The Chalice

THIRTEEN

In the Meadwell kitchen. Woolly and Sam were playing three-card brag by torchlight.

'Where'd you learn to play like this?' Sam said. 'Old hippies, taking people's money is not what they're about.'

Every time he lost, it was down to Sam to go and check they were alone, which meant an ominous trek through that bloody eerie dining room.

'You're just not concentrating,' Woolly said. 'I can understand that. But you got to keep playing, man. You let go of your mind in this house, it… You just don't, OK.'

'Something happen to you?'

'I don't know,' Woolly growled. 'That's the other thing, you never quite know.'

'Some things you know,' Sam said, not thinking of the house.

Woolly picked up on it. He grinned. 'She's a wonderful girl, Sammy. Surprised me, though, I got to say. You coming round to it. After that Charlotte.'

'Mmm, well,' Sam said. 'Something happened.'

'Like?'

'Like why a confirmed atheist and non-believer in anything you can't either spend or save from predatory upperclass gits with hunting horns is suddenly scared to go in that room next door.'

'Oh,' said Woolly. 'Like that.'

'I've seen… bloody Pixhill,' Sam said. 'I've seen Pixhill, OK? Old bloke in a deerstalker hat. Though I like to think he wouldn't ever have stalked a deer. And don't ask me – don't anybody ever ask me – about his eyes.'

'Sheesh,' Woolly said. 'When was this?'

And so Sam told him. And because it was cards-on the-table night, he told Woolly about the devastation of the trees. The road.

Woolly threw his newly dealt hand on the table.

'You're not winding me up?'

'Tonight I'm not winding anybody up, Woolly. Tonight, winding up is on hold.'

'I don't know what to do.' Woolly said.

'Don't do anything. Juanita said to hang on.'

'Until when?'

'I don't know. Until we got Diane back.'

'You know what I think?' Woolly said.

'I don't even like to ask.'

'I think we got a battle on two levels here. On the material level, the Glastonbury First bit, the road, Bowkett's Bill. And all the side effects that lot's having on the invisible layers. Or maybe it's the other way around, and G-1 and the bypass, the whole thing's a manifestation of something going down on the Inner Planes.'

'Oh shit,' said Sam. 'I'm not that much of a sodding convert.'

'So what I think… I just think it's time we threw everything we got at this situation.'

'You're just saying that 'cause you reckon you've got nothing to lose.'

'Maybe,' Woolly said. 'Does it matter? Where's Verity keep the phone?'

'Never was any good at keeping my trap shut.' Sam stared at his cards. 'Aw, for fuck's sake, Woolly, you dealt me a bloody king-flush and threw your cards in.'

'Yeah, well,' Woolly said, 'it was about time I took a stroll. After I use the phone.'

They entered the cradle.

Henry VIII could steal the gold, pull down the walls, Powys thought, but the fat bastard couldn't take away the atmosphere.

Sometimes, when I am alone in the Abbey grounds, Colonel Pixhill had written, I become afraid of my own reverie, afraid that my soul will rise before its time.

Even at night it was not eerie. Merely awesome.

Juanita knew how to get in. She said most locals did. You just had to be quiet as you climbed over a certain garden wall in a backstreet. In the old days, Juanita said, many a bottle of Mateus Rose had been consumed under a full moon on the holyest erthe in all England.

They'd gone back to the main entrance. Near the dying Thorn. This was the way to approach it, Juanita said.

Beyond the wooden cross, uneven stone walls had evolved into a kind of organic life, could almost have been close-cut, layered hedges. Other walls, other buildings, heaps of hallowed rubble, were all features in what, even without the lawns and the manicuring, was a garden.

Powys laid down the suitcase on the dark grass. It was cold and wet, but the snow had gone.

This, in the beginning and at the end, was the heart. This was where it all came together. Thirty six secret, walled acres in what was still the centre of the town. Glastonbury's streets guarding their Abbey like…

Like the Holy Grail.

His gaze was raised to the focal point, the summit of the ruins. He'd seen pictures of it many times: the light flowing like a river between twin towers.

Except they weren't towers. And your second concept – an arch with the top part missing – they weren't that either. They were the ends of two high, buttressed walls, a flawed mirror image of each other, but they rose like forearms from elbows resting on the green turf. Ending in compliant, cupped hands… hands which could almost be supporting an invisible bowl.

Powys felt Juanita's tentative arm against his and realised he'd been standing here staring, for several minutes, at the moon through the space between the stone hands.

'It's like they're holding a chalice,' he said. 'Or waiting for one.'

'They say – some people say – this is the heart chakra in the body of the earth. The higher emotional centre.'

'I know.' You could almost swear it was warmer in here than the other side of the walls. 'You warm enough?'

Juanita nodded. She was wearing the long woollen cloak he'd brought from her wardrobe.

'Somehow,' Powys said, 'I can't quite believe that when we talk of the Dark Chalice we mean the gold cup planted on Abbot Whiting by Edmund Ffitch. I still think it's a metaphor. An ancient symbol of division, intolerance.'

'If the Holy Grail is a symbol of conciliation, both a pagan and a Christian symbol…'

'The anti-Grail. It's logical to believe there's always been an anti-Grail. These things have their time. It's as if, when Henry destroyed all this, he was caught up in something that was trying to happen. They all were. Abbot Whiting – nice guy, kind to the poor. They put his head on the Abbey gates, isn't that right? The whole town must have been absolutely flattened, people terrified.'

'Not least', Juanita said, 'because this was the place where Jesus himself walked.'

'You believe that?'

Juanita looked up at the hands of stone accepting the invisible chalice. 'Sure. Why not? If his rich Uncle Joe wanted to broaden his horizons.'

'So when the Abbot was killed and the building violated and vandalised… by the King of England, they must have…' Powys hesitated.

'They must have questioned the very existence of God.' Juanita stood in front of him. 'It would have taken a long time to get back to that level of spirituality. We thought that maybe we were close to it once. Now it's gone the other way.'

Standing here, in the silence of the ruins, on the eve of midwinter, Powys could almost feel the Veil shredding like a cobweb.

'OK?'

Juanita nodded. He pulled at the ties which fastened the cloak at her neck.

She raised her arms, her crippled hands in the cup formation, like the great stone buttresses, and the cloak fell away from her shoulders and dropped to the grass.

Powys caught his breath.

Juanita shone in the moonlight.

She was wearing the dress last featured on the front The Avalonian. Issue Six.

'Sammy,' Woolly hissed. 'They're here.'

Heart in his mouth, he'd been upstairs, to the lavatory. The torch lighting up the dirty black beams and all those doorways, some of them ajar, shadows oozing out. And on his way back, glancing out the window at the top of the stairs, he'd seen the sidelights moving very slowly up the drive.

'What do we do?' Sam whispered. 'We call the cops?'

'I reckon we see who it is first. If it's Grainger I don't reckon we need bother the fuzz.'

'Christ,' said Sam. 'You still call them the fuzz after all these years?'

But Woolly had crept out into the dining room, a sliver of moonlight thin as fuse-wire on the table where Pixhill had lain.

Sam shivered. Funny, it really did go up your spine.

Any normal, earthly fear, like having the crap beaten out of you by a master of foxhounds, it never happened like that.

Woolly was standing on a chair to see out of the high window.

'Two of them. Men.'

'Grainger?'

'Don't look like it. Both tallish guys.'

'Shit,' said Sam.

'One's got a pickaxe.'

'Double shit.'

Woolly dropped to the floor. 'You wanner go for this or what?'

'Maybe not. Maybe we should play safe. You want me to ring the cops, being as how I'm slightly less well known to them at this moment in time?'

'Only, one of em's your mate, Mr Davey, said Woolly.

'Ah.' Sam rubbed his jaw. 'Well. This changes things just slightly.'

Powys wondered afterwards if perhaps he'd fallen asleep.

Which seemed, in the normal way of things, unlikely, on the eve of midwinter, sitting on a low stone wall under an icy moon.

If he hadn't fallen asleep, then it wasn't a dream.

In this dream, the one that wasn't, Juanita stood on one side of what tourists sometimes saw as a broken archway, where the stone arms reached for the chalice.

On the other side of the archway that wasn't, stood another woman.

Both white, incandescent in the moonlight.

When Powys either awoke or didn't, Juanita was alone.

Woolly came out of the garden shed. 'Ain't much useful in there, man, to be honest.'

He handed Sam a garden fork.

'It's got a wonky handle.'

'The alternative's a bent lawn rake.'

'What's yours, then?'

'I'm a man of peace, remember?' Woolly whispered.

'Come on, move it.'

They climbed over into the field. Under the moon, the Tor looked surprisingly sinister. Sam figured he was seeing it from the same angle as when…

Don't think about it.

'You know your way round here? Shit, this field's waterlogged.'

'Couple of hours it'll be ice-logged,' Woolly muttered. 'Sure, I used to do a bit of gardening for the Colonel. He had a greenhouse then. I figured maybe I could grow certain exotic plants on the side, like. Never thought he'd know what one looked like. Still, he was very nice about it.

Died the following year, poor old soul.'

Sam looked up at the Tor. Something was bothering him.

'Woolly, where I saw this road, look. There's no way they could run it through there. I was so blown away by… you know, him… that I just didn't figure it out proper. I remember thinking it looked like it was aimed straight at the centre of the Tor, under the tower. And, like, you see from here, that's where it would have to go, else Meadwell'd be right in the middle of the central reservation, and it's a double-listed building, so that's out, right?'

'What you saying? And keep your bloody voice down.'

'I don't think that excavation's anything to do with the road. Not directly.'

'So what was it?'

'Fuck knows. You're the earth-mysteries expert.'

'Think about it later,' Woolly said. 'We got to scare these bastards away before they have the top of that well off.'

By moonlight, they skirted the edge of the field, keeping to the hedge. They heard the clunk of a pickaxe on concrete, saw the muffled glow of a lamp on the ground. Sam moved quietly through the shallow drainage ditch, his shoes and the bottoms of his jeans soaked through. There was an old stile he vaguely remembered from his days with the Ramblers' Association. From way back, when there was like a little pilgrims' way to the Meadwell.

Amazingly, he found the stile, tested it with one foot, it seemed solid enough to stand on, so he stood on it. He signalled to Woolly. Then, just as the pickaxe struck metal, he bawled out,

'Avon and Somerset Police. Don't no bugger move!'

And then he was over the stile and going hard for Darryl Davey, swinging the garden fork like an axe at a tree.

Darryl had started to run, and the shaft of the fork caught him under both knees and he came down on the concrete with a smack. Sam was aware of the other guy legging it, but that didn't matter because the lamp on the ground showed him where to put the fork, like hard under Darryl's chin.

Woolly was with him now. 'You see who the other fucker was?'

'Don't give a shit. This is my man. Darryl, as I recall, it was in 1972 when you persuaded me to part with my dinner money or face a difficult nosebleed situation. I got to tell you, you got precisely five seconds to say what you done with Diane, else it's a prong up each nostril and then I start beating your lovely big teeth out with the handle, look. And after that…'

Darryl twisted his neck round and a rusting prong nudged his Adam's apple. He screamed. 'Where's them cops?'

'Four,' Sam said. 'Three. Two…'

'I don't fucking know, do I?' Darryl began to cough.

Sam raised a foot.

'Leave it out,' Woolly said. 'He can't say much with your shoe on his gob.'

'One,' Sam said.

'No, listen… All we done was scare her. Then Ceridwen comes in and tells us to piss off. I don't know what they done with her after that, honest to…'

'Where was this, Darryl?'

'Outside Woolaston's shop. Len and Wayne done his window, right. I'm following Lady L… Diane.'

'Following her, why?'

'Cause they told me to.'

'Who?'

'Like… your old man, yeah?'

'Shit,' Sam said in disgust. 'You get your orders from the old man?'

'Sometimes.'

Woolly said, 'Who was with you, then?'

Darryl went silent.

'We missed that, Darryl,' Sam said.

'You can kill me,' Darryl Davey shouted. 'But I ain't sayin' no more.'

So they let him go. They let the bastard go.

They went back to the house and they put on every light in the place.

It was gone three a.m.

'Would you trust Darryl Davey with anything worth knowing?' Woolly said.

'Would you trust my old man?'

'Not unless I had no choice,' Woolly said. 'Go on. Go get him, boy.'

'I'm not leaving you here. Woolly. What if the other bugger comes back?'

'Then I'll handle it. Go, Sammy.'

'Can't we both go? This well thing, is that really so… ?'

'Yeh. It is. It is, Sammy. Go.'

Sam drove away from Meadwell in Joe Powys's Mini. Glad, on one level, to be leaving Meadwell. Not glad to be leaving Woolly.

Premonition?

Not that much of a convert.