The Chalice

ONE

The caller said, 'This is Lord Pennard. I wish to speak to my daughter. Now.'

No question, it definitely was him, voice straight out of the freezer compartment. Sam Daniel, the printer, had seen him around, as you might say, heard him ordering his huntsmen about. Very big man in these parts, and oh yes, this was definitely Lord P on the phone, no doubt about that.

'Sure it is,' Sam said. 'And I'm the Pope. Now piss off and stop bothering us or I'll call the police.'

Diane looked up from the oldest and simplest of Sam's office word-processors.

'Your old man,' Sam said. 'And not a happy old man, if I'm any judge. What if he shows up at the door?'

'He's left a couple of messages on the answering machine at the shop,' Diane said. 'I just wipe them off. He won't come here. He's always employed people to show up at doors for him.'

'Fair enough.' Sam turned back to his computer screen. He was laying out this illustrated feature piece by Matthew Banks, one of the five million local herbalists, about the Glastonbury Thorn. It listed all the Holy Thorn trees in and around the town, suggesting which was the oldest and examining the case for the various thorns being actual descendants of the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.

Complete load of old horseshit, in Sam's view, but Diane said the Thorn was a potent symbol which united the Alternative types and the locals. Local people were proud of the Thorn, Diane said. Well, Samuel Mervyn Daniel was about as local as you could get, and proud was putting it a bit strong.

Paul's digital clock said 8.20. Twenty past bleeding eight and they'd been at work for over an hour, marking up copy, transferring it to the computer, experimenting with layouts.

It hadn't even been light when he'd unlocked the print-shop. He hadn't had a shave for two days, nor a proper meal, nor seen any telly, nor been in any fit state to do much with Charlotte.

The upper classes. Always been good at getting the peasants working the clock round for a pittance.

Except Diane was always here too, head down, a woman driven. A lot of grief, a lot of upset inside. But she wasn't letting any of it out, not in front of Sam Daniel. She had guts, and you didn't expect that. Or else it was another aspect of her reputed insanity.

Diane pushed her chair back. 'I've got to go. Got to open the shop.'

'Bet you've not had any breakfast, have you?'

She was losing weight, too. Not that she couldn't afford to lose a couple of stone, but not this way. And her face was always pale. It was like somewhere behind her eyes there was always an image of what she'd seen that night.

'Oh, well, you know, I've got some carob bars at the shop.' Diane pulled her red coat from the peg. The kind of coat you'd think twice about donating to Oxfam in case the Third World sent it back.

Sam raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'Bloody carob bars. I'm not saying the humble carob hasn't got its place, look, but a slice or two of toast, soya marg, a dab of Marmite, nothing would've died to bring that to the table, would it?'

'Thank you so much for your concern, Sam.' Diane gathered her stuff together in a plastic carrier bag. 'Listen, could you let me see a proof, printout, whatever of the piece on the town-centre enhancement scheme when you've finished it? No hurry, but if I could have it by three at the latest…'

Strewth.

'Anybody, excluding family, wants to see you, Diane, what shall I say?'

'Oh, send them round to the shop. They'll have to join the queue. Bye'

He watched her through the window walking quickly, head held high, out of Grope Lane on to Magdalene Street. Gonna crack. Nothing surer.

After the fire, and no Juanita, Sam had figured the magazine idea would be straight down the tubes. But then, the day following the funeral, Diane had appeared, pale-faced, in the print-shop, a cardboard folder under her arm. Talking about getting started on The Avalonian. Like, pronto.

'I owe it to her, OK?' was all she'd say. Then they started work on the first dummy.'

How do we know, Sam read on the screen, that the thorn tree on Wearyall Hill is even in the same spot as what we like to think of as the Original?

Matthew Banks's original draft had been a sight more cumbersome. Diane had ripped into it, subbing it down to neat sentences, short paragraphs. 'The Alternative Community,' Diane had said firmly, 'have to learn from the outset that this is our paper, not theirs.'

Sam grinned, remembering that bloody tight-arsed Jenna – a 'Voice therapist' – coming in with a piece written by The Women of the Cauldron, with its own headline on top: WHY THE ANGLICAN CHURCH DENIES THE GODDESS MARY. Diane giving it back without even reading it, pointing out politely that The Avalonian would be doing its own headlines and any comment pieces would be specifically commissioned.

Suggesting they cut the piece by half and submit it as a reader's letter with actual names at the bottom. Jenna'd gone out with a face like an old shoe.

Sam was starting to warm to Diane. One thing about the upper classes, they knew how to put people down with style.

And slave-driving, they knew about that. Three weeks after starting from nothing – no design, not even a paper size – they now had almost enough for a respectable dummy, with real features, real news stones. Idea being they could take it around and show to people to stimulate advertising.

The plan was to start out as a monthly then come down to fortnightly. Anything beyond that, they'd need staff, which they couldn't afford. Diane insisted every contribution had to be paid for, even if it was just a token amount. Couldn't rely on volunteers like the guy with the three-legged dog.

You had to start out, Diane said, how you meant to go on: professional. Incredible. She'd seemed so soggy, that first time she came in.

Ah well. Sam stood up. Twenty to nine. Young Paul'd be in soon, then he could get some breakfast. No carob bars for Sammy, not after another dawn shift. Funny, everybody was up early this morning. Even Lord Pennard, who was obviously monitoring Diane's movements. Having her watched.

And with this family, it had to be more than just paternal interest.

Like she didn't have enough problem:

Mid-December already. The town-centre Christmas tree had just gone up in front of the Victorian Gothic market cross. There was a thin glaze of merriment on the streets – carol singers and also bands of pagan mummers with shamanic drums.

The former Holy Thorn Ceramics – now called the Goddess Shop – had a banner wishing customers a Happy Solstice.

Carey and Frayne had no specific wishes for anyone. Diane had found a box of Christmas ornaments for the bookshop window, including a chubby little electric Santa Claus with coloured lights around his hat which Woolly had made last year in his workshop. She hadn't the heart to display it; it reminded her too much of Jim Battle.

Jim's funeral had been awfully depressing. Woolly had rounded up a bunch of local mourners for the sake of appearances, but there was no family. His abandoned wife, unsurprisingly, had not attended; neither had his son, who also lived in Bristol.

An inquest had been opened and adjourned until the New Year. After taking her statement, the police had told Diane an open verdict was possible, although Accidental Death or Death by Misadventure were more likely. There'd certainly been nothing to suggest. suicide. Unless she knew otherwise?

Diane had shaken her head. In truth, she didn't know what to think.

Through the shop window, she saw a lanky red-haired man in black jeans and one of those lumberjack shirts slapping something to the side of a yellow litter bin on a lamp-post.

Darryl Davey. The biggest boy at Sam Daniel's school, apparently. Like a shark in a goldfish tank. Case of premature development. Shaving at about ten and a dad at sixteen, but now his son's sixteen and Darryl's pissed off that nobody looks up to him anymore. He seemed to be employed by the Glastonbury First people to display their material all over town. Probably illegally, but nobody stopped him. He was certainly quite open about what he was doing now, standing back to admire it.

It was a sticker, about four inches in diameter, like a no entry road sign. Diane went to the window to examine it.

It was horribly effective. You just knew that it was going to be all over the old-established shops and pubs in Glastonbury In the back windows of cars and delivery vans and farm vehicles. On the sides of buses.

The idea of restricting access to the Tor had caught on in a big way… given immediate and urgent impetus by the fire. Before that inaugural Glastonbury First meeting had even finished, fire engines had been struggling to reach the top of a Wellhouse Lane effectively blockaded by travellers' vehicles.

One of those frightful coincidences for which Glastonbury was famous. The local and regional Press had seized the angle, giving a tremendous boost to Glastonbury First. And, of course, to Archer, who had been interviewed on the local TV news.

'Had this system been in operation,' Archer had said soberly and sorrowfully, 'I believe we should not now have a tragedy of this proportion on our hands. I hope these people, wherever they may be skulking, can sleep at night.'

Efforts by the Press to find these particular travellers had, of course, failed. Woolly said they'd never even arrived at the road-protest meeting. Eventually, the rescue services had managed to remove the old bus which had broken down in the road. It apparently had carried no licence disc, and all the other vehicles had gone.

The following day, an entirely innocent travelling couple, just passing through, had returned to their van on the central car park to find all four of its tyres slashed and the words MURDERING SCUM spray-painted along one side. The chairman of Glastonbury First, Mr Quentin Cotton, had appealed for calm and restraint although, as he told the Evening Post, it was understandable that emotions were running high.

Poor Jim Battle would have been sickened.

As the afternoon trailed dismally away, Verity Endicott sat in the deepest corner of the dining hall and welcomed the dark by inhaling it.

Dr Grainger had taught her how to do this. You breathed in, expanding the diaphragm, imagining the air inside your body to be of the same consistency and texture as the atmosphere in the room. And then you directed the smooth, dark air to the extremities of your body, to your hands and feet and along your spinal cord until the restful darkness filled your head. Finally, you exhaled through the mouth, sending some of your essence out into the room. A mingling.

Thus, Verity had taken her first tentative steps along the path to penumbratisation: fusion with the dark. Dr Grainger had spent hours with her over the past few weeks, refusing to take any payment because, he said, Meadwell was 'a real palace of shadows' in which it was a privilege to work.

He was an earnest, humourless man, and Verity seemed to be becoming rather dependent on him. On three occasions, they had meditated together in one of the upstairs rooms, sitting side by side on straight-backed chairs with their hands on their knees, a tincture of moonlight on the rim of a wardrobe. Here, Dr Grainger had instructed her in the techniques of tenebral chakra-breathing which, he said, would put her in tune with the dark physically, mentally and emotionally.

'There are five other stages after this,' he said, 'but it's gonna take you maybe a couple more weeks of nightly exercise before you're ready to move on up.'

Verity clung, with little confidence but certainly no misgivings any more, to the tenebral exercises. The house might be growing ever darker, but the real oppressor was Oliver Pixhill, whose undisguised intention was to dispense with her services, presumably seeing her as the final link with his despised father.

Dr Grainger was right. If she could not love the dark as he did, at least she might learn to live with it. It was her duty to stay, to resist all attempts to force her out. To hold out until…

Until when? Colonel Pixhill had always said she would know. Major Shepherd had said someone would help her, that she would not have to be a canary until she finally succumbed to the gases. All she was sure of was that the person coming to help her was not Oliver Pixhill.

She just couldn't get him out other head. He had never returned, but his sneers lingered. He obviously hated Meadwell too; had he inherited it, he would doubtless have sold it at once. Which was perhaps one of the reasons the Colonel had laid the foundations of the Pixhill Trust.

Verity felt very lonely. Day to day, she seemed to see only Dr Grainger. Wanda never telephoned; she was, it seemed, spending much of her time persuading influential people to support the campaign against the Bath-Taunton Relief Road. And was also, apparently, involved in setting up some sort of Christmas event uniting pagans and Christians in the person of Dr Liana Kelly, the liberal-minded new Bishop of Bath and Wells.

All fine and good in its way. This, surely, was what Glastonbury was about: a healing of ancient rifts. So was Christmas. It should be a time of rejoicing. But on the town streets there were few smiles to be seen. She missed very much the joviality of Mr Battle, with his sketchbook and his bicycle. And the careless elegance of Juanita Carey, even if she was always too busy to talk for long.

Such an unbelievable tragedy. In its wake and in the aftermath of the unpleasantness at Holy Thorn Ceramics, there seemed to be in the air of Glastonbury a cold hostility which Verity had never before experienced. Not what the holy town was about. It was as though Avalon itself- awful thought – was going the way of Meadwell.

At least Woolly looked cheerful, in orange trousers and a yellow jacket over a lurid Hawaiian shirt. But then he always looked cheerful; apart from that one suit, clothes like these were all he had.

His face was doleful though, today.

'Tis slipping away from me, Diane. I can feel it. They're taking over.'

He pulled a stool to the counter.

'Daft to complain. On one level, 'tis a wonderful job she's doing.'

'Dame Wanda?'

'Knows more famous folk than I even heard of, that woman. Actors, artists and such.'

'Yes, but Woolly, the sad fact is that when it comes to infrastructure, I'm afraid it's the kind of people Archer and my father know who really count.'

'Infrastructure. There's a clever word. You gonner use words like that in The Avalonian?'

'Certainly not,' Diane said. 'It's going to be simple and direct.'

'It's really gonner happen?'

'Of course it's jolly well going to happen.' Diane lowered her eyes. 'I think.'

She worked on The Avalonian every waking hour, even when she was in the shop, with the little laptop she'd borrowed from Sam. Studied the customers for people who might be recruited as correspondents. Preferably straight people. Well, as straight as you could find among customers at an Alternative bookshop.

'You know I'll help all I can,' Woolly said.

'I know. And don't think I'm not grateful, but there's a limit to how much you can help. Or at least be seen to help. You're a politician now.'

'Sheesh, do I look like a politician?'

'We have to be seen to be independent.'

In the window, a sign Sam had printed said, COMING SOON – THE AVALONIAN. She'd been a little worried about that; suppose people remembered the old hippy magazine and thought it was going to be the same sort of thing.

The phone rang. Diane never answered the phone in case it was her father. She waited for the answering machine to cut in, Juanita's voice still on it. There was silence, the caller not sure whether to leave a message.

'Er… 'tis Miss Diane I wanted.'

'I know that voice,' Woolly said. 'It's…'

'Tis Don Moulder here. I, er, I needer talk to Miss Diane .. 'bout… 'bout them hippies, look. I… right.'

The line was cut.

'Well, there's a man really at home with the new technology,' Woolly observed. 'You gonner call him back?'

'I might actually go and see him,' Diane said. 'I keep hearing rumours that he's gone sort of strange.'

'That's no rumour, my love'

'Apparently he's put up a huge cross on his land. I thought it might make a piece for The Avalonian. For the dummy. I mean he's not an Alternative person, is he?'

'You mean he's like a straight religious maniac. Yeah, I suppose so. I do admire what you're doing, you know. The way you've thrown yourself into it. At a time like this.'

'It's because it's a time like this,' Diane said.