The Chalice (9 page)

      
'Look,' Hecate said. 'Headlice told us to do it, right? Good
enough?'

      
'I don't believe you.'

      
'I don't give a fart what you believe.' Hecate put her face very
close to Diane's. Her teeth were thick and yellow and her breath smelled
putrid. 'Now get back on the bus, crawl into a corner and mind your own. Else
when they've finished I'm gonna hold you down while they spray your fanny black.
That
good enough?'

No getting round it; Jim
was shaken.

      
'I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I didn't see her, although
...'

      
Juanita said, 'Jim, is there something wrong with this line?'

      
Jim coughed, realising he'd been almost whispering down the
phone.
Whispering
. In his own buggering
house! And with the lights out, so no one could see him standing by the window.

      
'Thing is .. .' He drank some whisky and then put the glass on
the windowsill, pushing it behind the curtain as though she could see how full
it was. '... it was very nearly dark when the last ones went past, but I'd gone
down to the end of the garden by then to get as close as possible to the path.'

      
Standing behind a sycamore tree with plenty of leaves still on
it. Holding his breath as they went past. Hiding in his own buggering garden!

      
'I mean, they tend to be pretty skeletal, don't they, these travelling
types? So unless she's lost a few stone ...'

      
Bloody angry with himself for feeling threatened. But it was
the first time in seventeen years of living here that his sacred space had been
penetrated so blatantly by so many people. And such bloody
purposeful
people.

      
'You could have asked one of them where she was,' Juanita
said.

      
'I suppose I
could
.
But I ... it's strange, but I didn't like to speak to them. You know what these
characters are normally like, either drugged up to the eyeballs or laughing and
swigging cider and what have you, like day trippers.'
      
'Yes, I know.'

      
'Not these buggers. Could've been the SAS on night manoeuvres or
something. Quite ... well, unearthly I suppose. In fact if it hadn't been for
the way they were dressed and the glint of the rings in the ears, I'd've … I
don't know. They were just so
quiet.
Not
a buggering word between them. And you're looking at - what? - over a hundred of
them. Yes. I suppose I could quite easily have missed Diane.'

      
There was a moment's silence.

      
'I don't like the sound of this, Jim.'

      
That's why I called you. Do you think I should phone the
police in Street?'

      
'What, and have the camp raided and Diane herded into a Black
Maria? No, let's play it by ear. I'll get the car. Pick you up at the bottom of
your track in about ten minutes?'

      
'Right ho,' Jim said, relieved. 'Just ... just be careful. Don't
stop for anybody.'

      
'Jim.'

      
'Yes?'

      
'You sound scared.'
      
'Oh. No, no. Just out of breath.'

Diane stood on the deck of
the bus, nervously nibbling another carob bar. It was quiet again now. The
strange children had finished spraying the bus and gone. Was it supposed to be
a joke? She was ashamed at having let the girl menace her like that.

      
The air was cooling. She drew her woollen shawl across her
lower arms, dragged it tight around her, arms folded in the wool. She sat down
in one of the slimy vinyl seats. She'd wait about an hour and then creep
quietly away to the van, drive up to Don Moulder's farm and then down Wellhouse
Lane into the town.

      
All the buses and vans were still as wooden huts and drained of
their colours. It could have been a scene from centuries ago. The circle of
vehicles, which might just as well be carts, looked almost romantically tribal
when their squalid aspects were submerged in shadows.

      
When she'd joined the convoy it was all so noisy and jolly, with
a real sense of community. It was a kind of fun paganism more concerned with
stone circles and earth forces and ley-lines and spreading good vibes. They
were like a travelling circus. And yes, you really could imagine a new spirit
of freedom being born and nurtured in an encampment of latterday gypsies dismissed
by just about everybody as a bunch of dirty scavengers. There really had been a
glimmer of ancient light here.

      
The smell on the bus was of sweat, grease and oil with an
underlying cannabis sweetness. A misty wafer of moon rose in the grimy glass.
This was the only ancient light now.

      
And yet, as the thought passed through her mind, there was
another glimmer, some yards away. Diane froze and then, very quietly, stood up
and peered through the window into Don Moulder's field.

      
The Tor, half a mile away, was still visible, the tower entwined
in strands of moon-touched cloud. A tall figure was gazing over the fields towards
the sacred hill. Gwyn the shaman. He was still here. He must be waiting until
they were all in position on the Tor before making his ceremonial entrance.

      
The shaman was the tribal witch doctor. The man who interceded
with the spirits. Bearded Gwyn, with his aloofness and his whispered
prophecies, seemed disturbingly like the real thing. It was when Gwyn had
joined that the atmosphere had begun to change. The gradual shedding of the
happier, noisier, more casual pilgrims, leaving the quieter, more committed
ones.
      
And Diane. And Headlice.

      
She held her breath, moved back a little from the window. She
could see that Gwyn wore ... a robe or a long overcoat. His arm, the one
nearest to her, was reaching up into the mist, his hand ...

      
His hand was curled around one end of the spectral sickly moon.

      
Diane gasped. Gwyn stood tall and still, a god with the moon
in his hand. Or so it seemed.

      
Until, with a feeling of deep dread, she became aware that the
wan glimmer was from the blade of a real sickle.

      
Gwyn lowered the blade, in a slow and ceremonial fashion. She
watched the curved sliver of light swinging by his side as he strode across the
field towards the Tor.

EIGHT

Only in Glastonbury

Towers. Everywhere in
Glastonbury you were overlooked by towers.

      
Juanita hurried across High Street. As an established tradesperson,
she was permitted a reserved space on the central car park below the fortified
Norman tower of St John's.

      
Like St Michaels on the Tor, over half a mile away, the town's
principal church had its own colour chart of moods. In the sunshine of late
afternoon, it could be mellow, sometimes almost golden with its four-cornered
Gothic crown. But on a dull day it faded to grey and was outshone by the
rusty-red tiles on the roofs of the shops and houses packed around it.

      
And at night it brooded behind its walls and railings. When
you looked up, you could no longer make out the four crosses supporting the
weather vanes on the highest pinnacles and there was not that sense of the
sacred which Glastonbury Abbey always seemed to retain in its ruins, day or
night.

      
There was also a sort of concrete, walled apron where groups
of young pilgrims gathered to smoke or chant to bongos and tablas. Which seemed
fairly innocent during the day but could be rather menacing after dark

      
It was also a good place to get yourself mugged, so Juanita
very nearly screamed when a shadow moved.

      
'Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry. Did I scare you?'

      
'Not at all.' Juanita put a hand to her chest and swallowed.
'Jesus, Verity.'

      
The little woman wore a quilted body warmer and elflike velvet
hat. She carried a shopping bag, even though almost nothing was open.

      
'Nothing will happen to you here, Juanita. It's a very warm
and spiritual spot. And so
egalitarian
.
And the young people know that, and they neither threaten us nor feel threatened.'

      
'Right,' Juanita said uncertainly. Sometimes you wandered into
the church itself and it would be full of young New Age types of indeterminate
religion, hugging each other and smiling at everyone. And OK, nobody had actually
been mugged in the area recently.

      
Except, of course, by Verity, who prowled the streets like a
small cat because she was lonely when the tourist season was over and there was
nobody to stay with her.

      
'Well, I'm just going to pick up Jim Battle,' Juanita explained,
because Verity would keep you talking here for bloody ever. It was rather sad,
really, this middle-class, New Age bag lady. 'Going to the pub.'

      
'I must go too, Juanita,' Verity said surprisingly and actually
hefted her shopping bag and half turned. But then she dropped the bait neatly
behind her. 'I can't put it off forever.'

      
Oh God. 'Put what off, Verity?' Juanita was trying not sound
over-patient.

      
'Silly of me, I know. But it's the Abbot's night, you see.'

      
'Ab …? Oh. Whiting.' Juanita didn't want to hear this at all.
Some thoughts were just too damned creepy to carry around with you through
darkened streets.

      
'Poor man,' Verity said. 'He comes for comfort, and there's
nothing we can do. They'll still hang him tomorrow.'
      
Juanita shuddered, couldn't help
it. When you knew the circumstances, it wasn't very funny. Verity managed Meadwell,
Glastonbury's gloomiest guest house. Abbot Whiting
was said to have spent his last night there before he was executed in the
king's name. And then they took the Abbey apart and Avalon's dark age began.
Every year the Pixhill Trust held a formal dinner in the Abbot's honour.

      
'I wonder', Verity said wistfully, 'if he will ever be at
peace.'

      
'Well, who knows, Verity. But there's not a lot you can do
about it, is there? Look, I have to …'

      
People say that when there is spiritual unity in the town
again, when the Christians and the pagans come together in harmony...'

      
'Verity,' Juanita said gently, 'old Whiting was a Benedictine
monk with no documented pagan leanings.'

      
'But he was a
Catholic
,
my dear. Therefore a follower of the
Goddess
Mary. In destroying the Abbeys, Henry VIII was …'

      
'Yeah, I know. It was a sexist, male-domination trip.'
      
Propaganda from The Cauldron, the
town's fastest-growing goddess group. It was almost a New-Age Women's Institute
these days with even people like Verity going to the Outer Circle meetings and
lectures. And fashionable since the arrival of the actress, Dame Wanda
Carlisle, who was apparently discovering the goddess in herself. They kept
urging Juanita to join, but it seemed to have an underlying political agenda.
Anyway, the idea of an outfit led by someone calling herself Ceridwen after the
Celtic harridan goddess...

      
'You want to be careful there, Verity. That woman's on a power-trip.'

      
Verity smiled nervously; although Juanita saw only the gleam
of her tiny teeth, she could imagine all the cracks in the walnut face of
someone who seemed to have been born to be sixty and sprightly. Verity, surely,
was no latent pagan; she could be observed every Sunday toddling along to both
morning and evening services at St John's.

      
'Power,' Verity said. 'Yes. The power to heal and to help
people find their way. The Church is embracing spiritual healing again. The
Bishop is talking to the alternative worshippers .Glastonbury is becoming
whole
again. So they say.'

      
'Do they?" Juanita was slightly incredulous. 'Jesus.'
      
'If we could help the Abbot find
eternal peace after nearly five centuries, wouldn't that be wonderful?'

      
'Terrific. But if I were you I think I'd just go to sleep and
try not to think about it.'

      
'Oh no! It's my
duty
to
receive the Abbot. Who, thank God, I do not ... See .. .'