The Chalice

NINE

Lord Pennard uncapped a new bottle of Famous Grouse.

'You'll have a drink.'

'No th-'

'Wasn't a question, Powys. You will have a drink.'

Powys shrugged. Pennard poured him an inch of Scotch in a thick tumbler and went to sit at his desk with the pile of hunting and shooting magazines.

'So that devious, milksop bastard Pixhill wrote it all down. If this is blackmail, Powys, I have to tell you we're not a good prospect, the Ffitches. Haven't been for years.'

'Not since the great days of the Dark Chalice?'

'Bunkum.' Pennard gazed into his Scotch as if pictures might form there. 'Spent half a lifetime telling m'self that, father was a great believer Always react against our parents, isn't that the way of it?'

'Like Archer's reacted against you?'

Outside, the snow had turned back to rain and sprayed the window, which was protected by metal security blinds.

'Powys.' Pennard rolled the name around his mouth with a slosh of whisky. 'You a descendant of the old hack?'

'Maybe.'

'Met him a time or two. Thought a good deal of himself. Talked and bloody talked. But that's the Welsh for you.'

'He wasn't Welsh.'

'Bugger should have been then.'

'That's what he thought too,' Powys said. 'Did he talk much about the Chalice?'

'Not going to let that go, are you? No, he didn't. Learned his lesson by then. Some chap in town, forget has name, convinced he'd been portrayed in that damned great book as the villain of the piece. Sued the piss out of Powys. Made bugger all from that book, in the end. Served him right.'

Powys smiled.

'Come along,' Pennard said. 'Get this over. Tell me what the bastard said.'

'You want the lot?'

'Got all night.'

I haven't, Powys thought, worrying about Juanita and Diane and Verity and everything that might need to be done before dawn.

'As far as I can gather,' he said, 'your family seems to trace its roots in Somerset back to the mid-eighteenth century. At least the first Viscount Pennard…'

'1765. Roger Ffitch. Like my father.'

'But the Ffitches had held land in the area for a long time before that. Over two hundred years in fact. Basically, since 1539 and the dissolution of the monasteries. When a certain Ffitch was rewarded for services rendered to the king.'

'Pure legend.'

'It's all legend. But legends are often more persistent than facts.'

'Only if you permit it,' said Pennard. 'Get to the point.'

'OK. Fact: Glastonbury Abbey was very rich and powerful and built out of the very cradle of Christianity, and Henry VIII had to crush it. Fact: Abbot Whiting was a hard man to nail because he was an unassuming kind of guy who tried to help the poor and was consequently very well liked. Sir Henry's hit man, Cromwell, had to find a way of fitting Whiting up. Fact in the end they found writings in Whiting's chambers criticising the king's latest divorce. Also a gold chalice. From the abbey. Which he was accused of stealing.

Lord Pennard appeared uninterested and drank some whisky.

'Pixhill seems to think this chalice was later awarded – along with a few hundred acres of land and a farmhouse known as Meadwell – to the man who agreed to plant it. A Benedictine monk at the Abbey called Edmund Ffitch. Spelt F F Y C H E. Who happily dumped his calling, moved into Meadwell… and founded a famous dynasty. Fact?'

Pennard grunted. 'Inasmuch as Meadwell was our first home.'

'The legend, of course, is that when Whiting was hanged and then beheaded on the Tor, Ffitch collected his blood in that same chalice In deliberate parody of Joseph of Arimathea catching Christ's blood, from that famous spear-wound on the cross, in what became the Holy Grail. Thereby founding another tradition.'

'As you say…' Pennard leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, chin on his chest. 'Legend. Little-known one, too. So little-known it was probably invented by Pixhill to bolster his own fantasy of himself as a crusader. Sad little man.'

'You did have a family chalice, though, didn't you?'

'I wouldn't know.' He sounded very bored. Or trying to sound bored. 'Certainly not in my time.'

'And in your time…' Powys was beginning to despair of denting the armour. '… That is, since the War, the family hasn't exactly prospered, has it? Investments collapsing. Bad seasons in the vineyards. Land having to be sold. Couldn't help noticing as I came in that you're down to using sixty-watt bulbs where you need hundreds.'

'You're an idiot, Powys.'

'Perhaps the family has always associated its good fortune with possession of the Chalice. lose the Chalice, money starts to go down the toilet.'

'Powys, if your illustrious ancestor'd been able to make up stories as good as this he might even've profited from his scribblings. Drink up, man.'

He advanced on Powys with the bottle of Grouse.

'Of course there was a down side.' Powys looked up at him. 'Meadwell became somewhat… spiritually tainted? Hard to live in?'

'Always a miserable hole. Don't cover your glass, it's discourteous. Either drink with me or get out.'

Reluctantly, Powys accepted another inch of Scotch. 'So this place was built. Comparatively small at first but massively expanded after the industrial revolution. By the outbreak of the First World War, the family was very wealthy. Which brings us to the previous Viscount Pennard. Your father, Roger Ffitch. Bit of a lad, Roger. A bit cocky. Not being discourteous here, am I?'

'My father', Pennard said, no hint of a smile, 'would have pulled your head off quite a few minutes ago.'

'Did you admire him?'

'He was an obstinate man. Immensely brave. Would've received the VC after the Somme if he hadn't shafted the wrong General's daughter, but that's by the by. Since you ask, I did not admire him. He was a chancer. A gambler.'

'And not only with money?'

'No,' Pennard said soberly. 'Not only with money.'

'With his soul, in fact,' Powys said. 'Such as it was.'

Juanita dressed slowly, painfully and impractically. She still couldn't bear jeans, tight or otherwise, against her thighs. Her thickest skirt was black velvet, calf-length; she dragged it on, thumbs through the loops, then wriggled into a sloppy lemon sweater, the softest thing she had, and it still felt like staff cardboard. Her skin was starting to feel moist again, her head an oven.

In the kitchen, she turned on the cold tap with her wrists, put her head under the jet. The water hurt, so cold it burned.

Matthew had left a glass of water with a straw. A note to say there was a light salad (which she could manage to eat) in the fridge (which she could manage to open).

Blinking, horrified, at the clock, she thought, Powys!

Nearly nine o'clock. Hours since he'd gone to Verity's. A long time since Matthew had delivered the message that Powys was 'doing his best'.

Whatever that meant.

And no word from Diane. Time to call the police? Time to call Pennard?

Christ's sake, stay cool.

Sick joke.

She went down to the shop. No messages on the answering machine. She rolled the phone from its rest, slipped out the Meadwell number with the tip of a thumb. Bent over the receiver, heard the number ring and ring and ring, no answer, no answer, oh no.

She staggered back upstairs to the living room. He'll be back. He will be back. A little surprised at how much she needed him to be back.

Him. Not just somebody to be with her, to open things and switch things on. Him. Joe Powys, burned-out earth-mysteries writer, another jaded Grail-seeker.

She eased herself into the sofa, her arms spread along its spine. Opposite her, Jim's depiction of the mystical roads converging on the Tor as beams of dying sun, which lit the fields but not the Tor – a black silhouette, a hill or shadow.

The picture's surface glistened and glowed tonight, as though the paint was wet again, as though the ghost of Jim Battle was breathing on it.

She didn't like that thought. Made her want to look away, but the colours burned out of the canvas, the sweat on her face felt as slick and rich as linseed oil. There was a sour tang of turps. She blinked; water filmed her eyes, colours smeared.

Then there was a small movement on the picture. Could be a fly from the attic. Could be a spider. Crawling along one of the red sunbeams Following the line exactly, towards the Tor.

Nothing there. It was the fever,

The room tilted; she saw the fly on the move again.

Except it wasn't a fly any more It was a small, black bus, swaying and rattling down the black road from the Tor, a noxious Dinky toy stinking of burning oil and diesel, smoke puffing around it, feeding the blossoming shadows in the room.

A thin scream ribboned between Juanita's lips as the carpet hardened under her feet like stone. Like tarmac.

She arose from the sofa, edged towards the door of the sitting room.

Keeping her mouth tight shut, refusing to let the scream out. Corrosive fumes stinging her nose and it wasn't just smoke and oil, there was a harsh, acrid animal stench, a tomcat smell a hundred times more pungent, and the bus was coming at her, spewing feral breath from the torn-scab radiator between its heartless yellow headlights.

Juanita burst out of the room, tugging the door shut behind her, shutting it all in there, and she carried on tugging and wrenching long after the catch had clicked into place.

Becoming gradually aware – almost with a sense of awe – that she was using her lurid, pink, patched-up Frankenstein hands. The right hand gripping the door handle, the left hand around the right hand, all melded together in a pulsing lump of crippled flesh.

Fused to the handle as Jim had been fused to his easels.

She felt no pain at all as she fell to her knees on the landing, unable to breathe, lungs full of black smoke, head full of burning and those other images she suppressed even in her dreams: the explosion of the sunset window, Jim's blackened, dead grin, his boiling eyes behind the twisted bars in her arms, her own hands torched in the night. Blue fire from sizzling fat.

The ash tree. The dangling hat.

And then the pain. As wild and brutal as crucifixion nails through both palms. And the breath pumped out of her in hiccuping yelps as one hand came free and prised the other from the handle, finger by finger.

Powys put it to Lord Pennard that when Roger Ffitch came back from the Trenches, he was in a very bad state, not so much physically as emotionally.

'Hell of a lot of chaps afflicted that way. Three weeks in some petty little skirmish these days and they're sent for counselling. Gulf War Syndrome. Falklands Fever. Any of 'em even imagine what it was like at the Somme?'

'But he did find counselling, didn't he?' Powys said.

'Did he?'

'He was directed to a psychoanalyst. New word in those days. Who he'd probably have rejected if she hadn't been blonde and twenty-nine years old. With a certain glint in her eye. I'd guess.'

For the first time. Pennard looked fleetingly nervous. 'You're not drinking,' he said. 'Not drinking with me'

Watching him now, Powys could imagine the problems Violet Mary Firth must have had with his father.

'He would meet her at Meadwell – he didn't want his family to know, that would've been a sign of weakness. Not his style.'

'Not the family style' Pennard almost smiled.

'Anyway, she does seem to have been able to help your old man with his nervous problems. Putting a stop to his recurring nightmares of the blood and the filth. Restoring his self-confidence. Getting rid of that embarrassing, nervous tic. Making it so he could function again. He must have been impressed. Although he wouldn't have shown it. Couldn't let women get above themselves, could you?'

Pennard didn't look at him.

'But he really wanted her,' Powys said. 'My guess is he sensed her power, something he'd never encountered before, and he wanted some of that, too.'

Pennard snorted.

'But because she was a woman, he had to subdue her. If she was into magic then he'd bloody well show her magic. The Holy Grail? He'd show her a real grail.'

Pennard was looking at him now. This stuff was obviously new to him. 'Pixhill wrote about this?' He spoke almost mildly.

Powys nodded. 'Your father took Violet to see the Dark Chalice. And then, perhaps feeling that the power was at last his power, he tried to make love to her.'

Pennard scowled.

'Did he rape her, or did she manage to fight him off? I prefer to think she did. Big strong girl. Maybe he was still weakened by the War. Asthma, wasn't it? Still, she was furious – justifiably. This was the man she'd spent weeks helping out of his crisis. Maybe she'd even fancied him a little. Whatever, she didn't anymore.'

He decided to pass over the next bit, how Violet's hurt and her craving for revenge had manifested into an elemental force in the form of a wolf. Stay close to established fact.

'Maybe a month later, Roger Ffitch comes crawling back to Violet. His nightmares have returned, worse than ever. What were those nightmares, do you know?'

Pennard grunted. 'Before my rime, all this. If it ever happened. Which I doubt.'

'I don't think you do. I think it's making terrible sense to you now.'

'Don't you threaten me, you little shit…' Pennard half rose from his chair, fists clenched.

'Wasn't a threat. Jesus, you bastards are so…'

'Just finish your fucking story.' Pennard sat down again, and his hand shook as he poured himself more Scotch.

'All right. Your father sent a message to Violet. She refused, understandably enough, to go back to Meadwell, so they met in The George and Pilgrims. She, um… well, she was shocked when she saw him. He'd lost over a stone in just a few weeks. He was getting no sleep, couldn't keep a meal down. His tic – that was back in a big way. And his asthma had worsened to the point of being life-threatening. He was a hollow-eyed mess, your dad, and he virtually threw himself at her feet, fighting for breath.'

' Not his style,' Pennard snapped, meaning not our style.

Powys shrugged.

'As it happened, Violet hadn't been too good herself since exposure to the Chalice. If you've ever read Pixhill's diary you'll know the kind of dreams she was getting. Glastonbury not as a peaceful haven but as a volatile, unstable place. And always potentially a battlefield. The Dark Chalice: could this be the anti-Grail? Was there a parallel tradition?'

'Absolute non… nonsense.' Pennard scowled at the break in his voice and cleared his throat. 'Fucking bunkum.'

'So Violet made a deal with your old man. She would treat him again, work with him. And he would let her dispose of the Chalice however she saw fit. Which wasn't going to be easy, she knew that. At that age she really didn't feel up to dealing with evil on this scale. My guess is she probably consulted her own teacher, Theodore Moriarty – he ran a clinic specialising in cases like Roger.'

'He went away,' Lord Pennard said suddenly. A look of astonishment crossed his face. 'My mother told me this, many years later. He went away for six months in 1920.'

'To a clinic?'

'This is ridiculous.' A wave of anger quite visibly went through him, shone in his eyes as his arm swept over the desk, sent the whisky bottle spinning across the room until it hit the gun cupboard.

'While he was away,' Powys said, 'being treated by…Dr Moriarty?… your mother co-operated fully with Violet. She gathered some people, leading magicians of the day, powerful pagans and, I suspect. Christian mystics. And they took the Dark Chalice and they hid it – just as Joseph of Arimathea or the Fisher King was said to have done with the Holy Grail – in a well.'

Pennard sighed. Powys heard the whisky gurgling out of the bottle into the industrial carpet below the gun cupboard.

'They did their best with the Meadwell. They blessed it in the name of God. They did a powerful binding ritual. But it's a bit like burying nuclear waste. It's not possible to destroy something like the Dark Chalice which exists on more than one level. You can only contain it and hope for the best. But it's a hell of a contaminant. I don't know where the well leads, but that's a black spring now. You can see what it's done to the house.'

'I wouldn't know,' Pennard said. 'Not our house anymore.'

'That was part of the deal. Roger Ffitch agreed that when he died, that house would be sold to Violet Firth. Who by this time had her own home and teaching base in Glastonbury. Documents were drawn up. Your mother, Lady Pennard, was party to it, of course. But Violet died first, in 1946, as I'd guess she knew she would, after her unique contribution to the Allied cause.'

'Met the woman once, you know. As a boy. Gave me a bag of sweets.' Lord Pennard actually smiled. 'Bullseyes. Never allowed bullseyes.'

'Did you like her?'

'Did, matter of fact. Jolly. Like a scout mistress. Interfering bitch.'

'The Fall of the House of Pennard?'

'Bunkum. Useless businessman, my father. Incompetent. All there was to it. Never the same after the War. Cracked up. Spent most of his last years in bloody church.'

'Whatever, all the wealth the family acquired with the chalice began to drop away. So Pixhill says. He reckons you did everything in your power to get Meadwell back.'

'Bloody disgrace. Under the table deal while I was away in National Service, Bloody Pixhill. What damn right did fie have to take away our property? Worth over a quarter of a million now, that house. Of course I tried to get it back. Who was the bloody man?'

'Just someone Violet could trust. She needed a custodian for Meadwell. She was only fifty-six when she died. Leukaemia. She'd known it was coming. Maybe years before, you know what these people are like. I doubt if it worried her. Death was just a station between trains. That was what she told Pixhill.'

Just saying it, hearing himself, Powys felt aglow with the certainty of it all. Confirmation now in every response from Pennard, every change in expression, every involuntary gesture.

'What changed?'

Pennard didn't reply. He reached for the whisky before remembering the bottle wasn't there anymore.

'Why did you give up the fight to get Meadwell back?' Powys said.

'Legal costs.'

'No.'

'No. Of course not.' Pennard stood up. 'What's your angle on all this, Powys? What do you hope to get out of it? Book? Bloody bestseller?'

Powys shook his head. 'I'll be honest. I was going to tell you I'd publish the whole thing if you didn't play ball.'

'And now?'

'It's too heavy. Until just now I don't think I entirely believed it.' He leaned back at last on the stiff sofa. 'I don't want to threaten you. It would be the wrong thing to do. I won't write about it.'

Pennard looked at him for a long time. 'I'm inclined to believe you.'

'Then tell me what changed.'

'Why do you think I should?'

'Because I think it's something to do with Diane,' Powys said. 'Who, according to the late chairman of the Pixhill Trust, is in, and I quote, danger of a most extreme and everlasting nature. And she's disappeared.'

Lord Pennard collapsed into his chair. He suddenly looked much older.