The Chalice

ELEVEN

'What the buggering hell's going on here?'

It might have been the erratic candlelight making Jim Battle appear to quiver. Or it might – Juanita couldn't be sure – have been real, Jim trembling not, of course, with fear but with barely suppressed anger at these bloody pagan scroungers taking over his beloved Tor.

What the buggering hell's going on here? Juanita couldn't believe he'd said that. It was just so Jim, but so completely out of context. Standing there defiantly, shoulders back, on the concrete apron at the foot of the St Michael tower, candles all around him: Jim Battle, building society manager turned mystical artist, being a dumpy little hero.

Juanita just hoped the pagan Pilgrims had a sense of humour.

Actually, there weren't as many of them as she'd imagined. Maybe a dozen. People always exaggerated where travellers were concerned. Juanita stayed behind Jim on the fringe of the assembly, a foot on the last step of the path, her nostrils detecting a soiled sweetness in the air – not marijuana.

No music either. Not even the rattle of the wind which normally haunted the summit of the Tor. Jim's outburst had erupted into a yawning vacuum, as if he'd stormed into church in that moment at the end of a prayer before the scuffling begins.

Juanita lightly squeezed his arm, a squeeze supposed to convey the message, Back off, Jim Make an excuse. Walk away, pretend you didn't see anything. You don t have anything to prove. Say you're sorry for interrupting. Just back off.

'Well?' Jim glared belligerently at the shadowy travellers. 'What have you buggers got to say for yourselves?'

Oh, Jim.

Nobody replied. 'The only sound was a choking gasp from up against the tower. Juanita felt Jim's hand groping for the lamp and before she could think about it she'd let it go and he'd flicked it on, stabbing the beam at the tower.

The gasping person wasn't much more than a boy. His eyes, speared by the lamplight, were glazed. A man and a woman were holding his arms. Juanita realised, with distaste, that the smell on the air was vomit. And it lingered; the air up here was dense, like wadding.

'What's the matter with this lad, eh?' Jim tried to spread the beam over the other travellers, but they moved away. 'Well? Too bloody stoned to explain ourselves, are we? I really don't know what to think about you buggering people, I don't indeed.'

Juanita peered over his shoulder as he sprayed the light about, looking for Diane and not finding her or any recognisable face.

Actually, it was all a touch unnatural. Only the candle flames were in motion, burning in a semi circle of lanterns around the tower, the glowing buds magnified by glass. At Jim's feet, there was a chalked semi-circle around one of the entrance arches; inside it, metal bowl and cups and implements of some kind. Probably some sort of altar, Juanita recalled fragrant summer nights here with Danny Frayne and bottles of Mateus Rose. And laughter, lots of laughter. Why was nobody laughing? Why weren't they making fun of Jim, old guy in a silly hat. Have a drink, dad, Danny Frayne would have said. Have a joint. Be cool.

Jesus God. Juanita shivered under her Afghan. Something wrong here. She remembered Jim saying what purposeful people they were, not the usual semi-stoned rabble, and became aware of shapes on the edge of the candle-lit semicircle, closing in around him. She wanted to show a warning, but suddenly her mouth didn't seem to work anymore.

Sensing movement behind him, Jim turned slowly and with dignity. He snorted.

'I don't know – you call yourselves bloody Green pagans, but you've really no idea what this place is all about, have you?'

For God's sake, how long was he going to keep up this Colonel Fogey routine? How utterly stupid men could be when forced into a confrontation.

'Well, I'll tell you. Tell you what it's not about, shall I? It's not about drugs and made-up bloody rituals invoking lots of shagging. It's not about littering the place with belching wrecks of buses. It's not about worrying sheep and ripping out fences for fires and having a shit on the buggering grass and not even burying it. It's not about contaminating a sacred site, and ruining all the…' A fissure developed in Jim's voice as it became personal, '… all the mystery.'

Juanita flinched as something slid past her and moved, with a fleeting feral smell, through the circle of candles and into the lamp beam.

She flinched again when she saw what it was.

Saw Jim's mouth fall momentarily open. Saw a man (?) with long, tangled hair secured by a metal circlet. Saw, with a feeling like a kick under the heart, that the hair enclosed a face from old, old nightmares, from those books she never really liked to sell, from magical pornography.

An animal's face and a devil's face. Sculpted and textured, harsh-haired around black eyes. And its body gleamed, well-muscled arms and legs glistening with grease. She saw this because, apart from the animal mask, the man (man? Oh lord, yes) was naked.

When he spoke it was not much above a whisper, but it carried like a fast train in the night.

'You've said too much.'

Juanita was shocked to see the lips move, then realised that the mask of hair and skin ended above the mouth but the beard below it was real.

Over the top of the lower, there was a curiously unhealthy glow in the sky. Juanita began to feel seriously scared. This was not your routine New Age extravaganza, and some part of Jim had known it from the start. You know what these characters are like, drugged up to the eyeballs or swigging cider… day trippers. Not these buggers.

Jim looked up bravely into the bearded face.

Please God, Juanita thought, don't let him say anything inflammatory.

Below, the lights of Glastonbury had been doused by mist; the Tor was an island again. It was no longer part of the world Juanita knew.

'And who the hell are you?' Jim demanded. 'Conan the buggering Barbarian?'

She shut her eyes in anguish. Her head seemed to fill up with cold mist. She felt the ominous nearness of other bodies, smelled the feral smell again, like tomcats. This was all so futile. Diane wasn't here. She'd have recognised Jim's voice by now, come dashing out to explain.

When Juanita opened her eyes it was to see the goat-face close to Jim's, as though it was going to kiss him. Jim didn't move his head away, but she saw his hands grip the flaps of his overcoat to stop them shaking.

That did it. Diane wasn't here and Juanita couldn't watch this any longer. She pulled her Afghan coat together and marched through the crowd.

The goat man turned to her. Nothing moved behind the blackness of the eyeholes. She felt horribly exposed, as if she were naked, not him. She pushed her hands hard into her coat pockets.

'OK, look.' It came out as a croak. 'We made a mistake. Come on, Jim, she's not here.'

'Bloody hell, Juanita.' Jim stood there like a bulldog.

'Why couldn't you just leave this to me?'

He pushed irascibly past the goat-man-priest and advanced on the boy held against the tower.

'You all right, sonny? Look, bloody well let him go, will you?' Snatching at the wrist of one of the men holding the boy. 'He's been sick. What's wrong with him? Drugs?'

Jim was pretty strong. The man's grip broke; the boy stumbled away and then straightened up, swaying into the darkness. They heard him slipping and rolling down the side of the Tor, into the mist.

'Jim, we're going.' Juanita took his lamp. 'Let them get on with their… religion.'

The goat-man moved under the archway, as if he needed to think. Well. Juanita didn't Whatever they were doing they could get the hell on with it. She grabbed the end of Jim's scarf and tugged him towards the path. Still, nobody said a word, but the atmosphere was stiff now with menace. These were the new hippies? Christ.

'Listen, we're sorry. Sorry to mess up your ritual, whatever, OK? We were just looking for a friend.'

She heard Jim grunt, and his scarf came away in her hand.

'Jim!'

Her shoulder was gripped. She dropped the lamp in alarm. When she turned, she fell into someone's arms, was swung round and looked up into a stubbly, grinning male face. As she squirmed, she saw two men seize hold of Jim, slamming him against the wall of the tower, where the boy had been, his arms stretched above his head.

The naked man stooped to pick something up. When he stood before Jim it was glittering in his left hand.

He whispered, 'I did not say you could go.'

He was bent over the bonnet of Mort's hearse. His face was streaked with mud and blood from scratches on his cheek and jaw. His eyes were big in the lamplight and sort of glazed.

Diane raised the Tilley lamp. 'Head… Headlice?'

'Mol…'

He stared up at her. In the white light, the swastika on his head looked crude, like a knife wound. He smelled of sick. Why was he alone? Where were the others?

He let her help him up and walk him over to the bus. He stood on the little platform, framed in the doorway. Somewhere behind him was the Tor, but there were no lights there now.

'We'll get those cuts bathed.' She found a plastic bottle of water. The little woodstove in the bus was still going, just about.

'No time.' Headlice shook himself as if remembering something then swung round, urgently scanning the dark.

'Gotta get the hell out, Mol '

The plastic bottle went slippery in her fingers. 'What happened?'

They were alone. Hecate had disappeared, probably not wanting to be around when Headlice found out what they'd done to his bus.

Diane had lit the Tilley lamp when the Tor went dark again. She'd been afraid to leave the bus. She didn't know what she'd seen, but it had left an atmosphere tainted with a brooding evil she'd never felt before. Not here. Not anywhere. The blackness at its heart had seeped into the unnatural spread of light until it was a night sky again. But it was a different kind of night, as black and opaque as soot, with no moon any more.

'Shit.' Headlice glared down at his hands. 'Look at that. Shakin' like a fuckin' leaf. Bad shit, Mol.'

'Listen,' Diane said. 'All I know is that sometimes you can't trust your… what your mind's telling you. It does awfully odd things to you. Up there, I mean. On the Tor. Tell me what happened.'

'You're talkin' dead posh.'

'I am posh. Frightfully posh, actually, For what it's worth.'

'I wanted you to be there. I wanted…' He shrugged. 'Nobody got laid, anyroad. There was a… like… holy water and chanting and stuff in Latin. I don't remember. Don't fuckin' remember

…'

The kettle began to whistle on the iron stove. Headlice pushed it angrily away. 'I told you, we got no time! Gotta get this thing going, piss off.'

'Headlice, you have to tell me. What did they do?'

Headlice picked up the kettle and emptied the hot water into the stove's firebox, causing an explosion of hissing steam.

'Water. Holy water. Acid, mushrooms, some shit. Did me head in. I'm not down yet. Not… There was ' He stopped, as if he wasn't sure what he remembered. 'This old man. And like a black chalice.'

Diane went very cold inside. Arms. Huge smoky arms in the sky, hands cupped like a communicant's to receive…

Headlice sprang to his feet. 'Get the bus goin' before the bastards come back. You an' me, Mol. I'm trusting you, don't shaft me.' The Tilley lamp spread its gassy, wobbly light over his face, mud and blood on it like warpaint.

'Tuum Montem… Summat like that. That were part of it. He'd lift his arms – like that.'

'Lift his arms…?'

'Monum Sanctum?'

' Monum sanctum tuum,' Diane said. 'Your holy hill. It's from the Mass. They have conducted me and brought me unto thy holy hill?

She sighed. They sent me to a convent. Once.'

'Gonna write about this, Mol? Gonna write it up for the papers?' He sneered and poured cold water from the plastic bottle into the stove.

'Headlice, oh my God, listen. Gwyn. Had you ever met Gwyn before?'

He shook his head, slammed the metal stove door.

'What about Mort?' Oh gosh, these people, she knew there was something wrong with them.

'Yeah. Mort was the guy got me into this. He was in a pub, back home. Salford. I told you before.'

Headlice was moving around the bus, throwing things on the luggage racks. She remembered him saying he'd been unemployed, living with his parents, devouring earth- mysteries books, dreaming of ley lines. And Mort had introduced him to a man with an old bus for sale and Headlice had sold his motorbike to pay for it. How he'd met Rozzie was a mystery.

'Look,' she said. 'When Gwyn joined us at Bury St Edmunds – you remember? When Gwyn joined, the whole mood of the convoy seemed to change. Some people left.'

'Con and Daisy.'

'What?'

'At Bury. Con and Daisy, Irish travellers. Con says to me, he says, You wanna fuck off, man, this guy's heavy shit. I mean, come on man, heavy shit's what I've come for. And he just shakes his head. That's it, Mol, we're off'

He took out his ignition keys for the bus, threw them up in the air, caught them.

'Me an' you then, Mol. Back on the St Michael Line. And no more stopping at churches, goin' in backwards. No more shit.'

'What did you say…?'

But Headlice had leapt down from the platform to get into the cab. He was probably right; they had to get out of here. She'd go with him, as far as the town and then…

She heard Headlice yell, 'Who the f…?'

And then he screeched in pain and there was a bump.

'Headlice!'

Diane snatched up the Tilley lamp and stumbled down the deck to the platform. She leaned out from the top step, holding out the lamp by its wire handle.

'Headlice?'

She couldn't see anything at first, but she heard retching and moaning. A dark figure moved unhurriedly aside.

Headlice was writhing on the grass, clutching his stomach, his head flung back. She saw a heavy-booted foot crunch into his face, under his nose. Bright blood fountained up. Headlice started to snuffle.

The lamp was wrenched from her hand.

Juanita kicked backwards with the heel of her boot and someone went, Aaah. Then she was punched hard in mouth, tasted salt-blood.

The naked man raised his hand and the blade of the sickle was white gold in the candlelight.

Juanita screamed through swelling lips.

'Oh, come on.' Jim Still trying to bluster through this. 'Don't be so damned stupid.'

Only about half a dozen so-called pilgrims remained, two of them gaunt, unsmiling women.

'Do you know me?' The voice, still a whisper but raised high like the blade, had a horrid triumphant ring.

'Thankfully no,' Jim snapped. 'Now tell your lackey to get his bloody hands off that woman.'

'I am Gwyn ap Nudd. Do you know me now?'

Juanita spat blood.

'Bring him here.'

Jim, spluttering, was pulled from the wall by the warrior-looking man with the tight plait, and the priest pointed with his sickle to a patch of grass beside the concrete path. One of the other male pilgrims – he had a black cap and two large earrings like a pirate – went down theatrically on one knee, and when they flung Jim down, his head was bent back across the shelf of the man's other thigh.

His hat fell off; they pulled his hair to hold his head back. Most of the candles had been extinguished. Jim had to stare up at the moon. They had removed his scarf, exposing his neck. He'll catch cold, Juanita thought ludicrously.

'The date', said Gwyn ap Nudd, the goat priest, 'is November the fourteenth.'

Not a goat-priest… a dog-priest. Hound, Gwyn ap Nudd, lord of the Celtic Hades which could be entered through the Tor, Gwyn 's hall. Gwyn was the leader of the wild hunt. It was a dog-mask.

As if this mattered.

Jim retched. Someone balanced one of the remaining candle lanterns, on his heaving, overcoated chest.

'On this day in the year 1539, the last Abbot of Glastonbury. Richard Whiting, was convicted of petty theft and treason, then brought up here, to the church above the hall of Gwyn ap Nudd, fairy- lord of death. And then, side by side with two of his monastic underlings, he was… hanged.'

'Let him go,' Juanita pleaded. 'Can't you see he's choking? He's an old man, for Christ's sake.'

'Whiting was also an old man,' the priest whispered. 'A rich and powerful old man. His public execution, on the spot where we stand, signified the fall of one of the wealthiest monastic establishments in the land. His God couldn't save him.

The lips smiled. 'He was worshipping the wrong god.'

The sickle was raised until the moon once more was in the blade.

'And so his death was a sacrifice. To me.'

Juanita expelled all her breath in a long scream, kicked out and kicked nothing, and then her head was wrenched back by the hair and some disgusting rag was shoved between her teeth and halfway down her throat until she gagged.

Out of the darkness, quite close, a drum started up.

Behind the man who presumptuously called himself Gwyn ap Nudd. the mist had cleared and Juanita could see the lights of Glastonbury, so bloody, bloody close. Where were the police? Where were the courting couples? Where were the night-joggers?

'Imagine it bump, bump, bumping down the Tor,' Gwyn said. 'Whiting's head. Bump, bump, bump.'

In time to the measured drumbeat.

Juanita's eyes streamed. This couldn't be happening it couldn't. Not here where she and Danny had lain and shared a joint, drunk cool wine, made love, watched for the good aliens… She felt her stomach heave and began to choke on her own rising vomit. She tried to close her eyes, and she filled her head with prayers to God and all the other stupid gods that lived up here.

'They hung his head on the town gate,' Gwyn said.

'Where should this one hang?'

In the end Juanita had to open her eyes, if only because she knew she couldn't close her ears to the whistle of air against blade.

Jim's mouth was slightly open. She couldn't see his eyes; they'd put his hat back on and tipped it raffishly over his brow.

There was no sound from him, but there was movement, it might have been the candlelight, or it might have been that his cheeks were quivering.

Gwyn, the goat dog-priest, raised his sickle to the slender moon and Juanita saw his long, thin cock begin to rise to the thrill of hacking off the poor man's head.