The Chalice

TEN

'Go on then!' Mrs Moulder yelled, back from the WI. 'Don't bugger about. Been a sight too many fires hereabouts.'

'You can't be sure,' Don protested feebly. 'Coulder been a glow from a torch, headlamps.'

'Well, seeing where it come from, that's not much better. You should never've let them hippies down there, I told you at the time.'

Halfway through the door, Don turned back. 'Let's call the police, then.'

'Don't be stupid. Farmer for near forty years and scared to go out on his own land. They've all heard about that cross, too. Lizzie Strode said is it true he's holding open-air services now?'

'They can mock! Tis a pit of sin, this place. A pit of sin!'

Don Moulder snatched his lamp from the big hook behind the door and walked into the dark. Protect me, lord, protect thy servant, yea though I walks into the valley of the shadow.

Verity was in a stiff-backed kitchen chair, her back to the Aga, re-reading John Cowper Powys's Maiden Castle.

The novel bad been bought for her many, many years ago by her fiance, Captain Hope, and she'd never been able to open it without picturing him: a strong, stocky man with a faintly practical Errol Flynn air and a wide, white smile which would simply erupt across his face when she opened the door of her mother's house on a Sunday afternoon.

Captain Hope had been ten years older than Verity, who was twenty-five when they became engaged. He liked to call her 'the child bride' although this was more a reference to her stature than her years.

His sudden death from peritonitis, barely a month before the scheduled wedding day, had been followed a week later by her widowed mother's first stroke and then fifteen years of caring for her, increasingly querulous, before her death dispatched Verity, all alone into the world. Two unhappy housekeeping jobs had followed before she and Colonel Pixhill had found each other, recognising the qualities that each required for the quiet, untroubled life that never quite came about.

Colonel Pixhill was not at all like Bernard Hope, being more refined, less vigorous in his manner. But then, when they met, he was so much older. Verity had often wondered what might have developed had she met the Colonel twenty or thirty years earlier. Before the unfortunate Mrs Pixhill.

Before Oliver.

The mere thought of Oliver Pixhill spoiled her concentration and she found herself miserably counting the Christmas cards on the windowsill.

Seventeen. Fewer and fewer every year, as her friends died off and Verity was crossed from the lists of distant great nieces and nephews who presumably thought she must be dead by now but did not think it worth a phone call to find out. She imagined that years after her departure, from the house or from life, whichever came first, there would stall be a handful of' small, cheap cards addressed to Miss V. Endicott, Meadwell, Glastonbury.

There was, quite simply, nobody left now to whom she might turn for help – having this afternoon telephoned the only contact number she now possessed for the Pixhill Trust. She'd at last reached a solicitor called Mr Kellogg and asked him if the Trust could prevent Dr Pelham Grainger from uncovering the Meadwell as, in her view, this would not be complying with the Colonel's wishes.

Mr Kellogg had laughed. Actually laughed.

'Miss Endicott, the Trust is entering a new era. Meadwell is a delightful and historic house and it's been hidden away for too long. While the Chalice Well gets tens of thousands of visitors, ours is ignored.'

'But that's because…'

'We want to see the Colonel take his place among the great pioneers of modern Glastonbury, along with… with all the others. And for Meadwell to become recognised as architecturally on a par with the Tribunal, The George and Pilgrims…'

'But the Colonel quite deliberately- sealed up the well so that nobody…'

'Probably because he was unhappy about spending the money that would have been required to clean and repair it. But times change. Miss Endicott. There are now thousands of tourists with an unassuageable thirst for the Spiritual, and if this man Grainger can help put us on the map…'

Put us on the map!

Was Major Shepherd the last of them to realise that the Colonel's last wish had been for Meadwell to stay, for the forseeable future, entirely off the map?

Any faint hopes that Mrs Rosemary Shepherd, the Major's widow, might have picked up his sword had been dispelled by a telephone call around teatime.

'Miss Endicott, I've been trying to clean out Tim's study, getting rid of all the silly books Pixhill made him read, and I keep falling over this blasted parcel – full of boring papers connected With the Pixhill diaries and addressed to a Mrs Carey. If I've phoned her once I've phoned her a dozen times. Keep getting the same tedious answering machine. Would you have any idea at all what on earth the problem is with this woman?'

Verity had explained that Mrs Carey was in hospital, having been injured in a serious fire.

'Oh. Well, how long's she going to be in hospital? Look, suppose I send this stuff to you, can you pass it on to her?

'Yes, that makes sense. I shall do that.'

Nothing makes sense any more, Verity thought.

Coming into Glastonbury, there were several police diversion signs. One said, AVOID TOWN CENTRE.

'Still got bloody roadworks, I see,' Juanita said. 'I'd ignore it. It's just to avoid congestion in the daytime.'

Seconds later they were stopped by a policeman.

'You're going to ask me if I can read, aren't you?' Powys said.

'I wouldn't insult you, sir I was going to ask you which paper you worked for and then I saw the dog and Mrs Carey. Welcome home, Mrs Carey.'

'I'm sorry?' Juanita looked fogged.

'It's OK, you won't recognise me.' The policeman leaned on the wound-down window. 'I was at the fire.'

'Oh,' Juanita said.

'I'm glad to see you looking so much better. We were a bit worried about you. I put my jacket under your head. Tried to keep you calm until the ambulance got through. You kept saying, "Get the cat.'' I thought, If there's a cat in here he can get himself out.'

Powys felt rather than saw Juanita go absolutely rigid.

The one time Don Moulder had felt safe going down to the field was at dawn, when the cross would make a proud and rugged silhouette against the eastern sky and the Tor.

At night, no silhouette was a good silhouette.

Bloody woman. How could she have seen flames down here? And wouldn't it have been easy just to stop the car and have a quick glance over the hedge? She did it on purpose; sensed there was something he didn't like in the bottom field but wouldn't tell her.

Trouble with this field, you approached it from the farmhouse and you couldn't see what was inside it till you were practically through the gate.

Protect me, Lord.

Don slid the bar and walked in, praying under his breath.

No flames No light at all, except from his lamp. Which he kept switched on and tightly in his right hand all the way to the cross

Feeling safer when he reached the cross. He went to embrace it, that good and sturdy telegraph pole he'd bought far 50p when they moved the lines.

The cross felt oddly light when he threw his arms about it. And brittle, like a husk. He felt his fingers sinking in.

His arms dropped, nerveless, to his sides, the lamp still clutched in his right hand. He backed away and held up his left hand to the light. It was black.

He let out a cry as the wooden cross started to shiver.

Charcoal. It was burned to charcoal. Lord, how could it be?

How can it be, Lord? D'you hear me?

He shone the light on the cross. Black as soot. Black as sin. Burned to a black cinder and still standing, like the fire had come from inside.

This was what the missus seen? Not ten minutes ago, coming home from the WI, she'd seen the cross on fire?

Couldn't be.

Don flung himself at the cross and hugged it close, feeling it flaking in his arms, beginning to crumble.

He began to whimper. It was burned through, and worse than that, worse than that…

… Worse than that, it was cold.

In a corner of the field, an old engine cranked into unholy life.

Behind the barriers, the Christmas tree lay in slaughtered sections at the side of the road. Christmas had been cancelled and the market cross exposed again, a solitary finger accusing God.

Powys winced. 'I suppose you know this guy Woolaston.'

'Yes.' Her voice sounded slack. 'And Kirsty Cotton.'

He pulled sharply into the kerb just below Carey and Frayne. The pavements were deserted, most of the shop lights were out. Even The George and Pilgrims had looked quiet, a muted glow beyond the ancient windows.

'Woolly has a reputation', Juanita said, 'for being the slowest driver under seventy in the entire West Country. It doesn't bear thinking about.'

But she still sounded as if there was something else pressing on her mind, something the policeman had said before he told them about the horrific accident. Maybe it was being reminded of the fire by someone else who'd been there. More likely, though, it was what the policeman had said about the cat. Had Jim Battle had a cat?

Powys climbed out of the Mini, took the suitcase from the boot, went round and opened Juanita's door wide.

It was a penetratingly cold night. She stood shivering in the road. Almost directly across the street, the goddess smouldered in purple, in one of the very few windows which remained lit.

'My God.' Juanita looked slowly around her as if she might be in the wrong town.

If it's all changed so much from this morning, Powys thought, what the hell must it seem like after more than a month?

She seemed unsteady. He put a hand under her arm, guided her to the pavement.

And stopped.

There was a new sign in the window of Carey and Frayne.

It had been pasted to the outside and was clearly legible under the streetlamp. He realised it was effectively covering a sign which the printer guy, Sam, had made and Diane had stuck up on the inside of the glass. The sign which said, COMING SOON – THE AVALONIAN.

This one was much bigger. It had foot-high black letters on luminous yellow paper, pasted the full width of the window right at the top, where you couldn't hope to reach it from outside. Whoever had done this must have had ladders. Or maybe parked a van on the pavement and stood on its roof.

The sign said, THEAVALOONIAN IS HERE.