The Chalice

SIXTEEN

She lay back and let her eyelids fall. The pillows were soft and cool. The back of her head felt heavy, like a bag of potatoes. She let her arms flop by her sides. The anger, still burning somewhere below her abdomen was at odds, though not uncomfortably so, with the supine state of her body. She was, surprisingly, reaching a state of relaxation. But then, she was getting rather good at that.

Diane smiled.

The earliest light had hardened the tower on Glastonbury Tor into a rigid finger which poked and gouged blood from the raw flesh of the winter sky.

It was not yet seven-thirty. A false dawn, Don Moulder thought, watching from his top field through binoculars.

Lights showed where the protesters were scattered like maggots all around the Tor, but Don reckoned the police wouldn't let them go up. For their own safety no doubt. He'd half expected there to be a counter-demonstration by the Glastonbury First people, but they were lying low. Sensibly. let the New Age hooligans dig their own grave would be their line.

He could see the handful of folk starting to wind their way up the Tor under a big lamp. Dame Wanda the beacon, in her black and white cape and her big hat. Pretty tame pagan, all the same. Too cold, no doubt, for the old Egyptian priestess get-up from Hello! magazine. Poor bloody Christian, too, that bishop, with his smarmy ways and his entourage and his minders.

Don focused the glasses on a very bright spotlight, setting up a small figure in a sheepskin coat, the collar up around short blonde hair. Tammy White, BBC Bristol. Don had relented and allowed Tammy and her cameraman to park in the bottom field. Tammy had parked her white Peugeot right side on to that bloody bus, God save her news-hungry little soul.

The sky was on the move again, darkening up again. Knew it was a false dawn.

Not seen weather like this in a good long while. First one thing then another, like the heavens couldn't make up their minds which way to turn.

'OK.' Powys was driving. 'How we going to do this? Do we go in through the Bowermead entrance or what? How d'you get in that night, Sam?'

'Parked on the road, scraped through a couple of hedges. But it took me bloody ages, Powys. We don't have that kind of time. I say we go in. State you left him last night, I don't reckon Rankin's gonner do much. Juanita?'

'Do it.'

Powys cut the headlights at the entrance to the drive. Sam did the gates Nobody came out to stop him, but when they reached the house there was a grey BMW parked on the forecourt.

'Archer's home' Juanita said.

'Head down there.' Sam pointed to an avenue of trees. 'Takes you past the barn, past the hunt kennels. We wake the dogs, nothing we can do about that. Only problem is, it's a dead end. They come down here in a couple of Range Rovers, we're screwed.'

Powys paused, holding the Mini on the clutch.

Juanita sighed. 'You want to know how certain I am about this, don't you?'

Neither of them answered.

'It was like a Ouija board is all I can say. Something was moving my finger on the map. Just like something gave me a jolt when you came out with the word "reservoir" earlier.'

'Oh, shit,' Sam said. 'I don't like this.'

'I wouldn't like it either, Sam, except whatever we picked up, we picked it up in the Abbey. I wouldn't like to think you can pick up anything bad there.'

Powys let out the clutch. 'You saw her sitting on the bed, didn't you?'

'Just like you in the Abbey, I don't know what I saw.'

Arnold sat on his rug on the back seat, next to Juanita. Powys watched him for a moment in the mirror. 'He knows what he saw.'

In the mirror Powys saw a figure emerge on to the steps, watching them, as they passed under the avenue of trees.

She was starting to enjoy her anger and felt no guilt about this, light dripped on to her eyelids like syrup. And in the cushiony hinterland of sleep, in those moments when the senses mingle and then dissolve, when fragments of whispered words are sometimes heard and strange responses sought, Diane's rage fermented pleasurably into the darkest of wines…

The barns bulked to the right. 'Kennels beyond that,' Sam said. 'Then you got no road left.'

The Mini went into a dip. Powys knew he wasn't going to make it up the other side.

'OK, leave it here. You're out of sight.'

They all got out. Sam took the torch, led them up the side of the hill, Powys concerned when Juanita slipped and went down on her hands.

'OK?'

'Seem to be. It makes no sense but I do seem to be.'

'Not a hag then. Not tainted by the whatsit of death.'

'I feel like I may live forever. That probably means I'm going to die. Jesus God, will you look at that.'

It looked like what Sam had thought it was. The devastation before a motorway goes through. The outraged rubble of a speedily shaven forest. You could almost hear the screams of the trees. If trees had ghosts, this place would be haunted for centuries.

'I've seen this before,' Powys said. 'They're reawakening the ley. They're going to either bring something down from me Tor or…'

'Or send something up,' Juanita said.

'Is that you talking or… '

'I don't know. Do we have to walk through this?'

'Yeah.' Sam stepped over a watery rut. 'Sorry about this.'

Somewhere behind them, a hound began to howl. Powys looked sternly at Arnold, hopping between their legs, before he remembered that Arnold rarely responded to other dogs.

'Where'd you see Pixhill?'

'Shut up,' Sam said.

'Don't worry. They rarely appear to more than one person. I think they're scared.'

'Ha ha.' Then Sam gasped.

Powys stopped. The Tor had arisen before them, a huge black wedding cake surrounded by candles.

'Lamps?'

The protesters,' Sam said. 'Woolly's eco-army on the march. Swelling the ranks of the locals opposing the Tame the Tor Bill. Got here in no time, didn't they? All those little idealists phoning each other, spreading the word. Taking a day off work, those who've still got jobs. Piling into their cars and vans and trucks. Makes you proud to be British, don't it?'

'They'll go to the Tor first, and then they'll start looking for the road.'

'Do you think we oughter make sure they find it?'

'That's not a bad idea, Sam.'

'Give me something to think about. Like the night I first came this way, I was figuring out how best to sab the hunt. Trying to work off my temper at Archer.'

Juanita said, 'You know what will happen if Diane does that. If she lets go of the elemental.'

'What d'you mean?'

'She won't be the Diane you know and… and love.'

'She'll always be the Diane I know and love,' Sam said. 'That girl don't change'

'Yes, she would, Sam.'

'You can't go bad, Juanita, not like that.'

'Absolutely like that. That's the only sure way to go completely bad. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to explain what this is about.'

Sam didn't like this. 'Where's the old cynicism, Juanita?'

'Cynicism is no defence. We're close to the reservoir. I feel close.'

'How can you know that? You're just… Jesus…'

Powys handed Sam his car keys and held out his hand for the torch. 'Do something practical, Sam. You'll feel better. There's a can of petrol in the boot, Juanita's matches in the glove compartment.'

He watched Sam moving away, hunched up against the unknown. Looked around for his dog. 'Arnold?'

Silence.

And then a sharp cry that he wasn't sure he'd heard at all. Wasn't sure if it was in his head. He looked at Juanita, wondering if she'd heard it.

'It said "fetch",' Juanita said.

There was a distant, muffled yip, an Arnold noise.

Then more silence.

It was coming light. Don Moulder, against all his best intentions, had moved closer, right to the edge of his top field, from where he could see the figures moving up the Tor quite clearly now.

He wondered what the Bishop was saying to Dame Wanda Carlisle. Discussing the terrible weather or Wanda's famous roles.

It was a joke. Even Don could see that. Where was that bloody Ceridwen? Why wasn't she up there?

Bloody joke. A stunt for Miss Tammy White.

Its fur was as harsh as a new hairbrush. It brushed her left arm, raising goosebumps.

It lay there quite still, but with a kind of coiled and eager tension about it. She could feel its back alongside her, its spine pressed against her. It was lean but it was heavy. It was beginning to breathe.

She put out her arm. Felt an almost liquid frigidity around her hand, over the wrist, almost to the elbow, like frogspawn in a half-frozen pond.

It turned its grey head, and the only white light in the room was in its long, predator's teeth and the only colour in the room was the still, cold yellow of its eyes.

I am yours.

'I can't,' Diane said.

'He killed your mother.' Ceridwen spoke softly. 'She stood at the top of the stairs. She was always very careful coming down them, afraid that the size of her belly would make her overbalance. She came down one stair at a time. One hand on the banister, the other holding the pink teddy she'd bought for her baby daughter. The teddy had a bow around its neck. Do you remember that teddy?'

'No.'

'Of course you don't. Because Archer burned it on the bonfire your father had Rankin build to destroy the blood-caked sheets. All the toys your mother had bought for you. Archer threw them on the bonfire, horrid yellow flames leaping into the night. He killed your mother and then he burned her dreams…'

Diane's head turned in anguish on the pillow. She saw the flames in the eyes of the beast.

'Let it go,' Ceridwen said, ever so softly.

'Yes.' Diane closed her eyes. 'Yes Nanny.'