'Let us go to the spot where you had your dream.' So Magnus took him to the bank of the stream. Constantius entered deeply into silence, and the Holy Spirit came to him in a vision and showed him the secret path he needed to take. 'Return to the city,' he told the Emperor. 'Await me there.' Then he followed the hidden track the Spirit had revealed to him - exactly the same way Magnus had walked, with exactly the same landmarks and an identical sequence of events: the stream, the river, the glittering city, the ship, and the mist-strewn land at the end of the voyage. Finally, he arrived at the castle. He knew what and whom he would find there, and so he did - the chess-playing youths, the weatherbeaten carver, and the woman of the Emperor's dream. 

She dod not rise to greet him. She looked at him with surprise. But when he said, 'Hail, Empress of Rome,' she stood up and replied, 'Sir, I know not that title. I am Elen, daughter of Eudaf the Maker, lord of this castle. I am also sister to Adiyon and Kyneon, the chess-players yonder. Why then do you call me Empress of Rome?'

'The Emperor Magnus met you in a dream and ever since he has thought of nothing else and will know no peace until you consent to be his bride and sit beside him on the Roman throne.'

'Tell him that if his love is as great as you say then he needs must come in person. With his army and navy too. Sixteen years ago the wild men of the North poured down over the Wall and laid Britannia waste. The eagles of Rome departed and now Beli the tyrant has almost conquered all. Our days in this fair house are numbered. Beli's forces harass us from the East while Hibernian pirates ravage our shores from the West. Tell the Emperor to come with all speed and bring the light of Rome back to this island. We have been cut off too long.'

So Constantius returned to Rome and Magnus rejoiced at his news. He gathered an army and marched north through Italy and Gaul. His fleet sailed west, through the Pillars of Hercules, then up to the North and the narrow straits that separate Britannia from Gaul. Magnus crossed the sea. Once on land he gave battle to Beli. His victory was swift and Britain was restored to Roman rule. His ships, meanwhile, harried the pirate vessels and sent them scuttling back to their Irish ports. His victory assured, Magnus made his way in triumph to Eudaf's castle, where Elen awaited him. There was joy unbounded at their meeting and they were married that afternoon. The next day Constantius arrived unexpectedly from Rome to declare that Gratianus, a high-ranking general, had assumed the purple and declared Magnus persona non grata. The provinces of the East had gone over to him en masse and he was already preparing a campaign to conquer the West and finish with Magnus once and for all. 

So Magnus handed over the rulership of Britain to his wife while he busied himself strengthening the other two provinces he controlled - Gaul and Hispania. Elen ordered the building of three mighty castles in the West of the island - in Caernarfon, close to her family home, in Caerleon and in Caermarthen. She then constructed a network of roads which connected these castles to the old Roman cities of Londinium and Verulanium in the South and Deva and Eboracum in the North. She was dubbed 'Elen of the Ways' by the common people for this and as 'Elen of the Hosts' after she raised a huge standing army which stood ready to be deployed as soon as Magnus gave the word.

After seven years Magnus did give the word and his men pushed Gratianus all the way back to Rome. He laid siege to the city for two years but was unable to take it. He sent a messenger to Elen in Caernarfon for advice and the messenger returned with her chess-playing brothers, Adeon and Cyneon. Their strategic guile unlocked the city for Magnus and the men of Britain gave him the victory. He journeyed in triumph to Byzantium then, and the city of Constantine acclaimed him as master of all the Empire, both East and West. For ten years the glory of Rome shone forth over the world as in the days of Trajan and Augustus. On the first anniversary of his reconquest, Magnus stood on top of the Capitoline Hill and declared that from henceforth he would be known as Aeneas. He had had another dream, he said, where he had seen himself as father of an endless line of kings and the instigator of a never-ending Roman golden age. But his second dream was not as prophetic as his first - not in the short term at least.

After Aeneas's death, such was the pressure of the barbarian attacks and the disruption caused by squabbling generals that his son, Constantine, was forced to retreat to Britain.The island was then stripped of its garrison by a rival emperor whose only concern was the defence of Rome. The Empire was once again divided and Britain cut off, but Constantine rallied the men of the land and the Saxons, Picts and Scots were successfully held off for thirty years. But Constantine was betrayed and killed by the traitor Vortigern and Britannia fell into ruin. His two young sons, Uther and Ambrosius, were smuggled away by his supporters to the mountains of North Wales, to the ancestral lands of their grandmother. From there, in time, Ambrosius led a counter-attack which pushed the invaders back to the Eastern fringes. Uther fell in battle but he left behind a son, Artorius, who succeeded Ambrosius as High King and after his crushing victory over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus was proclaimed Emperor of the West by his troops.

For the twenty-five years of Artorius's reign Britain was the Empire in the West. But after his death the land slipped back into sleep and no man has donned the purple there from that day to this. It is said by many that Artorius sleeps with the sleeping land - the Sleeping Lord, they call him. But there are others who say something different, something not recorded in any of the countless stories written about him - that he fathered a child in secret and that a line of hidden kings continues to this day. When the time is right, so they say, the heir of Artorius will appear, the Empire will be restored, and the second dream of Magnus Maximus will be seen by everyone as just as prophetic and heaven-sent as his first.

The Breaking of St. Peter's Chains

 

'Satan's Soldiers', they called them, though Peter thought 'brownshirts' more apt. That's all they were really - hired thugs, pound-shop Hitler's. It was laughable in truth but Peter didn't feel much like laughing, not with two of them dragging him to the cells and a resistance movement in Liverpool expecting his arrival and gradually, inevitably, grasping why he hadn't come. 

The streetlights and the slanting rain combined to give the familiar buildings - Central Library and the Midland Hotel in particular - an eerie, sinister glow. Peter actually knew the men who were hauling him off - born and bred Mancs like himself - Mark Cassidy and Jason Bell. He had even worked with them a couple of times over the years - here and there, around and about - in supermarkets and building sites and what have you. He had done them a good turn once or twice. But they didn't remember. They were too drunk on power. They tried a bit of persuasion on him. "All you've got to do is renounce Christ," said Bell. "Even if you don't agree just say it with your mouth. That's what all the Christians are doing. You'll get your life back mate. All the perks as well."

"Two words'll do it," Cassidy told him. "'Fuck Christ.' Or if you don't want to swear then 'I renounce Christ.' That's it. Simps."

"It's not about the swearing," replied Peter. "You know that."

For some members of the public though, it definitely was about the swearing. Great crowds of them came surging past - spliffs in one hand, bottles and cans in the other - on their way to venerate the new statue of Satan. They curled their lips as they saw Peter being led away.

"Fuckin' knobshanks," growled one.

"Christian cunt" snapped another.

They said this because Christianity was the only crime one could be guilty of now. Everything else was permitted.

They took him to Bootle Street Police Station, threw him in the cells, chained him to the wall and left him there. Peter looked around. The room was lit - somewhat erratically - by a flickering bulb, loosely attached to the ceiling. The walls and floor were made of pock-marked stone. Lots of folk were there, bound to the wall as he was, spaced out evenly in a rectangle around the room. His neck had been chained as well as his arms, so he wasn't able to clock everyone present, but he recognised one or two from church, a few beggars, a couple of known alcoholics, and a handful others who he had seen around for years but had always presumed were rationalist, atheist types. Yet they must have been Christians all along, or had recently become Christians, otherwise they wouldn't have been here. After all, there was no other crime now.

"Covid Marshals!" shouted a wild-eyed man sat opposite. "Bloody Covid Marshals! That's when it started. First they came for the anti-vaxxers, then when that died down they came for us. It was always about us, wannit? It was the Christians they were after from the start. Now they say there'll be human sacrifices up there at Albert Square. Kids as well. Bloody awful it is."

Peter nodded and made eye-contact, acknowledging the man's presence and showing that he sympathised. But did he agree? He wasn't sure, and that was why he kept mum. He didn't want to get into the whys and wherefores of it all. It was a distraction. Not the point. So what was the point? Peter lowered his gaze. Someone, one of the 'soldiers' probably, had left a copy of the Manchester Evening News in the middle of the floor, front page up, so that everyone could see the picture and read the headline: 

THE GREAT LIBERATION - SATAN SPEAKS TONIGHT IN ALBERT SQUARE.

There was a colour photo of the hideous twenty-foot statue they had put up in the Square. Peter looked away. If his eyes rested on that picture for more than a second it would rot and corrode his soul as it had done so many others. He focused on the lightbulb and reflected on the situation. He hadn't realised that it was a speaking statue. These monstrosities had sprang up in all the countries where the Satanic Revolution had taken root - Canada most notably, parts of the US as well, and places in Europe too. The guy was right then. Human sacrifice had followed in all those places. But this was the first speaking statue, as far as Peter knew, that they had erected in Britain. What a disgrace that it should be in Manchester too! He closed his eyes and bowed his head. He felt like weeping, but the tears wouldn't come. Everything in him was hard - too hard for crying - all gnarled and twisted - a tight, constricted ball of frustration and wrath.

How had it come to this? London had fallen a fortnight ago, Manchester just yesterday. That was why he had been arrested. He had been tagged as a prominent Christian for a while, and they had started the round-up in earnest once they'd seized the Town Hall. Yes, he could have got away sooner, but he had never been a quitter. Right until the end he had believed that the city would hold. But it hadn't, and now he was banged up, cut off from the resistance in Liverpool and Dublin. He was the top man too, so they'd struggle without him, just as he faced full-spectrum insignificance without them.

The odd thing was though, that even if he had told the Satanists about his network, they probably wouldn't have been bothered. It was the Christian faith itself that bugged them, especially the practice of that faith - people saying prayers, going to church, etc. An old woman of ninety, fingering her Rosary, beads was as much, if not more, of a threat than Peter and his band, with all their political and military know-how. He had been nicked because he was a practicing Christian, not because he was suspected of plotting a counter-coup. Unlike the Nazis and Soviets of old, these weirdos didn't seem to care that capable people were agitating against them. It was as if that sort of thing didn't matter, like they didn't need to act, that the wild tide of inebriation they were riding would scoop up all the rebels and reactionaries and smash them to pieces. All they had to do was keep upping the ante and whipping up the frenzy. Satan would do the rest, and so far this strategy - if that was what it was - had been 100% successful.

From a rational point of view, none of it made sense. But maybe that was the point? Rationalism was so 'yesterday' now. It astonished Peter the scale of the volte face which had taken place in barely over twenty years. Back in the day, the enemies of the Church would often say that they wanted to believe in God but couldn't because there was no scientific proof. Now they had no trouble believing in God but were so consumed with hatred towards Him that they had chosen His opposite as their champion.

The Satanists had been shrewd in their messaging. They had upended the traditional narrative of God v. the Devil and totally captured the Zeitgeist. That was what this 'Great Liberation' trope was all about. Satan, so the story went, was the true master and shaper of the world. His energy, his ruthlessness, his amoral dynamism - these were the powers which set the stars in motion and brought growth and vitality to the Earth and everything on it. Our vocation, as human beings, is to tap into these potencies - to align ourselves with them - and thereby share in Satan's fecundity and gain dominion over our lives and circumstances, and over others too should we so wish.

Satan is stronger, they claimed, than the entity we mistakenly call 'God'. It wasn't through any lack of strength that he fell from Heaven but through a piece of low-grade trickery - vague and unspecified - from the renegade angel Yahweh. This dubious figure then usurped his throne, and the maker of the universe had to descend to the lowest depths of his creation and bide his time, waiting for Yahweh's empire of lies to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Yahweh had even concocted a myth that his lieutenant, Michael, had worsted Satan in single combat and physically flung him into Hell. The reverse was actually the case. Satan had overcome Michael, but at that time he wasn't able to match Yahweh's cunning, so might and force alone were not enough for him to regain Heaven. But now the wheel had come full-circle and the long-awaited assault on the High Places was nigh. Earth was falling, Heaven was next. 'Thy will be done,' as the Satanic prayer puts it, 'in Heaven as on Earth.'

Peter opened his eyes. What a load of bollocks it was! An opportunistic power-grab that a child could see through. Yet the movement was gaining massive traction and the whole world was running after Old Nick now. It had filled a gap somehow - given people the release and ecstasy that they craved and that neither Church nor State had been able to provide.

Soon, however, they would start to fight and kill each other. Unbridled licence only goes so far. Then, mused Peter, we'll see a tyranny unparalleled in history - Yeats's 'rough beast' ruling the roost with rods of iron and fists of steel. What could stop the juggernaut? "Only prayer," said a voice. Who had spoken? Peter looked around. The voice was external. Definitely. It was a man's voice and had come from somewhere in the room. But where? None of his colleagues had spoken. He could tell that straightaway. They looked too beaten-down and tired - even the sparky fellow opposite - for either speech or prayer to make their mark.

Peter tried to obey. He wanted to pray, needed to pray - he knew the voice was right - yet no prayer would come. He was in a place beyond words now - a bitter bed of grief and mourning - and it was tears that came instead. All those lovely memories and the loss of so much that was good and true and beautiful. It was too much for him. Not so long ago, he recalled, there had been candles and incense and chasubles, and now there was nothing, with the great Manchester churches - The Holy Name, the Hidden Gem, St. Chad's - shuttered up and silent. The Faith had been crucified and was lying in its grave and he, Peter, had backed the wrong horse, lunging with his sword at the High Priest's servant and lopping off his ear. To what effect? Absolutely none. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

He sobbed like a child. He wasn't a soldier or a politico or a 'man about town' any more. He was a vulnerable little boy again - the same unheard, unseen kid he had been when he was ten years old - stymied by shame, thwarted by trauma, fighting a one-boy war against a blind, mechanistic world that walled his soul and spirit in.

His eyes misted up. It seemed brighter on his right side than his left for some reason. He turned his head and was met with an astonishing blend of colours - red, gold and purple, shot through with streaks of silver. He rubbed his eyes. The colours were still there, brighter and sharper. Hold on a minute! How did I do that? How did I lift my hand? Where are the chains? He looked down. There they were on the ground, cut into shards. "Get up," said a voice, the same voice he had heard before. He stood up. The colours began to take shape. In front of him was a giant - or an angel, maybe - a great being of light at any rate, some seven or eight feet tall. The figure glowed and throbbed with pure vitality and strength. As he gazed upon him, Peter felt those qualities pouring into him as well. Where there had been disintegration, now there was focus and resolve. Where Satan had scattered and fragmented his mind, he sensed an ancient, long-slumbering source of power and direction surging up inside. 

Then he saw the sword - blade of gold and edge of fire. The Presence before him held it point-down, from what Peter now saw was his right hand. It pointed to the chains, and right there and then Peter knew who his visitor was - St. Michael the Archangel - and saw and felt the absurdity of that Satanic fable about the Devil giving him a whipping. It couldn't be done. Wasn't possible. Only God Himself could best this being and that would never happen as Michael and God were so closely aligned that conflict between them was unthinkable. Then, at last, Peter was able to see his face. The eyes were molten brass and the hair like running flame. "Come," he said. "Follow me."

Joy abounded in Peter's heart yet he felt himself strangely reluctant to leave. "What about these?" he asked, gesturing towards his fellows, none of whom appeared to be witnessing anything out of the ordinary. "I can't just leave them."

"You're leaving them with God," replied the angel. "He will look after them. He is here now. If you had faith you would see that. But come. You must go to Liverpool."

The cell door was already open. Michael passed through and Peter followed. He turned to look back on his comrades. All of them were quiet. All of them awake. But the stress had gone from their faces and Peter discerned a certain peace and serenity there instead. A hint of triumph even. That was good. So good. He left them and caught up with the angel who had glided down the corridor ahead of him. 

Michael navigated the rabbit-warren of passages with ease. None of the guards or 'soldiers' could see them - they were invisible - yet their expressions were tense, as if they sensed that somewhere, somehow - quite near at hand - something was going wrong. Fine, thought Peter. Let the dead bury their dead.

Soon they were outside. The rain had stopped and there was a stiff breeze. Scraps of cloud scudded through the sky like tattered ribbons  A few stars peeped out. Michael led him around the side of the Library towards St. Peter's Square and the top of Oxford Street. There was the smell of smoke and a dreadful noise of roaring and bellowing from Albert Square on the other side of the civic buildings. But Oxford Street was quiet. Little groups of 'brownshirts' hung around smoking and laughing in shop doorways. They had had an easy night of it. No need to drag and compel folk to abase themselves before the statue. Punters had gone of their own volition. Normally Peter felt nothing but disdain for these types - 'Satan's Soldiers' and all that. But not now. Not with the angel beside him. He saw them with the eyes of compassion instead - a new experience for Peter - fallen men and women like himself, vulnerable and fragile, who had been taken in by a grand deception. Same for those in Albert Square. It could so easily have been himself. Should have been really. He looked back on his life as he walked and realised that he had sone absolutely nothing to deserve being sprung from prison like this. His faith had lacked substance. It had all been about aesthetics. That was what he was fighting for. If the Antichrist had come to town with a basket of fine vestments, Peter would have snapped his hand off. There but for the grace of God, etc.

"Don't let self-hate find a foothold," said Michael, reading his mind. "Remember the paralytic. Jesus first forgives him then sets him free to march forward into the future. So it is with you. God shows you your past, you see it, you repent, then He blesses you and sends you on your mission. So be of good heart. Your fight is a just one."

They bore right at the Java coffee house, up the concrete hill that led to Oxford Road Station. As they left the main road, Peter saw flames leaping high into the sky, about a quarter of a mile away. That's the Holy Name, he thought. That was the church he had gone to for years and where both his kids had been baptised. It surprised him that he didn't feel more angry. He wasn't even sad. In fact he almost felt glad. Why was this? What was happening was horrific, yes, but as he watched the inferno, Peter had a strong sense that everything that was going on was somehow as it should be, that God was in command, and that the Holy Name was this very night fulfilling her vocation, sharing in the passion of Christ so that one day, maybe very soon, she would rise with Him in glory.

The angel tugged his sleeve and ushered him up the hill. The touch of his hand was like a draught of cool, refreshing water. At the top, Michael stopped at the row of ticket machines, stooped down and pushed some buttons on the screen. Peter looked on, amazed at the practicality of it all. "I'll leave the receipt in the machine," said Michael. "You won't need it." 

He turned and handed Peter his ticket. There were two of them. "You've given me a return," said Peter. But the angel was gone and the tannoy was announcing his train, the 2141 to Lime Street. It was on its way from Piccadilly, almost here now. Peter punched his ticket through the barrier and dashed across to Platform 2. There it was. He hopped on, sat down, and spent the forty-five minute journey in silent prayer for the saints and heroes he had left behind at Bootle Street. "Only prayer," the angel had said. That was the best way, Peter felt - the only way even - to begin his second life.