The Chalice (67 page)

      
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. Not what he wanted
 
to hear. He stared at his trainers for a
couple of seconds.

      
'OK. Spare me two minutes Woolly. Over there. Excuse us lads.'

      
He led Woolly out of the square, away from Hughie and Gav, over
towards St Benedict's, where it was quiet.

      
'I've been at a bit of a loose end this morning,' Sam said. 'I
just walked round, looking for Diane, asking if anyone's seen her.'

      
'Diane's still missing?'
      
'Since last night.'

      
'Shit,' said Woolly. 'Like I know she's done this before, but...'

      
'I don't care if she's done it before or not. Things are
different now.'

      
'Sheesh,' Woolly said, looking hard at Sam. 'I can see they
are.'

      
'Yeah. Ain't life runny? Let me get this other thing out. I've
been talking to people. In and out of the shops. People I haven't talked to in
years. Both sides of the fence - what we thought was a fence. There's two
topics on everybody's lips. The crash, obviously. But the other one's Bowkett
and his Tor Bill. Most people, they just didn't realise. They just never
thought it could happen.'

      
'Most people want it to happen,' Woolly said. 'They've had it
with the New Age.'

      
'I reckon most people
don't
want it to happen. OK, maybe a lot do, but still less than half. Lot of folk
out there got no big feelings about magic and earth-forces and all this crap,
but they do care about freedom. And they don't want bloody Griff Daniel back.'

      
'So you stand against him. Take on your old man.'

      
'Aw, Woolly, some of these people like to go into the
countryside and shoot rabbits, watch the hunt and that. They don't want me
neither. But I reckon you'll see the size of the opposition, look, at dawn
tomorrow, when the Bishop goes up the Tor. This Christian pagan common ground
stuff, it might be crap, but if the Bishop comes out against Archer and
Bowkett...'

      
'Better I'm not there, Sam. I got a bad feeling about that.
Better I'm miles away.'

      
Sam had a major struggle with himself, at this point, not to
tell Woolly about the evil road burrowing through Bowermead, leaving the ashes
of slaughtered trees.

      
'Also,' Woolly said, 'on a personal level, this may be the
last chance I get to walk the line before it's sliced up.' He put out his hand.
'You're a good boy, Sam. I always said that. Diane could do worse.'

      
He shook Sam's hand solemnly and walked towards the church.

      
And Sam thought, with a horrible jolt.
He's not going to come back. Not ever. He's going to be found dead in
his little tent near some forgotten standing stone.

      
'Woolly!' His sense of loss compounded. 'Woolly, listen, you
gotter help us. We're all shit scared here. About Diane. About the way this
town's cracking up before our eyes. You can't just walk out on us. You can't!'

      
Verity unscrewed the top of the brown phial. 'Dr Bach's Rescue
Remedy. If you can hold his mouth open, I shall put three drops on his tongue.'

      
'Does it work on dogs?' Powys held open the car door. It was
snowing freely now.

      
'Why not?' said Verity simply. She leaned into the car from
the other side. Arnold lay on the back seat, a tartan travelling rug half over
him. Powys patted him and then, as if to give Arnold the chance to bite him,
nuzzled his face into the furry neck.

      
Arnold licked him apologetically. It was different out here.

      
'Do you know what this is?' Powys asked her.

      
'I think I do.' Verity squeezed the rubber bulb on the end of
the glass dropper, her wizened face tight with determination. They had bathed
quite a deep cut beneath the dog's ear, where he'd caught it on a nail
protruding from the door. They'd felt around his skull, finding no obvious
damage. But his breathing was disturbingly erratic.

      
'It's simply the house,' Verity said, like she was shedding a
great weight. 'All animals hate it here. A few weeks ago I had to take a very
placid little cat to the Cats' Protection League to be re-homed. She went
berserk. Attacked me.'

      
They sat in the front. The snow accumulated on the recumbent
wipers. Powys was not anxious to go back in the house.

      
'How do you stand it?'

      
'I'm a very dense person. I do not See. And lately there's
been Dr Grainger to ... help me.'
      
'Help you to cope with the dark?'
      
'I thought he was harmless. I was
very lonely, you see. And my friend Wanda Carlisle is very persuasive.'

      
'Between them they persuaded you that this tenebral therapy
nonsense was going to help you cope with what the house was throwing at you?'

      
'That's exactly it. Foolish, wasn't I? And yet when Oliver
Pixhill came and made it clear he wanted me out, Grainger was very kind.'

      
'This is Colonel Pixhill's son?'
      
She nodded. 'I thought they didn't
know each other. Dr Grainger appeared to be on my side. I thought he was
harmless, you see.'

      
'He might be harmless. His theories might be complete bollocks.
But bonding with the dark, while unlikely to cause problems in most places,
could be ... Well, in a place like this it could be close to suicidal.'

      
'I've been very stupid. Loneliness, I suppose.' Verity looked
out at the snow. 'Do you know why you're here, Mr Powys?'

      
'Joe. I'm here to collect a parcel for Juanita Carey.'

      
She turned and examined his face.

      
'It's funny,' she said. 'You don't look at all like him.'

'Hawthorn. Hops. A little
rosemary. Some other things,' Matthew Banks said.

      
'What's it for?' Juanita felt utterly limp. She'd drunk the
herbal mixture and about three pints of water, most of which she'd surely
sweated away.

      
It began in her feet, a prickly heat, like warm goose-pimples,
crept up her legs like unwelcome, flaccid hands ... and then her whole body,
instant sauna, breasts and face burning up.

      
At least the duvet lay quite comfortably, for the first time,
on her flayed thighs, to which Matthew had applied some ointment; it had stung
like hell at first, but that was preferable to the other thing which came and
came again, a hot tide four or five times in an hour and left her flung against
the headboard like a rag doll.

      
'What's happened to me? Did I just do too much too soon, or
what?'

      
'Forgive me,' Matthew said. 'But when did you last have your
period?'

      
No. No, no
no
.

      
'Missed one. Maybe two. Shock, they said. It's normal.'

      
The last transition for
a woman ...

      
'What are you suggesting?' She panicked, hitched herself up on
her elbows, 'Listen, Christ, it doesn't happen like this, it can't be, I mean,
it doesn't happen from
nothing
like
overnight?
It doesn't come at you time
and again.
 
Not ... nothing and then ...
Jesus Christ, Matthew…?'

      
'No.' He straightened the duvet. 'No. It shouldn't happen like
that.'

They were all there. All
the main ones, anyway;
Weymouth Sands,
Maiden Castle, Wolf Solent, Porius, Morwyn
,
Owen Glendower
,
A Glastonbury
Romance
- well, naturally. And the
Autobiography.
      
Hardbacks, too, several in leather.
She had them arranged in what might once have been a bread oven in the jagged
inglenook.

      
Powys shrank back. He'd never seen all the books together
before. like a reception committee.

      
Took you long enough,
boy.

      
'What?' Almost a yelp. His senses swimming, or maybe drowning.

      
'I said I'd be most honoured', Verity repeated, 'if you would
sign them for me. Later, perhaps?'

      
'I'm sorry?' He was imagining all the books spinning out of
the black hole, whizzing around his head, blown by unearthly laughter.

      
'I doubted him. Poor Major Shepherd assured me that someone
would come. He said I would know.'

      
'Um, look ... Maybe we're both in danger of over-reacting. Do
you think?'

      
The high melodrama of it might normally have made him smile.
Anywhere but here, in a room like an ancient vault, haunted by the
leather-bound spirit of Uncle Jack of blessed memory.

      
The collected works seemed to shimmer on the shelves in
triumph. Pre-ordained. In this hard, cold, uncompromising house, it all seemed
horribly pre-ordained.

      
He thought about what Diane had said. About the three of them.
George Pixhill, John Cowper Powys and Dion Fortune. The Avalonians.

      
Grey-green light from mean, leaded windows tinctured the
silver lettering on the spines of Uncle Jack's books.
      
Verity and Powys sitting once more
at the old, shadowed dining table, where the Colonel's body had lain in state.
A brown teapot and cups on it now.

      
'He came here?' Powys said.

      
'Only once while I was here. A tall and immensely striking man
with curly hair and a hooked nose. He sat… well, where you are sitting now. I
was so much in awe, having read his work, that I could not speak to him, let
alone ask for his signature on the books.'
      
A brown paper parcel lay on the
table between them.
      
'Are you going to open it?' Verity
asked.
      
'It isn't addressed to me.'

MRS J CAREY. VERY PRIVATE.

Very firmly written,
fountain pen job.
      
'Do you know what's in here,
Verity?'
      
'I'm perhaps as curious as you are,
Mr ... Joe.'
      
Powys felt on edge. The nervous
part of him needed to be well out of Meadwell by nightfall. Something was
building here, and it wasn't a new Jerusalem. Blake's
dark, Satanic mills
: in this house you could almost hear those mill
wheels grinding.

      
The other side of Glastonbury. It had always been here.

      
As had Verity. And not being
sensitive
was not necessarily a defence. She'd survived, perhaps,
because she hadn't yet been personally attacked. But now Grainger would go back
and report to whoever had set him up - and Wanda - to come on to Verity, get
inside Meadwell, and into the well itself for whatever reason.

      
This puzzled him, too. If they wanted to penetrate that well,
why not come at night - Grainger's chosen medium - go through the field, as
Powys had done, hack it open at their leisure?

      
'Can I use your phone?'

      
The telephone was in the kitchen, a lighter room because of
its white walls, one of which bulged out unpleasantly, like a corpse under a
sheet.

      
Powys called Carey and Frayne. He didn't get the answering
machine, he got Matthew Banks.

      
'She's sleeping at last,' Banks said. 'I've made her
comfortable. She shouldn't be disturbed. I shall stay with her as long as I
can.'

      
He left as severe pause.

      
'Glastonbury as we know it, Mr Powys, may be about to collapse
into a chaos unseen since the Dark Ages, but, as Juanita appears to be my
patient now, I must put her interests first. I hope you understand that.'

      
'Yes,' Powys said. 'I'm glad. If she wakes up before I'm back,
tell her everything's ... tell her I'm doing my best.'

      
Whatever that meant.

He went back to open the brown paper parcel.