Crybbe

CHAPTER VI

Powys waited half an hour for Fay. She didn't show. He couldn't blame her if she'd just taken off somewhere for the night or possibly forever, she and Arnold, battle-scarred refugees from the Old Golden Land.

Leaving him to convince Goff that the Crybbe project was a blueprint for a small-scale Armageddon.

On impulse, he started the car and drove slowly through the town towards the Court.

The afternoon was dull and humid. The buildings bulged, as though the timber frames were contracting, squeezing the bricks into dust. And the people on the streets looked drained and zombified, as if debilitated by some organic power failure affecting the central nervous system or the blood supply.

Which made Powys think of Fay's dad, the old Canon, whose blood supply had been impeded but who now was fast becoming a symbol of the efficacy of New Age spiritual healing.

Maybe everybody here could use a prescription from Jean Wendle's Dr Chi. Maybe, in fact, Jean, the acceptable, self-questioning face of the New Age, was the person he ought to be talking to this afternoon.

But first he would find Goff and, with any luck, Andy too. Sooner or later Andy had to resurface. It seemed very unlikely, for instance, that he wouldn't be at tonight's public meeting.

Rachel had said Goff was 'besotted with Boulton-Trow'. If there was indeed a sexual element, that would mean complications. But Goff wasn't stupid.

However, even as he drove into the lane beside the church he was getting cold feet about making a direct approach to Goff, and when he arrived at the Court he saw why it was useless.

Something had changed. Something with its beginnings, perhaps, in an effluvial flickering in the eaves two nights ago.

Powys drove out of the wood, between the gateposts and, when the court came into view, he had to stop the car.

You didn't have to be psychic to experience it.

Where, before, it had worn this air of dereliction, of crumbling neglect, of seeping decay – the atmosphere which had caused Henry Kettle to record in his journal,

… the Court is a dead place, no more than a shell. I can't get anything from the Court.

– it was now a distinct and awesome presence, as if its ancient foundations had been reinforced, its Elizabethan stonework strengthened. As if it was rising triumphantly from its hollow, the old galleon finally floating free from the mud-flats.

He knew that, structurally, nothing at all had altered, that he was still looking at the building he'd first seen less than a week ago as a shambling pile of neglect.

It had simply been restored to life.

Its power supply reconnected.

Occupancy regained.

There was a glare from the rear-view mirror. The Mini was stopped in the middle of the narrow drive, blocking the path of a big, black sports car. Goff's Ferrari, headlights flashing. As Powys released the handbrake, prepared to get out of the way, the Ferrari's driver's door opened and Goff squeezed out, raising a hand.

Powys switched the engine off.

'J.M.! Where ya been?'

Goff, untypically, was in a dark double-breasted suit over a white open-necked shirt. He looked strong and, for a man of his girth, buoyantly fit.

'You're a very elusive guy, J.M. I've been calling you on the phone, putting out messages. Listen, that problem with cops… that's sorted out now?'

'I'd like to think so. Max.'

'Fucking arsehole cops can't see further than the end of their own truncheons. They got so little real crime to amuse them in these parts, they can't accept a tragic accident for what it is.'

Powys said nothing. He was pretty sure Goff must have known about him and Rachel.

'Listen,' Goff said, 'the reason I've been trying to track you down – I need you at the meeting tonight. I don't anticipate problems, I think the majority of people in Crybbe are only too glad to see the place get a new buzz. But… but I'm the first to recognise they might find me a little – how can I put this – overwhelming? Larger than life? Larger than their lives, anyhow. You, on the other hand.. . you're a downbeat kind of guy, J.M. Nobody's gonna call you flash, nobody's gonna call you weird.'

'That a compliment, Max?'

Goff laughed delightedly and clapped Powys on the shoulder. 'Just be there, J.M. I might need you.'

Powys nodded compliantly, then said casually, 'Where's Andy these days, Max?'

Goff's little eyes went watchful. 'He's around.'

'Just for the record… this whole idea, the idea of coming to Crybbe. That was Andy's, wasn't it?'

'It was mine,' Goff said coldly.

'But you did know about Andy's ancestral links with the Court?'

Dangerous ground, Powys. Watch his eyes.

Goff said, 'You got a problem with that?'

'I was just intrigued that nobody talks about it.'

'Maybe that's not yet something you advertise.' Goff went quiet, obviously thinking something over. Then he put a hand on Powys's shoulder.

'J.M., come over here.' He steered Powys into the centre of the drive, to where the Court opened out before them like an enormous pop-up book. 'Will you look at that? I mean really look.'

Powys did, and felt, uncomfortably, that the house was looking back at him.

'J.M., this was once the finest house in the county. Not that it had much competition – this part of the border's never been a wealthy area – but it was something to be envied. You can imagine what it musta been like. This introverted, taciturn region where, by tradition, survival means keeping your head down. And this guy builds a flaming palace. Well, jeez – to these people, they're looking at a Tower of Babel situation. Here's a guy who takes a pride in the place he lives, who loves this countryside, who wants to make a statement about that. They couldn't get a handle on any of it, these working farmers, these… peasants.'

Powys said, to get the name out, 'Sir Michael Wort.'

'Listen, this guy has been seriously maligned.'

'He hanged people.'

'Goddamn it, J.M., all high sheriffs hanged people.'

'In the attic?'

'Arguably more humane than public execution. But, yeah, OK, that was the other thing about him they couldn't handle. He was a scientist. And a philosopher. He wanted to know where he came from and where he was going to. He wanted to find – what's that phrase? – the active force…'

'The force above human reason which is the active principle in nature.'

'Yeah.'

'Definition of natural magic. John Dee.'

'Yeah. I got this Oxford professor who's so eminent I don't get to name him till he comes through with it, but this guy's doing a definitive paper on the collaboration between John Dee and Wort. Has access to a whole pile of hitherto unknown correspondence.'

'From the Wort side?' Powys thought of Andy's Filofax, wondered whether the professor had been given all the correspondence.

'Maybe. Yeah. Maybe, also, some of Dee's papers that came into Wort's possession, all authenticated material. This is heavy stuff, J.M. Point is, you can imagine how the people hereabouts reacted to it back in the sixteenth century?'

'Pretty much the way some of them are reacting to your ideas now, I should have thought.' Powys wondering how Dee's private notes – if that was what they were – had fallen into Wort's hands. Unless Wort had taken steps to acquire them in order to remove any proof of the collaboration.

'They drove Wort to suicide, the people around here. A witch hunt by ignorant damn peasants, threatening to burn down the Court.' Goff stood up straight, his back to his domain. 'Tell you one thing, J.M. No fucker's gonna threaten to burn me out.'

You do have this one small advantage. You haven't hanged anybody. Yet.'

Goff laughed. 'You really wanna know about this hanging stuff, doncha? Listen, how many people get the opportunity to study precisely what happens when life is extinguished? When the spirit leaves the body?'

'Doctors do. Priests do.'

Goff shook his head. 'They got other things on their minds. The doctor's trying to save the dying person, the priest's trying to comfort him or whatever else priests do, last rites kinda stuff.'

Powys saw Goff's eyes go curiously opaque.

'Only the watcher at the execution can be entirely dispassionate,' Goff said. Powys could tell he was echoing someone else. 'Only he can truly observe.'