The Chalice, page 50
Don Moulder was manning his field gate, keping the riffraff out, shouting at them that it was private property.
Who were all these buggers? They never said this. There’d been talk of a small demonstration against Bowkett’s Restriction of Access Bill (of which Don Moulder was fully in favour).
‘No, you can’t!’ he roared at some cretin in a cagoule leaning out of his car and waving a twenty-pound note. ‘This is the official car park.’
At last, two new-looking cars prodded through the cold mist which was alternating with freezing clear spells and sudden wintry mist, the Tor appearing and disappearing against a filthy night sky.
‘Mr Moulder? Peter Wakely, Archdeacon.’
‘Thank Christ.’
‘Indeed,’ shouted the Archdeacon. ‘The Bishop’s behind me in the BMW. Just tell us where to go.’
‘Over there. Under the tree. By the buzz.’
Don Moulder didn’t look at the bus. He hadn’t been close to it. Hadn’t even liked putting the keys in his pocket. Maybe the Bishop could bless them too. And then he’d sell the bus back to the scrap-yard for half of what he’d paid. Give the proceeds to charity. Thus cleansing himself and his land.
The Bishop was wearing a tweed overcoat, buttoned around a purple neckpiece. He stepped out under an umbrella.
‘Morning, your grace. Donald Moulder. This is my field.’
‘Good morning, Mr Moulder. And a very fine field. Wonderful view of the Tor.’
‘About the buzz, Bishop …’
‘The buzz?’
‘I spoke to a feller in your office. Reverend Williams, could’ve been. Arranging for you to help me with this buzz. This one behind you.’
‘My God,’ said the Bishop, ‘I don’t think we can tow it away.’
‘To cleanse it, Bishop. To free this buzz and my field from unwanted presences. This Reverend Williams said you could, like, exorcise it …’
‘I’m sure he said no such thing, Mr Moulder.’ The Archdeacon, a powerfully built man in a Goretex jacket, thrust himself behind them like a bodyguard. ‘I think you must have misunderstood.’
‘You sayin’ this man lied to me?’
‘He was in no position to make any such promise and on a day like this, with a schedule like ours … I suggest you write to the diocese. I’m sorry, Mr Moulder, we do have to get on.’
‘Drop us a line,’ said the Bishop, as he was hustled towards the field gate.
Don Moulder looked back towards the bus. All he could see in the darkness was a great black bulge in the field and the glimmer of the scablike radiator grille, rust on it like dried blood on grinning teeth. Grinning at Don Moulder’s stupidity.
As the Bishop’s party left the field, another BMW pulled halfway through the gate, a head leaned out of the driver’s window.
‘Mr Moulder!’
Archer Ffitch’s voice.
‘Hell’s going on?’
Don wandered over. ‘Somebody told ’em the new road’s under way.’
‘But that’s nonsense.’
‘You tell them that. Looks like hundreds of the bolshie devils, comin’ from all over, look. Won’t do your campaign no harm, though, will it, Mr Archer? You wanner get up there, argue with ’em. Be telly crews in a bit. Make the most of it, I would.’
He knew he sounded like a ranting lunatic.
‘I’ll come later,’ Archer said. ‘I have to see my father.’
He reversed out of the field. Don Moulder followed him, not looking back. People with torches and backpacks were swarming all over the lane. It was like Armageddon.
They went into The George and Pilgrims through the back door and quietly up the narrow stairs to Powys’s room.
When Arnold leapt up at her, Juanita pushed both hands into his fur. Powys looking on, not sure if the dream was over.
Juanita held both hands under the Tiffany lamp. They were still luridly discoloured, but she could flex the fingers without pain. She reached up, very hesitantly, and untied her cloak.
Juanita and Powys looked at each other. Neither said a word. Powys pushed his hands through his hair, sat down on the bed.
‘I suppose’, Juanita said after a minute, ‘that most people would say it was a nervous thing.
That I … you know … I could probably have used them any time. But I was scared to.’
‘Is that what you think?’
She thought about it. ‘If that was the case I think I’d have been able to use them when I wasn’t thinking about it. Like when we were making love.’
‘How long have you known?’
‘I suspected from the moment I put my hands up before the stone arms. To receive the Chalice. I didn’t think about it again.’
‘Juanita …’
‘Mmm?’
‘Who was the other woman?’
‘Did you see another woman?’
‘I think I did.’
‘There was power there, wasn’t there?’
‘A lot.’ He couldn’t stop looking at her hands; they were loosely clasped in front of her against the muslin dress. ‘A whole reservoir.’
He felt her stare.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing. I don’t know. Listen, maybe … Maybe it wasn’t the right time.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I need to wash. I’ll think about it.’ She seemed unhurried suddenly.
‘I’ll take Arnold round the block,’ he said.
In the middle of the car park, Arnold taking a leak against the church wall, Powys encountered Sam Daniel.
‘Powys, where the hell you been?’
‘Around.’ What was he supposed to say? He couldn’t explain any of it.
‘It’s chaos up there. Gonner be a lot of trouble, count on it. Woolly. He wouldn’t listen. Half the bloody Green Party’s moved in over the last couple of hours.’
‘He told them about the road, didn’t he?’
‘And he was wrong. It’s not a road. I seen my dad. He did the work, his lads, his JCB.’
‘What do you mean it’s not a road?’
‘You got a map?’
‘I can find a map. Come up to the room, Sam.’
‘You think this is important?’
‘Could be,’ Powys said. ‘I mean anything could be important, couldn’t it, at this stage. What time’s dawn? Eight?’
‘I never notice.’
They heard the angry warble of a police car.
‘Bloody hell,’ Sam said, ‘word’s finally got through to Street.’
Verity had walked all the way back to Meadwell, as quickly as she could manage with her dragging hip.
She pushed open the garden gate. Over her head, the yew trees clasped each other against the ice-barbed, predawn wind. Councillor Woolaston’s Renault car was parked under the wall. No other car, thank God, was there. All the lights in the house were out. Verity dug into the pocket of her winter coat for her keys.
She didn’t need them. The door swung lazily open at a touch, as though the house was yawning with boredom.
Verity entered silently. And then, lest he thought she was the expected intruder, she called out,
‘Mr Woolaston. Don’t be alarmed. It’s Verity Endicott!’
He didn’t reply. It had been a long vigil; perhaps he had fallen asleep.
In the hall, all was normal: the dark tobacco pillars lounged like greasy old men and the water pipes bulged and croaked. Welcome home. Heh heh heh, the pipes seemed to belch. There was a sour and salty smell in the air. As if the house had broken wind in her face.
And she knew then, before she even noticed that the dining room door was ajar.
‘Archer’s orders, this was,’ Sam said. ‘Not the old man.’
Powys had found the Mendip Hill (West) Ordnance Survey map downstairs among a rack of tourist guides. They had it spread over the bed.
‘Here’s the Tor, right? Here’s Meadwell. And here’s Bowermead Hall.’
‘I should have noticed that.’ Powys pencilled it in. ‘They’re in a straight line. You’d probably miss it because it runs so close to the St Michael Line. But it is a ley … see, it goes on … a mound here and through this farm called Southbarrow farm.’
‘So they built Bowermead Hall on an old ley-line.’ Juanita had changed back into her sweater and skirt, combed her hair. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘OK,’ Powys said. ‘If, say, they thought Meadwell was too small and dismal to live in, maybe a little too close to the Tor for comfort, but they wanted to retain the link. Maybe even strengthen it, by adding another point to the line. And this is where they chopped down the trees. Dug it out. They dug out the ley?’
‘You get an immaculate view of the Tor,’ Sam said. ‘Side of it I’ve never seen before. Like at Meadwell, but even more dramatic.’
‘And that was where you saw …’
‘Him. Pixhill. I think it upset him.’
Juanita was tracing the line with a forefinger. Possibly, Powys thought, for the sheer novelty of being able to do that. He noticed she was breathing faster.
‘Sam, what’s here?’
The tip of her finger quivering.
Sam peered at the map. ‘Resr, what’s that mean?’
‘Reservoir,’ Powys said.
‘Oh my God.’ Juanita closed and opened her eyes three times. She was looking at the bed next to where Powys sat. ‘That’s it.’
‘What?’
‘It’s where she is. This reservoir.’
Sam stiffened. ‘Drowned.’
‘It’s disused,’ Juanita said. ‘It’s a big grey place with …’ She closed her eyes again, ‘… three grey, concrete pillars.’
‘What’s up with her?’ Sam was spooked. ‘Where’s she getting this from?’
Arnold stood up on all three legs and Powys, seeing his big ears go back and his hairy snout rise, dived to the floor and clapped a hand around it.
‘He was gonner howl, wasn’t he?’
Juanita smoothed the quilt next to where Powys had sat.
‘Never a dent,’ she said.
Upon the long oak table, on which the Colonel’s coffin had lain for three days and nights, little Councillor Woolaston now lay dead.
Verity wept over his horribly disfigured corpse.
Be assured that I would not expect you to do anything beyond coming to the rescue of my good and staunch friend, Verity Endicott, who is in grave and mortal danger, standing as she does directly in the path of (and, God help me, I do not exaggerate) an old and utterly merciless evil.
She backed away from the body, not through fear or revulsion at the way the head had been smashed – nose and teeth broken, the blood pooled in sunken cheeks – but to give vent to her feelings.
‘How I hate you,’ she told Meadwell.
And then thought of the well itself. It would be opened now.
SIXTEEN
Yes, Nanny
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 newshungry 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 believe 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 for ever. 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 stubble 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 the 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 ecoarmy 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?’
