The Chalice, page 53
Verity said nothing.
‘Is this … I mean, is this the Abbot?’
Verity pulled the Safeway bag back over the horror.
She’d said vaguely that she must have found it by the side of the well. Where he’d placed it so that he would have both hands free to pull himself out.
Powys banished for ever an image that came to him of Verity, fresh from her discovery of murdered Woolly, kicking Oliver Pixhill’s groping fingers from the rim of the well, shutting out his scream.
She came down from the bus in floods of tears. She didn’t know if it was over. How was she ever going to know?
She saw Juanita and Don Moulder over by the gate. On the other side of it, Joe Powys stood with little Verity and Arnold the dog, who had brought the lightball into the cold heart of it all.
And then came a strange jolt in her breast.
He was shambling slowly across the field towards the bus, his head down as if he was scared to look at her. His buccaneer’s hair was matted, he’d lost his famous earring.
Diane, full of tearful longing but still uncertain, looked back along the deck of the bus.
Go, said the Third Nanny.
She had a nice smile.
Epilogue
Prophecy is a dangerous trade, but we may hazard the guess that history will look back to our English Jerusalem as the cradle of many things that have gone to enrich the spiritual heritage of our race.
Dion Fortune
Avalon of the Heart
FOR MYSTICISM … PSYCHIC STUDIES … EARTH MYSTERIES … ESOTERICA
CAREY AND FRAYNE
Booksellers
High Street
Glastonbury
Prop. Juanita Carey
24 December
Danny,
OH GOD, Danny where do I start?
Where’s it going to END?
You’ll have read the papers, seen the TV reports (all concentrating on the Pennard madness, nobody making the right connections) and I know Powys phoned you.
Maybe this is entirely superfluous. As usual, I don’t know whether I’m writing to you or to myself.
Today, I’m going to try to have a long talk with Diane. I’ve seen a lot of her, of course, but there’s always been someone else there. Policemen. Her solicitor, Quentin Cotton. And Sam, of course – she’s moved into his flat, doesn’t like to let him out of her sight. She hasn’t really taken it all in, of course. Still talks about her father as if he were still alive and still the owner of Bowermead Hall.
Which SHE is now, of course. I don’t think any of us have quite taken that in.
‘Two hundred acres,’ Powys keeps saying. ‘Three vineyards. And a pack of hunting hounds.’ At which he grins. delightedly at Sam, and Sam looks terribly embarrassed.
We’re still staying, Powys and me, at The George and Pilgrims. He brought the old Amstrad across and I sit at the window and tap out this nonsense, looking down on High Street, very un-Christmas Eve, but still there, you know? Still there. Still with the candle lit in the window of the Wicked Wax Co. Even the quake didn’t put that candle out.
And I think I’m happy. Happier than I’ve been since I don’t know when. There’s no calm before a storm, only tension. After the storm, that’s where you find calm.
I feel guilty about this. Guilty because I’m glad – have to be frank and honest here – that old Pennard killed Archer and, especially, the hateful psychopath Ceridwen. I can still see Pennard framed in the entrance of the reservoir. Where he was always grey and heavy to me, there seemed to be a pure, fresh light in him as he raised that gun. Which just has to be very wrong, doesn’t it? God knows, I hate and fear guns as much as Sam Daniel. I’m sorry – ignore this bit, I’m mixed up, there’s too much I don’t understand.
And yet aspects of it are coming clearer all the time. It was only yesterday that it occurred to me that out of all those appalling people in the reservoir – and I recognised many of them from that night on the Tor – there was one missing.
It was the man who called himself Gwyn ap Nudd. The man in the hairy mask.
I’m almost certain now that behind that mask was Oliver Pixhill. Diane told me how the whole attitude of the travellers’ convoy began to change as they approached the start of the St Michael Line at Bury St Edmunds. What I suppose you would have to call a dark element entered. The less serious ones – the colourful, circusy types – had dropped away so that the only remaining members of the original group Diane had joined up with in Yorkshire were this boy Headlice and his so-called girlfriend.
Headlice – no home, estranged from his family, very much a lost boy.
They needed a sacrifice, you see. To activate the dark side of the Tor on the anniversary of the execution of Abbot Whiting. Powys, who (when pushed) will admit to knowing a little about these things, says the rootless, anonymous travelling population is regarded by working black magicians as a very accessible source of human sacrifices. Even babies, whose births are unregistered. Doesn’t bear thinking about.
We know from Diane that Headlice had been ‘prepared’. Made to walk backwards into every church along the St Michael Line – how more obviously satanic can you get? But this kid, from what Diane says about him, would have done it without a qualm, equating anti-Christian with anti-Establishment. (Which is utterly wrong; when the Arimathean planted his staff on Wearyall Hill, the pagans were The Establishment and Christianity was seriously radical, man …)
Who actually killed Headlice is no more clear than it ever was. Was it Gwyn or Mort? Or Rankin and his son. Or all of them, as, with hindsight, they seem to have been basically on the same side.
A sacrifice? Do I believe that, really? Well, people have died on the Tor in strange circumstances. And Jim …
Jim. Yes. Why did Jim die? Was it a case of Gwyn/Oliver spotting an opportunity for another Abbot’s Night sacrifice, feeling that this bolshy little guy had been delivered into his hands? It will remain a mystery. He always treasured Mystery.
Oliver. How can we ever know what drove that bastard? Apart, that is, from years of resentment at his father and exposure, through Archer, to the allure of the Dark Chalice.
They were very close friends from an early age, Archer and Oliver. Doubtless, Archer initially cultivated Oliver to get close to Meadwell and the family chalice he probably believed was calling out to him. Perhaps this is why Colonel Pixhill encouraged his poor wife to leave with his son, sensing the evil growing in the kid.
By this time, Archer and Oliver were at boarding school together – in Wiltshire or somewhere, I forget. Who should be the matron there but one Ruth Dunn? Was this coincidence? I don’t think it was. Dunn would already have been a serious, practising occultist by then. Who knows what she did with those two boys, what perversity they conjured between them.
It’s my feeling that, while Archer initially dominated Oliver Pixhill, it was soon Oliver who was controlling Archer. I suspect he became genuinely powerful, in a Charles Manson-like way. I can imagine him getting a great buzz out of dumping his city suit every so often, stopping shaving and joining up with the travellers as their revered shaman, collecting around him a group of the kind of insane occultists this society attracts and acquiring the kind of reputation that scares off the routine travellers.
And always, in the background, there was Ceridwen. I have no explanation for her. A psychopath is a psychopath, and there are more around than we think. Even in Glastonbury. Thank God her husband got the kids is all I can say.
Ceridwen, Oliver, Archer – THIS was the Inner Circle. These were the people playing with the volatile Glastonbury atmosphere. I don’t like to even imagine what went on down in that disused reservoir, the ‘perfect temple’, as Powys called it because of its alignment – an alignment they strengthened in the hope of somehow taking control of the Tor. They nearly did it too. With the proposed Restriction of Access, the Tor would very soon cease to be everyman’s temple. Much of poor Woolly’s paranoia seems to have been well founded and it makes you fear for Stonehenge.
Without Archer’s influence, I suspect the Tame the Tor Bill will fade ignominiously away. As for the road – well, for a start, Diane’s instructed Quentin Cotton to tear up any agreement for the sale of land to the Department of Transport. She insists she’ll actually invite the eco-guerrillas on to her property if it comes to it. I suspect, in the end, we might at least force a change of route.
We’ll fight, anyway. We have a lot of battles ahead. Not least to clear Woolly’s name. I want to have some kind of Woolaston memorial – this is very important to me. And I want to publish The Avalonian before March. One of the issues I want to raise with Diane.
The earth tremor? I don’t know what caused it. Was it a timely geological anomaly? Or was it the conflict of good and evil forces in a psychic hothouse climate? Some are saying it was the Tor announcing its refusal to be tamed. Others maintain it was a manifestation of God’s outrage at a bishop attempting conciliation with the pagans. It’s interesting to me that it happened when the two great spiritual forces were represented on the top of the Tor by two distinctly weak links – Wanda and the bishop, not enough power between them to keep a cigarette alight. If you imagine a fuse box: when the power overloads, it’s the slenderest thread that breaks. I think if you’d had Ceridwen up there facing … well, maybe even me, the way I was feeling that day and maybe still am … then perhaps the tower would have come down. I’m not kidding.
You may have detected that I’m feeling so much better, more energised, much more positive about the town, about its future. Yes, I believe we CAN all live together. I believe we must invoke the Grail, which stands for tolerance and acceptance.
(I won’t say peace and love.)
And the Dark Chalice, the anti-Grail?
I never saw it. Thank God.
With Don Moulder’s permission, Verity (she wouldn’t let anyone else touch it) placed the grisly item in the black bus, exactly where the radiator grille was coming off.
And then we set fire to the bus.
Well, we didn’t know what else to do. We burned that damned bus to an absolute shell, and then we paid to have it taken away. We figured maybe the link was broken with the end of the last male Pennard. The speculation in the papers is that Pennard killed his son by accident while attempting to drive out New Age travellers setting up some kind of squat in the disused reservoir on his land. The fact that one of these people seemed to be a well-established Glastonbury citizen was one of the puzzles requiring further investigation. Another was the apparent murder of Councillor Edward Woolaston by Archer Ffitch’s agent, Oliver Pixhill, at his father’s former house.
Verity is still staying with a somewhat chastened Wanda. I am expecting the Home Temple to be dismantled. Diane says she hopes to persuade Verity to run Bowermead until she decides what to do with it. The Rankins have gone, of course. Just disappeared. Hardly a surprise. Sam’s been going to Bowermead to feed the hounds, convinced he can ‘reform’ them. When I start to get depressed about Woolly and Jim, the thought of Sam as some kind of Pennard consort – and particularly what that will do to his revered father – always brings me round. I mean, can you IMAGINE Sam with the hunting and shooting mob at meetings of the Country Landowners’ Association? I just love it.
As for your Glastonbury book, co-authored by JM Powys and myself – we may well get around to it, although it’s unlikely to contain much of the above.
We’re taking things day by day. And night by night.
Love,
J
Closing Credits
As with all stories set in Glastonbury, this was a mélange of myth, legend, fiction and even fact. I can’t even remember the crossover points, but that’s the Isle of Avalon for you.
The layout and history of the town are more or less as described, although small reinventions were necessary.
Dion Fortune and John Cowper Powys were both profoundly affected by Glastonbury, but whether or not they ever met remains a mystery. I like to think they did, and that DF’s misspelling of the great man’s name was an example of her irrepressible humour. As you may have deduced, I’m an admirer of DF, whose novels – particularly The Sea Priestess, for which Mrs Carey has good reason to be grateful – deserve to be far better known. The story of the wolf-like elemental can be found in her essential handbook, Psychic Self-Defence. I soul-searched before linking it with the Ffitch family, especially when my word-processor mysteriously refused to print the first four versions. But she did seem to accept the one you read earlier. Thanks, DF. Phew …
Thanks also to Peter James for planting the word ‘Glastonbury’. Everyone I went to for information was amazingly helpful. Here they are, in alphabetical order: Penny Arnold, Pam Baker, Jim Barrington, Patrick Benham (author of The Avalonians), Paul Broadhurst, Simon Buxton, Carol Clewlow, Paul Devereux, Michael Dobbs, Anne Dowling, Bob Fells, Ron Fouracres, Jamie George, Tony Heath, Peter Heaton, Wendy Holborrow, Rachel Humphries, Tina Lukins, Cameron McConnell, Jeanine McMullen, Hamish Miller, Graham Nown, Ruth Prince, Serena and Colva Roney-Dougall, Fred Slater, Cynthia Straddling, Taunton General Hospital Accident Unit and Herbert Williams.
And ultimate thanks to my brilliant wife and live-in editor, Carol, who helped shape the plot, curbed a few excesses and then spent many long days and nights transforming, page by page, what might have been a Ratners’ chalice into the nearest we could get to an authentic Grail.
Keep reading for a sample chapter of
The Bones of Avalon
PHIL RICKMAN
I
Lest Graves Be Open
Mortlake, February, 1560.
My mother’s only servant disappeared on the night we needed it least. The eve of the Queen’s visit. And of Candlemas. Catherine Meadows had been a quiet maid. Efficient, demure and, more important, discreet. The first servant I’d let dust, or even enter, my library. Given the afternoon for herself, she’d left the house shortly before noon.
Less than an hour, this was, before the Queen’s messenger had come to alert us of her arrival here on the morrow. The Queen! God, my poor mother had gone wild: so much to do, and no servant to do it!
No more peace for me this day, then. By six, the moon was over the river, cold-haloed, and then came the first wash of stars, and still no sign of Catherine Meadows. Although I work best at night, when all is quiet, by half past eight I was obliged to close my books, douse my candles, unhook my long brown coat and venture into the bone-raw February night to inquire after her.
Maybe, in some inner vessel of my being, I had the inkling of an approaching menace. Who can truly say? I’ve oft-times wished such occult portents were more clear and direct, but – nature’s bitter irony – it’s rarely been that way for me.
A well-lit night – on the edge of a thaw, I felt, yet still hard as crystal. Hoar frost swelling the twigs and branches of our orchard as I walked out, without a lantern. Out towards the edge of the village and London town, calling first at a smoky old tavern, where I knew the man I sought spent an hour or so most evenings. But he was not amongst the drinkers this night, and hard-faced men were staring at me, so I slipped away and went further along the road to his cottage and found him there. ‘Ah, now, as it happened, Dr John, she come to me midafternoon. About her gran, Goodwife Carter – took bad.’
Jack Simm, once an apothecary, now my mother’s occasional gardener. His cottage, on the edge of a copse of oak and thorn, was strong-built and snug and far warmer than our house – unwise, therefore, to go in, lest I end up passing the whole night before his fire.
‘Bad how?’
We always fear the worst. Smallpox, usually.
‘Back trouble,’ Jack Simm said. ‘Bits of her spine took a walk, I reckon. Not my field, really. I left some wintergreen balm and give Cath a message to take to Gerald. The bone-twister?’
‘Who’s that, Jack?’ A woman’s voice from the firelit, herbsmelling interior. ‘Who’s out there?’
‘Dr John, Sarah. No problem.’ Whitebearded Jack stepping out of the doorway, stained sacking belted around his waist, no boots. ‘You want me to ride out to their farm for you, Dr John? Won’t take—’
‘No, no. Too many robbers about. She’ll be back at first light, I’m sure. Go to your fire, Jack, and your wife. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
But Jack Simm was pulling the door shut behind him and shambling out to join me at the roadside. Rubbing his hands together and wincing as he shifted from one unshod foot to the other on the frozen mud.
‘God’s bones, I’ll be bleedin’ glad to see some sign of a warming.’
‘Candlemas tomorrow,’ I said. ‘The first gleaming of spring in the olden days.’
‘Yeah, well, the sun was kinder in the olden days. Dr John—’
Clearing rough phlegm from his throat, lowering his voice. ‘There’s things I wouldn’t say in front of Sarah, a good woman but she gossips. Don’t mean to but she does. Here’s the truth of it. The Meadowses … A religious family, now. If you understand me.’
For the past two years, at summer’s close, Jack Simm had harvested herbs for me, including the small mushrooms which, when brewed, can bring on visions. We understood one another well.
‘The father,’ he said. ‘Always the bleedin’ father, innit?’
‘Hot gospel?’
‘Of an extreme kind.’
‘Is there another kind?’
Used to be only priests; now any man might think himself chosen by God as a device. Jack talked, in some dismay, of Abel Meadows – built like a chimney stack, Bible brandished as a weapon.
‘You mean he’s finally realised who his daughter’s working for,’ I said. ‘That’s what this is about?’
‘Comes here day ’fore yesterday, blethering about the end of time, like we got maybe weeks. Then he’s asking about the habits of Mistress Dee.’
‘Mistress Dee? The bastard!’
‘I says, Master Meadows, I says, you’ll find that woman in church four times on Sundays and a good hour every weekday.’
